by Ellyn, Court
Thorn joined the arming dranithion, laid a heavy arm across Carah’s shoulders and smiled at her. He seemed untroubled that ogres pursued them. His niece was safe. He cared for little more. “How many, nethai?” he asked. Well-rested and flush with victory, he sounded almost excited.
“It’s … it’s my brother.”
Carah nearly choked. “Lothiar himself? Not that sneering what’s-his-name who stole Rhian’s face?”
“Ruvion? No. Just Lothiar. Looks like he rousted every ogre left in the Kaem, but the Regs have attacked his rear. They’re embattled again. Poor sods. If I’m estimating it right, Lothiar approaches with a single company.”
Thorn shrugged. “Not a problem. Get the avedrin out of here. I’ll take care of the naenion and join you at Lyrienn’s pavilion. I need a proper breakfast.”
Carah clung to him. “I’m not leaving you, Uncle Thorn. I can help you!”
“Don’t be foolish. I won’t risk you being captured all over again. Or worse.”
Laniel had protests of another sort. “This is Lothiar you’re facing. He’ll have some trick, some ward in place that will render your fires useless.”
“Then I’ll open the ground beneath him. Please, don’t insult me. It’s only one company. You saw how well that served the ogres attacking Ilswythe’s gate.”
Laniel wagged a finger in his face. “Don’t get cocky. You had Rhian to help you at Ilswythe, and he’s in no state to stay.”
Thorn’s face grew grim. “Take them.” With a firm hand, he passed Carah into Laniel’s keeping. She tried to shrug free of Falconeye’s grip, but his arm tightened.
“No, Uncle Thorn, come with us!”
He ignored her. “Follow the streambed, keep your heads down. Go. You don’t want to see what I do to your brother.”
Laniel swept Carah down the bank. She kicked and batted at him. Then Rhian squeezed in on her other side, fingers like vices about her wrist, the press of his hand at the small of her back, unshakable.
The avedrin splashed through the stream, the dranithion hemming them in to each side, arrows at the ready.
Carah tugged and lurched until she could peer over her shoulder. Uncle Thorn was leaning against the trunk of the cottonwood, content to let his enemy come to him.
~~~~
Thorn crouched in the shade beneath the tree. Wearing Elaran suedes the gray of shadow, arms dappled with stripes like leaf-shade, he hoped he was hard to spot. He worked empty hands. His staff was in its saddle sheath, and Záradel was tethered outside Lyrienn’s pavilion. No matter. His range would suffer; the ogres would need to approach closer than he liked, but that was all.
Funny, he had wanted to be a scholar. Still thought of himself as merely a scholar. When he was a boy, the idea of battlefields had sounded fine on paper but the reality of them had terrified him. Yet here he was, calloused, and he was unafraid.
They came at a steady lope. Lothiar led them like a hunter running before the hounds, his eyes finding without fault the path the avedrin had taken. The sound of marching feet soon punctuated the air, set the earth to thumping. Thorn turned his attention instead to the sound of water birthing from the earth, the touch of shade-cooled wind lifting the sweat from his brow.
Saffron’s light flared at his side. He smiled. It was good to have company.
“You should heed our Carah, my Thorn. Flee this place. Keep running. And do not stop.”
What kind of advice was this? He turned a frown on her. “What’s wrong? I can cover their escape better here. You can see that, right?”
Saffron raised lavender eyes bleak with sorrow. “They’re dead.”
His first fear was for the avedrin, but he saw them hurrying along the streambed, unmolested. They rounded a bend in the bank and were gone. “Who? Who’s dead?”
“The kings. The Falcon kings.”
“Valryk and Arryk both? How is that possible?”
“I felt them die. This dynasty of kings is at an end.”
The words sent a jolt through him, stole his breath. He felt himself falling up into a vast stretch of golden light. Wings beat against gilded clouds. …when this dynasty of kings is at an end… All the while, his feet remained fixed among the cottonwood’s roots.
Doubt surged, shaking his confidence. It made him angry. The fulfillment of the Mother-Father’s prediction didn’t mean he would die this very moment. Or even twenty years from now. Did it? Was he never to step out his door? Was he to abandon his brother to slaughter to save his own skin? To what end? To die decades from now as an old man, sick in bed? Either way, death was inevitable. Viewed in that light, the prediction carried little significance. Still…
“Better you had not told me.”
