by Jenna Rhodes
The lunge failed as Alton went to one knee, letting her speed carry her past him, and when he rolled off, his gaze was on Lara, not the Pantoreth fighter.
There would be no further pretense here this morning.
It would not be a matter of one of them pushing the other out of the Circle. No.
This was for the death.
Alton leaped, both hands filled with his silvery blades, and he took flight with that astonishing lightness that graced the heirs of ild Fallyn. Sequence two, begun. Lara slipped her dagger from her left sleeve and readied to throw it.
She had not foreseen what happened next.
With a curse and a defiant shout, Osten stepped in front of her. Alton came down, his sword cleaving Osten’s face in two and her friend went down in a wash of crimson. She felt the warmth splatter her own face. Jeredon gave out a maddened cry, pushing Alton away from Osten. He took a slash from Tressandre on his backhand even as he bent over Osten to protect him, reminding Lara of the mother bird who feigns injury and covers her chicks’ bodies with her wings as she does. She drove in to drive Tressandre off and ducked as Tress spun away and then came back, her mouth twisted in a sneer, but Lara had stepped back, grabbing the lithe Bannoc who had fallen and staggered back into the fray, and used him as a shield. He deflected the shot, but not without injury, and Lara swung him by his wrist off his feet and out of the circle where he fell into the arms of a waiting healer.
She staggered back into an embrace, hot mouth against the side of her neck, and felt a blade edge along her throat, just under the protective strap of her helm. “Did you see this, I wonder,” Samboca hissed into her ear. He kicked her ankles apart and tightened his grip. She looked into Jeredon’s wide eyes, knowing her front was exposed to any who might want to put a sword into her ribs, exposed except for him. He stood over Osten’s moaning figure, his eyes locked into hers. And then he dropped his gaze to her right hand, where she still held her throwing dagger, the last-minute gift of Sinok.
Undoubtedly poisoned. All she needed was a graze. But held as she was, any slight tensing of her muscles would telegraph her intention, her planned movement, her action, and her throat would be cut. Even now, she wondered why Samboca hesitated. Then she knew why he had asked the question he had. He’d felt as she had. He would feel as she would. He held a shadow of her forbidden Talent.
Corrupted empathic senses. He’d read her.
“Will you bleed as much as Osten?” Samboca purred. The heat of his words flowed down her neck, but she stilled any response to that, unwilling to feed the bridge of feelings they shared.
Instead, she watched Tiiva Pantoreth bear down on the two of them, her sword loose in her hand, her face expressionless, the copper of her skin glowing with the exertion of the sparring, her eyes focused on Lariel’s face.
Samboca locked his arms tighter. “Sweet to kill,” he murmured. “Sweeter yet to be killed without dying.” He would enjoy being entwined with her as she died more than he would enjoy slitting her throat. He stood steady and gave the last survivor of House Pantoreth her target.
Tiiva took a steadying breath and drove her blade deep. Samboca gasped before Lara did. He rocked back on one heel, arms loosened with the feel of the steel driving deep, hotly, fatally . . . into his torso.
He gurgled a protest at Tiiva, loosed one arm and feebly tried to stab back at her as she said, “It seems I missed Anderieon.” She twisted and slammed her blade downward before tugging it out of Samboca’s body.
Lara threw off the arm spasming about her neck and shoved Samboca away. He crumpled, blood foaming from his mouth in a wrenching gurgle, and curled upon himself as if the death agony was almost more than he could bear. He looked up at Lara. She heard his last whisper.
“What . . . did . . . you see?”
What she had seen, she would never reveal, and as he lay dying, he could never reveal that she could see. The House of Pantoreth had not only saved her life, but preserved her future. Why?
Tiiva gave her a nod as she stepped back and cleaned her blade in the sterile dirt of the dead circle. Lara moved to the side, heard the faint sound of bells and whirled, letting her dagger fly. It sank hilt-deep into Quarrin’s neck, the veils of his headgear torn and fluttering, then turning crimson as his eyes rolled back in his head.
Now only a handful remained.
She turned and ran.
