The Nightborn

by Isabel Cooper

  Agony abruptly swept over her. Branwyn had known pain since the first days of her training, but this was breathtaking. Through watering eyes, she saw her skin ripple, saw the dull orange sparks dancing across the gleaming bronze, and knew the horrible magic that she was fighting.

  Gizath’s power could have turned an unprotected victim inside out, or crushed their organs from the inside as their body betrayed them in the most fundamental way. Branwyn, reforged with the power of the gods, gritted her teeth and held on to Yathana’s hilt, keeping herself in one piece and her head intact.

  The pain didn’t stop. She stepped forward through it, raked her nails across the footman’s cheek, and stuck Yathana into his side when he staggered backwards.

  Someone grabbed her neck. Branwyn spun and struck upward, heard the guard’s jaw crack under the blow, and caught sight of the sorceress. She stood with one hand outstretched, her brow furrowed. Clearly she expected Branwyn to be a whimpering heap on the floor, if not dead.

  It was some pleasure, even through the pain, to disappoint her. It was even better to see the puzzlement turn to outright alarm when Branwyn charged, forcing herself past sensation to a speed that the daughter of Verengir didn’t anticipate.

  No spell had compelled the sorceress’s actions. Yathana pierced her gut, with Branwyn’s full, desperate strength behind her. The other woman’s face became a mask of torment, even as Branwyn’s pain ceased. For a moment it was as though the spell had doubled back on its caster. Then Branwyn’s backstroke took out her throat. It was reflex rather than mercy, but it served the same purpose.

  “Hanyi!”

  It wasn’t a familiar voice, but it was enough like Zelen’s to rattle her for a heartbeat. The same reflex that had sliced open Hanyi’s neck carried Branwyn back to her previous position in the hall, where she put herself in the way of the man with the poker before he could go after Tanya. The iron smashed down on her upraised arm, which hurt like hell. It was a known pain, though, not one that meant her body was trying to destroy its own organs, so she took it with almost a sense of gratitude.

  “I’ll watch you die for days, you harlot,” said the person who had cried out.

  Branwyn turned to bat his sword away with Yathana. From the platinum hair, the dark eyes, and the better quality of clothing and weapon than the others, she guessed that the man was Gedomir. From the quick way he recovered, she knew that he was good in a fight—better than his guards, perhaps, in these close quarters. There was open fury in his expression, offense mixed with honest grief, but he didn’t strike recklessly or push too far forward.

  She hated it when they were intelligent.

  Dodging the next blow from the poker, she started to flick a cut at the footman’s unprotected arm when the earth moved.

  Branwyn stumbled backwards, catching herself on the wall. Both of her opponents reeled with the quake too, and both looked stunned, which was some comfort.

  “What—” the footman started.

  “Kill her,” said Gedomir. “One thing at a time.”

  Branwyn regained her footing quickly enough to meet the next strike with steel, not flesh. A punch to the stomach left the man doubled over. She saw steel flash from the corner of her eye and shifted her weight backwards.

  Gedomir’s sword sliced a shallow line from her shoulder down her side, neatly splitting her tunic. The skin beneath only opened a little, a scratch rather than any kind of significant wound. In another fight, Branwyn wouldn’t even have noticed the sting, or the hot kiss of blood.

  The problem was that both existed. Gedomir had cut her, and that meant her transformation had worn off. From now on, it would be flesh against flesh.

  * * *

  Zelen ran.

  He’d do no good if he arrived exhausted, or if he tripped on a footstool and brained himself. He hated knowing that. Restraint chafed him. Caution bound him, just at the moment when no turn of speed would have been enough. He silently cursed every inch of the floor that he had to cross, every turn of the corridors and door that took a second to open.

  The dark house would’ve been eerie under any circumstances. As Zelen ran, it was a nightmare landscape around him. Every doorway was a yawning mouth, every chair a misformed ghost.

  From the study to the main hall, his path led into the back of the house. A right turn took him to an old door, which he’d been prepared to open and which he found already ajar. That was no real surprise, but the sight dismayed him—though it did save him a moment or two, as he dashed through without pausing.

