by Jenna Rhodes
“But . . . Lara . . . the others . . . said he was losing control, that he’d held them back as long as he could.”
“You just felt that Way being anchored here. Did he feel powerless to you?”
“No.”
“Nothing Daravan does is by accident or from weakness. Not even his attack on Calcort.”
She sucked down a breath. “He knew about Nutmeg and Lara’s heir?”
“Somehow. He’s not been in a void as we thought.” He took a stride forward. He knew what he had been charged with by the Kobrir all those days ago. “I have to take him out.”
She did not gainsay him, but she did warn him gently. “Hundreds of Raymy yet to come.”
“All the more reason I make this stand now.” He whirled about. “Get ready!” Sevryn cried, his warning augmented by his Voice, and the valley rang with it.
In answer, the bridge between worlds thundered.
Unthinkable. Masses yet to invade Larandaril, already driven down and besieged by a dread army. Even as they both thought it, they saw it. Line upon line of Raymy as they began to march through, a tide of gray-green reptilian flesh carrying steel. Rivergrace laid down a line of fire that channeled the march to turn away or it would consume them, her voice hoarse and her hands trembling with effort, but it was a weak line and she couldn’t sustain it. He felt her pull strength from him, driving a chill deep into his bones. He fed her a little and then cut her off, needing his own core to fight Daravan when, if, he found him.
Behind them, Bistane shouted for his archers to fire, and the sky filled with spears of wood arching overhead, raining death anew on the first ranks of the Raymy trampling into the meadow. They fell in waves, but their fellows behind them surged over the dead and kept coming. Their grunts and hissing filled the air.
He had to close the Way; he could do that as soon as he found Daravan and separated him from his cloak of disguise to target a physical being. Sevryn paced, readying to face the unseeable, his breath hissing now and then in frustration. Nothing he had learned, on the streets as an abandoned boy, or from Gilgarran, or from Jeredon, or from the Kobrir, gave him the knowledge to unmask Daravan.
Rivergrace closed her eyes for a moment as if centering herself, then reached for and caught up his hand and pressed a thread into it, a thread he felt more than he could see with its luminescence from her heart. It stretched between them as thin as gossamer and resilient as spidersilk. It did not match the threads of her cage, but with silvers and blues shining throughout it. It touched him as intimately as she had ever touched him. He put a hand up, but his fingers slipped through it, leaving a shimmering note of her presence behind.
“If you lose me again,” she said, “this is how to find me.” She smiled, a sad and fleeting expression. “Please don’t hate me more than you love me.”
“I could never hate you.”
She looked after Quendius and his Undead troop, disappeared through the eye of the Way. “I made them.”
“Narskap made them. He used you as Quendius used him.”
She shook her head. “No. I wove many of those threads.” She took a deep breath. “I wanted to hold them as gently as possible, as close to life as possible, because I could feel the hunger in them to live. I don’t know what lies ahead for them, but they pull me after as much as Quendius does.”
“They are fodder for him, but souls to you. I can’t hate you for that. Never.”
Rivergrace raised her other hand in the air, her eyes half-closing, and a shimmer of dewdrops covered her skin wherever the air touched it. She reached up and touched his eyelids with dampened fingertips. “Look for shadow weave. Lily wove and sewed him a cloak of one. Look for it and summon it.”
Call for it? He hadn’t the time, Bistane’s archers and Rivergrace’s line of fire held the Raymy back, but only just. They would be overrun in moments and yet, now was all they had. He cupped her cheek as she stood on guard, the one hand raised to keep her flames up. Strain ran through her, but her soft skin felt warm to him and she looked at Sevryn long enough to smile again. “Now,” she whispered.
