by Tom Deitz
“We won’t,” Merryn countered fiercely, rising and starting to pace. “I have to think about this, Strynn. Not long, but I have to puzzle this out alone. Meet me in the stables in half a hand, and I’ll give you my answer.”
Strynn rose as well. “That’s as much as I can ask for. And at that, I know I’m asking a lot, Merry.”
Merryn gave her a brief hug, but didn’t watch as Strynn passed through the door, her mind already spinning with implications.
There are people who don’t live as well as these horses, Strynn thought, as she paced around the stables. Certainly the stonework could have graced any palace, and the hardware and accoutrements were as well-made as those in the King’s own chambers. Tucked as it was into an angle between the royal herb garden and one of the war courts, it even smelled nice. And very clean.
Not a bad place to wait, if one felt like waiting.
Strynn didn’t, which was why she was pacing the perimeter of the arcade that surrounded the exercise court, and glancing all too frequently at the sky.
It was past midnight, though not by much. Avall would be returning to their chambers soon. He’d miss her. He might even come looking for her.
She had no intention whatever of letting him know what she was about until she’d accomplished it, either. And she was as ready as she’d ever be, clad in supple black-leather hose and short-tunic under light mail and a plain black hooded tabard, with black gloves and black boots to complete the ensemble. Decent protection, while still being good for stealth and allowing freedom of movement.
For armament, she had a short sword, daggers in each boot, a third at her waist, and a small buckler for defense. And her lockpick’s tools.
But where was Merryn?
Once again, she started pacing. Counting the horses this time, wondering if the gem could indeed draw on their life force to power what she and Merryn would shortly be undertaking.
Or she alone, if Merryn didn’t show.
She fingered her gem nervously, where it hung exposed in its filigree clasp from a chain around her throat. It thrummed at her, like a cat purring. Which startled her.
Maybe it approved. Or maybe—
Footsteps. Purposeful, and with Merryn’s distinctive cadence.
Strynn hastened her own steps to match them—and met Merryn coming through the door.
And couldn’t help laughing. Her bond-sister had dressed almost exactly as she had, save that there was more quilted fabric and less leather.
Then she noticed the weapon at Merryn’s side. “Eight save us!” she whispered, even as Merryn grinned. “You’ve brought that sword.”
The grin widened, joined by a smug nod. “I’ve seen it work—and Avall conveniently measured it for me, to pattern for a scabbard. I was going to surprise you,” she added sheepishly, not quite catching Strynn’s eyes.
For the second time that day, Strynn fought down a surge of possessive jealousy. It was her work, after all, save for Avall’s augmentations—and she’d begrudged those, though hadn’t told him. “Are you sure it’s safe to use?” she hissed back. “If we lose it—or ourselves …”
“We won’t,” Merryn informed her. “Besides, I’m not trusting it any more than you’re trusting your stone.”
Strynn regarded her levelly. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“I am now. But we haven’t got much time, so I suggest we be at it.” She eyed the nearest stall dubiously. “What do we do?”
Strynn dared a wry smile. “We go to where the concentration of horseflesh is thickest.”
“Lead the way.”
Strynn did—to a section along the opposite wall where retired warhorses were kept in smaller stalls than those beasts still in active service. Which meant they were closer together. And more expendable.
There was also a pair of benches in a corridor between two of them, and it was at these that Strynn stopped. Without pause, she sat down on the nearer, motioning Merryn down beside her. “I’m not sure how this works,” Strynn admitted, as she freed her gem from its clasp. “Avall didn’t prime it with blood, but that was Avall. I don’t know about Eddyn, but I think we should, because that seems to be how the things generate the most power.”
“And there’s the small fact that I haven’t worked with your gem.”
Strynn nodded absently while she found the dagger at her waist. Merryn took the hint and removed one glove, thrusting it into her belt. Strynn did the same.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“I’ve removed the stone from its setting,” Strynn murmured. “There’s only one barb, and there’re two of us, and—well, mostly it just seemed better to do it the old-fashioned way, if only for the enhanced closeness.”
“I understand,” Merryn whispered back. “Now—let’s to it.”
An instant only it took Strynn to make the requisite cut, purposely following the line of the scar from her and Merryn’s bonding rite. Merryn did the same and returned the blade solemnly.
“Desire and emotion,” Strynn stressed. “To the exclusion of all else: That’s all we can figure does it.”
“So I have to desire to be with Eddyn? I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Then this may not work. But what if you desired something near Eddyn? To be with Kraxxi, perhaps.”
Merryn snorted. “I don’t know if I’d kiss him or kill him. I change my mind twice a hand.”
“Well, want one or the other,” Strynn replied tersely. “Now.”
Without waiting for further response, she closed her eyes, found Merryn’s bleeding hand by feel, and folded it, with her own, around the gem.
Reality shifted. Time slowed, reflected in the attenuated beating of Merryn’s pulse. Dust drifted in the moonlight, describing a slow dance whose individual members Strynn could observe both together and discretely. She sensed a barrier pressing against her self, and realized it was Merryn, trying to join her. She dropped her guard at once—and felt a surge of power as Merryn rushed into her mind. They met joyfully, and then she was merging with Merryn, and their souls and selves and maybe some of their blood were not only separate entities, but halves of one much more powerful being.
