Vengeance of the Hunter

by Angela Highland

  “The Anreulag in Her wisdom would not expect us to forsake the safety of our people by prolonging this rite without need,” said the eldest priestess, her immaculate robe of the Mother as white as her unbound hair. “Let us carry out Her sacred will. We are ready.”

  “Ani a bhota Anreulag, arach shae,” the rest of the priests and priestesses said, in one voice.

  Captain Amarsaed scowled, his gaze shooting along the circle of priests and priestesses in place now before the altar. For an instant he looked as if he might argue. But then, to Kestar’s dread, he inclined his head in acquiescence—for even a captain of the Hawks had to submit to the will of the priests and priestesses of the gods. “Arach shae. Kestar Vaarsen, stand before this tribunal.”

  “Kescha,” Ganniwer breathed. Only now did her regal composure crack, her voice breaking with a barely repressed sob.

  Oh gods. Kestar could form no other thought as he rose, casting one last glance to his mother, one to Cel. Then he looked up at the priests and priestesses as they began to chant.

  Every amulet in the nave redoubled its light, brightly enough that Kestar had to throw up his hands to shield his eyes, an instant before lightning shot from one amulet to the next and at last into him. Pain set his every nerve ablaze, and in that first instant of contact with holy power, he had no room in his mind for anything save a sudden wild sympathy with Faanshi’s assassin, when the Anreulag had struck him down.

  In the next instant, his inner meadow began to split asunder—until, like the peal of a bell made of sunlight, Faanshi’s voice echoed across it. Kestar!

  And as the doors in the back of the nave flew open, every amulet in range grew abruptly brighter still, until each one was a tiny star of white-hot incandescence. Two dozen armed figures spilled in from outside, and while three in immediate sight were Hawks trying to fight back the tide, most of the rest were men and women in all manner of garb, raising all manner of weapons.

  Two were elves, the same two who’d accompanied Faanshi to Arlitham Abbey in search of him. The blonde-haired healer immediately fired two arrows at the Hawks who charged her from the front of the nave. Her silver-haired companion swung a sword around him in deadly arcs almost too swift for Kestar’s eye to follow. With them in the thick of the fray were the assassins, both of them this time, not only the one called Julian but his young partner as well. Each of them fought two-handed with knives while a burly Tantiu in a blue korfi, with a big curved sword in his hands, helped them drive away anyone who came too near one last, smaller figure.

  “Faanshi!” Kestar roared.

  Five of the guards hustled the Lord Provost, the priests and priestesses, and the duchess toward the door just beside the altar. Kestar caught one last glimpse of Khamsin as her escorts hurried her out through that door, past the statues of the Mother and Daughter—and he was gripped with the sudden surety that behind her veil, she was smiling.

  The remaining guards, along with the three Hawks still on their feet, charged forward to join the fight.

  And the nave gave itself over to chaos.

  * * *

  When the rioters broke down the gates of St. Telran’s, Follingsen led their own charge in to join the fray, with two others of their band helping clear their path. Enverly was more than willing to let them handle the lion’s share of the fighting—he could still defend himself, but he was long removed from the soldier he’d been on the battlefields of Tantiulo. And now that he’d spotted the girl and her companions, he had a higher purpose to fulfill.

  Once he’d found Faanshi, it didn’t take much effort at all to track her. She ducked and wove out of the way of weapons and blows, her green eyes flat and frightened over the korfi she wore. Her face was covered, but her entire frame was glowing, and he had no doubt in his heart that this was the girl he sought.

  With one quick gesture he urged his companions to engage the assassins and the big Tantiu who fought at their side. As the combat spilled through St. Telran’s grounds and into the cathedral itself, through the narthex and straight into the nave, Enverly kept to the fringe of it all. Yet not once did he let Faanshi out of his sight.

  Inside the nave he got one quick glimpse of the people by the altar, and he laughed as much as he could, in the confines of his own thoughts—did Kestar Vaarsen appreciate that he’d just interrupted the young Hawk’s fate?

