by Ronie Kendig
Tili jerked. “What has she to do with anything?”
“You were seen kissing her.”
“Blazes,” Tili hissed. Then he shook his head, lifting a palm. “The threat—that is where yer focus must be.”
“Why?”
“Because!” Tili closed his eyes and lowered his chin, hand fisting. “The vision with Thiel, as I said”—his words were tight, controlled, edged in steel—“may not be real. May have been planted in yer mind. If it is a legitimate concern, Thiel is strong and smart. She needed not yer anger, nor yer lopsided wielding to protect her the years she journeyed to find herself. Give her credit. Trust her.” He nodded to the field. “Train yer mind, Fierian, on the true battle—the one before ye, smiting the Dark One. Until ye can deliver us from this wickedness.”
“The danger is real if she was with him. And it didn’t look . . . contrived.”
“And ye know the difference between contrived and real thoughts? Is that why ye so quickly escaped the Infantessa?” Tili used sarcasm the way some used a blade. Cut right to the heart of the matter. “We, all of us, are in danger, Fierian.” He huffed. “But Thiel would not give herself to that savage willingly.”
“Exactly!”
“Ye suggest he would ravish her.”
“Aye!”
Tili scratched his jaw, then planted his hands on his hips. There had been a day not too far gone when he had towered over Haegan and seemed twice as big and strong. Now, they stood on even planes in height and breadth. Tili’s cheek twitched as he stared at the convocation. “Though it pains me to say, ye cannot go after her.”
The itch to send Chima was real, but Haegan knew raqine were not to be ordered about like beasts of burden.
“I know yer thoughts, Thinblood.”
Haegan stilled at the words. “Everyone seems to know my thoughts but me.” He huffed. “How is it I can summon giants and raqine and even battle Poired—”
“And fail.”
“—but I cannot save the woman I love?”
“Love, is it?” Tili balked.
“I go,” came a voice like thunder and rain.
Haegan shifted, finding a large shadow blotting out the campfires. He stepped back to look up into the timeless, somber face of a Drigo. Not in his vudd state, he was different, but the eyes, the tenor of his voice remained true. “Thelikor.” His heart skipped a couple of beats—one for the sight of the overgrown man, one for the thought of sending help to Thiel. “I could not ask it of you.”
A trilling breath rushed over Haegan’s face. “Fierian not ask. I say go.” He gave a hefty nod as if it were done.
“We need the Drigo,” Tili argued, but not too ardently.
“The danger is great if you leave us and if you are alone in the scorched lands. If—”
A growl silenced his words. And the shadowed darkness around them grew. Or was the Drigo growing?
“I’m not sure I’d keep arguing,” Tili said and started back to his tent. “Unless ye like sipping yer meals through a straw.”
Aye, Thelikor was growing. As if need alone fueled. Nay, the Fierian’s will. Should he release the giant? Allow him to find Thiel? A new grief tugged at Haegan. “I know not where she is.”
“I go.” Thelikor’s chest rattled—a sigh, it seemed. He then pushed to his full height and started walking south.
Just like that. Haegan marveled that the Drigo made a decision and set out immediately to put it into action. But he had the power of Abiassa and superhuman strength to succeed.
I have both Abiassa’s power and other-than-human giftings. Why then do I keep failing?
• • •
Coarse and thick, something dragged across his face. He could feel it through the layers of the mask.
Mask?
As consciousness struggled through his body, Aselan attempted to open his eyes. The pressure to his face persisted. He blinked. Blinding light stabbed his eyes. He groaned and fought to lift his head. Where am I?
A blast of hot, steamy breath washed over his nose.
Through narrow slits he peered out, blinking rapidly against the accursed brightness. As he pushed up, pain tore through him all at once. He collapsed, feeling the cold sting of the snow he lay upon. Panic rushed through him. Why am I here?
Something tugged at his shoulder with a growl. Duamauri. The shearing of fabric reached his ears. Another growl as powerful jaws pinched for hold once more. Aselan tensed, knowing he should feel pain but there was none.
Awareness flared as a furry white snout nudged his cheek. Sikir. The other pulled him onto his back. The move was torture, his limbs numb. Red stained the snow around him.
