by Renee Wildes
Loren gripped her arm, hard enough to pull her from her dark musings. His gaze searched hers. “Remember, he takes what is given. He cannot force. Your soul is safe, I swear it.”
Gratifying as that was, it wasn’t her soul that concerned her at the moment. Cowardly though it was to admit, she feared more of the physical pain, as well. Pain was just pain, but she had new appreciation for just how bad it could get, and she had a lifelong susceptibility to iron. Pahn’s treatment was no permanent cure.
“We art with thee. He shalt not get thee thisss time.”
Dara and Loren crept up the stairs. All able-bodied warriors were out on the field, and all the other…noncombatants…seemed to be hiding. Dara hoped so—fewer innocent casualties that way. In a couple of candle marks, they’d all either be freed, or dead.
Dara swallowed down the fear and sense-cast out and up, looking for cold. Dark. Other. A gagging foulness like rotted meat came from the tower overlooking the north mountains. “He’s in the north tower.”
A wisp of a breeze tickled her ear. “They come,” the sylph reported.
“There are three entrances to the tower,” Dara whispered. “Come up through the hall and across from the kitchen stores.”
The sylph disappeared with the message.
They continued climbing, the soft soles of their boots silent on the cool stone. The higher they climbed, the greater the sense of dread that churned in Dara’s stomach. The blood torque stirred, the voices rumbling with palpable malice. “Remember the wordsss.”
Maiden to Mother, Dara chanted in her head, envisioning throwing a line of power to Lorelei, one of the binding triad. Three faces of the Goddess, bound in a perfect triangle. Fire heats water. Five elements, five fingers of the Destiny Hand.
She choked on that last one. Instead of the four elements, with five mage disciplines they formed a pentagram.
No matter what Loren said, Dara would rather not acknowledge the Destiny Hand at all.
The tower shook as with a great earthquake. Dara leaned against the wall, placed her hand against the stone to steady herself. A stinging thread of wrongness snapped back at her touch. “A trap.”
With grinding suddenness, one of the stairs dropped away, revealing a trapdoor that opened down into black emptiness right below Dara’s feet. She didn’t even have time to scream. The voices screamed for her. Loren grabbed her wrist as she started to fall, and yanked her back onto the lower stairs.
Dara clung to him, silent and shaking, blood pounding in her ears. She’d almost died, and she’d never gotten the chance to say “Thank you”—or “I love you”. He’d been with her every step of the way, never turning aside, never wavering. Even now, Loren crushed her to him and she heard his own heart thundering, as well. “Well, that was close,” she whispered.
“Too close. I almost lost you.” Loren dipped his head for a quick, desperate kiss. His eyes were wide in a taut face. Then he turned and sized up the distance across the void. “I can jump it.”
Dara closed her eyes. Maybe he could, but she couldn’t. “It’s too far. I’ll fall.”
“I can catch you. I swear I shall not let you fall. We have come too far to turn back now. We have defeated his army and rescued Tegan, but if we do not banish this demon, it is all for naught. We must go on.”
She knew that, but she hated the feeling of her stomach dropping as the ground fell away. She shuddered. “You first.”
He leaped the chasm with catlike ease, and spun to face her from the far side. He stared down at her. “You can do this.”
To not only jump across, but up? She eyed the bottomless black sprawled at her feet. It looked a mile wide. “I don’t think so.” She whimpered, hating the fear in her voice.
The voices hissed. The blood torque blazed around her throat.
“Dara, look at me.” Loren’s voice cut through the panic.
She stared up at him—her salvation, her anchor.
He nodded. “We started this together. Now, let us finish it together.”
She fought just to breathe. “I’ll fall.”
“Nay. I shall catch you, I promise. I shall not fail you.”
Her gaze locked to his, Dara took a deep breath and jumped. Loren reached out to grab her outstretched hands and haul her up into his arms.
“See?” he whispered into her hair. “There is naught we cannot do, when we do it together.”
Together. Such a simple word for such a profound concept as never alone. She trembled.
A savage snarl came from the top of the stairs.
“Get behind me.” Loren drew Justice.