“You will stay then?”
“Did you really think I’d run?”
“Not for a moment.”
The cottonwood, the only tree residing over the northern stretch of hills, drew the ogres like a beacon. Lothiar’s stride was driven, furious. The afternoon sun struck his pale hair and set a halo to glowing about his head. His dark armor looked too heavy to haul across the miles on foot, but his grace and energy seemed unhindered.
The links of a shiny chain swung against his thigh. Only one set of shackles? “He has no intention of capturing us,” Thorn told Saffron. “Not all of us.”
At Lothiar’s side stomped an old ogre with worn tusks and a short graying braid. “Look at the size of those paws.” Like mallets, one swat from them would crush him.
When Lothiar was within thirty yards of the cottonwood, Thorn pushed himself lazily to his feet.
The uncurling of motion caught Lothiar’s eye at once. He stopped and tossed up a fist. The ogres halted. Satisfying to see the alarm on his face. He glanced around warily. “Just you, Dathiel?”
“Just me.” He paced the shade like a snowcat measuring up its quarry. “The odds are a little uneven, wouldn’t you say?”
Lothiar’s laughter rolled across the breeze. “Not at all.”
Good to know his enemy didn’t underestimate him. Thorn sneered in disgust. Lothiar’s arrogance sickened him. The absolute certainty of his power, over the earth he trod, over the air he breathed, over the lives he dominated, over the prey he chased.
Rage bubbled hot. I’ll never be free of you. All my adult life spent evading your hatred. It’ll never end. You’ll plague my brother’s children, and their children after them. While he paced, he thrust his rage toward the sky. The blue roiled with heat, swirling, frothing.
“Must you be a savage?” Lothiar cried, eyes on the firestorm building over his head. “Let’s discuss a trade. Your freedom for Carah’s.”
“Not interested.” Avë crackled along Thorn’s skin. He swept a hand. The firestorm plunged.
Lothiar and the mallet-handed ogre dived headlong into the grass, but the fire wasn’t aimed at them. The inferno crashed like a wave into the company behind them. Hair and garments burst into flame. Flesh bubbled. Air seared lungs. Grass ignited.
A clench of Thorn’s fist quelled the flames. Bodies littered blackened frost-limned grass. The ogres who still lived looked at the sky, at Thorn, then fled back toward the Kaem. Their Captain lunged up from the smoldering ground, ordering them to halt. His bellow cut off abruptly, and Lothiar slapped at his breastplate. Molded into the hutza, a dragon’s snarling face melted like wax.
Thorn watched in amazement, not understanding, until he glimpsed black stains on the steel. He laughed in delight as Lothiar flipped open a dagger hidden against his palm and cut the leather straps holding the breastplate against his body. He flung away the ruined armor and patted embers from his quilted undershirt.
The mallet-handed ogre grabbed his captain by the arm and doused a tongue of flame licking up his back into his hair.
“You should follow your brave army,” Thorn called as fire coalesced over his palm. “The next one goes right through you.”
“Damn you and your kind, Dathiel,” Lothiar retorted, breathing hard. “Ruvi
on!”
Saffron shrieked and flared bright. A blast of avë from her little hands shunted Thorn aside. Pain ripped red and breathless through his belly. His knees struck the ground, his fingers clenched deep into soil, teeth biting against the agony, biting so hard they might crack. The arrowhead meant for his spine protruded fanged and red under his ribs.
The world tilted, and with it the tree and the hills rearing behind it, and on the hills Ruvion sighted along a second arrow.
Roll, dive, move! Thorn’s brain demanded. His body seized around the wound, paralyzing him. Imagination, will, execution, but the pain sapped all three. Claw through it! “Eshel,” he groaned, “burst his heart.”
The second arrow missed by a yard. Ruvion flailed on the ground, clutching his chest. With a great shudder, he fell still.
“Now, Paggon!” came a shout.
Massive hands crushed Thorn to the ground. He curled into a ball trying to protect his wound, but with a snap and a screaming peak of pain, Paggon broke away the length of the shaft at Thorn’s back. No use trying to shake off the ogre. Thorn went lax, palms flat to the ground, and the ground began to tremble. The cottonwood creaked, shedding leaves like rain. Break open and swallow us all! He had time to grin at the idea of being buried with his enemy, their bones locked away inside the earth together for all time.