She could hear the gasps of surprise from observers ringing the circle. She dove at her grandfather’s boots and took the banner from the ground, from just inside the circle where he had nudged it and when she rolled to her feet, she held it aloft with a cry of triumph before stuffing it into her chain mail.
Surprise, then dismay crossed Alton ild Fallyn’s face as he and his sister realized that besting in arms was only part of the prize, and they had yet to take either Lara or Jeredon down or obtain the flag.
She took three quick, yet deep breaths, charging tired muscles to answer her yet again.
Tressandre smiled slowly, her lush mouth curving into a grim line. Her hips swayed as she settled into her stance, and she quirked an eyebrow, waiting for Lariel.
It crossed Lara’s mind then and only then that she had been waiting for Alton to take the initiative, getting into position for the final attack, when it was Tressandre she ought to be fearing.
Tressandre who held the ambition.
Tressandre who would stop at nothing.
She should have known.
Now she would never forget. Lara took the battle to Tressandre, and prayed that Jeredon could handle Alton.
And she watched for Tiiva at her back.
Tressandre moved like quicksilver, black-and-silver shadows of grace and deadly precision. A smear of blood graced one high cheekbone. A bracer hung raggedly from her left wrist, perhaps broken by a shot from Osten’s axe earlier. But she stood unshaken and raised her left hand to beckon.
Come and get me.
Lara smiled. Oh, I will.
But not in a way that Tressandre could expect.
Her katana in her right hand, she pulled the second dagger with her left and threw it even as she moved in with a confident lunge. Tress knocked the dagger out of the air instinctively with her own drawn sword, but that opened up her flank for attack . . . and Lara answered with a slash across the ribs that drew a gasp from Tressandre even as Lara spun away, and fell back on guard for a response. It came immediately, Tressandre’s smoldering calm utterly broken.
The blows came fast and furious. Lara parried, answered, and circled, her ears filled with the scream and ring of metal against metal and Tressandre’s short grunts of exertion as she pounded at Lara’s skills. They fought with swords and kick blows, turns and lunges, until both fell back for a long moment, gulping down air and energy, steadying themselves for another bout. From the corner of her eye, and the look of shock on Tressandre’s face, she sensed a wild movement.
It was then Alton leaped.
His sweeping sword aimed at Lariel’s neck. She looked up, with no place to go, caught between the point of Tressandre’s blade and his fall. Her brother lunged to shield her, his body twisting through the air. Alton’s blade drove on.
He impaled Jeredon through the shoulder, even as Jeredon stabbed his own sword upward, thrusting it through Alton’s thigh. Face-to-face, they tumbled to the ground and lay still.
“Coward,” spat Jeredon.
Pain creased Alton’s handsome, sulky face as he responded, “Loser. Always in your sister’s shadow.”
“By my own will. I am not a dog begging to be allowed at my sister’s heels.”
They strove against each other a moment, setting their blades even deeper.
Lara heard the barest of movements and swung about, catching Tressandre’s weapon on the tip of hers and tossing it off, thrusting it from her grip, disarming her. Grimacing, Tressandre put her hand to
the inside of her baldric, filling her palm with the many-edged silver of a throwing star. Lara stepped back and then made a running leap of her own, both heels, into Tressandre’s chest. She flew back, out of the circle, and onto her ass even as Lara fell flat and fought for air.
She looked up. A shadow against the sky caught her gaze.
The Kobrir looked down at her and shook his head. He pointed to her flank. She flung herself to her right and got to one elbow, to see Tiiva Pantoreth begin a move.
Whatever it might have been, Lara did not allow her to finish. Her senses flared. She scrambled to her feet and, grabbing Tiiva by her slender wrist, whipped her out of the circle before she even knew she’d been caught.
Then there were just the three of them, Alton and Jeredon muttering low curses into each other’s pale faces while their blood slowly stained the dirt, still grappling and making it impossible for either one to get to his feet.
Lariel gathered herself, weak in the legs though she felt, arms aquiver with the weight of her weapon, and she pulled the banner from the neck of her chain mail. She put the tip of her sword through it and held it aloft.
