Apostate: Forbidden Things

by Nikki Mccormack

  He scowled down at the warlord who watched them with an eager, arrogant smirk. Very little of the warlord’s army had entered the city. Perhaps 500 warriors at most waited in the streets. Arrogant was an understatement.

  Nearly an hour ago, Yiloch sent Adran to lead Lady Auryl, her family, and several other important nobles and merchants to the port through the back trails along the rocky beach. He was to see them to a ship and secure additional ships ready to set sail at a moment’s notice. Evacuation of as many people as possible was starting to look like their only recourse. The possibility brought with it an almost blinding fury, but he had taken Yiroth once, he would do so again if he lost it now.

  All of a sudden, Ian and all of the other adepts and creators on the wall staggered as though struck. Adran, who was standing between them, managed to catch the creators arm before he fell from the wall. Even Yiloch felt a concussion much like that of a catapult stone sending a tremor through the ground, but this tremor went through the ascard and none of the archers along the wall were affected by it. There were anguished cries outside the wall and he watched in astonishment as numerous Grey warriors recoiled, some falling from their mounts, their faces twisting with agony.

  There was a moment of confusion on all sides and he turned to Ian. The creator had one hand on Adran and another on the wall as though he needed help standing, but he was smiling. There was a maniacal sparkle in his pale eyes that gave Yiloch a faint chill. A bolt of power shot from Ian. It drove out above the main street, creating a line of blinding red light several blocks long, then molten rain sprayed down from it onto the warriors lining the street. Shouts of pain and panic filled the air as their hair caught fire, their skin and armor searing under the molten droplets, their mounts panicking.

  “Fire on all targets!” Yiloch cried. “Prepare to open the gates! Send up a signal for the reinforcements!”

  He wasn’t sure who did the deed, but blue signal flashed in the brightening sky above the palace to signal the reinforcements. At the same moment, arrows flew and Grey warriors fell under the assault, their barriers gone. The ones who had fallen first must have been adepts whose power maintained the barriers, though they had been armed and dressed in the same fashion as the other warriors. The Grey warlords smile was gone and he had turned away, looking back into the city. The fire rain and arrows bounced away from him, suggesting that he maintained his own protections. He started shouting out orders in a strange tongue and led a retreat heading full speed out of the city.

  Yiloch turned to Ian. “What happened?”

  “Someone destroyed the barriers. They must have channeled the energy back into the adepts controlling it. I felt death all through the army out there.”

  “Who could have done something like that?” Yiloch asked. He knew the answer, but he needed to have it confirmed, to force himself to acknowledge the implications.

  “Only two adepts I know of have anything near the kind of power that must have taken,” Ian said. “Somehow, I don’t see Myac rushing in to help.”

  Yiloch gazed out towards the forest. “Then she’s out there somewhere.”

  “Yes,” Ian replied soberly. “Somewhere, on the other side of them.”

  “She? You mean my daughter.” Theron who had been nearby, watching over his adepts, stepped up to the wall now and stared out in earnest.

  The slip, calling Indigo his daughter, warmed Yiloch toward Theron even as cold dread made a knot in his stomach. He lowered his gaze and saw the Grey warriors pulling out of the city to rejoin the army beyond the remains of the outer wall. Fathoming the kind of power she controlled was beyond him, but he doubted she could have much left after that performance. Dozens of Grey adepts lay dead outside the inner gates. If Ian was correct, there were many more dead beyond the outer wall. If the Grey warriors found her now, she wasn’t going to survive the encounter.

  “Hax, gather the units. We’re going out now.” He turned to Theron. “Get inside the palace. If things should go badly, I expect you to get to your ship.”

  Theron narrowed his eyes and Yiloch braced for the argument. Then the man glanced out toward the trees again and nodded.

  “Yes.”

