“For this, you have left the Fair Kingdoms,” he mused to Tyriel in an even voice.
“No. Not for this,” she said, shaking her head. “For freedom. And in the Fair Kingdoms, there are many who think that this is all I would be good for.” Then she stepped forward, lifting her face to the dark sky, her hands open, palms outward. “They’ve not gotten started just yet—no blood has been spilled. We have a little time.”
She studied the ground and a smile curved her lips when she found what she was seeking. Aryn saw it as well and sighed. Into the tunnels below the city they were going. Jaren closed his eyes briefly and said, “If I were not loyal to you, Princess—”
“I’m no Princess any longer,” she said easily, taking the iron cross-gate cover in her hands and lifting it easily before either man reached her side to do it. “I left my father’s side and his home, his lands and the title he tried to secure for me. You need not come with me if you do not choose, Jaren.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “If I were not loyal to you, Princess, and your father, I believe I would strangle you for even thinking I would follow you in that cesspit. Perhaps my loyalty is misplaced. Perhaps I should take you back—”
She slid him a cocky glance and said, “Perhaps you should try living in the real world instead of the Fair Kingdoms, Jaren.” And then she leaped lightly down into the dark maw, landing on her feet and as Aryn jumped down behind her, she held out one hand. In it, a ball of white light formed to light their way. It softened to a golden yellow as Jaren came down behind them.
Aryn said, “Someone may see to the cover—”
But Jaren had lifted one hand, and as Aryn spoke the cover was floating gently down to settle over the hole, covering their passing as if it hadn’t happened. Jaren was staring around him, eyeing a rat as he blandly said, “The real world. If this is the real world, ‘tis glad I am that I live in the Fair Kingdoms, Princess.” He’d paid no attention as the cover had settled over the hole, blocking off the dim light from above.
Tyriel ignored him and beckoned to Aryn. Aryn moved closer to her and Jaren fell in step behind him. “Can Irian protect you against most magick?” she asked as they started down the narrow passage. “He protected you against the sorcery that night, but what about elemental magery? Enchantment?”
Aryn felt the soft rustle in his mind as Irian moved out of his ‘resting place’ and then the enchanter shimmered into view, laughing softly. “I am an enchanter, lady of the Jiupsu. A sorry one I would be if I could not protect him against enchantment. But I would have to borrow his body and blood for a time.”
“A time?” Tyriel and Aryn asked in unison, doubtfully. Jaren studied him with curious eyes.
Irian laughed, a deep, husky laugh that filled the tunnel and made both Aryn and Tyriel shiver. Jaren just continued to stare at the enchanter. “A time, a few moments. Long enough to draw blood and raise wards,” he said, smiling slowly at Aryn’s obvious discomfort. “’Tis a sad day when I must beg permission to protect my ward, Aryn.”
Aryn asked grudgingly, “What must I do?”
Irian moved closer and Aryn felt the enchanter settle inside him, but not taking him over, more like he was sliding inside his skin with Aryn.”Watch…learn…remember,” Irian purred inside his head. “First, we draw the blade. His name was Asrel. Once. Long ago. Much magick had to be forged into him to make him withstand the ages. He belonged to my father—”
Images swirled inside Aryn’s head as he drew the blade—the land much more primitive, wilder, newer, a man, similar to Irian forging a blade, breathing magick and life and blood into the blade as he shaped the enchanted iron while a wide-eyed youth looked on from the safety of the yard.
Blood, death, mayhem, a young girl’s scream, the father’s sightless eyes, a woman, Irian’s mother, somehow Aryn knew, who lay dead, her body raped and battered and mutilated before they granted her death. And the youth, not even fifteen, taking up the sword.
“Asrel.” Irian whispered the blade’s name as Aryn whirled the blade in front of him, almost hypnotized, remembering. No, reliving Irian’s memories. “We must place our palm along the blade’s edge, my brother, but we canna cut too deep. Do not be worrying, though, Asrel will heal the wound. He always has before.” And Aryn remembered that he had done this before, with Irian controlling him, and then blocking the memories.
