by J M D Reid
*
Ōbhin gained his feet, his right wrist screaming from the fall, his ribs creaking. The exhilaration of battle dulled the throb across his ribs, but every moment built the pain. He had to end this. Something had happened to Ust’s shield. He retreated.
Ōbhin attacked.
He crossed the spaces, boots slapping on concrete, and swiped a hard blow at Ust’s upper shoulder. Fingers rushed in from the left, thrusting the backsword before him. Purple popped into existence. The shield returned. His sword bounced off it.
Fingers’s backsword buried into Ust’s hip. The monstrous man snarled in pain. Fingers already was moving, retreating before the blurring blow caught him. Missing Fingers, the fist slammed into the outer wall, smashing through the plaster coating and cracking the heavy marble block. Blood streamed down Ust’s hip now, but the wound healed, the topaz glowing between his thighs.
There had to be a way to beat this bastard. Ōbhin wasn’t about to let these people down. Jilly sobbed over Smiles, clutching her husband. He couldn’t have survived that impact. Avena scrambled up to her feet, blood spilling down her pale face. Miguil and the gardeners lurked back, their faces pale in fright while Pharon clutched a shoulder, his face a mass of pain.
Avena caught Ōbhin’s eyes. He could see an urgency in them. She had thought of something. Trusting her, Ōbhin slashed at Ust. They had to end this. They were lucky to still be standing. His legs were turning to lead. Fatigue ate at him.
He would make a mistake and end up like Smiles soon.
*
If I can disable that topaz . . . rattled through Avena’s head as Ōbhin made his next attack. His blow looked slower, not as skilled. He used his off-hand. They were losing. This had to work. She had to do this.
She darted two paces, holding her binder low as she rushed at the naked, foul man. Muscles rippled along his back as he responded to Ōbhin’s attack. She swung up between his legs with her metal binder, the rod an effective baton.
It had weight.
She slammed it between his legs, striking his dangling testicles and driving them up to where the topaz glowed. On impact, she felt something hard beneath the skin cracking against her binder. The purple energy shot out, wrapping about his legs as he howled in agony.
A hot, vicious thrill shot through her as he staggered, struggling to stay upright with his legs bound. He broke the binding with his shield and blurred around to face her. His face twisted in monstrous fury as he stared at her. She gloated at the ruin she’d left of his privates, skin ruptured, blood spilling out.
No topaz glowed. She’d disrupted it.
She almost didn’t see him draw back his fist as he howled his bestial rage. Death hurtled down at her. She shifted her weight, struggling to move, to throw herself out of the way. She took the first step.
It wasn’t enough.
A dark shape struck her from the right. She gasped, pushed out of the way of the powerful blow. It struck the man who’d knocked her aside. She twisted in the air as she fell, turned by the attack. She caught a glimpse of Pharon streaking from her. His back slammed into the shattered doorway, bent farther than it should.
The crack of his spine struck her ears as she hit the ground.
“Pharon!” Miguil shouted in horror as the butler hit the ground on his side, arm extended, face frozen in the final moments of pain.
Tears stung her eyes as Ust turned to follow her. He snorted like a bull. His glowing diamond eyes flared in intensity. Their focused beam fell on her, blinding her. She kicked, struggling to stand as he advanced on her.
“Black-stained quim!” he bellowed and raised his fist to slam it down on her.
*
His shield is down, flashed through Ōbhin’s mind.
As Pharon crashed into the door frame and died, Ōbhin had a moment of clear thought. Ust had to dodge his attack after breaking free of the last binding. His shield and the binding were the same energy. Two identical musical notes that had canceled each other out.
It seemed there was a fraction of time where Ust couldn’t create another shield after that. A plan forming, Ōbhin swung the sloppiest, hardest blow he could at Ust’s arm cocking back to slam his fist down on Avena as she struggled to gain her feet.
The blade hummed. The buzzing rushed down at that arm. Ust twisted around in a blur. Amethyst light flared from his palms. A shield flared moments before his sword landed. Ōbhin struck the energy. Fury fueled Ōbhin’s stroke. He hated that the barrier lay between him and Ust.
