She still wished she had the pistol. She would have felt much more useful with that than what she did have. The magic bombs she wasn't sure would still work, and though the borrowed sword belted at her waist and the borrowed dagger sheathed at her hip looked impressive, she knew how to shoot a pistol. The only thing she knew about daggers was that underhand strikes were better than overhand ones; about swords she knew nothing.
It wouldn't matter. By preparing ahead, they had created a situation in which Tik would assume he had the advantage, both in weapons—because of the pistol, and in overall strength—with the Watchers. And by playing off his assumptions, they would strip all of his advantages from him.
From the castle and throughout the village, the bells began to ring. The castle carillon played a slow, mournful canon, the theme rung on the large bells and echoed with repetition and variation on the higher bells. Kate heard the bellringers in the village begin working their own variations on the music, so that for a few minutes, all the universe seemed steeped in the poignant, aching music.
"Canon for the Lost," Tik said.
Rhiana nodded. "It seemed appropriate for the day." She turned to Harch. "It's time."
Harch summoned the gate; it billowed out of nothingness and threw hard, cold shadows along the drifted snow.
The guards stepped quickly through, hauling Callion and Val with them. The Kin followed, their steps measured, deliberate, their bodies stiff with anger.
"Our turn," Rhiana said. She walked forward and the few guards who accompanied her took up places before her and behind. Kate stayed behind, keeping herself next to Harch, who because he'd created the gate and was holding it open, would step through it last.
This time Kate felt ready for the falling sensation, for the rippling walls, for the weird internal twisting that had accompanied her first trip along the path that she believed was nothing less than a road between dimensions. She and a guard stepped into the blazing circle of nothingness just behind Rhiana and Tik, and beside Harch.
Something slammed her down hard.
Harch screamed.
The walls wrapped around her and swallowed her up, and left her hanging for a no-time that could have been an instant or an infinity over an abyss as endless and empty as deep space, lacking stars or dust clouds or any light or shape or color; she found nothingness and in it found a silence so total it became an unendurable scream. She hung, helpless, lost…
And the world crystallized around her with the tinkling of breaking glass, and she could breathe again. But she could not move. Something tremendously heavy pinned her to soft, snow-covered ground. She heard whimpering to her right, and twisted to look up and behind her; Tik held Rhiana pinned against his chest with the pistol jammed up against her temple so hard the skin all around the muzzle blanched bone white. He also held Kate in place, his left foot pressing firmly on her back.
Harch, or what remained of him, made a frighteningly small pile of ragged, bloody meat a little distance from her. The old wizard's face remained recognizable, but that had to have been by Tik's design. It sat atop the pile, neat beard stained by blood, eyes glazed and half-open, mouth gaping. No one could question the identity of the remains, or the object lesson those remains presented.
Somehow, while still traversing the gate, Tik had killed Harch and grabbed Rhiana before the guards could react. Now he had more weapons than he'd had before.
The troops who had been waiting for Tik to come through the gate faced the three of them, and their faces spoke their outrage and frustration and fear more clearly than words ever could have. In spite of all the plans and all the precautions, Tik held their lady captive and they could do nothing about it. They stood in their ranks to either side of a writhing, pulsing rent in the fabric of reality that felt to Kate like a window into Hell; Kate realized she was looking into the Rift. She had never looked at something purely evil before, but in the Rift she sensed an enemy to all of life, and a vast, cold, awareness that looked back at her and hungered for her blood. If Callion and Tik were the lesser enemies, this hungering, hating void was the greater.
Tik told the troops, "You don't want to move. If you do, you'll be picking pieces of Lady Smeachwykke's head out of the snow until spring thaw."
None of the troops as much as twitched.
"Very good," Tik said to the soldiers. "I know what you planned, but as you can see, we're going to do things a little differently. I don't want to be captured, and I don't want to die. I intend to take Glenraven for the Kin-hera, and in order to do that, I have to live and win." He nodded to two of the closer soldiers. "You and you, go cut Callion's bindings. You're going to turn him loose."
