by Lisa Cassidy
Soon she sensed the chaotic tangle of the thoughts of hundreds of Shiven soldiers. A shudder went through her at the sheer size of their forces—the main bulk seemed to be based at Port Rantarin, but she could pick up the thoughts of soldiers stretching out through the disputed area, a wide front pushing down on the Rionnan lines.
Frowning in concentration, Alyx began trying to untangle the knot, sinking down into individual minds in slow, methodical fashion.
First she looked for the commanders, rifling through their thoughts for the information she needed. Success came on the sixth mind—an older man whose thoughts indicated he led an entire division of the force camped at Port Rantarin. Under his command fell those Alyx was looking for. Weariness tugged at her as she delved deeper into his mind, trying to see exactly which…and there it was.
Ignoring exhaustion, she left his mind and began roving again, focusing on an area of the encampment in the northwest. It took nearly an hour, but when she found what she was looking for, a fierce glow of satisfaction filled her. Amidst all the sleeping minds and busy thoughts of the awake guards there was a bubble…an area of utter nothing.
Guided by the commander’s mind, she’d found a unit of Hunters. Gotcha.
Her eyes flickered open. A wave of weariness crashed down and she became quickly aware of the soreness in her cramped body. When she stood to stretch, the cold air bit deep, the kind of cold that presaged snow. Limping slightly, she crossed to her horse and dug out a blanket from her saddlebags.
“You found them?” Jenna called softly.
Shivering, Alyx crossed to join her, the blanket wrapped firmly around her shoulders. The cold set her newly healed ribs aching and it almost hurt to talk. “Yes.”
“You’re certain they’re going where we want them to?”
“I pulled the knowledge from their commander’s mind.”
Jenna nodded and turned away. “It’s still a few hours till dawn and you look exhausted. I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep.”
The blanket kept out the worst of the night’s cold, but even so Alyx found it difficult to fall asleep. It was impossible to get properly warm without a fire, and the ground was hard beneath her. The lumpy bark of the tree she rested against didn’t help, and she found herself shifting constantly, trying to get comfortable.
Eventually she fell into a fitful sleep, but almost immediately after was dragged into Shakar’s nightmare. His torment of her was edged with a note of vicious triumph over Dashan’s death, and her grief left her with little emotional strength to fight him off. Tonight she simply curled her consciousness into a tiny ball, whimpering helplessly as he drove his hooks deep into her mind and buffeted her with his dark power.
“The council killed him, Alyx, and they would have killed you too.”
“You’re the one that sent Hunters after us.” She hated the weakness that trembled through her mental voice, but could do nothing to stop it.
“But THEY killed him.”
He read her flash of anger with ease, just as easily reading how deeply she hated the council for what they’d done. That she burned with the need to hurt them the way they’d hurt her.
“Join me and it would be easy to destroy them. You could watch as the council burned to ashes. I know that’s what you want.” His voice turned almost soothing. “Your friends betrayed you. Your allies are not who you thought they were. But you don’t have to be alone. We both know the council needs to end. Help me do it.”
“Alyx!”
She came awake with a gasp, lashing out at the hand shaking her shoulder. Jenna’s Taliath reflexes allowed her to dodge aside to avoid the hit, a scowl on her pretty face. “Quiet!” she hissed. “You were crying out in your sleep.”
“Sorry,” Alyx mumbled, straightening up as wakefulness hit her properly. “Nightmare.”
“I don’t care what it was, you were about to bring the whole Shiven army down on us,” Jenna said flatly.
“I didn’t do it deliberately,” she snapped, defensive. “Anyway, I’m awake now. Get some rest and I’ll take watch.”
As the light of dawn crept through the trees, Alyx, shivering, forced herself to climb stiffly to her feet and send out enough magic to check on the Hunters she’d found the night before. The bubble of blankness created by the medallions was still there, but it was moving.
“Hey!” Alyx kicked Jenna’s figure where it was curled up under three blankets. “Time to go.”
