Little lights twinkled in the darkness, little and glowing against the black, the starry sky, starry, and…
* * *
As Jon's feet broke the surface of the water, Marfa was still shouting the entire way down.
He plummeted deep, and let the water take him as deep as it could while he searched the depths for any sign of her.
Above him, Marfa plunged in, too, flailing her arms and legs. She didn't know how to swim.
He’d get her later. But first—
He waded deeper, farther and farther, scouring the sea floor for any sign. In the vast darkness, tiny lights shuttered, winking like stars.
Narrowing his eyes, he swam toward them, faster and faster, pushing himself as much as he could. The tiny lights grew larger, became eyes, mermaids bearing a bubble up to the surface.
Rielle.
Unmoving inside, she lay there, drenched, sopping, her eyes closed.
His chest fit to bursting, he swam alongside her up toward the surface, eyed and surrounded by the mermaids, their long hair floating ethereally, iridescent scales catching snatches of filtered sunshine.
He didn't know how to tell them, what to do, so he just swam, right up alongside her. Please be all right, please be all right, please—
Marfa flailed desperately just below, and he swam to her, reached for her. As she locked her arms around his neck, he made for the surface right along with the mermaids and Rielle in her bubble.
It popped in the air above the water.
He caught Rielle, held her, and swam toward the distant beach, with Marfa on his back and Rielle clutched in the grasp of one arm.
Marfa took hold of her, and he let her, able to use both of his arms freely, struggling toward the distant beach.
It wasn't long before shouts echoed across the surface—Raoul and Florian, who’d removed their armor—and they swam toward him.
A born swimmer, Raoul grabbed Rielle, with a hissing Marfa reluctantly handing her over.
They met Florian within the last fifty feet, and as soon as Jon could stand, Marfa dropped off his back to her own feet and he took Rielle from Raoul.
He ran her toward the beach, shoving hair from her face, leaning his ear close to her nose and mouth, listening for breath, for some sign, for anything—
Nothing.
Terra have mercy, she wasn't breathing.
His heart hammered in his chest as he ran with her, then set her down upon the sand near the sheathed Queen’s Blade. As he sank his knees down at her side, Marfa did on her other side, frantic eyes pinning him.
Rielle would breathe. She had to.
He applied pressure to her abdomen, raised her chin, and respired into her mouth.
She’d been like this once, her lungs full of water and mud, and it had been one of the worst moments of his life.
He respired into her mouth again.
Again.
Again.
Wake up, Rielle. Wake up. Please—
Again.
His racing heart throbbed, tightened, and Terra help him, it would not happen, not here, not now, not while she needed him—
Another breath, and she broke into a cough, spluttering seawater, and he braced her head gently, rolled her over to her side.
He closed his eyes, praised Terra as he heaved a breath of relief. She was all right. She’d be all right.
Marfa dug her fingers into the sand, clutching fistfuls. “Maestru,” she shouted, lowered her head to Rielle’s eye level, and he couldn’t help but grin.
Caked with sand, Rielle curled tighter, coughing, her eyes still closed.
Terra have mercy, that night after she’d dueled Flame came back to him, vivid and powerful, and the relief that had claimed him when she’d taken that first breath. He’d carried her to camp, taken care of her, watched over her, waited until she’d open her eyes, and Terra help him, but there had been nothing in this life he’d needed more then.
Or now.
He’d agreed to leave her be, not to meddle, and yet… here he was.
Wet ropes bound her ankles and wrists, and his blood boiling, he drew the Queen’s Blade and cut them. Someone had dared tie her up, had discarded her off a cliff as if she’d meant nothing, had tried to murder her—
He resheathed the Queen’s Blade.
Rielle groaned. She was coming to, and he couldn’t be here when she did.
“Marfa,” he said, grasping her shoulders, and she fixed him with an inquisitive stare. “I was never here.” He touched his chest, shook his head, and stood while she tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.
