"I don't believe you," I whispered.
"I give you my word," he said with cold eyes, his words clipped. "If you will take even that much from me." His anger was back, his fury at my long absence. I nodded slowly. He wasn't lying.
I allowed him to come closer to me.
"So stay a while with me," he murmured. "You may as well. No one needs you this moment, do they?"
"I will stay," I said, though I'd meant to say something else. "Just a while!" I added hastily. "But you have to put some clothes on." I winced at the note of pleading in my voice. He threw back his head and gave an open laugh, then bowed.
"If Her Chosen requests it, how can I refuse?"
"Don't mock me," I muttered. "I am a poor Chosen, and I know it."
He turned his back on me, digging in a trunk for a pair of pants. After pulling on a pair of smooth leather pants, he kicked the chair out from his campaign desk. Iceblade gestured for me to sit on his bed while he sat in the chair.
"It is somewhat the same for me, though the God asks little of me," he said when I complied. "It is not a task I would have sought, but my mother brought it to be. And I will have what I want from it."
"You seem to be perfect for your work," I said bleakly.
"I would be, if it weren't for you!" he snarled. "You've thrown everything off." I smiled, leaning against one of the bed's high supports. Iceblade poured himself some wine from a decanter on the desk.
"Did you miss me?" I asked, evilly. He drained the cup, flung it against the wall of the tent with vicious force.
"Did I miss you? No," he said cruelly. I felt myself flinch from the pain of those words, raising a hand to stop him. He ignored my unspoken plea. "Did I miss you? You were gone, disappeared, amputated from my very spirit, and you think I missed you? I couldn't breathe when you were gone. I searched for you, used up men I needed elsewhere just to find one single sign of you. Tirith thought I was losing my mind. The last time I saw you you were losing your mind. I feared... when you were gone so suddenly-" He cut himself off and fell silent, brooding.
"But you found me anyway. I was supposed to be safe from your eyes."
"You weren't completely safe from Wandis, though. She couldn't scry you directly, but we found in the end she could using another's eyes, who was physically present with you. Vankyar said you weren't dead. And then, to the south of the haunted wood, some of your friends-" he spit out the word, "ran into one of the patrols who had been sent out after you. And Spider made it back to me. After that, it was just a matter of finding a way in." I watched him from under my lashes. He was distant with his remembered fury. The face I found so haunting was hard, a muscle clenching in his cheek.
"How is Vankyar?" I asked. He returned his eyes to me, his face softening reluctantly under my gaze.
"Dying. Another death to lay at my mother's feet. And mine." He took a deep drink of wine out of the carafe. "She wasn't born a Seer, you know. There was a ritual. Vankyar was given to a demon."
I Saw it, the visions fluttering behind my eyes. "She was still a child," I said mournfully.
"She had just begun her womanhood," he said. "And was still pure. She had tried to give away her maidenhead, but Deirdre killed any man Vankyar approached, from the stableboy to a visiting lord."
"Your mother must die," I cried. I tried to wipe the images of a small, struggling Vankyar being dragged to the ritual room from my mind. Iceblade turned blank, dead eyes on me.
"She will."
I looked away, covering my face, tears running down my face.
"Don't cry, my Ada," he said. "We were all ruined long before you knew us." He came to sit beside me, reaching out with one hand to trace a line around my hand, laying on the bed covers.
"I wish I could have saved you," I whispered. "You and Vankyar."
He laughed, the sound harsh, sharp. "Look at me, my beloved," he said, and I obeyed. "I don't want to discuss the past. There is nothing in it that holds any value to me. You are all that I want in this world."
"If that were true, I would be with you right now."
He lay back on the bed, his legs sprawled off of it and his arms crossed behind his head. "There are things that are owed. Things that will be paid. Then all I need is you." I felt an wanton urge to straddle him, to sit splayed across his abdomen and see what he did, what the conversation would be. Tamping the urge down, I swallowed.
"It isn't going to be like that," I said painfully. "You know what I must do."
