* * * *
The attack came as Ceera and Mrillis' team approached their third village, Endor's team had left their second, and all the others had put at least one village of healed plague victims behind them.
The Zygradon rang with Loereen's voice. Mrillis wrapped mental hands around the petals of the bowl, trying to muffle it as Ceera jerked, nearly twisting sideways in her saddle. He caught her physical body, and almost let go a moment later as the image of the attack filled his mind.
Warriors seemed to boil out of the ground, from the trees, walking through the walls of the village where Endor's exhausted team had just finished healing. They wore copper and iron armor painted dark red and black. The colors of blood and death. The colors of the elite warriors who had served at the side of the Nameless One.
Endor reacted faster than anyone among the Valors and soldiers protecting the healers. He shouted something in the guttural, harsh Encindi tongue, and stretched out his hands. The Threads closest to him became visible and pulsed red and thick as Endor physically and mentally pulled hard on them.
Mrillis flinched, feeling the gush of power, and held on tighter to Ceera. She clung to him, as they both perched precariously on their restless horses. They could only watch and throw their joined power to Endor's effort.
Endor shouted orders to the Valors, who leaped to surround Loereen and Brictan, the two members of this team linked to the Zygradon. The Warhawk's soldiers surrounded them, and Endor wove a wall of pulsing red Threads around them as the Encindi warriors approached with a silence and speed that made Mrillis think of a flood of creeping, crawling insects.
Encindi simply didn't fight like that. Their style was noise and chaos, speed and numbers, to overwhelm better trained, better disciplined, more skilled foes. Mrillis thought of the battles he had witnessed over the years, as courier and assistant to the Warhawk and Lyon. The Encindi had learned new tactics, and it frightened him.
Two lengths of a horse lay between the outer ring of guards and the Encindi when the closest enemy warrior blurred. First the outer edges, then all his features. Before Mrillis could do more than mentally turn Ceera's attention to the oddness of it, the Encindi on either side of the first man blurred also.
They're shielded, she said. Endor, beware! Shields!
Endor spat curses that sizzled in the mental air. A long, thick gush of power flew at the enemy ranks, and splattered, turning aside like water spilled from a pitcher onto a stone. Mrillis felt as well as heard the indrawn breaths from nearly half the embattled company, just before the lead Encindi roared a battle cry and lunged at the Noveni soldier facing him.
They're getting through, Ceera cried in horrified fascination.
The wall of Threads Endor had pulled around his company shifted aside, creating gaps for the Encindi to walk through, like mist parting before a strong breeze.
What kind of magic is that? Mrillis growled. He gathered up all he had seen and called for Master Breylon. As High Scholar, the oldest of the Rey'kil leaders, if he didn't know...
Mrillis didn't want to consider the implications if Master Breylon didn't know, or at least have a theory.
Shouting their fury, the Noveni soldiers threw themselves into the battle. The Valors called up their limited imbrose, using the Threads to protect them as they battled.
Mrillis and Ceera watched and tried to manipulate the Threads from where they sat in the rainy forest, two days' ride away. If they did any good, taking up the task of shielding the company, they had no idea. But trying to help was better than sitting helplessly and watching.
An Encindi clambered up into an empty Noveni saddle.
"Take him!" Endor shrieked. He flung his hand in the warrior's direction and a long, thin Thread spun out of the air, twisting, to fall around the enemy's neck.
The Thread yanked the Encindi to the ground, but whatever magic served the enemy helped him slip free. Endor caught him twice more, tripping him up and tangling his feet, until finally a Noveni soldier clubbed the man and brought him down.
Ceera shrieked. Mrillis yanked his attention away from the battle seen through the Threads. He jabbed his horse with his heels, so it stepped sideways, smashing his and Ceera's legs between their two mounts. He didn't feel it, caught up in catching Ceera before she slid sideways off her mount. Mrillis cradled her close and a long, low howl of despair escaped him as he saw what she saw, felt what she felt.
