by JANRAE FRANK
He stripped and secured her to the bleeding-table before the spell could fade and then drank the fear in her eyes. "It was only a matter of time, Merissa, before one of us ate you. You were always so free with your favors, so inviting. Your blood is so rich and strong."
Troyes laid an array of black-hilted blades on the table beside her, considering them. He took one and sliced her leg open from hip to knee with languid slowness, regarding the welling blood reflectively. The spell loosened, allowing her to scream. Hoof beats sounded. Troyes dropped the blade he had been using and snatched up a different one. Abruptly, Troyes skidded across her, spinning into the dirt beyond with Isranon on top of him. Isranon's horse bolted off into the woods. She watched them struggle for a moment. Then Isranon hurled Troyes into the trees, pivoted and trudged back, staggering slowly. She could not understand why he should have so much trouble moving. He was sa'necari. Then he faltered and almost fell, grabbing at the table and she saw why: Troyes' death-runed blade was shoved to the quillons in his ribs. Isranon straightened, mastering his body and stood swaying. He drew his knife from the sheath at his hip and cut her wrist free, placing the hilt in her hand, folding her fingers over it. "Get loose and flee... I can't ... hold him long."
Merissa immediately set to cutting her bonds as Isranon turned to face the returning Troyes. That one was truly a monster. How could she have been so foolish as to think she had loved Troyes! Sa'necari were hard to kill, but the match had been decided already: Isranon was dying from the runes on the blade. Sa'necari could heal vast amounts of damage with blood; and while their other victims who fell to such blades would rise undead slaves, their own kind would simply perish; hence the old proverb of "when sa'necari fight sa'necari they do it well." Merissa slid the blade under the spellcord on her wrists, slicing it away, and then instead of bending to her ankles she simply changed form and tore free.
Merissa bounded from the table to the far side to crouch in the shadows as they grappled. Her hind leg hurt, but she could deal with it because she had to. The struggle ended too quickly. Troyes forced Isranon's sword from his hand, sending it spinning into the forest. Then Troyes pulled his baneblade from Isranon's body, swiftly shoving it in again repeatedly. Isranon's body jerked and twisted, his legs slowly giving as he sank to the ground. Merissa sprang onto Troyes back snarling and biting. He caught her by the throat and slammed her into the table, stunning her. Isranon cried out, staggering to his feet, drew his last blade and stabbed Troyes in the back.
Troyes laughed at them. "I have taken a hundred times a hundred mortgiefan. I am not an easy kill." He turned on Isranon with a word of power, summoning a net of death, striking him. Isranon screamed in anguish and fell to lie unmoving at Troyes' feet. Troyes shoved Isranon onto his belly, tore his pants open, and mounted him.
"I killed your little Rose," Troyes growled. "I rode her into death as I ride you." He shoved the blade in again and bent to drink the rising flow, preparing the suck up as many fragments of Isranon's soul as he could when it shattered at the moment of the younger male's death. Even with his immature powers, Isranon was still sa'necari and it would take more time for him to die than it would a human.
Merissa fled into the trees. There she slunk through the forest on her belly, watching Troyes riding Isranon, taking the rite, and feeding. Merissa tried to look away and could not, she had to see it in order to scan the clearing as she tried to find Isranon's sword which he had lost as he fought Troyes. She dared not make any more heedless rushes at Troyes. He would kill her; her wolf form was no match for him. But with the sword – with the sword she could break his spine, swinging it in her hybrid form when her strength and power was greatest.
There. She saw it.
Merissa crept up. Troyes was totally oblivious. He must be close to completion of the act. Shame and rage filled her. Her heart was breaking as she realized it had been Isranon she loved all along. She changed, seizing the weapon, rearing up as she swung. The blow caught Troyes just above the waist and she heard bone snap. Troyes stiffened, his eyes strange, and then toppled to the side, coming loose from Isranon, his blade falling from his hand, his seed fountaining over them both. She had saved his soul, if not his life.
"Bitch!" Troyes' lips twisted as if to speak a spell and Merissa drew back, circling cautiously. She spied more strips of spell cord in his belt. Shifting the sword to one hand, she knelt and snatched them free. She banded each of his hands in them. His broken spine had paralyzed him, but blood could heal almost anything. Troyes would get no more blood.