"Oh, go, then. I won't hear you vow my death again. Go. In the end you will come to me, whether you kill me or lay with me." I hesitated. "Go!" he shouted, sitting up.
I left.
"You're here," Selas said in the morning. We sat around the campfire, having a rushed breakfast.
"I am," I said.
Nefen looked at me, curious. I ignored him, turning my face away. Selas stood and gestured curtly for me to follow him.
"How did it go?" he asked when we were away from the others. I turned my face to him, let him see the anguish eating away inside me. He frowned direly, shaking his head and looking off into the distance.
"I have his promise not to come to me," I said.
Selas snorted. "His promise? What's that worth?"
"I believed him," I said, pulling my cloak closer around me.
The old man shook his head again. "It's time to move out," he said. "Get ready. If he won't come, we won't rest for a couple days. You won't need to sleep."
Two grueling days followed. We marched all day, stopping only for supper, then marched through the night. Breakfast was spent sprawled around campfires as most people caught what rest they could before the old tyrant set us moving again. As evening fell the second day, I called our army to a halt.
"We can rest tonight," I told them. "But tomorrow we must make haste. At this moment, Iceblade's soldiers are two days behind us." Selas echoed my orders and had the camp set up ship shape in a short time. When he was satisfied, he came and sat next to me, dishing himself some soup out of the pot.
"So you think you're in charge of this army," he grouched. I stared at him, noticing a hidden twinkle in his eyes.
"I only spared you the trouble, General," I replied, falsely submissive, trying to hide my smile. Looking around I saw Nefen and the others at a separate campfire a short distance away. He saw me looking at him and smiled, placing one hand over his heart for a brief moment, to remind me of the night at the stream. I blushed, and turned to face Selas.
"He doesn't know what he's getting into," Selas snorted. "You are far more trouble than you seem."
"I think you could be right," I said in agreement. "But who said there's anything to get into?"
Selas tilted his chin at the younger man. "He thinks there is."
I looked at Nefen again. Could I love him? Someday? Was I holding him near but not close because I really believed that I would someday return his feelings or because I was afraid to be alone? My actions toward him, my words to him, today seemed selfish and unfair. Suddenly morose, I turned back to my own campfire, fingering my amulet.
"He's not getting into anything," I said. "He's just waiting. And I'm going to bed."
Selas snorted. "Run along then."
As I drifted off to sleep, I felt the inexorable pull of Iceblade's presence. I sat up, forcing myself awake. For more than an hour I meditated like Banning taught me to, and prayed, and reminded myself of reality. Being in love with Iceblade was not reality, it was a fantasy that could never be made true. No matter how much I ached for his touch, his voice, the sight of him, no matter how much I hurt for every abuse done to him as a child, it must only stay in my head, in the farthest corner I could push it. Vankyar said there was nothing left in him but the cold rage he turned on everything in his path, no matter how innocent.
I lay back down, weeping. My strength was laughable, I was a disgrace to my duty. Perhaps that knowledge alone would keep me here in my cot, spirit and all. I don't know how long I cried, silent and
isolated, before I managed to fall asleep.
I awoke with a start of panic before the first sunlight touched the sky. Dragging on my boots, I hopped over to Selas' tent. "Get up," I yelled inside the flap. "Get up – it's time to go!" The snoring stopped abruptly and our General was in motion. As we hurried to wake the camp and get everyone moving, I explained to him.
"Cur is leading the group after us. They kept going through the night. They're being sped magically by the mage – they don't require rest. Missing a night's sleep is not going to slow them down or dull their reflexes. And Cur has no chance of losing our trail no matter what I do – he can smell us and sense us."
Selas gave miniscule nods as I spoke. Without breakfast, without even gathering the tents, we were on the march again, as fast as we could go. I led because I knew exactly where we were going, and Wyntan and a group of our strongest fighters took up the last position.
