“That’s because I never have. Not like that.” Khouren spoke softly, also amazed.
“Your grandfather would be proud.”
“Grandfather never wants to see me again.” Khouren wiped his knives on the dead creatures before sliding them home in their sheaths. The cavern was quiet now, but for the rippling of water.
“Fentleith loves you. No matter how angry he is that you got tricked by Lhaurent,” Ihbram murmured. “As does Eleshen. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on there.”
“What if she finds out I’m no good?” Khouren murmured as he sank to a seat upon the rim of the nearest pool, staring at the dead mer-creatures seeping a viscous white blood onto the cavern’s stone. Ihbram sank to a seat next to him and Khouren glanced over to see his uncle’s green eyes were wistful in the moving light, a wry smile of heartache on his lips.
“Did I ever tell you about Helene del’Ilio, the first woman I ever loved?”
Khouren stilled, watching the eerie cavern light play over the pools. He and Ihbram had been close before Khouren had retreated to Roushenn. Once, Khouren had loved his uncle’s stories of wine, women, and song – before he found out Ihbram was a two-faced hypocrite when it came to love. And though he’d heard his uncle talk of women again and again, he’d never heard of Ihbram’s first obsession.
“How did you meet?” Khouren asked.
“It was in Cennetia,” Ihbram smiled softly. “In Duomini, the City of Waterways, built upon pontoons in the Ciari River-delta.”
“There’s no city at the mouth of the Ciari,” Khouren cocked his head, intrigued.
“Not anymore,” Ihbram chuckled. “That area of the delta has sunken now; it was underwater before you were born. But it used to be a glorious citadel. It would flood when the rains came. The pontoons would go up and down, lifting the buildings. The walkways were built on floats, trussed to arching stone bridges anchored deep in the silt. This was back when I was still young, less than a hundred years. I was a callous fucker then – I had five women at that time who knew nothing of each other. They were stunning beauties, but Helene put them all to shame.”
“Was she a noble?”
“She was an assassin,” Ihbram chuckled, lacing his fingers to pop his knuckles one at a time. “Hired by my noble lover, Ruitia del’Mar. Ruitia had a sense of honor, and when she found out she was getting royally fucked, literally, she retaliated. Most Cennetians like their poison, but Ruitia wanted me gutted like a flounder, my corpse tossed into the canals for the alligators and ripfish. So she hired the Sons of Illium to come after me. And when her assassin accosted me one misty night, I gave the woman what-for.”
“Did you hurt her?”
“Badly,” Ihbram chuckled. “Got a shoulder in her gut, slammed her face into the stones of a bridge. Knocked her out. When I hauled off her face-shroud – Shaper’s tits! I scooped her into my arms and took her to our Alodwine safe-house in the city, to Minareth. You never met your aunt Mina, but she had healing wyrria similar to Lenuria’s. She saved the girl a broken nose and cheekbone. By the time Mina left, the girl was unmarred. And more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen.”
“I doubt it.” Olea’s face surfaced in Khouren’s mind, followed by another beauty – Eleshen.
“Well, there she was, starting to stir,” Ihbram continued. “Hair that amazing Cennetian blonde-copper. Dark eyelashes. Tattoos of real gold ore curling around her cheekbones, in the style of Old Illium. She was Illianti. When she opened her eyes, fuck me Khouren, if they weren’t the purest lavender I’ve ever seen.”
“Like Elemnia’s. And Eleshen’s.”
“Just like it.” Ihbram gave a sad smile. “Elemnia was one of the most beautiful women in the world, Khouren, also from the Illianti line, did you know? Lavender eyes only surface in Illianti blood. Well Helene had those eyes, and dammit, if I didn’t fall in love right that very moment. I leaned over her. I set my lips to hers for a kiss. And felt a damn knife snicked to my groin.”
“Serves you right.” But Khouren twisted inside, knowing that he’d never done Olea any better. And now he was doing no better with Eleshen, suffocating her.
“Well, she had me,” Ihbram chuckled. “She held me at knifepoint all night, riding my brains out. To say we fucked is saying too little. I gave myself to her – heart, body, and soul.” Ihbram sighed in the dim grotto. “What I’m trying to say, is that when I met Elemnia – a part of me fell in love with her, too. She was dangerous, alluring, ruthless in battle, fierce. She was everything Helene had been and everything Eleshen is now.”
