by Joe Jackson
Kari laughed. “It’s so weird. I thought I would feel guilty after what we shared, but even before you said what you did, I didn’t feel guilty at all. It was more like I was being foolish to think I had to stay faithful to my husband after he passed, even though…”
“He told you not to mourn him too long?” he finished when she trailed off.
She met his eyes intensely. “How did you know?”
Morduri sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. “It was my father’s final order to his wife when his will was read,” he said. Kari found it interesting that the beshathans – or at least the elestram, or Morduri’s family specifically – might adopt leaving last wills, but she didn’t say as much or interrupt. “And yet, for all these years, she has remained solitary on my behalf, to help run my realm as regent while I put myself and my people before her. You and I both have unspoken promises to fulfill when we return home, Kari.”
“I suppose we do.”
“And are you ready to return home now?”
Kari straddled his lap, facing him. They shared another kiss, but when she drew away, she asked, “Am I?”
“Yes,” he answered for her. “Go find that man you’re in love with, and don’t waste any more of your time and effort on me. My uncle and I have things to do, and then I must see to releasing my mother from her bond of servitude. But before you go, I want to make certain you understand exactly how I feel.”
“When you first came to me, you hated me. No need to deny it or act embarrassed; it was a natural reaction, and dare I say the correct reaction. When you came to me this time, I could tell you still didn’t trust me, but when I told you what I wanted from you, I sensed a change. The more we got to know each other, and the more intertwined our lives became as we planned this gambit, the more I could see it. And all of that obviously culminated in you allowing me to mate with you.”
“I hope you understand that it was not lust. It was something I was happy – honored, even – to share with you. Emma is my mate, and my true love. But you have become special to me in a way you might not appreciate. Not in the sense of lovers, but dare I tell you that it is something more than friends? I trusted you in a way I have not trusted a great many people in my life – and I still do. A time of great change is coming to this world, and I am willing to put my life and my trust in you. I hope only that you are willing to do the same.”
“I am,” Kari answered without hesitation.
“Good. We will have a great many things to discuss once the next Council session has come and gone. Depending on how things play out here – it is probably not in any of our best interests for me to remain here throughout the campaign – I will send you an invitation to meet with me in Pataria. And I mean it when I say I very much look forward to seeing you again.”
“Even though I’ll be terra-dracon again,” she teased, rising up from his lap.
“Even though I expect – and hope – that there will be another man by your side.”
Kari reached out her hand, and helped him to his feet when he took it. She wrapped him in a tight hug. “Please give my best to Cestriana and Amalikor if you see them again before I do,” she said. “As much as we might feel for each other now, Morduri, remember that it was them and their daughter that I did this for.”
“Of course,” he said. He walked over and hefted the rucksack, then helped sling it over her shoulder. “Just remember, you need to change back to your normal form as soon as you get home. Otherwise, it may take a bit of explaining to get yourself out of prison.” Kari laughed. “Do you want someone to accompany you through the process of returning home?”
“I feel confident enough,” she said. “Thank you, my friend.”
Morduri leaned in and kissed her again, but chastely this time on the side of her snout. He waved a smiling goodbye as Kari took hold of the little voice in the back of her mind. She fell within herself, her mind stretching out through the heavens apart from her body. Within moments she saw the great expanse of Citaria, recognized the continent of Askies Island, and saw the harbor of DarkWind. She slid down toward the campus of the Demonhunter Order, to arrive in a little-used alleyway between its wall and one of the barracks…
…and arrived in the middle of a raging inferno and pall of smoke.
Chapter XIX – Counterstrikes
Kari coughed and hacked, her eyes shut tight against the brightness and heat of the inferno. She moved closer to the wall and crouched, trying to get out of the stream of heat and smoke coming from the blazing barracks. She needed to change back to her true form, but this definitely wasn’t the right place to sit and let the transformation happen. She shuffled along the wall and looked across the campus of the Order: the barracks were not the only building set ablaze.
