by Jenna Rhodes
Speech froze in her mouth. The wind she’d had knocked out of her and gotten back fled again. She could see Bistane held back on the sidelines by men wearing their black and silver and knew that the moment Tressandre had engineered for centuries came to a close.
Except that she was losing. Tressandre struck and instead of a spray of blood, sparks would fly, and Lara spin away and close back, to slash home herself. Tressandre staggered back and spun about, and Lara closed again, a hornet stinging her opponent to death with a thousand quick strikes. Perhaps not a thousand, Nutmeg found her thoughts, and wiped her dry mouth on the back of her hand and nearly sliced herself with her own knife.
“Rotten apples!” That would be a fine fix, wouldn’t it, to have survived ild Fallyn henchmen only to cut her own throat carelessly. She braced her left hand on the tree, digging her fingers into its crackled roughness, her eyes fixed on the sight of her Warrior Queen finally, finally, taking the fight to Tressandre and winning. Warmth crept through her body until she realized that every time sparks flew, Tressandre landed a blow that should have driven the life from Lara.
Lariel wore armor peeking out under her loose, white silken blouse that blood now streaked, and with each hit, a new slash revealed her protection. Armor studded with Tranta’s jewels, just as she’d worn the day she’d been struck down and sent into a deathlike sleep. Tolby had told the tale of those gems many a time, bits and pieces of Tranta’s Jewel of Tomarq. And though those bits of gem protected her again, they wouldn’t, couldn’t, last, running out of power even as the two female bodies kicking, lunging, stabbing, and whirling away would run out of stamina. Lara might be winning now, but the tide could turn and viciously. Even so, Nutmeg thought she’d never seen anything so deadly and beautiful as the duel before her. She clenched her hand tightly about the hilt of her knife, her every muscle tightening with the need to help, but knowing she could do nothing.
Then Tressandre hit and scored hard, blood flying.
Bistane threw his head back and pulled against the hold of his captors with the same futile urge. He pulled one arm free as Tressandre took to the air with a follow-up roundhouse kick, but Lara ducked under, cramped and hunched, breathing hard against the pain.
And then, then three more passes and Lara had her on the ground. Hope surged through Nutmeg, the battle over, Tressandre spitting but finished—and Lara slashed her throat apart. Blood sprayed up, and Nutmeg would have screamed but could not, the words, the wrongness stuck in her throat. Dead, finally, at last, but oh, Gods!
A wordless scream tore from her throat. Her children! What of her children? The truth to their taking died with Tressandre and Lara walked away from the deed, uncaring. No, no, no.
Hot tears spilled down her face again and she sank to one knee, shaking in every limb. Lara had her down and defeated! How could she strike fatally at the one person who knew where Evarton and Merri had been taken? How?
Sun glanced off the knife blade in her quavering hand. Nutmeg stared at it, unthinking.
No queen like Tressandre does her dirty work alone. There must be someone, somewhere, who knew what she had done and was planning. Someone.
Small hope, but she would hold on to it tightly until it grew into something bigger. Nutmeg rubbed her nose on her other sleeve and got back up. Betrayed by a Vaelinar, how could she ever have thought that Lariel would act in anyone’s interest but her own? Bistane would give her heirs of her own; she did not need two bastard half-breed children to rise to her throne. If Nutmeg wanted her children back, she would have to gain them herself.
And they would not be the first things she would take back.
Nutmeg wove her way through the last of the grove, not watching Bistane and Lara as they approached the Eye which lowered and threatened in the sky above them. She watched instead, as Tressandre’s men picked up her body, taking care and placing it within the shaded canopy that bore the ild Fallyn banner and insignia. They would have formed a watchful square about the body, but a tall, spare man came out of the depths of the tent and shooed them away, as he might children or pests. He moved into a position with head bowed and hands clasped over her, and Nutmeg might have thought he prayed. She recognized the cut of his clothes and his manner, titling him as high in Tressandre’s royal household, perhaps even her seneschal. No one saw Nutmeg as she took a place outside the tent flap, just out of view of the watcher.