“You punished me for loving Elemnia.”
“I can’t say it was right, or fair.” Ihbram drew a long breath. He let it out slow, his gaze a thousand leagues away. “But you have to understand. I watched my own lavender-eyed lover succumb to time, Khouren. When it began to devour her, when we had children, and time began to change her, and me... I ran. I blocked my mind hard and never looked back. Because I knew if I didn’t, I would stay. I would stay and be a father and a husband. Raise my children and forget being Alodwine – sending so many weaves through my own mind, that I would become no better than a common farmer. Losing myself.”
“Was her love so terrible?” Khouren murmured, tired.
“No.” Ihbram’s gaze met his, devastated. “It was everything I’d ever wanted. I was there with Helene, at the end. Our children had all been killed before her – assassination, accidents, sickness, and one other had disappeared without a trace. She was alone upon her deathbed. The day the light left her eyes, when she was white-haired and frail, I was the only one there to watch her die.”
“You didn’t stay and watch the rest of your lovers die,” Khouren murmured.
“I couldn’t.” Ihbram’s words haunted the cavern. “But I found them every few years, saw my children from afar. Watched the years turn in their faces, life dimming from their eyes. I watched all my lovers expire, Khouren. Watched my Khehemni children die, too, not enough of Leith’s wyrria in their veins to sustain them. After a while, it started to seem futile. Loving. And when I saw you and Elemnia fall in love—”
“You were jealous.” Khouren spoke, so much about their history coming clear at last.
“I was jealous.” Ihbram’s eyes lifted, their emerald depths piercing. “I know what I am, Khouren. I’ve seen my shortcomings in the face of every child I’ve sired and left unclaimed. But maybe Lenuria gave you a gift before she died. Maybe she saved Eleshen – so you could be saved, too.”
Khouren took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I love Eleshen, Ihbram. It’s in the way she moves; the way she argues. It’s in the flash of those eyes when she’s pissed or thinking. Eleshen echoes Elemnia and Olea – yet, she’s so different.”
“Eleshen’s a noble, Khouren,” Ihbram’s mouth quirked. “Elemnia and Olea were only fighters. Eleshen needs a man who’s more than just a good sword. A man who can stand in the fire, and love her no matter how heated it gets. She needs someone who’s a zealot for her love. Like you.”
“What if I’m not what she wants?” Khouren’s hands trembled and he laced them together.
“Become the man she wants. Become the man you want to be, ghendii.” Ihbram jostled him, then clapped him on the shoulder and pushed to standing.
“What about you?” Khouren asked, sadness moving in him for Ihbram’s predicament as he rose to standing also.
“What about me?”
“Who do you have to love you?”
Ihbram’s face closed like stone. His green eyes glittered in the low light, pained. “We should get a move on. Merra’s forces aren’t going to wait.” Glancing down at the corpses, he nudged one with his boot. But they were motionless, desiccated flesh hanging off their bones as pearly blood spilled over the floor. “These fuckers were strong. Could be we’re on the right path.”
Khouren glanced at his uncle, and they watched each other a long moment. At last, Ihbram’s mouth gave a sad quirk, as he palmed his red brai
ds back into a half-bound bun and glanced off around the grotto. Khouren’s gaze followed, seeing a few low tiers and a flight of stairs that led up at the far end. It was the only exit, as if whoever had built this place had wanted intruders to be tested by the mer-creatures. In the cold light that simmered off the crystal alcoves, that dark ascending staircase looked almost preferable.
“That looks as good a way as any,” Ihbram spoke, gesturing Khouren onward.
Moving to the ascending stairs, Khouren headed up with Ihbram on his heels. They didn’t talk again, though the tension of all that had been said still flowed between them in the darkness. But they’d not ascended hardly a minute, when the staircase suddenly ended in a blind wall. Khouren set his hands to it, feeling the vibrations of the stone.
“It’s thick, but there’s a large space beyond it. Maybe another grotto, or a room.”
“Then let’s go,” Ihbram nodded.
