Fool! Idiot! Moron!
Fool! Idiot! Moron! The feycoocu's words echoed his own, screamed into his ears as a warhawk's cry.
"So where have you been?" he croaked.
Taking care of things.
Typical that she spoke in riddles. He jerked upright, forced hisfear down and started to run to the pentagram in Alexa's home. He'd never run so fast, but as he skidded over the threshold into the entryway, he felt their Song dim. She was gone. Gone from the house.
Faucon slammed into him from behind. They both rocked before they caught their balance. Panting, Faucon said, "Just heard, the battle is at Prevoy's Pointe."
Big mountain, just over Lladrana's border. Rough country, and far. Far from the Castle and even farther from here.
Bastien jerked his head back toward outside, in the direction of the stables. All his best horses and volarans were here. He grinned at Faucon.
"Have I got a volaran for you."
Grinning back, Faucon said, "Great. Where's Alyeka?"
Bastien took off at a run. Faucon matched him.
"She went with the Marshalls."
Faucon's mouth opened, closed.
"Wise man," Bastien said. "Feycoocu!" he yelled.
The bird circled his head. I am here.
"Go to Alexa!" he shouted.
Not yet. I must keep an eye on you.
Bastien gritted his teeth. That sounded familiar, at least.
The volarans had left their stables, and now shifted around in the corral. As word spread amongst the Chevaliers, they congregated at the stables where the prime volarans waited.
Bastien threw open the gate. "Take your choice! I hear the fighting will be good at Prevoy's Pointe."
Alexa's stable master, Pierre, led Bastien's strongest volaran out of the stables. The stallion had flown in from a wild herd just three months before and had demanded the best. He and Bastien had trained only enough to be able to work as a team. The stallion wore no bridle, only a thin halter, reins and a saddle.
Bastien mounted.
"Wait!" Alexa's little butler puffed up to Bastien, carrying a box painted with Powerful symbols and bound with magic. "My Lord, take this."
It was the box containing his shooting-star atomball.
"You're right. It could come in handy. My thanks." Bastien stowed it in a bag behind him.
The butler wiped his perspiring face with a handkerchief and bowed as far as his large paunch would allow. "Good journeys, My Lord."
Bastien nodded. "A good journey and good fighting. A safe home to you." He settled himself again, and the volaran fidgeted a couple of steps in preparation for taking off.
The feycoocu screamed from the stable eaves. Go to the Castle first, Bastien.
He looked up, jaws clenching. No!
His volaran backed up a couple of steps, reared. Bastien kept his seat.
Ihave told your volaran to fly to the Castle. He will take you there with all speed. The feycoocu clicked her beak and Bastien could have sworn she smiled. You will not arrive too long after the battle started.
That turned his bowels to water. He wanted to be there before the battle started, to support his woman.
You must go to the Castle first. The Song says so. She shot into the sky.
"Urvey, Pascal!" he yelled.
They were there, volaran-back, at his elbow. "Go with Faucon, use distance-magic to reach the battlefield. Protect Alexa."
Both looked too damn young, but their faces white, they nodded, then wheeled their volarans to follow Faucon.
To the Castle, now! commanded Sinafin.
Dread made him stiffen in his saddle. He heard her faint bird cry, looked up to see a small, flapping speck. As he watched, it winked out. Gone. Some otherwhere.
For the first time since he was a child, he trembled.
Bastien tranced for most of the trip to the Castle; otherwise he'd have gone mad with the tension. When he arrived, his stallion set him down in an echoingly empty Temple Ward.
For a moment he just sat and stared. Never in all his life had he seen the Temple Ward deserted. From his earliest memory, it had bustled with life.
Then he wondered what he was supposed to do. "Sinafin?" he whispered. It was safe to use her name, and he was sure the magical being would hear.
Nothing.
He glanced at the sundial on the flat wall of the keep and decided to wait a quarter hour. Dismounting, he walked his stallion to the trough, left him there. Bastien stretched his legs by crossing to the cloister entry near the map room, then paused. He really didn't want to see what was going on. He wanted to be where the Marshalls were preparing for battle.
