He strode out into the hall with a fierce whistle that sent the guardsmen scrambling into the safety of the shadows.
Chapter 21
Shade of Blood: Death is life.
What is the true meaning of darkness?
Romantic horseshit, Lorth replied inwardly. Wizards and hunters, light, wolves, blood and gods—it all blurred together like an ugly gray puddle stomped by too many boots.
He knelt, bound and gagged, on the floor in Morfaen’s council room, where only six quarter-moons past the Lords of Eusiron had sworn vengeance on Faerin. One side of his face throbbed from being struck to the floor by Lefors. The balding, pale-eyed lieutenant would answer for much more than that, if Lorth got his way here.
The lieutenant and a small company of men-at-arms lounged at the table, tapping their fingers, rubbing their foreheads, talking in low tones and sipping from fine goblets. One of them rose and paced the floor. They glanced at Lorth occasionally, as if he were an animal in a cage and no threat to them, though the biggest pair, standing close enough to smell, had orders to render him unconscious if he moved.
That they had brought him here to Forloc’s command stronghold indicated the warlord didn’t have the time or security to waste on gratifications of war such as interrogation, starvation, isolation or revenge. Lorth wouldn’t survive the day. Judging by the uneasy pall hanging over these men, the warlord most likely planned to place Leda on her throne in short time, to turn a tide gone against him.
Your Keeper is quite dead, I’m afraid, Lefors had earlier informed him, fingering his recently acquired silver Leaf girl with sadistic care. I suggest you make peace with your wolf gods before the witch discovers his blood on your hands.
Too late, Lorth thought in reply. He could no longer tell the difference between the emptiness in his heart over the idea that Leda could actually believe he would kill Eaglin and the aching, irrational sadness her potion had left on him. By now, the wizard probably had died, and Lorth wouldn’t blame Leda for throwing him to Forloc as she would a scrap to a hound. If nothing else, he had killed her son by failing to save him in time.
He gazed through a swelling eye at the Eusiron standard emblazoned in rich colors above the mantelpiece. Sodding gods, they were even more aloof than wizards. Lorth glared at the glittering crystal stars and thought, Are you regretting freeing me from the tree yet? After a moment cut by the low laughter of the lieutenant who had given the orders to ravage Ivy, he added, Bastard.
Lorth had earlier tried to bring up a word in the wizards’ tongue to loosen the gag cutting into his cheeks. He had used his best mind-voice, hearing it as clearly as he had heard Eaglin whisper to him of plants that would bring him back from the clutches of motherblack. But such tricks no longer counted for much.
Lorth’s hope that Eaglin still lived lingered like a brown leaf clinging to a twig, but it fell before the cruel gaze of reason. He hadn’t seen or heard the Raven since his dream in the closet. An even worse thought suggested Astarae had killed herself after discovering Eaglin had died. After threatening a war god, she wouldn’t have feared a hunter enough to do it.
What is the true meaning of darkness?
Why had Eusiron asked him that? Just a dream, perhaps, brought on by hunger and fatigue. Lorth envisioned Leda, giggling like a girl, the sunrise in her eyes glowing. Just a dream? Silly, there’s no such thing!
And to think he had left her here to bleed on that morning so long ago now, beneath the cold shadow of a new moon. Gone off to hunt Setriana on the eve of war. So proud, so beautiful, Leda had never let on that he had hurt her badly enough that in her anguish over the loss of her son, she would think he had committed the deed! No wonder the High Guard had believed he deserted them.
I owe nothing. He breathed a silent laugh that coated his mouth with scorn. The Shade of Fate knew nothing of love.
The doors to the chamber opened with a boom. Forloc didn’t enter, as expected; instead, a Faerin soldier, pale and out of breath, exploded into the room. “Milord!” Several men strode to him, but before Lefors could muscle him to a lower voice, he blurted, “Barbarians...”
Barbarians. The only men worthy of a title like that from a Faerin would be the Maelgwn. Perhaps Ithsion had rallied his people to join Sigmund against the Faerins. A far-flung hope, that. More likely, Morfaen had finally arrived. In any case, as the soldier delivered his report, his face and the hare-like tension in his body didn’t bode well for Forloc.