Weapons ready, Khouren seized his uncle’s wrist, then stepped them through the wall. To find themselves emerged in a massive armory, lit bright to the vaulted eaves with torches and lanterns. The armory bustled with men and women in war-gear, the vaults filled with stands of armor, sword and bow-racks, wall-stands of pikes, and baskets of arrows. All of the warriors within looked up at once. Pikes were suddenly leveled, swords whipped from scabbards and aimed at the intruders.
“Whoa!” Ihbram held his hands up, a roguish grin upon his face. “Peace! We’ve come to find the Vicoute Arlen den’Selthir. Any who can point our way to him is going to win this war single-handedly.”
“That’s a pretty promise. One that half-Elsthemi curs shouldn’t make, if they value the length of their dirty red braids.”
A gravel-hard voice turned Khouren’s head. A man stood nearby at a rack of swords that shone with impeccable care. Wearing older grey Kingsmen battle-armor, the aging lord had a tough yet elegant demeanor. His thick sandy hair was combed back from his forehead and shot with streaks of iron. A neatly-trimmed beard graced his jaw, unforgiving blue eyes staring out from a stern face. But moving forward, his austere face broke into a welcoming smile as he clasped arms with Ihbram.
“Ihbram Alodwine den’Sennia,” the lord chuckled, his eyes glittering. “How long has it been? Thirty years?”
“Never underestimate my ability to survive a fight, Arlen,” Ihbram chuckled back. “Or your own meticulous planning to survive even worse.”
“I never do.” Arlen clapped Ihbram on both shoulders like the man was his own son. “And here you walk straight through a wall into my stronghold, looking as young as ever! Your wyrric wonders never cease.”
“Not mine, actually,” Ihbram gave a small nod to Khouren. “Arlen, meet my nephew, Khouren Alodwine.”
“How are you both here?” Arlen gave Khouren a gaze that missed nothing, suspicious suddenly as his gaze roved Khouren’s mangled gear.
“From Temlin den’Ildrian. He hadn’t received word from you in some time and feared the worst.” Ihbram’s face fell suddenly. “You should know, Arlen – Temlin has fallen. And the First Abbey with him.”
Arlen’s face fell, suddenly grim as stone. With a deep inhalation, he nodded. “Temlin will be honored, as fits his station. But now is not the time. Did anyone survive from the Abbey?”
“Most everyone survived, actually,” Ihbram continued with a ready grin. “And Temlin ordered us to come to your aid, before he died. We’ve arrived with some twelve hundred keshari riders, Kingsmen, and Roushenn Guard – all waiting outside your walls atop cats in the northeastern canyon. We need a distraction to get them inside the fortress. Tonight.”
Arlen’s face opened in shock, but his surprise was quickly mastered. Khouren saw the quick mind of an old fighter churning as Arlen squared his shoulders, turning from a lord into a war-general in the blink of an eye.
“Come, gentlemen,” the Vicoute Arlen den’Selthir barked, making an efficient gesture for them to follow as he threaded briskly back through the armory. “I know just the distraction we need.”
CHAPTER 33 – ELESHEN
From her place hiding in the shadows of the canyon-ridge, Eleshen saw a small flame kindled at the fortress’ eastern archways. Just the flicker of a single torch illuminated in a night black as tar, but she felt a breath of relief ripple through General Merra’s forces around her, hoods of fur and leather up in the driving rain. Rhennon gave a soft curse from atop his big cat next to Eleshen, as the same came from his brother Rhone, having re-joined them, puncturing the rain-washed silence of the past four hours.
Suddenly, Eleshen saw fires rise from the line of enormous trebuchets atop the fortress archways, their slings loaded with immense boulders burning with pitch. As alarms rang in the Menderian camp, the peal of hammers on massive bronze war-bells, Eleshen saw additional movement at the grand archways of the fortress. Brazier-fires suddenly blazed in every arch, lighting the red fortress like a bloody wall of eyes. In half a breath, lines of archers in the fortress had lit arrows – each archer sporting tremendous silver-white warbows taller then they – and now the darkness spawned fireflies. Before Eleshen could gasp, the enormous boulders of fire and all those fireflies launched into the night, beautiful arcs that came hurtling down into the northern edge of the Menderian camp – thudding into wains, bowling over barrels, and lighting up siege-towers not rolled back far enough from the river’s edge.