I found within myself the power to pull energy from the area around us and feed it to Galiena's army. Maybe it was the armor, or maybe I was just becoming more Galiena's Chosen. There was different kinds of energy near – the melting of the snow, the way the rocks heated in the sun, seeds and fungi awakening under the earth. I stole it all and passed it on. Before this, any time I used myself in any act of concentration and power I became quickly exhausted. Now I refreshed myself the same as the others.
Behind us I left a path of vaporized snow, cold and sometimes cracking stone, once living fauna in gravid soil stillborn and unseen. As I used myself as a passage bringing this energy to those around me, I became less aware of the physical world. I could feel the souls of every person who followed me, but couldn't see their bodies. Distance no longer mattered to my senses, I could feel the presence of Cur and his band of hundreds as they gave chase. The beast felt something like a broken string on a fine lute – an empty wrongness, a missing note that jarred. For the first time I noticed that the crow soldiers were women as well as men, I could sort out the different energies. Some energies were surpassingly feminine and some completely masculine, and a whole range in between.
I heard a singing voice as the sensation of real sound receded. The words sung were beyond my understanding, though some concepts formed in my mind as the voice rippled around and past me as if I were a stone in a river of enchanted harmony. I saw a new world unfurling with life, I saw the first children, long lost from this world, then the humans who replaced them. I saw the growing things and the dying things, the creatures of the oceans and fresh waters, things that lived in holes far beneath the surface of the world. With every phrase or picture that filled my head, the power within me grew. Galiena's army moved faster and faster. The force fueling our pursuers seemed to waver as if confused and Cur hesitated, sniffing and seeing the unnatural trail we were leaving; then the power changed, darkening, burgeoning up from someplace beyond the mage and flowing through her as if she herself was a sluice gate. This dark energy, called up by Dagar's Chosen, soon matched mine, but an advantage lay with us. We had found our power earlier, if only by a mere hour or so, and we had pulled further ahead of Cur and his troops.
Iceblade, so far from me physically, was pursuing right on my heels in this other place. He had become to my perception a being of dark and magnetic energy, the incarnation of the God in the Unknown Forest, giving chase to his adversary, his mate. I could sense his ardor, his frenzy, and his terrible resolve. There was between us an exhilaration, the pre-ecstasy of the most primal hunt.
Shaken, I tried to pull away, break off this connection. I was near refuge but more unsafe than I'd ever found myself. Within the walls lay sanctuary, I had to get within the walls. Sweating, trembling, fearful and euphoric, I pressed those around me harder. Soon, soon, I would be safe soon. I would have victory in this contest and we both knew it. His wrath teemed from him, meeting and tangling with my exultation.
It all ended in a jolt from somewhere beyond me, a wrenching, sundering explosion. One moment his presence was everything around and within me, the next we were unjoined, ripped into separateness. I found myself lying flat on my back, the priests surrounding me, hanging on to me, lit from below by my light-shedding armor. The physicality of the world exploded into my consciousness – the hardness of the ground, the chill and dwindling light of dusk, a wash of smells and sounds. My breath gushed out of me and I struggled to suck it back in, shuddering with effort.
"Breathe, Lady!" Fiona bellowed, and banged on my armored chest with all her might. The very air obeyed her and filled my lungs, sweetly, deeply. I laughed.
Before the sound of my laugh had scattered in the darkening air, I was on my feet, pushing Gronwon and Wind toward the town gates. "You must close those gates!" I shouted. "Call up a barrier!" They ran to do my bidding and I fueled them from the Song, poured it through me so a wall that would have taken days would take only moments for them to raise.
We had arrived safely within the walled city, every one of us inside, but Cur and his soldiers rose on the horizon and the wooden gates of the city were down, burned and bashed into mere remnants. Selas was roaring orders, I heard the sound of Samar's horn and the yowling of her cat. Everyone was in motion around me. The priests sang and the ground convulsed beneath us, a rock wall shooting up to block the broken gate. Archers and warriors mounted the walls, weapons ready, and I hurtled after them, taking a place where I could watch Cur's horde advance like a flood of pitch.