Nor did either of them command the other to remember their preposterous mission. Indeed, their sharing gave it more force. Merryn had doubts about being able to desire Eddyn’s company, but Strynn showed her memories of the rape, and that knowledge roared through Merryn like flame. With it went an almost irrational desire to be revenged on Eddyn once and for all. If I had him here …, she found herself thinking. If I were where he is, I could put an end to him. … It’s my right, not the king of Ixti’s.
Strynn found that anger and fed on it, joining it with her own. But she also found something else: Strynn’s feelings for Prince Kraxxi, who should still be incarcerated in the same place as Eddyn. And as Strynn, she wanted to meet him, whereas as Merryn, she wanted to love him and hate him, and demand answers of him she knew he would never be able to give.
Reality shifted. Pain filled them—and cold. For an instant they looked down on Tir-Eron. But then their senses wrenched again, and they were back in their own bodies.
—Hearing footsteps fast approaching, even as agitation filtered through the surrounding steeds.
Someone—
Who?
Someone we dare not let see us!
We have to—
Even as Strynn thought that—or Merryn, or both of them together—reality jerked again. And this time it stayed jerked.
For a timeless moment they were nowhere, in a place of cold beyond cold, heat beyond heat, pain beyond pain, and pleasure beyond pleasure. They wanted to stay and to escape at once.
And for a moment became lost indeed, when Merryn recalled the panic she’d felt when she’d lost herself seeking Avall.
But Strynn found her there and soothed her, in a flash of thought that lasted an eternity. Neither reminded the other of their true quest. There was no need for that;
they were one in their desires.
And then reality shifted again, and they felt cold beyond knowing.
And smelled smoke instead of horseflesh and hay.
And were looking at a bonfire.
Or rather, Strynn was: a bonfire viewed through iron bars set in a massive oak door. A bonfire around which men in strange armor danced drunkenly, pausing now and then to fling what looked like bits of shattered furniture atop the hungry flames.
Flames that limned Merryn’s face in red and gold.
They had arrived inside a cell. Stone walls. Dirty stone floor. Another opening behind them that let in the softer glow of moonlight.
“We made it—” Strynn breathed.
But then an appalling stench found her, overruling the eerie beauty of the fire, and she saw Merryn’s face. Her bond-sister’s eyes were growing wider by the moment.
Strynn felt the hand that still clutched the gem bear down so hard she feared the stone would shatter between them, never mind her finger bones. “Merryn—”
“Strynn,” Merryn whispered, barely moving. “Turn around very slowly, and whatever you do, don’t look down until you’re sure you’re ready.”
Thoroughly confused, Strynn nevertheless obeyed, slowly easing her hand free of Merryn’s, while Merryn’s other hand quested for the sword hilt. And then the stench found her in truth. Dirt. Human sweat. Sour fabric. Excrement.
Blood.
All mixed with the cleaner scent of the smoke from outside, where someone was now burning cedar.
A deep breath, and she let her gaze slide down.
It was merciful that they were in darkness, yet even so, she gasped. Even the gloom showed too much.
A man—tall and dark-haired. And naked: facedown and spread-eagled across a filthy cot, his skin pale, save where shackles of black iron showed at wrists and ankles, binding him to the bed.
But a deeper darkness glistened between his legs that she couldn’t bear to look upon, and yet could not resist.
Blood.
The same blood that leaked from gashes across his back and buttocks.
Strynn’s senses reeled, forcing her to grasp Merryn for support, as that image merged with one she had almost—almost—banished from her memory.
“He’s been—” she blurted.
“Don’t say it,” Merryn warned. “Strynn, you shouldn’t see this.”
“Is it—?”
“It’s Eddyn. I can see his clan tattoo.”
“Is he—?” As Strynn’s gorge started to rise.
“He’s alive, but I don’t know for how long.”
“Why would they do this?”
Merryn finally moved, pushing past Strynn to kneel beside the figure. She felt for a pulse. Turned his head to confirm identification in the tenuous light. “Humiliation—obviously. They were probably trying to find out what he knew about the gem. Of course the irony is, the only thing Eddyn knows how to do with it is escape—if he had it.”
“But torture … I thought you said Barrax was more humane.”
“A matter of opinion,” Merryn gave back, rising again and eyeing the door. “I think he’s running scared.”
“But he’s winning.”
“Maybe. But every shot he advances puts him deeper into enemy territory and farther from home. And he knows we have a weapon he doesn’t have. That would scare me to death.”
Strynn was doing everything she could to avoid looking at Eddyn. “So what now?”
Merryn shook her head. “More than you expected, sister? Well, there’s nothing we can do for Eddyn here that can’t be better done in Tir-Eron, if we can get him there. And something certainly has to be done. We dare not waste any more time.”
“If it doesn’t kill him,” Strynn gave back. “The cold …”
“We have to risk it. In any case, we’ve two things to do before we can leave. You have to pick the locks on his shackles—”
“And you?”