  Not that it mattered, for he made it to within four feet of the girl even as the men fighting around her were all engaged. The duchess didn’t know what he was planning, for he hadn’t bothered to tell her—on the off chance that it wouldn’t work. Either way, regardless, she would certainly find out soon enough.

  Three feet.

  Two.

  He seized the girl from behind. She screamed and writhed in his grasp, but he pulled the knife he’d hidden beneath his robes and drove it first into her ribs, and then into his own.

  And exactly as he’d planned, her power ignited in incandescent brilliance.

  * * *

  Gunshots from the Hawks armed with pistols or the rioters armed with muskets only slowed the fight in the nave rather than stopping it. Arrows, swords and knives did nothing to convince those who fought on either side to lay down their arms.

  But when Faanshi screamed and her power filled the nave with the brightest light yet, every combatant had to freeze. Male or female, elf or human, the ragged explosion of magic from the healer girl momentarily blinded them all.

  Kestar felt rather than saw her fall, and all else, even his mother and his partner, vanished from his mind as he bolted for the back of the nave. In his dazzled haste he tripped twice over bodies sprawled between the pews, but neither one stopped his headlong rush to reach Faanshi. The light ebbed down just enough for him to see before he plowed straight into the silver-haired Kirinil, who nearly mowed him down where he stood as he rasped, “Back, human! Back, all of you!”

  Silence fell, almost deafening in the wake of the fighting that had just been going on, as the elves, the assassins and the Tantiu with the curved sword formed a circle around the fallen girl. The blonde she-elf, the other healer, tried to fling herself down to Faanshi’s side—but the man who’d seized her, the man who’d stabbed her, let out an animal howl at her approach.

  The hood of his cloak fell back, revealing the face of the old priest Shaymis Enverly.

  He’d fallen to his knees along with Faanshi, and they were both bleeding now, but the priest was bizarrely smiling. He kept on doing so, clutching the healer girl, while her hands blindly fumbled at his body—first at his ribs, and then at his throat.

  Enverly kept howling, while light kindled around his head like a halo, until his howl changed into a burst of hoarse, harsh laughter. And then, words.

  Words Kestar recognized the instant the man began to chant them. Words that had pulled down the roof of the chapel at Arlitham Abbey, killed several men and manifested the Voice of the Gods.

  He didn’t even have to scream a warning, for the elves all reacted more swiftly than he. Arrow and sword alike felled Shaymis Enverly, along with a knife from one of the assassins—and Kestar didn’t have to guess that it was Julian who’d hurled the blade, for the Rook was the first to reach Faanshi and pull her out of the old priest’s embrace.

  It was the blonde healer, though, who first saw and recognized Kestar himself.

  “We came for you, valann,” she said, and her voice was grim with purpose. “And if you value my sister as much as the rest of us, you’d better come now and come fast. We’re leaving.”

  A deed more easily announced than done, for weapons in the hands of angry Hawks stood between them and escape from the cathedral. Kestar didn’t have to work to find weapons of his own, for there were swords to be stolen from the first Hawks who tried to attack him and his partner—only to fall under Alarrah’s arrows for their pains. Thus armed, they fought their way back to the front of the nave to retrieve Ganniwer before Jekke Yerredes could drag her away. Yet Lady Vaarsen rose to her own defense,
wresting a knife from the Hawk’s own belt, and stabbing her with it. It wasn’t enough to drop the woman in her tracks, but it was enough to make her let go.

  Kestar had never been more proud of his mother in his life.

  Yet what Hawks remained in the nave weren’t about to let them go. Only through a deafening clatter of sword against sword and the periodic reports of pistols were they able to return to those who’d come with Faanshi, and more than once, the weapons of the Hawks struck home. Bleeding and battered, they had to fight their way outside in a lopsided circle around the Rook, who bore the unconscious Faanshi in his arms. Kestar thrust Ganniwer into the middle of their circle to join him, while Alarrah darted back and forth among them, touching each of them in passing, with as much of her healing power as she could spare to sustain them all.

