by C. L. Wilson
“When we find him,” Cann growled softly, “he’s mine.”
His boys nodded. Together, they slipped back into the hallway and made their way to the stone steps leading to the central hall.
They found Sebourne and two of his men disposing of the body of a King’s Guard in the first hallway of the west wing.
Cann didn’t hesitate. With a speed that would have done his Elvish kin proud, he pulled an arrow from the quiver at his back, nocked it, aimed, and let fly. A second arrowed followed a split second later.
Sebourne’s two companions dropped without a sound. The Great Lord whirled, blade unsheathed and raised for battle. At the sight of Cann and his sons, Sebourne’s lip curled.
“You,” he spat. “I should have known.”
“Ta, me,” Cann snarled. “You miserable, jaffing traitor.” He thrust his bow at his son Severn. His hand dropped to the hilt of the blade sheathed at his hip, and he drew the shining blade from its scabbard.
“Traitor, am I?” Lord Sebourne snarled, baring teeth like a lyrant issuing challenge. “Because Great House Sebourne is finally standing up to that puling Fey-lover of a king?”
“Because Great Lord Sebourne is a spineless rultshart of an assassin, too cowardly to face his enemy in open battle.” Cann crossed the courtyard in a few long strides and took his battle stance, sword raised.
“I’ll face you—gladly.” Sebourne raised his sword. Torchlight glinted along the blade’s fine, gleaming length. “You killed my son. You and those Fey maggots—and that loose-legged slut you called a daughter.”
The insult to Talisa did not make Cann charge recklessly at his opponent as Sebourne had no doubt intended. Instead, all his anger, all his grief, shrank down into a hard, icy knot deep inside his core.
“Your son was a weak, spoiled bully,” he replied. “I should never have let my daughter waste herself on him. Even on his best day, he wasn’t worthy to kiss her hem.”
Satisfaction surged inside him as Sebourne’s nostrils flared. The Great Lord swung his blade with reckless force. Cann dodged the blow with ease and swung at Sebourne’s unprotected back. Dervas spun sharply, raising his shield in time to deflect Cann’s blow. He was no stranger to warfare and no easy kill, with reflexes honed by a lifetime of living in the wilds of the northern borders. Like Cann, there were few lords who could best him.
They flowed from one masterful form to another, attacking and counterattacking with blurring speed and steady, relentless prowess. Scissor Blades. Circle of Ice. Death Drop. Ring of Fire. Shield Strike. Helm Cleaver. Neither flinched or faltered.
Cann had appreciated Sebourne’s skill a time or two in the past, and they’d spent many a day sparring together in a friendly rivalry. Right now, he heartily regretted those days. Sebourne knew him too well, knew how he attacked, defended, which combinations came most naturally to him.
But, then, he knew Sebourne, too.
He watched for the patterns that inevitably appeared in Sebourne’s fighting. And eventually, it came. After a particularly savage series of attacks and parries, a panting, sweat-drenched Sebourne backed off into a lighter attack called Maiden’s Dance. The series of teasing blows, though swiftly delivered, carried much less strength behind them. They weren’t meant to kill, only to inflict numerous shallow wounds to weaken an opponent through blood loss and shake his confidence.
Cann took more of the wounds than he normally would, hoping that would encourage Sebourne to attempt his favorite next move. And there it was. Maiden’s Kiss… the glancing blow to the face intended to lay open the cheek or blind an eye. Not a killing blow, just a bloodletter like Maiden’s Dance, but to dodge the Kiss—which was often the instinctive response—put a fighter off-balance. The attacker could then deliver a hard blow and a sweep of his boot across the defender’s ankle to put the defender down on his back and vulnerable to Final Point, a sword buried deep in a vulnerable throat.
Cann didn’t dodge. He spun into the Maiden’s Kiss, taking the side of Sebourne’s blade across the cheek. He felt the sting, the warm spurt of blood as his skin split. But helm and chain-mail coif saved him from worse injury as he spun into and under the blade, ducking beneath Sebourne’s sword arm. Cann’s sword bit deep into Sebourne’s wrist as he went, while his left hand reached for one of the black Fey’cha strapped to his chest. He sprang up behind Dervas, dagger in hand, to deliver a slicing blow to the vulnerable back of Sebourne’s leg
Sebourne went down on one knee, his sword clattering to the courtyard’s paving stones.
