Aryn lifted a brow, quizzically.
And Jaren laughed. “You are in the presence of one of the few psychic warriors known among the kin, swordsman. How else do you think I knew you were in the city?”
Irian was oddly quiet.
The blade at Aryn’s back was becoming heavier, the way it had in the early years, before Aryn had realized just what he held when he first took up the blade. “Know you, friend, it grieves me that it led to this. If I had known she would come to any danger, any pain…never would I have risked her, never.” As they crept closer, their presence muffled by the deft touch of elvin magick, Irian spoke somberly into Aryn’s mind.
“It’s not your fault, Irian. Tyriel has always done what Tyriel wants to do—and her actions shouldn’t have put her at risk, but they did. That isn’t your fault.”
“Ahhh, but my wanting her so desperately clouded my thinking…”
Aryn slid the enchanter a wry glance as Irian walked through a tree without blinking an eye. “You love her,” Aryn said quietly. “Don’t think I don’t know it. Don’t act like I’m not aware. The person who is to blame is Tainan. And Tainan alone. Not you. Not me, though I will kick my ass from now until the day I die. And certainly not Tyriel.”
“Do not be so quick to acquit me, brother of my soul. There are things you canna know about me. Things I havna told a living soul in more millenia than even I can recall.”
Aryn drew the blade at the door. Jaren took the back. Very few servants were here. Very few living souls. But many, many magicked traps and creatures. As Aryn drew the blade, he also called Irian, pulling the enchanter willingly inside himself, so that the two were one inside his skin. Five mortals. Including the most important one. Tainan Delre.
And the ever-weakening soul of a very battered elf.
Aryn launched himself at the door, words he didn’t know he knew pouring from him. And not a drop of blood was spilled, not a grain of salt flung on the ground. The magick was well and firmly inside him, and in his rage the accoutrements so many enchanters needed were forgotten. Irian smiled bitterly. His task was nearly complete. But at such a high cost.
Fire erupted the moment Aryn’s body touched the door. At the same time, the very foundation of the building shook as Jaren’s magick breached the barriers that surrounded and protected it. Under the onslaught, it buckled.
A berzerker, Aryn lifted his sword and cut through one guard, severing his torso from the waist up, leaving him still screaming from the shock of it as he realized he was dead. His eyes gleamed red with rage as he scented Tyriel on the body of the huge man who came running at him, blade drawn. Aryn flung one hand up, slicing it along Asrel’s edge for blood, smearing his blood on the face of the man who stopped, frozen in abject terror at the sight of the warrior standing before him with death and vengeance in his glowing blue eyes. The images continued to shift—from a tall slender blond man, who looked almost angelic, like an avenging angel, to a sinister-looking, towering warrior of a man with wildly curling black hair and rough-hewn features in barbaric garb, a wicked smile on his face, the very devil to prey upon your fears.
The guard screamed and screamed, as the man rubbed a smear of blood down his cheek, then impaled him on the tip of the sword, pushing it in slowly from his belly, downward. “Why is it I smell her on you? All over you?” Aryn asked hoarsely, his rage tightening his throat. As the blade forged through his internal organs, it burned them, searing them, charring them. “My lady—you beat her, raped her and whipped her. If I could spare the time…” A growl ripped from his throat as he twisted the blade.
The blade scraped over the guard’s internal sex organs, and then outward, and his screams locked in his throat. “Die…slowly,” and he jerked the blade forward, ripping bone, tissue, muscle, and the man’s cock from his body.
In the hall, Aryn came face to face with Tainan.
Jaren had planned on taking this bastard.
But both Irian and Aryn had other plans. Of course, Tyriel was more important, but if they happened upon him…
“Bury Asrel deep inside his black heart, my brother. Such a simple blow, and he will not expect a physical attack from an enchanter.”
Irian formed. Larger than life, full of vengeance, rage, anger, his black hair whipping around his face, and he flung a painful lash into Tainan’s face, distracting him as Aryn lunged. “I don’t need distraction tactics to kill him.”