Then a bite of cold, a cold he knew all too well, clamped on his wrists.
The trembling of the earth stopped. The leaves moved only with the wind of the world. The singing of avë deep in his brain went silent. Thorn couldn’t tell if it was the lack of avë, the pressure of the ogre’s hands, or the arrow lodged under his lung that stole his breath.
“You think I wanted to kill you?” Lothiar shouted. The frenzied pacing of his feet whispered back and forth. “Look what you’ve done!”
Paggon’s weight let up mercifully. He grabbed the back of Thorn’s collar and hauled him to his feet, but Thorn refused to cooperate, and the blood drained from his head, and his knees refused to hold him. He sank back to the ground.
A fierce mournful cry, as from an eagle or a stroke of lightning, shattered the sunlight around them, and Saffron dived upon the ogre. He howled at the sting, the assault surely like a swarm of hornets. Dozens of little gashes opened on his skin. His giant hands swatted and shielded his head. Saffron flew so fast, stinging and biting, that the ogre appeared to be swathed in streamers of yellow light.
“You’ll never wake again!” she shrieked. A floral scent wafted across the wind. The ogre staggered, blinking small eyes rapidly, then he folded like a tree in a flood.
Lothiar cried out as Paggon collapsed senseless on the riverbank. “Wake him, damn you.” From the latch on his belt he freed a baernavë box.
Saffron’s light raced with an arrow’s speed, aiming for Lothiar’s chest. At the last instant, he whirled aside and swept the box like a bear’s paw batting at bees. With a dull thunk and a burst of light, Saffron plummeted, a shooting star.
Thorn clawed his way to the cottonwood tree, dragging two feet of chain, and pulled himself up the trunk. He leaned heavily against it, searching the ground for a weapon, trying to catch his breath, to find a stance that eased the pain. It resonated through his abdomen, down to his groin, into his chest.
A triumphant bark of laughter and Lothiar latched the box shut. He raised it for Thorn to see, held it out so he could hear the screams echoing inside. The smirk on his face was intolerable.
Thorn knotted his hands together and swung the drooping chain like a flail.
Lothiar grunted, dropped the box, and danced back holding his wrist.
The twisting motion drove searing lances through Thorn’s body. He grit his teeth, shoved himself from the tree, and rammed a shoulder into Lothiar’s unprotected belly. All Lothiar had to do was touch the arrowhead to drop Thorn to his knees again.
“Give it up, will you?” Lothiar grabbed a fistful of Thorn’s hair and wrenching him from the ground. “I’ll summon healers for you, if you just yield. For the Mother’s sake, yield.”
For Carah’s sake, never. He let Lothiar drag him to his feet, then he whirled with the chain. It crashed across Lothiar’s cheek. Blood spouted from his nose. He reached for the sword on his hip, but Thorn fell over him, wrapping the chain about his throat. A sharp tug jerked Lothiar off his feet. They tumbled in a tangled heap in the sweltering shade.
Thorn leaned into the chain with all the strength left in his bones, crying out as shredded muscle clenched around the arrow shaft.
Lothiar kicked, twisted, tried to pry off the chain, but Thorn shortened his grip on the links, let the shackles bite bloody into his wrists and hooked his ankles about Lothiar’s chest.
Unable to flip or twist free, Lothiar drove an open hand back and back and back, and new pain blossomed where his hand struck. Thorn glimpsed the slender palm-blade rising red. He raised his heels and drove them against Lothiar’s chest, expelling precious breath. The stabbing stopped, and Thorn tugged, arching back, teeth grinding. For Carah, don’t stop. For Kelyn. For Rhoslyn, Rhoslyn, Rhos—
Something gave in Lothiar’s throat. His hand spasmed feebly, then fell limp.
A long while, or maybe only minutes, Thorn lay entangled with his enemy, carried on waves of pain, afraid to unwind the chain, let Lothiar take a breath, and fail. The sky whirled, fat white rainless clouds stood on end, and his enemy did not move.
Inch by agonizing inch, Thorn extricated himself from under the deadweight.
Lothiar’s face was a bruised shade of blue. Lids at half-mast did not bother shielding eyes from the glaring sun.