Shouts rose as Bistane and Lara ordered her troops to dismantle the encampment. The watchful servant observed these actions for a moment before ducking back and bending low over Tressandre’s limp body, beginning to arrange her clothing. He spoke to the body, a running of hurried words that Meg could hardly differentiate.
“You can’t be dead, my lady, you’re too strong for this. Too stubborn. I’ve stopped the bleeding, you’ll see, I have a bit of healing in me, not much, my father tried to beat it out of me for a soldier’s ways, but I still have it, and I give it to you, to our Fort, our House. You’ll rise again, you’ll see.”
Outside, a wind began to rustle the canopy, even as Lariel’s troops started to topple the encampment, the voices of the squatters crying loudly in anger and despair. In the furor of dismantling the squatters’ homes, no one saw Nutmeg as she slipped inside.
“She took my children. Where are they?”
The seneschal raised his face to look at her.
“Do you see them by my side? A bargain made with lies is no trade. I’ll take you apart until you tell me what I need to know. She put them somewhere, and you must know what she did with them. Do they live? Did she have them killed?” And the point of Nutmeg’s long knife circled in emphasis.
The man drew himself straight. He clenched a worn piece of paper that she recognized and waved it about. “I’m Waryn ild Fallyn and the House lives. Tressandre will have her legacy yet! Your mongrels will die at our hands.” Pulling his own long knife, he lunged at Nutmeg.
She did more than duck. She threw herself on the ground, knife point down, and drove it into Waryn’s foot, twisted it, and rolled away. He screamed in pain as she leaped back to her feet, and backhanded a slash at him, across the top of his knees. He stumbled back, but her knife caught flesh and crimson cascaded. She would slice him to bits, if she had to, from the feet up until he met her Dweller height!
“You gutter rat.” Waryn limped back, breathing hard, gathering himself.
“Not gutters. My kind lives in trees.” Nutmeg felt her mouth pull into a smile as he moved again, and she parried him easily. The knives sang as they ran against each other. She let the momentum turn her about while he fought it, the torn leather of his boot hampering his movement as much as the wound. He dropped his left hand to his thigh wound, squeezing it tight, blood seeping through his fingers. Taking a great breath, he leaped at her, and caught her, his blade digging deep into her shoulder muscle. She screamed then, as much in anger as pain.
“I should let you live, to see me kill them when they arrive.” Waryn flexed in triumph, baring his torso.
She had her answer, of sorts. They still lived. They were expected. Nutmeg stood fast and plunged her blade into his stomach. With a grunt of effort, she sliced the knife up and out, stepping back as his hand went limp and he doubled over. He gave a last sputter before crumpling to the ground in a bloody pool. She calmly reached up and pulled his blade from the meat of her shoulder where it hurt, but had hit nothing more vital than a little muscle. She bent to retrieve the Writ before leaving the tent, stepping over first Tressandre ild Fallyn’s body and then that of Waryn.
She wiped the back of her hand across her face, shaking from the pain. What if he’d lied? Or she’d misunderstood him? She had to believe they were still out there. She had to.
She staggered into the sunlight as a ragged figure burst from the trees across the river and forded it with great, bounding splashes. He stopped, waving a massive war hammer over his head and crying, “I am
come to break the world!”
Bregan Oxfort stood on the banks of the Andredia, swung the hammer about his head three times, and let it fly at the portal in the sky.
Hammer and Way collided with a massive boom and a scream that sounded from a hundred hundred throats. Blazing light poured out like molten gold from a bucket, blinding in its brilliance and shocking all who saw it.
Magic spilled out from the Way as if a dam had broken.
The demon she’d come to know as Cerat stumbled through with a roar that deafened Nutmeg. He drove two people in front of him, dwarfed by his immense figure as he emerged, and he combed the land of Kerith in front of him, looking for new blood.