  Outside the riot and fighting hadn’t much abated, but those who shouted “Nirrivy!” were beginning to prevail. They were still streaming into St. Telran’s, far more interested in the grand building than in the ragtag group now fleeing it. Some who saw them pass dodged to let them by, and only much later did Kestar realize the import of that—why half a dozen different armed men looked with dismay on the sight of one unconscious half-elven girl glowing in the arms of the assassin who bore her, and why they called out “Saint Faanshi” as the Rook hurried past them. Many more, though, were preoccupied with combat, and moved out of their way only as the ebb and flow of the fighting demanded.

  In the full headlong rush of their flight, though, all Kestar ultimately knew was the urgency of their escape.

  They ran pell-mell through streets and alleys, following enough turns and twists that he quickly lost track of where they were headed, save that it was away from the fire that still hurled flame and smoke into the sky. In one last alley, they ducked one by one down a spiral staircase of old wood and rusted iron. From there, a cellar full of barrels of salted pork and bottles of brandy—and in that, there was a trapdoor that led down into cool, dark tunnels that were a welcome respite from the heat and smoke above.

  Not even then did they stop running, not for a while. When they finally reached what Kestar guessed to be their destination, a wide underground chamber he’d never dreamed existed below the city, strangers greeted them and guided them quickly to places where they could collapse and rest. He made sure that Celoren and Ganniwer were safe, then followed Julian as he bore Faanshi into one of the nooks that made hollows in the ancient stone walls. There, the assassin sank down with his back against one of those walls, still cradling the girl’s unmoving form.

  Kestar, barely daring to breathe, crouched down beside him. And then he had to lean aside, as the other healer came into the nook after him, insisting, “Let me through, valann. Let me help her.”

  “She’s still glowing.” His voice sounded awkward in his own ears, with such stricken faces before him, but he could think of nothing else to offer. “She’s still alive.”

  Julian raised his head and looked at him, with eyes gone hollow with exhaustion. “She insisted we rescue you. Said we’d all have to be with her, or else we’d all die. You’d better be worth this, Vaarsen. If she doesn’t come out of this, you won’t have to worry about your Order hunting you. I’ll take you down myself.”

  “If you’re going to fight, then get out of here,” ordered the healer, pressing her hands to Faanshi’s form. “Otherwise be quiet and let me work to make sure she survives till sunrise.”

  They obeyed her and fell silent, and to Kestar’s weary relief, neither of them demanded he leave. So he lingered, and watched, and wondered if the Mother would hear him now if he prayed to Her for help.

  If the assassin prayed at all, he could not tell.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Julian hadn’t meant to sleep. He hadn’t wanted to, for far too many of his nights as of late had been filled with the nightmares he still hadn’t quite been able to shake. This slumber, to his surprise, was an exception. When he finally surfaced from it, so many hours later that he had no idea at all of the time, his first conscious thought was that Alarrah must have taken it upon herself to drop him into unconsciousness.

  His second thought, immediately overlapping the first, was of Faanshi.

  She wasn’t in his arms as he’d last remembered, but she proved to be nearby, curled up on a pallet beneath a blanket, a pillow underneath her head. The korfi she’d been wearing still hung loosely around her neck, but her face was exposed and turned to him, as was the hand that lay limply outstretched before her.

  He still sat propped against the wall of their nook, and Vaarsen hadn’t budged either. The Hawk—if he could properly be called a Hawk anymore—was crumpled over in another corner, sound asleep. There was no immediate sign of Alarrah, and though Julian was conscious of voices and activity somewhere out in the main body of the tunnel chamber, no one came in to disturb them.

  That left him free to lean forward and take Faanshi’s hand in his, and to drink in the sight of her face.

  He’d kissed her, and that was alarming; that she’d kissed him in return, later, was more alarming still. It complicated things, and reminded him that this healer with an innocent heart was indeed a young woman. One he’d come to adore, he could no longer deny, and who seemed poised now on the verge of warm feelings for him if she hadn’t succumbed to them already. She was only eighteen, nineteen at most, and he knew the strength of emotions at that age—at eighteen, he’d loved Dulcinea with all his heart.

  At thirty, he loved Dulcinea’s memory. But the woman that memory had become had hurled a challenge to him as she’d died, and in the relative solitude of his awakening, all he could think of was her final words to him. Kill him or don’t kill him!

