by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The back of Allara’s neck crinkled. Something was wrong.
After a few days of fighting off stark boredom along with the last of her concussion, she and Quinnon had left Glen Arden for Ballion. According to the captain of the ship that had brought them across Lake Thyra, her father’s headquarters was some six leagues deep into the Ballion hills. After unloading their horses, Quinnon had chosen a back road that wouldn’t be clogged with artillery and troops.
Now, nearly two hours later, she reined up near a fork in the road and listened. The forest sheltered her body from the wind and the rain, but its roar in the treetops filled her ears. And yet something out of the ordinary had penetrated her senses.
She slid her estoc from its scabbard. “Quinnon—”
From the trees on her left, the blurred outline of a rider flashed. She jerked around, and the translucent white of a Cherazim face filled her vision. Instinctively, she lashed out at him.
“Wait. I come only to talk.” The Cherazim’s blade blocked hers, and even without the weight of attack behind it, his strength so far outmatched hers as to topple her balance.
She kicked free of her stirrup, dropped to the ground, and rolled.
“Hold there!” Quinnon galloped past her.
She staggered to her feet and clawed at her pistol.
Without stopping to ask questions, Quinnon swung his sword.
The Cherazim smashed his broadsword into Quinnon’s and sent the smaller blade hurtling into the trees. “I’ve not come to fight you.” He pulled back both his sword and free hand.
Allara started to lower the pistol.
A breath of wind blew his tawny hair out of his face. It was the Tarn. Orias.
“You.” She twitched the pistol back up to point at his head.
The corner of his mouth curled. “Going to pull the trigger this time, princess?”
Her breath burned her windpipe. “If the cartridge hadn’t jammed when I pulled it that day in the Glockamon Moors, you’d already be dead, you reeking traitor.”
“I’m a traitor no longer.” His expression was as impenetrable as ever. “I’ve left Mactalde.”
One step at a time, with the straitquin’s sights hovering over his face, she approached. “I’d be a fool to believe that.”
“You’d be a fool not to.” He spared another glance away from Quinnon. “I need to speak with Redston. There are things I must tell him. Things that could change the balance of the war.”
“Aye, I just bet you do,” Quinnon snarled.
Allara stopped beside Quinnon’s horse. “You’ll never get within pistol shot of him. You’ve already done more than your share of damage.”
“That’s a decision he should make for himself.” The arm holding the sword flexed. His voice sounded strained.
“He won’t get the chance because you’ll be dead.”
“You shoot me, and you can be assured you’ll have just lost the war for Lael.”
She braced both hands around the pistol and lowered it to point at his sternum. At this range, the shot would tear his chest into nothing. “Why should I trust you? You’ve betrayed your country, your people, your God—in the worst possible way.”
“You should trust me because you’re both still alive.” He glanced at Quinnon. “I could kill you both yet, if you’d so much rather.”
Her brain raced. He would do it. He would do it in a second, and not even feel shame for it.
She shook her head. “I’m not taking you to the Gifted.”
“Then carry him a message. Let him make his own choices.”
Quinnon’s laugh rasped. “You blues lie as well as you fight. But we’ve no reason to believe anything you say.”
“That’s up to the Gifted. And that’s all I have to say.” Orias wheeled his horse. “Dougal!”
Before Quinnon could pursue, a big black Koraudian lion leapt out of the trees to cut him off. Quinnon drew his chewser to shoot it.
Allara took a quick step forward. “Wait—not yet.”
Two horse’s lengths down the road, Orias looked back at her. “I’ll wait out the day at Mere Shoal. Tell him to come alone.”
“Do you think we would risk his life so foolishly?”
“One man, then.” His nodded to Quinnon. “Him. But no more. Dougal, eider fon!” He reined around and spurred his horse into a gallop.
Allara’s pistol fell to her side. Quinnon raised his to sight the Cherazim’s back, but he didn’t fire.
She emptied her lungs. “We could have had him.”
“Could be he’s telling the truth.”
“Is the truth worth the risk?”
“Maybe.” He turned to face her. “I’ve been doing some wondering about all this. What if we’re wrong about Redston being able to fix what he did? Even if he kills Mactalde?”
She knit her forehead. “What are you saying?”
“All I’m saying is . . . what if Redston can’t fix it? What happens to the imbalance then?”
“I don’t know.” The heat of her dry throat squeezed her words. “The worlds might tear apart, I suppose.”
“Destroyed?”
“I don’t know. The God of all help us.” She shook her head. She couldn’t afford to believe what he was saying. Where there was hope, there was purpose. Where there was purpose, she could yet survive. “Either way, we cannot risk Redston’s life needlessly.”
Quinnon stared down the trail where Orias had disappeared. He pursed his lips. “It’s Redston’s life to risk, if he chooses. The Tarn’s right about that.”