The soldiers looked from Tik to Rhiana, and started forward.
"No," Rhiana said. "Attack him. If he kills me it doesn't matter. He intends to kill all of us when he's through anyway."
The soldiers stopped. Tik whipped the pistol around and shot the first one, and he toppled to the ground with a neat bloody hole between his eyes, dead before he could scream. Tik was better with the pistol than he had any business being. Or else he'd been lucky…but Kate didn't want to assume luck.
"If you want to be the next dead hero," Tik said to the second one, "by all means listen to Rhiana. If you do as I tell you, I'll let you live." He indicated another soldier. "You, now, go and help him."
The soldiers stood firm.
Tik shot the second one, and the second shot hit as perfectly as the first. As the second man died, the third one, eyes huge, began to move toward Callion.
"You with him," Tik said. The next man in the front row moved out, not listening to Rhiana's demand that he stand fast.
"They won't listen to you, lady. They're listening to the sounds of their own skins," Tik said. "Wise of them to do so."
Kate, flat on her stomach with the dagreth's foot planted in the middle of her back, wondered what she could do to turn the situation around. She thought perhaps she could draw up magic to pass to Rhiana—but then she thought, no, in this world, Rhiana would be able to find and control her own magic.
She considered the sword and the dagger—worthless if she couldn't stand. And the magic bomb…useless if Tik wasn't using magic, and maybe worse than useless because it would adversely affect not just him but every magic user in the area.
With his huge foot pressing her into the snow, she felt as helpless as the soldiers who stood watching. But she couldn't accept helplessness. There had to be something she could do, if only she could figure out what it might be.
She watched the two soldiers kneel beside Callion with their knives drawn to cut away the bindings. When Callion was free, Tik could release the Watchers. Callion would control them, and she and everyone else would be dead. She had to find a way to stop what was happening.
Tik's voice interrupted her frantic search for answers. "Kate, I'm sorry about this."
"You're what?" Kate twisted up and around to look at him again. He still held Rhiana with the gun against her head, but he was looking at Kate.
"Sorry. I truly am sorry. I tried everything I could think of to make sure that you would be safely away from the danger. I intended to see you home before the purges began."
"Why?"
He shifted his weight a little; his foot no longer rested quite so firmly on her back. "Because you liked me. And, honestly, I liked you. Admired you, too. You have backbone. Courage. You took some hard hits and you didn't roll over and quit on us."
Kate wasn't sure how to respond to this. "You like me so much you're going to kill me, is that it?"
"Dammit, I didn't want to. I offered to send you home right away; I drugged you; I spelled you; I locked you in your room. What else could I do?" He sighed. "I'm afraid it's too late now. I can't afford to let you go—you're as likely to try and save all of these stinking sons of dogs as you are to fight with me. Likelier, I think."
Kate had to agree with him. She didn't get to tell him what she thought, though, for he suddenly lost patience wit
h the soldiers he'd told to free Callion, both of whom still struggled to remove the binders without noticeable success.
"Why isn't he free yet?"
One of the soldiers, gray-faced, looked up. "Our knives slide away from the rope before they can touch it. We can't take hold of it, either. And neither of us knows spells."
Tik said, "So you would have sat there all day, trying the same things that didn't work over and over again. Bring him here."
Rhiana said, "Those binders won't come off, no matter what you do, Tik."
"Perhaps not, but I'm betting you can do something to remove them."
Rhiana said nothing.
Tik was about to have to deal with one more variable. Kate forced herself to relax; she made no move, no sound, did nothing to divert Tik's attention from his problems with Callion, the soldiers, and Rhiana. She repeated over and over to herself, I'm invisible. I'm invisible.
The soldiers placed Callion on the ground well away from Kate, over to Tik's right side. That angle made it necessary for Tik to twist to see Callion, and when he twisted, his balance changed. Kate could tell he was having a difficult time keeping his foot on her back and holding on to Rhiana too. But he remained aware of her.