Another shout rang out from the hall as the warlord himself strode in flanked by men-at-arms. Between them walked Leda, head bowed, her face hidden in the shadow of a drawn hood. Intent on his captives, Forloc waved aside reports and questions. By his hard-set expression, he had already heard them.
Forloc and his company gathered in the center of the room before the hearth, stomping mud all over the floor. The warriors stood back in a comfortable ring, giving room to their lord and his new prize. The pain in Lorth’s body settled into a hunter’s calm as the pale-eyed lieutenant moved into position behind him.
“Ungag him,” Forloc said.
“Milord,” the lieutenant protested, “If he speaks—”
“Do it.” Under the warlord’s icy glare, the lieutenant roughly complied with his request. Lorth moved his jaw around as the blood returned to his face. He no longer had the power to talk his way out of this, and Forloc knew it. Aenspeak had drifted from his reach.
Leda gazed at him from beneath her hood with the eyes of an adder.
I didn’t kill Eaglin, Lorth stared back.
The priestess lowered her gaze and glanced aside as Forloc sidled up to her. Almost tenderly, he drew back her hood. Her skin was pale, and dark shadows hung beneath her eyes. The sun had set.
Wolves at the gates were about to be the least of Forloc’s problems.
Forloc paced slowly around the priestess, looking her over as if for the first time. Leda stared at the dirty floor. In a casual voice that betrayed the lust in his eyes, the warlord said, “There is no such thing as a man without loyalty, though it is only for want of coin or power.” He glanced at Lorth. “Being a wizard, your conscience is of a finer sort, I think.”
I’m not a sodding wizard. If Lorth had followed the Keepers’ rules, he wouldn’t be kneeling here listening to this tripe. He studied the Faerin warlord with predatory regard. Surely, this man had more weaknesses than arrogance. If arrogance alone were enough to bring a man down, war wouldn’t exist.
Forloc lifted a battle-weathered hand to Leda’s cheek. While the possessive gesture caused Lorth’s male instincts to raze his gut like a fiery sword, the priestess responded with all the warmth of a gravestone. The warlord continued, “Fascinating, the things lovers will do for each other—and against each other, when love dies. Which it always does.” He stopped pacing and leveled his gaze on Lorth. “Surely a hunter with your abilities wouldn’t lower himself to love. And yet a wizard would, evidently. So tell me. Do you love her?”
“What I love,” Lorth said with measured calm, “is the taste of blood on her lips.”
Leda looked up. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched the corner of her mouth. In any other circumstance, Lorth might have found it comforting. But now, it only sealed his fate.
Forloc stepped up to him, making a point to block his view. “You do understand that you will die here.”
“That’ll warm her up to you.”
“I don’t need her warmth to claim her.”
Lorth sat back as if shoved there. This man actually believed he could take Leda by force! Lorth himself had once touched her with an emotional storm in his heart, and she’d put him on his knees in a puddle of piss. Surely, Forloc didn’t become the ruler of Faerin by being that stupid. At some point, arrogance had to stand down to strategy.
Clearly, Leda was playing him. Perhaps he knew it, or perhaps not; but under her paw, he would stumble sooner or later. Lorth could only take so much pleasure in the idea. The Mistress of Eusiron did nothing for h
is sake anymore.
“So what did you agree to do in return for her attention?” Lorth asked, leaning aside to catch a glimpse of her. “Pity a condemned man.”
With a spurious smile, the warlord returned to Leda’s side. “I swore on the Old One”—he spoke the word with a lilt—“not to harm any more of Eusiron’s people.”
“Am I not a man of Eusiron?” As he said it, the Hunter’s Rede pulled the knife from his heart. I owe nothing. It hurt as badly as it had going in.
Forloc lifted his brow. “You?” His nostrils flared as if to catch a scent. “Your Mistress’s men handed you over to me for high treason. You’re no more a man of Eusiron than I am.”
Leda stepped forward, her voice trembling with a mother’s wrath. “You killed my son. You’re a traitor to the highest powers of this land. To the Aenmos himself.”
With that, blood poured out of the knife wound, hot, laughing, and taking to the Void all Lorth’s heart knew of loyalty and love. He wanted to lift his chin with the pride of the wilds, but everything those he had loved and lost had ever said to him rose up like an army, swords pointing, eyes burning with violet condemnation. How many hearts had he broken on the crags of the Hunter’s Rede, for nothing but gold and the comfort of solitude? He had valiantly attempted to exonerate himself for his dark ways by claiming love for his homeland. But his instincts had held the reins all along, so frightened had he become of a cage. Now he would die for giving his friends—and Leda—no reason to trust him.