“She hasna the time…do it.”
And so he did, lunging full-on, but pausing to deliver an arm-numbing blow to Tainan’s face, taking him to the ground and straddling him as the man went flying back. Aryn pierced his chest, driving Asrel through his heart, twisting it around, turning that black, worthless, shriveled, evil thing into so much meat until thick blood bubbled up through Tainan’s mouth.
“Now, we must hurry. The magicks may fall without him here to hold.”
Chapter Eleven
Jaren lifted her broken body in his arms, feeling his throat tighten. Ah, sweet. I failed you, didn’t I?
If he had kept his promise, his bond sooner, but he had thought he had time. Five years, he had spent five years watching the young Larel heal, then blossom, and enchant him.
And it had cost Tyriel.
She might yet die with bitterness between them.
Their last words had been in anger, and she had battled down a demon while Jaren stood with a child in his arms, watching, too angry with her to offer assistance. It didn’t matter that she didn’t need it. It mattered that he had not offered. Even now, she bore the demon’s silver mark on her breast, her frail skinny body sallow, the silver mark nearly gray now. Her black hair, always so glossy and soft, was brittle and dry, lifeless.
Her heart was failing her.
Because he had blamed her for not letting him rush to Larel’s side. And if he had…Larel would have been killed outright. He had wanted to be Larel’s savior. Instead it had been all of them. His pride—was that to blame? As he carried Tyriel out into the clean-smelling night air, he rested his chin on her hair and clenched his jaw against the grief that rose up in his chest.
If he had gone after Tainan instead of mooning after a bewitching mortal-fae—Larel—Tyriel would not be lying so near death’s door. The metal at her waist, her wrists, her ankles weakened her. It would have killed Jaren, or another full-blood. If they could get those off, get her onto clean earth to buy them time…he felt a big warm nose nuzzling his arm. “My lady…help her…”
The house behind him was starting to fall into the earth. Aryn had destroyed Tainan. And much magick had been woven into that house. The entire building would fall now that the master of it was dead. Lifting his gleaming green eyes to the elvish stallion he said softly, “Help her I will try. But I am no healer, Kilidare.”
The stallion pawed the ground and tossed his great head.
“Kilidare help her. Kilidare heal.”
He donned a pair of thin leather gloves and pulled a pair of lock picks from his belt before he went to work on the iron. Within moments, he was tossing the damnable stuff to the side, away from Tyriel and himself as the steed curled his body around his broken, battered mistress.
“She is badly hurt, not just her body.” Staring into the dark eyes of the steed, Jaren pulled a vial of vesna oil out and went to work on the angry red and blackened flesh that had formed under the metal bands.
Not her body I fear for, but her mind.
That was how Aryn found them, Tyriel’s battered body cupped in the curve of her protective stallion’s body, his head arched impossibly around to nuzzle her belly and arm and face as magick and power crawled through the air. He knew the feel and scent of it by now, but didn’t quite trust his mind. “Irian, am I going mad or is the horse working magick?”
Irian chuckled as he shimmered into view. “Stranger things have happened. Kilidare is no more a mere horse than ye are a mere human. Ye stopped being merely human within three o’ four years o’ wieldin’ an enchanted blade.
Kilidare is an elvish steed, and may resemble a horse on the outside, but all similarity ends there. Heard tales, I have, of warrior-trained elvish steeds, who had no masters, who were their own masters.”
Aryn moved his eyes back to Kilidare and slowly shook his head. Healing horses? What is bloody next?
He knelt at her side, cupping her face in his hands, feeling a rage unlike anything he had ever known tear through him, side by side with grief, and relief.
She was alive.
She was battered and bruised and beaten and scarred.
She was alive.
Her lids lifted slowly and he saw the dullness there, the lack of realization before her lids drifted down again.
She was broken.
It made sense, really, when Jaren thought it through later. The blasted brat of a Princess had an elvish stallion that had never really needed taming, that had sought her out, instead of her seeking him out. She had taken mortal wounds that would have killed even their kind and was up and riding around with a sassy smile on her lovely face within two days.