“I stand alone!” she cried.
And so she did.
After Alton and Jeredon had been carried from the field, and after Sinok had sat down triumphantly on his litter, and after Tressandre had promised her an uneasy future with her title, and after Tiiva Pantoreth had been made seneschal of the manor of Larandaril for her effort against Samboca, Lara finally left the Dead Circle. Osten had been carried off, his face staunched and forever a ruin of what it had been, and the bodies of those with failed hopes taken to be attended for the rites of death.
No one stayed to talk with her. No one but a shadowy man who seemed not to be noticed.
Lara looked at the darkness-swathed Kobrir. “I owe you thanks.”
“You need to learn to think like an assassin. There are no friends, only foes. And more importantly, when you drop a foe, make sure he stays down.”
The corners of her eyes crinkled a bit as she eyed him more closely. She saw storm-gray eyes watching her through his mask, but they were not the eyes of a Vaelinar. “Who are you?”
“That is not the question you should be asking. The question you should be asking is—who will I be?”
In a flash she did not see, his hand shot out, and a thin blade traced her bare throat, eliciting the smallest of blood trickles before he turned and disappeared.
In her mind then, Lara did not know the assassin.
But Sevryn did.
SEVRYN ALMOST FREED HIMSELF. Her surprise and shock as her own blood dribbled over her fingers nearly drove a wedge between their minds so that he could separate himself, but it was not enough. Her ties to him were tempered and layered like steel in a well-forged blade. Nothing less would surprise him. He knew Lara’s will almost as well as he knew his own. Perhaps better than he knew Rivergrace, for he had been at the Warrior Queen’s side far longer. She clung tenaciously to him now without even knowing how she had bound him to her consciousness. He was her anchor. He was to bring her back . . . except that she had dragged him along.
Sevryn wrested a niche for himself, a Way within the Way that she fabricated as she searched for the future. He found a place next to her temple, so that he could see through her eyes, hear through her ear and possibly even speak through her mouth if he had to. He made himself as small and inconspicuous as possible, as though she carried a gnat with her, and fought to stay as he had made himself. He knew nothing of her Talent except what he was experiencing and from what little Lariel had told him, he doubted she knew a great deal of it herself. If she had suspected in any way that he or Jeredon or whomever else she might have used as an anchor would be open to her memories, or soul, she might never have allowed it. She could not have afforded the chance. He rode inside a pocket of her mind now that gave him a window he wished he did not have.
There were many things about the Warrior Queen he did not want to know. There were far more things about himself that he did not wish her to learn. He hunkered down, finding a place of calm, putting himself into a position of ease and yet readiness, a position that was only figurative within Lara’s mind but which he felt that his own physical body would take. He sat with both legs in front of him, knees bent and feet flat, his sword across the tops of his knees, his palms upon the blade. He had often meditated like this, and his mind and body fell into the routine, guarded, centered, and yet at a kind of peace. He didn’t think she could find him here, even if Lara searched, and he sheltered himself from the storm of her thoughts and memories skittering around him like storm clouds lashed ahead of a strong wind.
Like dreamtime, it seemed to stretch forever and yet, when Lara stirred, coming to a sudden and sharp consciousness, it seemed as if no time at all had passed. Yet he knew better, for the blade had grown warm under his hands. He came alert. A whirlwind of her thoughts wrapped around him—sight, sound, and smell—until he realized what she searched for: that first moment of battle when the enemy engages and the body reacts with the recognition of that encounter, readying to fight back or run, as that enemy is recognized. The Raymy. Lara searched for the Raymy. Unwilling to wait indefinitely for the devastating wave that would mark the return of the reptilian soldiers, she was going to meet them on a future day, possessing a body which might or might not withstand the attack.
He sensed Daravan, but the man twisted out of her reach time and time again, and he would not give away the secret of their returning. Sevryn held his breath as he felt Lara sifting through souls as one might sift the wheat from the chaff, lives running through her fingers like grain. He tried to turn away from the invasion and could not, although he managed to buffer himself from the wrongness of her actions. She was desperate. He could feel the panicky edge of her own thoughts and emotions even as she searched harder and faster. Then she had the unwilling, unsuspecting host she searched for, and dragged Sevryn in with her.