Reaching the corner of the building, she could see that not only was this barracks house not the only building on the campus ablaze, but the campus was not the only place in the city on fire. She stood transfixed for a couple of minutes, turning side to side slowly to behold parts of the city spewing columns of flame and smoke into the air. It looked like the western quarter of Solaris after Zaliskower had struck, and she wondered if a dragon might have attacked the city.
“Hey, there’s one over there!” a voice shouted to her left. Kari looked that way. A group of recruits, poorly armored and armed as if they’d rushed out the door with no time to prepare, approached her warily. “Drop your weapons and surrender!”
Kari started to reply, but realized instinct had her speaking beshathan. She shook her head and switched to the Citarian trade tongue. “Stand down, cadets, that’s an order,” she said, noting the utter shock on their faces. “Where is Lord Allerius?”
The trainees continued to stare at her, dumbfounded, but then exchanged glances. “He’s dead. You should know, your companions killed him!”
Kari had to work hard to bite down the sob that rose unbidden to her throat. Albrecht is dead? she thought. This was unreal; it was like she had stepped into a nightmarish reflection of Citaria instead of the true world. She thought of Seanada’s warnings about walking through the dream alone; could she have ended up in the wrong place? Or was this actually happening?
“Stand guard and give me a couple of minutes,” Kari said. “You’ll understand when I’m done. Just don’t do anything stupid and don’t let anyone or anything near me, understand?”
Blank, blinking stares answered her, but Kari shook her head. She shed her armor and the clothing beneath it, ignoring the muttered what the hell from one of the cadets. Kari focused her will on returning to her true form. She wasn’t sure if she needed to, but she thought of all the times she’d looked at herself in the mirror. She could see her jawline, her nose, the wings, the hair, the black eyes; and then, pain shot through her entire body.
It hurt less than the initial transformation into a mallasti, but pain was pain. The gasps of the cadets told her it was working, and once the pain faded to the dullest echo, she straightened out before them. Most of the cadets had the wherewithal to avert their eyes, but not all of them, which was just as well. The ones taking in Kari’s naked form couldn’t possibly miss the angry, pulsing symbol of Zalkar emblazoned across her chest.
“Lady Vanador!” one of them said, snapping her a salute, and the others followed suit.
Kari started getting dressed. “Would one of you care to explain what’s going on? Is Lord Allerius…is he really dead?”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of the men answered. “They…they cut his head off as he was trying to escape the burning building.”
“WHO IS THEY?” Kari shouted, and the young men and women recoiled. “WHAT IS HAPPENING?”
“Demons…er, Mehr’Durillians, ma’am. The attack started just hours ago. We’ve been holding here as ordered, but there seems to be several groups of them attacking the city. There’s fires everywhere you look. The campus seems to be secure, and the fires are slowly being put out, but I think the city is still under attack.”
Kar
i put her hand to her belly and grimaced. That gurgling passed through her guts just as with the first transformation, but this time, it left a sharp pain deep in her belly. She took a few deep breaths and tried to shrug off the pain. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it did release a surge of adrenaline, and after being in the heavier mallasti body, she felt extremely light on her toes. She felt ready for battle, pain in her stomach be damned.
“Are you all right, ma’am?”
“Fine,” Kari said, her mind trying to think clearly when flooded with fury. She pointed at the cadet who had been addressing her. “You – you’re hereby field-promoted to Enforcer. Take these others, get some armored coats at least, and then you are to patrol the grounds from gate to gate and make sure the perimeter isn’t breached. Get these fires out, and then let citizens onto the campus as needed to take shelter.”
“You,” she said, pointing to one of the others. “Get to the temple, tell the Council that I’m home and headed out into the city to kill the invaders. Then you find Corbanis Tesconis or Erijinkor Tesconis, and you tell them to meet me at my home. Get moving, all of you.”