Breathing heavily, Cann circled back around, kicked Dervas’s fallen sword across the courtyard, and thrust his sword under Sebourne’s chin. “You traitorous rultshart. I should kill you now.”
“Then why don’t you?” The defeated Great Lord hugged his injured hand to his chest and curled his lip in a sneer.
“Because you don’t deserve a quick death, Dervas. Our new king, whose father you slew, will want you punished as the traitor you are.” Cann nodded to the King’s Guard, then stepped back and sheathed his sword. “May the gods have mercy on your Shadowed soul.” Abruptly feeling drained and hollow, Cann turned to rejoin his sons.
“I won’t need that mercy, Barrial,” Sebourne called after him. Then his voice took on a Dark edge, and he added, “But you will.”
Cann saw Sev’s eyes widen. He heard Parsis shout, “Da! ‘Ware!” just as Sev raised his father’s Elfbow, arrow nocked and drawn. Cann spun and dropped to one knee, blade in hand, to see Sebourne lift his uninjured arm. The cuff of Sebourne’s sleeve had fallen back to reveal a small bow strapped to his wrist.
Cann’s sword, Sev’s arrow, and the King’s Guards’ swords all pierced Great Lord Sebourne in an instant. The poison dart from the wristbow bounced off the wall behind Cann’s head and fell harmlessly to the stone pavers.
Mortally wounded, Dervas Sebourne, the last of his Great House, cried, “Gamorraz!” then toppled to the paving stones. Bright streamers of blood spilled from his nose and mouth as his pierced heart pumped the final moments of his life away.
On Seborne’s chest the round moonstone in his necklace began to glow.
“What the—?” One of the King’s Guard bent down to examine the pendant. The white stone grew brighter.
Cann had no idea what the thing was, but he knew magic when he saw it. And if the magic was Dervas’s dying gift to them, it couldn’t be good.
“Put it down!” he cried. “Get back! Everyone get back!”
His warning came too late for the guard holding the necklace.
Bright light gave way to rapidly expanding darkness. The guard screamed in helpless terror as the growing blackness consumed his hand and arm and half his torso. The smoldering remains of his body dropped to the ground and convulsed. Howling shadows fell upon his twitching corpse with ravening hunger.
“Demons!” someone cried, and the Celierians scattered.
Screams erupted from all corners of the castle.
“Attack! We’re under attack!”
“Da! Look!” Severn pointed back towards the open portal behind them.
Cann looked in time to see a great, tawny cat leap from the well, a brightly garbed and veiled Feraz warrior on its back. The warrior carried a strange urn on a chain that he spun in circles over his head. Some sort of liquid sprayed forth, the fine droplets settling on the fleeing Celierians. The Celierians cried out, some slapping themselves where the droplets had landed on their skin. They slowed, stumbled a bit as if they were disoriented. Several of them shook their heads and rubbed at their eyes. But then, one by one, they straightened and drew their swords.
“The king! Save the king!” they cried.
And they fell upon their fellow countrymen, hacking and slashing their own people.
“Krekk,” Cann swore. They were in trouble. If the Eld took the castle from the inside, all the allies encamped around Kreppes would be geese plump for the plucking. “Sev, Parsi—to the gate!” he cried to his sons. “We’ve got
to open the gate! We can’t let them take the castle.”
They raced up towards the outer courtyard and the main fortress gates, but before they could reach it, a mob of magiccrazed Celierians blocked their way.
Blades flashed and whirled. Cann and his sons were all gifted swordsmen, trained from birth by the dahl’reisen who guarded Barrial land. Blood spewed—none of it theirs—but as the droplets splattered on Cann’s face, his eyes and skin began to burn and a strange, disorienting fog came over him.
“Da?” Parsis grabbed his arm.
Parsis’s face went in and out of focus. He blinked, rubbing at his eyes with bloody hands. A strange scent filled his nostrils, warm and exotic, intoxicating. On the heels of the scent came fervor. Bloodlust. Courage and determination.
The face hovering before him changed. Shadows played across the features, twisting and reshaping them into the face of the enemy. Pale, skin untouched by sunlight, hellish black pits for eyes, evil oozing from its pores.
