Kaarl jammed his heels into the sides of his mount, charging east toward his wife. He would run through the Ken’nar bodily if he must to save her.
... All commands ... Ken’nar archers ... Moving north ... Desde called, her mind’s voice desperate.
He whipped his head around to look south. A column, one-thousand strong, rode toward him. Those racking maggots had split their unit yet again. The Ken’nar broke for the outside of the garrison to the west, along the land’s edge overlooking the river gorge, and attempted to create a perimeter. They would move to surround Kaarl’s forces.
The maneuver forced him to call off his charge toward Desde. ... Morgan, get her out of there ... he called to his friend and wheeled his mount around toward the surging southern phalanx.
If his Fal’kin could outrun the Ken’nar and make it south across the Anarath bridge, the southern Ken’nar might be drawn away from their northern phalanx—and Desde. It was more than risky. The bridge was exactly where he did not want to be. He couldn’t make more amulets, but maybe he could leave fewer Ken’nar for Dav Koehl, Liaonne Edaran, and what was left of the Fal’kin northern provincial unit. He gritted his teeth. If nothing else, they could hold the bridge for a retreat. If they could pull it off. If he could hold out that long. If.
Kaarl regrouped his provincial forces and charged to meet the remainder of the southern Ken’nar phalanx head-on. He gripped his amulet and downed one Ken’nar. He aimed for another, but the Ken’nar repulsed the strike with amulet fire of his own. Two provincial Fal’kin fighters went down. Another defender incinerated several arrows at once with her amulet, but there were too many. A lethal projectile found its mark in her neck. Soon, the air was alive with arrows.
... Desde ... Run ... Run! ... he called while deflecting the deadly missiles with his Aspect.
His wife and her dwindling guard raced toward his forces, the tattered remnants of the il’Kin guarding their backs. A blistering exchange from the Fal’kin opened the embroiled Ken’nar line for Desde and the others, but that frail victory only handed them another defeat. No one called the battle now. He cursed. Even if Desde and Binthe could handle all the communication for the harrowing fight themselves, they no longer had a vantage point.
Cold apprehension swallowed him as he searched the sodden, bloody battlefield for some advantage, some weakness in the Ken’nar lines he could use. The regrouped northern phalanx of the Ken’nar—now two thousand strong—curled around the western edge of the garrison, a wave in an ocean of black armor. Those from the east pushed back his line.
Searing pain scorched his back. He screamed in agony and fury as he wheeled his horse to face his attacker. The Ken’nar died from amulet fire and a pair of long knives.
Kaarl threw an arm around his wife as she reached him, nearly pulling her from her horse in his effort to embrace her. “Desde.”
She brushed her lips on his cheek. “Dav Koehl—” She panted, trying to recover her breath from the strain of her Sight. “He has fallen. Liaonne and Niall Corran, Dav’s second, are doing what they can with our northern provincial troops, but our line is gone.”
The southern contingent now drove straight for his forces.
Her words chilled him, his blood oozing like mud in his veins. “There is no one to stop the northern Ken’nar forces.”
... We will create a feint ...
The air surrounding him became alive with Fal’kin arrows. He smiled. They were an illusion. But the Ken’nar didn’t know that. ... We ride for Deren! ... He reached deep within himself, his power billowing in him, and his red amulet exploded in fury.
At a full gallop, his forces, at last, broke through the Ken’nar archer line as the dark warriors momentarily retreated against the image of an aerial barrage. Fal’kin amulets flashed like earthbound lightning to match the lightning in the heavens, and downed enemy fighters in waves. The diversion wavered as Desde and Binthe could no longer maintain the illusion of arrows. Real Ken’nar arrows forced them to focus on saving their own lives.
Kaarl dealt death for death with the dark-armored warriors, but for each one he cut down, another Ken’nar took his opponent’s place. The Fal’kin around him began to falter under the might of their enemy. Already, defenders were being forced off the Kin-Deren plain between the two bridges into the river chasm. They plummeted to their deaths far below as whole sections of earth fell away under from under their feet.
