Night Elves of Ardani: Book Two: Sacrifice

by Nina K. Westra

  Neiryn stood over him. A flickering flame in one upturned palm illuminated his face from below, casting odd shadows on his features. He was looking down at Novikke with stunned concern.

  Novikke grit her teeth, climbed to her knees, and gripped the handle of the dagger. With a roar to cover up the pain with rage, she jerked the blade free.

  “Novikke…” Neiryn began tentatively.

  Blade in hand, she stood and turned to the still-twitching Zaiur. She glanced up at his face, still cloaked in flame, and regretted looking. At least now he looked as disgusting on the outside as he was on the inside.

  She raised the dagger and drove it through his chest. That he wasn’t awake to see her do it was an injustice of epic proportions. Blood gushed over her hand. She jerked away from it, watching his limbs grow still.

  It felt hard to breathe, like her throat was closing. Her entire body vibrated with adrenaline.

  Her eyes went to his waist, where his sword was still sheathed on his belt. She unbuckled the belt and tore it off him, then stood and, one-handed, fastened it around her own waist. Finally, she looked up at Neiryn. He was looking down at the dagger in Zaiur’s chest with what she dared to think was an approving eye.

  She couldn’t embrace him with her hands cuffed together, so she just held onto his shirt and let herself collapse against him. He let her. Novikke let out a shuddering breath against his shoulder and choked back a sob.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Let’s say we’re even.”

  “Sure.” She stepped back, scanning the woods. His collar was gone. And he was alone.

  “Where’s Kadaki?” she asked, trying to suppress the suspicious tone that wanted to creep into her voice.

  His expression turned carefully neutral—which alarmed Novikke even more.

  “She’s safe. She removed my collar when the fighting started.” A smile flickered over his lips. “As I suspected she would. She’s hidden with some of the others.”

  Novikke narrowed her eyes. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” He frowned. “How little do you think of me?”

  She glanced down at Zaiur, feeling guilty for questioning him after what he’d just done for her. She rolled one shoulder. “I think more of you now than I did when we first met, when you were grasping at every possible opportunity to be an ass. I recall an awful lot of talk about setting people on fire.”

  “You can hardly hold that against me, can you? I’m a sun elf.”

  “I can hold it against you,” she assured him.

  He looked down his nose at her. “I find that people tend to show me more respect when I make sure to remind them what could happen if they cross me. There’s no harm in it.”

  “And hasn’t Kadaki crossed you?”

  “No more than you have,” he said. “I came to look for you and the Varai. Our Varai, that is.”

  “You haven’t seen him?”

  “No. I thought he’d be with you.”

  She shook her head. “They caught up with us. One of the Varai from the outpost. I think they’ve taken him. There’s a mage with them. The woman who did this,” she said, holding up her scarred arm.

  “Then we should find him quickly.”

  “Agreed.” She looked down at his shackles. “How about burning those off?”

  He made a face. “That, uh, could get messy. And would probably take a while. Let’s try to find that lieutenant and get him to unlock it, first. I expect he’ll be more cooperative now that my collar is off.”

  “Aruna first,” Novikke said.

  He looked like he wanted to argue, but then he relented. “Aruna first,” he said with a nod.

  Chapter 8

  The Varai were regrouping back on the ridge where the fighting had started, which was now empty of Ardanians except for the dead. Novikke wondered how many had made it out alive.

  As she and Neiryn picked their way through the dark brush toward them, she drew Zaiur’s sword. She had a weapon again. Finally, she could fight. Finally, she could do something.

  She did a double take when she spotted a small but elaborate set of runes shimmering on the blade just past the crossguard. The sword was enchanted. With what, she had no idea. With her luck, it would be some kind of security measure that stopped other people from using it.

  It was light enough to hold comfortably in one hand, fortunately. Her left hand was useless. Her fingers still wouldn’t flex. Dull pain throbbed insistently, trailing into her wrist and occasionally spiking to her elbow. The handcuffs hurt every time they bumped her wrists.

  When they were near enough to the Varai that Novikke was afraid they’d be seen if they went closer, they stopped in the shadows behind a fallen log.

  The ridge was a mess of scattered packs and weapons. Bodies lay entangled with each other in bloody heaps. Varai walked among them, checking for survivors. They drove swords through the human ones, ensuring they were dead. Novikke felt sick looking at the dead. She hadn’t liked them, but they were her people. They’d been doing what they thought was right.

  At one end of the clearing, an injured Varai man was being cared for—with the Ardanians’ own medical supplies, she noticed. Looking farther on, she spotted a kneeling figure facing away from her.

  Aruna. She was surprised how easy it was to pick him out of the rest of the Varai, even from behind. She allowed herself a sigh of relief. They hadn’t killed him.