Much to the voices’ displeasure, Dara obeyed. She gaped at the grizzled abomination peering down at them from the top stair. The changling hellhound bared long fangs at her, darkness and muscle shifting and sliding under its matted coat as it flattened against the stone, every muscle quivering. In the time it took to blink, it sprang.
Loren met its preternatural rush with the upthrust blade. The changling twisted in midair, a fatal chest blow glancing off its shoulder with a painful slice. Its scream echoed in Dara’s mind with black rage and the promise of retribution. It spun toward her, but Loren was there again, keeping Justice betwixt the demon-hound and themselves. “Return to your master,” he ordered.
The changling seemed not to notice the yellow ichor matting its coat. Ears pinned, it whined and advanced in a crouch. The black shard flickered behind its mad, feral eyes. A slight narrowing of those eyes was all the warning Loren got afore it sprang again. Loren brought Justice up, and the changling impaled itself on the blade, which flared with the Lady’s Light. The shard snapped back to Jalad, and the hound dropped dead at Loren’s feet.
Loren and Dara leaped over the carcass and continued upward. The open doorway beckoned. Dara sense-cast again, feeling the Lady’s other followers in the other two tunnels.
“Your armies are defeated. Come down and face my justice, Jalad,” Hengist called from the training courtyard.
“Never,” Jalad spat. “You can never defeat me, mortal.”
“Now,” Everett yelled. All three groups streamed into the tower.
Dara threw a hand toward a wall torch. “Go. Now, little friends—to me.” The torch burst into flame, and salamanders swarmed to her call, led by First. “I bind you to this circle of sacred flame, fiend,” Dara called, as she and the others were enclosed by the circle of salamander/sylph fire. “Maiden to mother,” Dara began. The blood torque flared, and Dara threw a line of power to Lorelei.
Lorelei caught the power, joined it to her own. “Mother to crone.” She fired it at Anika.
“Crone reborn as maiden,” the air mage finished, sending the power line back to Dara, binding the three faces of the Goddess together in a sacred triangle. Within the Goddess-barrier, backed by the elemental circle, the Other raged, helpless to escape. “In the name of the eternal She, the Lady of Light, I hold thee to this plane,” Anika decreed.
Jalad’s eyes narrowed and he spun wildly, looking for an escape from the circle of Light. The Other growled.
“As thou entered the physical realm and bound thyself to that body of flesh,” Gwendolyn said, “I bind thee to the earth.” She threw a line of power to Pahn.
“As thou wield iron and quail afore Her sacred toshi blades, I bind thee to the metal of the earth. Dwarf to elf.” Pahn threw another line of power to Anika.
“As words of thy foul deeds spread to all lands on the whisper of the wind, I bind thee with air, that thou mayest have no secrets on this plane.” Anika threw the power to Lorelei.
“As thy foulness pollutes all it touches, I bind thee with water, within and without, to wash thy filth away.” Lorelei flung her power line at the blood torque itself.
The power reshaped. “Fire of life, without and within, I bind you to the element of fire. Human to dwarf, dragon to elf.” She flung the power out to complete the Destiny Hand pentacle.
“Mortal witch.” Enraged, Jalad threw up his hands at
her. Demon-fire flared at her, bounced off the draconian blood torque shield.
The voices roared. The flaming circle flared brighter.
“You are fools,” the Other raged, spinning within the bindings. “This vessel brought me over. This vessel only can send me back. You hold not the key. How long do you think to hold me here?” Its laughter was a hollow echo.
Aletha stepped forward from the shadows. She glowed with the Lady’s Light. “I am She in this earthly realm. Thou speaks of thy focus? Rest assured, we have no need of such a device.”
Everett stepped across the bindings from Aletha. “I am he who is Her consort. Man to woman, sun to moon. Know the man who summoned thee wished to gain power, not lose his immortal soul. Doth he renounce thee, thou shalt find no other home here.”
Loren stepped betwixt Lorelei and Dara, holding Justice afore him. The sacred toshi blade gleamed white-hot, brighter than the sun. “I am her champion, wielder of Her justice. I am the instrument of her freedom, for all who turn from thee and to Her.”
“I was summoned and bound to this plane by this vessel, and I am not yet done with it,” the Other snarled. “If I go, this soul comes with me.”