The hounds. His icehounds were here. Why were they not with—
“Kae!” Aselan surged, but fiery shards sliced his limbs. “Augh!” He threw himself back, only then feeling the strange, swollen weight of a broken arm. Cradling it did naught but stoke more pain. He hooked his hand to his shoulder, which provided a mediocre measure of relief. But what was that compared to the rampant pain searing his heart?
Sikir drew close again, her breath hot. She swiped at his face. Though he felt only pressure, he knew she licked him. With a trembling hand and great effort, he reached for her. Weakness, frostbite, wounds refused his attempt to find his feet. Nay, even to lift himself to a sitting position.
I must. I must find Kaelyria.
He strained forward, only to have the edges of his vision ghost. He dropped back, snow padding his fall.
Jagged pain exploded through his ankle. He felt warmth. But he should feel naught. He glanced down the length of his body and saw Duamauri take hold of his leg. It was not an attack. His hounds were doing what they knew to do—protecting him. He was one of their pack. But when his hound gave the first tug, a rush of black, violent and torturous, crashed over him.
• • •
Drip. Drip. Splat! Drip.
Clawing free, Aselan caught a tentative grip on consciousness. It’d winked in and out as Duamauri hauled him across the Tooth. Darkness, a greedy master, seized his vision and held it hostage. Surprising warmth cradled him in a soggy embrace. Something spat in his face. He flinched away, pulling himself erect. But pain coiled through his body, tensing like a viper ready to strike, and he slumped once more to the ground.
Panting came from his left and right, and only then did Aselan realized his hounds had packed him between their warmth. Relief and gratefulness coddled him. How long had he lay unconscious? Hours? Days?
Ye have to get up.
With a groan, he angled to the side, propping himself. Darkness still reigned. Aselan planted his gloved hands and hauled his aching body upright. Only as he took his full weight did he remember his injured arm. “Augh!” He dropped again to the frozen earth.
Hissing, he drew his hands close. Winter had bitten him cruelly. He knew better than to remove his gloves, but he ached to do so. To blow on them, but that would not help. It was too cold. His body too injured.
The priority was to determine where the hounds had hidden him. He strained to see. He had the sense of being closed in. Ahead. The hounds would face a possible threat. So . . . ahead must be his option. He felt along a furry spine, unsure which hound this was, and determined the entrance must be in the same direction his feet pointed. He squinted around a swollen shut left eye, part of the problem, but he detected a pinprick of light in the distance. He grunted. Though his aching limbs demanded rest, to do so would mean death.
Reaching out, he stretched and found a wall. Cold. Hard. A cave then. Using it for support, Aselan struggled to his feet. He groaned, each movement torture, but staggered forward, using the wall as a very awkward crutch.
Duamauri and Sikir were on their feet, ready.
Pain scorched as he forced his way toward the ever-widening circle of light, which fueled his determination. Drew him heedless of what his body screamed. By the time he reached the mouth of the cave, he once more cradled his throbbing arm to his chest. He stepped
out and released an exhausted, relieved breath. His gaze locked on the sight in the distance. The last place he wanted to seek help, shelter, healing.
Nivar Hold.
Just beyond the cave mouth, he paused long enough to grab a thick limb and use it for support. A sight he would be for the family. He knew he was a fright—beard mottled with blood and ice. His eye swollen shut. Clothes filthy, wet, and torn. On top of the broken leg that had barely begun to heal, he had a frostbitten leg and now a wrenched arm. He limped through the thick pines that skirted Nivar Hold. As he gained the edge of the trees, he slumped against a trunk to rest, eyeing the high walls surrounding the hold. It was not a great distance, but enough for him to worry about making it.
Kaelyria. They took her. He must make his way.
He started forward, lumbering, the hounds at his sides. A dozen paces, already having to talk himself into each step, to lift the leg. Plant the foot. The staff cracked. He stiffened seconds before it snapped in half. Aselan flopped into a bed of snow.