Merryn grinned cryptically, her face demonic in the wavering firelight. “If they’ve done this to Eddyn, whom they in some sense need, I don’t want to think about what they might have done to Kraxxi, who’s basically superfluous.”
Strynn nodded grimly, then peered at the door. “But that’s locked from the outside—which we should’ve considered in the first place, given where we are.”
Another snort. “We’re lucky to have come this close. Imagine if we’d shown up in the fire.”
“Might’ve converted some Ixtians,” Strynn laughed nervously.
“Or replaced The Eightfold God with the twofold goddess.”
Eddyn groaned.
Strynn took a deep breath, and steeled herself. She was finally getting over the shock of the situation—though the irony wasn’t lost on her. Maybe Balance was a more important aspect of Fate than she’d assumed.
“Go,” Strynn said decisively. “If you need help with the door …”
Merryn grinned again and reached for the hilt of the sword protruding from the scabbard. “You might want to turn away, just in case.”
Strynn watched long enough to see Merryn’s hand tighten, and note the way she flinched at the tiny prick of pain from the hidden catch. And then Merryn was leveling the sword at the door. She closed her eyes, took a breath that Strynn felt with her, so close were they still bound.
A tap, a wrenching of something that felt like wind, air, and stone all at once—and the door ripped asunder.
Merryn staggered back as the flame from the sword’s tip died. Strynn caught her, though she, too, had felt the force of that blow. Eddyn groaned again.
She fumbled for her picks, while Merryn stood blinking dazedly at the blade, then set her mouth, squared her shoulders, wrenched the smoking oak aside, and strode through.
Strynn watched her go: a tall shape in black silhouetted by fire and framed by the deeper black of the arcade. And then she was gone.
A chill wind invaded the cell in her wake. Strynn shivered, and not only from the cold.
Night enfolded Merryn, and with it air that, while thick with smoke, was still sweeter than the stench of Eddyn’s cell. Part of her was furious about that—that a king should use anyone so, much less a High Clan prisoner who was kin to a rival King.
But fury had to contend with other emotions now, as she paused warily in the shadows beside the door, trying desperately to regain control, to let what she’d learned in her aborted Night Guard training take precedence.
She failed.
She’d show them the power of Eron. The power of Merryn san Argen-a. The power of Strynn’s sword. Why, that one casual blow had been like wine and combat and sex all at once. Like a drug—but one she made inside herself. A drug she’d barely tasted and was desperate to try again.
All at once she was running. Clinging to the shadows, but reckless for all that, as she made for the corner in which Kraxxi had been housed.
Ten spans …
Eight …
Five …
Her footsteps sounded loud as thunder as her boots slapped against the paving stones, yet she could also hear the voices of the men by the fire as though she were there with them—and each voice separately, at that.
She even felt the separate stones beneath her boots, the pulse and pull of the wind. The textures of the fabrics against her body. It reminded her of the imphor high she’d endured for days uncounted.
But this was courtesy of the gem—of the hot pain that pulsed and throbbed and—almost—protested against her palm. Of power waiting there, latent, but eager to burst free.
And very nearly out of control.
Two …
One …
She was there. She slammed into the door and pressed her face close against the bars, trying to see within.
Darkness.
“Kraxxi!” she hissed. Or thought she did, for her voice seemed loud as thunder.
“Kraxxi!”
Silence.
She pounded the oak with her fist.
Nothing
.
Perhaps a tap with the blade …
But then she noticed the catch. Unlocked.
She flicked it irritably, pushed at the door.
It opened easily.
And though dark inside, there was yet sufficient illumination for her to see that Kraxxi was gone.
Apparently permanently, since the bed was completely bare.
“Damn!” she spat into the darkness. And the fury rose up in her again—or frustration—or a return to the ambivalent anger she’d felt for her former lover since he’d abandoned her. Without really thinking about it, she swung the sword at the door—not with the full force of her limbs or the strength of her will, but still not casually.
The door exploded. Lightning flashed across the room, turning it stark white. The mattress pad blazed up in a froth of flame, as other flames took root on the wooden ceiling.
She danced away, shielding her face from the flames she’d called. From the lightning that had come from her fingertips.
From the anger that threatened to overwhelm her as power she’d never known danced through her body.
She wondered how Avall had resisted this. How he’d been able to swing the thing time after time and still be willing to put it down.
And though instinct warned her that something wasn’t right, that she was in danger of abandoning rationality in favor of this odd new giddy high, she ignored it, overwhelmed as she was by all the emotions that had tormented her since the war began.
… since her affair with Kraxxi had begun.
Since Strynn had been raped, in fact.
That jarred her.
Strynn …
She’d left Strynn alone with Eddyn. And guards were now approaching …
She ran.
But though she pounded along as fast as she ever had in her life, she still had time to study everything with the same considered languor as before. And among those things were doors: which ones were locked, and which not. And every door that was locked, she smote with the sword, not bothering to see if anyone emerged.
Behind her, she was aware of flame roaring up to the skies—and finally, of the men in the courtyard noticing her handiwork and starting to react. A few were running toward her, at least as many away.
It didn’t matter. The latter were cowards, the former—she could use a good fight, to burn off some of this energy.
