by Isabo Kelly
Holding her at his side, he led her to the bed. “I haven’t attempted anything yet.”
They lay down, fully clothed, and she rested her head on his chest. “Is your…is your battle state part of your magic?” No one knew, at least not that she’d ever spoken with, though she was sure the queen knew, and no one seemed inclined to ask Einar. She’d never been brave enough to bring up the topic.
He remained silent for a while, and she gave him time, listening to his heart beat steady against her cheek.
Finally, he said, “I’ve never been sure. I don’t feel like I’m tapping magic when I…let go. Unlike the owls. I feel that, the mixing of magic and my essence to make that possible. In battle… All I ever feel is rage. When I turn the rage loose, I become the Darkness.”
“So you’ll still be capable of doing what you do in battle?” She realized that gave her a measure of relief she hadn’t anticipated. She was quite certain one of the things that kept Einar safe was the fear he inspired. Even the king wouldn’t think to challenge him in combat. But if that had changed because of what they’d done, he would be vulnerable.
“That skill at least should be fine,” he reassured. “The owls…”
“Has something changed with that?”
“Not that I can put words to. I can still feel the ability to speak with them within me. But something in the calling has changed.”
“The calling? Being able to get them to come to you?”
“It hasn’t gone away. I can call them. I think. But there’s a difference to it. I can’t really explain. Maybe a different focus?”
“Different focus. That sort of describes what I’m sensing in the new arrows. No. Not difference so much as more focus. There’s something…precise about the spell, something specific that wasn’t there before.”
“Yes. That’s a good way to explain it. There’s a precision to the feel of the calling now, a specificity that wasn’t required before.”
“Does it make things more difficult?”
She felt his shrug. “I haven’t tried to actually bring an owl to me yet, so I can’t say. I’m going on the way the magic feels.”
“You should try. Soon.”
“It isn’t as important as the new arrows. It can wait.”
She licked her lips before asking, “Will they stop carrying messages for Glengowyn if you’re banished?”
“I don’t know that either. When the king first threatened me with banishment if I didn’t stay away from you, I asked the owls and they said they wouldn’t continue. But…a lot of time has passed since then. With the change in my magic… I’ll have to ask them again.”
She didn’t think the threat of losing the owls would be enough to earn them forgiveness from their sovereigns, but it was something to consider.
Her head lifted slightly as Einar pulled in a deep breath. “Sleep, Nuala. We can worry about these things another time.”
He was right. They would worry about them when they returned to Glengowyn. A small part of her wondered if they should bother going back. Just take themselves into banishment now, before the king and queen publicly sent them away. It wouldn’t save them from the consequences of their actions. And the sovereigns, if they wanted to, could place the Or’roan on her and Einar no matter where they went. But it would be easier not to have to face the censure of the king or the wrath of the queen in person.
She closed her eyes and allowed her tired body the rest it needed, taking comfort in the fact that at least she and Einar would face that future together, no matter what the sovereigns decided.
Nuala watched the final preparations for the offensive strike against the Sorcerers’ borders from the rooftop of the council’s meeting hall. Gas lamps lit the movements of humans in and out of the hall and through the neighboring streets. A cool breeze ruffled the night, bringing a freshness to the air along with the anticipation of a battle to come.
She’d spent more time with her new arrows, digging through the layers of the spell. And had come to one conclusion.
“They have to be tried,” she said to Einar, who stood at her back. “I have to use one to see what it will do.”
He didn’t pretend not to understand her meaning. “You’re not a soldier. You’re too valuable to be sent directly into a battle like this. I will go and try the weapon.”
“No.” She turned and faced him. “It’s my spell. My risk. You won’t know the difference the way I will when I use one. There’s no other place to try them. I can’t just fire one randomly at a target like the others. There’s…something about that sort of experiment that feels more dangerous than firing one in battle.” She raised her hands, palms up. “I wish I could explain better.”
“Nuala, I can’t allow you to go into this fight. You’re not prepared.”
“I’ve been fighting since we left Glengowyn.”
“This isn’t your war. It’s the Sinnale’s. Besides, the king and queen—”
“Are about to impose severe punishments on us for our love. They will hardly blame you more if you take me into a fight.” She stepped close and cupped his cheeks. His jaw was hard as stone beneath her palms, and he refused to meet her gaze when she looked up at him.
“Einar. This is the only way to test them. I don’t dare leave them untested. I can’t move them now that they’ve been set. They’re more dangerous like this, so I can’t just walk away and relinquish the responsibility of them to the humans. I have to solve this. And it has to be done in battle where the only ones hurt will be the enemy.”
“I don’t want you to do this.”
The petulance in his voice forced a half laugh from her. “I don’t want to either. I’m more than aware of my deficiencies in a fight. I’ll stay back from the ground attack, on the rooftops with the other archers.”
“That position is not safe from the Sorcerers’ spells.”
“Safer than being in the middle of swinging swords.”
“Not by much.”
“You know this has to be done.” She rubbed her thumbs across his cheeks, trying to loosen the tight muscles under her fingers.