And the odd almost insane look he had seen in the stallion’s eyes, once he had calmed enough to think back on it—they had bonded. Not just as mistress and beast. But as magick-makers in the soul. Tyriel had been the stallion’s focus, had made him more than a wild beast, like all the elvish steeds. Just this particular steed had magick in his blood, and it made him more unpredictable than most, more untamed.
Jaren stared impassively into Aryn’s eyes.
“I thought you said the bloody horse was going to heal her!”
Jaren narrowed his eyes as the swordsman stepped just a little closer and snarled into his face just a little louder. “You push your luck, mortal,” he said warningly.
“We are wasting our time. She needs healing–and we’ve already sat here all of yesterday and all of last night. Will we wait another day and night as well?” Aryn demanded, reaching out and grabbing Jaren’s tunic. The soft, molded leather bunched under his hands and Aryn yanked him forward. “Remember your word to her. You swore to kill her if her hesitation cost a child’s life? If yours has cost Tyriel her life, I’ll be holding you accountable.”
Aryn bared his teeth in a grim smile before he stepped back, sliding out of reach just as Jaren moved to strike. Aryn laughed easily. “No longer quite so human, Irian is telling me. I’ll never be wholly anything, but no longer human. And I was never your mere mortal.”
The assassin’s blade was wickedly long and sharp. Deadly, and Aryn knew it could pierce his flesh as easily as a fork could slide through butter, but he’d made his point. He threw up a deflector’s ward just in case Jaren decided to throw it, but he suspected the man was brandishing it just to make a point—if the elf wanted it, he would be dead before he saw it coming.
Jaren acknowledged it with a raised brow and waited for Aryn.
Now that both points were driven home, so to speak, they could get on with the business of what really mattered. Tyriel.
“My loyalty, my love for her has never been in doubt.” The elvish lord’s hands moved and the blade was gone as quickly as it had appeared, as though it had never existed. “Though our last parting was not a pleasant one, my Princess knows me well. Doubtless, she knows how foolish I feel. I would move the stars from the sky to save her, and well she knows this.”
Aryn snarled. “And you show it by letting her lie in a forest with a horse?”
Irian chose at that moment to whisper reprovingly to Aryn alone, “The True One chooses odd bearers for His powers. Is it our place to judge those bearers?”
Jaren coolly said, “He has healed her ills before. I will take all chances, any chance to save her. However—”
A heartrending shriek tore through the air. Followed by the sound of weeping, gut-wrenching sobs that filled the air. Jaren murmured quietly as Aryn took off running, “The stallion succeeded in healing her body. It is up to you, now, to heal her heart and soul.”
Aryn burst into the clearing, his heart hammering in his chest, lungs burning to find Tyriel sobbing, alone in the center of the clearing, arms wrapped pitifully around herself, rocking back and forth. Kilidare stood to the side, shifting on his feet, head low, keening sadly in his throat. Her back—narrow, dirty, scarred—shook with the force of her sobs and Aryn’s nails bit into his skin.
He hadn’t made him pay enough.
Can we fetch his dark soul from hell and do it again?
Oddly enough, as he moved in his woman’s direction, he realized, he was alone. Completely. Irian was not there at all.
“Tyriel.”
That soft, deep voice rolled over her skin like a caress, but it wasn’t real.
Simply couldn’t be.
“Tyriel, sweet, open your eyes and look at me,” he whispered roughly as a callused, warm hand gently stroked the side of her arm before moving away.
She scuttled away from the touch.
“Love, he’s gone. Dead. He cannot touch you ever again, I swear.”
Gone? Dead?
She shook her head. It was too much. That voice was lying, sounding too much like the one she longed for, telling her things she had hoped and prayed for. It had to be a dream—
“Sweet, open your eyes.” The voice was firmer now and two large, warm hands worked their way into her hair, forcing her to lift her head, gently, very gently, but so very firmly. She had no choice but to lift her head and look into impossibly blue eyes, surrounded by thick black lashes, tipped with gold, eyes that were diamond-bright, wet, haunted, tormented and angry and grieving.