“You”—he pointed at her, then the sea, and then Rielle—“brought Rielle back.”
She frowned and shook her head.
Armored once more, Raoul and Florian led the horses to them, and Florian held out his boots, his overcoat, and his weapons belt.
“Marfa,” he asked, taking her hand in both of his, “swear it. Please. You brought Rielle back.”
Her fingers wiggled in his grasp as she frowned at him. “You…” She pointed at him.
He held her gaze for a moment, searching her hesitant eyes. If she didn’t want to agree, he couldn’t force her, but he prayed she’d honor his request.
With a sigh, he dragged on his boots, buckled his weapons belt, and threw on his overcoat, leaving it unbuttoned as he hoisted up into the saddle.
“Keep an eye on them from afar,” he said to Raoul, “and make sure they’re safe. Then report to me.”
Raoul placed his right hand over his heart and bowed. “Understood, Your Majesty.”
With a last glance back at Rielle—she still coughed, curled up on her side—he nodded to Florian, and they took off toward the city.
Someone in Divinity Castle had tried to murder Rielle. Someone who would answer for it, and never harm anyone ever again.
* * *
Coughing up water on her side, Rielle blinked open her sore eyes, squinting through the blur.
Jon. His face inches from hers, dripping water, a deep frown etched into his brow as he stared down at her with those intense Shining Sea eyes. That frown of his eased as he stroked her wet hair from her face, held her steady as she coughed her lungs clear.
What was he doing here, looming over her? The last thing she remembered was... the scale. Singing to the scale. Inhaling water.
She rolled onto her back, but his gaze remained fixed upon her, still intense, looking her over with merciless scrutiny.
The sea blue in those eyes really did shine, a certain light brightening them from within. She'd spent far too much time in their depths. And not enough. Never enough.
“Maestru,” a voice said, and a shadow blotted out the blinding sun and bright cerulean of the sky.
Rielle squinted, the blur clearing, but it wasn’t Jon over her, but Marfa, her voluminous black mane plastered with sand and dripping water onto her face.
Marfa grasped her shoulders and shook her lightly, making her head wobble, and shook her head. “Maestru, you… live.”
The headache cracking through her skull was a definite sign of that.
With a wince, she sat up, her hands looking for purchase on sand, and around was—a beach. Turquoise waves lapped onto the dark sand, the surf fluttering among rocks, seaweed, and shells. A narrow path wound up a cliff, massive and daunting, at least a hundred feet high.
She took a deep breath and coughed, pain lancing through her ribcage. Broken. At least two broken ribs. “Sundered flesh—”
She began the healing incantation, but no magic came. Her wrist stung, and as she glanced at it, her spirits fell. Arcanir. Exactly like the cuff the Divine Guard had used in the second trial.
“I break,” Marfa hissed, then seized the cuff.
Arcanir—
She frowned, closing her eyes. A man had slapped that arcanir cuff onto her wrist, by a carriage—
As Marfa broke the cuff, Rielle craned her neck up to the top of the cliff.
She’d been thrown of
f.
Instead of taking her to the castle, a carriage had taken her here, Mac Carra’s brother and another man, and they’d put her in arcanir, tied her up, and thrown her off the cliff and into the sea.
They’d thrown her off a cliff.
And into the sea.
Her pulse pounded as she heaved harsh breaths, as she clenched fistfuls of sand and scrambled to her feet.
Marfa tilted her head. “Chì ci hè?”
“Thank you,” she said to Marfa, bowing her head and indicating her wrist.
Marfa bobbed her head, and Rielle whispered the healing incantation, wincing as her broken ribs fused back into place.
Marfa had also saved her from drowning, brought her in from the water, severed her rope bonds.
Bond.
When she’d pulled on the bond, there hadn’t been a single thread to Brennan as there had always been, but two.
One to him, and one to Marfa.
Brennan.
He’d gone to Magehold, and when she’d pulled on the bond, he hadn’t come.