The Zygradon chimed discord, the multiple notes of its song shattered for three agonized heartbeats. The rainbow light that surrounded and filled it turned muddy.
Endor cursed and jabbed his sword repeatedly into the Encindi who had attacked Loereen but it was too late--a forger of the Zygradon was dead. A note had left the song, yanked away with a brutal force that caused all the other notes to clang in discord for many painful heartbeats. Ceera lay in Mrillis' arms, shuddering, stunned by the whiplash of power that recoiled back at her when Loereen's bond with the star-metal bowl snapped.
Chapter Four
"Somehow, I thought it would... I don't know..." Endor shrugged. He was still pale, bruised around his eyes and greenish around the mouth, two days after the attack.
"Protect us from death?" Nixtan offered. His attempt at a wry smile warped and cracked, and he abruptly put his head down on his hands and sobbed, the sound muffled.
The damp cloth of the tent where the Zygradon's makers and their Valor guards gathered seemed to swallow the light of the lanterns and muffle all outside sounds, as if they had all slipped into some bubble outside of time and physical being. The heavy, cold, pounding hiss of spring rain seemed leagues away, and the brazier full of glowing coals did little to dispel the damp and chill that drained them all. Those who hadn't brought folding camp stools into the gloomy tent sat on the soggy canvas flooring. No one had the energy, the spirit to stand, everyone huddling together in the pain that bound them together. Only a few days ago, the first flush of victory, purpose, and the need to serve and heal had united them.
"I wish I could have given my life for hers," Endor vowed, yet again. Mrillis had lost count of the times his friend had said it. The words had no meaning anymore, though Mrillis didn't doubt Endor meant it every time he said it. "This is all my fault, you know."
"No it isn't," Ceera whispered. "We are all still little more than children, overconfident, depending on magic we do not understand and most certainly have not tamed."
"No, it's my fault," Endor repeated. "They broke through the Threads because my father knows the touch of my imbrose, and knows how to break it. They got through because they were cloaked in his power. If someone else had been shielding us, if I hadn't been there--" He shook his head and raised a hand to stop Mrillis when he opened his mouth to speak. "I know, you and Ceera helped shield us, but the flaw was through me. I was still part of the shield. If I had pulled out completely, they never could have broken through. I'm a liability, as surely as if I had deliberately left a hole for those warriors to come through. I might as well have run her through with my own sword."
Ceera said nothing about the shock that had physically and emotionally battered her when Loereen died and her link to the Zygradon broke. Most of them knew without even asking that Ceera had felt it far more intensely, painfully, than they did.
Mrillis had felt as if his fingers and toes had been scorched. He remembered that exhilarating, terrifying day in their childhood when he had saved Ceera from painful injury by awakening his imbrose too soon. Just as he had risked burning out and losing his talent for magic, he wondered if Ceera had been injured by the reaction, magnified a hundredfold by the Zygradon.
Nixtan stayed silent as the others shared and questioned their varied reactions to Loereen's death. Mrillis took it on himself to drag his childhood friend from the tent and find the nearest tavern to get royally drunk. It occurred to him only as he poured Nixtan into his blankets that his friend took Loereen's death a little too personally.
"I've been a blind idiot," he mumbled,
when he came to Ceera's tent to check on her and found her--finally--asleep.
After finally acknowledging his love for Ceera, how could he not have noticed the attraction between others? He knew Nixtan had bloodied his knuckles a few dozen times on those who still mocked or looked down on Loereen because of her half-blood status. What if Nixtan's actions came from more than just being a champion for the innocent? What if death had snapped the first binding strings of love?
Mrillis knew how much pain he would be in, if he had lost Ceera without confessing his feelings for her, and knowing how she felt about him.
"We both are," Ceera whispered, as her eyes fluttered, struggling to open.
"Go back to sleep." Mrillis knelt next to her cot and took hold of her hand. What would he have done if the attack had taken Ceera?