  Below him, the floor changed from smooth wood to stone, only slightly rougher after generations of residents and the efforts of many servants. The walls had no ornaments, and the light was much dimmer.

  Up ahead, around a corner, that light became dull orange. Something about its color, or the way it flickered, raised Zelen’s hackles right off, but he had no opportunity to think it over. He was running, and then the earth shook beneath him.

  He stumbled, fell roughly to his knees, and managed to hold onto his sword without cutting himself in half as a result. Solid rock shook like a frightened horse beneath him. What in all the hells have they done? He was already getting to his feet while he framed the question, pushing himself up despite the world’s unsteadiness.

  Zelen went slower for the brief time that the shaking lasted, and so it stretched out much longer in his heart and gut. In a way, it was no more than he’d expected. He’d never been in the old wing, and particularly knowing what he did, he was not surprised to find it a dark place, where even the ground was untrustworthy.

  Soon after, he began to hear the noises of combat and to smell blood in the air.

  Gedomir’s order echoed through the hall, cold and furious. Their father had often sounded that way, and nothing good had ever followed. “Kill her. One thing at a time.”

  The insults he’d tossed at Branwyn earlier had left Zelen unmoved. They were tiresomely typical of Gedomir: of course he’d pick at how many beds he thought she frequented. Of course he’d think that mattered. Zelen hadn’t felt any urge to defend her honor, only to roll his eyes.

  The command sent a flood of red across his vision. When he rounded the corner into the long hallway and finally caught sight of his brother, the metal on Zelen’s sword hilt was etching bloody patterns in his palm.

  “You’re going to regret that,” he snarled, and didn’t recognize his own voice.

  Gedomir did. He didn’t turn away from Branwyn, as Zelen had been hoping he would, but he looked back for a breath, disbelief warring with spite. Never one to let an opportunity get past her, Branwyn thrust past his guard, but the footman next to Gedomir knocked Yathana to the side with his poker.

  The unnerving light didn’t reveal very much about anybody in the hallway. One of the guards was slumped against the wall, cradling his bleeding side. He was still breathing. It was harder to tell about the groom, who lay faceup between Zelen and Gedomir, but eventually his chest did move. Branwyn knew about the compulsion, then; he couldn’t imagine her sparing their lives otherwise.

  For the second occasion in his life, tending to others’ wounds wasn’t Zelen’s priority. He dashed past both wounded men with a muttered apology, similar to the one he’d used for the guards in the study, seeing them only dimly. Gedomir and Branwyn were the center of his vision.

  She wasn’t metal, which suggested either careful hoarding of resources or that she’d been fighting for a while. She also wasn’t moving with the normal superhuman speed she demonstrated in a fight. That and a slight favoring of her left side made Zelen think she was flesh out of necessity, not tactics. Gedomir, fresh from trying to have his brother killed, was moving nearly as quickly and using the footman’s amateur-but-desperate efforts with the poker to decent advantage. Zelen picked a spot with anatomical exactness and lunged forward.

  Gedomir spun, catching the strike on his
blade, and uttered three words Zelen didn’t understand.

  Branwyn, who had just laid the footman low with a sweeping kick to the ankles, staggered back, clutching her neck. Gedomir actually smirked as he advanced on Zelen.

  Their swords met again. Zelen blocked his brother’s strike that time. He disengaged and stepped sideways, seeking an opening and finding none. Gedomir’s hair shone like fire from the light in the room beyond. Behind him, Branwyn made choking noises. She’d dropped to the floor and was crawling back the way she’d come, nails scrabbling against the stone.

  The air around her was wrong. Not poisoned, or not that Zelen could smell above the blood in the hallway, but simply wrong. Maybe Branwyn could get out of it. He didn’t want to take that risk.

  Other risks were better.

  Chapter 39

  He lowered his blade and retreated, letting Gedomir’s next slash almost hit. “Please,” he said, taking another step backward. “Let her go. You can do what you want with me.”