That wasn’t like him.
She pulled on the bond again, isolating that thread that had always tied to Brennan, for years and years, and—
He was there, she could feel him, but… It was as if he was ignoring her.
Something had to be wrong. Very wrong.
She went rigid, clenching a fist as she headed toward the narrow path. Brennan was at Magehold.
And Mac Carra was at Magehold, along with his kidnapping brother, and he’d had help. That bastard had kept her from the trial and tried to have her killed, with the Grand Divinus’s support. Or at least her cuff.
And after that, he wouldn’t get to win. He wouldn’t even get to draw another breath, not when she was done with him.
“Maestru, where… go?” Marfa asked in broken Emaurrian as she loped alongside her.
Rielle nodded in the castle’s direction. “To the castle… where I have lots of nimici to kill,” she said, borrowing Marfa’s word.
“Nimici,” Marfa repeated, with a deadly glee. “Kill. Yes. Erardo.”
She nodded. There was a list of kidnapping, murdering bastards she had to kill. Adding an Erardo who’d harmed Marfa?
He had it coming.
“Maestru,” Marfa said again, taking her arm, her eyebrows drawn. “Brennan… he…” She hissed, her face contorting angrily. “Magic… blood.” Marfa’s fervent eyes bored into hers as she squeezed her arm.
Brennan had to be at Magehold, then. Had he killed a mage? Was he in trouble? With a deep breath, she nodded to Marfa. “We’re going to him now. If he’s in trouble, I’m going to save him.”
The Grand Divinus could take from her the chance to become a magister, could try to take from her her life, but she would not take another loved one. She would not take Brennan.
I won’t let her.
Chapter 56
"Why does it have to be me?" Katia whispered, glancing over her shoulder and wrapping her brown cloak about herself.
Distant growls and hisses echoed from inside the cave, where deep within, the horde was concentrated.
Crossing his arms, Leigh grimaced. "Because you have the most annoying voice. Isn't that obvious?"
Katia's gray eyes turned to steel as she speared him with a glare.
But beside him, both Ambriel and Della waited, too. Katia would find no protests here.
With a groan, she turned back to the cave’s inky black opening and approached with slow, hesitant steps. She cupped her hands around her mouth, leaned forward, and shouted, “Hello! Hey, horde! Why don't you… come over here and kill us? We're alive and… walking around here, all living and stuff… So come and get us!"
Not the best invitation to come and kill that he'd ever heard, but it would do.
Katia glanced over her shoulder at him, her lips curled in an uncertain grimace.
The distant growls and hisses multiplied, louder, closer and closer.
He cast a repulsion shield around her and then gestured her back toward them with two fingers.
"Well done," he said to her as she approached cautiously. "Not the most convincing plea, but we needed annoying, and you delivered.” He gave her a bright nod as that steely glare speared him again.
"Can you really do it?" Della asked Ambriel, then bit her lip. Her face was creased with worry, and dark circles ringed her eyes. She’d hardly rested at all.
Of course Ambriel could do it. They wouldn't have hinged the plan on it if he couldn't.
"I have trained as a tree-singer for hundreds of years," Ambriel reassured her. "I know how a dryad is welcomed, and I have welcomed one before."
The forest was behind them, some fifty feet. The horde was attracted to anything that moved, anything that lived. That included them, but once the dryad arrived, it would also include her.
And with the entire forest under her command, with her ability to will the trees to move, one hand would wash the other.
"This will work," he said, extending the repulsion shield before all of them as the first shambling bodies trudged out of the cave.
Katia yelped, and as they made for her, she stiffened. He grabbed hold of her sleeve and yanked her back with him toward the tree line.
The horde flowed out, a sea of moving undead bodies, some with barely any skin or flesh remaining, and yet still animated, moving, by the power of Ava's necromancy.
Hundreds advanced on them, and as they ducked into the forest, Ambriel sang the first few notes welcoming the dryad.
