Us or them.
Bodies fell around me—furred, scaled, feathered, skinned—and I felt as if I waded through stone to reach the bleeding pile of my husband, niece, and nephew. I couldn’t reach them, and yet I must. I struggled on, forced a step back for ever two I managed.
Ami’s wail of horror penetrated my determined haze. How in Moranu had she gotten here?
Then, impossibly, Ursula strode past me, face stony, slashing through the Deyrr creatures in a ruby glow that had them falling away. Salena’s rubies—I’d forgotten. Ami, blood-spattered and brandishing a dagger, followed in Ursula’s wake. Then Kelleah, her fiery curls an odd combination of green and ruby light.
I lurched after them—and Harlan’s bear hug wrapped me in place. “You’re wounded,” he grated in my ear. “Let them do it.”
“Rayfe…”
“They’ve got him. And the kids. Let me help you.” He released me and began tying a tourniquet around a wound on my upper arm I hadn’t even noticed. I tried to see around him, but Harlan is a big man. Harlan knelt, grunting as he surveyed the cuts on my torso, enabling me to see more. It seemed more people had filled the cavern, bringing lanterns and torches. The sounds of fighting continued here and there, but lessened from before. I couldn’t see Rayfe and the twins, walled behind a group of people, maybe a deliberate screen to protect me from the truth.
“Annfwn?” I asked, forcing myself to think about the bigger picture.
“We are overrun.” Harlan sounded uncharacteristically dour. “Everyone is either in the upper levels or down here. The doors are sealed and our people are doing their best, but it won’t be enough.”
I could feel it, the steady hammering of the attack, the pitched roar of mental commands and calls for help. Calling for me, for Rayfe, for their queen and king to help them. A call Rayfe might never answer again. I couldn’t face that possibility. What would my life be, empty of him?
“I should go. We have to fight.”
“I’m under orders to keep you here.” Harlan looked up from bandaging my leg, his normally somber face contorted. “You can’t feel it, but you’re bleeding in half a dozen places. You go now, you’ll collapse from blood loss. Give me a few minutes. We’re hunkering down here, reassessing.”
The endless stream of Deyrr creatures had indeed diminished. Hawks and Tala fought some of the ones I hadn’t yet killed, but no more arrived. Harlan took note of my returning rationality. “We sealed ourselves in. We’re safe as can be for the moment, as long as that lasts.”
“Dafne, Nakoa and the baby. We—”
“Can’t help them right now. We can’t even get to them. You told them to stay in the council chambers, remember? That’s secure. Nakoa can handle it.”
“Right.” Maybe he could. Maybe he couldn’t. But Harlan was right that they were on their own. “I can give us more time, if that will help.”
“Absolutely. We need to regroup and plan.”
I tapped into the Heart while Harlan bandaged the wounds on my back, using it to augment the doors the wizards had moved into place. I layered a new barrier into the stone, a mini barrier connected to the bedrock and the Heart of Annfwn that should hold for hours, at least.
“Done,” I said.
“And that takes care of the worst of the bleeders until Kelleah can heal you,” Harlan replied. “Can I trust you to stay put while I help clean up here?”
“Yes.” I nodded, to assure him, putting my hands on his muscled arms to steady myself. He wore one of Salena’s ruby necklaces, the dangling strands made into a choker around his thick neck. It should have looked absurd, but somehow it became heroic. “I have to go to Rayfe.”
“I know.” His eyes held compassion, the kind that showed he, too, feared the worst. “Where are the rest of the kids—do you know?”
“Back behind that door. Meg managed to shut most of them in.”
“Any of these animals with them? So far we’re just defending, but we need to deal with all the Deyrr in here.”
Oh, right. “Probably. The Tala will know.”
He nodded and let me go, waiting a moment to make sure I stayed on my feet. Then he brushed a hand over my cheek. “You did well, Queen Andromeda. Your very best. Keep reminding yourself of that.”
His intended reassurance only reminded me of how abysmally I’d failed. I’d known all along that we’d be overrun, that none of the futures allowed for an alternative, and yet I’d still clung to a fragile hope that I could stop it.