“I don’t like it. So you will follow my direction. I will be by your side every moment.”
“I expected nothing less.”
“If I say run, fall back or give you any other warning to leave the field, you will go.”
She nodded. “I’m not trying to get myself killed. I just don’t want any of our allies killed either.” She licked her lips. “And a concession from you.”
His brows rose sharply as he dropped his chin back. “A concession from me? I’m the warrior between us.”
“Yes and that’s the problem. We’ll be in the middle of a conflict that isn’t yours any more than it’s mine. It’s for the Sinnale to drive the Sorcerers out. We do our part with weapons. But we’re not here to really fight. I don’t want you in the middle of things. I will make it clear to Ulric that you are not taking part as anything but my bodyguard. I’m not taking part except to discover what these new arrows really do in the only way that won’t endanger the humans. Beyond that, no. You are not here to be their Darkness.”
The night breeze blew through his short hair, rippling the edges around his ears so the points were more prominent than usual. Light from the gas lamps below bathed his features but kept his eyes dark and difficult to read. She didn’t flinch away from his silent look, though. He had to understand, his safety was as important to her as hers was to him.
“You are the only one I will be the Darkness for ever again,” he said quietly. “My loyalty is with you now. Not Glengowyn. If you ask me to fight, I will. If you ask me to avoid fighting—except where I must defend you—I will. From this time forward, you’re my city, my people, my life.”
Her chest ached at the declaration, making it impossible to speak. So she did what she wanted to do anyway. She drew his face close to hers and kissed him, letting just a hint of the Shaerta rise to add weight and power to their kiss. Letting him understa
nd she felt exactly the same way.
She only stopped to avoid getting carried away, but she rested her head against his forehead for a long moment. Then she said, “Let’s go talk with Ulric.”
Chapter Fourteen
Nuala watched from a rooftop as the madness of battle raged below in the streets. Minions and Sinnale fought just inside the Sorcerers’ border, swords clashing, the sounds of screams, metal on metal, shouts and the thwack of launching arrows matched only by the roar of magic.
The Sorcerers remained behind the main front but made themselves known in the drop of fire spells, which melted cobbles and brick and any hapless living thing that got in their way. Bolts of energy slammed into the midst of the chaos along with the fire, creating a cacophony of death. The Sinnale archers focused their efforts on the Sorcerers, making the attacks less consistent and overwhelming than they might have been otherwise.
Nuala even witnessed the death of one Sorcerer who happened to be standing too near when an archer finally used one of her special arrows. The shrapnel carried a spell of its own that punched through magic shields. The Sorcerer in the way of that shrapnel died in bloody shreds.
A cheer rose from the surrounding archers, spurring the Sinnale attack below.
After that, the attacking spells from the Sorcerers were even more sporadic, the focus almost defensive. The archers kept their attention on the rooftops, protecting the street soldiers below. Now that her weapons had been tried successfully, others used them as well, carefully but with a kind of relish that was almost disturbing. If Nuala hadn’t known exactly what these people had been through over the last two years, she might have been bothered by their glee.
As the fighting moved deeper into the Sorcerers’ territory, Nuala and the other archers followed. Einar, true to his word, stayed with her and out of the mêlée below. She kept her distance from the fighting too, remaining to the rear of the archers as they descended to street level to find another rooftop vantage point.
Down on the ground, she felt infinitely more vulnerable and so stayed close to Einar. Unlike their entrance into the city, however, no one was after them specifically this time and that made their passage somehow easier.
At the next rooftop, Nuala got her opportunity to try her new arrow. She’d only brought three with her, with the intention of using only one. And while she carried more ordinary-spelled arrows in her quiver, they were only to defend herself if it became necessary. To Einar’s surprise and approval, she’d also strapped his knife to her hip. Though she had no intention of getting involved in the fighting, battles changed directions fast and there were some situations in which a bow was less useful than a knife.
She spotted the Sorcerer as she rose just above a low parapet to study the street. Nuala had taken a position away from the others, putting herself beyond the focus of most of the Sinnale archers. None of them paid attention to her or seemed to have noticed the robed woman standing two buildings over, studying the battle. Nuala watched the woman, but the Sorcerer merely observed the fighting below. It didn’t matter. She was an enemy, and Nuala had her opportunity to test her new creation.
She nudged Einar and he grunted quietly in affirmation.
With a careful eye on the target, Nuala nocked the new arrow into place and drew back her bowstring. But when she released the string, nothing happened. The arrow remained in place, hovering oddly as it held the string stretched without any pressure from her.
Because she didn’t want the humans to notice, she quickly replaced her fingers so it would look like she was still aiming. Then she attempted to ease the string back and relax the arrow in its position. Nothing. The thing remained nocked and drawn, ready to fire and yet not going anywhere no matter what she tried.
A tickle of panic set in. She didn’t dare turn the point away from a potential target, but she had no idea how to get the bloody thing to launch.
As she pondered her quandary, a shout rose from below. She glanced down long enough to see three of the traitor elves joining the fight, bringing a level of skill with them that the minions couldn’t match—and neither could a lot of the Sinnale.