Chapter
Sixty-Two
HE SEARCHED. Glowing bits of sparks and embers bounced off a crude pathway arching from the Way to the banks of the Andredia, dancing and drifting through the air with fervor as though each and every one sought a target to strike. Nutmeg felt his burning touch as the demon sifted through her soul, scorched her hopes and fears, turned her inside out as if she were nothing more than a rag on the wind, made her an offer which she, jaw clamped shut against the pain and horror of Cerat, refused. He prodded at her again, opening new wounds, offering a sudden, striking hope which she almost grabbed before pushing the demon away. Her children! He offered them to her, dangling them in front of her aching soul like an auntie might offer a treat, and Nutmeg shoved him off, her sobs stuck in her throat. Torn, she almost grabbed after him, afraid to refuse but she clenched her fingers instead to stave him off. His God sparks showered about her, spitting and biting, a thousand white-hot hornets piercing her. He struck at her a third time. She screamed at the onslaught, the demon’s patience gone, his encouraging entreaties dropped, and only cold-hell promised for her and hers if she refused him again. Nutmeg wrapped herself in Dweller stubbornness, passed down in barrels by both her father and mother, and spat back the demon’s threats.
Nutmeg ducked her head and threw one arm over herself, knife still in one hand and Writ in the other as she ran to the river’s side, because she saw figures outlined in the doorway, two figures struggling. Cerat left her then. She felt raw and bared to the world, but she could see two others who fought to keep him from crossing the bridge to Kerith, and she knew them. “Grace!” she called hoarsely. “Sevryn!”
Her voice shredded on the wind which rose, circling about them, a whirlwind being called up, tearing away her calls even as Bregan sprawled on the ground, his life spilling all about him in prismatic color.
She did not see, behind her as those God sparks blanketed Tressandre ild Fallyn where Waryn had laid her out as befit his sovereign. Did not hear the gasp of unlife which issued in the midst of Cerat’s presence.
She did not see the shadows grow to envelop it. Nor did she see what rose in its place.
• • •
Bistane took Lara’s hand, noting, “Your vision was wrong,” as he stepped to her flank and they both took a stance to consider the portal and its increasingly agitated state. He noted the slashes in her clothing, the metal and crimson that showed through, and fought his desire to take her off the dueling field to home, where he would mend her yet again. But she didn’t feel the sting of the wounds yet, or suffer from blood loss, her heart’s pulse he could feel even in her hand—strong and quick, filled yet with the fury and excitement of the fight. The dart he carried in his thigh quiver remained a precaution he thanked the Gods he had not had to use. Not that she would have thanked him if he had sent her back to the imprisoning sleep of the king’s rest. He took a deep thankful breath for that respite. She had won the right to be here, so he abided and teased her instead.
Lara’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, wrong?”
“You’re not alone. I’m in this with you. I have your back, and you have mine.”
She felt her expression lighten. “Indeed, you do.” She put out her left hand to cover his, and he squeezed it lightly in answer. “I can’t guarantee you—”
He raised their joined hands to his lips. “You’re the Warrior Queen, and I your Warlord. We have this moment to live. And, if there are others to be savored, I’ll still be at your side.” Bistane grinned, suddenly. “Even if I have to haunt you as my father does me.”
She laughed softly at that. “Fair warning. I intend to take you at your word.”
“May I be held accountable by you for all the words I’ve ever said, or will say. Or sing!” He leaned his head forward and lightly kissed the end of her nose. Before she could react, he swung her about by their clasped hands and she came about facing sky.
She saw the War Hammer Rakka slung through the air, the spindly figure dressed in little more than tattered clothes except for the bright bronze metal structure that encased his leg, the elven brace. Bregan screamed in defiance and danced a mad dance as his Hammer hit the portal and it burst open, spilling a massive demon and more onto a bridge which now arched to her beloved Andredia.
