Wings Over Talera

by Charles Allen Gramlich

  My head was bowed, though I did not remember lowering it, and Vohanna’s fingers played in my hair, her nails curving over my scalp. Her words took on a new intimacy, as if there could be no secrets between us.

  “Your brother was badly hurt, Ruenn. Bleeding at his sheered wrist from the explosion that stole his hand. I healed him. Saved him. And yes, I took him. His mind was powerful. I knew then what an ally he would make. But you could be greater. By my side.”

  I felt myself drowning in the cool water of Vohanna’s words, felt my mind letting go, giving up. But still, from somewhere inside, some part of me flailed for a hold, for something to keep my head above that water.

  “Rannon,” I whispered to myself.

  And yet, Rannon had betrayed me. That last night in Timmuzz, she had seen to it that Kreeg was out of the way so that I could be arrested without hindrance.

  Or had she? Could there have been some explanation that I’d been too angry at the time to seek? And there had been the parchment note, which I realized now must have been planted by Vohanna’s agents. Its scribblings were engraved behind my eyes:

  Ruenn,

  Find an excuse and meet me. You know where. Soon, my brother. Nyshphal will be ours. Then you can have your princess-wench and a hundred others.

  Bryce

  Who knew what else Vohanna’s operatives had done to sew confusion in the land they planned to conquer? There had been reasons for Rannon to doubt me.

  Yet, she had come alone to my room. She had believed in me that far, despite the hurt the note must have caused her. And whatever she had done, I knew it had been out of concern for the people of Nyshphal, whom she truly loved.

  I thought then of Rannon’s eyes, brilliant perse blue against the wicked black of Vohanna’s, of Rannon’s satin mane against the oiled, dancing tendrils of Vohanna’s living tresses, and of Rannon’s scent, clean and good while Vohanna’s lingered like an erotic musk. I thought such things and trembled, and whispered again, louder.

  “Rannon.”

  Vohanna’s hand stopped its slow stroke through my hair.

  “What?” she asked, her tone sharpening slightly.

  My right hand drifted to my thigh, toward my sword’s hilt. Vohanna was so close and for a moment I thought of killing her to stop her deadly ambitions. But even as I realized that I could not murder Vohanna in cold blood, her appeal came, and I sensed now the calculated drama of her act—everything for an effect.

  “And still you fight, Ruenn. Why do you fight?”

  I forced my head up, looked into her oblivion-gaze.

  “Rannon,” I said, out loud.

  Vohanna’s eyes went utterly and bitterly cold, and her mouth sneered in a way that robbed her of all beauty. She stepped back, her hands lifting, nails curved like talons.

  “You are such a fool, Ruenn. And you will die for it.”

  “Then let it be by my hand,” a masculine voice said. And I turned my head to see at last my brother.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  BLOOD FOR BLOOD

  “Bryce,” I said, nodding slightly as I rose to face him.

  It didn’t worry me to turn my back on Vohanna. She’d enjoy this confrontation too much to interfere.

  “Ruenn,” Bryce replied, his voice mocking as he smiled with inked-black lips.

  I glanced my brother over. He looked sick...and dangerous. His eyes were the rust-red of burned earth, with savage embers of bright ruby working in the depths where his pupils should have been. His hair hung lank over his shoulders to the waist, and it was white upon white where once it had been nearly as dark brown as mine. At least his features were the same, though whip-lean and with every inch of skin covered by snarling tattoos in red, green, blue, and gold.

  My gaze dropped down to his right fist where it rested on the baroque hilt of a scabbarded saber. I had wondered what Bryce’s “false” hand might be. Now I saw. It was a thing of spiderweb and bone, of articulated metal wired with jeweled copper. Over it moved a translucent latex skin through which waves of scarlet pulsed. There were only three fingers to go with the thumb.

  I glanced back into my brother’s eyes.

  Bryce’s smirk grew as he walked past me then and leaned in to dab a kiss at the corner of Vohanna’s mouth. His eyes never left mine; nor did Vohanna’s as she reached up and stroked long, thin fingers through his hair as if petting a cat.

  “You two look sweet together,” I said dryly.

