The Queen of Storm and Shadow

by Jenna Rhodes

  “I’m not aware of such actions now, not even from the Vaelinar.”

  “War comes,” proclaimed the high, thready tones of the whirlwind. “You are warned that we will not allow it.”

  “Frankly.” Bregan cleared his throat. “From what I know of the Vaelinar, you may not have much choice or power against them.”

  A spray of gravel flung into their faces and both flinched aside, covering their faces as the whirlwind swept in angrily. Abayan had a thought in which to breathe deep and then he knew nothing until the Wind God spat him out, Bregan tumbling after. They grabbed each other by the forearms to steady themselves and found, Diort on his feet and Bregan on his knees, that the primal force had left them on an island, surrounded by the boiling sands of chaos. If either swayed or stumbled, they would pitch into the uneasy power churning about them. He had no idea what the magic might do to him, but Diort held a distinct image of the flesh melting off his bones until nothing was left of him but a skeleton bobbing in the magical discharge.

  “I am one of the bones of the world,” the God told them. “We are sunk deep into Kerith and we do not parade about as mortals to gain affection or attention. We are what we are. Take heed of our anger and our warning.”

  Then, as quickly as they’d been set down, they were plucked up again, air sucking from his lungs and drying his eyes with an incredible itch. The whirlwind bore Diort off and the only way he even knew Bregan had been brought along was through the grip holding to his forearm. He curled his fingers tighter, taking care not to be ripped away. Just when all the air had been dredged from his lungs, and his mind went light and dizzy, the whirlwind dropped him, gasping, upon the ground. Diort saw Bregan’s brace flash in the sunlight as it returned to the metal from which it had been forged.

  Bregan rolled to one side and let go of Diort’s arm. His eyes lifted. “Are you still going to kill me?”

  Diort had no answer he wished to give.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Seven

  “HANDS UP! Now down. Center your body and be ready to face me again. No cheating by looking ahead. Those moments when you look ahead, you’re not in your body, you’re in mine. I can take you out in that pause. All I or any opponent needs is a moment’s hesitation from you. Live in the now, Lara, and come at me! Now!” Bistane wove in front of her, his voice cracking out orders like a whip, snapping her attention to him. Her stamina fell far short of where it had been and that worried him. He drove her because he had to.

  Sweat dotted her forehead and exertion colored her cheeks and she fought for breath she shouldn’t have needed as she dropped back into her ready stance to face him. She carried a throwing dagger in her left hand and her sword in her right, using the one to parry with and the other to lead and strike; he faced her with the same blades. Her left arm trembled a little with strain. Lara shook it off impatiently. Instead of waiting for him to make the next move, she came at him. Over, under, and with a swing about, her booted foot aiming for the solar plexus, she nearly caught him.

  Nearly. “Good move if you’d succeeded. But you didn’t, and that put you out of balance and open.”

  “Cold hell, I know that.”

  “So why did you do it?” He closed on her and the blades whinged as they met, and he held her on the last cross, face close to face, so close he could see her nostrils flare as she sucked in a deep breath.

  “Because if it had worked, you’d be doubled over and at my mercy.”

  “But only if it worked.” He leaped back a step and into a new position, his flank to her, offering very little in the way of target. Before she could totally register the change, he swung about with a foot box of his own, clipping the side of her face. Lara dropped to one knee with an oof, but she covered her body with both her blades in shield position.

  “Good.”

  “You dropped me.”

  “And, if you were at peak physical condition, you’d have rolled with the kick, hit the ground, rolled again, and taken out the back of my knee.”

  “All that?”

  “Hopefully.”

  Licking dry and cracked lips, she stood up and gathered both her blades into her right hand, putting her other palm up. “Break. I am beyond thirst.”

  He retreated to the end of the training arena and stowed his weapons. Leaning back on his elbows, Bistane watched her down a goblet of water. She slammed the cup down when finished.

  “If I had been in peak physical condition, we’d be done. We would have fought each other to a standstill already.” She wiped her mouth and then her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “Indeed.” He noticed how sweat dampened her shirt and made it cling to her slender form, the fabric cupping her breasts and hugging the curve of her legs. He also could not help but notice that curves now graced her figure, much needed muscle and some reserve that she’d lost during her illness. He wanted to cross the room and bring her up against his chest, to feel the still racing beat of her heart against his own, and to cup his hands around her butt. Bistane turned his face away to grab up his own water but not to drink. He poured it over the top of his head, dousing away thoughts of her. “Take a break. There’s something I need to show you.”

  Her attention sharpened. “What’s wrong?”

  “Must there be something wrong?”

  “I’ve been in my bed for two years. There are bound to be many things wrong that you haven’t wanted to share with me yet.”

  “That’s a possibility, but no. This came to light recently.” He caught up the water jug and made his way to a trainer’s table. “It’s this.”

  Lariel looked at the clothing stretched across the table in front of her. “Definitely Kobrir, though faded.” She fingered a ragged edge. “Singed. Bloodstained. It has to have belonged to Sevryn.”

  “We might be able to gain proof of that.”

