Heat rushed through him like the wind, transforming him into something beyond his own flesh.
Nic felt himself shifting, like a Sabor or a Stregan, only this shift made him more of what he was, what he was supposed to be, what all Fae were meant to be.
Brilliant ruby light bathed him.
He heard the shouts below as he almost struck the ground—then swept upward into the waiting sky.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
ARON
On the battlements of Triune, standing between the bodies of two Altar warbird soldiers he had just slain, Aron’s short sword slipped from his numbed, damaged fingers. The blade clattered off the battlements to the courtyard below, coming to rest beside more dead soldiers and the bloody carcass of a Great Roc, upon which Tek was happily feasting.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Nic, spreading a pair of massive wings and taking flight over the battlefield.
The wings seemed so fragile, like they might be made of gossamer and silken feathers, but they lifted him higher, higher, over soldiers who were shouting and pointing and throwing down their swords.
Sabor shifted back to human form.
So did Stregans.
In moments, it seemed all of Eyrie had focused its attention on the sky, on the first Fae with wings the land had known since the mixing disasters robbed them of their heritage and legacies.
Nic’s ruby glow was so powerful Aron knew that the colors could be seen on either side of the Veil, likely even by those who had no mind-talents at all. The magnitude of that power drew Aron’s senses through the Veil, and heightened his awareness of every detail of the tableau below him.
The Mab soldiers stopped fighting, dropped to one knee, and lowered their heads, placing one fist on their chest in a gesture of fealty to this, their new dynast lord and king. Cobb and Ross soldiers knelt with them, and many from Altar and Brailing as well.
With his Veil-enhanced sight, Aron picked out Bolthor Altar standing beside the body of a woman on the far hillside. The body’s burned features were beyond recognition, but not the ruby dragon head pendant still clinging to her ruined forehead.
This was Lady Mab, Nic’s mother, whom Aron believed had been struck down by some sort of giant snake, then finished off by Dari or Kate when they attacked the hillside in their Stregan forms.
Bolthor Altar threw his blade to the ground beside Lady Mab’s body, sank down beside the dead woman, put his face in his hands, and began to cry.
On the field stretching below him, his sons were being taken into custody by Mab and Cobb and Ross commanders, and none were resisting. Lord Brailing’s heirs were nowhere to be seen, and Aron figured all of them for dead.
Before his eyes, Eyrie had just changed, and changed forever, moving back to a better time, yet forward toward the future Nic was calling to them with the magnificence of his graal and the wondrous flapping of his wings.
Stormbreaker stirred, unable to come to consciousness until Aron lent him a bit of energy. When he opened his eyes and saw Nic floating above him, it seemed too much for the man, and he passed out cold even with Aron trying to help him stay awake.
Dari stood with her twin in a circle of Stregans, and Aron almost connected with her—but her twin caught his attention instead. Kate was gazing at him, her mind open and welcoming as he joined his essence with hers. So familiar, like Dari, but different as well. Warm and soft, without the prickly edges he had come to associate with Dari. Without thinking about it, Aron offered Kate a portion of his energy to help keep her mind settled, and she gratefully accepted it.
I’m glad you didn’t kill me, Kate said, and Aron felt very glad of that, too. More than ever, he understood Dari’s drive to save Kate, and why Lord Ross and even Platt, the king of the Stregans, would take such risks to protect her even though she had periods of madness. Perhaps he could help her with those difficult times, if she wished him to do so.
Yes, he was glad to know Kate, and to see Dari safe, and to see Nic so transformed. Aron was even happy, despite all the death wrought by this terrible battle. He felt happy for everything in the universe until a moment later, when Nic’s amazing red glow sparked and faltered, and a fit seized him in midair.
The storm in Nic’s mind moved so fast, so forcefully that Aron and Dari could do nothing to save him as he tumbled out of the sky.
Aron felt his insides plummeting to earth with Nic even as he yelled and grabbed the edges of the battlements, almost hurling himself outward to try to catch his friend.