  Lord Terral was at the gate already, riding at the head of his soldiers. Yiloch wondered at his uncommon eagerness to enter battle, unless he hoped to atone for his crimes. There wasn’t time to question it now. He rushed down the stairs, leapt on Tantrum, and moved him into place as his army prepared to charge. When the gates were open, the army surged through. Most of the Grey warriors had already retreated beyond the ruins of the outer wall seeking to rejoin the main body of the army where they would have an advantage. Many remained in the city as well and Yiloch broke Lord Terral and Captain Leryc off with units to run a sweep. They would kill any Grey warriors and save who they could among those residents who were still in the city.

  Yiloch knew he needed to give the Grey Army as little time as possible to regroup. Right now, they were unprotected and disorganized. The panicked response was enough to tell him that this turn of events was completely unexpected and unplanned for. This was the moment to come down on them with all of his force and try to crush them as one might a horde of ants invading the kitchens.

  Lyran soldiers, on foot and mounted, rushed through the main streets of the city in pursuit of the Grey warriors. Adepts and creators went with them and some reached ahead, using ascard to sweep more of the debris from the wall aside and create a wider path for his army to pass through. Within moments, they were surging out through the destroyed wall. Their anger and the power of their pent up frustration charged the air, carrying the feel of a violent storm approaching out upon the field. The sensation lifted Yiloch, pushing him to a height of bloodlust that was exhilarating. He let out a war cry that his soldiers echoed as Tantrum leapt a portion of the fallen gate that was missed in the sweep.

  Meeting the eyes of the first Grey warrior he spotted, Yiloch smiled and raised his sword. Steel met steel with a satisfying crash, the physical impact jarring through him, real and brutal. He turned Tantrum and the stallion struck out mid-spin, catching one leg of the warrior’s horse with a steel shod hoof. The other animal shrieked. It staggered and the rider fell forward into Yiloch’s thrust sword, blood gushing over the blade as it sank into his throat.

  After so much time spent waiting for his city to fall before this unstoppable force, seeing their blood spill drove his hunger for battle to a fever pitch. Steel clashed all around him. Voices cried out in pain or anger. Hooves pounded the earth. The music of conflict played on all sides. A murderous grin on his face, Yiloch spun Tantrum around again and they quickly found another partner to dance with.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Myac reeled, the world spinning around him while he kept a death grip on the saddle. Despite the growing light of dawn, blackness threatened at the edges of his vision and he heard the screams of dying adepts all around him. The backlash Indigo had unleashed upon the army’s adepts with the destruction of the barrier was violent and lethal, a maelstrom of wild power. All that saved him from that power was her protection, something he imagined she wouldn’t have given if it weren’t necessary. Now it was up to him to get out of the middle of an army that was about to engage in full scale battle. The trickle of strength he had held back from Indigo the instant she broke Ini-jnai’s hold over him would have to be enough to keep him safe.

  All around him, the warriors were in confusion, trying to grasp what had happened as adepts intermixed within their ranks collapsed from their mounts, the majority of them dead before they hit the ground. He couldn’t tell if Ini-jnai was alive or not since Indigo had broken that binding. The foreign adept still had his key stones, but he had ridden with Ksa-jnai into the city. They left Myac out toward the back of the army where he wasn’t going to be noticed. Perhaps they feared the defenders would make annoying rescue attempts if they saw one of their own. Little did they know that most of those behind the city walls would be more apt to try to kill h
im than save him.

  Beyond a desire for revenge, Ini-jnai’s fate was unimportant. He was free. It was the time to make his getaway and regroup. Before Indigo unwove their ascard—that magnificent storm of power they created together—he had managed to track her location through their temporary link. He knew where she was when she destroyed the barrier, though he could no longer feel her.

  Struggling against lightheadedness and nausea, he gathered his focus enough to turn his horse toward the woods. He kicked the animal hard, steering it through ranks of warriors as the sounds of thundering hooves and battle cries rang out from the city. Real battle was about to begin, the kind where blood stained the ground and people bled out from non-lethal wounds or were trampled to death in the melee. The kind of battle he wasn’t interested in being a part of in the best of circumstances.

  As though someone had called them by name, the warriors turned toward the sounds of impending attack and drew their weapons. A few tried to block Myac, swinging at him with their short-hafted spears, but it took very little ascard to knock those attacks away. Minutes later the horse was diving into the trees and he steered it haphazardly in the direction he had sensed Indigo, still fighting to hold his seat with the ongoing dizziness.