Then she turned Isranon over, feeling for a pulse. She found it. Merissa shouldered his arm, dragging him to the table where she laid him beside it. Then she went back for Troyes. Merissa kicked him in the side of the head twice before dragging him to the table. He was much larger and, even in her hybrid form, harder to manage. She threw him across the table on his stomach – the position for a male intended for mortgiefan – and fastened him in place. The expression of terror on his face pleased her.
"You always thought you'd be the taker, not the taken!"
Merissa crouched by Isranon, opened the vein in her wrist with her claw, and put it to his mouth. She knew her blood would not be strong enough to save him, but it might be enough to waken him. Her blood filled his mouth, dribbling down the corners, getting no response. A sob formed in her throat as her chest tightened, but before she could release it Merissa saw him swallow and felt the brief sharp pain as his fangs entered her. Some of the pain left her heart. Isranon's eyes opened and he pushed weakly at her.
"Don't, Merissa... I need too much." His eyes clenched shut. He rode a wave of sheerest agony, struggling to master his body and get past it. "Troyes?"
"I've bound him to the table. Spellcorded. Would mortgiefan heal you?"
"No."
"No, it would not heal you? Or no, you won't do it?"
"No, I ... I won't do it. Death is ... better. I've known ... this was coming. Hold me."
Merissa shook her head. "Isranon! You could have his power! And live! Please, there must be a way."
Isranon's eyes slowly closed and then blinked open again. "Kill him, Merissa. With the blade he wounded me with. The same blade ... must be the same blade."
"Will that save you?"
"Possibly. Dispel the death magics. The rest is chance ... if I don't get enough strong blood in time."
Merissa nodded, and then ran to the spot where she had felled Troyes. She saw the blade laying in the grass. She picked it up and could feel the darkness swirling in it. A soul. There was a soul in it. She carried it back.
"Wait," Isranon called. "It's best I do it... Help me up..." he struggled to breathe, to speak. Merissa's blood had helped. "I don't understand why. But every time I do it, it works. But ... but not always ... for the others."
Merissa placed the blade in his hands. At first he felt a keen tremor of revulsion. It was a finely made baneblade, not some variant deathblade. The sa'necari forged those blades by binding trapped souls upon them: they cut the soul as well as the body. Then he seemed to hear the spirit on it call out to him for release, as if it sensed what he intended. His father had called that gift the "echo of the Dawnhand" his ancient ancestor – it was something very special and rare. "Dawnhand, give me strength."
The lycan clan-princess shouldered his weight, slipping her arm around his waist as she helped him rise. She steadied him as he stood over the bound sa'necari. Troyes sensed what they were about and screamed curses and spells, but corded, his power would not answer. Isranon raised the blade and brought it down in a single skilled strike into his heart. Troyes stilled. Need and hunger swept through Isranon, crescendoing to a roar of agony.
"His throat, help me around to his throat..."
The table was angled and spelled for the draining of the body. Merissa settled Isranon against the table. He leaned his head on it, wedged between the cold stone and the cooling flesh of Troyes' neck and chin. "Another minute or two, Merissa and I would have joi
ned my family." His voice was soft, as if he did not quite want to say it but could not quite stop himself. The need to speak the words humbled his pride. Isranon fastened on the body and began sucking the fluids from it as much to satisfy his desperate need as to stop his own humiliating venting. He drank as much as he could before weakness claimed him and he fainted. Isranon slumped forward, his head pressed between the table and Troyes' neck. Because he had never crossed the line with the first rites, he was not as strong as the other sa'necari. Isranon was more human than they were; weaker, incredibly frail compared to the others. He was only then beginning to realize just how frail.
Merissa went into the cave to search for blood in bottles and returned to find him there. She swallowed back a cry, thinking the death magics had claimed him after all, but his heart beat strongly. She retrieved their gear, wrapping him in blankets, built up a fire and made camp to watch over him. Troyes' cave was well stocked. Apparently he had been feeding regularly. There were many, many shelves of the golden preserving bottles, all labeled. She drained Troyes' body, leaving it bound on the table as a trophy. A strange stirring of power drew her eyes to Troyes' corpse. As she watched, the blade in his heart moved and then the hilt fell away as the blade disintegrated.