So Sevryn called for the shadows. He touched his throat and shifted into his Voice, singing to the dusk not to hide him as he used them, but to part and reveal that which he needed to see. To betray that which the shadows meant to keep secret. To part and let the light inward, to illuminate what he needed to see. He could feel her touch on his eyelids still and, with a chill, the veil lifted from his vision and a clarity of crystal sharpness descended. Sevryn frowned at the brightness of the day as it flooded him, but now he saw a man-sized force of shadow moving at will and focused on it, like the hunter he was. He moved, not toward it, but to flank Daravan even as Grace dropped into her stance, her hands curling once again into the gesture for summoning flame, and as he set his position, she laid down a new wall of fire. She staggered back a step as heat roared up, between her and the Raymy, the armies of Kerith at her back. They let out a shout of joy and charged to take out the Raymy stumbling through the wall of flame with armor smoking and skins blistering.
They stood in the channel through which the army surged. Sevryn caught her up and carried her, running, out of their way.
Horns trumpeted on the smoky air. He could hear the shouts of Galdarkans as they thundered onto the field, breaking the walls of Raymy.
Assured, he stepped into darkness cast by a whip-lean sapling as he asked it to hide him. The scent of the evergreen sapling filled his nostrils. He withdrew his ithrel and his curved dagger as the vision Rivergrace had given him filled his senses once more, and he sang a last time, the shadows shredding at his summoning. Into his Voice, he put all he knew of Daravan, which seemed little, and all he wanted to know, which was vast.
Storm-dark clouds darted past him where there should be no cloud across his acute sight. He struck, left-handed, carving the clouds away and the noise of fabric ripping answered his blow, as well as a grunt and curse. The shadow weave parted, revealing the man wrapped within it. Daravan spun about, brought to a halt in front of him, looking down at him with eyes of storm gray and icy gray, frost-silvery hair braided back from his face. Daravan’s sharp-paned face glared down upon him.
“Should I call you father?”
“I will never answer to that title.” Daravan gestured. “You can’t stop me.”
“I have already given you pause.” He watched as Daravan looked upon, and considered, the ithrel. One eyebrow arched.
“Step away while you can.”
“Not just yet.” Sevryn felt his ithrel and dagger hilts grow warm in his hold, familiar to his fingers and the palms of his hands. He did not have his second blade anointed with the king’s rest readily available but stepped into his balance.
“You’ve no idea what’s at stake here.”
“I know,” Sevryn said, even as he watched the other’s stance and flex of tensed muscles, “that you have been engineering the demise of Vaelinar in this world since the day we were exiled to it. That you have deaths uncountable behind you and would have even more before you. That’s all I need to know.”
“No longer a hero, am I? But you don’t ask yourself why.”
“Knowing why won’t stop me or justify you. Wasn’t one world enough for her? It seems not.”
Daravan pushed his cloak back from his shoulders. He put a hand back, indicating the Way behind him, filled with jostling Raymy as they continued to advance, but the world behind them could be seen if one tried. “I serve my queen with all that I am.”
“I don’t care.”
“We were at war! She only did that which she had to do to protect herself and her lands. And now I must help her undo the destiny she sent spiraling, and we will not die. Not there. Not when we cross to here. Give in and she will remember those who stood by her.”
“Trevilara is no queen of mine. She is still at war from all that I’ve seen.
Nothing gives her peace.”
“I can.”
Sevryn shook his head. “Not at the cost of Kerith.”
“Kerith. A pot of mongrel flesh. It’s the land that matters. The air. The seas. Kerith flesh. Bolgers aren’t even human.”
“They’re more human than you.”
Daravan’s mouth twisted for a moment. Then he spat to one side. “I thought it might be you who finally came after me.” Daravan shrugged back the hood on his cloak, the shadow weave billowing about him like black smoke. Vertical lines etched the starkness of his cheekbones and down into his face. Smaller crinkles flared the corners of his eyes as they narrowed on Sevryn. He made a gesture, and the Way fractured, sending lines of distortion through the ground to reach them. Sevryn staggered, placed in a world that no longer seemed firm. The shadows he had shredded flew up from the cracks, enveloping not only Daravan but him, and their touch made his teeth chatter with their cold. A blaze of white fire tightened about his chest, and he brushed it with the side of his hand.