He swung his sword and fired unceasingly with his amulet, but he knew now it was useless. They were trapped.
CHAPTER 31
“Hand in hand, Hafen and Halen together opened the womb of their mother. Now, hands their hold swords, opening the floodgates of their mother’s heart.”
—The Book of Kinderra
This bloodbath had gone on long enough. It was time to bring it to an end.
The Ain Magne was too experienced in the peculiar art of war to acknowledge victory while an enemy was cornered. Nothing fought more fiercely than trapped prey.
He reined his stallion to a canter behind the rear of his southern phalanx. He had the Fal’kin surrounded on the Anarath bridge. And in the center of his ever-tightening noose fought Kaarl Pinal. There was nowhere for him to run.
He clenched and relaxed the grip on his sword in an exceedingly rare moment of indecision. The steward would never accept his philosophy that both the Light from Within and the Power from Without merited benediction from the Aspects Above. No, Kaarl would not.
But his daughter would. He would make certain of it.
The Trine pulled in the essence of life from around him, savoring it as it filled him. He held onto it, letting build and grow within him to the point where his chest felt on fire. The milky, metallic crystal at his chest burned bright like flaming mercury. The decision made him both want to weep and shout in triumph. Kaarl Pinal had to die.
A rumble like that of distant thunder reverberated across the battlefield. Tremors vibrated up from the ground, up through the iron-shod hooves of his stallion, his dark-patinaed greaves.
“No.”
An unbidden vision exploded before his mind’s eye, stealing the Power from Without from his Defending Aspect.
Stone falls. Earth slides. A red curtain of light. The Anarath bridge. Consumed.
“No, you little fool! What are you doing? You’ll kill yourself!”
He dragged his horse’s head around and charged downriver, searching for a way to cross the swollen course.
CHAPTER 32
“My visions have disheartened me once again.”
—The Codex of Jasal the Great
... Now you die, Fal’kin bitch ... The Ken’nar defender woman called, her mind-words filled with bloodlust.
Mirana screamed. Before she could grapple for her long knives, the woman gurgled on a cry as a sword plunged through her neck and into her throat from behind.
Hot, red blood sprayed Mirana. She flailed to get out from under the ghastly shower as the Ken’nar’s body collapsed on top of her. With a shove, she pushed the corpse from her. She spat out blood that found its way into her mouth and wretched on her hands and knees, seeing nothing more than the dark form of her savior as he rode away.
She collapses to her hands and knees. Blood from the deep gash in her side drips onto the paving, the rain and sleet creating little red rivulets in the grout. Teague lies, unmoving. A sob of pain, of desolation, escapes her mouth as she slowly lifts her head.
“It is over, child. Give it to me.”
She shook her head to dispel the vision fragment. She had to move. She had to find Lord Garis. If she didn’t, Two Rivers Ford would be just the beginning. The Ken’nar would march, unstoppable, across Kinderra. The saving power of Jasal’s Keep, if it existed, would never be known. Teague would die. She would fail at the keep, at everything, if the Ford fell to the Ken’nar.
If the Ford fell.
She sucked in a breath. Her three Aspects rose sharply. They begged for release. Her heart was on fire.
She swore she would not take an amulet and wreak the awful destruction she witnessed through her keep vision. But could she do something to save the Fal’kin? With an amulet? Now? If she did, would they remain alive by her hand, only to die by it later at Jasal’s Keep?
If she didn’t act now, the Fal’kin of an entire province would be wiped off the face of Kinderra. Her province. Her people. People whose lives she had already put in jeopardy.
Mirana scrambled back onto her horse, drawing his head toward the direction of the land’s end. “Ashtar! Run!”
CHAPTER 33
“And it shall come to pass that Kinderra will cry out in such agony as to deafen even Her birth.”
—The Trine Prophecy, The Book of Kinderra
Mirana raced toward the river gorge. The first rays of the dawning sun stroked the Dar-Anar Mountains with red far off to the west as the storm exhausted itself. A lone star, Gabrial, shivered above the range’s crooked back.