“Dear Gods.”
Bistane had no response, as caught off stride as she. Shaking him off, she ran her hands over her bracers to prepare for more fighting.
“Send for troops. We don’t know what will come through. Raymy or fighters, plague or swords. Go now!”
Bistane let out a sharp, piercing whistle that caught the ears of those dismantling the squatters camp and the few who held ild Fallyn fighters at bay in surrender. He had no intention of leaving her alone to face whatever might come. Her soldiers turned and saw the unbelievable, even as they raised their swords to rally. Bistane called for a messenger, and one of them angled off, heading for his tethered mount.
She did not sense the figure behind her, at her flank. She did not see a shadow darting in from behind. No glint of warning came off the sword in hand, even as it drove between the two of them. Buffeted aside, Bistane staggered back. Lara let out a small cry of pain and astonishment as the sword slammed into her three more times. Bistane wrenched them apart, and then Tressandre whirled about on Bistane, knocking him to the ground with a blow from the hilt. The guardsmen and guarded scattered in disarray, the ild Fallyn recovering quickly.
Tressandre reached down and grabbed a handful of Lara’s hair, silvery blonde unlike her own which fell as a dark, smoked gold, and she let out a bark of a laugh. Her complexion so pale as to be more gray than porcelain, her lips white lines in a face no longer beautiful, she looked like the Cold Lady herself as Lara’s blood spurted onto her booted feet.
As quickly as she’d hit, her men fell on Bistane and dragged him up on one knee as he called out.
“Told you. I can’t be killed. Unlike you.” And she shook Lara’s body. “No mourning for you. No lying in state. No weeping.” She began to walk to the river, dragging Lara with her.
Without a sound, Bistane lowered his head and lunged at Lariel, his hand brushing her as Tressandre dragged the body past. Tackled at his ankles, he got his hands on her for but a moment before her men hauled him back, their hands and feet battering him until he curled into a defensive position and felt warm blood coursing down the side of his skull. He did not make a sound other than grunts as they pummeled him, but he did not take his eyes off the procession.
Filled with—what was it? Not life, no, because she knew her heart did not drum in her chest, but brimming with a sinister energy as she savored the triumph of her kill. It had been offered her and she’d taken it, without a second thought. Whatever swept her up and brought her back, she intended to worship. She’d been damned and died. She’d been there long enough to know that hell indeed lay cold and deeply dark ahead of her some day.
Now she was returned, returned in triumph. Tressandre did not miss a beat on her determined march, though the smell of their blood, Lariel’s and Bistane’s, filled her head with a throbbing need that she burned to quench. She wanted to fall on her knees and lap the warm, coppery syrup. It increased with every imprint of her boot upon
the ground, a drummer that sought to marshal her into its force. She heard a faint moan from her captive as her form bumped over rock and stone, toward the Andredia. The noise gave her pause. She hated to make the same mistake her enemy had made. Was there enough left of Lara to destroy further? Perhaps put her to a pyre and light it well and thoroughly?
Tressandre shook off the thought. She had a kingdom to claim, and the Eye of the Portal yawned over her, filled with far more potential than the unlamented Warrior Queen of Larandaril. She could hear a battle at the Way’s threshold and knew she could steer its fate. She stopped at the Andredia and took a breath, quelling her blood lust as best she could. This afterlife she’d brought on herself had some interesting demands, but she would conquer it as well. She eyed her latest conquest in satisfaction, noting the blood pooling slowly on trampled grass, the skin growing ever paler, the look of faint surprise etched on Lariel’s face, the look of defeat that had escaped Tressandre so many times and that she had obtained at last. Now she had a demon to attend.
Tressandre looked down at the muddy bank where bluer than blue water lapped, in waiting. “Blessed river. There have been many rumors about you. Let’s see if this one is true. Here’s my blood sacrifice to seal our vows.” And she kicked Lara’s crimson body into the waters.