“Earth and rock, shake the very foundations of this land,” Gwendolyn intoned.
The hair stood up on the back of Dara’s neck as the land shrugged off the coming winter sleep. A tremor shook the tower, and then another. Stronger.
The voices joined the torque, and the bloodstone glowed as Dara cried out, “Iliyardach pelesss fortuitar elemental levitusss. Komme mountinium Aege levitusss. Bring forth thy fire.”
Screams came from below the tower as Mount Aege exploded in a mighty column of fire and ash. Molten metal and rock flowed from its summit, westward, against all its natural inclination.
“Thou wert bound to earth, metal and fire,” Aletha intoned. “In Her name, I bind thee within Mount Aege.” She and Everett faced each other with their palms pressed prayer-like in front of themselves. Heads bowed, they whispered, “Rend our here-and-now, a gateway, a portal to beyond. Send this abomination forever from our sight.” As their hands separated, a wavering split appeared within Mount Aege itself, a screaming blackness beyond the base of rock, the river of fire.
Her skin nigh burst into flames from the heat within. Darkness crawled within her, bound to the lines of fire. The voices screamed in her mind with the effort of holding the mountain and the demon at once.
“With the Light of the Lady and the cleansing of water and air, I banish thee from this realm,” Aletha declared. “Meet Her justice, fiend.”
“From Her eternal Light back into thy eternal darkness,” Loren stated, and lunged forward, driving Justice through Jalad’s body.
A pulse of blinding acid slammed into Dara, flaying every nerve, but she pushed away with all her combined draconian might. The Light was too much for the demon; a snap, and the Other hurled into the chasm created by the Goddess Incarnate. Aletha and Everett clapped their hands together, and the chasm closed, forever.
Blood poured from Jalad’s wound, and he fell to his knees on the floor. “Mercy,” he cried, clutching his belly.
The voices roared in Dara’s head. Her shoulder burned anew. She banked the fires in the mountain, cut her ties with Gwendolyn and Pahn. The earth stopped shaking. Lorelei caught her friend as Gwendolyn’s legs gave. With the water mage’s movements, the power bindings collapsed.
Dara stared at Jalad, watched him bleed all over the floor. No one moved.
He stared back at her. “Would you let me die, healer?”
Footsteps sounded in the stairwell coming from the hall. Hengist appeared in the doorway, his drawn sword in one hand, a rolled up scroll in the other. “Hold,” Hengist ordered. He pointed his bloody sword at his once-neighbor-now-enemy. “I call you to answer for your crimes, Count of Westmarche.”
Jalad coughed up blood, swaying on his knees. “I would stand trial afore the high court.”
“I am the high court,” Hengist snapped, allowing the scroll to roll open. He held the written part toward Jalad so the other man could verify the truth of Hengist’s words, Sezeny’s signature at the bottom of a death-warrant. “You stand—kneel—accused of breaking your sacred Arcadian oath of brotherhood. That is treason against High King Sezeny, a crime punishable by death by hanging. You are accused of summoning demons, a heresy punishable by death by fire. You stand accused of torture and murder, crimes punishable by death on the rack.” He glared down at his foe. “And I further convict you of the rape of a child, a crime punishable by castration and death by stoning.”
Hengist’s eyes narrowed. “I have my choice of fates. Be grateful my lady wife is not here. In the name of King Sezeny and Arcadia, I hereby find you guilty on all counts and sentence you to death. Since the Lady has seen fit to carry out your sentence, I hold all here to bear witness to it.” His eyes met Dara’s. “You will not heal him.”
The voices were already suggesting Dara partially heal Jalad and in which order he could face all his punishments, saving death for the very end. “Too easssy,” they protested.
Dara’s arm bubbled with a fierce burning. “Your brand dies with you, master of none,” she spat at Jalad as she clutched her shoulder. “For Mag, for Tegan, for Moira—for all the daughters of Light you victimized—I welcome your death. May you answer to Her and join your master in the darkest pits of the netherworld.”
Jalad’s eyes searched the faces of the group. He found no compassion on any of them. He paled and fell over with a grimace of pain. “I may be finished, but so is your Goddess. The One Truth is in ascension and the once ways are over.”