  “How?”

  “Your healer should know, if they ever worked on Sevryn for training injuries and the like. I am told they can differentiate blood from one patient to the next.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing, but if it can be done, do it.” She pushed her chair back away from the table, her blue-upon-blue gaze held to the bloody garments in morbid fascination. “It would be proof that they reached beyond the portal, if nothing else, although this . . .” and she stirred the rags with a nail. “Does not portend favorably.”

  “Blood never does.” Bistane stepped back to the halls and gave a shout. When one of the maids came, he told her who was wanted although not why. On his way back into the conference room, he stopped at the table to pour a drink and crossed to offer it to Lara.

  She wrinkled her nose. “You pamper me.”

  “Don’t cross your eyes at me. You lost a lot of fluid in training this morning.”

  “And have the bruises to prove it.” She sighed as she accepted the cup and downed half the juice in three gulps.

  “Less bruises than you gathered last week.”

  “Is that your way of telling me I’m making progress?”

  He inclined his head. Whatever he might have added was interrupted as Healer Sarota hurried into the room, Farlen Drebukar on her heels. For a brief moment, Lara looked at Farlen and thought she saw his uncle Osteen, and her pulse jumped. It was not that she didn’t remember Osteen had died but it was the way Farlen moved, a huge, self-assured block of a man. Farlen had had his tentative years with her, and she realized that while she slept, Osteen’s nephew had come into his own. That realization filled her with relief. Another solid friend to count on.

  Sarota’s face lost color as she looked down where Lara had the garments spread. Without saying a word, she emphasized what the rest of them knew instinctively as warriors and fighters: no one lost that much blood and thrived. Perhaps not even survived.

  “Who,” the healer asked as she came to a stop.

  “We are
hoping you can tell us.”

  Her jade-and-gray eyes looked up. “Only if I treated them before, and perhaps not even then. It’s a portion of our Talent and not many of us have it in depth. If I may . . .” and she reached for the rags.

  Lara took her hands away as Sarota lifted them and put them to her mouth. She opened her lips and took an edge of the old, bloodstained fabric in, sucking on it briefly, before lowering it and standing with her eyes half-closed, her expression one of intense concentration.

  “More than one blood here. The second is female, I can’t tell more than that, but I would hazard the opinion that the major . . . donor . . . is male and should be Sevryn Dardanon.” Her eyes flew open, her expression aghast. “Sevryn!”

  Lara shivered as she took the shirt from Sarota’s trembling hands. “It was feared.”

  Farlen rumbled, “Where did that come from?”

  “The portal,” Bistane told him.

  “From that slit? I wouldn’t have thought even a blade of grass could make it through.”

  “It was given to me by one loyal to Lariel who is in the Returnist camp, watching events for us.”

  Farlen’s face curled in a snarl. “Bastards. I thought you cleaned the river of them.”

  “All but a handful. They wanted representation, I gave it to them.” Lariel folded the rags into a semblance of order. “We can surmise that the other blood may come from Rivergrace—or it may not. We’ve no way of ascertaining that.”

  “The woman’s was only a trace. The vast amount is from Sevryn.”

  Lara nodded at her Healer. “I understand.” She looked at Bistane. “How long has our spy had this? Was it dry or wet when it came through?”

  “Less than two weeks, I hazard, as I visit the camp regularly to keep pressure on them to vacate. As for the condition of the shirt.” He stopped with a shrug. He did not add that Lara would not look at the shirt for a week while she regained her strength and began her training with him, as if she could not quite bear to take on its burden then.

  “I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “I do,” said Farlen. “It’s a warning of more blood to come, and on this side of the portal.”

  “Do you think?”

  “I think it’s probable. Sevryn himself, or someone for him, put it through. A bloody flag. What other sense can we make of it?”

  “We can think,” Sarota said slowly, “that he himself tried to make it through and died in the attempt, leaving nothing of himself but shards of what he wore.” She met the others’ looks. “What? Could I not be right?”

  Farlen shook his heavy head. “No. He never would have tried to get back without his Rivergrace, mortally wounded or not. He’s fearless about death, that one. Even his own wouldn’t stop him, I think, especially when it came to his ladylove. If he couldn’t make it through whole, he’d make damn sure she would. I would count this as a warning, Lara, and a damned good one.”

  “And your recommended response?”

  “A troop, guarding. Birds for messaging.”

  “Round the clock.”

  “That goes without saying. And we need to bivouac more troops here, Lara. Our forces have been lean for several years now.”

  Bistane said, “I’ll bring men in.”

  “What do you think might come through that portal?”

  “Quendius went through it, with a small army of Undead behind him. Who knows what may wish to return? Whatever it is, we have to be ready. It’ll be bloody.” Farlen finished with his gaze fixed on the pile of rags between Lara’s hands. He nodded to Sarota. “We’re done here and I’ve my orders.”

  Bistane watched her. “What are you thinking?”

  She glanced up. “I’m thinking that I have to train harder.” She crossed to the weapons’ racks, knowing he would follow. The others left, and the arena grew quiet except for the faint clicks and clacks as she examined the blunt practice weapons in her hands. Her skin held its own paleness that came not from her heritage but from her weakness.

