Clearwater Dawn

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  And then she faltered. Stared.

  Shakily, Chriani followed her gaze down to his own chest. Where his tunic had been torn almost to the navel, the edge of the war-mark was exposed. He saw her read the name scribed there, saw her look up to meet the fury in his gaze.

  Where Dargana looked slowly back to Lauresa, he saw a smile of dark understanding form at the hard edges of the crithnala leader’s mouth.

  “Chanist’s greatest riches are his children, they say…”

  Chriani tried to mask his reaction, but the exile leader saw it all the same. Her laughter chilled him, set the anger flaring like an oil-fed fire. He sought for it, called to strength that he needed now, one exile behind him, another that he’d have to get through in order to reach Dargana herself. He felt the pain in his hand flare white-hot, let it stoke the rage.

  “Kill the thief and save his head,” Dargana called to the exiles around her. “Give the Ilmari princess water, then drug her. We ride for Brandishear at dawn.”

  Chriani was set to spring, had already run the mechanics of every possible last effort at escape through his mind. Having deduced Lauresa’s identity was a good thing, he realized suddenly, as it meant they couldn’t kill her now. More value to the exiles as a hostage than a corpse. Whatever happened, she’d make it back to her father. She’d be safe.

  He could hold onto that, he thought. That duty fulfilled, at least, before the end that was coming.

  Dargana would die with him, though. He would let the anger take that as a last gift before the end.

  But even as Dargana turned, there was a flare of light, and the ruins blazed with white fire like the slow-rising sun had come on all at once. Above, the raw shriek of griffons split the night, sudden chaos twisting through the crithnala where they scattered for the shadows, and where Chriani watched, he saw Dargana’s attention taken for the moment he needed.

  He slammed his head back into the face of the exile behind him, felt him stagger back as he came up under the arm of the guard before him and swung into Dargana with a roundhouse kick. Like he’d hoped, she dropped the bloodblade she’d taken from him, and because he’d been hoping, he was already falling on it where it spun to the ground. He sliced skin from his wrists as he slit the ropes that bound him, rolling out of the way as Dargana’s axe slashed against the stones where he’d lain a moment before. He kicked out at her hand, dislodging her grip as she cried out, but where they both jumped for the dagger, Dargana got there first. Chriani backpedaled, snatched her axe from the ground as he ran.

  From the air, a rain of arrows fell, the griffon riders’ eldritch light still burning bright in the tallest trees above them, illuminating the exiles below even as it screened their own aerial movement. Behind him, Dargana screamed orders in no language Chriani recognized, some kind of exile cant. But where the rest of the troupe melted back, she sprinted after Chriani, already moving for Lauresa where her crithnala guards were dragging her into the trees. She was watching him, brought her foot up hard into the groin of her closest captor. As he staggered, she twisted away, circling behind the other so that his attention was distracted for the moment Chriani needed to drop him.

  He didn’t kill him. Couldn’t kill him. Just swung hard with the flat of the axe where he wheeled in, a blunted blow that dropped the exile more effectively than Chriani’s lack of skill with the weapon would have normally allowed. He felt the rage peak, felt it stoke a sense of control he couldn’t remember feeling before. He grabbed the exile’s bow, gambled precious time as he tore the fallen figure’s quiver and cloak free.

  Where he saw Dargana circling along the edge of the ruins, Chriani pulled Lauresa with him as he ran for the opposite side of the clearing, fumbling the princess’s bonds and gag free as they ran. All around was chaos, sorcery and bowshot ripping the air as a storm of light and fire erupted in the forest around them. Dargana’s look said that she’d been truthful when she talked of Nyndenu as a place the Valnirata would never come, Chriani wondering as he pushed for the dark of the forest what would make them change their minds.

  Where Lauresa sang, he got his answer. From her hands, he saw the knives of white light flare, saw them flash past Dargana and into the trees as the crithnala threw herself to the ground. From behind her came a scream, two archers in white staggering from the shadows where Lauresa’s sorcery had struck them, pale skin and scarred cheeks. The bloodblade flashed as Dargana wheeled. They both died quickly.

