Touch of Gypsy Fire

by Shiloh Walker

  The iron at her wrists, at her ankles, wrapped around her belly was sickening her. And the collar around her neck, a slave’s collar.

  On a Princess.

  The blood of a Royal, which she so rarely acknowledged, was so very, very enraged—the death of this man must be painful enough, slow enough, bloody enough.

  He had put a slave’s collar on an elvish Princess, the daughter of gypsy chieftains.

  She stared blankly at the man in front of her.

  Tainan.

  Her mouth twisted in a snarl when he came through the door.

  “Are you ready to yield?” he purred.

  “Haik ilo biloi nu takimi,” she spat. I’d rather fuck a goat. Since she hissed the words into his mind as well as through her busted teeth, her meaning was quite clear.

  “Will you yield?” He turned and lifted a whip, topped with little metal balls. “I’ve broken better mages than you. You were foolish, wandering around unshielded, alone. I could smell the stink of that man on you. Perhaps I should have waited before taking you, shouldn’t have beaten you so cruelly. Ahh, but that’s in the past. Will you yield?”

  “Will you die a thousand and three painfully slow deaths?” she rasped, her throat achingly dry.

  The whip lifted and flew, and her shrieks filled the room.

  Tainan purred, “And now you are trapped.”

  “Va takimi,” she muttered. She turned her head aside and withdrew into herself. She barely managed to close the door inside her mind by the time the second blow fell.

  She took the first month of abuse with almost good humor. She wasn’t De Asir, but she had trained with them. And the legendary assassins knew how to take abuse and torture, for years and months on end.

  But Tainan was after something.

  And once she realized what it was, she broke inside.

  It wasn’t her body, or even her blood.

  She could have taken the abuse, the rapes, and the starvation.

  But it wasn’t just that he was after, though he reveled in her suffering, drinking it and feeding from it, the way a demon could feed from blood.

  It was her magick, her knowledge, her soul.

  He was a soul eater.

  Tyriel fell back away from the black shadows that came to her, reaching for her, touching her, grabbing her. A scream fell from her lips, terrified and broken, and she slashed out with magick even though she had sworn not to. The iron on her body burned her with every bit of magick she used, and it blinded her, deafened her, sickened her, weakened her.

  He would get her.

  Eventually. Her fear would break her.

  She fled inside herself and wrapped herself in the lights of the magick that made her what she was, the sorcery, the mage gift, letting the bright, burning lights warm her. She felt safe here—which was laughable. As long as these lights burned, he would torture her, pursue her, try to take her soul.

  As long as they burned.

  If the lights went out—

  It was forbidden.

  “Da…” she called out to him, but the stone around her neck that bound her to him had been taken and smashed. And some power blocked her from him. She was alone. Well, and truly, for the first time in her life, completely alone.

  She knew what she must do. But was so terribly afraid of it.

  Some of the kin could not even manage what she was thinking. It was dangerous. It was deadly. It was beyond foolish.

  But if the magick was not there…

  She could not let him take her soul. She could not. He would have too much, too many secrets, knowledge of the elvin kin, the haunts and hiding places of the clans. No, he could not have those. And Irian. Ahh, the damage he could do with a blade like that.

  To have Irian, Aryn must die.

  No.

  It was with a shuddering, frightened spirit that she reached out to the first light, and put it out.

  Chapter Ten

  Aryn stood outside the gates of Ifteril and closed his eyes. The last place to look. There was little else left to do after this.

  “As though ye intend t’ stop lookin’,” Irian murmured. The enchanter stood at his side, his long hair in a thick braid that hung over his shoulder. He seemed so solid at times, it often surprised Aryn that no other seemed to notice him. “We will find her. Something here will be leadin’ us t’ the elf, I know.”

  Aryn’s hands closed into tight fists. “I never should have let her leave. You knew this would happen. Why didn’t I listen?”

  “We didna know she would drop off the face o’ the earth, or that she would slip away in the dead of the night. I tried, truly, to convince her t’ stay.”

  “I bet,” Aryn muttered sourly, sliding the long-dead warrior a bitter glance. The question was how?