  Vohanna seemed to have regained the composure she’d lost when I rejected her bid to control me. Now she laughed, the sound bright and clear and as stinging as glacial ice.

  “Poor Ruenn,” she said, her lips pouting. “He misses his lady. Oh, I’m sorry. He has no lady anymore. She appears to have betrayed him.”

  “Appearances can lie, Vohanna,” I said. I waved a finger toward her. “For example, you look lovely.”

  Bryce’s eyes flashed scarlet. A growl erupted from his throat and he half drew his sword before Vohanna’s hand clutched his weapon-arm, her nails biting into his skin.

  “Above,” she snapped with tight drawn lips. “You’ll make him pay.”

  My brother’s rage subsided instantly, as if he were a tamed ghyre on a leash. And Vohanna’s words must also have been a signal because the floor gave a little jerk and began to move. Startled, I glanced down, then realized that we all—Vohanna, Bryce, the hybrid guards and myself—stood on a long, wide platform that was rising slowly, through the roof of the throne-room into the upper portion of the pyramid.

  The movement was smooth, with scarcely a whisper of friction from the walls around, and in moments we reached the destination Vohanna had chosen for us. I turned, seeing that we’d come to rest at the border of a small, rectangular amphitheater whose floor was dusted with fine sand. There were tiers of seats to my left and right, with a tightly woven fence of wickedly barbed wire between those seats and the sand.

  Directly across some two hundred feet of open space from me was a black wall in which a circular gray door was centered. That door stood closed but I suspected that beyond it would lie pens where prisoners could be held for this arena.

  I looked toward Vohanna. She ignored the stands, returned to her throne and seated herself upon it with a flourish. Her winged guardians found roosts among the thick, dark rafters above; her other minions gathered around her protectively. Except for Bryce.

  My brother walked past me onto the sand, his gaze still locked upon me. He unfastened his sword sheath from the scabbard hooks on his belt, drew the blade and tossed the lacquered sheath aside. Breeks of black leather encased him from the hips down, and he wore a high-collared shirt of crimson silk that he stripped off and let fall like so much litter beside his silver-studded boots.

  The blade in my brother’s metallic fist glimmered evilly in the smoky light of overhead glow globes, but it was not the weapon that held my attention. In Bryce’s throat, just where the left and right carotid arteries slipped beneath the clavicle of his collarbone, twin milkstones pulsed in obscene harmony. They’d been hidden behind his shirt collar and were the largest implanted stones I’d yet seen. Most of Vohanna’s servants bore only specks of the toir’in-or but these were the size of hummingbird eggs.

  Beneath the milkstones, down his chest, over his torso, the tattoos that marked my brother’s face and neck continued. I saw...things there: will-o’-the-wisp images of scorpions and nightshade moths, and of reeths, those jaguar-sleek predators which Talerans sometimes call harlequin-wolves for their mocking smiles. And I saw what Diken Graye had once told me I would see. The tattoos moved. They crawled. Like a living canvas of scars.

  I snarled at myself then, shoved away the cloying dread that threatened to overwhelm me. Bryce and Vohanna would not beat me so cheaply. I drew my own sword, the one that I’d taken from Eric Ryall at Kellet’s Bay. Its blade winked as sharp in the light
as Bryce’s did. I, too, threw aside my scabbard.

  Bryce motioned to me with his left hand, his fingers urging me to come. I offered him a cold smile and started toward him; but my thoughts burned. I could not kill my brother. I could not let him kill me. I’d carried some passing fancy of delay, of holding Vohanna’s attention rapt until Hurnan Jystral and Rannon arrived with the Nyshphalian air fleet.

  Foolishness. It was all foolishness.

  But Bryce did not let me wallow in self-recrimination.

  “Are you thinking about dying, Ruenn?” he called.

  I stopped walking, and looked across a dozen feet of sand into the crimson hellishness of my brother’s eyes.

  “Why, Bryce?” I shook my head. “Surely you know this hate you feel for me is Vohanna’s doing.”

  He snarled but I kept on talking—while the milkstones in his throat pulsed opalescent.