Forloc, taking his prisoner’s silence as acquiescence to the charge, nodded and flipped his cloak aside. On his side hung a familiar scabbard of worn, dark leather intricately worked with silver trees. Lorth’s self-doubt took another hard turn as he realized Cael and Regin must have failed in their mission to find and restore Eaglin.
The Faerin lord drew the identity-marked blade and held it out on his palms as if to offer a truce. “Lefors, if you would do me the honor.”
Just then, Lorth felt an odd sensation. It moved so deeply in his mind, he couldn’t tell the difference between the shift and the darkness...but he recognized it. He had perceived it while crossing the Northpass into Eusiron, and again each time the specter had come to him whispering of blackthorn and thistle. Eaglin. The Raven’s mind came into focus as a shiver in the walls that even the Faerins responded to; they looked around, and at each other. Forloc wore the same cavalier expression he usually did. Leda remained opaque.
Lefors came forward, took Lorth’s sword by the hilt and swung it around in an elegant spiral, as if to test its weight and balance. “Shame to dull such a blade on a wolf,” he said.
Lorth lowered his head as his last dream of Eusiron came into his mind. What is the true meaning of darkness? In the lore of the wise, the answer united wizards and hunters in a common bond: Darkness is the source of light. But Lorth had never honored the tenets of the Eye, and his love for a woman had caused him to abandon the Hunter’s Rede.
He knelt there on the edge of death’s chasm, stunned by something he couldn’t see. As he looked into Leda’s eyes, raw and filled with tears, darkness became the only thing he knew, had ever known, or would ever know.
Lefors whirled the blade high over his neck and waited, oblivious to all but the command to strike.
Death is life. Given all the lives he had taken under the Shade of Blood, he couldn’t very well balk this, could he?
“Hunter,” Forloc said in a formal tone that bordered on mocking. It held urgency that hadn’t been there a moment before. “I hereby execute you for high treason to Eusiron and the Realm of Ostarin.” He moved his hand.
Lorth closed his eyes and surrendered his life to the Destroyer.
As he fell into the chasm, an eerie cry rent the fabric of time-space. It rose from nothing, a paralyzing sound that bent and broke the structures of the moment with a fanged snarl. The floor shook, and a yawning crack resounded through the air.
When he realized he still had his head, Lorth rolled out of the way, barely avoiding his sword as it slipped from Lefors’s hand and struck the floor. Lorth grabbed it and quickly freed himself.
The chamber erupted with a gale that lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the wall. As he recovered from the shock, he tried to rise, then stumbled to his knees and slid forward, dragged by wind roaring into a maelstrom swirling in the center of the floor. His sword lay a short distance away, moving towards the fathomless hole. Lorth hit the floor on his belly and reached with all his might, catching it by the blade. It cut into his hand. When he had the hilt, he flipped over, dove and grabbed the fetlock of a granite horse statue between the hearth and the corner.
Leda stood on the edge of the Void like a towering goddess of death, her face tilted skyward and her arms raised. She sang in the Dark Tongue. Awed nearly to tears, Lorth couldn’t have imagined anything so beautiful, and terrible. She tore out his heart and feasted on it. And if he let go, she would sing him into oblivion with the rest of these fools.
Men screamed and tried to run for the door as the vortex began to suck them into it. More men entered the room to investigate the commotion, and then fled for their lives. Men lay unconscious or dead in corners or behind things that prevented them from sliding inward. Forloc sprawled half under a heavy table, his armpit caught. On the other side of the hearth, Lefors clung to a protruding ornament at the base of the mantel, shielding his face against the ashes blowing from the fireplace.
Keeping his balance on the upside, Lorth moved carefully in the lieutenant’s direction. The man didn’t notice the hunter until he was nearly upon him. He tried to scramble out of the way, but Lorth grabbed him, rolled him over and hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious. He snatched Leaf from the lieutenant’s belt and shoved her into his boot. Though the lieutenant’s throat tempted him sorely, he had other plans for Lefors.