  The gypsy at Aryn’s side barely blinked when the mercenary started talking seemingly to himself. Kellen had learned that the swordsman had odd ways, to put it mildly. He would wake at night and ride in silence to a towne miles and miles away, find a young child cowering in fear from a man about ready to rape and beat—Kellen shoved that from his mind.

  That particular child was safe with the clans now.

  As were a number of others who had appeared with Tyriel over the years, since she had taken up with the swordsman. It was the blade. That enchanted blade. Kellen’s da had been a mage and while Kellen was not gifted, he knew how the craft worked, had the sight of it, if not the powers. And his eyes itched every bloody time he looked at the sword.

  And when he looked toward Aryn, sometimes he thought he was damn well going insane. He would catch a sight, just behind his eyelids, like nothing he had ever seen, a long towering powerful gypsy with yards of wildly curling hair and a savage smile, and eyes so achingly sad it made Kellen’s heart hurt.

  And then it was gone.

  Kellen glanced at Aryn now and asked, “To the inn?”

  Passing a hand over his eyes, Aryn nodded. “The inn is really all we have to work with. Tyriel was here but a few days. Irian had ways of keeping up with her. He knew when she had left us.”

  Kellen knew when the man’s attention had left him again. Talking to the Soul inside the sword again. With a sigh, Kellen brushed aside the itchy feeling it gave him and followed the tall swordsman to the towne gates, boldly meeting the guard’s eyes with a smirk as the guard studied the gypsy appraisingly.

  “Like a hole in our souls, she left. Do ye admit it yet, swordsman? That she is yours?”

  “I always cared, always wanted her.” Aryn tossed the enchanter a snarl. “But why pledge my heart and soul to a woman who will still be young when I am no more than dust in the ground? Why wish that grief upon her? Do you think I did not realize she cared? And could do more?”

  “Your foolishness has cost you and her much. And my silence hasna helped.” Irian retreated back into himself, gone in less than a blink, a cold wind of grief blowing across Aryn’s body as they came to the inn where they had last seen Tyriel all of twelve months past. A night he didn’t remember, when Irian had swarmed up and taken over—what had happened?

  Ah…his body remembered. His cock thickened and swelled, pressing against the lacings of his leather breeches, blood pulsing thick in his veins, the whisper of her scent flooding his nostrils.

  An image assaulted him.

  Her beaten starving body, mauled and scarred, her eyes so dim and lackluster.

  No power on earth—his hands closed into fists and the blade at his back felt heavy.

  No power on earth would stop him from finding the one who had done this.

  Blood-red hair, blood-red mouth, pale, pale skin, blood magick.

  Tainan…

  “Aryn?”

  “Wait,” Aryn whispered, his voice low and harsh. His lids lowered until only bare slits of his eyes showed and his breath came in harsh gasps as he remembered that night six years earlier. Jaren, Tyriel and he, in the bowels of the city as they sought the man who wanted to sacrifice another innocent to the Darknes
s Below.

  Tainan.

  His prey had a face.

  Aryn woke in the silence of the night with a blade pressed to his throat.

  “I trusted you, mortal. Into your hands, I gave my princess, to love, and keep and protect. And my Lord Prince tells me she is gone, away from his power, his touch. For six long months I have searched for her.” The low, almost silent whisper brought a dread fear into Aryn’s belly but he threw it off and opened his eyes, staring into Jaren’s dark face.

  The elf moved away and threw a mage light into the air, staring at Aryn with glittering, angry eyes. “Six long months. Six months is nothing to the kin. Nothing unless you seek what is dear to your heart, as Tyriel is to me. I trusted her to you. And you did not keep her safe. For that I should kill you where you lay.”

  Aryn sat up slowly, staring at the elf as Irian came out of the darkness, wavering into view, solidifying and staring at the elf with cool eyes.

  “And three months, I have searched for you, swordsman. And then I was led here and I have waited. Waited here. Now you arrive,” Jaren murmured as he drew his blade and ran one finger down the deadly edge, ignoring the enchanter.