The woman didn’t say a word, but rose lithely to her feet and quickly stowed her blankets away before untethering her horse and swinging into the saddle. Alyx followed just as silently.
The cold had deepened through the night and snow was already beginning to fall. She wished she’d thought to bring gloves—her fingers were turning blue where they gripped the horse’s reins.
Throughout the day, the bubble moved in a steady north-westerly direction, following the coast as it curved away from Port Rantarin. They moved quickly. Alyx cursed the delay as she and Jenna had to first head northeast to clear the heaviest cluster of Shiven army, then creep around behind on a straight line towards the coast.
She employed her magic without respite, keeping part of her awareness monitoring the Hunters, and the rest scanning for Shiven patrols. Her head throbbed. Every bit of focus she had was taken up, her strength draining as the Hunters drew further away and she had to expend more energy to reach them.
Eventually, though, they left the boundary of the disputed area and crossed into Shivasa proper. Once clear of the army, they were able to make faster time, pushing the horses harder through bleak, empty terrain.
The Hunters stopped moving just after dusk, presumably to make camp. By then, her headache had spread down into aching shoulders, awakening the pain of her newly-healed ribs. She hadn’t used her telepathic ability to this extent before, and it was testing the limits of her still-recovering strength.
Jenna wasn’t oblivious to this. Once they’d found a suitable place to camp, she tossed Alyx a blanket and told her in no-nonsense terms to sit down and eat something. “I’ll deal with the horses.”
By the time Jenna returned to settle nearby, tossing a second blanket to Alyx, she felt a little better. Silence held for a while as they both chewed through the remains of the stale bread in their supplies.
“It’s going to take some serious luck for this to turn out the way you want it to,” Jenna commented eventually.
“I’m aware of that.”
Jenna hesitated. “Why did you bring me?”
“Because if I tried to bring Ladan or my father, they would have refused to come and then locked me in a room until I changed my mind. Tarrick and Finn…well, I can’t even look at them anymore. Cario would have had the same reaction as my brother, and Dawn is the most powerful telepath mage alive, but doesn’t have Taliath skill at fighting.”
“You don’t trust me though,” she pointed out.
“No.” Alyx shrugged. “But I couldn’t do this alone, so I took a risk that maybe you are trustworthy.”
Sleep was hard to come by again. She missed Dashan with a fierce ache, and was beginning to feel guilty for running off like she had. Ladan, Cayr, her father…they were going to be so worried. Her plan was foolish and dangerous, but Alyx clung to the resolve she’d felt ever since the thought had first occurred to her.
She had to do this. Moving beyond what had happened wouldn’t be possible unless she did. If she survived, then perhaps she’d be able to breathe again.
And lingering, always, at the back of her mind were Shakar’s words, his offer to her. Together, we can bring down the council and watch it turn to ashes. It was impossible to ignore now how badly she wanted that. It was like all the warmth and softness in her had been burned away by what happened in Sandira, leaving only hard scar tissue and a burning need to see everything that had caused her pain destroyed.
Once, her friends had brought her comfort from that, allowing her to let the anger go, but now thinking of th
em only made her angrier.
With a slow, deliberate breath, she tore her thoughts away from them and summoned a memory instead. Her seventh birthday, when she, Cayr and Dashan had snuck away from the party her father had arranged and spent the afternoon playing hide and seek in the gardens. A golden day of innocent happiness. She allowed the memory of Cayr’s bright laughter, the sun shining on the colourful flowers and Dashan’s mocking laugh when she couldn’t catch him to surround her and fill her up.
And then she slept.
The next day passed much as the day before had. The Hunters angled further to the west, and by late afternoon, Alyx’s magic warned her of the presence of many other people ahead. Lifting a hand to slow Jenna, who trailed behind, she did a thorough sweep of the area.
“There’s a town ahead,” she said eventually. “I’m guessing they’re staying at an inn for the night.”
Jenna nodded. “Wait here and make sure they’re staying put. I’ll find a place to camp.”