  A woman approached him, her hand on the hilt of her sheathed sword, and said something to him. It was the mage. She seemed to be the one in charge.

  When Aruna spoke, it was too quiet for Novikke to hear. “What are they saying?” she whispered.

  Neiryn’s eyes were on the group, flicking from person to person, as if sizing up each one. He waited for a break in the talking before answering. “They’re accusing him of being a traitor,” he said. “Which he is, so I doubt he’ll have much to say in his own defense. All the worse for him. Varai allow all kinds of evils from their people toward others, but the one thing they have no tolerance for is betrayal of their own.”

  She heard the mage say Zaiur’s name in the middle of a long string of Varai words.

  “They’re waiting for someone else to arrive,” Neiryn said.

  “Zaiur is the one we just killed.”

  “Ah. Well, he won’t be coming, then.”

  Novikke wondered how Varai law worked. Who decided whether someone was guilty? How was punishment carried out? With the way the mage and the other Varai were looking at Aruna, she wasn’t confident they wouldn’t kill him right there and then.

  “How do we get to him?” she asked. Neiryn would be doing the real work. Novikke was just backup, really. She would do whatever he needed her to.

  “Wait until some of the others are distracted, ideally. We take down the mage first. You follow me in and watch my back. We’ll kill all of them.”

  She frowned. “What if they surrender?”

  He snorted. “They won’t surrender.”

  “They might. You’re an uncollared sun elf.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “You remember what I said at the river?”

  She thought it over. He’d said a lot of things. “They’ll shake your hand just to get close enough to stab you?” she repeated.

  “Precisely.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “You haven’t met enough Varai to have an informed opinion. Your perspective is skewed because you’ve only known Aruna. He’s highly unusual.”

  She bit back a retort as the conversation between the elves grew more heated. Aruna stood up, gesticulating as best he could with his hands cuffed. The mage scowled.

  “…listened to me, I wouldn’t have had to go to such lengths!” he was saying. “This is not how things should be done. If I’d known—”

  The mage interrupted to snarl a few words, taking a threatening step toward him.

  “What does that matter?” Aruna said. He shook his head. “Y
ou’re as bad as they are.”

  The mage drew her sword. Aruna took a step back.

  Novikke jumped. “Go!” she hissed at Neiryn, who was already on his feet. A fireball had bloomed in his hand and flown across the clearing faster than Novikke’s eyes could follow.

  The mage turned toward the missile at the last moment, raising her arm reflexively in front of her face. The flame collided with her in an explosion of light.

  She screamed and dropped her sword, batting at the flames. The left half of her jacket was on fire.

  Neiryn shot another ball of flame into the chest of a woman across the ridge, then ran toward the middle of the clearing. Novikke ran after him.

  She watched, awed, as Neiryn threw fireball after fireball. Most of the night elves had ducked behind cover. Someone shot an arrow at him, which he disintegrated in a jet of fire before it reached him.

  Novikke swept her sword toward a figure that approached from behind them, and there was a clang as her blade collided with another. As she was facing off with one night elf, another one appeared beside him, raising a sword to swing at Neiryn.

  Before the Varai could finish the blow, a pair of dark hands wrapped a chain around his neck and yanked him backward. He and Aruna went down as he tried to wrestle the chain away from his throat.

  The other one swung at Novikke again, knocking her sword sideways when she blocked and pushing her off-balance. She caught herself against Neiryn’s back, making him stumble.

  “Watch it,” Neiryn hissed at her between fireballs.

  “Sorry.”

  Instead of running her through, the night elf in front of her jerked to the side, like he’d tripped. Novikke glanced down. Aruna had reached over and grabbed his ankle.

  With a cry of effort, she swung her sword wildly sideways. She was sure she’d looked more competent during her training, but that had been years ago, and being in a real fight was a lot different from sparring. Nothing seemed to go as she wanted, and it was more a wild struggle than the dance-like duels they’d practiced back then.

  Her blade grazed the night elf’s arm and caught on the side of his chest armor. He jerked back, and Novikke whipped her sword around and jabbed it into his side before he could evade her. There was a flash of red, and he staggered back, clutching his side, before turning and fleeing.

  Novikke felt a strange but familiar sensation. A tingling of magic crept over her skin. Fear spiked through her. The sword. The enchantment was doing something.

  She looked down at the runes on the blade, then at her hand on the hilt. She held still while the magic weaved through her, trying to feel what it was doing to her.

  Then she realized that her hand didn’t hurt anymore.

  She held up her left hand, and the wound where Zaiur had stabbed her had healed over into a neat red line.

  The sword had healed her. But only after she’d hit someone else with it. Like it was stealing his life to give to her.

  The fireballs had stopped. Novikke could see a few remaining Varai hiding behind trees. The rest were on the ground, dead. Patches of grass and a few bushes were on fire.