  Aryn felt the cold fear sliding through his belly as the assassin continued to stare at him with gleaming green eyes that glowed and shifted with a morass of colors and magick that swelled from within. There was a power there, like what he had sensed inside the half-elf, but it was more deadly, finer, focused—all of it focused on him. “I know who has her. Are you here to fight this out with me, or here to help me save her, you long-eared son-of-a-bitch?” he asked in a low, harsh voice.

  A flash of teeth lit the elf’s poetically beautiful face and Jaren threw back his head, his long, razor-straight hair falling down his back as his musical laughter filled the air. “’Tis no wonder the Princess was so drawn. Not a bit o’ fear in you. And so very unmortal do you act.” Then he moved like a streak of lightning across the room.

  Aryn fell back on the bed, rolled backward and landed on the balls of his feet, barely managing to draw his blade and lift it before Jaren was at his back. In such close quarters, a sword did little good. Unless it was enchanted. A long knife at his throat, Aryn breathed shallowly as Jaren whispered silkily, “Where is my lady Princess?”

  “Go fuck yourself and the bloody steed that brought you here, you magicked son-of-a-whore.” Aryn didn’t bother to reach for the hands that held him. Jaren was centuries old. He slashed his roughened palm down the blade as Irian stood watching it all with what looked like very amused eyes. “So nice of you to help me here.”

  “Oh, it’s not your death he wants. He’s just bloody pissed. If he tries t’ kill ye, I’ll stop him.” Irian leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his broad chest, lifting a curious brow as Jaren continued to ignore what Aryn did with the blade. Was the elf truly so ignorant of what Aryn did?

  Aryn mouthed the words silently and too late, Jaren felt the magick rustle through the air just before the air above Aryn’s body grew fire hot. Aryn whirled away just as Jaren fell back silently, the front of his body scorched and smoking. Most men would have been screaming in pain, but the elf just stared appraisingly at the swordsman before lifting his reddened hands and studying the blackened, blistered flesh that was forming. “What an interesting change,” he mused.

  “Tyriel is not your lady.”

  Jaren purred, “And pray tell, why not?”

  Irian perked up with interest as Aryn lifted the blade and pointed it at the elf and said harshly, “She is mine.”

  The firelight flickered across Aryn’s face, casting half of it in shadow as he sat staring into the night. Irian had swarmed up from the recesses of his mind and forced his damnable will upon Aryn’s body until Aryn sullenly agreed to stop for the night. They had ridden for three days straight and the blasted elf looked as rested, and as out for blood, when they stopped as when they started.

  He lay on his bedroll, smoking a long, oddly scented pipe, stroking a crescent-shaped metallic stone of black at his neck as Aryn stared into the night.

  The swordsman had no idea how closely the elf was watching him. And likely wouldn’t care either.

  He had sat for the longest time alone, undisturbed, aware of nothing but a sense of her…somewhere in the east. Closer and closer.

  Now Irian was at his side, lowering himself to his haunches, his rough-hewn features puzzled, curious, almost too afraid to hope. His voice, when rarely he spoke in a voice for somebody other than Aryn alone to hear, had a deep, rippling quality, like a stone cast into a well. “I sense something…Tyriel…but not her. I know not what.” Irian glanced over as the elf rose to his feet in one smooth graceful movement, his muscled body gleaming in the firelight. “It sensed me. Doesna know me. Mayhap you, swordsman. Come.”

  Aryn was already mounting Bel bareback.

  Irian disappeared into the night, inside Aryn, guiding him to the source of what he had sensed.

  When Aryn slid from his mount sometime later, what he saw pacing in the moonlight was the last thing he had ever expected.

  The elvish stallion was taller, broader than Bel, with larger eyes that had the uncanny, unsettling ability of glowing. It resembled a horse, the way a tame housecat resembled a wild mountain lion that a faerie minx had tamed. But this elvish steed looked very unlike the mount Aryn had seen just months earlier. His neatly groomed coat had grown long and shabby, his eyes no longer had that ‘settled’ look in them. He looked vaguely wild and lost as he turned considering eyes Aryn’s way.

  He looked…wild.

  But he kept cocking his head at Aryn as the swordsman slid one leg over Bel’s head and circled the clearing, his intelligent eyes trained on the swordsman’s face, rapt and fascinated. Curious. Hungry.