By now Alyx had learned that either innate Taliath skill or simple intelligence led Jenna to pick campsites that offered excellent defence in case of attack, and she no longer protested the woman taking charge of that aspect of their trip.
While she waited, she continued sending out sweeps, but the Hunters stayed where they were. Jenna returned shortly, leading Alyx a short distance to a rocky overhang by a slow-moving stream. Together they unsaddled the horses before settling as comfortably as was possible underneath the overhang.
“The nightmare you were having the other night. It seemed pretty bad.”
Alyx glanced up in surprise. Jenna had been essentially uncommunicative for the trip north from Alistriem—not that Alyx had minded—yet this was the second time in two days she’d initiated conversation. “Shakar likes to torture me with them.”
“The one you were having seemed particularly intense.” Jenna’s voice was deliberately casual. “You were thrashing about like a madwoman.”
“He was…” She shuddered. “He was preying on my weakness, trying to tempt me to join him. I don’t want to talk about it.”
There was a long silence, then, “I still remember the night my parents died.”
Alyx’s head shot up, all weariness and discomfort forgotten. Jenna was staring at the piece of dried meat in her hands, her fingers toying with it, her gaze distant.
“I was six years old. I remember flames, the smell of burning. My mother’s screams…even now I can hear them with perfect clarity. I was hiding under my bed. My father had put me there, told me to stay and hide. But he never came back.” She paused. “I started screaming too, convinced I was going to die. Then a man came. He wore black robes and he scooped me up, carried me out where the air was fresh and I could breathe again. He told me he’d tried to save my parents but he’d been too late. He said he would look after me.”
Another silence fell. Alyx waited, enraptured. Jenna hadn’t used Casovar’s name once.
“We lived in Carhall for years. He wasn’t around a lot, and he was generally aloof, but he did look out for me. He made sure I was educated and had nice clothes to wear. He paid for a kind old lady to look after me when he was away.” Jenna cocked her head. “I always knew, even at a young age, that there was something he wanted from me. That he’d rescued me for a reason. Then we came to Alistriem, and it became clear. He wanted me to lure the prince, to marry him. Make him the father of the future queen.” She shrugged. “And Cayr was handsome, and he was nice. So I thought to myself, this isn’t so bad. I would rule the court, and have beautiful dresses, and my husband would treat me well. But Cayr could only see you.”
Suddenly Jenna looked over, her baby blue eyes fastening on Alyx with a frustrated intensity. “And I couldn’t understand why. You were so high and mighty, so impressed with yourself and so ridiculously naive at the same time.”
Alyx huffed a laugh, unable to argue with that. “I was.”
“You were different after you came back from DarkSkull though. And now…you’re nothing like that girl I remember first meeting.” Jenna shook her head. “Anyway, then one day you told me that the man who’d saved me was the man who killed my parents. That what he was really after was my invulnerability. That he was working for Shakar.”
Aching mournfulness hit Alyx like a slap in the face, and it took her a second to realise that despite Jenna’s cool exterior, Alyx’s telepathic magic was picking up the emotion under her words. Emotion seemed to leak through Taliath invulnerability like nothing else did. Jenna’s pain touched her own, still raw and fresh and too strong to hold back.
“The council killed Dashan.” The words spilled out of Alyx, stark with grief. “The things they’ve done…and despite my hatred of it, I’ve always been able to ignore the anger, push it away. But they killed him, and I can’t…I just want them all dead.”
“What about defeating Shakar?” Jenna asked with her typical bluntness.
Alyx took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t do it alone, and the council commands more resources and warrior mages than I ever could.”
Jenna frowned. “How can you work with them after everything that has happened?”
“I don’t have a choice.” She whispered the bitter truth, hands clenching into white-knuckled fists. “I think about Dash, what he would want. I know he would tell me to do whatever it takes to destroy Shakar, prevent him from hurting more innocents. So I have to ignore how I feel. How I miss him so much it physically hurts, how it was the council that took him away from me. I have to put that aside and find a way to work with them.”