Nothing happened, but he kept singing as they backed up and backed up and backed up—
Katia spelled up roots and brambles from the earth, tangling the approaching horde in the undergrowth, snaring them, but they just rolled over one another like a shifting fleshy wave, advancing and advancing, twisting and groaning, arms outstretched—
"I don't think it's working,” Della said as he sang, but Ambriel didn't waver, his song unbroken.
The first wave of undead staggered near, too near, and Leigh reinforced his repulsion shield, repelling them, pushing them back, keeping them at bay.
But this plan relied on destroying the entire horde, and he wasn't sure even he could achieve that if he had to protect three other people.
If you have to choose between me and Ava, choose Ava. Della had said that to him, but that was no choice at all. He wasn't going to leave her, much less Ambriel and Katia, to all die.
"Ambriel—” he called, hoping Ambriel had a contingency plan.
The singing only grew louder, and then—
An otherworldly white glow in his periphery.
The dryad.
This time, he knew not to look, and they all knew not to look. The tone of Ambriel’s singing changed as the horde broke through leaves and branches and twigs, destroyed young saplings, and still tore deeper into the forest.
A howl, like many voices become one, ghostly and anguished, and the trees groaned as they leaned, wrapping branches around bodies, pressing, squeezing, crushing.
Ambriel pushed him in an arc, around the horde and toward the tree line, his singing taking on an insistent tone.
Angling the repulsion shield to keep it between them and the horde, Leigh moved with everyone else toward the forest’s edge until they were out and Ambriel’s singing stopped, while the forest destroyed anything else that moved. Silently, they crept in the periphery, not daring to speak, hardly daring to breathe.
Squelching, groaning, and cracking continued from the forest, and the flow of undead from the cave seemed endless, pushing and tumbling while they waited.
Necromancers could raise the dead from graves, but some of them had looked newer… and had to have been killed by the horde and collected. Ava’s fureur had to have killed at least a couple hundred people, and he well knew that struggle.
Once they brought her out of fureur, she would hate herself.
Not if I can help it.
Finally, the horde trickled down to just a few lines
of undead scrambling toward the forest, and soon, there were none, despite the continued noise from the forest.
Even that faded until utter quiet claimed their surroundings.
At last, Leigh stood from his crouch and took a few steps toward the cave. Ava had to be in there, and there was only one way to find out.
Della followed after him, as did Ambriel.
"Are you sure it's safe?" Katia asked, taking a hesitant step.
"Safe is wherever I am," Leigh said. And he'd make it true.
Inside, the candlelight spell he’d cast by incantation led them deeper into the network of caves in the mountain.
So far, there hadn’t been a single undead straggler, despite at least half an hour of walking. Katia cast earthsight and led them to an aura she claimed to see in the distance, bright, shining, blinding—that had to be Ava.
Katia had also ordered him to stay behind her because, as she had put it, while the light in the distance was blinding, he was somehow even worse.
That's a wild mage for you.
On one side of him, Ambriel held his bow, ready to draw if the need arose. On the other side, Della chewed her lip, staring in whatever direction Katia did.
The smell in these caves was nauseating, even considering how woefully disgusting caves usually smelled. When he closed his eyes, all he could imagine was trudging through a vast ocean of dead bodies, rotting, festering, stinking…
So he kept the blinking to a minimum.
Ambriel leaned in. "I hear something. More than one. I'm not sure what, but… whatever it—they—are, they're big."
He glanced at Ambriel. Big? The horde had been big, but not the individual undead. Had Ava raised something else? Something… worse?
Katia gasped in a breath, then sneezed.
Grimacing, she cringed as that sneeze echoed, down every inch and every corner of this cave system, for what felt like forever.
When it finally stopped, she dispelled her earthsight and looked back at him. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
"That depends," he answered. "Do you consider utterly idiotic and potentially disastrous to be bad?"
There was that uncertain curl of her lips again. She winced.
Court of Shadows Page 48