Julian shot Rab only one pointed glare as his partner stalked to his side, and forbore to fuel Jannyn’s ire by acknowledging his presence at all. Alarrah held the obvious power; on Alarrah he would focus. “My volatile companion raises a valid point. Our reply promised payment. Not an ambush.”
The healer said coolly, “I’m charged only to bring Faanshi to shelter, and to offer you and your partner the same. If you insist on a reward of wealth, such isn’t mine to give. You’ll have to take that up with our leaders in Dolmerrath.”
Silence dropped across the trail, broken only by shocked intakes of breath from Tembriel and Jannyn, Rab’s labored breathing, and the nervous snuffling of the horses. Julian fought down his own surprise, for Dolmerrath was a name he knew only as rumor. He’d never met a human who’d set foot in the fabled last elven settlement in all of Adalonia, and he’d never entirely believed that it existed. Apparently, he’d been wrong.
“I can’t imagine that you’re prepared to trust Rab and me with the route for such a journey.”
“We’re not.”
“Then how do you propose to get us there?” Julian couldn’t keep his attention from straying to the still shape in Virden’s arms, or suppress the twitch in one of the muscles in his cheek at the sight. “Will you put us to sleep as you did her?”
Alarrah’s gaze flickered to the unconscious girl for only a moment, and when it came back to him, it had lost none of its resolve. “You have three choices, assassin. You and your partner may leave in peace if you wish. You may ride with us to Dolmerrath with your eyes shielded and your ears stopped. Or yes, I’ll put you both to—”
“No!” Rab cut in, slicing the air before him with his hands. “No, Rook. I’m done. I go no further.”
His eyes blazed blue, hot and bright, and his voice sizzled with a rage Julian had never heard it bear before—rage that had simmered beneath Rab’s youthful tenor ever since they’d returned to Camden to steal Faanshi away. “Alarrah, may we have a moment alone?”
At a gesture from the healer, the elves melted into the trees. Only Alarrah and the elf called Virden remained in immediate view, and they headed far enough along the trail to give the humans at least a pretense of privacy.
As sharp as elven hearing was, Julian had no illusions that they weren’t still within earshot. But he’d accept the token gesture nevertheless. “Have you lost interest in payment, then?” he demanded.
“What payment? We’ve gotten the girl to the elves, and what have they brought us in reward? Drawn blood and empty promises!”
“Alarrah’s been honorable so far,” Julian said, but the ache along the left side of his head argued in Rab’s favor.
Rab knew it too. He swiped a hand along his cheek and thrust his bloodied fingertips out for Julian’s inspection. “You and I both bear the evidence of her people’s honor, and now you want to put us at their magic’s mercy so they can slit our throats? How hard did Tembriel hit you with that rock?”
“Think, idiot! What use is coin if we’re dead? By now every bloody Hawk in the province is combing the countryside for us—”
“And whose gods-damned fault is that? We’d have had a clean escape if you hadn’t dragged us back to Camden in the first place! Didn’t you get into enough trouble the last time a pair of girlish eyes bewitched you?”
Shock roiled up, a burst of warning from a part of him already laid far too bare. “Stand down, Rab. This isn’t a road you want to travel.”
“Hardly, since it leads nowhere but that mangle-eared little mouse. For gods’ sake, what do you see in her? She can’t be anywhere as beautiful as Dulcinea!”
The warning in Julian’s mind became a shriek of fear and grief and fury. He knows was his only thought before reflex took over—and his fist lashed out to slam across Rab’s jaw.
Rab punched him back.
Then they were fighting.
Julian’s world narrowed to the giving and receiving of blows, to the impact of fists against flesh and bone, to a sudden hammering need to drive old memory and old hurt back down into the dark corner of his mind where they belonged. He dodged and lunged, circled and struck, and ignored the jabs of every new blow he took. Somewhere in the midst of it his opponent ceased to be his partner and became only an enemy, seemingly everywhere, fighting with the agility of a much younger man—
Feinting to Julian’s right, then pulling hard to the left and lunging at an angle he couldn’t catch—
Then a new blow cracked across his head where Tembriel had hit him, and everything vanished in agony that almost dropped him to his knees.