“You Black-cursed monster!” howled Ōbhin, pressing on his sword. He strained to slice through the shield.
“It’s going to be so much fun as you watch her howl on my cock,” Ust said. “I almost lost my temper and killed her early.” He snorted like a bull, his diamond eyes flaring high. “But where’s the fun in that? You have to watch from on your belly. Helpless!”
Ōbhin spat in Ust’s face. “I won’t cower on the earth like you did.”
Avena stood, her face a mask of blood from her forehead wound.
“I won’t be a pathetic, whining child blubbering on the ground like you,” Ōbhin snarled.
Fury built in Ust’s expression. His eyes were almost blinding, like staring into the sun. Ōbhin didn’t look away. He pressed his sword harder into the shield. Avena lunged forward, thrusting her binding rod, but not at Ust’s back.
“You pissed yourself like a whipped dog,” Ōbhin growled. “It doesn’t matter how strong you’ve made yourself; you’ll always be that whining bitch cowering on the ground beneath me.”
Ust bellowed in rage and drew back his left fist to break Ōbhin’s head open.
Avena’s binder thrust past Ust and then swung sideways at him. It slammed into the shield. Ōbhin put his weight into his blade, the muscles in his left arm bulging. The shield sputtered and popped out of existence.
Ōbhin’s blade snapped forward. It sliced through Ust’s arm above the elbow.
The bandit leader’s next attack froze. His severed arm hit the floor with a thud. He stared down at it with a stupefied expression on his face. Then his left hand darted down and grabbed his severed limb. He jammed it against the spurting stump like he expected it to heal.
But Avena had shattered his topaz.
Ōbhin’s sword flicked, a sideways swipe. Ust looked up and fear crossed his expression before the resonance blade passed clean through his neck in a single swipe. Ust’s body remained standing for a heartbeat and then collapsed into a bleeding heap. The head spilled off and rolled towards where Fingers crouched, ready to strike.
For a moment, the only sound was Miguil’s sobs over Pharon’s body, then Ust’s head buzzed. Ōbhin winced, the noise driving rusty nails into his ears. Something beneath the skin of Ust’s head vibrated.
Fingers backed away from it, drawing a prism in the air before him. He retreated into the wall as the buzzing hit a certain tone. And then, to Ōbhin’s shuddering horror, the vibrating sound oscillated in pitch to form words.
“The corpse beetle might have scurried into the cracks tonight, but you have to poke out your head eventually.” Though distorted, the tone held Dje’awsa’s cold superiority. “I see such potential in you, Ōbhin. The things I can do with—”
Ōbhin’s resonance blade sliced Ust’s head in half, severing through the vibrating plates. As his skull fell apart, the gray matter of his brain spilling, thin plates of obsidian were revealed, inserted beneath the skin.
“Elohm’s Colours, we did it,” croaked Smiles.
Chapter Thirty
Ōbhin stared in shock to see Smiles alive and standing. Jilly clung to her husband, pressed into his coat of chainmail. Furrows of tears ran down her face, joy on her lips. Smiles cupped her chin and kissed his wife with tenderness.
“I thought you were dead,” Ōbhin blurted out. The impact into the wall had held such a finality to it.
Jilly broke the kiss and nodded. “I thought so, too.” She stepped back, staring at her husb
and. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Smiles said. “Just got a knock on the back of my head. ‘Spect I’ll have a headache for ‘while, but I’m fine. Nothin’ seems broken.”
“Lucky,” groaned Ōbhin. He turned off his resonance sword and sagged beneath his armor’s weight.
“Ōbhin!” Avena gasped and grabbed his arm as he sank down to his knees. Blood still spilled down her face from the gash in her scalp.
“Just my ribs,” he groaned. “And wrist.” The pain grew with each moment as the battle thrill faded. He panted, struggling to find the energy to stand again. He cradled his right hand to his chest then winced when Avena took it. She probed at his wrist above the glove’s cuff.
“You’re swelling,” she said.
“Sprain,” he grunted. “You should look at your head.”
She frowned and then touched her forehead. She gasped when it came away wet with blood. “How bad is it?”
“You’ll have a scar,” he said. “But it’s at the hairline.”