_________
Artillery thundered on, echoed by thunder and hoofbeats as Chris and Tireus returned to the command post. After Chris’s arrival three days ago, Tireus had dragged him to the front lines for the sake of public relations, but they weren’t on good terms at the moment. Mactalde’s refusal to recognize anyone but Chris as the leader of Lael had found its way to Tireus’s ears, and Tireus wasn’t happy about it.
They reined up in front of Tireus’s big tent, and adjutants and grooms swarmed their horses.
Tireus waved Chris off. “You can return to your quarters now.” Beneath his beard, his face was grimed and tired.
“Yes, sir.” He tamped his own frustration. He had come up here to Ballion to do something, but so far Tireus was keeping him chained like a lap dog. He couldn’t really say he blamed him, especially in light of Harrison’s grab for power the last time around. But it didn’t make the situation any more enjoyable.
Behind him, standing on his horse’s rump, Pitch fidgeted. “I wish the sun would shine again.”
“Yeah.” He reined away, toward the smaller tent he was sharing with his father. Worick had stopped off at the hospital tent to help carry stretchers.
“Look.” Pitch pointed over Chris’s shoulder. “There’s the Searcher.”
At the far end of the camp, two horses paused to let their riders speak with a sentry, then trotted ahead.
Chris breathed out. This was the last place he wanted Allara to be for any length of time. This was no pretend battle. Men were dying at staggering rates on the front lines. The hospitals were teeming, and the boats back to Thyra Junction were packed with casualties. Mactalde’s assault had eased up a bit in the last few days, but this was only a brief respite, and they all knew it.
He turned back to Tireus. “My lord.” When he caught Tireus’s eye, he nodded toward Allara’s approach.
The king urged his horse past his crowd of attendants, and Chris followed to meet Allara and Quinnon in the middle of the camp. Everyone but Quinnon dismounted.
Tireus took hold of Allara’s shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
Dark circles still ringed her eyes, but the cut on her forehead had almost healed and she stood without wavering.
She glanced at Chris. “We spoke with Orias Tarn.”
Chris looked at Pitch. “He’s here? On our side of the lines?”
Pitch tugged at one of his
cuffs and pulled the too-long sleeve over his hand. He stared at Allara, his lip between his teeth.
Tireus frowned. “I thought he was with Mactalde’s men.”
“He was,” Chris said. “We saw him when we went after Eroll.”
Allara plucked at a brass button on her coat. “He wants to speak with you.”
“Why?” The last time Chris had seen him, Orias had made it very clear he had nothing more to say.
“He claims he’s deserted Mactalde and has information that will dramatically affect the battle.”
Chris breathed out a laugh. “Yeah, I bet.”
Pitch yanked on Chris’s fingers. “I told you! He needs to talk to you.”
Allara’s lips parted. “You’re his Riever? He sent you here to bait his trap—”
“No.” Pitch rattled his head back and forth. “I told Chris already. Orias needs help. He doesn’t want to be with Mactalde.”
Tireus huffed. “This is far too obvious a ploy.”
Quinnon shifted his weight, and his saddle creaked. “The Tarn says he can tell you about Mactalde’s defenses. Says you’ll only get one chance to win the battle, and you won’t know what it is unless he tells you.” His voice remained flat. “He could be lying.”
“Please, please.” Pitch tilted his head back to Chris. “He’s in trouble. If you help him, he’ll help you. And I’ll help you too. You can take me with you. Orias won’t hurt anyone who comes with me.”
“He wants you to go alone.” Allara stared at Chris. “It’s a trap. He wants to kill you. It will be Harrison Garnett all over again.”
“That was different,” Chris said. “Harrison Garnett was a traitor.” But even as he said it, he had to admit it had an ironic ring. After all, in resurrecting Mactalde he had only finished what Harrison started.
Quinnon dismounted and faced Chris. “The only way to find out is to go. Are you willing to live with the results if he’s telling the truth and you stay here?”
Quinnon had been challenging him almost from the moment they’d met. But this was something new. This was more than merely bullying or butting heads. Quinnon was out to prove something. And, when it came right down to it, so was Chris.
“I’ll go.” One way or another, he and Orias had things to settle.
Quinnon gave him a nod. “I’ll ride along with you. The blue allowed that much.”
“I’ll go too. I have to go with you.” Pitch let go of Chris’s hand and climbed up the stirrup into the saddle.
Tireus’s mouth worked. “I’ll need to send a squad with you.” He didn’t have a squad to spare, and his tone made his irritation clear. But at least he wasn’t trying to dissuade Chris.
Quinnon shook his head. “The Tarn’ll be gone in a whisper if he smells one man more than me on the trail.”