I can’t see!
The panic of blindness alone kept him moving, propelling him forward into the source of the pain and tackling it to the leaf-strewn earth. He hauled back with his false hand, desperate to smash its weight into the pain. For an instant, as his vision returned, all he saw was a sneering face that lived in the heart of memory. Then the features changed, becoming once more Rab. At the last moment, before his false hand could crash into the other man’s head, Julian jolted—and Rab pushed him away with all his might. Over onto his side Julian tumbled; clarity rushed back across his thoughts.
Tykhe, what am I doing?
Had he really been about to kill Rab?
“Do what you will, Rook. I’m finished.”
Panting, he snapped his head up to find Rab standing, his face bloodied from the fights with him and Jannyn. The resentment and frustration in his eyes, though, were for Julian alone.
“I’ll be in Shalridan. When you come back to your senses, you’ll know where to find me.” Rab spun on his heels and stalked to his horse. “Don’t trouble yourselves to escort me. I know my way to the coast from here.”
“Go in peace.” Alarrah’s voice rose from nearby.
“Thank you ever so kindly, my lady. I’d say it’s been diverting, except it hasn’t.”
Unable to watch Rab take his leave, uncertain what he could do to call him back or even if he wanted to, Julian closed his eye and waited where he lay. His head ached. His chest heaved for air. But even over his own strained breathing he heard his partner’s retreating footsteps, the creaking of Tornach’s gear as Rab swung into his saddle, and the clop of the stallion’s hooves fading into the distance.
Then there was silence once more. Only then did the Rook lever himself to his feet, a few slow inches at a time.
“Will you follow your companion?”
Alarrah again, nearer now. Julian felt no surprise to find the she-elf beside him, and several of the others closer than they’d been before. Jannyn glowered; Tembriel frowned, seemingly less sure than her brother of what they’d just witnessed. Not a one of them had come near enough to intervene while he and Rab had tussled, and that didn’t surprise him either.
After all, the elves had no stake in whether two humans pummeled one another senseless.
“I promised the girl I’d see her safely to the elves,” he grunted.
“You’ve done that,” Tembriel pointed out, and Alarrah made no move to silence her. “She has no need of you now.”
“She’s unconscious. This doesn’t qualify as safe,” Julian said, with a knife-edged smirk. “Call it a quaint human definition.”
“I felt her power in your flesh, so I know what you’ve brought us,” Alarrah said. “The question is, human, do you?”
“She’s saved two lives. One of them is mine.”
Brows furrowed and eyes narrowed on the faces around him—what would have been openmouthed amazement for his own kind. Tembriel glanced back and forth between him and the girl in Virden’s arms, as if trying to fathom why Faanshi had granted him such a gift, and even her brother seemed unsure now. Only Alarrah showed no astonishment. If anything the healer’s gaze grew almost serene, as if Julian had merely given voice to a truth she already possessed. “A debt of honor,” she said.
“If it means anything to you coming from a human, yes.”
Though her lips barely curved, it was the clos
est expression to a smile that Julian had seen Alarrah wear. “If it means anything to you coming from an elf, it does. Ride with us if you will to see your debt of honor through.”
“I ride by that one,” Julian said, nodding toward Virden, “so that if Faanshi wakes, she can see me.”
“She won’t wake until our journey’s done; it’s safer that way for her. The Wards on Dolmerrath aren’t easily borne by untrained mages.” Alarrah studied him. “Or by humans. It would be best if you let me put you to sleep along with Faanshi.”
Each ache along Julian’s frame redoubled at the prospect of imminent relief, though he couldn’t afford the temptation, not when he’d named himself the girl’s guardian. He hadn’t used the word—his mind skittered around it even now—but it wouldn’t be dismissed. “Blind me and deafen me if you must, but no more.”
“At the very least, permit me to mend your head.”