  He hadn’t killed his brother, no matter how great the urge, for Dulcinea had refused to engage him in a contract.

  Yet he’d been willing to kill Kestar Vaarsen twice now, on Faanshi’s behalf, without her even asking. He’d fought in her defense in Shalridan’s streets and in St. Telran’s, and though he hadn’t counted, he knew he must have slain at least some of the men he’d fought. One of his knives had certainly helped take the priest Shaymis Enverly down.

  For Dulcinea, he’d still been the Rook. Willing to kill, but only for a price.

  For Faanshi...the exact opposite of that, something for which he couldn’t begin to provide a name.

  He was still pondering the question when her fingers tightened around his hand, snapping him out of his reverie—and when her eyes opened, he had barely enough time to note her sudden, joyous smile before she scrambled up to embrace him.

  “Julian! Are we back in the tunnels? I don’t remember what happened, did we find Kestar?”

  She’s asking for him? A pang of something sweet and painful rolled through his chest at her smile, but a second one came at her words. “We got him,” he assured her gruffly, unable to keep from answering her hug, regardless. “He’s right there.”

  Faanshi’s glad little cry was loud enough to shock Vaarsen awake, just before she leaped to him and embraced him with the same anxious fervor she’d just shown Julian himself. “Kestar, oh praise Djashtet we got to you, are you all right? I was so afraid we wouldn’t get to you in time.”

  Kestar sat up, rubbing sleep from his drowsy green eyes. He smiled crookedly at Faanshi, and hugged her readily enough, but his voice was still sober with worry. “I’m alive. So are my mother and Celoren, thanks to you and your friends. But Faanshi, I’m still not sure you were in time at all. Don’t you remember the priest?”

  Blinking, Faanshi pulled back from him. “Priest?” Julian nodded once as she glanced back at him for confirmation, and her cheeks turned sallow as she paled. “Lady of Time. Father Enverly. He was there...he...he stabbed me. And himself.”

  “My best guess,” Kestar said, “is that he wanted you to heal him. They cut out his tongue at the abbey so he couldn’t speak the Rite of the Calling again.”

  Julian started. “I hadn’t known that.”

 
; “You and Faanshi both were...” Kestar looked back and forth between them, brow furrowing. “You were distracted. And there wasn’t exactly an opportune time to discuss it once you woke up.”

  Faanshi sat back on her pallet and wrapped her arms about herself. Her eyes squeezed shut, while her mouth pulled into a tight, skewed line. When she spoke again, her voice had gone brittle. “I felt it. His mouth was ruined. So much pain, and I couldn’t think, and I lost control of the magic.” Her head snapped up again. “He spoke the Rite! But he died...? Did I feel him die?”

  He should reach for her, Julian thought, but his gaze flashed past her to Vaarsen. The other man’s eyes held that same uncertainty, and in fact, he’d already lifted a hand. With a heavy sigh, he dropped it again and nodded. “Yes.”

  “We killed him three different ways, girl,” Julian affirmed. “And we were lucky this time. The Anreulag never appeared.”

  “That’s the part that bothers me,” Kestar said. “I think he might actually have finished the Rite before he died.”

  “Then why didn’t She come to us if Father Enverly called Her?” Faanshi asked, going paler still. “Where could She have gone instead?”

  * * *

  The royal palace, Dareli, Jeuchar 4, AC 1876

  What the people of Dareli would call the Night of Fire in years to come began when the palace shook, with a great quaking that surged up from the bowels of the earth, as if some massive beast fought its way to the surface from somewhere deep underground.

  Margaine snapped her eyes when the first tremor hit, her mind latching first on the wailing of Padraiga in her bassinet, and she was out of bed and leaping for her daughter before she was even fully awake. As she scooped the baby into her arms, the doors of her suite flew open to admit her frantic maid—and behind her, two of the palace guards. “Your Highness, you must come at once,” the first one said. “We’ve got to get you to a safer location.”

  His tone was respectful, but it was an order nonetheless, and Margaine didn’t waste time arguing. “Is the Bhandreid safe?” she asked, as she hastened out into the hall at the direction of the guards.