Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses)

by Sharon Shinn

  Oh, Great Mother, if they were truly going after Justin—

  Ellynor glanced at all her charges. Either sleeping, or peacefully lying in bed, reading. Darris would be here within the hour to relieve her; no one would die if the infirmary was unattended that long. Ellynor could not sit there, could not feel this great restless terror clawing through her blood. She had to go, she had to find out, she had to see if the soldiers had set out with the intention of harming Justin.

  She slipped out of the infirmary, down the hall, down the stairs. Through the great reception hall with its echoing spaces and massive chandeliers. Out into the courtyard, where the dampness of the air made the cold that much sharper. Ellynor shivered and for a moment considered going back inside for her cloak. Even for some food, in case she was gone for several hours. But there was no time. She didn’t mind the chill, and she would set a brisk enough pace that her blood would heat up.

  And surely she would not be gone long enough to miss more than a meal or two.

  Surely nothing had really happened to Justin.

  There were two soldiers guarding the entrance and three walking the perimeter, engaged in idle conversation. None of them saw her. It was trickier to pass the gate without being noticed, since she had to pull it open just far enough to slip through. She waited till the pair at the entrance got distracted by the arrival of two relief guards, and then she made her escape. The metal did not squeal; it barely moved as she made it gape just wide enough for her to squeeze out.

  Then she was on the path, striding through the forest at an uncomfortably fast pace. Drops of frigid water dripped on her from the overhanging branches; now and then a squirrel ran overhead and shook a small storm of icy rain onto her head. Within twenty yards, the hems of her white robes were wet and filthy, and her feet were already caked with mud. Fortunately, her shoes were good—comfortable and sturdy—she could walk all day in these.

  All day and all night if she had to.

  She was not much of a tracker, not like Torrin was, but even she could tell that everyone who had left the convent this day had gone in the same direction. There were multiple sets of hoofprints in the mud; the road had been fairly churned up by the passage of ten or so animals. Bad news for anyone coming behind them on foot who was interested in keeping clean. Good news for anyone trying to follow their trail. She couldn’t judge, as Torrin would have been able to, how quickly the later party was gaining on the travelers who had left the convent first, but common sense told her the soldiers had moved faster. They had better horses, none of them tied to a lead. They had a stronger purpose —

  Maybe not. Maybe the soldiers were just riding into town, delivering messages for the Lestra, picking up supplies that could not be trusted to strangers. Maybe Ellynor was afraid— and cold and hungry—for no good reason at all.

  She had been on the trail about two hours when daylight started to fail. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, not in the least, but the onset of night would force her to make a quick decision. Keep going forward, giving up any chance of returning to the convent with some story about why she had left so abruptly—or go back. Walk on toward Neft, with no cloak, no provisions, and no hope of arriving in the city before morning—or turn back now.

  She kept walking.

  Another mile down the road, she saw them.

  At first she didn’t realize what they were, the dark shapes lying so still across the path. Fallen trees, or at least great, unwieldy branches, flung down by the earlier storm. There were half a dozen, scattered right on this bend of the road, tossed down from some tree so big and so old that it could not withstand the force of a winter storm.

  Ten steps closer and she realized they were not tree limbs. They were bodies.

  Seven bodies strewn across the road. Five in the black-and-silver livery of the convent. Two in nondescript traveling gear. All of them covered with blood.

  One of them was Justin.

  She screamed and the forest around her echoed with startled cries, but she didn’t care. She didn’t hear. She ran forward, sobbing, her breath fogging around her face, her hands the temperature of ice. Great Mother, sweet Mother, dark Mother, please let him not be dead. . . .

  She knelt beside him, her hands on his chest before her knees had even settled into the mud. She could feel the blood, slick and damp on his clothes, but she didn’t care about that. She had to check for body temperature, for heartbeat, for the subtle lift and settle of breath. Her seeking fingers found rents in his clothing, great gashes in the flesh beneath; she tilted her head so that her ear was just over his mouth.

  An exhalation, faint and warm. A pulse, buried and weak.

  Sweet kind holy Mother, Justin was alive.

  Ellynor flattened both of her hands against his chest, nesting her fingers in the ripped and bloody fabric of his shirt. Her own breath slowed; her concentration became fierce and total. Great Mother, she prayed, her lips moving but the words silent, fill me with your power. Make my hands your hands, my blood your magic. Heal this man. Save him. Great Mother, I love him. Save him for me. . . .

  She felt warmth trickle through her as a perceptible heat built up between her shoulder blades and slowly spread through all her bones and muscles. But there was an icy band around her left wrist, the place where the baleful moonstones on her bracelet lay against her skin. The Pale Mother’s gems. The Silver Lady hated mystics. Impatiently, Ellynor paused to undo the fine catch of the slim, silver chain. She tossed the bracelet into the forest, as far from the deadfall as she could.