Nic struck the ground with such force that stones and rock sprayed in every direction, sending soldiers and Sabor to their knees, faces covered to shield their eyes.
Dari’s screams echoed through Aron’s agonized mind as he tore his awareness out of the Veil and hurled himself past stunned Stone Brothers and Sisters, running toward the battlement’s nearest stairs. He found the steps and pounded to the ground, bursting into the courtyard only to run headlong into a wall of blue graal energy that hit him so hard he tumbled backward.
Aron’s grief and rage drove him to rip his dagger free of its sheath before he even got to his feet to locate his attacker.
There.
In the archway of the main gate and keep, retreating onto the byway.
Canus the Bandit took a few steps, then waited for Aron, his many veils and wraps flapping in the light-afternoon breeze.
Aron hated the man almost as much as he hated the sunlight that shouldn’t be, that shouldn’t exist, now that Nic had fallen. Aron’s gaze shifted toward the opening that led to the battlefield and his friends, but he saw only graal energy, sapphire blue like his own.
The meaning was clear enough.
Canus the Bandit had the Brailing mind-talent, almost as strong as Aron’s, and not depleted by battle and graal attacks.
The man intended for their combat to happen here and now, no matter what it cost Aron or Nic or anyone else.
Aron roared at the veiled man and hurtled toward him, pursuing him onto Triune’s main byway.
First strike would be the last strike if Aron had his way, even if he had to carve the bastard into pieces with nothing but one slim silver dagger.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
ARON
Canus the Bandit ran with a speed and grace Aron didn’t expect, and he had to push himself to near past his limits to keep pace. They pelted past the House of the Judged and farther into Triune, heading, it seemed, for the High Masters’ Den.
The castle grounds seemed unnaturally still and quiet after the clamor of the battlefield. The crunch of boots grinding into rocks seemed to echo off the distant walls. Familiar smells washed over Aron. The soil of the fields, the stink of the barns. Old smoke from the forge, and a lingering yeasty sweetness drifting down from the main kitchens.
This was home, and this man was nothing more than a marauder, an invader no better than the Brotherless Altar soldiers who lay dead in the entrance courtyard.
At the last turn in the road, Canus broke to the right, and Aron gave chase, gripping his dagger so tightly that the hilt drew blood from his palm.
His senses were clearing with each step, and his graal strength growing.
Somehow, he wasn’t surprised when the Bandit plunged off the main byway and made his way toward the ring of stones marking the Shrine of the Mother. It seemed a fitting place for this battle, and if the Goddess truly existed outside Pravda Altar’s perversion of her likeness, perhaps she would watch this fight and bless Aron’s victory.
Aron sprinted around the first monolith to find Canus waiting for him a few yards away, swords sheathed but a dagger already drawn and palmed. He raised it to the ready position.
Aron hurled his dagger and struck the Bandit’s hand with such force that his wrist cracked and the blade he held flew wild and broke against the nearest pillar of rock.
Canus grabbed his injured wrist, then turned it loose and let his damaged arm hang loose at his side.
“Im
pressive,” he murmured as Aron grabbed for swords and daggers he no longer had. The only weapon he now possessed was the white pebble in the bag at his waist, the one marked with the Bandit’s name.
With his good hand, Canus unsheathed his curved desert blade.
Aron’s heart raced as he judged the distance of the dagger he had thrown.
Too far.
He could hurl stones from the ground, but that would last only so long before the Bandit overpowered him.
Canus raised his blade, then turned the strange sword and tossed it on the ground.
It landed at Aron’s feet with a loud clatter.
He snatched it up, holding it with both fists to judge its weight and balance. He was unsure why his quarry had given him such an advantage, but he didn’t take time to wonder long.
Canus drew his ancient-looking military sword, an old Guard weapon, and held it at the ready. With three of his fingers, he beckoned for Aron like a training master daring an apprentice to charge.