  “You and I were friends, Bryce. Not just brothers. Don’t you remember?”

  And now he started toward me. I took a step backward.

  “Our parents raised us to watch each other’s backs. Not to fight among ourselves. Blood for blood. You have to remember that! They loved—”

  Bryce was too far away for an attack but he lunged at me anyway, his sword held straight in front of him, the muscles of his legs uncoiling like springs. I saw his blade coming in like blued lightning, whipped my own blade across to knock his aside. I leaped to my left and he turned off his left heel, a low growl bubbling from his throat as he rushed upon me again.

  Nearly, he had me. I’d expected a moment of respite; he gave me none. His sword drove in, tip winking with light. I parried desperately. Once. Twice. My third blocking move was too high. I felt the jar as our blades struck together, heard the keen of steel on steel as his edge slid down mine in a wrath of sparks and came free. I missed the stroke that followed, felt the burn of a wicked razor slicing in across the outside of my left shoulder. Blood spattered my cheek.

  I jumped back, startled. Seldom had I been so easily cut one on one in a sword fight. I backed farther away. Bryce chuckled, and followed.

  I spared a quick glance at my shoulder. Too much blood ran to judge the depth of the slash, though the limb seemed to work all right. For now. Unless the wound clotted soon, though, it would bleed me to weakness.

  “You’re quick, brother,” Bryce called. “But nowhere near quick enough.”

  As if to prove his words, he came charging, boots slapping lightly on the sand as he ran. I half crouched, sword ready. He hacked his blade down. I blocked; I was meant to. He spun right off that parry and slashed across toward me at the midline. I blocked again, and he spun left. I caught his edge on the back of my blade. Metal shrieked as our arms strained, as our muscles bulged.

  Bryce slammed a shoulder into my chest, staggering me. He followed immediately with a swordsman’s lunge, his body extended, his blade stabbed like a lance at my heart. I parried. Barely. He kept coming.

  Damn, he was fast.

  We fenced wildly, an electric flurry of light splintering from the swords. I matched him for a moment—parried, parried, riposted. And I missed as my blade whispered past his cheek and his own blade licked down across my thigh, slicing through the tough jeans as if they were linen and flaying fire across my skin.

  I bit my tongue against the pain and stumbled back. Bryce held up for a moment, grinning at me insanely with black lips, his tattoos writhing like a nest of adders. At his throat the milkstones beat and beat, like pigeon hearts. From behind me came the chill tinkle of Vohanna’s laughter, and the sound of her delighted clapping.

  “Excellent, my love,” she called to Bryce. “Excellent!”

  Bryce sketched a short bow in his mistress’s direction. Then he lifted his sword, brought its tip up close to his nostrils where they flared to catch the scent of my blood upon the steel. His gaze found mine over the blade, and he grinned at me again as his vermillion eyes churned with black runes that bloomed and burst in their depths.

  “I am so enjoying this, brother,” he taunted, as he lowered his saber and let the tip inscribe small curlicues in the air.

  I was breathing hard, with blood running down my arm and down the leg of my jeans.

  “Mom and dad loved us, Bryce,” I gasped out. “It would kill them to see us now. If....” I looked directly into my brother’s face. “If they could be killed. But they’re already dead, Bryce. Did you know that? Our sisters too. Did you know? Did Vohanna tell you?”

  It was a last bid on my part to reach through the witch’s control and to touch the Bryce that I hoped still lived inside this vicious shell. But I knew that my emotional thrust had failed as surely as any by steel when he said in response to my comment:

  “I didn’t know, but I’m glad.”

  He chuckled, and slashed his sword through the air to send ruby droplets of my blood splattering from the blade. He twirled in place, arms up, head back, his voice growing into laughter.

  Then he turned to face me and asked: “Ready for the end now?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Now I am.”

  He smirked and stalked forward, the tip of his blade weaving. Again came his sudden lunge, faster than a striking cobra with his sword ablur. But I caught his weapon on mine, slapped it aside. He spun, saber coming around. I blocked that one too, and he dropped the line of his thrust. I met it, and the one that followed. Our swords locked for an instant at the hilts and Bryce looked surprised that I’d parried.