I made my way to where Rayfe had fallen, staggering a little as my wounds and blood loss made themselves known. A Hawk guarding the little group nodded to me, expression grim, and stepped out of the way.
Ami sat on the ground, pink skirts arrayed as if at a picnic—but she clutched Stella in her arms, rocking her. She murmured a steady stream of quiet words, coaxing Stella to wake, all the while she had her gaze fixed on Astar, still in bear cub form. Kelleah knelt over him, deep into healing mode, her hands buried in his cinnamon fur. She wouldn’t waste the energy on him if he was dead. Kelleah was far too practical for that.
And Kelleah was far too loyal to her king to ignore Rayfe in favor of Astar, so either he was dead, or he was less wounded than Astar. With anguish and dread, I reached out mentally—my legs sagging with watery relief when I found a low rumble of life in him still.
I sank to my knees, shifting Rayfe’s gore-scarred head into my lap, smoothing his tangled, blood-snarled hair from his face. He’d gone so strengthless and limp, skin waxy pale against the angry wounds. With his face lax in unconsciousness, he looked far younger than his years, his habitual brooding expression erased, uncharacteristically vulnerable. I reached for a loose edge of my skirt to wipe the gore off his face—I couldn’t tell if Stella had gouged out his eyes or simply torn the flesh around them—but I found my entire gown seemed to be soaked in blood.
“Here,” Ami said, holding out a cloth. I took it from her, slightly bemused. “Comes of being a mother,” she added tightly. “You have to be ready to clean all sorts of disgusting messes. You’ll see.”
With a pang of wistfulness and dread, I mentally checked in with my unborn child. Fortunately he seemed to be fine, riding along in his cushioned bubble. A relief to know that nature, or the goddesses, or whatever, handled some things for me. I cleaned Rayfe’s face with care, using water from the flask Ami also handed me.
So odd to be sitting here in this island of light and relative peace, while the others prowled in the dimness of the caverns and tunnels around us, the scuffles of brief skirmishes and occasional calls and answers coming back to us. Every once in a while, a child’s querulous voice rose, then faded under the murmurs of adult answers.
And outside a battle raged.
Exhaustion washing over me, now that I sat, I began to feel every one of those wounds Harlan had mentioned. I concentrated on cleaning Rayfe’s wounds, with diligence and tender care. As if I could make up for everything by doing this one thing right. If I could just wipe all the blood from his many wounds, then he would be himself again. He didn’t stir under my ministrations, his consciousness so deep I could barely sense him inside, though his body lived. Maybe that was just as well.
The way those Deyrr threads had snapped back into him… I wondered if I’d ever be able to root it all out of him, if he’d ever be completely free of it. That is, if his sanity survived. The chaos I’d glimpsed in his mind while I rampaged through it… I didn’t know how anyone could survive that. Or would want to. Reaching to the Heart, I fed its magic to Rayfe, encouraging the conduit to strengthen him enough for him to shift.
And I began purging him, seeking out the dregs of Deyrr’s passage, lifting it into myself and dissolving it in the clean flow of the Heart’s magic.
“Did Nilly get his eyes?” Ami asked tentatively, startling me a little.
“I think the eyes themselves are all right,” I answered. An easy thing to assess and think about, his physical wounds. In the background, I kept searchi
ng and cleansing. “But she did a thorough job on the flesh all around.”
“I’m so sorry.” She sounded truly stricken, and I jerked up my gaze, astonished.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said, harshly enough that she flinched. I closed my eyes and tried to get a grip. “I’m sorry. We are sorry. He tried to abduct Nilly and she only defended herself.”
“It wasn’t him, Andi,” Ami said firmly. “You know that.”
I did know that—and yet it changed nothing. “I’m just glad that our Nilly is so fierce. She will be a force to be reckoned with someday.”
Ami stroked her unconscious daughter’s dark curls. “Is that prophecy?”
“Simple prediction of the future based on the present,” I replied wryly.
“She won’t wake up, and I don’t know why. Willy is obviously wounded, but—” A hiccupping sob interrupted her words.