The flood broke against the walls, a wave of unvoicing black upon the twilit earth. The small city was surrounded. Felan's voice rang out, the archers nocked and loosed their arrows into the crow soldiers below us.
"Pull back!" howled an inhuman voice. "Regroup! To me!" The enemy swirled away from the gates, encircling the speaker, the beast Cur. His growling voice raised, carried to those of us waiting within the walls.
"Galiena's Puppet!" he shouted. "You are trapped. Your people are doomed! Those who follow the Puppet, listen to me! Turn her over and you will be spared!" I felt my mouth dry in revulsion and fear at the sound of its voice, and stuffed those feelings back down inside my gut. My stomach churned with it, and I tasted bile.
In answer to the beast, the archers loosed another volley at the crow soldiers. Though many arrows found their mark, the soldiers held their silence. The unearthliness of this response sparked an uneasiness within my army.
"Hold your courage," I said to my people. "They are human, no matter what they seem. Whether they die silently or screaming, they do die." I could feel their fortitude returning with the sound of my voice. The armor I wore lent a pervasive calming influence as they turned their eyes to me, to the light the Chosen's armor cast upon the walls.
"I will give you an hour to choose," Cur shouted. In the dark we could see its flashing fangs as it spoke. "Then only death will appease me!"
"You boast," I shouted back. "You will not breach these walls, and you and your soldiers will fall and blow away like dry autumn leaves before the fury of the Goddess!"
Cur snarled, then snickered. "Do not fear, Galiena's Puppet, a special fate awaits you!"
I held my back stiffly against an icy shudder, and managed not to vomit. Looking at my soldiers, I met the eyes of each one looking to me. "The beast's words bear no weight for us," I told them. "Those threats will not come true, if we hold our courage and let ourselves be mighty! You have felt the power of the Goddess moving within you today. Hold on to it, and we will defeat this loathsome brute."
"One hour!" boomed the brute, and turned his thickly furred back on us.
Chapter 12
Besieged
We used the hour to prepare, and those of us on the wall could see our enemy doing the same. Selas put my honor guard to work supplying the archers with arrows and filling waterskins. Fiona and her helpers set up their hospital in a sizable inn overlooking the village green. Gronwon and Wind saw to the horses. Wyclif and his group went through the village, searching for breachable entrances, knowing Cur would have a group doing the same on the oth
er side of the wall. Nefen's troop took position on the walls with half of Felan's and Hesta's archers and me. Wyntan's group waited below, ready to fill in any gaps should any of Nefen's company fall. Daltorn, Declan, Samar and Selas' troops and the other half of the archers were ordered to take shelter where they could find it, to be rested when the others became exhausted. Some prepared an evening meal, to be ready to feed my soldiers as the effects of having been sustained all day by the energy I pulled from our surroundings gradually wore off and left them feeling much as they had right before I'd begun. Others went to work making long forked poles from whatever suitable material they could find, which would be used to push ladders off the walls when the crow soldiers began to climb.
With a great roar from Cur, the black painted soldiers rushed the walls. "Your time is up! Your lives are forfeit!" Cur screamed. Felan shouted orders. Arrows flew into the enemy. The crow soldiers pushed long, heavy ladders up against the wall, two soldiers holding each ladder so others could climb. Their archers commenced loosing a covering volley of arrows, to try and prevent us from pushing the ladders off the walls.
The long forked poles were passed up quickly to Nefen's company. They began trying to use the poles to dislodge the ladders while avoiding being hit by the crow archers. I was of little enough help, and I saw Selas curtly gesture for me to come down, but I knew if I stayed on the walls where I was easily visible to my own soldiers it would help them maintain courage in their first truly perilous battle at my side. I shook my head at the old man and he glared back, tilting his chin up. Nefen took time out from his work and shouting of orders to push me behind a merlon, one of the high parts of the wall.
Iceblade Page 22
