Deathcaster (Shattered Realms)

by Cinda Williams Chima

  Finn screamed, a high, feral sound that was scarcely human. Despite his lack of amulet, despite the fact that he was surrounded by the Queen’s Guard, he exploded into flame, driving back his captors. Lila thought he might try to reach Julianna, but instead he leapt toward the foot of the stairs, where Micah Bayar stood over a motionless Harriman Vega.

  Bayar took two steps back, raising his arms to fend off his nephew. Again and again, Finn drove flame against the barrier the High Wizard had erected. Having no luck there, he turned and directed his fire at the wedding guests, who dove behind pews and fonts to escape.

  Lila ended up squeezing into a niche with Lord and Lady Mander.

  “Get out!” snarled Lord Mander, unsuccessfully trying to push her out. “There’s not enough room.”

  “Why don’t you go talk sense into your son?” Lila snapped back. “I’ll wait here.”

  But they seemed to be leaving that up to Uncle Micah.

  “Finn!” Bayar cried. “Blood and bones! Stop it!” When Finn continued his assault on the crowd, the High Wizard raised his hand and spoke a series of charms that seemed to have no effect. Finally, the High Wizard hit one of the temple pillars with a torrent of flame. It toppled, slamming into Finn. The impact should have ended it, but Finn pushed to his feet, resembling an effigy consumed in flame. He turned and threw himself down on top of Vega. In a few minutes’ time, Finn’s body was consumed in flame, leaving only scraps of wedding velvet and silk and bits of metal behind.

  Vega’s body appeared undamaged.

  In the sudden, horrified silence, Lila heard bodies thudding against the locked temple doors, again and again. It could be reinforcements, Lila thought, but something about the way they repetitively hit the doors made her think that, whoever was outside, she didn’t want them inside. One of the bluejackets left off gaping and stumbled out of the chapel and toward the nearest door.

  “No!” Lila shouted, breaking out of her stunned stupor. “Don’t open the—”

  By then it was a moot point. The door crashed in and black-robed figures poured through, blades glittering in their hands.

  Darians.

  Why does this keep happening? Lila thought. Fanatics at Oden’s Ford, fanatics on Hanalea, now fanatics in the palace itself. That was all the thinking she had time for before she snatched up a dropped sword and plunged into the fighting. The bluejackets were battling the dark priests, trying to hold them back from the gallery and from what remained of the wedding party.

  Lila was not a particularly good swordswoman, especially in a dress, but she saw the advantage of a longer blade in keeping the Darians at a distance.

  “Lila! Give us a hand.” DeVilliers and Shadow bolted past her toward the altar, where Julianna stood frozen as a swarm of blood brothers closed in. She still clutched her wedding flowers, though her shawl lay crumpled at her feet and her hair hung in long strands around her face. Blood poured from a wound on her forearm. Lila, Shadow, and DeVilliers boosted themselves onto the altar, driving the Darians back from the recent bride.

  Gone was the confident spymaster and court official; in her place was a distraught young widow, blood soaking into her wedding dress. “Let them have me,” she whispered, swaying, closing her eyes, raising her chin to provide better access to her neck.

  “If you faint, I’ll kill you,” Lila growled, or something equally heroic.

  Julianna remained conscious as they helped her toward the steps, but there was a major knife fight going on at the foot of them as Princess Mellony’s bluejackets fought to prevent the Darians from climbing up to the gallery.

  “Julianna!” Mellony screamed from the gallery. Lila could see her frightened face floating above the railing like a pale moon.

  Bayar forced his way across the room to the foot of the stairs, incinerating Darians as he went. He looked like some avenging spirit, his face grim and stricken with sorrow. He turned, extended his arms, and Shadow and DeVilliers boosted Julianna up to him. The wizard carried her up the stairs to her mother, then descended again to rejoin the fighting.