She remained impassive, and yet he couldn’t shake the sense that she thought him far more foolish than brave. On the other hand, he hurt far too much to care.
“Do it.”
Her touch was brief, the warmth of her power briefer still, rising and fading almost before he could perceive either. The magic did nothing for the blood where Tembriel’s rock had struck, or for the rest of the aches that plagued him. It chased the hurt out of his head, however, and that was enough.
As she moved from him once more, Alarrah called out orders to her companions, sending them off in ones and twos toward horses he could only just glimpse in the trees. But a tight-lipped Tembriel brought mounts forward for Virden and his unconscious burden—and for the wounded Jannyn, who mounted with his sister’s aid, and who didn’t hide his disdain as Julian followed Virden to his horse.
“She doesn’t need you, human. Neither do we. What good can a maimed protector do?”
Behind him, barely louder than a whisper, Tembriel snickered. Julian ignored brother and sister alike and held out his arms for the girl. “Give her to me and mount up. I’ll hand her back to you.”
With clear reluctance, Virden nodded. It took them but moments to shift Faanshi’s weight between them, and less than that for the elf to spring into the saddle and take her back. Julian strode to Morrigh. His stallion was quieter now, wariness still palpable in his carriage around unfamiliar horses, though the alarm of the sudden ambush had left him. He blew out a soft noise of approval at his rider’s climbing into the saddle.
When he was ahorse, Julian deigned to look Jannyn’s way.
“Malign mankind all you like, but remember three things, lad.” He had no idea how old Jannyn was—older than he most likely, and therefore quite liable to be irked by a human word like lad. “It was humans who liberated this oh-so-valuable healer, humans who brought her to you—” Annoyance flared across Jannyn’s face, and before he could reply Julian leaned over in his saddle to finish, smiling without humor, “And a human who drew your blood today.”
More whispers of laughter broke out around him, including a grudging little chuckle from Tembriel that won her a scathing retort in Elvish from her brother. Julian turned his back to them both and nudged Morrigh into flanking Virden’s mare. That put the elf on his blind side, which felt wrong. He’d have to keep turning his head, not only to keep Faanshi in his line of sight, but also to remind himself that it wasn’t Rab and Tornach beside whom he’d be riding now.
He tried to tell himself it wouldn’t matter.
He didn’t believe it.
Alarrah drew her mount up on Morrigh’s other side and beckoned for his attention. “Your horse will follow mine—don’t concern yourself with guiding him. These are for your ears.” She held out two balls of soft wax for his inspection, and with them, a strip of green linen. “This is for your eye.”
“I’ll hold Morrigh’s safety on your head,” he warned. “Along with Faanshi’s.”
“By the Mother of Stars, both their lives will be as mine.”
That vow, he supposed, was the best assurance he would get. He hauled in a breath, released it and then bowed his head toward the she-elf. “Do it,” he said once again.
“When your Morrigh moves, let him. Put all your will into staying in the saddle. You’ll need that to pass through the Wards.” With that she pressed the wax into each of his ears and wound the strip of cloth about his head, while he fought to keep from flinching at the cocooning of his senses.
Wrapped in green-tinged darkness and silence, he felt his horse move beneath him. Like Rab’s absence, it seemed wrong, as though he rode in the grip of a formless dream. Initially he sensed nothing but the sporadic sunlight on his head and the shifts of Morrigh’s powerful frame. Then, more subtly, came eventual layers of smells that flavored the air with every breath. Wind against his face. Horses. Sun-warmed leather. His sweat intermingled with the tang of the blood in his hair.
For a time Julian strove to track which way Morrigh turned on the trail, how that changed the angle of the sun’s heat upon him—anything to keep his mind engaged, to distract himself from the gnawing memory of Rab’s departure. For a time, it worked. A salty taste rose in the air and nudged aside other scents of his surroundings, and he seized upon that. No matter how often his guides might bend their path, there were ultimately only two directions that wouldn’t lead back into the rest of Kilmerry Province, west and north. They were riding toward the sea.
With that ocean smell, however, something else arose.
