by Niki Florica
“What became of him?” He took a step nearer. Elillian stepped instinctively back. “Does he live? Can you save him? Surely you know whether the son of Robinsdwel is dead or alive.”
She drew a shallow breath. His eyes were ebony discs beneath muddy lashes and a filthy, earnest face that screamed of madness while whispering somehow of something far deeper. “I do not know,” she whispered at last. His gaze held her captive, locking her feet to the shore and her hands in a knot before her waist. “Perhaps . . . I mean, I am not certain, but the river may tell me if you truly wish to—”
“Please.” His tone was pleading, desperate. Elillian forgot how to breathe.
The thought of her treason plagued her as she knelt upon the shore, disbelieving. Watching—detached—as her own hands slipped beneath the Nelduith, listening as her own voice whispered the words of command. “Ileunda lil rylina.” Release your prisoner. Her back was to him and the thought sent a tremor of panic humming through her every nerve, but no attack came, no sound. She knew without glancing behind that the creature had not moved.
The river’s response coursed indignantly through her fingers at the same moment a shadow darkened the moons for a breath. Elillian froze, eyes snapping skyward.
It was coming.
The shepaard was coming.
A shriek rent the sour night and chills erupted across her flesh. Her breath caught in her throat; the Skyad appeared at her side, kneeling upon the bank with his eyes to the sky. “What news?”
She drew a shaky breath. She was trembling. They needed to leave. He needed to leave.
“My lady?”
“He is not here,” she managed, choking upon her fear. “The river tells me nothing of a Robin beneath these waters.”
His every feature tightened and Elillian’s hand drifted of its own accord toward the knife against her spine, halting midair when his eyes snagged upon it, and a flicker of hurt crossed his face. “Please,” he said quietly, “I would not harm you, my lady.”
Elillian shook her head, hands trembling uncontrollably. A shadow crossed the moons again, and this time the shriek lingered longer, wilder, a savage battle cry of a demon from the Skies. She gasped, “You must leave this place. You must leave now, Skyad, before—”
The attack tore a scream from her throat. Thunder drummed upon membranous wings as the sky exploded black and glittering red. She heard the Silver cry out and saw the shadow lift him from the riverbank, carrying him higher, higher on beating wings, shrieking its war cry to the night. The Skyad writhed to free himself, a splash of pale flesh against the darkness of the demon’s matted flanks. Elillian was rooted to the ground, unfeeling, unthinking.
The Skyad dropped.
He struck the bank with a force she felt in the marrow of her bones, grunting as the ground drove the wind from his lungs. The shepaard hissed, circling the sky, beating thunder with its wings, daring them to attempt escape, if only to appease its restless wrath.
She forced her muscles into motion, crawling through the mud and silt to crouch at the Skyad’s side and grasp his shoulder with a trembling white hand.
He winced. “Death.” Forced himself to his knees. “I see now.”
Elillian had seen this beast before, watched it at third moonrise from beneath the surface of the Nelduith, watched it prowl the bank and shriek its bloodthirsty cries to the night. Her people did not stray from Dunbrielle for fear of it, but she was drawn by her fear. Her fascination with its power, its wickedness, its insatiable thirst for the Nelduith was more than she could describe, more than the Naiads could understand. The same fascination that drove her beyond Dunbrielle’s safety each night held her there in that moment, petrified but gripped with the white-hot desire to pull the knife from her belt and do what no Naiad in history had yet dared.
To pull the knife from her belt and prove herself more than a Peacemaker.
“Return to the river,” the Skyad hissed, gaze flickering skyward as the moons darkened for a moment. “Quickly, lady. While you can. The shepaard shall return.”
“What of you?” she protested.
He propped one knee. “I shall manage.” Another shriek rent the night and she watched his hand fly to his side, to the sheath hanging limp and sodden from his belt. He blanched.
It was empty.
His confidence dissolved in a breath, draining with the blood from his face. “The Sword . . .” Terror knifed from his visage to hers, slicing through her chest to the heart beneath her ribs, spurring her pulse faster, still faster.
She swallowed the dryness in her throat, the truth painfully clear. “The river . . .”