Hooves thundered closer . . . closer. Alarm speared him. Hiel-touck! How had they found him so fast, the enemy constantly nipping at his heels? Out of nowhere. Disoriented by the pain and the trauma, he hadn’t heard or seen the riders closing in. His hounds came alert, growling.
But when he saw the cloaks, Aselan sagged in relief. Nivari.
“Name yerself. What are ye doing on Ybiennese land?” barked one.
After pushing onto all fours, he brought up a knee, wobbling. “To see the king,” he growled, his swollen lip muddling his words. Waves of nausea and gray swept him. He swayed, but jerked himself upright. Grabbed the tree.
“Not like that—”
“Stand down!” came a familiar bark. “Lower yer weapons!” A great black horse barreled into the group. The thick, muscular bulk of the king dropped to the ground with a quiet thud. Cheeks red and face wrought, his father stalked forward, lips set in a grim line amid his beard.
Aselan set eyes on his father, saw him hesitate a yard from him. “Father. I beg yer mercy . . .” His lids drooped. “I . . . I need . . .” Could he remain on his feet much longer?
“Assist me,” the king barked to the men. “Get him to the hold. Aburas, go for the pharmakeia.” An icy storm blazed through his father’s brown eyes as his gaze traced Aselan, and he closed the last few feet. “What in blazes happened?”
Surprise and relief warred. “The Sirdarians,” he managed. “Incipients—on the . . . Tooth.”
“Aye, we’ve just returned from an encounter.” His father’s gaze rose in the direction of the Heart. “They hit ye?”
Aselan gave a weary nod, feeling the world whirl and tilt. “They . . .” Everything spun. Upended. The blur of his father’s rich fur cloak rushed at him. Caught Aselan, who thudded into his father’s shoulder. “Mercy . . .” The edges of his vision drew shut.
“Naudus, help him onto my horse,” his father said. “We’ve got to get him to the hold.”
Aselan gripped his father’s pelt cloak, caring not of the pain in his fingers. The pain in his heart was much greater. “They took her.” Anguish squirmed violently through his chest. “They took her!”
“All right, son.” He set his grim face on one of the men. “Naudus, on three. Watch his leg and that arm. One . . . two . . . three.” Hands shoved and pulled, and Aselan cried out as his bad arm wedged against the saddle.
He drifted in and out as the horse carried him the distance to the hold. After they passed under the gates, a half-dozen men lurched into action, lifting Aselan from the ground and ferrying him through the stable yard and into the side entrance of the house. The door he had passed through every day as a boy. Chased Tili. And even a toddling Thiel. As the day folded shut on him again, he fought to stay coherent. But he floated . . .
• • •
“Elan,” came a voice from a dark chasm.
He shifted and blinked, light flashing across his eyes with ferocity.
“That’s it, m’boy. Wake. We must talk.”
He knew that voice. Loved it as a child, the rumbling of it. The deepness. “Father.”
“Aye. Look at me, boy.”
Aselan blinked again. Cleared his vision and swung his gaze around until it rested on the broad shoulders of the man towering over his bedside in his old room. It would do no good to remain here. He must get on his way. Borrow a horse. Beg for provisions. Set out. Track down the vile men who stole Kae.
The thought of her in their hands, after watching the way they’d incinerated the girl—
Aselan hoisted himself up. Pain exploded, blinding and agonizing.
“Easy,” his father said, a hand weighting Aselan’s shoulder. “Don’t be so stubborn. Pharmakeia says ye broke a few ribs. Rest.”
“They have her—” Pain chomped into his side. He clamped a hand over his ribs and dropped against the mattress, biting back an epithet.
“Breathe through it,” his father coaxed, hand extended. Warmth radiated from his fingertips, sailing across the gap between them and heating the tissue around the injury.
Surprise spiraled through Aselan, glancing at the Flames roiling from his father’s hand. “’Tis true,” he croaked in amazement, easing back slightly. “Ye can wield.”
“The heat will do naught but ease the sting of pain. I am no Drigo or pharmakeia, but it should help a little.” His father lowered himself into a nearby chair.
“He’s better than the other one,” a burly voice spoke.
His father grunted.