  The assassins had followed them there. The Valnirata griffon riders had followed the assassins in turn, likely still not knowing what prize the Order of Uissa sought but hoping to gain it for themselves.

  Dargana shouted another coded command to the unseen troupe shifting through the dark forest around her, and all across the clearing, a boiling wall of shadow rose. In Chriani’s head, in his heart, Lauresa’s song was exquisite agony, twisting with the pain still lancing through his arm where his hand bled freely. She sent the white knives of force out against two more archers as they ran, sent a pulse of yellow fire skyward against a griffon as it dove for them, dropping from the darkness with a shriek. Chriani saw its rider veer away, screaming as its armor burned.

  He saw Dargana then, moving fast through the trees ahead of them. He pulled Lauresa back, changed direction sharply, but the princess caught sight of the crithnala leader, held her ground for the moment it took to change the pulse of the song that flowed from her. As the princess twisted her hands, Chriani saw Dargana suddenly spin where the bloodblade was pulled from her hand, grabbing at it, too late. She watched as it sailed through the shadows and into Lauresa’s grasp.

  The princess slipped the dagger into Chriani’s good hand but he swapped it to his left, fought the agony and the slickness of his bloody grip as he held it tight.

  That blade has been in Chanist’s hands…

  He pushed the thought away, didn’t want to face it. Didn’t want to believe.

  He held Lauresa’s hand tighter, kept her fingers locked to his as they ran.

  — Chapter 11 —

  A GOOD WAY TO DIE

  WITHIN THE SHELTER of the towering limni, no light fell from the stars, the moon long-gone beyond the forest wall. Behind them where they ran, Chriani could see the twisting flare of the sorcerous light that the griffon riders threw down, but where he and Lauresa made their way along a barely visible pathway, a shadow settled around them that told him they weren’t pursued. Not by the Valnirata at any rate.

  He ran on instinct, drinking in the distant sounds of battle against the closer silence, eyes open to the maze of trails that surrounded them. No way to tell where they led, he and princess following dead ends twice, doubling back at speed. All around, he could feel the ruins even beyond the range of his sight, like the voices of the unknown past were calling to him through the shadows. He tried to block them out, focused on his footsteps and Lauresa’s beside him where the forest swallowed all sound.

  He slowed. Ahead, a shadowed space opened up, starlight faint through the trees.

  Against the faint light of stars above a roof of gnarled branches, the remains of an Ilvani forest-tower rose. Between living pillars some ten strides across at the base, semi-circular platforms climbed within a tangled web of ropes and rotted gantries. Curved beams of blackened wood marked their edges, dark arches pushing out from the trunks of the trees themselves to buttress them. They twisted past each other where they hung suspended, most at dangerously oblique angles where some of the rope-supports that lashed them into place had given way.

  Faint behind them, Chriani heard voices, too far away to make out. Ahead, rising like the terraces of some Elalantar garden, broadly stepped platforms swept up from the ground to the tower, gaping holes marking where their wood had long-rotted through. He looked up, saw the level edge of one high platform, moss-crusted ropes still lashed tight from its edge to the bole of the ancient limni that anchored it. As tall as any Bastion tower, he guessed. A perfect vantage point from which to try to spy the escape
route they desperately needed to find.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Carefully, he and Lauresa climbed the twisting tiers of rotting steps, making their slow way up within the space of shadows the limni made. Twice, they had to edge their way along the narrow span of a single beam, Chriani reaching back to help Lauresa across. She had spellcraft that could have made it easy, he knew, but she was weak, stumbling. The power she’d unleashed in the ruins below had seemingly drained her to a degree that alarmed him, some part of the casting rituals drawing strength from her and the meager sleep she’d had the day before not enough to recover it.

  Where the stairs ended, the platform was a moss-green field of twisted planks, thick spars visible beneath them where arched beams radiated out from the limni’s weathered trunk. Above them, the canopy of green-grey ropes that had once held the terrace in place was mostly gone, thick vines hanging in its place. The half-dozen stanchion lines that had survived this long spoke to the skill that had crafted them in the first place, Chriani stepping out carefully to gauge their strength. Only when he was sure the platform would hold did he motion Lauresa to follow.