* * * *
Master Breylon listened without a word, without any change in the grave expression on his weary face, until all the Zygradon's forgers had related their reactions to the death of Loereen. Before they came to Wynystrys, they had fulfilled their vow, going through the stricken villages and healing the people as originally planned. The weeks of travel and effort had drained them all, physically as well as in mind and heart.
"The question," the High Scholar finally said, after the silence in his private chambers went on so long the air seemed dark with nightfall, "is whether this is to our benefit or to our detriment."
"What benefit can there be in knowing my father--may the Estall curse him to rot for eternity--is still alive and working against us?" Endor burst out. He punctuated his words with hard slams of his fists against the table, so their mugs and plates jumped and clanged.
"The benefit of knowing for a certainty which enemy strikes at us. We know a little how to counter his magic. We know the way his mind works. Yes--" A lifting of his gentle, wrinkled hand stopped Endor's retort. "Yes, he has had fifteen years to recover, to formulate a new plan of attack, to discover new, evil tendrils of magic to fling against us."
Mrillis flinched, remembering the black tendrils that had woven through his dreams, nearly choking him in the dreamrealm, as well as tricking him to slice his own throat.
"But the essential core of a man does not change. We have beaten him before. We will beat him again. And now we have the Zygradon, which ties to our hands and our use all the Threads in the World."
"And what happens when all of us are dead and there is no one who can touch or see it?" Brictan asked quietly. He looked into his goblet as he spoke, rather than at anyone sitting at the table.
"Trust the Estall, my children. Time will reveal an answer."
"I would feel more secure, sir, if we found a way to link people to the Zygradon now," Endor said. "Certainly my own sister has to be strong enough, skilled enough, to accomplish that. She is heir to the Queen of Snows."
"Yes," Ceera snapped, her face going paler instead of flushing with anger. "You make sure no one forgets it. Maybe you have forgotten that I have no intention of dying any time soon and leaving her untrained."
"Lady Le'esha had no intention of dying, but she did," Endor muttered, but he shrugged and offered a crooked smile, probably the best he could do for apology.
"Enough. Your exhaustion and anger guides your tongue, lad." Breylon shook his head and looked around the room. "All of you have done too much, healing as well as doing battle. You have earned your rest."
"Until the next wave of plague comes," Nyessa said. "For all we know, the plague was just to force us to bring the Zygradon out of the Stronghold where it could be stolen and we could be killed."
"Maybe the Nameless One thinks that if we are all dead, it will become visible and touchable, and then he can take control of it," Nixtan said.
"Perhaps. But that is something to consider another day. Go. Rooms have been prepared for you. Eat and sleep and let go of your burdens for another day." He stood, and it seemed to Mrillis his shoulders weren't quite as straight and broad as they had been only a year or two ago.
Le'esha's death had done more far-reaching harm, he supposed, than anyone of them had guessed. Breylon was older than Le'esha had been when she was killed. Certainly he wanted to pass on his duties and authority to Deyral, but did he dare, with such a young Queen of Snows and new dangers foaming on the shore?
Mrillis thought of something else, and he lingered after all the others finally filed out of Master Breylon's quarters.
"Sir...is there any way for the Nameless One to cleanse himself of the poison of blood magic, so he can use the Threads again?"
"Can hundreds of years of poison and death be wiped away in a mere decade? I think that would take more magic, more power, more purity than all the Rey'kil now living possess." Breylon sank down in his chair again and reached for his cup and the pitcher of still-steaming mulled wine. He didn't pour, merely sat looking into the spices swirling through the contents. A long, weary sigh escaped him. "No, I truly believe the only way to cleanse the Nameless One of the poison in his soul and mind and body is for him to submit to the Estall's cleansing and judgment and mercy. And that, he will not do."
"So even if he could possess the Zygradon, how could he control the Threads?"
"Ah. I wondered how long it would take you to think of that. You are still my prize student, lad. You never disappoint." He nodded, smiling wearily, and closed his eyes. "Do you know any way he could do that?"