  The wizards—the Manders, Bayar, and DeVilliers—were killing the brothers at a furious pace. It helped that the Darians were more frenzied than strategic, though a frenzied person with a knife can do a lot of damage. Still, the northerners were vastly outnumbered. Just as it seemed that the battle might soon be over, more black-clad fighters poured into the room and filled the gallery. At first, Lila thought they were more Darian Brothers, but these wore tailored black uniform tunics instead of hooded black robes, and they carried crossbows and swords instead of knives. They deployed their weapons in a disciplined fashion.

  Blackbirds, Lila thought. Smoking-hot scummer. Who let them in?

  She looked toward the gallery, searching for Mellony and Julianna, but saw only a sea of black uniforms.

  A tall officer stepped forward, rested his gloved hands on the gallery rail, and surveyed the scene in the sanctuary.

  Recognition rippled through Lila. It was Destin Karn. Maybe it was her imagination, but he actually looked sickened by the carnage below.

  “Shoot the swiving crows,” he said. “All of them.”

  Crossbows sounded, and all around the chapel, Darians crumpled to the floor until not a one was standing.

  Have I ever told you that I love you, Destin Karn? Lila thought. Who knew that the day would come that I’d be glad to see you?

  46

  BEDTIME STORIES

  That first night, Ash and the crew of the disabled ketch Destiny camped amid the ruins of Celestine’s marble palace. They found stable shelters in the outbuildings in which to hang their hammocks and store the supplies that hadn’t been damaged or destroyed coming through the stormwall.

  Ash stumbled through these chores, panicking a little each time Jenna was out of sight. Some part of him was still afraid that he was dreaming and she would disappear if his attention wandered.

  “Ash!” Sasha said, gripping his arm when he tripped over a coiled line. “Will you be careful? I can’t tell if you’re moonstruck or sunstruck.”

  “Lovestruck,” Evan said, his lips twitching. “Incurable.” The pirate seemed to be taking ownership of their reunion in an I told you so kind of way.

  Ash didn’t care. After what had seemed like a long series of failures and losses, there was this.

  Jenna explained that their main camp was high in the mountains, away from possible traffic at the harbor. They’d left two more dragons and another human back at camp. Another magemarked human.

  Gripping Ash’s shoulders with her hot hands, she pushed an image into his mind—of a cave and a ledge littered with bones. Laughing at his startled expression, she said, “Words are too slow.”

  Since Ardenscourt, she’d acquired—no, befriended—six dragons and a human. Ash couldn’t help wondering how he fit into all of this.

  The dragons went hunting and then joined them in feasting on dragon-roasted pork and wine from the empress’s cellar. Sasha kept her own counsel, but Ash noticed that she’d moved in close to the pirate, as if for mutual defense. Her hand never strayed far from her dagger, her eyes shifting from dragon to dragon like she expected to be the dessert at this fireside feast.

  Ash scarcely tasted the meal. He treasured up the details that would hold Jenna in his mind, tallied up the changes that had occurred since they’d parted in Ardenscourt.

  Jenna’s golden raptor’s eyes glittered in a face burnished by firelight, dusted with copper and gold. She wore thick leather armor that exposed her muscled arms above her gauntlets, a divided leather skirt, riding boots. Her hair was woven into a knot low on her neck, and she ate without a scrap of self-consciousness, tearing off chunks of meat, chewing, swallowing, licking her fingers, throwing back her head and laughing at silent dragon jokes. Every so often she would lean toward Ash and kiss him. Her kisses were like incendiary promises, flavored with Celestine’s wine.

  There were many kisses but few words. His questions drew brief, vague answer
s, punctuated with the vivid images she delivered through touch. Since she and the dragons could speak mind-to-mind, human speech seemed to be a little too much trouble.

  There were other changes. She was restless, in constant motion while awake. Maybe it was because, for much of her life, she’d been confined in a mine, only to end up imprisoned in a dungeon. It was as if she’d slipped free of the shackles that held her to the ground, shed the gossamer cloak of civilization, and opened her wings. Ash couldn’t help feeling like an outsider. What if the gulf between them had become uncrossable?

  Anyway, it was difficult to relax in the company of four dragons who grew merrier and rowdier as the night wore on. Eventually, Cas began poking his head between Jenna and Ash, eyeing the two of them, and then nudging Jenna with his nose until she all but toppled into Ash’s lap. Jenna kept pushing him away, silently scolding. Finally, laughing, Jenna scrambled to her feet and extended her hand to help Ash up.