  In the shelter of a shredded thatch canopy, she took Chriani’s mangled hand without a word. She tore an edge from the rough-cut hem of the shift, used half to clean and half to bind the wound as best she could. The pain when she touched it was like being cut all over again, but Chriani focused past it, staring into the stillness around them. As high as they were, he could see the stars now where the cloud had all but gone. More importantly, he could see the flare of eldritch light to the south, the griffon riders pushing farther away, he hoped.

  When Lauresa was done, he had her lash the quiver to his leg, his hand not strong enough to do it. He tested the draw of the bow with shaking hands, checked the supply of arrows. Lauresa was tight against him, her head on his shoulder. For a long while, neither spoke.

  “Why did you save her?” he asked at length. “The leader, Dargana.”

  “The Uissa archers were targeting you,” she said. “My power is spent, Chriani.”

  She rubbed his wrist gently, wouldn’t meet his gaze. With his good hand, Chriani raised her face to his.

  “I don’t want it to end this way,” she said.

  He kissed her then. Felt the familiar surge of blood and the quickening of his pulse beneath which the pain faded, just for a moment. He held her tight, felt her body press into his as it had in the tent, felt her breath on his cheek, her lips at his neck.

  That blade has been in Chanist’s hands…

  With all the strength that the anger that was in him had ever made, he tried to force Dargana’s words away. He didn’t want to think it, didn’t want to understand like he understood now with a certainty he would have given anything to deny.

  As she’d died on that day of quiet summer so long ago now, Chriani’s mother had spoken haltingly of people she said she saw in those final moments. Her own mother, dead since before Chriani was born. His father. I know now, she’d said, over and over with a laugh that seemed to suggest she was only ever just a moment away from standing up, from sweeping Chriani into her arms as she always had.

  In the shadow that loomed in the back of his mind, Chriani saw the dagger in Chanist’s hands, Barien clutching at the blade as he fell at the prince’s feet. He squeezed his eyes shut tight.

  With her last movements, his mother had traced the mark she’d laid at Chriani’s shoulder. You are the crossroads, she’d said. You are the place where two worlds meet…

  “I’m sorry,” Lauresa whispered where Chriani was trembling. “Does that hurt?”

  Seek always to see, his mother had said.

  Chriani saw the blood in the hall of records where Barien fell. The archives quarter deserted, no witnesses. No guards patrolling there, no servants passing like there would have been in every other quarter of the Bastion on any given night.

  “You need to get away,” he said with effort. “Ride for Aerach. Stay off the road, avoid anyone you see until you get to your husband’s house.”

  Where Lauresa raised his eyes to hers, she watched him, uncertain.

  “It’s two days to the frontier,” Chriani said. “Whatever horse you’re on, ride it hard, don’t stop.”

  “I won’t go without you.”

  “There’s no other way…”

  She didn’t speak Ilvani. The language of the forest and of the ancient arts and of the history of the Ilmar that predated the migrant tribes. The tongue of those who had cut her grandfather’s heart out with the blade he clutched in his hand, the finger missing, the ring hacked away so that Lauresa hadn’t heard.

  “What is it?” she whispered, and Chriani felt his vision blur, a fear he couldn’t name twisting inside him as the shadows shifted at the stairs.

  He felt the sudden surge of instinct, had Lauresa behind him even as the bow came out, an arrow nocked and shot. He saw the blur shift to one side, got a second shot off even as a dizzying kick slammed him back. He was ready this time, though. The cloak he’d taken from the crithnala he’d dropped whipped out across the blur even as it faded back. Where sand-grey cloth seemed to suddenly twist in the air as the assassin tried to disentangle himself, Chriani fought the pain and the tremor in his hand to sink two arrows into him from four strides away.

