Medalon dct-1

by Jennifer Fallon

  “Are you sure it’s Tarja we’re going after?”

  Jenga stopped in the shadow of the Officer’s Barracks. He recognized the voice. It was Osbon, newly promoted to captain and itching for excitement.

  “I heard a rumor it was the Harshini,” another voice added. Jenga thought it sounded like Nheal. He had been in Tarja’s class as a Cadet. He had failed to apprehend Tarja at Reddingdale and was the officer who took it into his head to conduct a snap inspection of the cell guards the morning of Tarja’s abortive escape attempt. Jenga was still not convinced it was a coincidence.

  “The Harshini are a fairy tale,” a third voice scoffed. “It’s the Kariens we’re after. Their Envoy left recently, and he didn’t look happy.” Jenga wasn’t sure who the third man was, but he sounded older than the other two.

  “Tarja said the Kariens were the real danger to Medalon,” Nheal said.

  “And what good did it do him?” the third man asked.

  “He’s escaped from the Grimfield. It’s bound to be him we’re after. Do you think they’ll hang him this time?”

  “They should have hanged him the last time,” the other man pointed out. “I heard a rumor that he didn’t really desert, you know. That the whole thing was just a cover that he and Garet Warner worked out so that he could join the rebels and expose them.”

  “Makes sense,” Osbon replied thoughtfully. “That would explain a lot of things. He’s got more guts than I have, let me tell you. I wouldn’t throw everything away...”

  Jenga moved off, frowning in the darkness. Even publicly condemned, Tarja’s influence was still felt in the Defenders. He wished, not for the first time, that he had found the chance to speak with him alone. Not in the interrogation cells or in the company of the guards, but man to man.

  Jenga was an honorable man, and his pride in the Defenders had sustained him for most of his life. He truly believed that they had a solemn duty to protect Medalon and the Sisters of the Blade. But he was finding it hard to reconcile his duty with his oath. For a while, when Mahina had been First Sister, he had positively relished his position, as he watched her trying to bring about some genuine change. Her reign had been all too brief.

  Satisfied that the Defenders would be ready to move out in the morning, Jenga made his way back to his quarters. He picked up the letter on his desk and read it again. It was from Verkin on the southern border. Jenga had read it so often in the past few days, he knew its contents by heart.

  My Lord Defender,

  It is with great sorrow that I must inform you of the death of your brother, Captain Dayan Jenga. Although his death was from a fever, brought on by contact with an unclean court’esa, he nonetheless served this garrison with dedication for more than twenty years.

  Faithfully,

  Kraith Verkin

  So Dayan was dead. The manner did not surprise him, only that it had not happened sooner. He grieved for his brother, but his death finally freed him from his debt to Joyhinia. He read the letter again, then threw it on the fire and watched the flames consume it. When it was nothing more than white ash he dug out a bottle of illegally distilled potato spirit and for the first time in twenty years, drank himself into insensibility.

  chapter 48

  Tarja climbed to his feet warily as Ghari approached, pushing aside his despair in the face of a more immediate threat. They both knew that in a fight, Tarja would be the victor. He was bigger, stronger, and far better trained – a professional soldier – where Ghari was a farm-boy-turned-freedom-fighter. But the younger man wanted him to fight. Tarja could see it in his eyes. He wanted Tarja to resist so that he could take out some of his frustration and anger on the man who had once been his hero. Tarja was in no mood to accommodate him. Neither was he particularly enamored of being hanged.

  “I didn’t betray you, Ghari,” Tarja repeated, partly as a plea and partly to distract the younger man long enough to get his bearings. Out in the yard, he heard voices again followed by horses leaving at a gallop. Padric leaving with R’shiel. How long would it take the old rebel to reach the Kariens? The faint beginnings of dawn lightened the sky through the dusty window.

  “I don’t listen to traitors.” Ghari carried a sword but made no attempt to draw it. “Are you going to come peacefully, or kicking and screaming like the miserable coward you are?”

  “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

  Ghari glared at him for a moment then motioned toward the door. “After you, Captain.”

  Tarja walked toward the door, Ghari watching him warily. He was level with the young rebel before he brought his elbow up sharply into Ghari’s face. The young man barely had time to call out before he dropped to the floor, his hands clutched to his broken nose. Tears of pain filled his eyes as he opened his mouth to call out again, but Tarja silenced him with a second blow to the side of his head. He checked the pulse in Ghari’s neck to assure himself the lad was still alive. The young man had been about to escort him to his hanging. He had nothing about which to feel guilty. He quickly relieved the unconscious rebel of his sword and turned to face the door. Either Ghari’s cry had not been heard, or the rebels outside had not recognized the sound for what it was.

  Tarja moved to the window and glanced out into the rapidly lightening yard. A dozen or more rebels were still out there, most of them concentrating on putting together a workable noose and pushing an unhitched wagon underneath the tree limb where the noose had been thrown. Mandah stood watching them, but her back was to him. Knowing he had only seconds, Tarja ran toward the back of the house and the cellars. He had supervised the construction of this stronghold and knew its every secret. He barreled down the stone steps into the wine cellar and ran through the gloom toward the last huge barrel. As raised voices reached him from above, he knew Ghari had been discovered. Tarja forced himself not to rush as he felt along the wall in the darkness for the concealed latch. Pushing down on it, he waited as the barrel swung slowly outward. He squeezed into the narrow opening and pulled it shut behind him, dropping the locking bar into place.