"Isranon! Isranon!"
"What?" Isranon opened his eyes, pushing himself painfully onto his side, levering himself onto his elbow.
"Look!"
"When I do it, this is how it happens," he said.
A white mist emerged from the hilt, swirling motes of power dancing through it. A figure formed in the mist until it became a woman, clearly Valdren. She walked toward them, pausing before Isranon. "Dawnhand," she said, and then seemed to frown slightly in perplexity, her head tilting. "No, sa'necari, yet not sa'necari. Son of Dawnhand. You freed me, so I give you a gift and a promise. I give a kindling of the echo to fullness so when you are touched by the all-talent you will have it all. I promise you the staff of the Dawnhand, once you have ridden with gods and kings of light to the shores of Ildyrsetts."
The ghost touched him. Isranon cried out at the searing ecstasy and for a moment he could not see. When his vision cleared the ghost had departed.
"What was that?"
"When they die by their own blade, it destroys the blade. The magic being turned back on them."
"I meant the ghost. But that too. I thought ghosts didn't like sa'necari."
"I'm an exception. I am a speaker to spirits, as Dawnhand was." Isranon fell back, exhausted from speaking, struggling with the pain and the darkness sucking at him. "I'm so cold, Merissa. So very cold." Then the dark whirlpool wrapped around him and dragged him into it.
"Isranon! Isranon." Merissa shook him, but he did not rouse. She laid her ear to his chest and heard his heart beating, but his breathing was strained and uneven. She wormed beneath his blankets, wrapping around him, kissing him. "I'll keep you warm," she said and began to cry.
* * * *
Dawn light suffused the clearing, teasing across Isranon's eyelashes and drawing him to wakefulness. He hurt so bad he wanted to weep. His hands clutched at the blanket covering him. A second blanket, folded, made a pillow beneath his head. Growls came from all around him and he forced himself to sit up, recognizing the sounds of many lycans. The wolves shape-shifted around him, seven deep. Apparently Claw had summoned all his warriors, including the battle-clan that dwelled on their lands, when he discovered the three of them missing. Isranon caught the edge of the table, using it to stand and once erect, he pushed away from it out of pride. His eyes flicked from Troyes' body draping the altar to Claw.
"So, Isranon," Claw regarded him steadily, his head tilted and his eyes hard. "Mort ta giefan at last."
"Nahn. Nahn mort ta giefan."
"You killed him. You drank from him. He is lying on that table. Is it yours? You cut him up good."
"Nahn. Nahn mort ta giefan."
"There was a rite. A rite, if not the rite. It's all right, man." Claw came closer. "It's your nature. You're sa'necari. You took on his power."
Isranon's throat and chest tightened painfully. He could not breathe. "I am not a monster. Yes, I killed him and I drank from him – I drank from him after he was dead. Not before. And I filled his bottles."
"The bottles he intended to fill with my blood, father."
Everyone turned to see Merissa emerge from the cave.
"He said we would run away together. But it was a lie, just to get me to his table in the hills." She hung her head, her dark hair falling about her shoulders. A sob wrenched up from her stomach and forced its way through her throat, bursting at last from her lips. Aisha went to her, gathering her daughter in her arms. "If Isranon had not followed us... Isranon had to feed. He was desperately injured. It's all my fault. I filled the bottles."
"Merissa! Don't defend me!" Isranon stepped toward her and faltered, a wave of pain striking at the core of his body. Another crashing wave and he crumpled, unconscious.
Nevin reached Isranon first, gathering the youth into his arms and pressing his head against his chest. He touched Isranon's forehead and then glanced at the crude bandages around his chest and stomach, noting the fresh stain. "He's fevered and he's bleeding."
Merissa screamed Isranon's name, tearing herself free to kneel at his side. "Father, I had to fill the preserving bottles with every single drop. Every bit of strong blood. Troyes nearly killed him."
Claw gave her a resigned, disgusted look. "I'm going to beat hell out of you when we get home. I'd rather have you badly bruised and thinking than lying dead somewhere. See to him," he nodded at Isranon and then at the body on the table. "Cut the asshole's heart out, I want to eat it. Always wanted to eat one of them." Two lycans moved to the table and began systematically butchering what remained of Troyes. Aisha and the women went to tend Isranon.