  Where a flash of steel shredded the cloak, it fell to the ground, Chriani catching a glimpse of two hooked blades in the assassin’s hands where he staggered back. The loose tunic was a grey stain against the darkness, the shimmering blur gone where it had concealed him, but for how long Chriani didn’t know.

  One arrow had taken the assassin through the side, the other sticking through his thigh, but where the cold eyes burned into him, Chriani watched as the hooked blades hacked both shafts off short, front and back. No sign that he even felt it. No words, no sound where the dark gaze flicked past to the princess behind him.

  As one, he and the assassin moved. Chriani was faster, barely. He saw the figure shift again, slipping into shadow as he ran, but whether the injuries done him had affected the sorcerous power he wielded, or whether Chriani had simply learned to focus past it, he got in front of him, firing once more, point-blank through the shoulder before he swung the bow hard across the pale figure’s throat.

  The assassin cried out this time, Chriani pulling the dagger as the pale figured blurred into view, staggering back, shimmering as he faded from sight again. Chriani cursed, scanned the vine-strewn spaces around him, but he was gone. Behind him, Lauresa was sticking to the shadows, skirting a decaying field of planking where it flanked a narrow riser along the platform’s edge.

  “There,” Chriani whispered. “Climb, quickly.”

  Lauresa was hesitant, stepping back carefully between gaps in the weathered planks, Chriani following. He kept her behind him as he pressed back. He waited, watched the silent shadows all around. To the south, he heard a griffon scream, the distant hiss of arrows through the canopy of leaves. In his mind, he felt all the pieces of this puzzle shuffle into place, new layers on top of the layers he’d seen before, never realizing how deep they went in the end.

  Lauresa had been right in noting that when they’d met outside Chanist’s camp, the assassin had gone for Chriani first. Not as a means of clearing a path to the princess, though. For the dagger. The Valnirata bloodblade that had struck Barien down and been hidden, and which was the only thing now that might halt the relentless wheels of a plot that had taken a lifetime to bring to fruition.

  Across from him, Chriani saw marks punch down into the rotting floor. Footprints, the assassin moving serpentine where he ran for them, the steel boots that seemed to give him his incredible speed breaking through the soft rot of the wood that surrounded them. Chriani was ready, two arrows unleashed quickly as he tried to focus, one flying wide, the other hitting the mark. With a muffled cry, the assassin blinked into view with a shaft in his chest, but he snapped it off with a grimace as he leaped for Chriani, both hooked blades flashing a
s he swung.

  Chriani dodged, too slow. He felt searing pain on his injured side, and there was a red haze in his eyes as he drove the bow into the assassin’s throat again, knocked him back. Too close to shoot again, he dropped the bow as he pulled the bloodblade from his belt.

  Across the decaying floor, they shifted back in a frenzied series of attacks and feints, Chriani stumbling, trying to keep Lauresa behind him, but he’d lost her suddenly in the shadows. He was conscious of the riser’s crumbling edge behind him, conscious of his left arm going numb where he tried to balance his dagger strikes, catching empty air again and again as the assassin wheeled, just out of reach.

  He felt one of the curved blades tag him at the hip, but it was the splintering wood underfoot that took him down, slipping as he tried to roll with the blow. But even as the assassin loomed over him, a single arrow suddenly slammed through his chest, spinning him as Chriani rolled and rose. Behind them, Lauresa had the bow, was trying to nock another shaft with shaking hands. Too late.

  Where the assassin leaped past Chriani, he raced for the princess, inhumanly fast. The pale figure had time to grab her arm, one blade shredding the white shift but missing her side where she pulled back, and then Chriani was on him, tearing him from Lauresa as the dagger sought for his throat but found his shoulder as he twisted away. The three of them fell together, hit the platform as one, Chriani twisting the bloodblade, feeling it shred bone as he pulled it free.

  The assassin screamed, then. Chriani rolled back to grab Lauresa’s hand, the two of them stumbling to their feet as the figure in grey rose behind them. One arm was limp, blood pouring from the shoulder where Chriani had hit deep, the other clutching the hooked blade as he staggered forward.