“No,” he breathed, both hands flying to his dark hair. “No, no, no . . .”
“I have a weapon,” she said, as if to console him, pulling the blade from her sash, holding it to him, hilt first. To the Skyad, hilt-first.
He shook his head, features contorting. “No, you do not understand.”
A shriek from the Skies killed her response before it began, buried it in an avalanche of adrenaline and fear and, beneath it all, a reckless, secret thrill of battle. The shepaard was a dragonesque silhouette against the stars, a shade of black wings and a whip tail barbed with bone.
“Return to the river, my lady,” the Silver whispered, tense.
Elillian frowned. “What of you?”
The shadow vanished then, as suddenly as it had come, and as she frantically searched the stars Elillian caught herself counting each terse, breathless moment. One, two, three . . .
The night sky erupted in black wings and gleaming fangs. The demon descended upon the bank like a bolt of crimson lightning with a shriek that rent the air and screamed in her ears. The Skyad lunged to shield her but Elillian’s adrenaline had taken control; she could not breathe, could not think, but suddenly she was standing and he was shouting and her knife was rising and the eyes of the shepaard were blazing a red streak toward her . . .
And Elillian dropped to her knees and plunged the knife blindly over her head.
A strangled scream of agony was the anthem of her victory, along with the thunder of the massive creature as it plummeted into the forest fringe, splintering trees with its impact. The knife in her hand was scarlet with blood, stark against the paleness of her own skin as she knelt, breathless and trembling, back turned to the creature writhing in the debris of the broken trees.
She had pierced the black shepaard.
She, a Naiad, had drawn blood.
It was the Skyad that shattered her trance, kneeling to pry the knife from her hand with the faintest of smiles, dark eyes wild and reckless with the thrill of battle. He had not forgotten his sword; the memory of its loss was still scrawled in his face. But his eyes were flashing and his jaw was set, and there was something fierce and predatory in his expression that would have been terrifying had it not been so very, very reassuring.
“I have never heard of a warrior Naiad,” he remarked breathlessly, taking the knife from her hand with a smile that creased his eyes to shining crescents.
Weakly, Elillian grinned. “I believe I am the first.”
A low hiss drew their attention to the forest behind their backs, where a dark form was stepping from the debris, pupilless eyes gleaming blank, bloody red. The winged panther was less formidable when earthbound, baring yellowed, broken fangs through lips too tight for the jaws they sealed. Its batlike wings were folded against its spine, torn and flaking, pierced with gashes through which its matted fur was visible. Black claws scattered stones beneath its feet as it stepped nearer, spines protruding from its tail and the crown of its wedged skull, scarred by sword and claw. It hissed. Elillian swallowed hard, the Skyad tensing beside her. He had the knife. Their only knife. They were prey, cornered for the kill.
She could have turned her back upon him. Could have vanished, in a gasp of foam and spray. She was, after all, a Naiad, and no Naiad, no Peacemaker, belonged in the raging throes of battle.
She clenched her jaw, rebuking her
self, hating herself for even the thought.
Naiad or not, she would not abandon this Silver to die a martyr’s death.
When the shepaard spoke, its voice simmered slowly through her consciousness, a steady, gradual mounting of hisses and moans whose echoes left words in her mind, in her bones. Its bloodred eyes disregarded the Silver, locked instead upon her—piercing her, holding her, seizing her every muscle, her very will in its crimson gaze.
“You are mighty, river-daughter,” it rumbled from somewhere within its bleeding frame. “But the blades of the earthbound are weak against the shepaards of cloud and wind.”
Its jaws did not move as it spoke, and the echoes of its voice lingered too long, too loud in her skull, vibrating along her spine and sending a tremor through her limbs. She must have shuddered or gasped, because the Skyad demanded, “What is it?”
He did not understand. He did not hear the voice.
“It-t is in my h-head . . .”
“I have waited long, river-daughter,” thrummed the voice, the beating drum. “Each night your people have denied me an audience, watched me burn in dark desire from beneath your mighty Nelduith. I grow weary of waiting. My lust shall not be ignored. Let the wisdom and judgment of the Naiads weigh my desire in their balances, lest my thirst be satiated by blood.”