"Whatever is in the cave belongs to Isranon," Aisha decreed before anyone could start toward it, "by right of conquest, and I will personally call challenge on anyone who tries to take the smallest piece of it." Aisha had been the fiercest of the young wolves in her youth, which was what had drawn Claw to her; he liked a feisty bitch.
"Aisha!" Claw protested, disliking the way she always put him on the spot in front of his myn; and yet he had a grudging admiration for it that he would never admit to either. They would have a big argument about it in private later, but the kiss and make up afterward would be passionate and intense. He always liked the kiss and make up.
"Old mon," she replied in her most crotchety oldwife voice. "He saved our daughter's life."
He scratched his head and then ran his fingers through the thick black thatch. "Well, there is that, isn't there?" One of his lieutenants brought him the heart and he sat down chewing on it thoughtfully. Some of the others got a big fire going while they served up Troyes body and the clan ate.
* * * *
Nevin in his hybrid form lifted Isranon in his arms and started back. Isranon's head lay against his shoulder, finally listing forward until his forehead nestled against his mentor's neck. It was a long way back and several times others offered to carry Isranon, but Nevin refused to surrender his burden. Isranon was far more injured than any of them, except possibly Merissa, realized. Nevin held him tight to his chest like a child, his expression grim. Along the way they stopped from time to time to get more blood down him. Otherwise, Nevin kept his steady pace and refused to make camp. He intended to get Isranon home as quickly as possible where Baroucha the healer could look at him.
They reached the Great House around midnight and Aisha ran ahead of Nevin to Isranon's rooms, where she turned back the bedding and set the nibari to build up the fire. Another lycan went after Baroucha.
* * * *
"A sa'necari?" Baroucha, a withered crone whose skin hung loose upon her face and arms, protested as Aisha led her into Isranon's bedroom. "You're asking me to treat a sa'necari?"
"We're asking you to treat my brother," Nevin growled. "The brother of my heart and fur."
"Not Isranon. He is different."
"Please, Baroucha," Aisha asked. "Do what you can. He saved our daughter's life."
Baroucha's eyes narrowed shrewdly as she glanced from one to the other, measuring. "I do this against my better judgment. The world would be a better place without them."
She took Isranon's wrist and Read him, nodding slowly. "Blood to heal. Feed him as much and as strong as you can get into him. Food also." She took a bottle and a glass jar from her satchel. "Poppy for pain. Make a tea from this," she set a jar of herbs beside the white milky liquid that was the poppy juice. "That will bring down the fever. Beyond that, I suggest you pray." Then she rose and left.
"I'll get a glass for the poppy and then start some tea." Aisha left with the jar of herbs.
Nevin remembered Isranon's questions about god and whether his people went to hell. Certainly no just god would condemn a young male like Isranon to hell. He stroked the black hair back from Isranon's pale face. "You are a good mon, Isranon. A good mon. I... I love you."
Aisha returned, followed by two nibari with a basin and an ewer of water. Nevin took the glass from her, poured a measure of the poppy juice, and lifted Isranon up. He moaned faintly in Nevin's arms and his eyes fluttered open, glazed by the fever into troubling brightness. Nevin got the juice into his mouth, and had to encourage him to swallow it, as he was only semi-conscious. Then he laid Isranon back. Aisha filled the basin with water and soaked a cloth in it. She twisted the cloth to get the excess moisture out and gave it to Nevin. The lawgiver smoothed the cloth out and placed it over Isranon's forehead to cool him.
"I'll sit with him, Aisha."
"Nevin, you need your rest also. You carried him here. I can watch him."
"No. No, I don't want to leave him."
* * * *
Nevin sat with Isranon for hours, watching him sleep. It bothered the scarred wolf that the youth healed so slowly compared to lycans and other sa'necari. Late the next day Isranon finally woke again, hurting and Nevin got more of the fire poppy into him. He looked so much younger, in his suffering, than the combat-seasoned eighteen year old that he was. Isranon would be not be nineteen until Sowayn in mid-autumn. It had been here, in this very valley that Mephistis had stumbled upon him. Nevin wished that meeting had never taken place.