  “It’s too late to repent,” said Gedomir, with a thrust that truly came close to Zelen’s ribs. “Your woman’s killed Hanyi. Was that your intent all along?”

  “No!” He’d thought that might happen, but hadn’t known it. “Please, Gedomir, I’ll say whatever you want. I’ll take back my oath, say I was mad—just let her go. I’m begging you.”

  Zelen took a deep breath, then dropped his sword and fell to one knee, an inch or two outside Gedomir’s range. The fallen guard stretched out beside him, complicating the terrain, but that wouldn’t stop Gedomir for long.

  His brother paused, but not out of mercy. He lifted his chin, the picture of righteous justice. “You can’t buy her life,” he said, “though you might have bought her an easier death than I’d planned. But you attacked your own brother. We won’t need you alive to show madness.”

  Gedomir stepped forward again and swung his sword down toward Zelen’s neck.

  It was a quick blow, with all Gedomir’s force behind it. It would’ve severed Zelen’s head, had he not already been rolling forward. The sword sliced a hot line of pain down the side of his back, but he kept going, tumbling inside of Gedomir’s range.

  On the way up, he stabbed. The guard’s knife, which Zelen had grabbed from its sheath just before launching himself forward, sank into Gedomir’s thigh. It wasn’t a vital spot, and the knife wasn’t particularly sharp or well made, but Zelen, like his brother, was using all of his strength. Gedomir dropped his composure, not to mention his sword, and howled.

  Beyond him, Branwyn drew her first real breath in too long. The dragging sound of it echoed through the hall, over Gedomir’s screams, and got Zelen’s heart beating again.

  He couldn’t pause to savor the victory. A knee to the groin seemed a good way to follow up the initial attack. Then, when Gedomir doubled over, his head was at the right height for Zelen to punch him in the temple.

  “You were onto something,” he said, shaking out his knuckles. “It’s worth a bit of pain.”

  Gedomir, lying on the floor by the guard, didn’t respond. His eyes were still open, and he tried to glare despite not being able to focus them.

  “I can dispatch him now,” Branwyn said. Her voice was back to gravelly hoarseness, but she was upright, holding her sword. “Or we can take him back to the city. The choice is yours.”

  “He’ll see the house disgraced before he faces the Dark Lady,” said Zelen. “That’s fitting. Only, if we leave him alive, will he be able to cast more spells on the way back?”

  “Not if we leave the knife where it is,” said Branwyn. With speed that was even more impressive given how recently she’d been struggling to breathe, she sliced the tunic from one of the fallen guards and twisted it into a rope. “Once Yathana comes back to us, she’ll be able to manage a longer-lasting, less awkward solution, but iron works in a pinch, and so does pain.”

  Zelen rolled his brother onto his back and pinned Gedomir’s arms behind him. It was far easier than he would have ever expected, even given the other man’s condition. As a child, he’d have looked on this moment with pure wonder that his hands didn’t blister, or that the earth didn’t open beneath his feet.

  It did tremble again. That didn’t stop Branwyn, who was winding the fabric tightly around Gedomir’s wrists.

  “She killed Hanyi,” said Gedomir. His speech was slurred, but the words came out clearly.

  “I did,” said Branwyn. She jerked the knot tight. “It was the best course of action at the time.”

  The body lay in the hallway, her white dress drowned in a pool of red. “Then,” Zelen said slowly, “I’m sure it was. We can talk about it later. Tanya?”

  “Upstairs. Hopefully she’s either made it out the window now or hasn’t tried at all.”

  “I’d bet she’s better at climbing than she’ll be with either of the horses. We’d—”

  The earth shook hard enough to send Zelen staggering, grabbing for the wall. He was glad that they’d tied Gedomir already, and looked back to his brother to make sure that the bonds still held.

  They did. But a smile was on Gedomir’s lips, one Zelen had long since learned to dislike.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I didn’t tell you hoping for proper remorse, Zelen. I’m long past hoping you’d act decently. Your woman killed Hanyi. Hanyi was a wizard, casting a spell, and the Sentinel killed her here.”

  “Oh, gods have mercy,” said Branwyn.