Rivergrace. His darkening world lit up in silver and blue.
Daravan sliced a hand forward, and his flesh sizzled when he touched that shield she’d put upon him. The corner of Sevryn’s mouth quirked.
“I was sent,” Sevryn told him.
Daravan’s eyes lit as he contemplated the meaning behind those words, that allies he might have anticipated had now stepped away from him. He looked at the ithrel once more. “Ahhh.”
He might have said more, but he lunged, and Sevryn had readied for him. They clashed, the fractured world beneath their feet shifting and crumbling as they moved. Daravan slung his cloak forward, attempting to net him, but Sevryn slipped aside and tore it from his hands, coming up in Daravan’s face as the shadow weave disintegrated about him. They clashed, Sevryn being surprised only that Daravan held weapons he hadn’t even seen him pull. Steel rang.
Careless of him to have missed the weapons pulled. It was the only thought he had as they met, parried, swung, hit, shrugged off, turned and attacked, blocked, and the steel between them screed against their edges. His training centered him. His teachers’ voices spoke firmly in his ear, telling him how to react. Daravan sank a vicious fist across his rib cage, a stinging blow that knocked the breath out of him, but his muscles answered with two fists and a backhanded slash of his own, driving Daravan away so that he could catch a breath. Daravan fell back out of range of the ithrel, a deep glimmer in his eyes.
Sevryn flexed his hands, resetting his hold on his blades. His knuckles stung, and he knew he’d hit hard.
“The assassins, the traitors, trained you well.”
“Gilgarran gave me a good start. The Kobrir finished it.” He chose to ignore the ache in his ribs. A fist was better than a knifepoint.
“I think he recognized me in you.”
“At least he bothered to look at me as someone’s son.” Sevryn took a step to the side, then came back two steps in the opposite direction and closed on Daravan, silver flashing in his hands and coming away crimson.
Heat scored along his own shinbone. Kobrir cloth rippled open, and blood seeped out the length of his lower leg. He kicked aside and moved back into a defensive position. Shallow, it would close without attention, as long as Daravan did not have his blades doctored.
Sevryn caught his breath again and did not wish to waste it. He said nothing but waited for the sign Daravan would attack again. The barest of warnings. He dodged to the side, landing on his knee, and the knife that would have pierced his right lung jabbed past harmlessly. He whipped his feet out at Daravan’s ankles, to bring the man down but catching him, not at his feet as planned but behind one knee, driving him off balance.
Daravan fell back with a grunt, caught by an evergreen sapling, which kept upright and hampered the backswing of his left arm.
Sevryn closed again. He thought he had the other at a disadvantage, but Daravan proved him wrong. Sevryn spun away, going to the ground and clawing out of range, coming up gasping and wary, hot blood trickling from an arm wound he hadn’t even felt getting. Daravan gave him no quarter. He filled the air with throwing knives, Sevryn twisting and turning, spinning and coming away relatively unscathed, though his left sleeve now flapped loose. No hindrance to him and perhaps even a gain—Daravan would have to look through the tatters to find a solid target.
But the other arm, that worried him. Any significant bleeding slowed and weakened him—would bring him down as surely as a solid hit. He tore his left sleeve loose and knotted it tightly about his right bicep, moving always as he did, eyes on Daravan, denying him an easy target. Sweat trickled down Daravan’s temples. That caught Sevryn by surprise, and he looked again. Then he realized . . . Daravan wore leathers under his clothes, armored underneath, protected from many of Sevryn’s blows but given away by his own body heat. Sevryn smiled grimly to himself. He’d need to change tactics, no longer needing to wonder why his slicing attack hadn’t given him the results he wished.
“Did you ever wonder where your mother went?” Daravan sounded winded a bit, but he bared his teeth in a savage grin.
“She went looking for you.”
“No. No, she went looking for another Vaelinar who would have her, searching for her own fading youth and beauty. She went chasing the street rumors that we Vaelinars give part of our long lives to those we bond with. She abandoned you to chase a new beginning for herself.” Daravan stopped talking. Lunged at him.