Forloc’s body had dislodged itself from the table leg and now slid towards the maelstrom.
Lorth braced himself against the wind howling from the chimney, removed Lefors’s scabbard and strap, put his own blade in it, and put it on. Grabbing the lieutenant by his collar and dragging him along, Lorth skirted around the perimeter of the council room, hugging the wall and grasping at anything he could get hold of to keep from being sucked into the hole.
As Forloc neared the edge, he regained consciousness. His face twisted into a white mask of horror as he flailed around to distance himself from the wailing maw. His motion accelerated as if his weight changed with proximity. As he tumbled in, he shouted a nasty curse and slapped his hand on the ragged edge. Then he vanished.
Leda lowered her arms, and the wind stilled.
So did Lorth.
The priestess turned around, her gaze sweeping the room before she found him. Her lips formed his name. Then she collapsed.
Lorth dropped Lefors and ran to her. As he skirted the edge of the chasm in the floor, the sensation of infinity emanating from the hole weakened his knees and raised every hair on his head. He reached Leda, lifted her away from the darkness and gathered her close. Hunger and grief had made her frail as a child. She smelled of patchouli and underground.
He jumped as shouts and running feet echoed in the hall outside. The door slammed open. He lowered Leda to the floor, drew his sword and jumped up to defend her to the death—and then he blinked and lowered his blade as warriors in gray, white and black filled the room. Though bloody and gaunt, their faces glowed with hope.
“Make way!” someone boomed. “Where is that sneaky...” Regin pushed through the crowd, and then stopped as he saw Lorth standing over Leda. “Wolf,” he finished softly.
Lorth knelt and lifted the priestess into his arms. “She’ll be all right,” he said, caressing her face with a gaze as he stood.
The High Guard crowded around him in a quiet mood dappled with sighs and words of relief. Someone said, “Where is Forloc?”
Lorth glanced behind him at the silent abyss. “Destroyer took him.” He returned his attention t
o Regin. “I felt Eaglin earlier. Is it so?”
“Aye, it is.” A couple of the men grumbled with laughter. “Cael got hold of that elixir you told us about. Turns out, Master Eaglin was in the Omefalon when the motherblack hit him. It rendered him unconscious. He said the Om Tree protected him, and gave him water.” He touched Leda’s face. “He said she came in—the tree wouldn’t let the Faerins enter—and found he was alive.”
Lorth sagged with relief. Leda had put on a damned good act with Forloc, to trick the warlord into defying the Destroyer—even as Lorth had surrendered to her.
Men gathered by the wall where Lorth had left Lefors. Swords hissed from their sheaths. At the same time, another group entered the room, led by Cael. “Och!” the guardsman called out. “What’s this?”
Lorth drew Leda to his heart and moved towards the door. As he passed the lieutenant, who had awaked to the points of a dozen blades, he said, “That is Lefors.” The name was all he needed to say; every man there knew it. “I planned to give him to Eamon.”
Amid the resulting hue and cry, Regin gave the order.
Aggressors and protectors.
The hunter carried his priestess into the hallway to a spiraling chorus of love and victory.
Chapter 22
Shade of Instinct: I act from knowing.
Three days passed, bringing a Wind Moon to shine upon Eusiron. Dove gray clouds with deep purplish edges moved slowly across the evening sky. A north wind blew. Far beneath the High Pass, the spring-swollen Starfilon roared over the melting ice and vanished beneath the palace. The pale moon rose behind the tops of the firs to the east, promising a good night for hunters.
Lorth of Ostarin sat comfortably ensconced in a tumble of crags on the edge of the drop below the bridge, wearing a gray cloak that blended him with the stone. He held his blade in his lap and lovingly polished it. Above, the last of Morfaen’s forces filed onto the muddy road that led to the palace gates. Though visibly battle-worn, they laughed and sang, their hearts as bright as the rising moon. Scattered among them rode Sigmund’s and Ian’s men, who had been stationed to the east. As Lorth had hoped, the Maelgwn had joined their cause and helped to clear the Faerin forces who attempted to ride south to meet Morfaen’s onslaught. He had also heard reports that Faerins had fled to Eusiron’s Haunt to hide or escape. Whether the forest or the Dark Warrior himself had dispatched them there, no one knew. None had emerged.
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