The Silver tensed at her side, raised the knife, made to charge, but Elillian caught his arm and held it, halting him midstep, hating the eerie laughter in her skull when he stared at her—disbelieving—and she heard herself whisper, “Wait.”
“Then we have an accord?” hissed the shepaard. “The judges of Ariad cannot refuse the appeal of any mortal formed by Aradin’s hand. You must hear me. This is the Ancient Law.”
The Skyad was staring at her, brows knotted, face fierce and earnest. “What is it saying to you?” he demanded, his fingers hot against her wrist. “Naiad, answer me. What is it saying?”
She ignored him but held to his arm. To the shepaard she whispered, “What is your desire?”
A forked black tongue snaked outward for a moment, dancing over yellow fangs. “The Rains grow restless,” it rumbled, grinning. “The shepaard legions have surrendered them to the northern Skies. I thirst, river-daughter, for as this land withers so also shall the legions. Grant me a taste of your Nelduith that I may never thirst again.”
Elillian drew a shallow breath. “The Nelduith is forbidden to all save the Naiads.”
“Then give me a Naiad’s blessing.”
The Skyad’s gaze flickered wildly between the two of them, his hand tight about her knife, his every muscle tensed for motion, for charge, for battle. Impatience emanated from his fiery presence in waves, and she imagined his strength, his fearless courage, flowing from his fingertips and into her veins, lending heat to her cold, cold blood. The shepaard’s empty eyes seared through her flesh, through her ribs to her heart, burning in rhythm with her pulse. Every beat.
“My lady,” hissed the Skyad, earnest. “What is it saying to you?”
Elillian released his arm, peeled her shoulders back. Forced herself to meet the scarlet eyes as the shepaard’s voice hummed its echoes in her veins and the long, black claws flexed subtly in the mud. Threatening her, though it scarcely moved. But she would not be threatened.
“Your wish has been heard,” she answered. Her voice did not waver as it left her. “But the Nelduith belongs to the Naiads, creature. Your thirst shall not be satiated by Ariad’s sacred flow.”
The shepaard’s reply ripped through her every nerve and set her veins aflame.
“Then let it be satiated by Naiad blood.”
The words held no meaning in Elillian’s mind until the shepaard’s black wings flared, until its haunches braced and its broken fangs bared, and she realized with a surge of panic that the murder in its eyes was for her and her alone. Her thoughts scattered. All the world shrank to twin, red orbs.
The demon leaped.
Dimly Elillian was aware of a shout of rage, a shriek of inhuman surprise, the impact of her shoulder against the ground as she was thrust from death’s path by a blasting force from her left. She gasped, eyes snapping wide, her blurred mind still waiting for the slash of shepaard’s claws and unable to process why they never came. Why did they not come?
The Skyad’s arms were tight around her, holding her to the bank, shielding her. She felt his hot breath in her ear, his damp hair against her neck, but she did not understand how he had come to be there, did not understand the desperation in his grasp until the shepaard shrieked and she heard him scream through clenched teeth in her ear.
She heard the sound of barbed talons embedding themselves in Skyad flesh. She felt the impact in her bones, in the bite of his fingernails into her flesh as he gasped with the strike, the savage blow. She scarcely felt it. She was looking for the knife. He had dropped it, lost it, he did not have it. What had become of the knife?
There. Upon the bank to her left where the Skyad had abandoned it to be her shield, to bear a demon’s wrath in her place. Her face was pressed to the mud but her hand was free, and she reached through the gallant shelter of his arms, reached until the black iron hilt was locked between her fingers. He moaned in her ear, arms tightening. Her heart shrivelled in her chest. When the first flash of black matted fur flickered in the corner of her vision, she did not pause to aim, to think. She simply stabbed.
The demon toppled sidelong, stumbling into the mud in writhing, shrieking agony. The Skyad tore the knife from her hand and rose shakily to his feet, tunic hanging in tatters from his back as Elillian’s skin pulsed with the loss of his shelter. He charged into the black mass of fur and wing, slashing, striking and thrusting, dodging the whip of the barbed tail and the lashing of membranous wings. The demon screeched; she heard its wrath in her skull. Her mind was a blundering haze.