“The king!” he cried. “Save the king!” And he thrust his sword into the monster.
In Kreppes’s west wing, outside the suite occupied by Ellysetta and Rain, the door and half of the corridor-facing wall dissolved into nothingness as a portal to the Well of Souls appeared where the brass hall sconce had been.
Twenty Primages, led by Primage Soros, leaped out of the Well, globes of blue-white Mage Fire spinning in their hands, ready for launch. But the sight of the empty room drew them up short.
“Check the bedchamber!” Soros commanded.
Mages and Black Guard flung open the connecting doors to the adjoining bedchamber and flooded inside, arrows nocked, swords drawn, Mage Fire blazing. Soros rushed in behind them to claim the High Mage’s prize. But instead of gloating with victory, his expression darkened to thunderous rage.
The room was empty. The bed still neatly made. “Sebourne!” he cried. “You worthless jaffing rultshart!” Ellysetta Baristani and the Tairen Soul were gone.
Outside the castle, in the tairen’s makeshift lair, Ellysetta came awake with a gasp. Her body was ice-cold and shivering uncontrollably. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
She reached for Rain. Her fingers closed around his bare arm, gripped tight, shook him hard.
“Rain, wake up. I think it’s begun.” She left her hand on his arm so he could sense what she found as she reached out in search of the trouble that had roused her. Her empathic senses soared on wafts of lavender Spirit gleaming with golden shei’dalin’s love.
Suddenly, she grabbed her throat, feeling the barbs of an arrow pierce her throat. She tried to breathe, but her lungs filled instead with bubbles of blood. The king. Save the king! Then pain eased, and her body went limp.
Rain grabbed her shoulders and shook her with sudden fear. “Shei’tani!”
She blinked. Stared up at him. Feeling returned to her limbs. She pulled back her senses, locking them tight inside herself. “Kreppes. They’re inside the fortress. They’ve taken the castle! They’re attacking our camp!”
“Krekk.” Rain leapt to his feet. Green Earth swirled as he summoned his golden war armor and steel. «Fey! Ti’Kreppes! Ti’Dorian! The enemy is upon us!» He grabbed Ellysetta’s arm, and together they raced for the lair’s entrance.
The tairen erupted from their makeshift lair with roars and jets of flame, springing from hill to sky, soaring up on widespread wings before wheeling back around to dive towards Kreppes.
The Eld had taken the ramparts and were firing the trebuchets and bowcannon filled with shrapnel bolts on the allied camps. Massive hunks of stone, balls of burning pitch, and bolts that separated into hundreds of razor-sharp shards rained down upon the allies. Chaos ruled. Tents were aflame. Burning men shrieked and ran in mindless terror while around them soldiers raced in every direction.
«Kaiven chakor, ti’Feyreisa! Ti’Feyreisa!» Rain cried on her quintet’s path. He swooped low over the Fey tents, and Ellysetta leapt from his back and rode a shaft of Air to the ground.
She landed on her feet in the center of the Fey encampment and was immediately surrounded by hundred-fold weaves and scores upon scores of grim-eyed warriors.
“I need cots and tables,” she told Bel when he, Gaelen, and the others reached her side. “Tell the lu’tan to start bringing me the wounded.”
“Nei, Ellysetta,” Bel said, “we need to get you to safety, away from the battlefield. Rain’s orders,” he added, when her eyes flashed. “It’s too dangerous for you here.”
“I know what he wants, and I know why he wants it, and I’m not going anywhere. There are wounded men who need my help.”
Bel exchanged a speaking glance with Gaelen.
“Kem’falla,” Gaelen said, “it’s not just dangerous for you to be here. It’s dangerous for everyone around you.”
She speared Gaelen with a cold glare. “Don’t try to play on my empathies, Gaelen. I know what I’m asking. I know that my presence puts everyone in danger, and if there were any other option, I’d take it. But we have wounded—dying men. I can feel them right now. I’m all they’ve got, and I will not abandon them. Now get those tables and cots—and send the wounded my way. And tell my secondary quintet to attend to me. All of the generals were in the castle with the king. Rain’s going to need leaders for this army, and you five are it. You stay close, though, Gaelen. I’m going to need your help for healing.”
Gaelen had known her long enough to recognize when she was determined. He gave a curt bow. “La ve shalah, doreh shabeila de.” As you command, so shall it be.