  Instantly, she felt the heat in her blood leap higher. Her hands were almost on fire; her fingertips were conduits of flame. Justin’s torso jerked slightly, as if shocked by a burning brand, and then he lay still. She felt the fever run from her body into his. She almost saw the magic arc from her closed system into his opened veins. The power pooled around her, like heavy rain on oversoaked soil, then drained slowly into Justin’s chest—pooled again, and again was absorbed—again. Again.

  He was so close to death that nothing, not even the Mother’s energy, could sustain him for long. He was so empty of life that he could be filled and refilled and never overflow.

  “Justin,” Ellynor whispered. “Justin. Breathe. Force your heart to beat. Live.”

  And still the Great Mother’s dense magic poured into her, unstinting, bottomless. Ellynor felt herself growing heavy, rich, saturated with darkness. If Justin opened his eyes, if a stranger chanced upon her on this road, they would see her face black as midnight, tears as bright as stars upon her cheeks. Her hands would look like shadows; she would appear to be nothing but a layered shape, indistinguishable from the night itself.

  Justin breathed. His heart beat. He did not die.

  Keeping her hands pressed against his chest, Ellynor watched his face. Pale unto death, of course, marked with bruises and blood. The dark blond hair had fallen back from his forehead and was matted with mud; every bone and angle was exposed. He was unconscious. There could be no thought process to pull his features into any kind of recognizable expression.

  But she could see every pinch and flutter of his mouth and eyelids. Could read the intensity along his clenched jaw. He was struggling—straining—as if to speak, as if to sit up, as if to wake.

  He was fighting. With every instinct of his body, against overwhelming odds, he was battling to survive.

  “Justin,” she whispered, her lips against his, her voice whispering his name into his own mouth, in case he had forgotten it. “Don’t give up. Keep fighting. I love you. Do not surrender now.”

  Beneath her lips, his mouth took in air; beneath her hands, his heart kept beating. This was a man who did not want to die.

  She must do something about his wounds. The bleeding had slowed but had not entirely stopped. Shifting her body so that one knee rested gently against his ribs—she wanted to make sure that she was touching him, always touching him, pouring her power into him in an unbroken stream—she began searching for something she c
ould turn into a bandage.

  A fallen convent guard lay within reach. Ellynor hesitated only a moment, struggling with the reality of death, then closed her heart. She felt around for the clasp of his cloak and tugged it free of his body. It came away grudgingly, muddy and bloody and already torn in half. But it would do.

  Working as quickly as she could, never moving her knee from Justin’s side, she ripped the cloak into smaller strips and pads and began binding the worst of Justin’s wounds. That meant lifting him enough to pass the cloth under his body, an act that caused him to grunt with incoherent pain. But he seemed to lie easier once the bandages were in place. She convinced herself that the bleeding slowed and stopped.

  It was hard to tell. There was so much blood already.

  Not sure if it would help or hurt, she tried to tip a little water down Justin’s throat. He swallowed, which she thought was a good sign, so she gave him a little more. She had no water skin of her own—no provisions at all—but Justin and the freighter had each carried water and some food. The convent soldiers as well, no doubt. Enough to keep a dying man alive for the rest of the night, the next day, the next night. . . .

  But he could not lie there long enough to recover. He would almost certainly develop an infection from his wounds— and lying on the wet ground for a series of cold nights would send even a healthy man to his death. She needed blankets, clean bandages, medicinal herbs, broth, water, a bed, a fire. . . .

  She needed to go for help.

  Neft was the nearest place, and from this point on the road, it was probably three hours away on horseback.

  That made her look up. Where were the horses? She had been so preoccupied with the bodies on the ground that she had not even thought to check for living creatures in the vicinity. But, there they were, bunched together a little distance down the road, mostly quiet now that the chaos of combat was past. She wondered why the fight had taken place on foot, and supposed the eager reach of forest branches had made it difficult to wield a sword from horseback. Or perhaps Justin had jumped from the saddle in the hope of racing off through the woods on trails a mounted man could not follow. In any case, it seemed that the horses had been abandoned in the heat of battle, and none of them had strayed yet. She counted eleven shadows standing with their heads down and their tails limp.

  That presented a fresh worry. How quickly would the convent animals, left to their own devices, decide to wander back toward their familiar stables? That would be bad—that would surely signal someone at Lumanen that trouble had felled the guards. Which might not be news, anyway, if the soldiers had been expected to return immediately upon dispatching the freighter’s troublesome friend.

  If the guards did not return, or their horses returned without them, a search party would be on its way by dawn.

  Ellynor had to go to Neft for help.

  And bring the convent horses with her. Or secure them here.

  She could make sure no one who traveled this road was able to find them.