  If not for the horse tethered loosely to a tree, he might have missed her, might have even trampled her. At the last second, he managed to pull his stocky mount up and turn him. The abrupt twisting stop in combination with his distorted sense of balance sent him sprawling to the ground a few feet shy of her. Pain lanced through the injuries Ini-jnai had poorly healed and through the older wound that she had inflicted on him. Tears sprang to his eyes and he lay there on his back for several moments gasping for air and waiting for the treetops to stop spinning.

  He could hear the sounds of fighting now. Steel clashing. Cries of rage meant to bolster courage. Screams of agony. Sounds that chilled him and helped clear his head. This wasn’t a safe place to linger. Rolling over, he got to his feet and stumbled to her side.

  For a minute, he could only stare at the still figure leaning against the foot of the tree. She was dressed in Kudaness clothing and he could see that she was still breathing, albeit shallowly. He knelt down beside her and brushed her hair away from her face, exposing a dark tattoo on one cheek. He sucked in a breath, his heart skipping a beat when he recognized it as an elegant rendition of the symbol of the Kudan priesthood.

  They had taken her, a Caithin, a woman, and an adept, into their sacred priesthood?

  “What a remarkable creature,” he murmured, tracing the lines of the tattoo with a finger.

  She looked calm, peaceful, as though the task she had accomplished had lifted all the weight off her shoulders. Perhaps it had. Where Myac had been doomed to watching the army tear down Yiroth and many of his hopes with it, she had managed to intervene against odds that appeared insurmountable. Odds that would have driven so many people to simply give up. She had drastically improved the chances of victory for her beloved Yiloch and his city and she had saved Myac’s life. Whether through necessity or some sense of mercy didn’t matter, though he suspected it was the former. His ability was his again. When he fully recovered from the power she had drained from him to take down the barrier, he might even be able to fix some of the damage Ini-jnai’s less than precise healing had left.

  He reached out to her with his power, curious if she had suffered damage from the backlash and scowled. Her elaborate shields and maskings blocked him, as strong as ever. In her unconscious, weakened state, she should be completely unguarded. He traced her figure with his eyes, enhancing his vision with ascard until he detected an anomaly at her left hand. It was the ring, the elegant pearl ring Serivar’s wife had admired over dinner. As he probed at the object, he finally broke into its myriad protections. The piece was as magnificent in its hidden purpose as it was in its external design. A considerable amount of ascard had been worked into it, mostly protections, and her barriers were tied neatly into the mix. He couldn’t stop a grudging smile in admiration of this creation that had undoubtedly caused him difficulty in locating her more than once.

  He leaned down, intending to take the ring, and stopped as the sound of fast moving horses reached his ears. Given the direction, there was little doubt that enemy warriors were coming in search of her now, which suggested that at least some of their adepts had survived to track her.

  He hesitated, brushing her cheek again with his fingers. So soft. So vulnerable. He could kill her now or he could leave her for them to kill. Somehow, both options were inadequate. Inadequate and so much less than she deserved. There was no true hatred for her left in him, not like the hatred he harbored for Yiloch or Ini-jnai. She was a beautiful and worthy opponent, someone he would prefer to defeat with his own skill and ingenuity. With his plans falling apart around him, their rivalry was one of the few things he had left worth savoring.

  Myac leaned close, pressing his lips to hers in a soft kiss as he slid the ring from her finger and dropped it into a pocket. She was beautiful and worthy, and far too powerful to be allowed such advantages.

  Rising, he turned toward the sound of the approaching riders, walking forward to place himself between them and Indigo. He could see them through the trees now. A quick search with ascard revealed nine individual riders, two of them adepts weakened by the power backlash. He shook his head in disappointment. Ksa-jnai expected her to be too weak to fight and he wasn’t wrong. Too bad, he assumed she was alone. Even as weak as he was, he was still far more powerful than anyone in the approaching group.