  “What?” he said, blinking up at her. “Where are we going?”

  “Cas says it’s time to—to—twine our tails,” Jenna said, scarcely able to speak for laughing.

  “What?” Ash resisted the temptation to press his hands against the back of his breeches. Evan and Sasha were watching this back-and-forth like avid spectators at a match.

  “Dragons often mate in flight, so they twine their tails in order to, you know, maintain their—”

  Ash couldn’t help laughing, though his face blazed with embarrassment. It was like having four enormous scaly relatives pushing a bedding ceremony at a wedding.

  “Tell Cas to mind his own business,” Ash said, glaring at the dragon who appeared to be grinning, though it was hard to tell with dragons. “Tell him that we will . . . we’ll—ah—twine our tails when we’re good and ready.”

  With that, Jenna took Ash’s hands, looked him in the eyes, and murmured, “I’m ready, Wolf. Are you?”

  Ash had chosen to hang his hammock in what seemed to be the tack room in the half-built, then half-demolished stables. Who builds a stable out of marble, anyway? he’d thought. But the dragons hadn’t done as thorough a job wrecking the stable as they had the palace, so it had seemed safer to lodge there. It was close enough to the harbor that he could hear the water gently sloshing against the quay and sucking at the piers.

  He stood awkwardly in the doorway as Jenna walked around the tiny room, then paused at the window. She stood in the pool of moonlight pouring through the one window, peering out to sea.

  Ash shed his stormcoat, folded it carefully, and set it on his sea trunk. Then began unbuttoning his shirt. Jenna turned away from the window and leaned back on the sill, watching. She made no move to disrobe.

  Ash stopped unbuttoning. “Is something wrong? If you want to wait, I understand. We haven’t even spent that much time together, and most of that was in a dungeon.” He couldn’t seem to keep the words from tumbling out, words that unmade the case for going forward.

  “I don’t want to wait,” Jenna said, her voice a throaty growl. “But—”

  “If we need to find some maidenweed or—”

  “Shut up, healer,” Jenna said. “Look—you’ve already seen my body, in the scummery dungeon in Ardenscourt. I’ve never seen yours without clothes. I want to see.”

  Ash took a deep breath, released it. Bit his lip to keep from issuing a disclaimer. Resisted closing his eyes. He finished unbuttoning his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. Then fumbled with the buckle on his breeches, managed to undo it, and stepped out of them. He followed with his smallclothes until he stood, totally naked, partly illuminated by the light through the window. It took everything he had to meet her eyes.

  Jenna studied him, eyes unblinking, as if memorizing everything. Still looking, she carefully, methodically unlaced her leather armor and let it fall, pulled her thick knitted sweater over her head, following with her cotton undershirt. She stripped off her skirt, leggings, and smallclothes, kicked them aside, and purposefully walked toward him. When she stopped inches away, he could feel the constant heat she generated. She reached out both hands and ran her fingers over his chest, his collarbone, his shoulders, then lunged forward and pressed her chest against his, warming him skin to skin, until he thought he might explode. Carefully, hesitantly, he closed his hands around her hips, drawing her in close.

  “Oh,” she whispered into his neck, “you are a handsome wolf. Now show me how to get into this strange bed of yours.”

  Making love with Jenna Bandelow was a twining of minds as well as bodies, a mingling of imagery and sensation so complete that sometimes it was hard to tell who owned what—who was giving, who receiving.

  Later, as they lay, still entangled with each other, Ash said, “I told my mother about you.”

  “You did?” Jenna said sleepily. “What did you say?”

  Ash laughed, kissing her eyelids. “I told her you were dead.”

  “Huh!” Jenna snorted. “I guess that was the end of that conversation.”

  “No,” Ash said. “It wasn’t. I told her how we met. I asked her . . . I asked her if it’s possible to fall in love with someone over such a short space of time, under those circumstances.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me that love is not measured by the amount of time you spend together, it’s how that time is spent.”