Testing his Song with Alexa, he found it calm but rising, building energy as she neared the Field.
His volaran's angry neigh made him pivot. He stared at his father on the ground near the flying horse.
Reynardus picked himself up and dusted off his tabard.
A sinking feeling invaded Bastien's gut. He didn't want to do what destiny had prepared for him. Slowly he walked to his father.
They stared at each other for several heartbeats.
"Is this your volaran?" demanded Reynardus.
"He is his own."
A tic appeared next to Reynardus's mouth. "It was always that strangeness that fried my temper."
"Where's your Shield, Uncle Ivrog?" Bastien feared the answer.
Reynardus's lip curled. "Gone. Shield to the Exotique, I believe."
Maybe if he hurried, fate wouldn't overtake him. Bastien jumped onto his stallion and wheeled him toward the east, where the wall was lowest.
"You aren't leaving me here!"
Bastien didn't look back. "Yes, I am."
Before the volaran could take off, the whisper of wings came to their ears, and another flying horse set down in the courtyard without a sound. Except the dull thud of Bastien's heart as it accepted destiny.
The volaran was thin and scraggly with huge, sad eyes. Bastien recognized her as the mare to the late Chevalier Perder, who'd been lost the day Alexa had saved Farentha and Dema.
Time to accept the inevitable. He and his stallion turned, observing the winged horse stepping delicately up to Reynardus, who stood frozen with fear.
"Your volaran is here, Father," Bastien said quietly. It was a time for stillness.
Reynardus opened his mouth. No words emerged. A first in Bastien's experience.
The volaran nudged Reynardus with her head. You know, she whispered. Reynardus looked shocked, as if he'd never heard a volaran. It hadn't happened very often to Bastien, but he'd heard an occasional word, even a phrase.
It's time. She bent her neck.
With a high two-note whistle, Bastien magically saddled her. He took a deep breath in, released it on a sigh. "I'll be your Shield."
Reynardus spun on his heel, his mail clinking. "You!"
"Me." He breathed deeply again. "Me, or no one at all." Glancing at the sundial, he saw fifteen minutes had passed. "I must fly to the Field."
The muscles in his volaran's haunches bunched.
"Wait!" Reynardus shouted and jumped onto the volaran.
The stallion whickered. I will help in the distance-magic.
Bastien's lips felt cold. "Let's go."
A tiny threnody unfurled from Reynardus to touch Bastien's mind. He allowed it in. The connection between them snapped into place.
And Bastien knew the burden his father had carried since his Song Quest. Alexa's and Reynardus's lives were intertwined, and one or both would die this day.
Alexa's heart started pounding as soon as they came out of the last distance-magic spell. She and Ivrog had traded off who kept touch with the volaran and who went into trance. By the time they'd reached Prevoy's Pointe, they'd found the rhythm of their Song together, and the Song they'd share during battle.
She looked down at the field and terror whipped through her—for herself, but more for Lladrana and all the people deep in the interior who had never faced t
he horrors. The common folk would be easy prey. Hideous visions coalesced in her mind.
All along the boundary line for as far as she could see was a snaking line of monsters, prowling. Mostly renders and slayers, but many soul-suckers, and five dreeths. Great clumps of the horrors milled near the three gaps between the fenceposts.
Ivrog landed. Alexa jumped down and staggered to the Marshalls' standard, raised by a huge, old brithenwood tree. Reynardus still hadn't arrived, but all the other Marshalls were there, along with major nobles and their Chevaliers, and some strangers. Alexa stared for a moment at richly robed men and women, thenunderstood they were the Sorcerers and Sorceresses. She counted twenty. They stared back at her.
Thealia stood in front of another animated map, this one of the current battlefield. She nodded to Alexa, but finished with her question to the Sorcerers. "Can you of the Tower hold a forcefield to narrow gaps between the fenceposts so the horrors push through at a rate we can handle them?"
Jaquar looked at his colleagues, garnered nods. "We can, if that's how you wish to use our Power, Swordmarshall Thealia. But it will take six of us at each break to hold such a forcefield. That will leave you with only two of us for offensive battlespells."