Aron flew at his foe, going low to miss the arc of the taller man’s swing. He gave Stone’s battle-cry as he slashed and missed, slashed and missed, as the Bandit stepped nimbly out of his way each time.
“That’s it,” Canus said, his voice hoarse and gravelly. “Let it out. I know you just lost your friend.”
Aron backed off, curved blade raised at an angle to deflect any sudden charges.
Once more the Bandit readied his own sword and taunted him, curling his free fingers in a gesture that said, Bring it to me, boy.
What madness was this?
Aron roared at the man and charged again, his mind focused only on killing his quarry and returning to the valley outside Triune’s walls. He struck at Canus with the wide end of the curved silver blade, but Canus met his swing and knocked the desert sword free of Aron’s grasp.
Aron swore and grabbed his stinging wrist as he lunged out of the Bandit’s range.
Sapphire graal energy flowed toward Aron, but he blocked the mental assault as fiercely as Canus had stopped the swing of his curved blade.
“Let me speak to you,” Canus murmured. “Mind to mind. You won’t accept what I have to say any other way.”
Aron snarled, drawing on his own legacy. If the Bandit fought with graal, then so could he. He threw the force of his energy at Canus with only one thought, one command.
DIE!
Canus met Aron’s graal command with a burst of his own sapphire energy, deflecting it but not returning it. The man stumbled from his efforts, and his sword hand trembled.
Aron threw himself toward the curved blade the Bandit had bestowed to him, then knocked from his grasp. He snatched it from the ground and spun, cutting through the Bandit’s veils and robes and opening the skin at the top of the man’s chest.
Righting himself and finding his balance, Aron glanced at his foe’s wound. His head snapped back from the sight. The ridges of scars, terrible corded pieces of flesh, now with blood staining them an even darker red.
The Bandit’s scarred hand covered his wound, his injured wrist hanging limp against the mangled flesh. “Don’t,” he whispered, his voice reaching Aron on both sides of the Veil. “You’ll regret this.”
Aron’s next charge was twice as fast and fierce, so frenzied he almost didn’t hear the Bandit add, “Seth always did, when he acted out of rage instead of reason.”
Aron was already swinging the terrible curved blade at the Bandit’s midsection, intending to disarm him or open his belly and watch him bleed out his life like wine from a sliced wineskin.
He tried to pull the blow, but he couldn’t do it.
Canus the Bandit stepped back from the swing and met the curved blade with his old Guard sword.
The sword’s blade shattered and the man’s other wrist broke under the force of the blow. The sword hilt fell from his useless grip even as Aron shouted and threw his sword to the side. He reached for the veils covering the Bandit’s face, and Canus made no attempt to stop him.
Still shouting with disbelief, Aron gripped the cloth and tore it free, but he had already seen the man’s eyes.
Black eyes, bright and powerful and stern, yet also kind. Familiar eyes, so painfully real and known to his heart.
Wolf Brailing’s eyes.
Aron knew his father even before he saw the tufts of brown hair clinging to the man’s scarred head, or the rows of dav’ha marks, barely visible beneath the burn scars the veils and scarves had concealed from him.
Sobs choked Aron as his father took him into his scarred arms and held him tight against his chest. Their thoughts flowed together, and Aron saw his father battling the Brailing Guard who killed their family, only to fall beneath their many blows, and find himself barely alive and clawing his way from beneath his dead loved ones on the funeral pyre in the woods.
He burned with his father as he healed, and traveled with him mile upon mile as he searched for Aron, madness and grief driving him even harder than stubborn will and determination. He understood how his father came to see the suffering of the people in Dyn Brailing, and rise to the defense of the goodfolk even though it meant leaving off his quest for Aron for days at a time, then weeks, then cycles.
Wolf Brailing had taken the name of Canus, of the ancient wolves of Brailing, as he prowled the countryside and took down renegade Guard. He restored food and safety to those who sought his aid, then worked with ever larger groups of men in Dyn Brailing and Dyn Cobb, training them to defend farm and family from the very soldiers who had sworn to protect them.