  “So you’re saying that washing blood and scummer off a person in a dungeon is—”

  “I’m saying that sometimes the patient heals the healer.” Ash shut off further speech with kisses, then pulled back enough to say, “She told me that love moves fast in wartime—it has to.”

  “I told your sister about you,” Jenna said, burrowing into his side, nipping and nibbling, and absolutely driving him to—

  Hang on.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your littermate was here,” she said. “Lyssa Gray.”

  Ash reared up, sending the hammock swinging wildly. “What? My sister was here?”

  “She was teaching the empress’s horselords how to fight,” Jenna said, forcing him flat again with kisses and biting his lower lip. “Breon may be able to tell you more when he gets his voice back.”

  “Mffblt,” Ash said, attempting to talk around the kisses. Having no luck with that, he pressed his hands against her shoulders, putting enough distance between them to free his lips.

  “When? What was she doing here? Is she all right? Where is she now? Who’s Breon? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Jenna frowned, as if picking through the cascade of questions, looking for one she wanted to answer, then ended by answering most of them. “She left about a week ago, and I believe they’ve sailed for the Realms. I didn’t tell you before because I would rather make love than talk. I knew that once I told you, lovemaking would be over.” She wriggled under him in a very distracting way, then arched her back and flipped him over so that she was on top. “She was the empress’s prisoner. It was either fight for the empress or join the bloodsworn.”

  “So . . . she’s not . . . ?”

  Jenna shook her head. “Lyssa said that the blood ritual makes people strong, but it makes them stupid. The empress wants smart officers.”

  Ash felt like he’d been clubbed. Again. In a good way. That seemed to be a constant with this girl. It took a while to get his mind moving again, grappling with this new information. Lyss had been here, just a week ago. Sometimes it seemed that he and his sister were cursed to follow each other around the globe, never quite connecting.

  But she was alive—and, according to Jenna, on her way back to the Realms. It reminded him of what Sasha had said, when they were sailing for the Northern Islands—that it seemed they were going in the wrong direction.

  “What is my sister like?” Ash said, hungry for information. “You could know her better than I do. I haven’t seen her for five years.” He tried to dismiss the thought that he might never see her again.

  Jenna thought a moment
. “She’s not afraid of dragons,” she said, as if that spoke volumes. “She’s fierce and strong, in a way that’s different from you. You smolder, and she burns hot.” She paused, then said, “I know you’re worried about her, Wolf, but she is a survivor. She’s faced down death many times. She will find a way.” Jenna’s clipped, dragonish speech was like poetry—economical and yet vivid.

  “Breon will be able to tell you more about her when he’s feeling better,” Jenna said.

  “Right,” Ash said. “Breon? Who is he?”

  “He’s the magemarked boy I told you about. He was a prisoner here with Lyss.”

  “He’s sick? Hurt?”

  “The empress was giving him leaf. He’s in withdrawal right now.”

  “Maybe I can help him,” Ash said.

  “We can go see him tomorrow. Goat might be willing to carry you. Or you can ride with me.”

  “Goat?”

  “The dragon you freed from the rigging. The dragon you charmed with your voice.”

  Ash took a breath. Now to the hard part. “Lyssa. Did she . . . did she tell you who she is?”

  “She told me she was Captain Gray, and your sister,” Jenna said. She took his face between her calloused hands again and said, “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me the rest.”

  47

  A SIT-DOWN WITH A KING

  The road between Ardenscourt and Delphi was familiar, at least. Hal had marched up and down it at least once for every year he’d been in the army. North in the spring, fit and well fed, and south in the fall, licking their wounds. Except that one time when he’d been stationed at Delphi, and Lyssa Gray had kicked his southern ass.

  His quartermaster, Rives, had done his best to provision their army, knowing they were unlikely to find much to forage on the way north. It would be a long time before another harvest, and they were following in the footsteps of Jarat’s army. The countryside along the North Road appeared deserted. Hal imagined farmers and householders huddled in their cellars, lying flat in the fields, hoping to escape the attention of the second army to march through in a fortnight.