Everyone looked at the dreeths.
Thealia grimaced. "That's how it will be, then."
"What are they waiting for?" asked Alexa, pleased when her voice came coolly.
"Apparently, you," Jaquar said. "Look, they're moving, pouring through!"
"Everyone in position!" Thealia ordered, and her words reverberated across the field. She gestured to a pair of battlemares. "For you, Alexa and Ivrog."
"With your permission, Alexa, I would prefer to stay volaran-back. I promise you I can Shield you best from there," Ivrog said.
Alexa mounted the horse, squared her shoulders and put on the helm that Ivrog had handed her. "Sounds good to me." She grinned, more a rictus than a real fighting grin. The adrenaline should dump into her system soon. God, she needed it. Her insides were so watery with fear, she thought they'd slop around.
She should do that old Roman salute and the "we who are about to die, salute you" thing. She shuddered and wiped her hands on a hank of saddle blanket in front of her. Her dreethskin leathers wouldn't dry her hands. She supposed this fear would always hit her.
She gulped. We who are about to die, salute you. She tried to remember what that was in Latin, but couldn't. She'd always been bad at languages.
"Attack!" screamed Thealia.
Alexa pulled her baton from her sheath and set her mount galloping to the nearest breach of the border, and into the fray.
Worldly power always demands a price, and I wanted power, said Reynardus, mind-to-mind with Bastien.
Bastien's link with his father seemed odd...because it was unusually easy. They were more alike than either would have wished. Their father-son Song, suppressed for so long by each, ran strong and clear.
As Reynardus spoke of Power, Bastien caught images from his mind, as if seeing a well-traced history: Reynardus young and in love with a lower-class girl. That shocked Bastien, and his father snorted. Then Reynardus's first Song Quest—where he was shown several futures.
Icould wed the girl and live contentedly on our ancestral holding. Or I could wed another—a woman of great wealth, but of pitiful character—and build my own status. Then I would be a man to reckon with—the Lord Knight of the Marshalls! My name would echo through history. I wanted that, and more.
Bastien said nothing, kept his disapproval to himself. Having been the issue of that cold, passionless marriage, he wanted more. His heart wanted more—intimacy and delight. He'd found that with Alexa—passion and endless fascination.
The price of my Power was a bloodless mating with one who could never be a Marshall, never my Pairling, never my equal. His mouth curled, he slanted a stare at Bastien. And the price was a flawed son.
Bastien's heart lurched. He gripped his reins tight, but kept the pressure from affecting the stallion.
And to fulfill my dream of fame and fortune, the Song required a third payment—death on the battlefield at a relatively young age. This time Reynardus turned his head and his eyes glittered. But the Song is not always right—not always inescapable. Even though it took my volaran and sent me this sad beast ready for death, the Song can be changed by the will of a man.
Keeping his mouth shut and completely averse to talking philosophy with Reynardus, Bastien nodded. Then his father did something so touching that Bastien was stunned.
Reynardus stroked the neck of the volaran, and sang. He sang of life, of fighting for life, of determination. In doing so, he relieved his mount of the brooding sorrow and despair it had carried since its flier perished. The volaran's ears perked up, the tension of its muscles loosed. It held its head high and proudly, with eyes unclouded by grief.
Bastien could barely believe his father had done such a thing. Compassion. The man had a little compassion after all. Or was it simply self-interest? Bastien didn't know. He did know that in the coming battle, as Shield for a man marked for death, Bastien would have to be very, very careful. Though Reynardus would not allow Bastien any other than surface thoughts, he began layering defensive spells to protect them both.
Bastien and Reynardus arrived at Prevoy's Pointe to see death and destruction. Glowing Marshall batons signified the loss of a Pair—the oldest Pair, Albertus and his wife.
Blood and ichor surrounded the bodies of Chevaliers, volarans, and the horrors. Dozens of skirmishes dotted the battlefield. The aura of magic glowed in sparkling rainbows around the breaks between the fenceposts.
The thickest fighting centered on a small woman glowing green and blue and on horseback. Bastien's heart jumped to his throat.