“No.” she whispered hoarsely. “You’re not real.”
A smile curved his mouth upward as he lowered his lips to hers, and his entire body seemed to shudder, in relief? In joy? “Oh, but I am, my lady,” he murmured against her lips. “Quite real.”
“Illusion.”
“Then denounce me,” he offered, stroking his hands down her arms, running the tips of his fingers over her lips, the arch of her brows, as though he couldn’t stop touching her face. “Denounce me, and use your lovely, pure magick to break anything false that may lie here and we shall see what is real and what is illusion.”
It was then that the bitter laughter started.
And nothing he said could make her stop. But eventually the bitter laughter turned into tears and she curled against him and wept.
“The magick is gone.”
Jaren stared at her sleeping figure and tried to come to grips with what Aryn had told him. Such an act would have surely driven most, if not all, of the kin truly insane. Or just simply killed them. Magick was part of their makeup, part of what they were inside, like their skin color, their hair, their blood. And she had taken it out. It had been a sheer act of desperation. De Asir knew what to do against a soul eater. Tyriel did not. A lone elf did not. But lone elves rarely ventured out into the mortal realms.
And the mages who knew how to work such magick—only a few had ever existed. ’Twas insanity.
’Twas also one of the most sincere, truest acts of heroism he had ever seen in all his years. Men like this jackal were the reason the elves lived in secret. If he had found their stronghold, or discovered the gypsies’ haunts, the world would be short many saviors. But she was hollow inside now.
“If you let her see the pity in your eyes, do you really think that is going to help?” Aryn asked quietly as he moved past the assassin to settle down on the ground beside Tyriel. He arranged his bedroll and shucked his jerkin before turning to face the elf. “She will not want or need your pity.”
“I cannot help that I pity her.”
“Pity her all you wish. But she doesn’t have to see it all over your face.” Aryn moved his eyes to where she lay sleeping, her sleep fitful, but deep, thanks to a restorative brew Jaren had concocted. Aryn had fed it to her, spoonful by spoonful, and now it was helping her rest and further heal by replacing the stores that had been drained dry during her captivity. It would take more than just one bowl of it—mo
re like a vat, or several of them.
But it was a start.
“We need to do more than this—but is she strong enough to move?” Aryn didn’t know enough about an elf’s physiology to make this choice. If she was too weak, and they moved her, then she would die.
Jaren moved one broad shoulder absently, then rubbed his temple. “I think we must try. She cannot stay out here. I would ask the Healer.” He nodded his head to the stallion that never strayed too far from the gypsy-elf’s side.
The Healer, eh? With a curve of his lips, Aryn made his way to the stallion in silence, his booted feet making little noise over the grassy terrain. But Kilidare heard him all the same and turned dark, turbulent eyes his way.
“She sleeps. Too much. All the time.”
That powerful, intelligent voice that boomed into his mind would never cease to amaze him. Aryn lowered himself to his heels by the stallion, the leather of his breeches stretching tightly across powerful, muscled thighs, molding to a firm, muscled ass as he studied Tyriel’s pale face, tormented even in sleep.
“I know, Kilidare. We need to take her back to Averne, to her father’s people in Eivisa but we aren’t sure if it’s safe to move her. The elf suggests we ask the Healer.” Aryn dipped his head in acknowledgment to Kilidare and lifted a brow, waiting for an answer, the wind blowing his hair around his face, into his eyes.
Kilidare’s ears flicked. He arched his head around and rubbed his velvety nose against Tyriel’s cheek, her neck. “Averne. Yes. Needs her people’s Healer, her home. And you. Heart hurts for you.”
Kilidare insisted he take them into Averne, mounted on his back. Jaren whispered secrets into Bel’s ear and said obliquely, “Your mortal mount will find his way into Averne. I have shown him the way. It will take him a while, though not as long since he travels without weight.”
Touch of Gypsy Fire Page 14