Sevryn spun to his left and came back with a high, left-footed kick. The Kobrir Bretta had schooled him in that move. It took Daravan down.
He rolled to one knee and staggered up. The Way shifted under him, swelled and then closed, and then shuddered open again.
Sevryn watched the fabric of Kerith tremble at Daravan’s weakness. They were all weak, and though he did not believe what Daravan told him, he could understand if that search for more life had drawn his mother away. He would do it if that’s what it took to stay with Rivergrace. That need was a weakness he could understand.
“She needed a life,” Sevryn told Daravan. “What was your excuse? Where were you, Father, when I grew?”
“Not tending a mewling mongrel.” Daravan wiped the back of his hand across his face, smearing the blood Sevryn had drawn. “I saw you once, long enough to know you existed and that you had not a hint of Talent about you. Not in your eyes, not in your disgusting flesh. I love Trevilara and came to fulfill my duty to her. I spilled my seed in a weak moment or two. You came into being. But it was Lariel I wanted a child upon. Then my sacrifice would be worth it. We lose power you see—a child rips it from us whether we will it or not. Would I let a pretty piece of meat part her legs for me just so she could steal my magic? Not if I can help it. I should have killed you then, but you had nothing of me. Not until Gilgarran found you, and then it was too late.”
“You wouldn’t have fathered me even then.”
“No. I still would have killed you. As I will put you down now.”
They met again, blades clashing, arms and hands swinging, feet shifting. Met, spun away, turned back for another clash. Sevryn felt the blow that parted the skin on his right lower ribs but not the pain of it until warm, salty blood began to leak. He couldn’t afford to bleed.
He sucked in a breath, and moved into a pattern the Kobrir had taught him well.
Daravan dodged low to his own left to avoid it, but he could not avoid the fisting blow aimed at his throat, Sevryn’s ithrel between his knuckles.
One hit.
Daravan fell back. He clawed at the blade in his throat, dislodging it, face gone pale in three heartbeats, the front of his body dappled with fresh crimson, the hole in his throat pumping out more. He blinked as he looked at his hands and then put them back to his throat, trying to stop the flow.
“The queen must stand,” he husked. “You cannot bring her down.”
“She’
s a murderous bastard like you. Why not?”
“She is life. She is the only true Power.”
“She is nothing to me, as I was nothing to you.”
Daravan crumpled to his knees. He threw his head back to look up at Sevryn. “She’s a great woman. I earned her love . . . I . . .” He did not finish, his breath and life whistling out of him, punctuated by a last gurgle. His body folded upon the ground.
Sevryn stood over it and regretted only that he had not left the man in a king’s rest for the Kobrir to gather, as they had requested. A mercy on Daravan, he supposed, for he felt certain that what the Kobrir had planned was nothing less than a slow, harsh death in servitude much as they’d been condemned to by their creator’s actions. This dead man could never have been his father. He had no memory of him except for feeling the echo of the ache his mother had felt before she, too, abandoned him. If he had any patriarch, it was Gilgarran. Gilgarran and the streets. He toed Daravan’s dropped weapon far away from his open hand, the other still clutching at the gash in his neck futilely. Blood pooling into the grass and needles slowed into a sluggish crawl until the heart no longer beat. He turned away.
The open eye behind him opened and shut for the barest of breaths.
When it stared open again, the Raymy no longer marched through, the flood halted. He saw an ocean shore, marsh grasses tangled and brown, a red-brown scum floating in on the tide, but he had no time to watch. He could feel a pull on his heartstrings and then saw, in a cold fear, Rivergrace framed by the Way. Her hair blew loose in a wind that smelled strange and exotic.
Rivergrace stood in the halo of its aura before entering with a soft murmur. “Follow me.”
Because he loved and trusted her, because he was an arrow that had to have an archer, he did without so much as a look backward.
aderro: (Vaelinar corruption of the Dweller greeting, Derro). An endearment, meaning little one