It began as nervousness that he dismissed at first as nothing more than unease at riding blind. Julian hated that weakness, but he’d felt it before and would weather it now. Yet despite his resolution the nervousness grew, sending tendrils across his mind and choking all other thoughts.
They’ll shoot you—
Unseen enemies were enemies who could take him down. His instincts knew it, and they shrilled an alarm that nearly drove his hand off Morrigh’s reins to his closest blade. With an effort he forced himself to relax, lest Morrigh perceive his mood. Unable to direct his mount, he couldn’t let him be distracted from whatever charm Alarrah had worked to convince him to follow her horse. And at any rate, if the elves had wanted him dead, they would have shot him already.
They’ll shoot her—
That was harder. Wrath spilled through him, and he twisted left in the saddle, his hand shooting up toward the cloth that blocked his sight. For an instant he yearned to break Alarrah’s neck for lying to him as she’d pledged her life as surety for the girl’s. Then Morrigh faltered, and Julian caught himself again. Shaken, he fumbled for the comfort of his horse’s neck, twisting his fingers into the mane and slumping forward as he fought to steady his breath.
The Wards. They were crossing the Wards.
Knowing that should have helped. But it gave him only a brief space of clarity before knives of fear cut deeper and faster into his awareness, leaving less and less time to regain rational ground.
They’ll shoot you—
They’ll shoot her—
He won’t make it to Shalridan—they’ll stop him, they’ll kill him because you aren’t there—
Guilt and panic nearly undid him, and it was all Julian could do to keep from ripping off the blindfold, wheeling Morrigh around and plunging headlong through the forest in pursuit of his partner. He could no longer tell which way Rab had gone, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the growing need to be away. Only by swift, brutal summoning of Rab’s last bitter words, rekindling his own anger, could he fight the panic off. Rab had made his choice. So had he.
The anger gave him only seconds of reprieve, though, before the Wards redoubled their assault.
He knows what you did—
She’ll find out what you did—
They’ll find you, they’ll catch you, they’ll take your other hand, they’ll put out your other eye—
A howl of protest surged from deep within him, and the struggle to keep it from escaping nearly made him retch. Agony stung his right wrist and the place where his left ey
e had been. A fragment of his consciousness latched upon a defense and threw up a memory like a shield, frail but gleaming, against the onslaught of fright.
Her fingertips against his cheek, their touch as delicate as feathers. Her voice given strength by something he barely recognized as empathy—for him. The light that haloed her hand, painful in its purity and the searing promise of an absolution he could neither allow himself nor resist.
He didn’t know when she’d become a talisman to a part of him that had lain broken and never truly buried. But the memory of her contact shored up his splintering will, protecting that last vital portion of his being against the press of the magic invading his thoughts.
Her voice was the last thing he heard as the Wards drove him down into oblivion.
Chapter Seventeen
With Julian’s name a howl in her throat, Faanshi hurtled out of slumber with a speed that left her system crackling with thwarted magic. Her hands shone as she bolted upright, and the right one curled down to her side, reaching for a nonexistent sword. Kestar’s sword. She’d never seen it—she’d noticed nothing but Kestar himself once his blood had been spilled at the church—yet she knew how her palm would fit the hilt, how the blade’s weight would pull at her arm. Part of her mind shrieked to unsheathe the weapon along with her power.
It took her long moments to realize that no one was fighting or in pain around her, and after that, that she had no idea where she was. She sat upon an odd round bed among green linen sheets, old and faded, though more finely woven than she was used to. The chamber too was oddly shaped, its walls curving as she’d never seen walls do, with patterns worked along them in charcoal and paint in the shapes of trees. Three candles in holders nestled in the midst of crafted branches. Around these, dozens of fragments of metal and polished glass embedded in the walls reflected the illumination, until it seemed to Faanshi as if she’d awakened in a glade of light.
Movement seized her attention. The chamber had no door, only a hole in which hung curtains patterned like vines. These parted, and through them stepped a woman more startling than the otherworldly room.
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