The door to Dualayn’s lab opened, and the man stepped out in a white apron, smeared in blood, over his waistcoat. He had been working on his two patients since they’d returned. Ōbhin wondered if he even knew of the fighting.
“I see the fracas is over,” Dualayn said. “Who’s the worst wounded?”
“Bran,” Ōbhin said without hesitation. From above, Bran’s mother gasped. She broke from the other women and rushed down the stairs, her motherly face a mask of pale fear. Joayne reached him, eyes beseeching. “Out on the lawn,” he told her. “Follow Dajouth’s screaming. He broke his leg.”
“Right,” said Dualayn. “Come with me, Madam Joayne, and let’s attend to your son.”
“Cerdyn might be alive, too,” Ōbhin grunted. “Aduan’s dead.”
Smiles’s face fell. His wife hugged him tight, her face pressing into his mailed chest. Ōbhin frowned as he studied his friend, his unease sinking into his stomach.
Why aren’t you hurt? He remembered that flash of white flesh rippling across Smiles’s head. Was it a trick of his mind? He’d been dazed at the time. Ust hit you in the head, right? And if not, why aren’t your ribs broken from that second blow?
*
Avena fiddled with the knot of her bandage wrapped around her forehead with an absent hand. Through the fog, the golden light of dawn appeared, illuminating the lawn. Exhaustion pressed down on her, her back bowing beneath the weight, her eyes struggling to stay open.
When she closed them, she saw Ust naked and hard coming for her, then Pharon slamming into the door frame. She heard Dje’awsa’s voice promising Ōbhin he couldn’t hide in there forever. She swallowed and found her eyes falling on the dead.
They were covered by blankets and lying on the lawn. Pharon and Aduan were side by side. Nearby lay the bandits who’d been killed: Hook, Stone, Naston, Janis, and Laynet. The two that were bound, Creg and Anbrian, had gotten away. Handsome Baill had never even shown up.
Only Ust was missing. He was in Dualayn’s lab. Later, after all the sick were tended, Dualayn wanted to understand what had been done to the bandit leader. Avena shuddered. It was dark knowledge, beyond jewelchines into a realm of the impossible.
Into sorcery.
He spoke through those obsidian plates. She formed the prism before her.
She shook her head then remembered why she’d come out here. Smiles stood to watch over the dead. She called to him and he looked up. He had a somber expression on his face as he moved away from his friend, Aduan.
“Yes?” he asked. He still wore his chainmail, perhaps in case Dje’awsa sent his animated corpses.
“I need to examine your head,” she said. “You took a nasty blow.”
“I’m fine,” he said and rapped knuckles against the side of his head. “See? Solid as a rock.”
“Maybe your brain is, but I need to look at your head. You’re the last one.” Bran and Cerdyn were stabilized. Both would live long enough for the topaz healers to recharge. Dajouth’s legs were set, Ōbhin’s broken ribs bound, and her forehead bandaged. “Kneel.”
“Fine, fine,” Smiles said. “Jilly put you up to this?”
“Of course,” she said. “Plus, I’m your friend. It turns out I want to make sure your head’s intact, too.”
She could see that hard impact Smiles had taken when he’d hit the wall in her mind and the smear of blood left behind. He should not have woken up so easily. A queasy writhe rippled across her stomach as she remembered how his skin had appeared to go white and featureless, smooth like sculptor’s clay.
She ran her fingers through his fine, light brown hair. She felt around his scalp, searching for any hidden wounds or sticky blood. Her brow furrowed.
“What?” he asked. “Did you find somethin’?”
“No,” she said. “Not even a knot. You didn’t wince once.”
“Told you, my head is as hard as a rock. It’s like what I told my ma when she would catch me playin’ in the barn rafters. ‘Ma, my head’s too hard to break, you got nothin’ to worry about.’ ‘Course, it turned out my legs weren’t quite as strong. Snapped my left clean in half. But my head was fine.”
A giggle burst from her mouth, her exhausted mind surrendering to it. She pushed his head back. “Well, it appears true. I could have sworn you cracked your head open. And your ribs? He hit your chest hard.”