Sharp metal cries of swords punctuated the agonized human cries of the wounded and the dying. Grynwen howls sang a brutal counterpoint to the hissing, pitched whistle of Ken’nar arrows. Horses and men and women screamed in rage, in terror. Her Defending, Seeing, and Healing Aspects rose, battled against one another for her control.
She charged Ashtar toward the apex of the Kin-Deren’s landmass between the two bridges, willing him to run faster than he ever had before. The Fal’kin were trapped on the southern bridge, Ken’nar in front and behind. They could not get off. They would either be slain where they stood or fall over the Ford’s edge into the river gorge as the land crumbled away under their feet. The very earth was perishing.
She dug her heels into her horse’s sides. An arrow screamed through the air. She cried out in pain as it raked down her back at an angle. The thick leather armor Binthe had lashed to her in those harrowing moments before her ill-fated Choosing Ceremony saved her life.
A deep groaning echoed through the Ford as though the land itself was in agony. The ground between the bridge arches could no longer bear the weight of so many. Weakened by the rain, it was crumbling. Dying.
Around her, the amulets of the dead glinted in the fading lightning as the storm left the battle in its wake. For summers, the thought of choosing an amulet had paralyzed her. The sacred bond between crystal and Aspect, answering her birthright as a Fal’kin, would unleash a destiny of unimaginable destruction through her. Someday.
... Mirana, please be safe ...
Father.
Hatred and love, both raw and pure, sieged through her.
If she did nothing at this moment the Fal’kin would be destroyed. She must act. Now.
Mirana thrust out her hand. A blood-red ruby amulet flung itself from the neck of a dead Fal’kin and hurled through the air into her waiting palm. She caught it and threw the thick golden chain over her head. The amulet fell heavy against her breastbone, pressing the edges of Teague’s delicate pendant into her skin.
The Trine Prophecy. She was the Thrice-cursed, sent to destroy. She would turn the Ford itself into a weapon of destruction. Maybe she would save the Fal’kin now so they would live to stop the Ken’nar once and for all in the future. Destroy. Rebuild. In one.
Maybe she was that one.
CHAPTER 34
“And thus Kinderra was sundered.”
—The Book of Kinderra
Kaarl could not see. Thick black smoke from the blazing garrison billowed in the wind created by the flames themselves, obscuring his vision. The accursed Ken’nar had slathered their arrows with naphtha before lighting them. Even the rain would not put out that fire. He relied on his heightened defender’s senses to pick out the nearest of the incoming arrows, listening for the twang of bowstrings and the peculiar whistles made by the black fletching.
Grim satisfaction curdled in his stomach. He had been right. Columns from the merged northern Ken’nar forces had indeed followed him and his troops south. The Fal’kin, however, failed in their attempt to rout the Ken’nar off the southern bridge to the Sün-Kasalan plains just beyond. There were simply too many. They fought too tenaciously, leaving humanity behind as they struck. The only dismal good he could see was that the grynwen preferred to stay off the bridge, relishing instead the feast of the killing fields on the Ford valley’s plains.
Again, the eerie scream of Ken’nar arrows split the air overhead. He could move only so far, however, to avoid them. One false step, one unanticipated shove by some Ken’nar’s damned Aspect, and he’d fall off the southern Anarath bridge into the river chasm below.
Once more, Kaarl thrust his sword at a Ken’nar, dropping him from his mount, but he took a glancing blow on his own arm from the melee next to him. The bodies packed on the bridge made fighting all but impossible.
He wheeled his horse away from the combatants when a sharp pain drove through the back of his left shoulder. He cried as burning agony lanced through his arm. An arrow found its mark, slicing through an opening in his chain mail rent by a Ken’nar broadsword. The arrow’s head protruded forward from the thick part of his shoulder muscle. He turned to see more Ken’nar advancing behind him. Seething, he cursed and broke off the tip. He tried to reach back to pull out the remainder of the headless arrow, but the pain was too great. He would just have to cut down the damned Ken’nar with one hand.