Aselan forced himself to search out the other person and spied Aburas hovering to the side. His uniform crisp and clean, but his flesh swollen with fresh cuts and bruises.
“What other?” Aselan asked.
“Tell me of the attack,” his father insisted.
Disconcerted when his father did not answer, Aselan hesitated, but surrendered the fight. Closed his eyes again, relaxing against the pillows. “I was on Pharen. We went out to confront the Rekken. There . . . there were too many. They had incipients.”
“Aye, we faced the same. Drove them back, but not for long. They have reinforcements,” his father said. “My sentries found your men in a ravine. Most were dead. A few were not.”
A few. Grief wracked him, unable to fathom the loss. “By the Lady . . .” Swiping a hand over his beard, Aselan could only imagine what they’d do to Kaelyria.
“Aburas was witness to the attack from a ridge. Too far to be of help, but close enough to see what happened.” His father’s expression went grave. “They wanted none of the Legiera or the people. They only wanted her.”
Stilled at that pronouncement, Aselan gritted his teeth. “So they did take her.”
“Aye,” Aburas said. “There was an incipient I’ve never seen before. He and a handful routed the girl and then left.”
“The Eilidan?”
“Those not killed we brought here,” Thurig said. “They’re in stables and barns for now.”
Aselan looked at the man who had ruled a kingdom with resolute confidence and resolve. If Relig knew he had taken Kae as bound, then surely his father knew as well. But he gave no indication either way. And that somehow angered him.
He would not believe his father did not know. This was a power play. Just as it had been during Aselan’s youth, when his father forced him into confession.
“Ye took Zireli’s daughter, the heir to the Fire Throne.”
So no entrapment. Just bald truth. Apparently, he was not the only one who had changed. “Nay,” Aselan said around a laugh. “Forget ye how things be in the Heart? She took me. Chose my dagger from the table. Came to me. And Kaelyria is no longer the heir.”
“Yer a fool if ye believe that, Elan.”
“She relinquished all rights to her brother. Kae has no gifts—her wielding is gone.” There was no time for games, for explanations. She was out there, with those brigands. He again worked to peel himself off the bed, fighting the pain. “I must—” Agony choked the words from his li
ps.
“Will ye rest, ye thickheaded—”
“I won’t rest.” He pushed to a sitting position. “Not while they have her. I won’t lose her.”
“Ye may have already—”
“No!” Aselan’s bark rattled his skull. He groaned and braced his temple. “I won’t accept that. If Aburas is right and they took her, then they had a purpose. It means they didn’t want her dead.” He frowned at his father, shaking his head. “I must believe that means she is alive still.”
His father grunted, nodding and pursing his lips beneath his thick, bushy beard. “Now that I have the full of it, I’m inclined to agree that she may yet live. But why? Why take her?”
Aselan sighed, propped on the edge of the bed. “I know not. She has no ability to wield. She can do no harm or good.”
Something flicked through his father’s ruddy complexion.
“What are ye thinking?”
His father, the mighty Thurig the Formidable, heaved a great sigh. “She can do them great harm or great good.”
“She can’t wield!”
“Aye, but her brother can.”
31
Twisting the reins of his mount did nothing to ease the tension roiling through Haegan as he stared at the fortress roughly a half league from the knoll he waited upon with Graem. Between them and the outlying village flooded in another two hundred people.
“Are they mad?” Haegan muttered, shaking his head as he watched a mother and three children scurry across the road to the rear, taking shelter between the Pathfinders.
“Mad? They have hope for the first time in ages,” Graem said.
“What hope?”
“You. The army.”
Haegan sighed. “Do they not realize the worst is yet to come? Any with me are square in the path of this storm.”
“Some may come to hide, but many are here to fight. They are tired of being carpets for the Sirdarians to walk upon.”
Haegan pushed his gaze again to the fortress in the distance. Something in him swelled as he considered what was left of the flanking towers and curtain wall of Ironhall. ’Twas not made of mud and plaster but hewn from ironstone, the hardest rock and similar to the steel used for Tahscan blades. Builders used the same for Fieri Keep by the Lakes of Fire. And yet, the keep had taken hard hits.