  Smiling pleasantly, he waited until he was sure they had seen him, then he lashed out with several blades of power. Nine heads rolled, some of the bodies falling instantly, others staying with their mounts as though prepared to continue the attack for several strides before they slumped over and fell. Indigo’s horse only flinched as the confused mounts bucked and bolted around it.

  He leaned against the tree, feeling the drain of that effort after everything else that had occurred. The kills were quick and simple, but he delighted in the thought that Ksa-jnai and Ini-jnai, if they still lived, had probably felt the abrupt loss of those men. It was worth the heavy drag of fatigue.

  Now he had to decide what to do with Indigo before more came.

  When he turned back, he started, his gut churning with dread. They were no longer alone. A Kudaness high priest stood next to the tree now. His copper eyes bored into Myac, as though they could see to his soul. Myac doubted they really could or that gaze wouldn’t be so steady. Would it?

  “She is not yours,” the high priest declared in the trade dialect.

  His deep voice and his presence radiated power despite the fact that he had no active connection to the ascard that Myac could detect. He hesitated. The odd power the suacs controlled made him uneasy, but this was only one priest. Gathering his power, he prepared for an attack, fighting the growing weakness, then faltered. In the trees beyond the priest, he saw more coming. There were Kudaness warriors moving through the trees as far as he could see with several more suacs at their head. White-hot rage ignited within him, but he suppressed it. A mistake here, as worn down as he was, could prove fatal.

  “Time will tell,” he growled.

  He bowed with mocking respect to the suac and turned away. As soon as he was mounted, he glanced at Indigo once more.

  Kill her?

  He should kill her and bolt before the others had time to react. More of Ksa-jnai’s warriors were coming from the other direction now. He could hear them and feel them. A lot more.

  Not like this.

  Myac turned the horse away, aiming deeper into the woods in a direction that would take him away from the fighting, then he urged the animal to a trot. Let the Kudaness deal with the coming warriors, and with Indigo, for now.

  •

  Blood ran in thick streams off Yiloch’s blade. He spun Tantrum with leg cues and blocked an attack, then urged the stallion forward and rammed the attacker, sending the wa
rrior reeling back onto a waiting Lyran blade. His eyes met the Lyran soldier’s eyes for an instant before he wheeled the stallion back around and charged another Grey warrior on foot. The warrior’s eyes narrowed and he ducked under Yiloch’s blade at the last second. When he spun Tantrum for a second attack, another Grey warrior leapt from his mount, slamming into Yiloch. Tantrum went over and Yiloch threw himself clear, bringing his dagger around into the vulnerable point under the other man’s arm as he fell. He landed heavy on his back with the warrior dead on top. For a few seconds, his world was a flurry of feet and hooves. Then he was on his feet again. The man he had attacked initially lay on the ground with scorch marks around his lips and eye sockets, burned out from the inside with ascard.

  Another Grey warrior turned to face him. Yiloch shifted his blade for a block. A strange guttural cry rang out and the Grey warrior checked his attack, backing off suddenly. Glancing around, Yiloch watched as a group of Grey warriors drove back his soldiers, leaving an open space around him. A hole opened in the mass of bodies around that space and the Grey warlord entered. His black eyes blazed with fury. His lip rose in a silent snarl and he lifted his spear-like weapon to point at Yiloch. A string of angry words came forth that meant little to Yiloch, but he thought he could guess at the general intent.

  There was little doubt, judging from the way the warlord handled himself and his weapon, that he faced a capable opponent. There was no room for uncertainty here. Yiloch stepped into a fighting stance. Whatever went on beyond this circle was of little import now. He got the impression the Grey warriors would not interfere with their leader given the speed with which they had backed off and created a space for this confrontation. His own soldiers would intervene given the opportunity, but that wasn’t something he dared count on now.

  The Grey warlord attacked, his charge low, swift, and fierce. Yiloch had watched their style enough to expect such an attack, though the speed with which the man moved caught him by surprise. The point of the blade snagged a joint in his armor, digging into the flesh over his ribs before he could spin away. The pain made his breath catch.