“The high priestess used her power over shapeshifters to put her out,” I explained gently. “Nilly will be fine. They wanted her intact, so they wouldn’t have done anything to harm her.”
Both our gazes strayed to where Kelleah labored in intense silence over a limp, very small bear cub. We knew the same wasn’t true for Astar. He’d been expendable to Deyrr, and easily dispatched as such.
“How did you guess?” Ami asked in a hush, and for a moment I thought she meant about Deyrr’s disregard for a small boy with no special destiny. “Or did you see it in a vision, that they’d come for my Nilly?”
“I’d like to know that, too,” Ursula commented, coming into our circle of lamplight, then crouching. Her leathers were spattered with gore in shades from bright red to the black ooze of Deyrr. She still held her sword—too fouled for her to sheath—resting the tip on the bare stone.
“No vision,” I replied with some bitterness. “Just simple logic that I failed to piece together for far too long. That’s been the high priestess’s aim for years: to secure the Star of Annfwn, and Stella with the Mark of the Tala, and thus control the Heart—and all the world.”
“She doesn’t want to destroy Annfwn,” Harlan said, joining us, dawning realization on his face. “She wants to own it.”
“And all the shapeshifters within,” I agreed.
“Then why didn’t she try for you?” Ursula wanted to know. “She could’ve grabbed you long ago, and the Star, too, after Mother died. You were a child not much older than Stella, and we were unprotected, living outside the barrier at Ordnung, unprotected by the barrier.”
I smoothed Rayfe’s hair back from his forehead, my fingers snagging in the snarls, sticky with dried and drying blood. There wasn’t water enough to wash, that, too. When—if—he woke, he could shift to heal his wounds and be his usual self: sensual, powerful, and so beautiful to my eyes. He’d always seemed so invulnerable to me. Oh, Moranu, please that be so. “I had the Mark, yes, but it wasn’t…active. I was asleep,” I said, partly to myself, “until Rayfe wakened me with a kiss. Blood to blood, and the Mark came to life.” I remembered how our blood had mixed, flying off as tiny dark birds.
“So,” Ursula said, and by her neutral tone I imagined I’d sounded daft, “the high priestess had also been inactive until then?”
“I’m not sure, but that makes sense. She was starved of magic, like the others, we know that. It could be she hibernated, sleeping like the n’Andanan dragons, awaiting the return of magic.”
“But she was outside the barrier, how could she have awakened before we moved it? Nothing about her access to magic changed until then.”
“Didn’t it?” I glanced up at Harlan. “The seraglio at the Imperial Palace is magically maintained, yes?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “After my—After I left forever, the events of that time disrupted many of Hulda’s plans, and also Hestar’s. Hulda might’ve reached out to Deyrr for power. Or Hestar did, to secure the throne. Or both did. A great… upset happened in our family around that time.”
Looking at him, I saw again the ivory blonde, draped in diamonds and pearls, a whirlwind of light and grace as she danced. I saw pain, and blood, sex used as a weapon, so cruelly. Inga and Helva weeping. Hulda raging. Then a casket, a desiccated figure inside, being brought to the tropical lagoon of the seraglio.
“I think they did bring the high priestess to the seraglio,” I murmured. “Some time after the ivory blond girl left.”
Harlan went rigid, a wave of grief and anguish rolling off of him, and Ursula went alert. Had she been a cat, her ears would’ve flattened, tail lashing. I looked from one to the other. “Do you know who she is?”
Ursula looked to Harlan, but he seemed to be unable to speak. “Yes,” she said. “Have you seen where she is?” She asked with such measured care that I felt my own skin prickle.
“I’ve seen how she was, then,” I temporized. “She was dressed all in shades of ivory and cream, diamonds and pearls. So young. Long ago. So much suffering.” The loss of innocence to such uncaring brutality made my heart throb. “And,” I added carefully, watching Harlan, “I’ve maybe seen her after that, much later. I think it’s the same woman.”
“Later?” Harlan asked with hushed intensity. He flexed his fingers, as if he wanted to reach for me, to drag the information out.