  “Ash,” Novikke swore under her breath. Neiryn still had a flame between his hands. He was breathing hard, scanning the clearing. His hands twitched when a woman peered out from behind a tree. She quickly ducked back behind cover.

  “Are you all right?” Aruna said, putting a hand on Novikke’s. The man he’d been struggling with was on the ground, not moving.

  “Are you?” Novikke said.

  Neiryn’s flame abruptly snuffed out. He jumped, surprised. They all turned toward the only figure that was still bold enough to approach them.

  The mage was still on her feet. She stopped a few steps from them, brandishing a sword in a shaky hand. The side of her jacket was in tatters and her left arm, like Novikke’s, was marred with a twist of scar tissue. She didn’t have the heart to feel pleased with the irony.

  Having extinguished Neiryn’s fires, she took another step toward them. Neiryn took a step back. He didn’t have a weapon, and it appeared that she could quench any fires he tried to conjure.

  Aruna took Novikke’s sword from her hand.

  “I think you should surrender now,” he said to the mage. She looked down at the sword in his hand, then back up at him, with a look so disgusted that Novikke caught Aruna flinching from it.

  In a lightning-quick movement, the mage attacked, feinting low right and then coming up high left. Aruna brought his sword up in barely enough time to deflect the blow, stepping sideways, then swung the blade into a sharp jab.

  The mage stopped. So did Aruna.

  His sword had pierced her ribs.

  He withdrew the sword, stepping back. As if the sword had been the only thing holding her up, she collapsed, gasping softly.

  Aruna took another step back as blood pooled around her legs.

  She murmured a few words Novikke couldn’t understand, and went still.

  Aruna looked nauseated. He thrust the sword hilt toward Novikke, as if eager to get it out of his hands. She took it.

  The fire reappeared in Neiryn’s hands.

  Aruna grabbed his wrist. “No! That’s enough.”

  Neiryn looked down at Aruna’s hand in annoyance. “They refuse to surrender,” he said, nodding to the mage. “They give us no choice.”

  “They don’t know it’s an option.” Aruna looked around, meeting eyes with the six or so Varai that were peering out at them.

  “What about the rest of you?” he called. “Will you leave now, or stay and die?”

  “I didn’t agree to this,” Neiryn said.

  Aruna ignored him. His gaze fell upon a woman hiding behind a tree in front of them. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Kashava?” Aruna said tentatively. “What about you?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  Aruna deflated a little. He glanced over at Neiryn, then nodded to his flame. “Turn that off.”

  Neiryn looked disapproving, but the fire disappeared.

  Someone called something to them from behind a tree.

  “No one is going to shoot you in the back,” Aruna replied. “They’re letting you live. You have my word. Just go and don’t come back.”

  Novikke saw a few of the Varai cautiously emerge from their hiding places long enough to back away into the trees. Then a few more followed suit. She spotted the injured man she’d seen earlier being supported by two others. They cast nervous looks toward Neiryn as they went.

  The woman Aruna had spoken to earlier, Kashava, gave Aruna a hateful look and said something to him before she, too, left. Aruna’s expression darkened. Neiryn raised his eyebrows at whatever she’d said, then glanced down at Aruna.

  “What?” Novikke asked. “What did she say?”

  “She said that his sister will have some things to say about this.”

  “I’m sure she will,” Aruna muttered.

  “You know that woman?” Novikke asked.

  “Kuda Varai is not very big,” he said. “Unfortunately.”

  Neiryn brushed soot off his hands. “That was stupid,” he grumbled. “They’re going to come back and kill us all in our sleep. That’s how they are.”

  “Shut up,” Novikke said wearily.

  The clearing atop the ridge was a grim, silent graveyard. The fires had begun to burn out, leaving it dark again.

  Novikke didn’t know if she was more upset by the bodies of the Ardanian soldiers, or by the charred and smoking remains of the Varai.

  “This is a cruel way to kill,” she said quietly. “I’m glad you’re here, Neiryn, but I hope you only do this when there’s no other choice.”

  “Would you kill someone at all, if you had any other choice?” Neiryn said. Despite his casual threats to set people on fire, he didn’t look happy about actually having to do it. He looked a little guilty as he turned toward Novikke. “Aevyr’s fire looks gruesome, but it isn’t especially painful when used properly,” he explained. “You saw how qu
ickly that other one went. He hardly had time to realize he was being attacked.”

  Aruna’s eyebrows pinched together in faint disgust. He wiped his hands over his face, then looked down at his shackles. “How can we get these removed?”

  “Some of the Ardanians were regrouping not far from here. We should catch up with them. One of them must know where the keys are, and I want to make sure Kadaki is unharmed.”