Bel squared his shoulders and signaled to his brother Fey. “You heard her, kem’jetos. Cots, tables, wounded. Gil, you spread the word to send the wounded here. I’m going to track down the Celierians’ next in command.”
«Bel, Gaelen, have you lost your mind?» Gillandaris vel Sendahr hissed his outrage on the quintet’s private path. Of all the quintet’s warriors, Gil was the one who believed that guarding her included protecting her from her own stubborn nature whether she liked it or not. “It will take the Eld two heartbeats to figure out she’s here. This hundred-fold weave lights a beacon to lead their way. We need to get her to a more secure location.»
«Believe me, she isn’t going anywhere no matter what Bel or I or anyone else say or do,» Gaelen told the white-blond Fey. «Or have you forgotten what she’s like when she’s determined to do something?»
«Between the five of us, we could make her go.»
Gaelen gave a bark of laughter. «Good luck with that, Fey.» He clapped a hand on Gil’s shoulder. «I’ll sing a mourning ballad in your name when she sends your charred and shredded corpse back to the elements.»
Gil turned to the other two. «Taj, ‘Jonn. Come on, kem’jetos. You know I’m right.»
Ellysetta’s uncle shook his head. «Nei, Gil. I saw my sister in Ellysetta’s face just then—and more than a bit of my bond brother, too. She’d carve out our hearts and eat them roasted before she’d let us drag her away.»
Gil turned to Rijonn, but the giant Earth master put his head down and went to work spinning cots and tables for his queen.
“Seven scorching Hells!” Gil cursed and kicked a nearby water barrel. “Gods save me from stubborn women!” With a scowl as dark as a thundercloud, he started spinning Spirit weaves to alert the allies where to send their wounded.
Tairen breath and tairen venom combined. Fire exploded from Rain’s muzzle, a great, incinerating jet of magic flame that burned hotter than any natural fire. Stone, flesh, bone, magic: Nothing could long withstand the searing fury of tairen fire.
The sky before Rain went dark with sel’dor arrows, shrapnel bolts, fiery mortars, all hurtling towards him as he hurtled towards them. Unfaltering, he flew, clearing a path with his flame. The scurrying ants on the wall became people, armored men lifting bows, racing to reload artillery, the oval shapes of their faces illuminated by moonlight. He drew a deep breath, filling his lungs.
The boiling cloud of tairen f
lame engulfed the western wall of Kreppes, consuming the bowcannon and trebuchets mounted there, along with all the troops that manned them. The tip of Rain’s tail raked the northwest tower as he passed, gouging a crater in the tower’s outer wall. The supporting wall compromised, the tower collapsed, raining stone and screaming, flailing men into the spike-filled pit below.
Steli, Xisanna, and Perahl strafed the other walls with similar results.
Roaring in fierce triumph, the four tairen circled and dove in for a second run.
In the few chimes’ respite from bombardment afforded by the tairens’ attack on the castle, the allies regrouped. Bel sent out a massive Spirit weave to locate and summon the men next in the chain of command of the Celierian forces. As the new leaders of the Celierian forces made their way to the Fey encampment, the field commanders gathered their troops, and the chaos of the allied camps yielded to a ragged semblance of order.
In Ellysetta’s makeshift healing tent, the first of the wounded had arrived on her tables—men with limbs missing, skin scorched away, screaming in agony.
“Las, las,” she crooned, stroking bloody, burned brows. “I am with you. Don’t be afraid. Ssh. There is no pain, kem’storran. There is only warmth and light. Do you feel it?” A golden glow of powerful magic radiated around her as she worked. The rest of the world, the other wounded, the battle raging less than a mile away: All faded from her consciousness. The entirety of her thoughts, the concentrated power of her great magic, was focused solely on each dying man carried to her table.
Gaelen and her secondary quintet ringed around her, keeping close by her side as she spun her healing weaves.
Despite Ellysetta’s orders, Bel and the other warriors of her primary quintet refused to leave her. Instead, to accommodate Ellysetta’s commands without fighting the dictates of their lute’ashieva bonds, Bel had set up a military command post beside her healing tent, and it was there that he, Tajik, Rijonn, and Gil met with the Fey commanders and the new leaders of the Celierian forces.