  “That’s not the way to do it.”

  Bistane pivoted. His father stood in his corner of the arena, leaning on a shield stand, face half-shadowed with a bit of a smile showing for all that. He looked the same, his ghost, and Bistane supposed that was because time, along with life, had ceased to exist for Bistel. Perhaps that was why his father’s ghost took so much interest in Bistane’s time. He visited often enough. “And what would you do?”

  “Stop looking at her like a woman. She is an opponent who must be stopped, at all costs.”

  “Lara or Tressandre?”

  “Whoever it is you are truly facing. Lara’s gift, as you noted, does her no good in a short-term fight. She can’t afford to indulge in possession if it takes her out of here and now. Tressandre will eat her up and spit out the bones and gristle.”

  “Lovely image.”

  “But true. Isn’t it?” Bistel moved a bit, out of the shadows, and as if having caught Bistane’s attention and belief, his apparition strengthened.

  “She has to go for the kill.”

  “Yes.”

  “What?” Lara pushed off from her equipment table and started across the arena floor.

  He put his back to his father’s ghost. She had his attention, again, fully. “You don’t go for the kill.”

  Her mouth twisted. “We Vaelinar kill in the dark, not the open. We can’t afford any more enemies than we already have, or any less population. That is one of the lies we tell.”

  “That’s your excuse, not hers. She’s come at you several times already; I wager that this time she won’t stop. There’s nothing to stop her. You have a paltry excuse for an heir and you’re weak. She doesn’t respect you and won’t, no matter what you do.”

  She gathered up her weapons, face tilted down as she examined her hands, the left with four fingers, and the right with all five. “You’re telling me I can’t win if I just drive her into the ground and then walk away.”

  “Yes.”

  “Death or nothing.”

  “Yes, again.”

  She swished her long sword through the air, back and forth, back and forth, in time to her thoughts perhaps. “I’m not sure Sinok would agree.”

  “The old king did play by his own rules. I take it he stopped your hand a time or two.”

  “He did. He had a timetable sunk in that crafty old mind of his, but didn’t get a chance to impart it. He died before he thought he would.”

  “Which in itself should tell you his strategies are far from perfect.” He tried not to watch a droplet of water that hung from her chin, as it dropped to the deep V of her shirt and began to slide down into the delicate valley between her breasts.

  A smile came to her reluctantly. “True.” The sword swung. “I’m not convinced there’s another way.”

  “To the death or just beating her into the ground—” He grabbed his weapons and jumped at her. “Either way, you still need training!” Their blades rang loudly against one another.

  The arena chimed with their strikes and parries and Bistane got little chance to think as Lara met him with a renewed confidence and fury. He tested her as she met him, finessed him, and returned with challenges of her own until both panted like a bellows, his clothes soaked through, and he could smell the heady aroma of her heated body. Her hair came undone from its tight knot at the back of her neck, flowing about her body in platinum-and-honey–colored streams, like a fine wine made from silver and sunlight. It masked her face and intentions, and she caught him off guard, sweeping his legs from under him.

  Bistane rolled as he went down, catching her on a backswing, bringing her to one knee beside him. He crossed his wrists over hers, pinning her weapons, and she let out a low growl of frustration.

  The sound moved him, not unlike a noise made while in the depths of lovemaking, a primal note
from deep within, and he responded to it. He rolled to his right and brought his left leg up, securing her on the floor with him, locked between his leg and his arms. Her expression narrowed in frustration and she bared her teeth as if she thought she might bite her way free. She strained against him, unable to free herself.

  “Yield.”

  “I thought this was to the death.”

  “Then you would be the one who’d died.”

  “What?” Her voice rose higher.

  He jabbed his dagger hand into her rib cage just below the swell of her breast, a sensation she had evidently not felt moments earlier. She inhaled sharply.

  “Oh.”

  “Even on her back, Tressandre ild Fallyn can be devastating, or so I’ve been told.”

  “You never slept with her.”

  “No.”

  They stayed entangled, her breath as she spoke gentle on his face.

  “Why not?”

  “I never wanted her.”

  “From what I hear, that made little difference if she wanted you.”

  Bistane shook his head slightly. “She wanted many people. She even called Sevryn to her side briefly. I believe he only went because you ordered him to.”

  “And men will talk.”

  “He didn’t, but then, he didn’t have to share details with me. Others did, from time to time, over the years. She is a voracious mistress. I believe the only man she ever really loved was Alton—which is why she will kill you.”

  “Because I killed him.”

  “Actually, it was Sevryn who dealt the killing blow, but that came out of mercy. Your jewel-studded armor blasted him into a living death, half man-half corpse burned beyond recognition. So, yes, Tressandre wants you for what happened to Alton as well as to clear the way to your title and your lands and whatever else she can grab.”

  Her hair pillowed her head on the arena floor, setting off the magnificent blues of her eyes. Her gaze rested on him, and her mouth curved softly. “You’re watching me.”