“I am sorry, you know.” Drawing enough breath to speak was difficult. Thorn unwound the chain and laid Lothiar’s head gently on the ground. “Whatever the crimes of my forefathers, I am sorry. If I had said so, would it have made a difference?” Doubtful. Lothiar’s hatred was a thousand years ingrained. What good would the words of an avedra boy have done? “We caused the worst to emerge in each other, you and me.”
Thorn’s strength leaked through the wounds in his belly, his thigh, one in his chest. The gray suede soaked it up, was slick with it. Black spots swam before his eyes. He swayed, faint, nauseous. Nothing to be done about it until these chains came off. He reached to search inside Lothiar’s clothes, but bloodless arms tingled numbly and sagged short of the mark.
He laid his hand over Lothiar’s eyes instead and began the Elaran blessing of parting. “May the Light shine…” Something outside himself stopped him, like fingers pressed to his mouth.
The wind paused mid-stroke. Silver light flared under the spreading arms of the cottonwood.
“You mourn him?” asked a voice as pure as song.
A youth emerged from the silver light. No, he was the light. He brought it with him as he knelt at Thorn’s side. A long silver robe pooled between them. A deep hood framed frightening eyes. A serpent’s eyes. Silver irises, vertically slit pupils. Thorn recalled a discussion with Aerdria in her garden, decades ago, and with Jaedren in the library only this past spring. One’s true nature is revealed in the eyes. The eyes do not change.
A shudder went through him. “I know you … Rashén Varél.”
The youth smiled, and the reptilian chill in his eyes warmed. “We have restored the balance, Kieryn Dathiel.”
“Have we? The ogres still fight…”
“Not for long.” His glance fell on Lothiar’s discolored face. “They won’t remain united without him.” Slender silver shoulders shrugged. “I am amazed. In the end, it wasn’t your gift that helped you triumph, but the will to protect your family.”
“She’ll be safe? Carah will be safe?”
“For the time-being. But you know her. She’s impetuous. And she has a destiny to fulfill. I will do what I can to guide her, to protect her.”
That assurance was more than Thorn could’ve hoped for. “I wish … I wish it could’ve been different.” What would Kelyn say to that? ‘Could haves’ and ‘should haves’ were a
waste of time, but Thorn couldn’t help it. His enemy lay dead at his knees. Another life cut short. Was there no better way?
Rashén patted down Lothiar’s clothes, rifled inside his undershirt. “We gave him a choice, and these are the consequences.” He hissed through his teeth; serpent-eyes clenched shut. Long fingers uncurled, revealing a baernavë key. What must its touch be like to such a creature? Thorn took it and searched for the keyhole in the shackles. It should be so easy, but it was as if he viewed his own hands through a lengthening tube.
Despite the pain that the baernavë inflicted, the dragon reclaimed the key and the shackles fell away. A weight lifted from Thorn’s chest.
“Better?” Rashén asked.
Thorn nodded. “Doesn’t matter though, does it. I can’t heal myself in time.”
The youth’s smile was full of affection. And certainty.
Sudden terror sped Thorn’s heart, pumping the blood faster. “Has the Mother forsaken me?”
“You? Never. You have dared to walk a road few could tolerate. You have flirted with darkness. You have waged your private war against her, ever as hatefully as Lothiar did, yet your heart remained unspoiled, your desires never contrary to hers. The path she laid for you, the choices you were compelled to make, none were easy. Yet you have walked it well, Kieryn Dathiel.” The dragon stood, silver light pushing the deep shade back. “And so it is done. I must make a delivery, and you have a journey ahead of you.”
Yes, a journey, but not the one Thorn dreamed of. He thought of uncharted shores, of vast unpeopled silences.
“She will take you with her when she goes,” Rashén said, “no mistake about that.”
Carah? Carah was to go to Azhdyria? Immense joy welled, both dispersing the pain and redoubling it. “What will she find?”
“That is for her to discover.”
Slowly, carefully, Thorn settled himself against the trunk of the cottonwood, shoulders lodged between hunchbacked roots. For all its great size, the tree was young. Short-lived. Its vitality burgeoned through its bark. The wind tugged and twisted, but the tree grappled itself robustly to the earth. Its enduring strength grounded Thorn and brought Carah to mind. Healer of trees. He wished she was here, relieved she was not.