Allara rubbed her crooked finger. “I knew you’d want to go.” Tendrils of hair had fallen from her chignon, and the wind plastered them against her face. “But whatever information he may have isn’t worth your life.”
Chris spread his hands. “So I’ll be careful.”
The edge of her mouth lifted the tiniest bit. “I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I won’t.”
“Now we’re even, because I don’t believe that either.” He let his smile fade.
His horse stood fast while he mounted, and Pitch ducked as he swung his leg over.
He adjusted his reins and looked down at Tireus. “Maybe I’ll have a new plan for you when I come back.”
Tireus pursed his lips and didn’t say the obvious: That he might not come back.
__________
Orias heard the rambling of nervous words long before Chris and Quinnon rode into the canyon entrance at Mere Shoal. He leaned back against the blue-gray rock that overhung the trail, and his baldric grated between the stone and his shoulder. If his attack went according to plan, he would have no need to draw it. He would fall upon Chris from the rocks above and use his dirk and axe. The death would be quick. Orias would give Chris—and himself—that much.
The hoofbeats neared, perhaps only a dozen paces from his rock. His every muscle tensed. Beneath his skin, nerve ends tingled like white sparks.
The words below resolved into familiar voice: “Don’t you think we should have met him by now? Orias is always on time.”
Pitch had he escaped Mactalde? His abdomen clenched.
“He always keeps his word,” Pitch continued.
“Yeah, I know.” Chris’s voice gave a wry twist.
“But maybe it would be a good idea for me to go ahead and find him. I mean, maybe I should talk to him first.”
“Why? You afraid he’s going to change his mind and take a stab at me instead of spilling Mactalde’s secrets?”
“No, not exactly . . .”
“Could it be he doesn’t want this help you’ve been begging me for all week?”
“He does want it. He maybe just doesn’t know it.”
“He doesn’t know he needs help?” The horses stopped just shy of Orias’s rock. “Before you go running off to find Orias, maybe you better tell me what’s going on.”
Orias eased around the corner and peered into the narrow gorge.
At the far end, Captain Quinnon reined to a stop. The Searcher’s bodyguard leaned against his saddlebow, watching. If he caught sight of Orias waiting in the rocks, he didn’t so much as flinch in recognition.
Orias gripped his weapons. With Pitch behind Chris’s saddle, he couldn’t risk attempting the immediate death he’d hoped for. He’d have to knock Chris out of the saddle and take him on the ground. It was not how he would have chosen to end a Gifted’s life.
Chris’s saddle creaked, and the scrape of a blade leaving its sheath whispered through the misting rain.
“Tell me the truth,” he said. “What do you know about this that I don’t?”
Orias screamed and launched himself into the air. The horse shied hard, and Chris shot his sword up in front of his face. Orias caught the blade against his dirk. His weight smashed into Chris and tore him from the saddle. They crashed into the ground, and Orias rolled away and scrambled to his feet.
“Orias!” Pitch shouted.
His vision tunneled around Chris. The Gifted had landed in the rocks at the water’s edge, and the leather of his coat had ripped down the side. A dark glare of blood showed through the tear.
Chris scrambled to his feet and faced Orias. “So it was all a setup. You made Pitch lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie!” Pitch said. “He does need help! You do need help. Tell him, Orias.”
Orias tucked the dirk and the axe away in his belt and drew his sword from his back. The bank here was formed of flat black stones, pocked with sinkholes and backed by the canyon’s mossy walls. Footing would be at a premium.
He charged and hammered his blade against Chris’s. The clangor rebounded off the rocks and filled their private arena with the knell of war.
In the month since his crossing, Chris had obviously learned a thing or two. He had tapped into the memories of his body, and he fought with the skill, if not the experience, of a practiced Guardsman. What he lacked in tactics, he supplemented with aggression.
Orias slowed just a bit. The Searcher was right. He had already turned his back on his God, his duty, and his people. He had condemned his soul and had nothing left to lose except the very thing for which he had sold it. And that he could not lose. Even at the price of a Gifted, he could not lose it.
And yet his heart cried out in him. How many times before had he shed blood as he rejoiced in the rush of the battle? Today, he cringed from it. He could not risk letting the Gifted escape, but he had no desire to kill him.
He drew back. “I came here today with every intention of giving you a death so quick you would never know it happened. But fate is much better than I at deciding who should live and who should die.” He brought his sword up in front of his face. “So let it be a contest.
”
Chris held his ground. He was wise enough, at least, not to fling himself into the face of a stronger opponent. “You lied to me from the start. From the moment you figured out who I was, you took advantage of my ignorance at every turn.”
“I promised you that if Mactalde returned to Lael, you would leave our land. And now I’m giving you that opportunity.” Orias spun and hurled his weight into the blow.