The vision of forest and meadow burst before Sevryn in vibrant greens and the myriad colors of wildflowers. He felt the bow in his hands, an arrow idly held before being set to the string, his heart beating in time with that of the archer. He recognized the man even as Lara did: Chastain, a disciple of her brother Jeredon, a good man, young, eager, and in this moment, frightened as he stepped in to flank Lara herself and the air rang with the noise of swords being drawn, horses being reined around tightly into formation, shields being brought up, orders shouted across the din of men, and Raymy moving into contention. Hundreds upon hundreds of Raymy. They stank of saltwater and a dry, musty under odor. Lizards did not carry an animal stink to the Vaelinar nose, although perhaps they did to the war dogs that barked loudly and bounded across the fields.
The vision showed Sevryn that they had not stepped into this possessed body at the beginning of the fight, however. A regrouping perhaps, a defensive formation, because he could now see across the grasses where many dead lay and a thought ran across Chastain’s mind that his quiver must be less than half full now and that he would have to draw his sword and close on the enemy soon. When the queen did.
Now Sevryn had to hang tightly onto himself, for he was drawn not only into Chastain but into Lara herself, warrior Lara, Lara looking across the field and assessing what she needed to do to stand against the Raymy. Assessing where she was and how to best hold the ground and where best to retreat strategically if necessary, waiting for Bistane. Yes, she waited for Bistane and his troops, on the way, so close and yet so far. Ironic that the ild Fallyn were here and he was not, but that was war, was it not? Enemies always close.
Far off, the horns sounded. Lara’s heartbeat jumped. Here came Bistane, as hoped for, as promised, as needed. A flurry began among the Raymy as they knew they were being flanked, and half their forces began to swing around, to face attack on another front, and set themselves into position. She could not allow them that luxury. Lara st
retched her neck, and bellowed, “Archers!”
Off to her right, she could hear Sevryn echoing in his Voice, using that Talent of his, to repeat the order, making sure that it would not only be heard, but followed: “Archers! To the fore! Set and fire!”
Caught in her mindset and that of Chastain, he could see only a peripheral movement in the corner of his eye, which the possessed Lara noted had to be Sevryn and mostly likely Rivergrace. She did not turn her attention to them, worrying instead about the Raymy and their placement to face Bistane, wondering how she might warn him, then deciding the warlord, young as he was, had inherited all his father’s finer instincts.
Yet, Sevryn and Lara as observers, could not ascertain the where of the battlefield, only a hint as to the when, that it was early enough in the spring that maiden’s nod still bloomed among the grasses, and that the wind carried a sharp edge of chill to it. As one mind, they noted no sign of Abayan Diort or his Galdarkan forces in the battle. Whether that was for good or ill would be decided on the outcome. He had either abandoned them or failed in his vow to support the war. Or perhaps he was behind them, holding a strategic point, and they had outflanked his position. Lara could not tell from her possession of her future self, as if something blocked all but the most rudimentary knowledge. Perhaps it was Fate protecting itself.
Perhaps the Warrior Queen simply did not know.
The Raymy decided that they would leave a token resistance to Bistane on their flank, and that their real goal would be to take down the Vaelinars they faced, and they turned almost en masse to Lara and her battalion. Archers fired. Arrows blackened the sky momentarily before falling in a wooden rain that took its toll, but not enough.
Never enough.
He heard a cry. Rivergrace’s soft, yet strong voice rang out in denial. “Never!” A golden river of flame sprang up, walling them away from the Raymy. He could feel the power sucked from him/them to fuel it, feel an answering weakness which they/possessed Lara could ill afford and yet . . . and yet . . . the flames stopped the Raymy. He could feel the searing heat across the meadow, smell the cloth and leather gear of the fighters smolder, and flesh of the dead begin to crisp. He gagged. Lara choked. All one and the same.