It was a masterful attack. Clearly, Arlen den’Selthir had been waiting to use this powerful ploy, and the Menderian forces scrambled in the deep of the night, waking to fire lighting up their northern camp. They’d thought Arlen’s trebuchets inoperative, just like Ihbram had, a line of pretty toys unused for weeks, and Eleshen guessed they’d not seen these silvered warbows yet. Bronze alarms pealed throughout the camp as men rushed out of burning tents and others rushed into the fray, trying to capture horses and pull wagons back from the rapidly-spreading line of fire.
Which had blocked the Menderian’s access to the river. It was time. Hand signals fluttered through the keshari riders and in a massive surge of muscle and power, General Merra’s forces leaped forward like a single organism. Eleshen was one with her cat as they bounded forward, Rhennon on his big beast beside her. Hunkering low over Moonshadow’s shoulders, she felt the rain slice her cheeks like wasps as they ran with silent elegance over the rocky flats at an impossible speed toward the river. No horse could move like this. Exhilaration filled Eleshen; a roaring sensation in her body. She was lightning, she was wind.
She was the night, and the night had claws and fangs.
They hit the river in a rush of darkness. Water hardly splashed at all around them, as Eleshen’s great cat heaved into the stony watercourse, swimming with ready strokes. The driving rain was still heavy, and though Eleshen could see the perimeter of surging fire blocking off the Menderian camp, she couldn’t make out much else. Merra’s forces gained the shallow ledges, and cats began to leap up the fortress’ walls. Above, Arlen’s archers were cunning, directing their fire deep into the central and western camp to turn all eyes away from the eastern wall of the fortress the allies ascended.
Eleshen’s cat came to the wall, and as Moonshadow began to heave upward next to Rhennon’s big male, Eleshen watched the Menderian camp blaze. Soldiers ran, scrambling in the driving wet and churning muck. Siege towers too close to the carnage caught alight in a whirlwind from the burning pitch coating the boulders, funnels of red fire twisting into the darkness despite the driving rain. Fire held a line at the bank of the river now, as the trebuchets were re-loaded again and again, hurling flaming boulders into the closest Menderian’s resources. Merra’s forces leaped fast up the narrow ledges to the fortress’ great archways, silent as ghosts as the distraction raged. Keshari surged before and behind Eleshen with not a single yowl – a flowing sea of silent fang and sinew thrusting in great leaps up from the river and into the fortress.
The shore was devastated – bodies burning, siege towers collapsed, mess-tents and command-tents, and every
last thing that could burn alive with fire. Eleshen hunkered low over her dappled cat, feeling the muscles of the beast coil and explode, leaping them up one ledge to the next. When she at last slid from its back high upon the smooth flagstones beneath one vaulted archway, Khouren and Ihbram were there, rushing to her side as she moved out of the way to let more cats and riders flow past.
The sweet song of victory ran in Eleshen’s veins as she and Khouren embraced, his arms crushing her breathlessly to his strong, lean chest. She hardly even registered his torn and mangled garb as the whomps of more launching trebuchets thundered through her ears like music. The rhythm of the archers’ volleys beat in her heart as they loosed again, and again. And as Eleshen turned her eyes to the night, watching the Menderian camp burn, she felt no sadness. Staring down at the carnage, Eleshen burned with triumph. As Khouren stepped close, watching the devastation with her, Ihbram marveling next to them, a song of wrath in Eleshen’s heart surged.
“We have waged death this night,” she spoke. “Behold its glory.”
Khouren turned to look at her, his opal eyes carnal as his blue-black curls reflected the fire below. Reaching up, he touched Eleshen’s chin, his gaze fervent in the light. Eleshen watched him, feeling her own fierceness in the light of the flames. Khouren hitched a hard breath, then drew her in. His lips found hers and they kissed in the burning night as cats ascended the wall, flowing in through the archways all around – a living sea of fang and claw beneath the storm.
At last, Eleshen pulled back. “I’m sorry. For provoking a fight with you earlier. I didn’t mean to.”
Khouren’s grey eyes shone with relief and fervency. “It’s alright. I know how it feels, the battle-rage. It’s part of the wyrria that’s been awakened in you Eleshen, and I—”
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