  I punched him in the jaw with my free fist.

  Now it was Bryce who staggered back, blood at the corner of his mouth. He spat to clear it, not truly hurt but incensed beyond thought. He snarled savagely and attacked. His blade arced down. I met it with my own. He disengaged, leaped to his left, slashed across his body at my belly. I blocked the blow an inch from my unprotected flesh, then riposted and the tip of my sword whiffed close enough to his chin to fan him with a breeze.

  My brother hurled himself forward instead of back and I had no time to meet his hacking steel with my own. My left hand caught the wrist of his sword arm, stayed it. I tried to punch him again with the hilt of my blade but he snared my wrist as well and we stood chest to chest, straining. He growled at me like a beast, his face contorted, every muscle in his body strung tense as wire. But I was a little taller than he, a little heavier. He could not move me.

  I butted him in the face with my forehead, felt and heard the cartilage crunch in his nose. He cried out in pain, blood spraying from his face. His legs quivered and threatened to drop from under him. Releasing his sword arm, I slapped him, open palmed, ringing his ears. And while his head snapped to the side I pushed him away from me, spun off my left heel and lashed a kick to his chest that knocked him on his backside in the sand.

  Behind me I could hear Vohanna hurling curses now. I ignored them, waited for Bryce to rise. He got up slowly, shaking his head, but there was no fear in him. It seemed to me that the color of his eyes had changed, that they had lost some of their crimson luster, but his face was set and he lifted his sword and stalked toward me. I met him.

  We did not circle to look for openings now. There were no fancy fencing moves, no feints. Toe to toe we came together, and our blades slammed, locked, broke away, linked again in a wild clanging frenzy of scraping metal. He cut me once on the arm. I cut his cheek. And still we fought face to face, on sand that was clotted with blood from both of us now.

  Faintly to my ears came the sound of Vohanna screaming at Bryce to kill me. And then the screaming stopped. In that lull of sound, as if it were a signal, Bryce and I stepped apart. Our chests heaved; our bodies were raked with sweat. I could smell the stench of it, could taste the salt of blood on my tongue.

  Bryce was looking toward Vohanna. I followed his gaze to see that she had risen from her throne. Her face was pale under the rose petal blush that marked her natural color. Around he
r, the hybrid guards milled in agitation. Bryce reacted instinctively. He took a step toward her but her hand lifted to halt him. She pointed. At me. Her voice hissed like scorpions on a griddle.

  “They’re here. You lied to me, Ruenn Maclang. You said your friend the Green Llurn had fled, but it seems you sent him for help. The fleet of Nyshphal is here. Soon the battle will be joined to decide the fate of this world.”

  Vohanna lowered her hand, and even as a fierce exultation tingled every hair of my body at word of the fleet’s arrival, the witch gestured peremptorily to her guards.

  “No time now for pleasure” she said. “Kill Ruenn Maclang. All of you.”

  Jubilation died as my mouth went dry, as the guards turned with one mind and marched upon me. Overhead, I heard the whir of wings as the flying hybrids released from their rafter perches and began to circle.

  “No!” Bryce shouted. “He’s mine!”

  Vohanna’s only response was an order: “Obey!”

  Bryce glanced from Vohanna to me. His face was a rictus, his hand locked in bloodless rigor upon his saber’s hilt. Over his shoulder I saw Vohanna spread her arms, hands turned up, and in her palms appeared twin milkstones of heart-of-night black. They seemed to emerge, like stigmata, out of her flesh.

  A column of light, golden with shimmering motes, stabbed down upon the witch from overhead. An answering flame burst from her stones. Then I saw the reality of what I had only suspected. The thing that was truly Vohanna discarded its human form and swept straight up into the air in a glittering weave of rainbow-spun wings and crystalline jet eyes. It was the same being that I’d seen at Kellet’s Bay.

  A door rasped open in the roof and with a tiny thunderclap Vohanna went through it and was gone. The abandoned human body dropped to the sand like a discarded suit of wet clothes. No doubt, the witch herself was even now preparing her defenses against the Nyshphalian fleet.