  Muffled voices reached him in the darkness as the rebels searched the cellar. Tarja ignored them, and, stooping painfully, he felt his way along the tunnel. The darkness was complete. He could not even see his hand in front of his face. Forcing himself to stop for a moment, Tarja tried to remember all he could about where the tunnel led. It opened out in the vineyard, he knew that much, but how far from the house he could not recall. It was pointless worrying about it any case. He would just have to rely on the fact that if he had had enough brains to create an escape route, he also had the sense to make the exit a safe distance from the house.

  Several nasty bumps on his forehead convinced Tarja that crawling on his hands and knees was the safest way to negotiate the suffocatingly dark tunnel. Scuttling insects scurried beneath his fingers as he crawled along the dank floor. More than once something dropped on him, and he brushed the unseen creature away with a shudder.

  Time lost all meaning as he cautiously made his way through the tunnel, and he began to understand what it was to be blind by the time he discovered the exit by crawling headfirst into it. He let out a yelp of pain as he cracked his forehead on the rough wooden barricade. He touched his forehead and felt the wet, sticky blood with a sigh. Sitting back on his heels, he felt along the rough planking that was sealed with turf on the other side. The roots grew through the gaps in the planking and brushed his seeking hands like ghostly tentacles. He found the latch and forced it down, not really surprised when nothing happened. Pushing on the trapdoor proved fruitless. With a curse, he maneuvered himself around until he was lying on his back, then brought up both feet and kicked the door solidly. He winced at the sound in the close confines of the tunnel, praying there was nobody outside to hear it. A second kick brought a spear of light from a small crack in the opening. Several more kicks forced the trapdoor clear. Light pierced his eyes painfully as he turned his head away, giving himself a few moments to adjust. It would be
pointless to get this far, just to stumble blindly out of the tunnel into the arms of his former comrades.

  When he could finally face the light without squinting, he crawled clear of the tunnel into the open air. Tarja threw himself on the ground and took several deep breaths, the air clear and pure after the musty tunnel. His face pressed into the turf, he smelled the fresh dampness with unabashed delight. Nothing had ever smelled better.

  Finally, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and looked back toward the farmhouse, astounded at the distance the tunnel had covered. It must have taken him hours to crawl through it. Glancing up at the sky, Tarja discovered the sun was quite high overhead. His elation vanished as he realized how great a start Padric had on him. He pushed himself up to his knees and looked around, suddenly aware of a deep rumbling that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. For a moment he stopped to listen, unable to place the sound, sure that it sounded like nothing so much as someone breathing. Someone very large, admittedly, but breathing, nonetheless. As he identified the sound, he glanced at the tree trunks that grew in front of the tunnel. Their roots spread out evenly like claws gripping the fresh turf. Two coppery-scaled trunks, glinting in the sunlight, grew from the clawlike roots. About the same time it occurred to Tarja that he wasn’t looking at tree trunks, he thought to look up.

  The massive dragon’s head lowered itself slowly until its plate-sized eyes were almost level with his head.

  “Are you human or worm?” the dragon asked curiously.

  chapter 49

  “You found him,” a musical voice said behind him as Tarja tore his eyes away from the curious gaze of the dragon.

  “Of course,” the beast replied, as if there had never been any doubt regarding the outcome. Tarja looked over his shoulder. The woman who walked toward him was of the same tall and slender proportions as R’shiel, dressed in dark, close-fitting riding leathers that covered her like a second skin. The dragon moved his massive head forward to greet her, and she gently reached up and scratched the bony ridge over his huge eye. Her eyes were as black as midnight.

  “You must be Tarja. My name is Shananara,” she said by way of introduction. “This is Lord Dranymire and his brethren.”

  “His brethren?” He had not yet recovered from the shock of being confronted by a dragon, but he was certain there was only one creature standing before him.

  “Dragons don’t really exist, Tarja. This beast is simply a demon meld.” She turned to the dragon. “You frightened him. I asked you to be careful.”

  “He’s human. They jump at their own shadows.”

  Shananara shrugged apologetically. “He’s not been around humans much lately. You’ll have to excuse him. Where is the child R’shiel?”

  “R’shiel?” Tarja asked. “I don’t know. They rode off with her in the middle of the night. I think they plan to hand her over to the Kariens.”

  Shananara’s expression clouded. She turned to the dragon. “Can you feel her at all?”

  “We have felt little since early this morning when we felt her pain.”

  “What does he mean?” Tarja asked, forgetting for a moment that he was talking to a dragon and a Harshini magician, two things that only a few days ago he thought were long extinct from his world. “What pain?”

  “She might have done something. She’s already proved she has considerable power, particularly for a wildling; she just doesn’t know how to control it. Or...”