Aryn barely felt the sharp metal slice through the toughened flesh of his palm and he stared at the welling blood for a long moment before Irian guided him into sheathing the blade with his uninjured hand and smearing his index finger through the blood. “If we were protecting the ground we watched, it would be a circle we paced. But we ward ourselves. Gather earth, spit, and salt.”
“I don’t carry salt,” Aryn said. His voice sounded loud. Too loud.
Irian laughed. “Aye, but you do. Look in your belt, my brother. What kind of—”
“…Enchanter would you be if you let your ward go out without salt,” Aryn finished in a mumble as he reached into his belt and rifled through it. And lo and behold, a small vial of salt. Fine-grained, and worth a small fortune. Cupping his bleeding fist to keep the blood from spilling, he added the salt, the earth and then spat into his hand, listening to Irian’s voice and making the paste with a curl of his lip. He dimly heard Tyriel laugh. “The fastidious enchanter,” she murmured to Jaren. “Oh, wouldn’t he hate earth witchery?”
He was also distantly aware of Irian’s amused chuckle but he was too focused on the heat in his soul, something he hadn’t ever felt before. “That’s the magick, boy. It’s becoming a part of you¼the more we do together, the more it becomes a part of you,” Irian said softly. Aryn felt Irian settle more firmly inside his body and realized he was just a watcher now as Irian’s magick took over. “Not mine¼ours¼and soon¼it will be yours.”
Symbols etched onto Aryn’s face, wrists and hands. One on his chest. Irian’s deep, guttural voice echoed out of Aryn’s mouth and foreign words filled the tunnel as the runes on Aryn’s skin started to seep into his body. The heat started to spread outward and took on color and form, a silvery blue in the corner of Aryn’s eyes that disappeared every time he tried to turn and focus on it.
“The ward. And you can see it. Enchantment takes its hold on you, more and more,” Irian mused as he left Aryn’s body with a sigh and shimmered back into view. He bowed to Tyriel and said, “He is protected against any magick that may be thrown at him—save for mind magick. The protection from mind magick has always come from the blade. Asrel’s magick still holds, after all these years. A fine blade, like none other in the world. Only the Jiupsu could have forged such a blade of steel and magick and have it hold after all this time.”
Jaren turned to look at them, his dark-green eyes gleaming against his pale skin. “We must go—something calls to me,” he murmured. “A child, suffering and screaming.” He started to run lightly down the tunnel, his feet flying soundlessly over the dirt, so fast Aryn could not keep pace with him.
Tyriel followed, swearing under her breath and Aryn took up the rear, casting one glance at what little he could see of the sky through the grid of the iron cover. He quickly lost sight of the elves but continued to run, trusting his night vision and the ghostly glow of Irian at his side. “Something is amiss, brother. I feel much anger, much hatred.”
When he barreled around the corner, he saw Tyriel bracing Jaren away from the wall, her chin up and her eyes narrowed as she arrogantly said, “As your Princess, I command you to step down.”
“Then I renounce my—”
“Mecaro! Esiyencio!” she rasped, gesturing with one hand toward him and the taller elf’s eyes narrowed as he opened his mouth but no sound came out. He started to lift a hand but froze. “Ceano mora fovan.”
“High Elvish hasna changed much—silence, still your tongue. Do not move,” Irian translated with a smile. “An odd package, this gypsy-elf. Not just an elemental mage, like she tried to tell me. She bespelled him well
and truly.”
But Aryn heard little the enchanter said.
“Do you think I cannot feel her crying out?” Tyriel said, her eyes gleaming with tears, her voice husky and deep. “There is a girl with fae blood in there, aye, I feel it. But more, there is a child in there, innocent and hurting, but rushing in there blindly will only get her killed, Jaren. You are De Asir, one of the legendary assassins of the Fair Kingdoms, a vengeance killer. You know this. Think with your head, not your heart. That is what she needs.”
Then she merely blinked and Jaren swore, his hand snapping out, grabbing her neck. He whirled and pinned her against the wall quicker than Aryn’s eyes could track, but he had already drawn his sword, unaware he had even moved until his blade was at Jaren’s neck, before Jaren had so much as opened his mouth.