Shuddering uncontrollably she crawled across the bank, collapsed with one hand in the river while the Skyad shouted an indomitable war cry and the shepaard replied with spitting rage. She could still feel his arms, pressing her to the mud, could still hear his scream in her ear. She needed to do something. Anything. Something.
She needed to find his sword.
“Ileunda lil trillia, Nelduith,” she breathed, hands clenching in the water as she fought not to hear the pain of the Silver whose name she did not know. “Ileund’i, ileund’i! Nel-guildin!”
Aradin be thanked, the river was swift to respond. She felt its power coursing through her fingertips as she turned at the sound of a strangled shout, breath lodging in her throat. He lay trapped between the creature’s front paws—pale, bloody, glistening with sweat, grappling the great black head and the dripping jaws seeking to seize his neck. He had lost the knife. She could not see it. His forearms were trembling, spent, and the shepaard’s eyes blazed as, with a surge of strength, it descended upon him with all the force of a hurricane at the same moment his hold slipped.
In a last, desperate manoeuvre he wrenched his body to the left, and glittering fangs bit savagely into his exposed right shoulder.
The shepaard raised him from the ground, shook him in its jaws like a child, tossed him sidelong and shrieked triumphantly as his body struck the bank with a shudder Elillian felt in her core. She heard him gasping, coughing, wheezing. Bloody cloth clung to the shepaard’s fangs.
The spitting of the Nelduith drew her eyes to the river, where a sword had surfaced in a bed of foam and spray. She reached for it, desperate. Heard him scream, “Wait—no!”
Her fingers closed about the hilt. An explosion of ice, fire, and agony beyond imagination seared through her every vein and burst in her skull.
Shepaard shrieks and Skyad shouts melted into silence as the world turned black.
The world was tilting madly in Kyrian’s vision as the Naiad’s blue eyes widened, then rolled back into her skull, as she toppled to the bank and the Sword dropped and the shepaard shrieked and Skies ablaze there was so much blood . . .
It was his. He knew it was
his but felt detached from it, numb to the gashes the shepaard’s fangs had torn in his dripping shoulder. The world was whirling and the Naiad maiden lay still—the brave, brave Naiad maiden who should have abandoned him long ago. He struggled to his hands and knees, toppled with a cry. The shepaard crowed, victorious.
No.
The creature’s red eyes locked upon the prone Naiad and this time Kyrian did not allow himself to feel the needles of agony spiking through his limbs. This time he braced both feet upon the bank and gritted his teeth until his jaw cracked, summoned every drop of his strength to stagger to his feet, half-run, half-stumble across the bank, collapse beside the prostrate maiden a moment before the shepaard’s wings spread and—with an ear-splitting hiss—its claws rent the air in a screaming path for her.
Time resumed and heartbeats raced. Kyrian reached for the golden hope with the mighty, hidden power to withstand the Nelduith’s wrath. The golden hope he had never dreamed of seeing again, that the Naiad had jeopardized her life to touch.
One slice was all that remained of his strength. He did not even look.
The shepaard died mid-shriek, head rolling across the bank to stare—empty—at the sky.
Kyrian collapsed.
One was enough.
Fifteen
And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day? And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds . . .
–Exodus 2:18–19A
Elillian’s consciousness returned in a breath, a cascade of sounds, sights, pain, and a cold, grey ache in the marrow of her right arm. She was cold as ice, as winter’s breath. So very, very cold . . .
“My lady?”
His face hovered above her, all concern, dark brows knotted above bright, tired eyes, one hand half-strung through his hair. She blinked, tried to speak but found her teeth chattering too fiercely to form the words. He frowned, glistening sweat, and in evident pain, she watched him unclasp his silver-white sky-cloak despite the bloody, tattered carnage that should have been his right shoulder. She almost flinched at the sight of it, of the gouged flesh and shredded fabric hanging in rags from his frame, and were it not for her years as Dunbrielle’s healer she would very likely have retched. She wondered at the venom carried within shepaard fangs, how swiftly it would act if not dispelled within the hour.