  “Or what?” The Harshini was not telling him everything. For that matter, she was not telling him anything. What had happened to the rebels?

  “If you say she has been given to the Kariens, then the pain may have been caused by a Karien priest,” the dragon informed him. “Unfortunately, we can only tell that she suffers. Not how.”

  Tarja needed no further prompting. He turned for the farmhouse at run, his only thought to find a way to follow R’shiel. Shananara called after him. He ignored her. A thunderous rush of wind almost flattened him as he neared the farmhouse. The dragon landed, blocking his path. Tarja skidded to a halt. The beast was taller than a two-story building, and the span of his coppery wings was almost too wide for Tarja to comprehend. The dragon stared at him disdainfully.

  “Human manners have not improved in the last few hundred years.”

  Shananara caught up to them and grabbed Tarja’s arm, pulling him around to face her. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to find R’shiel. The Kariens have her.”

  “You don’t know that for certain. And even if they do have her, you have no idea where she is or how to find her.”

  “Then what do you suggest I do?” he snapped, intensely annoyed as he realized that she was right. He had no idea where Padric had taken R’shiel. All Tarja knew at that moment was that he had to find her and that he would happily murder Padric himself, if any harm had come to her.

  The Harshini studied him. “Is she a particular friend of yours?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Shananara frowned, as if she knew something Tarja was not privy to. “Oh, nothing. Let’s wake up one of your rebel friends and ask him where they took her, shall we?”

  Shananara led him back to the yard of the farmhouse. The dragon followed, his huge tail leaving a trail as wide as a narrow road in the dirt behind him. The dozen or so rebels who had been planning to hang him lay still on the ground, the noose waving gently in the breeze like a child’s swing. Tarja looked away from the uncomfortable reminder of his close brush with death and glanced about him with growing dread.

  “Did you kill them?”

  The Harshini rolled her eyes with exasperation. “No! Of course I didn’t kill them! What do you take me for? They’re asleep. Which one should we wake?”

  Tarja looked around, but he could not see Ghari among the unconscious rebels. He led Shananara into the farmhouse and found the young man lying in the doorway, his face still bloodied and bruised from Tarja’s attack.

  “What happened to him?” she asked.

  “I hit him. I was trying to escape.”

  She knelt down beside the unconscious rebel. “And these people were friends of yours? I wonder what you do to people you don’t like?”

  “Just wake him up. Ghari will know where Padric took R’shiel.”

  Shananara gently placed her hand on Ghari’s forehead, closing her eyes. Tarja watched expectantly, but he felt nothing. Ghari’s eyes fluttered open. He looked at them blankly for a moment before jerking backward in fear at the sight of the black-eyed Harshini woman leaning over him.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Shananara said.

  Tarja didn’t know if there was any magic in her musical voice, but the young rebel visibly relaxed as she spoke. He turned his gaze on Tarja before cautiously climbing to his feet. They stood back to give him room.

  “What happened?” he asked, gingerly touching his broken nose.

  “I escaped,” Tarja told him. “And the Harshini came looking for R’shiel.”

  Ghari stared at the woman. “They really do exist?”

  “Yes, they really do,” Tarja agreed. Every moment they wasted R’shiel was getting further away. “And the Karien Envoy will kill R’shiel as soon as he learns what she is. Where did Padric take her?”

  Ghari’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I tell you anything?”

  Tarja’s first impatient reaction was to beat the truth out of Ghari, but, as if she knew what he was planning, Shananara stepped between the two humans.

  “Now, now, children. There is no need for any unpleasantness. Where did they take her, Ghari?”

  The young rebel found his gaze locked with the Harshini’s. “To a jetty about eight leagues south of here. The Karien Envoy was to meet them there.”

  She released the thrall on Ghari and turned to Tarja. “There! That was painless, wasn’t it?”

  Tarja did a few rapid calculations in his head. The results were not encouraging. “She’s long gone, then. They would have
handed her over just after dawn.”

  “About the same time the demons felt her pain,” Shananara agreed. “I’m sorry, Tarja.”

  “What do you mean, you’re sorry? Aren’t you going after her?”

  “Tarja, we risked much coming this far. The demons can only assume a shape as complex as a dragon for a limited time, even with hundreds in the meld. I can’t risk taking them so far from Sanctuary. If the meld weakened and we were airborne at the time...” Her voice trailed off helplessly.

  Tarja was sure that he would have been quite sympathetic to her plight had he the faintest idea what she was talking about.

  “Can’t you do something?” he asked.

  “I can,” she conceded, “but a Karien priest would see right through it. And not for you or R’shiel or the King of the Harshini, will I risk my demons being seen by a Karien priest. I’m sorry.”

  “Then what do we do?” Tarja refused to give in so easily. He could not, would not, leave R’shiel in the hands of the Kariens. Not if there was the slightest chance he could save her. He owed her that much at least.

  “Find a boat, I suppose,” she suggested. “I don’t know much about them, but I imagine there are faster boats on the river than the Karien Envoy’s. Shipbuilding was never a strength of the Kariens. Maybe you can catch up with them.”

  “And then what? Suppose I get her back? Will you help then?”