Yes, his father had made mistakes, kills he shouldn’t have made, and thefts that weren’t strictly necessary for his quest—but Aron couldn’t see him as a criminal. He couldn’t agree with the Judgment that had put his father’s stone in Aron’s hands.
“You have to kill me,” Wolf Brailing whispered in Aron’s ear, squeezing his damaged wrists into Aron’s back. “You can’t let me walk away, or you’ll be an oathbreaker like me.”
Aron clung to his father and cried, hearing the truth, knowing it with his graal and rejecting it nonetheless.
“Help me hold my sword and I’ll do it myself,” his father said as he gently separated himself from Aron. Tears streamed across his scarred cheeks. “Just seeing you again, that’s been enough. Knowing what a powerful warrior you’ve become, and how much good you’ll do Eyrie in its time of greatest need. Hand me my blade, son, and let’s have done with this.”
Aron couldn’t stop his own tears, and he couldn’t kill his father, no matter what that meant for his father’s future, or his own. There had been too much killing and death already. Aron wanted no more of it, by his own hand or anyone else’s.
“I won’t,” he said, knowing he’d have to think quickly, or his father would find some way to spare Aron from breaking his vows to Stone.
With all the graal strength he had left to him, Aron struck at his father fast and hard, using a single word, limiting his command only by a mental image of the Adamantine stretching far and wide, mile after mile of dense woods, in which only an old hunter like Wolf Brailing could survive.
Flee, he commanded, watching as his sapphire graal struck his father like a swinging anvil, driving him backward out of the Shrine of the Mother, then sending him toward the gates of Triune at a dead run.
Aron dropped to the ground, drawing his knees to his chest.
He wanted to rip his gray robes off his shaking body and run after his father, but Wolf Brailing had a better chance of reaching the Adamantine alone. Aron doubted his father would take his own life once he left Dyn Brailing, for his death would do nothing to save Aron now.
Though Aron could keep the secret of his crime for a short time, he knew his own truth-seeking graal would give him no peace until he confessed to Stormbreaker, who would be the new Lord Provost of Stone as soon as the dead were counted and laid to rest.
“Oathbreaker,” Aron said aloud, knowing he would be given no quarter, no mercy for sparing his Judged, even if that Jud
ged was his own flesh and blood. The order and fairness of Stone wouldn’t allow it.
Aron himself wouldn’t allow it.
Oathbreaker.
That was his identity now, the full sum of it.
He forced himself to rise and walk, though he wished he could do anything else. Only the desire to see to the welfare of his friends and family of the heart kept him moving forward, back to the castle’s shattered gates.
Aron left Stone’s stronghold, his own ruined home, passing by groups of apprentices and the sheltered returning from the Ruined Keep and running out onto the battlefield to take stock of what had happened in Eyrie. He even brushed past Zed and Raaf, who stood with Windblown, grieving over Lord Baldric’s body. Aron didn’t speak to them, for he didn’t want to taint them with his own crime, should they sense what he had done.
He had eyes only for the small group across the moat, clustered near the center of the battlefield, guarded by soldiers and Sabor and Stregans alike.
Aron knew he would do what he could for Dari and Kate and Nic, if somehow Nic had survived. He would thank Lord Ross and Lord Cobb and Platt, and Snakekiller, if she, too, had lived through the chaos.
Seeing them all once more was more than he deserved, but he would take this small liberty before he gave himself over to Stormbreaker’s sword, and hoped for a quick and merciful blow.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
NIC
Nic woke screaming, tasting thick elixir on his lips, far stronger than he had ever been given before. A cloudless sky stretched above him, and he remembered, and he knew he was still lying broken on the battlefield at Triune.
Dari knelt at his side, drawing back the wineskin she had emptied into his mouth to ease his suffering as he came back to consciousness. She dabbed a bit of blood from his bare chest and arms with her sleeve and tried to smile at him. Nic loved her for the attempt, even if she couldn’t achieve her goal.
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