  And then Jaren charged in, lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl as he launched himself in a low tumble at the elvish stallion that ended with him underneath the beast, a long wicked blade drawn and ready.

  His own mount went nearly wild, pawing at the air, his screams filling the night.

  Aryn kicked Jaren’s wrist, hard enough, he hoped, to numb it and grabbed the elf’s ankle, hauling him out from under the stallion.

  “He betrayed his mistress,” Jaren snarled, flipping to his feet, snarling at Aryn and whirling back to the stallion.

  “He looks rather lost to me.” Aryn turned back to the stallion, rubbing the beast’s black face, his cheeks and neck with gentle hands, staring into the dazed, helpless eyes. “Pretty mistress…good hands…she never came…”

  The voice filled the air.

  Astoundingly clear in their minds. Even Jaren stumbled back in shock from it.

  Aryn said softly, “Tyriel. She was coming to you that morning. She never came, did she?”

  “The elvish mounts are fantastic creatures, but none can comprehend that well.” Jaren moved again in Kilidare’s direction. “’Tis like a guard dog. And he sorely failed at his job.”

  “Nevernevernevernever.”

  Aryn ran his hand again down Kilidare’s cheek and slid Jaren a look. “We go to find her. The lady. The pretty lady with the good hands, your mistress.”

  “Evil man, evil dark take…I scent…not see…but his scent I know.”

  “Evil man?” Jaren asked, stopping in his tracks. “How do you know his scent?”

  “Towne, demon mark…all over her. His scent, all over. He take, I feel, then pretty mistress gone.”

  Jaren’s face was blank, simply stunned.

  Aryn smothered a smile as he continued to stroke Kilidare, soothing the bewildered stallion. “We will find her,” Aryn murmured soothingly as the great beast rested his head over Aryn’s shoulder, a huge shudder wracking him.

  * * * * *

  Tyriel knew the end was finally slipping nearer.

  Her heart was failing her.

  She lay wearily on the cold floor, feeling it stutter and slow. It didn’t hurt. She had feared heart failure would be painful, like it
was for humans. But the elvish in her had won out again. It was merely…slipping away. Ever slowing beats and eventually she would drift into a sleep that could linger for days or weeks.

  Without the treatments her people knew, she would be dead within a month. And mostly likely even those would not help. Human or elvish will made up for so much.

  And she had no will left. No desire left to live and suffer and fight.

  There was a brush on the edges of her mind that felt oddly familiar as she drifted closer to sleep.

  But she was too tired to think about it.

  And the crashing of doors, the burning smoke didn’t faze her at all.

  The low, sprawling, lavishly built house wasn’t at all what Aryn expected. When the songs were sung of heroes heroically rescuing the Princess, it was from a towering, craggy cliff, or a cave buried deep in a jungle.

  But the steed had started to liven, and purpose had returned to his eyes. This was where he had led them, where Aryn’s heart and soul had been guiding him. They had stumbled through a thick, obscuring fog that tasted metallic, almost poisonous, burning and stinging Aryn’s eyes. “’Tis illusion,” Jaren said quietly from atop his mount. His dark-green eyes shifted to a paler color as power rolled through them. One hand lifted and his fingers spread, flexed, and a mist of light formed, then dissipated.

  “A protection. It hides something.”

  The something had been this place, this house. After the light had dissipated from Jaren’s hand, the fog surrounding them had started to lift. And as they moved, it lifted ever more until they moved into a circle of free air. By midday, it was all gone. And at nightfall, they came to the edge of a clearing in the woods and that low sprawling structure came into view. In the light of the full moon, Jaren said, “I feel her, her strength wanes.”

  And the stallion near went mad, scenting her. Aryn could feel her, too.

  The strategist in him would prefer a plan of sorts.

  Jaren slid him a narrow look, his eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark. “As would I, swordsman. But her time runs short. I did not leave my Princess with good words between us. She is young, too young, too good a woman to die in such a place as this. And I know this scent—’tis my fault she is in there. If I had kept my bond. At the time, I did not believe he would come seeking her so quickly.”