“That’s not what I want anymore.” Chris gave way, one step then two, and then he held. He strained against Orias’s strength. Rain and sweat beaded his face. “I’m staying.”
“Why should you change your mind now?” Hard breaths growled through Orias’s throat. His own sweat burned his face. “You wanted the dreams to stop. You wanted to go back to your safe, quiet life in the other world. Back to the serenity of ignorance, back where you neither knew nor believed about this world of ours. And now I’m sending you back.”
Chris retreated two steps more. He gripped his sword with both hands. His body coiled around its center of energy, waiting to spring. “I can’t go back to the way things were, even if I wanted to. And I don’t, not anymore.” He shot one glance down the gorge to where Quinnon sat his horse.
The bodyguard made no move. Perhaps he too wanted proof this Gifted was worth believing in. For the last few minutes of his life, Chris Redston would be on his own.
Orias lunged. This must end, one way or the other. It must end so completely it would be as if it had never begun.
Chris met him halfway, and the blades clashed.
Orias never looked away from the Gifted’s face. He fought effortlessly, intuitively, but he never sank into the mindless furor of the Cherazii. He would fight on equal terms with the Gifted, and he would pray that in the end, perhaps Mactalde might be thwarted after all.
They battled back into the cold rush of water, and Orias slowed his attack until Chris secured his footing. When the Gifted righted himself, his gaze at last left the slash and thrust of the swordplay and found Orias’s eyes. He threw his weight forward, attacking, no longer defending. Orias’s berserking fire ignited, and the wearied pull on his muscles disappeared. He responded to the attack.
They fought at a stalemate, calf-deep in the water. Chris’s blade slipped, and Orias moved without conscious thought. He twisted his blade beneath Chris’s and flipped the sword from the Gifted’s hands. It splashed to the bottom of the lake.
Never in his life had he wanted less to kill someone. His innards turned cold, and he raised the blade to the hollow of Chris’s throat. “I am sorry.”
Chris breathed out.
Pitch darted between them. “Don’t you dare!” He leapt to grab Chris’s belt and hoisted himself up. One foot propped against Chris’s leg, he jabbed his stiletto at Orias. “Let him go—he’s mine! I found him, he’s mine, and you have no right to hurt him!”
“Get down,” Orias said. “This has to be.”
“If you hurt him, I’ll kill you!”
Orias stared into Pitch’s round eyes. Pitch—who loved Orias more than anything and had idolized him from the time Orias had first taken him and Raz under his protection—now looked up at him with a gaze backed by a metal sheet.
“Stop,” Pitch said. “You have to stop.”
“I cannot.” Orias tightened his grip on his hilt. “I’ve gone too far.”
Chris’s chest rose. His hands hung empty at his sides. “What happened was my fault. I’m to blame, not you.”
Orias shook his head. “You said it yourself. I lied to you. You’re to blame for that?”
“I made my own choices. I heard what I wanted to hear. In my heart and my gut, I knew Mactalde was dangerous. I knew it from the very moment I saw him. I shouldn’t have brought him across, and I knew it when I did it.” Chris’s shoulders drew back. “I made my choice. I brought Mactalde across, not you. I may have done what you wanted, but in the end I’m the one who’s responsible.”
The wind rippled the water into ledges against Orias’s legs, and the bones in his feet felt hollow with the cold.
On the bank, Quinnon trotted up to wait alongside Chris’s mount.
Chris rested a hand on Pitch’s back. He studied Orias’s face. “I don’t know why you’ve chosen to throw in with Mactalde. But if you’re doing it out of some sense of guilt, you’re digging a hole you’re never going to reach the bottom of.”
The thunder of his heart filled his head. “I finish what I start.” He ground out the words.
Chris eased Pitch down to stand on his own feet. Orias’s blade followed his movement.
“You don’t want to kill me,” Chris said, “anymore than you wanted to bring Mactalde back. You made a mistake in the beginning. So did I. But we both get to choose where those mistakes end.” He stepped back from the point of the sword. “Where does yours end?”
Orias’s sword sank. He watched Chris turn to fetch his sword, then wade to the bank. It wasn’t too late. He could still attack. He could cut Chris down and return to Mactalde to vouchsafe one more day of safety for his people.
Chris wiped his sword dry on the lining of his coat and sheathed it at his back. He accepted his reins from Quinnon. “Thanks for all the help.”
“You don’t need my help. You’re the Gifted.” The bodyguard’s voice held a solid note of respect. He glanced at Orias, and then the horses turned and clattered away.
Orias stood in the water and listened until the hoofbeats faded. Then he looked down to where Pitch stood, shivering.
The Riever put away his stiletto. “I didn’t want to kill you, you know.”
“I know.” What Pitch didn’t understand was that, given a choice, he would have chosen death.