I'm invisible, she told herself. Invisible.
"Tell me how to remove them," Tik told Rhiana.
Rhiana laughed at him.
"Tell me."
"I won't."
Tik shot the soldier closest to him, once in the chest and once in the head. The man crumpled to the ground. The soldier beside him blanched and tears started from his eyes. Tik aimed the gun at him. "Tell me."
In response, Rhiana swung both arms up at his gun hand; her fingers interlocked as if she were hitting a volleyball. Arm and gun bounced up far enough that Tik shot but missed the man he aimed at. He didn't lose the gun, though. But he did shift, and his foot came all the way off of Kate. She was ready. She rolled, pulled her dagger, and sliced along the back of his heel, aiming for the place where the Achilles tendon would be on a human, and hoping that dagreths had something similar.
The knife ripped through soft tissue, and blood spurted across the snow and Kate's hand. Tik screamed and flung Rhiana across the clearing; her body crashed through the center of the soldiers, who, as soon as Tik released her, charged.
Tik shot the first wave of them. He hit every one of the first attackers, and the men behind them had to climb over the screaming injured and the silent dead.
But he quickly ran out of bullets. He threw the handgun down at his feet and drew his sword.
Kate scrambled to her feet and unsheathed her sword. She held it in her right hand, keeping the point of the blade up and aimed at Tik. She lunged, trying to run him through with the point. She didn't have the years of training or the strength of wrist she needed to make an effective strike, though. Even though he only had the use of one leg, Tik evaded the intended blow and neatly swiped her sword away from her with a little twist of his wrist. It flew across the clearing. He looked at her for just an instant, his eyebrows raised, a half-smile curling along his muzzle to the corners of his mouth. "You should have gone home."
The soldiers hit Tik like a tsunami. He flung them off, his sword whirling like a tornado, ripping faces and slashing through bones as he sent the soldiers flying—but he was outnumbered. He didn't have the time to pull together a spell; he couldn't run or even walk; and even with his back braced against a tree, the soldiers kept coming, attacking with swords and maces and daggers.
He no longer seemed to have much fight in him. He batted them away, but now their blades were finding targets; Tik's arms and hands bled, as did a long, shallow slash through his clothing to his belly. He would fall, Kate thought, but he'd killed a hellish number of men doing it, and maimed more.
He held up the bottle that contained the Watchers, and Kate screamed, "Tik! No!"
Tik looked at her, and in the fraction of an instant that he was distracted, one of the swordsmen got past his guard with a long thrust through the chest. Tik howled and ripped the man to ribbons with his claws, but he went down to both knees as he did.
He looked at Kate again.
"For you," he said, and pulled the stopper out of the bottle and flung it away from himself.
The air filled with a delicate stream of golden lights. Tik crashed facedown to the ground, ramming the sword the rest of the way through his chest and out his back.
The Kin, unarmed and magicless, had until that moment been observers. Now they were the center of the action, as the beautiful, deadly light cloud surrounded them and began to illuminate them.
The Watchers should have gone into the Rift, Kate thought. They should have returned home, but instead they were still hunting.
And Kate remembered what the Fodor's guide had said—that until Callion released them or died, they would never return to their own world, and the Rift would remain open.
Kate fought her way through the surviving troops, and the Kin, who were all fleeing. "Release them," she said to Callion.
He looked at her. Behind her, the screaming echoed through the snow-covered forest—the same screaming she'd heard from the reporter and the cameraman in that Florida mall. She gritted her teeth and waited.
"These people intend to try me and execute me," Callion said. "I won't help them. We can all die together."
"If you're dead, they're released," she said. She put her dagger to his throat.
"Quite right. But you can't kill me. I know people from your world." He grinned at her.
He was helpless, but they were dying. And free, alive, he could summon them again, reopen the Rift. She hesitated only a moment, gritted her teeth, and slashed the dagger across his throat. His eyes widened in surprise and disbelief; his blood poured down his belly.