  “Why? They never have before. And the Deathmistress,” Gedomir spat the honorific like a curse, “isn’t the only one who knows vengeance.”

  The next quake hit, and with it came the roar of rending stone. Nothing fell in the hallway around Zelen, but still it took a minute to locate the center of the sound. The snarl that followed, equally as loud but clearly a voice—and clearly not a human one—did it for him.

  “There,” said Gedomir.

  It was his last word. His jaw split with the syllable, falling away into gray-orange fire. The flame had eaten away his face before either Zelen or Branwyn could act, and moved quickly to devour the rest of his frame.

  Even if water would have worked, Zelen had none. All he could do was bear witness as his brother became sickly radiance, all vestiges of human form melting away into a conflagration that never touched the rock.

  It streamed away, instead, into the room beyond.

  And the creature there snarled louder.

  * * *

  Branwyn hadn’t heard the roar before. She knew it meant nothing good and hastily turned to face the ritual chamber. A moment’s sight gave her the impression of a large room with niches cut in the walls. Skulls looked out of them in most cases. Three still had skin attached.

  The floor was crumbling in the center. Stones fell away into an expanding rift. As Branwyn watched, trying to figure out what the next step was, a hand the size of her chest reached out of the hole and grabbed onto the edge. She knew those spindly, many-knuckled fingers, studded with gray-orange eyes. Not long ago, she’d felt their grip.

  She’d almost thought they’d get out alive.

  Branwyn laughed while she charged into the room. It was a waste of air, tactically speaking, but she couldn’t stop. They’d come so close to getting away. She was only flesh, with Yathana still at least minutes away from consciousness and likely hours from full power. She faced a greater demon, one that had nearly killed her when she’d been in metal form.

  She whipped Yathana down and across. The sword sliced cleanly through three of the seven fingers, which twitched like dying worms while the demon’s blood painted glowing rime on the stones. The other four strained, but held. As Branwyn raised Yathana again, she saw another hand grip the rift’s edge.

  Zelen was there then, and stabbed with several quick, precise jabs into the eyes dotting the hand. The grip wavered. The demon roared. Nobody was there to keep i
t silent now, just as nobody was there to restrain it.

  Still it held on to the hole’s edge. The top of a head, hairless, gray, and lumpy, rose from the pit. It was larger now. Branwyn wasn’t sure that the room would hold it.

  As had been the case in the hallway, size wasn’t always an advantage.

  “Don’t look at its face,” she reminded Zelen.

  She struck again, rending the demon’s strange flesh. Glutinous blood oozed from the wound, but this time she’d hit closer to what passed for its wrist, and her strength didn’t suffice to take it off.

  “Back,” she said, trying to give the impression of fear.

  Zelen, bless him, didn’t argue. He retreated as she did, barely more than a shift in weight. Branwyn was coiling herself, tensing her muscles. If the demon had any reason or perception, it might assume it had the advantage.

  Or it might just see prey.

  Either way worked for her.

  She watched it rise from the abyss below Verengir. First came the vast tumorous expanse of forehead, then the half-circle of eyes, various sizes and all blazing with Gizath’s power. Below them, the wide triangular maw began to emerge.

  That was all she dared to look at. It was all she needed to see.

  And there was no point asking the gods to give her strength: they’d given her all they would when she’d been thirteen.

  Branwyn shut her eyes and sprang forward.

  The demon’s substance gave way before Yathana’s point. Backed by the full weight of Branwyn’s body, every sinew launched toward her goal, the sword sank hilt deep. Cold jelly brushed against Branwyn’s knuckles, and she heard, with great satisfaction, a gurgling scream.

  The demon started to fall.

  The force of Branwyn’s charge didn’t lend itself to reversal. She scrambled backwards, desperate to pull Yathana free before the vast weight on the other end of the blade could break her.

  She yanked, overbalanced, and teetered on the edge of the rift, sword free but feet unsteady, even her reflexes failing her at the end. Gulfs yawned below her. Branwyn knew that they weren’t empty. She knew that she was going to fall.