"Through another. Someone who hasn't lost their imbrose," Mrillis whispered through a throat that felt drier than summer sand. "Endor wouldn't--"
"No. Not of his own free will. But remember, if he loves anyone in this world, it will be his sisters, and they are still young and untried, unproven. And to my everlasting shame and regret...there are those who will never fully accept them, because of their blood."
"Why would they turn against us? That would just prove everyone was right."
"Exactly. But a wounded spirit does not think logically. You, my boy, are the way you are partially because Le'esha and Graddon and I told you all your life that you had great potential and great responsibility because of it. Your sense of right and wrong, of honor and duty, are woven into your soul. Imagine growing up being told that you are untrustworthy and flawed, knowing no one fully trusts you because of something you could not control. Wouldn't the rage grow deep enough, hot enough, strong enough, to eventually empower you to lash out and punish all those who were unkind? Would it really matter to you that you had proven them right?"
"No... I suppose not." Mrillis rubbed at his temples, trying to ease the new ache that settled into his brain.
"Sleep, lad. Take care of Ceera. Both of you, remember that you are young and in love. It is wrong not to enjoy yourselves, because youth and love are gifts from the Estall. Do not waste a moment of it. Let someone else save the World for a few days."
Mrillis snorted, the best he could do for laughter with the weariness aching in the very center of his bones. He bowed deeply to Master Breylon before he left. Even though the old man's eyes were closed, he knew his teacher saw.
He shared a room with Endor, Ferrys and Dyryn. All three were already asleep when he slipped through the door. They had hung their travel-grimed clothes outside the guest cottage, where the whispering rain could rinse them, and Mrillis picked up his discarded, filthy clothes and did the same. His eyes felt ready to glue themselves shut by the time he peeled off his outer jacket and vest and pried off his boots, but the thought of lying down in that dark room suddenly struck him as oppressive. He dressed, wrapped a cloak around himself, and crossed the yard to the long dormitory set aside for the women guests.
Ceera had her own room, as Queen of Snows. Mrillis stood a long time in the doorway of the room, watching her sleep in the illumination from a tiny speck of imbrose light. He dared to hope she wasn't quite so pale as she had been when they first arrived at Wynystrys.
Mrillis thought of the years he and Ceera had wasted already, both of them so busy, unsure of how the other felt. He refused to waste a
nother moment that he could spend with her, even if all he could do was hold her while they both slept. He slid out of his boots and hung his cloak over the chair so it could dry, peeled down to his shirt and trousers, then carefully lay down on top of the blankets. He stretched out on his side and wrapped one arm around Ceera.
There you are, she whispered into his mind, and pulled him down into dreamless, warm, sweet sleep with her.
* * * *
Athrar turned traitor by finding the records of the wedding festivities for Le'esha, when she married the Noveni warrior Garhad, in the days before Afron Warhawk's father had been born. Ceera laughed and scolded the boy when he showed her and Mrillis the two saddlebags' worth of journals, scrolls and wax tablets, recording the supplies for the festivities, the guest list, the gifts. The celebration went on for four days and every chieftain of the Noveni and Rey'kil, every major enchanter, every scholar and visionary, had attended.
"The last thing I want on my wedding day is for every noble and warrior in the entire World to know what I wore and count every sip of wine I take and interfere when I want to dance with my husband!"
She shook her finger in the boy's face, eyes flashing with merriment even if she managed to put on a mask of disgust. "And to think that I was glad to see you, when you had to bring all this trouble and dump it on us." She sighed and made a gesture as if she would shove the stacks of documents off the table in front of her.
Athrar let out an un-princely yelp and lunged to wrap his arms around the ancient records. Mrillis just sat back in his chair, propped both feet up on the edge of the table, and tried not to laugh. He knew Ceera had too much respect for any scrap of history, even something so mundane and ridiculous as the list of what people ate and how many casks of wine were emptied, to ever do real damage to the ancient parchments and crumbly paper journals.
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