“Not here,” Hengist said. “She is still strong in the north and the east. The truth-seekers are not welcome here.”
Jalad’s eyes glazed over, and the bleeding slowed as his arms went slack. Moments later, Dara screamed as savage pain sliced through her shoulder. Loren sheathed Justice and reached for her as she clutched her ruined arm. When she took her hand away, the brand was gone. Her skin was once again smooth, as if the mark had never been there. Screams within and without the fortress walls announced the other women branded by Jalad’s iron had been freed.
Wide eyes full of tears, Dara whispered, “It’s gone. I’m free.”
Tears spilled down Loren’s own cheeks. Unashamed, he wiped them away. “Aye. It is over.” Heedless of their audience, he wrapped his arms around Dara. “Now we can live our lives as they were meant to be lived.”
Hengist dropped to his knees afore Aletha. “Great Lady,” he whispered, awe in his voice. “How may I serve you?”
Aletha smiled. “But continue, king of men,” she replied with a voice not altogether her own. “Hold these lands safe for all My children. Thou hast done well. But the time for secrets has ended, my lord. The time for truth has come at last. I release thee from thy vow of silence. It is necessary no longer.”
He straightened and looked to Dara and Loren. “Aye, Lady. I thank you.”
Everett reached out a hand. “Arise, king of men. We have much work to do.”
“That’s a fact.” Hengist’s voice was grim.
Dara clung to Loren. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to move. She was home, she was free. The demon was gone, Jalad was dead, and Hengist and Moira were back in power. But so many dead, many more wounded, both physical battle wounds and mental trauma. The aftermath of war and enemy occupation. She recalled the heads on pikes, the ba-pef that were once men of Riverhead whom she’d been forced to destroy.
Free. No more fear. She shuddered, cold to the bone. It was all so sudden, so overwhelming, it was almost more than her mind could grasp. Her eye caught the flicker of flame from the torches. “Little friends, I release you from my service. With my sincerest thanks, you are free to go. Go home. Be at peace.”
“Kind halfling. You are welcome, sister of fire.” The torches all died. The howling of the pillar was silenced.
Halfling. Sister of fire. The blood torque. The voices. Drago
ns. Lady Goddess, what a week. Dara squared her shoulders and eyed Jalad’s crumpled form with loathing. A part of her wanted to kill Jalad a dozen more times, for all the sorrow one man’s twisted ambition had caused. Forgive me, Lady. “Let’s get out of this room.”
“Aye.” Loren looked at the body of the man who had rained such destruction down on their world.
“Gloreriell? Where—”
“With Cianan and Kikeona by the well,” the stallion reported. “Moira is arguing with her brother about entering the tower.”
“It’s safe now to enter, but we were just leaving.” Dara was willing to bet that wasn’t the only thing Trystan was snarling at his sister for. A-pregnant-woman-in-battle headed the top of the clansman’s list of unpardonable sins. “My Liege, your lady wife is most anxious for news. Mayhaps we should all go outside?”
Hengist’s face paled. “My wife? Moira is here?”
“Aye, Sire. She fought with the rest of the clan spears.”
“She what?” Hengist spun on his heel and stormed from the tower.
“Guess that is our cue to leave, as well,” Loren commented into Dara’s hair. “Think we should go rescue Moira?”
“I’d be far more concerned for him.”
Indeed, when they got downstairs and out into the courtyard, Moira faced off against Trystan and Hengist with her gore-splattered fellow she-warriors backing her up. Lorelei came over to Dara and Loren. “Well, younglings, we made it. Thou didst a fine job.”
Anika addressed her elemental sylphs. “Inform Kings Cedric and Pari of our victory. Tell them we shalt be home soon. Then thou art free to go, with my sincerest thanks.”
“Mine as well,” Dara added. “We couldn’t have done this without you.”
The wind swirled away with a titter like wind chimes.
Dara stared around her. Acres of burned and blood-soaked earth, polluted with demon acid, piles of dead, a scattering of wounded. Safehold was the only building still standing.
Aletha and Everett strode up as well. “Gather the Safehold survivors,” the high priestess ordered. “We have work to do, and undo, afore we leave.”