I Shield for you, but we go there! Bastien pointed. Where my Pair mate is.
Reynardus grinned, screamed a war cry and dove. Caught up in his own fury, Bastien followed, accepting the rush of emotions from his father to himself, handling them, adding wild magic from himself and his mount. Linking to Ivrog, and from Ivrog to Alexa, and through Reynardus and Alexa to the Marshalls. He saw a golden net among them all. With luck, the net could close around the horrors and crush them.
Alexa knew when Bastien arrived. That he Shielded Reynardus. A bubble of wonder passed through her brain, but her hands concentrated on killing a slayer. Ducking spines. Shooting green baton magic straight to the heart.
Then Reynardus was next to her, swiping his baton around in a wide swath, killing several monsters with one blow.
"Dreeeeths!" someone screamed.
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A dreeth materialized amidst them, its long, curved, pointed beak plunging toward Reynardus's heart.
Alexa was there, in front of him. How, she didn't know. Shrieking her own fear.
Bastien and Ivrog took the blow for her. The Shields held.
Her baton was in her hand, flaming green.
Reynardus's flamed white. He grabbed hers from her hand, yelled at the pain. He and his volaran shoved her aside.
She reeled.
They flung themselves in, in. Close to the thing's bulbous underbelly. Reynardus shoved both batons into its most vulnerable point. He shouted a chant and the thing exploded.
The force of it knocked Alexa to the ground. Dreeth chunks flew.
Reynardus laughed and tossed her baton to her. She caught it and gasped at his energy. Flung his magic back at him to absorb.
He laughed again and with a huge gesture and wave of his baton, Reynardus vaporized the rest of the dreeth.
He was still laughing when another dreeth appeared behind him and pierced his magical Shield, spearing his body with its beak, plunging through him and down into his volaran.
Reynardus and the flying horse gave one shudder and died.
Agony ripped through them all. All Marshalls. Bastien and Ivrog and Luthan screamed, their minds shocked at their loss, her connection to them gone.
Bastien was nearly unconscious
, his Shield around his father having been brutally rent.
The new dreeth flicked its beak and Reynardus's body flew, arcing droplets of deep red blood from the back and between its legs. The volaran collapsed as it lay, blood pooling under it.
The horror made Alexa's breath catch. The Marshalls' and Luthan's and Ivrog's and Bastien's grief and anger wrenched open her own for Sophie. Suddenly the dreeth was every senseless death, every stupid mistake that claimed a life, every evil that took life and laughed. All evil.
Screaming, she ran toward the dreeth, jumped over the body of the volaran, ducked under the wicked clawed wings, and thrust her baton into the dreeth. The jade dug deep. She threw herself forward and stuck her arms up to the elbows into the dreeth.
It died.
She was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks as her heart and mind and soul wept for Sophie. And Reynardus.
The dreeth's body toppled forward.
Not again!
But the massed magic of the Marshalls plucked her away. Was too much. The Power spun her across the Field, onto the ground and under another dreeth's beak and claws. Her help gone, she stared at her own death in fascination.
Sinafin screamed and dived.
Bastien's atomball bulleted straight through the dreeth, leaving a hole. The shooting-star shattered.
That dreeth rocked forward, toppling.
Alexa rolled until she stopped against a rocky outcropping littered with debris. The dreeth thunked behind her, causing the earth to vibrate. Grabbing the edge of a boulder, she used it to stagger to her feet.
A render shrieked and swiped. His claws skimmed her back and fiery pain sizzled. She whipped around and only one claw connected, sliced her cheek. The pain cleared her brain. She would not die. She would fight and win!
She lunged forward, her flaming baton-point took the render in the heart. She jerked her stick back and it came with a horrid sucking noise, echoed by a soul-sucker lashing a tentacle around her. Suckers fastened on her back, along the render wounds, and blood drained from her to it, along with her energy. Another limb pulled her close, trapping her arm so she couldn't use her baton.
Desperately, she reached for a weapon, any weapon. A long branch of brithenwood stuck out from the rocks. In that instant she knew.
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