She was answered with a resounding chorus of yes ma’am, and the recruits ran off to do as ordered. Kari touched her belly again, and managed to hold off until the recruits were out of sight before she lost the contents of her stomach again. Something is not right, she thought. Had Diszaro “cut corners” when transforming her? She couldn’t be concerned with it at the moment. Emptying her stomach alleviated some of the issue, but she focused on the coming battle.
Leaving the alleyway, she saw the chaos of the campus. There were rows of bodies laid under sheets on its central square, and she swallowed hard, knowing one of her closest friends was lying beneath one of them. Rage boiled in her blood, simmered in her capillaries, and exploded in her fingers and toes, causing her clawed feet to churn the ground and her hands to grip the pommels of her scimitars like vices. It was bad enough to see all the destruction and death she’d left behind on Mehr’Durillia, but now it had struck close to home. The demon kings had struck at her very home.
The thought of home set Kari’s feet moving quickly. The guards at the gate, holding their weapons and watching for trouble, nonetheless saluted her as she strode by. They cheered at her back as she continued on; she was the Avatar of Vengeance, and she imagined to them, she must look like exactly that as she strode out into the chaos with her swords at the ready. People were in the streets, bucket bridges trying to get the fires under control, but they were losing the battle. When they saw Kari, though, it was apparent hope flooded into them, and they began to weep and pray to the gods for salvation.
Kari turned on instinct and prepared to dive for cover when she heard the sound. It was a great flap of wings, and she cursed under her breath. She pressed herself against the wall of one of the few buildings not aflame, and closed her eyes against the blowing dust and debris in the wake of the dragon’s passing. But then she felt it: cold. It was cold. She opened her eyes as a great cheer erupted from around her, and she saw the nearby buildings had been extinguished, their charred edges now coated in frost.
Alamarise? Kari thought. Couldn’t be; too small. Not to mention, we’re a few thousand miles from his home, at least.
Any questions as to who it was evaporated quickly when Kari saw several lightning bolts and a handful of concussive force bolts chase after it. She dashed between two buildings that were no longer burning, rushing to the parallel street from which the attacks appeared to come. The dragon was unfazed by the attacks from Kari’s vantage point, but that didn’t mean he or she liked being attacked. At the very least, Kari owed it to the dragon to try to keep it safe while it helped the city.
The streets were emptier and emptier as Kari went farther from the campus. When she got near the origin of the attacks, she found a small group of mallasti and elestram watching the sky for the dragon’s return. She started to approach, but kept to the shadows of the alleyway for a minute. There were four of them, and only one of her; as strong as her faith was and as much practice as she was getting swiping arcane attacks aside, this group might be a mix of fighters and sorcerers. And that was not a combination Kari wanted to deal with.
She pulled the Wraith’s goggles down over her eyes and willed herself to fade from sight. There was no indication the beshathans were aware of her presence when she stepped out onto the roadway brandishing her weapons. This felt cowardly, but Kari thought better of it a moment later. Her pride and honor were a small price to pay to protect her city. It made her consider the methods of someone like Eryn Olgaryn, but she shook the thoughts off quickly; there was little time to weigh either’s intentions.
The only thing Kari refrained from doing was decapitating them. A scimitar slid neatly beneath one’s ribs, then she nearly eviscerated a second before the others even reacted. When they did, it was too late: she was upon them. Kari stepped between the remaining mallasti pair and spun several times quickly, cutting them down mercilessly. Four beshathan bodies lay spilled around her, and when the dragon came through for another pass, it held back its icy breath when it saw only Kari standing there.
With a deafening roar, the dragon continued on in its flight path, turning its great head to the south and extinguishing the fires on a row of flats and buildings. Kari watched its flight, and saw no further attacks aimed at it, so she got her feet moving again toward home. The dragon was relatively safe, and it recognized friend from foe; that was as much as Kari could ask for in this particular situation. Names and thanks would have to be exchanged later.