Jenna had shifted closer without Alyx realising, and she reached out to lightly touch her knee. “The way I see it, Shakar is not only hurting and killing innocents, he’s also the cause of the fear the council have of the Taliath. He’s the reason Casovar killed my parents and stole me away. He’s the reason they killed Dashan.”
Alyx nodded, scrubbing the tears from her face. “Right.”
“So the primary goal is destroying Shakar.” Jenna met her gaze. “The council has resources needed for that, yes. But does it have to be a bunch of corrupt, cowardly old men leading those mages and resources?”
Alyx sniffed, considering. There was intelligence in the blue eyes boring into hers, a sharp awareness she’d seen frequently in both her father and Dashan. But in Jenna’s there was fierceness too, a burning hunger to avenge her parents.
“No,” she said quietly. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
Chapter 15
They followed the Hunters steadily west, deep into Shivasa. Their food supply began to run low and Alyx tired from her constant use of telepathic magic. Each day it was harder to drag herself to her feet and summon more magic.
She and Jenna didn’t talk much, but the Taliath wordlessly took on the responsibility of finding camp, settling the horses, and ensuring Alyx had food and water each time they stopped. Part of her hated that her lingering weakness was so obvious. Another part was starting to think that maybe she didn’t really dislike Jenna so much after all.
When the Hunters turned in a northerly direction one morning, hope sparked. For the previous two days they’d been moving into more heavily populated territory, and Alyx was beginning to worry they’d reach a point where staying hidden would be impossible. But as morning stretched towards midday, it was clear they were moving away from towns again, and her hope increased.
The sun began sinking low on the horizon, the cold deepening and new snowfall beginning to drift around them. And then Alyx’s telepathic magic suddenly hit a wall of blankness. She’d been half-dozing in the saddle, but sat up abruptly at the sensation.
“What?” Jenna demanded.
Alyx waved her off, closing her eyes to focus her magic. Reaching out further, she sensed only nothingness ahead of the group of Hunters—a massive area of blank space. Despite how far she reached or how much power she used, Alyx’s magic couldn’t reach the other side of it.
A slow smile spread over her fac
e, and she opened her eyes to meet Jenna’s demanding gaze. “I think we found it.”
Fierce light leapt into the Taliath’s eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Jenna convinced her to wait until well after nightfall to move, insisting Alyx needed rest. She managed a fitful couple of hours’ sleep while Jenna kept watch and came awake to the sight of her companion crouched over a long, narrow blade, polishing it to a high sheen.
“Where did you get it?”
Jenna’s eyes shot to hers. “Your father.”
Alyx ran her eyes over the gleaming steel, and then the hilt—carved beautifully in the shape of a swan. It was smaller and narrower than the Taliath sword she’d seen at DarkSkull, smaller than her father’s too, but there was no doubting what it was. “What did you name it?”
“Huntress.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, then, “it suits you.”
“Thank you, Alyx,” Jenna said, and they shared a smile.
Alyx stood and stretched before calling her staff with a touch of magic and slinging it over her back. “Let’s do this.”
Moonlight cloaked the two young women as they moved swiftly through the snowy landscape. Using the bubble as a guide, Alyx took the lead, her old nemesis running at her shoulder with Huntress belted at her hip.
It wasn’t long before they crested a snow-covered rise. Alyx dropped instantly to the ground at a sharp gesture from Jenna, cold snow soaking into her clothes. The night air was cold, biting, and she tried not to shiver as it sank its tendrils into her.
The valley floor was mostly visible under the glow of a bright moon. In its centre was a dim, mostly rectangular shape marked by lantern lights set along what she guessed were the outer walls. Squinting hard, she could just make out movement along the top of the closest wall. In the centre, a large cluster of lanterns cast orange light over a pair of closed gates, illuminating broken snow where many horses had recently ridden through.
Alyx shivered violently. “We’re going to die of cold if we keep lying in the snow like this.”