  But how could she leave Justin? His hold on life was so tenuous that she was certain it was only her touch that kept his heart beating, his lungs functioning. He would die if she left him.

  He would die if she did not.

  Great Mother, put your hands upon this man. . . .

  She had been so absorbed in Justin that it had not occurred to her to wonder if anyone else had survived this day’s confrontation. Experimentally, she pushed herself away from Justin’s side, mere inches, close enough to touch him again if his breath faltered. But his chest rose and fell, a shallow but unmistakable movement; his lips tightened as if against pain. She could risk the ten minutes it would take to investigate the others.

  Quickly she rose to her feet and shook out her ruined skirts. No need to check the guard whose cloak she had stolen. His head had been practically severed; he was definitely dead. She followed the bloody trail to the other four guards, kneeling beside each one and feeling for a pulse. Absent in every case. She tried not to look too closely, but it was impossible not to get some sense of how each one had died. Three appeared to have received wounds straight to the heart. The other was so bloody she thought he, too, had been sliced across the jugular, after sustaining gashes on his face and hands and arms. A warrior. Just not quite good enough.

  The freighter was also dead, though there was no weapon in his hand or near his body. Not a fighter, not like the others. Had probably never in his life lifted a weapon to another man. Ellynor felt a fierce rush of bitter sadness at the life that had ended here so brutally, so pointlessly. This man had done nothing but try to earn a living, provide a service, carry out his commissions. He had died because Ellynor was foolish, because Ellynor loved a man she could not have.

  He had died because the Lestra was evil.

  That thought came from nowhere and filled her mind with a momentary blackness that had nothing to do with the Dark Watcher’s presence. Hate and fear and fury flooded Ellynor’s heart, and her hands clenched at her sides with her overwhelming desire to strike out. The Lestra was evil, the convent a source of violence and intimidation and despair.

  But not everyone inside its walls was vicious, was tainted. Not Deana, not Astira, not Lia, not some of those laughing novices too young to understand the path they followed. The guards—some of them, like those here tonight—they were cruel and ruthless, but not all of them. Ellynor would not believe it of all of them. Hadn’t that boy Kelti run away? Wasn’t Daken unhandy with a weapon? Surely there were some—new recruits, young boys fresh from their fathers’ farms—who would be horrified to learn how their senior officers dealt in torture and death.

  And surely the Pale Mother herself was not so terrible. She was playful and vain and fickle and careless, but sometimes kind and always beautiful, and Ellynor could not bring herself to hate that charming, inconstant face.

  It was not the goddess who was to be hated and despised. It was the woman who had taken it upon herself to speak for the Silver Lady.

  It was the Lestra who burned mystics and sent her guards out hunting men. It was the Lestra who was responsible for tonight’s deaths—and near deaths.

  Ellynor hurried back to Justin, dropping beside him in the mud. Still breathing. His skin still warm to the touch. No more blood seeping out past the makeshift bandages.

  Alive. Alive. Alive.

  For now.

  She bowed her head so low that her forehead almost touched Justin’s. Some of her hair had escaped its habitual knot, and a few locks tumbled over her shoulder, coiling on Justin’s chest. She had taken his hands in hers, and she squeezed his fingers just for the pleasure of feeling his living flesh against her skin.

  Great Mother, she prayed. Dark beautiful lady. I am the daughter of the daughter of the hundreds of daughters of Maara. I call upon you now to redeem the promise you made to the women of the Lirrens. Give this man one night. Keep him alive one night. Hold him in your hands for one night. I must leave him, but I will return for him, and I beg you to keep him safe until that hour. Guard him with your body. Strengthen him with your love. Shield him with your darkness. Let no harm come to him. Let him live.

  Ellynor felt the night rustle and gather around her as the trees conferred and the clouds debated. The owls and the mice paused in their ceaseless game of chase and escape. Not far away, a wolf raised a liquid cry of woe and warning. A possum trotted by, an ungainly ghost; the branches overhead dipped and released a spray of water as some night bird settled in.

  Invisible hands, tangible and warm, settled over Ellynor’s fingers where they rested on Justin’s chest. A shadow swirled around her, not quite holding a shape, faceless, incorporeal, but crackling with energy. Ellynor sucked in her breath, awe and wonder momentarily striking her motionless. She felt as if she had been drawn into a bear’s cave or a wolf’s lair, someplace hidden, safe, and sheltered.

  She lifted her hands but Justin still breathed. The Black Mother’s palms still lay pressed against his chest.

  Shak
ily, she came to her feet, almost stumbling from weariness and a sense of marvel. “You will keep him safe, won’t you?” she whispered, almost stammering the words. “No one will see him, no one will come upon him and do him harm? I will be back by dawn if I can—you will not leave him alone for a minute, will you? Someone will guard him this whole time?”