The more upscale areas of the city near the temples remained largely untouched. Kari was glad for that; surely the priests and priestesses of the temples, among others, had come out to defend their homes and churches. Hopefully, the watch and the Duke’s militia were organizing resistance, securing parts of the city and gradually forcing the attackers into an ever-shrinking area. Once she got in contact with her family, it was what Kari was planning to do.
She ducked involuntarily as the dragon flew overhead again, but the great reptile turned south again, where the many fires were painting the underside of the heavens in an orange glow. A group of hunters was following as quickly as they could in the dragon’s wake, so intent on following the trail of trouble that they didn’t even notice Kari. She was sure she was visible again, but that hardly made a difference.
Exiting the north side of the city, Kari could see flames. Her heart threatened to stop but instead sped up. She knew where the fire was; there was no doubt. She picked up her pace and ran down the length of her drive toward the conflagration. Surely her family would be there, fighting the fire as best they could from safety. She looked left and right as she ran down the road, though, and there were no signs of her workers or family anywhere in the fields.
“MOM!” Kari screamed as she put every last ounce of strength and willpower into her speed. “GRAKIN! LITTLE GRAY!”
She was hardly cognizant of when her legs had finally given way. She was on her knees at the edge of the yard, watching the fire consume everything she and Grakin had built together. There were no signs of life: no bodies, no one fighting the flames, not even anyone watching the house burn. Kari tilted her head back and burned her throat raw with a deafening cry of “NO!”
They had gotten her. She wasn’t sure which king it was – was it possible Sekassus had given so much ground to her, Emanitar, and Morduri because he had been planning this? He seemed the least likely to be behind it, but what did that matter? Someone had struck directly at Kari’s home. Her house was on fire, her family possibly all dead, the city of DarkWind ablaze with it, and the very campus of the Order – and her subcommander, Lord Allerius – destroyed. For all the gains she had made during her stay on Mehr’Durillia, she had lost so much more.
This is all my fault, she thought. If I hadn’t waited to see Morduri one last time, I would have been here, where I belong, when this attack came. And if I hadn’t slept with him, there wo
uldn’t have even been a question of whether I was pregnant.
She retched, but her stomach was already empty. Her anger and disgust flooded out through her eyes instead, but she gripped the hilts of her scimitars and wiped her face when she heard a voice ask, “Who’s that there?”
Kari jumped to her feet and brought her blades to bear, and a pair of shadowy figures came forth from the vineyards. “Kari?” Aeligos balked, and Eli stepped out next to him.
“Oh, thank the gods you’re back and all right!” Eli blurted.
“I am most certainly not all right,” Kari growled at them.
“No, no, Kari, it’s okay,” Aeligos said with a placating gesture. “The children are back at Mom’s old house, safely within the wards there. Mom’s at the temple, running relief efforts, and Dad and Serenjols are working with the Order to hunt down the attackers.”
Kari fell to her knees again and wept. She was soon wrapped in a double hug from the two men, but then she looked up. “The tree,” she whispered. “Save the tree, please.”
Aeligos and Eli dashed around the house without question, and Kari followed them as quickly as her near-useless legs would allow. The tree was getting scorched from the direction of the blowing flames, but it hadn’t caught fire yet. Aeligos looked around for a moment, then nudged Eli and gestured off into the fields. “Kari, stay put,” the rogue said. “We’re going to get buckets and water from the irrigation canals.”
Kari turned and put a hand to Grakin’s tree as the men ran off, and she closed her eyes. “Zalkar, Father, this is all I have left of him. Don’t let this tree burn, I beg of you. Don’t let the fire take it.”
A great flap brought her attention back to the sky, and she dashed a short distance away as the dragon flew over and blew out most of the flames of the house. It roared, swept out and around over the vineyards, then came back and loosed a second icy breath to finish the job. It returned to the city without pause, and Kari burst into tears yet again, sinking down to her knees to lean against the tree.