“A little bruised.” Smiles shrugged. “Things get confusin’ in battle. Memories get hazy. Unreliable. You can’t really trust what you saw.”
“So Ust’s skull didn’t talk to us?”
Smiles shuddered, a look of horror rippling across his face. “What was that thing we fought? That weren’t no man.”
“Black sorcery,” she said.
“Well, I’m gonna relieve Fingers at the main gate,” he said. “Don’t know how he got through it without gettin’ punched.”
“Not stupid enough to let Ust land one,” suggested Avena.
Smiles grinned at her and winked. He swaggered off, his chainmail clinking. She sighed, struggling to banish that strange sight of his face changing. It was unnatural. Impossible. It had to be the fear during the battle distorting her senses.
His head still hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
She turned and was about to head inside when she noticed Miguil kneeling over Pharon’s body. The groom had pulled back the blanket, exposing the older man’s face. A hopeless look filled Miguil’s features. He caressed Pharon’s cheek with a gentle touch.
Welling compassion rose through her, a spring of freshwater carving through earth and rock to burst forth. She rushed to him and fell to her knees, the dew on the grass soaking through her trousers. The sun shone with golden yellow, cutting through the thick fog to warm her face. She threw her arms around him.
“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered, pulling him tight to her. “I truly am. He saved me. He was a good man.”
His arms slid around her. He held her with a fierceness he’d never displayed when they were promised. He let out a ragged sob, his face pressed into her shoulder. She closed her eyes as she rocked him. She understood that pain. She’d had her heart ripped away when Dualayn had announced Chames’s death.
“I know how much it hurts,” she whispered. “I truly do. I know this won’t help, I know these words will seem like glass jewels, but it gets better. Bit by bit, the pain retreats. It’s never gone, not so long as you hold him in your heart.”
He squeezed her one more time. “Thank you.”
She smiled.
“And you say you don’t know how to love anyone.”
She froze at his words. Her entire body shuddered. “What?”
“If you couldn’t love, you wouldn’t care. You wouldn’t want to take away my pain.”
“But I don’t love you,” she said, pulling back from his embrace. The tears burned her eyes while the emptiness yawned in her, threatening to swallow her again.
“Not as your lover,” he said, his
hand sliding up to stroke her shoulder. “But as your friend. You are the most compassionate woman I’ve met. Whatever this emptiness is inside of you, it’s not a lack of love.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He drew in a ragged breath. “Maybe it’s guilt.” He looked down at Pharon. “If I wasn’t a coward, I could have saved him.”
“But you were there. You were fighting with us.”
He snorted. “I stood there pissing myself, too scared to fight. I couldn’t move. The moment the door burst open, shock seized every muscle in my body.”
“You have to learn to deal with surprise,” she said. “You have to train your body to think for you.”
“Maybe,” he said and then stood, breaking from her embrace. “I don’t know what you have to feel guilty for, Avena, but at least you tried.”
“Miguil!” she gasped as he staggered off towards the stables. He vanished into a stubborn haze of mist.
Avena glanced down at Pharon. Guilt rippled through her. He’d died in her place. Had he known that he would perish to save her? She stroked Pharon’s face. He looked asleep, the normal fussy expression melted away.
He’d thrown himself into danger the way a hero would in a story.
“Thank you for saving me,” she whispered, the tears spilling down her cheeks.
He wasn’t the only one who’d saved her life. In a way, Evane had. If their mother had picked Avena first . . . The emptiness swam. Was it guilt and grief? Was it the missing half of her soul wrenched away when her twin sister died?
She hugged herself and cried over the dead.
*
The sight of Avena crying over Pharon’s body struck Ōbhin.
He’d come outside to check on Fingers and Smiles. Instead, he found Avena, her body shaking. He shifted his right arm in the sling, his wrist immobilized with splints. He grunted as he stepped off the porch, each step jarring his broken ribs. Bandages bound his torso tight, constricting his breathing.
He labored to her, his entire body sore. Every muscle protested every movement, adding to the pain rippling through him. He wanted to find his bed. The sun was up. He couldn’t imagine Dje’awsa sending his dead into the sunlight. Kash appeared as a shadow, the last of the fog burning away.