“I didn’t think they fought in the battles and skirmishes, not like that,” she said to Einar.
“Something must have changed. Perhaps the threat of the humans finally beating the Sorcerers. I doubt they want to be on the losing side after all this.”
He sounded almost disinterested. As if the traitors meant very little to him. But she recognized all three of them. And one, many, many years ago, had been a friend. Sareena had grown resentful and mean after the wars, though. More than once she’d taken her bitterness out on Nuala, at first verbally. But twice she’d attempted to physically attack her. Those occasions had resulted in severe punishment from the king and queen, which only made Sareena’s anger stronger.
When the attacks had started, Nuala had been hurt and baffled by her former friend’s attitude. After the second physical attack, she’d grown angry. Well before Sareena had defected to the Sorcerers, she and Nuala had danced around each other as hostile acquaintances. When Sareena turned traitor, no one, least of all Nuala, was surprised.
Though Nuala kept the point of her arrow toward the Sorcerer, she stared down at Sareena and a deep anger rose, for her once friend, for all the traitors who’d placed their own desires above the safety of both Sinnale and Glengowyn.
“Sareena,” Nuala hissed aloud, jutting her chin toward the traitor so Einar would understand her statement. Before she could say more, however, her poised arrow began to tremble. Without Nuala releasing the string, it flew from her bow.
Gasping, Nuala watched, expecting it to fly in the direction it was aimed. Instead, the arrow turned unnaturally, as if guided by an unseen hand, and flew toward the place where the traitor elves fought.
Nuala choked down a shout of dismay. There were Sinnale all around the elves. If that arrow landed among them, it would kill as many allies as enemy. And because she hadn’t aimed, she had no idea who it might hit.
“Einar! What have I done?”
He stood beside her with a hand on her shoulder, watching the disaster unfold. But the arrow swerved and shivered through the chaos, actually turning to avoid hitting anyone who got in its way. The passage was impossible and defied all laws of aerodynamics. But the missile wound its way through the throngs of fighters, and to her utter astonishment, slammed directly into Sareena’s chest.
The traitor looked down at the arrow, her expression almost comically surprised. Then the missile exploded in a bright flash of white light. Nuala did scream then, knowing others near Sareena would be killed too.
Instead of the mess of carnage, however, a small smoking hole dented the cobbles and the bloody remains of a single elf colored a confined area on the street. Those close to the death—minion, elf and Sinnale alike—stared without moving at the bits and pieces that were all that was left of the traitor elf. Yet no other bodies littered the ground. No one else was hurt.
The pause in fighting only lasted a beat before swords were raised again and the conflict resumed, ebbing over the dead elf and moving on. But Nuala remained frozen, too stunned to react.
After several moments, she felt the gaze of others on her. Looking up, she noticed first that the Sorcerer she’d been hoping to kill was staring at her, dark eyes wide and jaw tight. Nuala barely took note of the woman’s expression before she vanished as if never having been there. The suddenness made Nuala gasp.
Einar’s hand tightened on her shoulder. She turned to ask if he’d see the Sorcerer vanish, only to realize the other archers on the rooftop were staring at her.
“We should leave,” Einar said close to her ear.
She started toward the door leading from the roof, but the commander of the regiment, a short, stocky man in his middle years, approached them, blocking their exit.
“What type of arrow was that? It defied all that’s logical. Can we trade for it?”
Nuala hadn’t had time to
figure out exactly what had happened with her new arrow, nonetheless prepared herself for a request for more. “It’s…experimental and not yet ready for trade.” She hoped the explanation would satisfy him.
He frowned but didn’t argue. “As soon as it’s ready, let us know. I’ll make sure the council buys as many as we can afford.”
Because she didn’t know what else to say, she let Einar lead her away. The Sinnale archers turned back to their part in the battle, but she heard murmurs of curiosity and interest even as they continued the fight.
She and Einar reached the street before she spoke. “I said her name, Einar. I said Sareena’s name aloud, and the arrow targeted her. I didn’t have to fire it. It flew of its own accord.” That realization made her clamp a hand over her mouth. “What have I done? I’ve just used your name aloud. What if the remaining two arrows target you?”
She wanted to throw her quiver away to keep the arrows as far from Einar as she could manage. But she was too stunned to put action to fear.
He took her shoulders in his hands and met her gaze. “Explain to me exactly how everything felt from the moment you nocked the arrow into place.”
She breathed carefully and turned her senses back in time to the memories and details.
“Until I put the arrow into the bow, I didn’t feel anything from it other than its bespelled nature, what I’d felt from the moment I set it,” she started slowly, working past the other distractions of battle to the specific sensations. “Once I placed the arrow against the string and pulled the string back, there was a sense of…readiness. Potential. Similar to the reaction from any elf arrow.”
“So until it’s brought into firing position, it doesn’t feel active?”
She sighed. “Maybe. When I released the string, the potential felt suspended. It was hard to tell, given the noise from the fight, but I swear I heard a low hum of…waiting. I just couldn’t tell what it was waiting for.”