“Be at ease, Aryn,” Tyriel said, smiling slightly. “He means me no harm.”
Without even glancing at Aryn, Jaren whispered savagely, “If you were not right, I would kill you for what you might have cost her.” Then he released her and stepped back, his eyes never leaving Tyriel’s face. “Every second we wait takes her closer to things worse than death.”
She smiled, once, sadly. And then she drew a small blade and pierced her flesh. “Viastra…”
The earth parted and a small orb floated up, revealing a teenaged girl with wild, frightened eyes and a circle of men who paid as much attention to her as they would to a pig trussed over a fire. “Viearne,” Tyriel whispered, turning to look at the wall.
The earth started to move and part.
“The lights will dim. Aryn, you will have to let Irian in enough so that he may guide your movements a little. We must move fast. They have cut her and she bleeds. Badly, she bleeds. I can smell it, feel it, the earth reeks with it. She needs healing,” Tyriel said quietly. Her body trembled minutely and her eyes fluttered closed for a brief second.
As the wall of earth that separated them thinned down to the manmade barrier, Tyriel indicated in trader’s sign that they be silent, though all knew. Then she whispered, “Kebasti.”
An explosion shook the ground, for miles around it seemed. They rushed in as the lights went out, the fire died and everything went black. Men shouted and hurled questions but didn’t realize it was an attack as Aryn felt Irian settle behind his eyes like a hand inside a glove. A man stumbled into him and set up the alarm. Sword drawn, Aryn took him down and turned to face another, snarling as he smelled the blood staining this man’s robe.
Someone was chanting and Jaren shouted out Tyriel’s name as he tried to mark her location in the darkness. Moving, searching by instinct alone, he found the girl, and clasped her to his chest. Protecting her with his body, he spun her away from the danger. Irian started to speak through Aryn’s mouth but Tyriel said quietly, commandingly, “This one is mine, enchanter.”
A man lit a fire and light came back into the room as Aryn turned to face two men rushing blindly at him. He snarled at them tauntingly and laughed when the magicks they flung at him hit his ward and dissolved. Another man reached for him with a hand that glowed and swirled. A ghostly hand reached out of the mists and grabbed the man’s hand and that hand turned gray, and withered, spreading up his arm, until his entire body was encompassed by it and he fell to the floor dead.
Tyriel smiled slowly, coldly, moving in on the man who had started to chant. “Mecaro, you perverted, evil wretched thing. Esiyencio, before I cut your tongue out myself,” she purred, placing one foot in front of the other as she advanced on him, drawing the long slim blade at her waist. His eyes widened as she faced him and let him see, truly see what she was. “Oh, but it has been a long time since I have had the pleasure of dealing with scum such as you.”
The man’s blood-red hair whipped back from his face as an unseen wind filled the chamber. His hands moved, almost elf-quick, and a cut appeared on Tyriel’s face. She gasped and pressed the back of her hand against it. “Now that wasn’t very nice,” she said, studying the blood that stained her hand. It trickled down her cheek, her neck, as she moved closer. “Ceano mora fovan.”
And as Jaren had done, the man went stock-still, frozen in place as Tyriel paced a long, slow circle around him. “Now, what to do with you? Send you to the Soulless Planes? The demons there so love to feast on the flesh of the living. Perhaps we could let the—”
Something knocked her down, unseen, unfelt, but there all the same. A black, stinking evil filled the room, and Tyriel’s eyes narrowed as she climbed to her feet. “Bad, bad little mortal…calling up a demon, don’t you know what they can do to you if they don’t catch their prey? You become the prey.” Turning, she tried to track the new creature that had let itself into the chamber.
“I do not fear the darkness,” she whispered as the amber moonstone at her neck started to gleam. But the moonstone’s gleaming paled in comparison to the glowing from the pendant next to it. The crucifix glowed as though it had taken the moon within it, silvery white, lighting up the chamber and casting a glow onto the man in front of her as she said, “I have nothing to fear from you. Show yourself.”