Tears in her eyes, blood soaking her hands and forearms, Kate turned away from Callion to the forest behind her.
The Watchers were leaving. Leaving. Curling up from the fallen, some of whom still lived, spiraling into the air, spinning and twinkling in a thousand radiant colors. Floating toward the Rift, the hungry, angry, watching Rift. They floated into the void, and for a moment nothing changed.
Then within the void the feeling of awareness intensified—she felt the air around her shift, she felt the hatred and the rage die down, and suddenly she knew that from the other side of that raw wound in reality, something looked out at her. She didn't see a face. She didn't hear a voice. But the hair on the back of her neck and on her arms prickled, and she felt a pressure…a desire that she understand. Feelings flowed around her and enveloped her. Gratitude. Relief. Something that could almost have been a mother's rejoicing at the return of a kidnapped child. Sheer exultant joy.
And then the Rift began shrinking, smoothing out, until finally, without fanfare, it erased itself.
Kate stared at the blood on her hands, at the blood-smeared snow, at the bodies that littered the clearing. She looked at Tik, facedown with the tip of a soldier's sword protruding through his back. She stared at Callion, his binding still around his wrists and ankles, his throat cut by her hand.
She rose slowly and looked around. A few other people stood, hanging on to each other. Others crouched in the snow, attending to the wounded or the dead. Kate finally saw Val, kneeling in the snow next to a corpse. Rhiana knelt beside him, speaking softly. Kate realized the dead man had been Val's father. She didn't go to them. She didn't want to speak to anyone, to hear anyone speak to her, to answer questions or ask them. Not yet.
We do what we have to do, she told herself. In war, when there are no right answers, no easy answers, we do the best we can.
We do what we have to do.
A gate opened on the other side of the clearing, and a dozen men and women stepped out. The first woman through wore ski pants and a nylon parka. The Watchmistress, Kate thought. The other human.
The woman looked around her and said, "Jesus Christ. What went wrong?"
Chapter Forty-Three
; "We could use you here," Jayjay Bennington said. Kate sat in a comfortable chair next to a roaring fire, opposite the Watchmistress and her mate, Matthiall, a Kin with an easy smile and an infectious laugh. Matthiall laughed then. "Jay would love to have another human here with her. I think she gets lonely, even though she won't admit it."
Kate smiled, but it wasn't a smile she felt. "Glenraven is beautiful. And I'm sure I would make friends here, and…" She shrugged.
She wouldn't even pretend to consider the offer. She'd watched the hunting parties going out after the Rift closed, looking for stray monsters trapped in Glenraven. Kate thought of the thing she'd shot in her front yard and imagined running into another one. The parties went out on horseback, the hunters armed with longbows and magic. She listened to the rhythms of speech, to the easy talk of lords and ladies and oaths of fealty. She watched the people on the bottom of the system and realized that no matter how hard they worked, they couldn't rise above their state.
We've gone beyond all of that, she thought.
Jay said, "Yemus, the wizard who created that book you ended up with, took a trip back to our world. He figured out what Callion was doing—breeding half-Aregen children. He evidently intended to bring them back here and reestablish the Aregen race. But you wouldn't have to worry about that. Without him to bring them back, the kids will grow up never knowing what they are. They'll just be kids. Some of them might have real talent in magic, but so what? Other children have been born with the same talent on and off since the first outcasts arrived in our world. Maybe they'll do something good with their lives. Maybe they won't. But the world will keep on spinning."
"It always does that," Kate said.
Rhiana joined them, settling onto the hearth. "Val and I intend to take eyran vows after he buries his father," she said. "We'll claim ourselves to be bondmates before the Faldan Kin and the people of Ruddy Smeachwykke, and state that our marriage is political; we intend to unite Faldan and Ruddy Smeachwykke. The fact that we love each other can be for us to know."
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