He surged his horse forward, but his charger stumbled as its belly was cut open by the broadsword of a dying Ken’nar from beneath. He arched his body as he dropped to avoid slipping off the bridge. He screamed in pain and rage. Ignoring his wounds, he scrambled to his feet and released deadly fire from his amulet. Sawing agony sheared through his left shoulder as someone pulled the arrow shaft. He whirled around and gripped the vermilion garnet, centering himself to incinerate whoever dared to touch him. Part of the shaft broke as he turned, leaving a portion embedded.
Desde threw away the arrow fragment and reached down to him to help him to her horse. He thrust away the thought that he had almost killed his wife.
“Keep to the middle—” Her words were lost as a Ken’nar tried to drag her from her horse’s saddle. She slashed viciously at her attacker.
Binthe rode up behind the dark warrior and scissored both of her long knives under his helmet and across his throat. He choked a cry and fell over the bridge into the abyss below. A Ken’nar next to her made a wide, sweeping motion with her hand, throwing the seer from her mount. She screamed and disappeared under an onslaught of Ken’nar fighters.
Kaarl thrust out his good arm, wrapping his Aspect around the Ken’nar, and flung the warrior away from her as Morgan reeled his horse around.
“Binthe!” The young defender let out a cry of rage and released a wash of fire from his amethyst amulet. Five Ken’nar ceased to exist. She emerged from the ash, shaking, bleeding from a dozen cuts. He caught Morgan’s fleeting call to her, no words, only emotion.
Kaarl’s Defending Aspect again cried a sharp warning to him. “Morgan! Look out!” Two sets of hands tried to pull the il’Kin defender off his horse. Binthe swept wide with her hand, throwing one Ken’nar off the bridge, while Desde’s lightning-fast movements slashed at the other. As the warrior’s hands flew to his throat, she planted a booted foot into his stomach, sending him sprawling. The Ken’nar reached out in the last instant for Morgan but snagged the reins of the il’Kin defender’s horse instead. The women dragged him away as the Ken’nar fell to his doom, taking Morgan’s mount with them.
Kaarl had no time to embrace his friend. “Down!” he screamed and pushed his former lieutenant to his knees. Red fire arched from his amulet, striking a Ken’nar behind the younger defender.
Morgan rose wearily to his feet. “We need to get off the bridge. This is madness.”
Kaarl scanned the span, the pain in his shoulder momentarily forgotten. The Fal’kin had to fight their way clear.
He swung his sword at the Ken’nar warriors impeding their way but could not advance. Morgan sprayed the Ken’nar line with deadly purple
fire from his amethyst. Kaarl lent his amulet fire to the young defender commander’s strike.
Ken’nar fell under their attack, but it was not enough. The southern phalanx kept coming and coming. The northern column herded all that was left of the Fal’kin forces onto the Anarath bridge and into the arms of the southern battalion. There was no room to move on the bridge, no room to fight, nowhere to run.
For the first time in a very, very long time, a tendril of fear wound its way through his mind. If they could not find a way off the bridge, they would die.
He was not afraid to die if it meant his daughter would live. That thought was the only thing that kept him going in the face of so much horror over the long summers. He’d be damned if the Dark Trine would take her while he still breathed.
“Diamond defense! Now!”
Standing back to back, he, Desde, Morgan, and Binthe created a defensive box. The defenders covered the seers with amulet fire while the seers slashed and stabbed at any who drew near.
Screams of terror rose above the battle as Fal’kin and Ken’nar fell off the bridge into the water far below. Even the very earth had turned against them, taking the Aspected of both sides with impunity as the soil washed away down into the river gorge.
Kaarl slashed at an attacker, but she danced just outside his reach. She toyed with him, coyly, almost seductively, her mind reaching out to his as she tried to draw his Aspects from him. She attempted to coax him out of formation toward her, coming nearly within arm’s reach of him. He pulled back, spitting an invective at her, and clamping down on his mind. She laughed in reply—her voice deep and rich and devoid of warmth—and taunted him now with her sword. That was a mistake. Her last. Morgan batted away her sword with his blade. Kaarl reached within himself and emptied his amulet on her. She died, screaming, in the shroud of the garnet’s scarlet fire.
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