She felt the amusement coming from the man who was held, still and silent, by her bonds. Smiling, she felt his amusement turn into dismay and shock as her order was obeyed. “Demons feed on fear. Their power comes from it. Their illusions stem from it—he is not truly invisible, on this plane, or any other. Not since you summoned him here. I do not fear him and that steals his power.”
The shape forming in front of her was hardly a frightening one. It was a gleaming white spear of ivory beauty. Until she looked into its eyes and saw the very fires of hell gleaming there. “Leave me to the master, magicked one, and I will not harm you,” it rasped, turning its angry eyes to the man who had summoned it.
Tyriel shook her head. “As much as we’d like to, that cannot happen. He deserves the death you would mete him, but then you would not be bound to him or any place or thing. And what creature, mortal or fae, deserves that, other than him and his ilk?”
“It is not your fight, go now.” The gleaming demon turned away.
She studied his horned head, the spiked shoulders, his long, oddly slender form so stretched and out of proportion. Her eyes closed and she remembered. “Mevitecaz.”
The demon froze.
“Mevitecaz.”
He whirled to face her with a roar and lunged for her. Throwing up her hands, she braced herself just as the ward formed and he struck it. “The elvin kin hold the Book of Demons. We all must know it. I know who you are and why you were banished from the Fifth Plane. Shall I send you to an even lower level of hell?”
Aryn moved to rush forward.
Jaren caught his arm and smiled thinly. He still held the girl cradled against his chest.
“Just watch. And wait.”
It was hours after dawn and Aryn had still not slept.
Tyriel lay pale, near lifeless on the bed. Jaren had assured him she was merely drained. She hadn’t killed the demon—she had indeed banished it to the lowest level in hell and it had gone fighting and cursing her name and striking out at her.
She bore a mark from it—a long silvery slash that had torn across her breast, slicing through her clothing, and marking her. There was bruising around it, but the mark itself was silver and felt hot to the touch. Aryn had touched it while cleaning it and it had left a burn on his hand that had blistered. It crossed from her right shoulder down her breast, just below the nipple and on down her torso, wrapping under and around her side.
“It will heal, but scar.” Jaren stood at the foot of the bed.
“How did you get in here?” Aryn asked wearily. The door bloody well did not open.
Jaren smiled slightly. “She is strong. This weakened her, but she will be fit and whole within a few weeks,” he said. “But how much of the night she remembers, I do not know. The heat of a demon battle sometimes takes on a strange quality. We oft times forget them, in pieces, or in whole. But the mark may remind her. The one who summon
ed the demon escaped, but the others are dead. I would hunt him but I must get the child to Averne.”
“Tyriel—”
“She needs you at her side,” Jaren said coolly, lifting a black brow. “She will not go back to Averne. If I send back warriors to bring her, she will level them with a blink. But she cannot be alone. If by chance I encounter her mother’s people, I will send them.”
“I was not about to leave her alone, but the man cannot be allowed to get away,” Aryn snarled.
Jaren’s eyes gleamed red around the edges. “Neither man nor beast can hide from De Asir. I have his scent, his name, his magick. I will hunt him, I will find him. But not now,” Jaren said softly. His eyes, his thoughts drifted down the hall to the sleeping girl on his bed. “Now I have a wounded soul I must take to my people.”
“Your people threw out a wounded soul because her mother was gypsy. Why will they care for that one?”
Jaren laughed. “Because Tyriel wasn’t broken,” he said softly. “There is nothing that makes the kin feel more needed than the need to fix the downtrodden and the broken. But I am not taking her there for them to fix. I am taking her there for my lord and lady. If my sister Aradelle cannot heal her body, and Averne cannot heal her soul, nothing can.”
Aryn lowered his head to study Tyriel’s face and he smiled. “No, Tyriel is definitely not broken—”
But he was talking to himself.
The room was empty.
Jaren lifted the heavily drugged woman-child in his arms, his heart bleeding, rage eating at him. They had tried to destroy this lovely thing. Nearly had. Your days are numbered, blood mage. Know that…and think of me while you sleep. Psychic skills were a rare talent among the kin, and powerful ones were even rarer.
Touch of Gypsy Fire Page 10