I shook away the vision. Knowing how the high priestess had been resurrected confirmed our speculations, but I didn’t see how it was otherwise helpful to our current predicament. “Maybe. The visions don’t come with helpfully labeled dates. And what I saw could be garbage. Not everything I see is relevant.”
“Would you…” Harlan’s voice cracked, and he squeezed his eyes closed. When he opened them, they glittered with rare turmoil from the stalwart former mercenary. “Would you tell me anyway?”
“Please, Andi,” Ursula added with unusual fervency, given our circumstances. Usually she’d be all about focusing on critical decision making, not distant players in a drama that didn’t involve us. “As a favor, to me. To us,” she added, setting down her sword and reaching up to take Harlan’s hand. He crouched beside her, both of them watching me with serious—and hopeful expressions. Though they both had gray eyes, I’d never thought they seemed the same, his so pale and hers so steely, but in that moment they looked so much alike that it seemed impossible they’d ever not been joined together.
“I’ve seen the part I just told you,” I said gently. “A young woman, barely out of girlhood, with very long hair of an extraordinary ivory color. She’s dancing, wearing a kingdom’s treasury of jewels.”
“An empire’s,” Harlan put in softly, and I began to understand.
“She was brutalized, hurt badly. I see Inga and Helva crying over her. But she’s not dead. She’s gone.”
“And later?” Harlan urged.
“I’m not sure it’s the same woman,” I cautioned, and he nodded, much too eagerly. “She’s tanned, substantially older, the hair the same, but her face a mature woman’s. In these visions I can see that her eyes are an intense blue. However, she is not anywhere that I recognize as Dasnaria.”
“No, she wouldn’t be,” Harlan inserted, excitement infusing him.
I waited a moment, but he said nothing more. Who was this woman? “It’s a hot place, with a large river. Everyone but her is much darker skinned, and there are elephants.”
He blew out a breath in choked sound part exclamation, part sob, startling even Kelleah out of her concentration. “It’s her, it has to be.”
Ursula gripped his hand, rising to her feet to look him in the eye. “We don’t know that.”
“I know it,” he replied unequivocally, and she put her hands on his shoulders as if restraining him from going somewhere. As if any of us could go anywhere. Though we couldn’t stay trapped down here forever.
“Even if it is her,” Ursula said, very reasonably, and I recognized the tone she used, the same as when she thought I might charge off to do something crazy, “we can’t go look for her now.”
“I know that,” he bit out, not at all his usual patie
nt self. “But there has to be a reason Andi is seeing these visions.”
Ursula looked pointedly at me and I shrugged a little. “Not necessarily. As I said, I see a lot of things, and part of the challenge for me is to winnow out what’s relevant from what’s simply carried along by attachment to people who are critical elements of events.”
“There,” Ursula said. “Besides, Kaedrin said she knew where she is.”
“And then Kaedrin disappeared again without giving me the information as she’d promised,” he replied with some vehemence, then put a hand over hers. “I know we couldn’t have gone to look for her yet. My loyalties aren’t conflicted. You come first. You always have.”
“Not always,” she replied wryly, but she lifted her other hand to cup his cheek. “I know this is hard for you. I just don’t want you distracted by this information.”
Ami cleared her throat delicately. “Are we to know who under Glorianna’s gaze you’re talking about?”
“Danu’s gaze,” Harlan replied gruffly. “She became a priestess of Danu.”
Ami gave me a wide-eyed look. “Gosh, I understand everything now!”
I snorted, not a laugh, but close to it. “You know as much as I do.”
“Another of Harlan’s sisters,” Ursula told us. “Lost, long ago.” She nodded to me. “Under terrible circumstances. Harlan made vows to reveal nothing about her—some things he literally cannot speak aloud—in order to help her escape her mother, who we fondly know as Hulda, and the wrath of the Dasnarian Empire. Her name is Ivariel now.”
Ami and I absorbed that. “She actually managed to escape the seraglio?” I clarified.
Harlan looked overcome with emotion—or perhaps struggled against the geas that bound his words—but nodded.
“She did, with Harlan’s help,” Ursula said, almost more to him than us, reassuring him of something. “And I’m entertained that’s the only question you have.”
The Fate of the Tala Page 25