“Alowan—The Terafin—” Arrendas began.
But the old healer finally released the young girl’s hand. He stepped gently but firmly between Jewel, with her pointed dagger, and the young Chosen, and he pushed them—again, gently and firmly—to either side. They went.
He knelt by The Terafin’s side, and the Chosen drew breath, holding it. Waiting his judgment. The beast in the hall did not wait; it roared. The Chosen dropped hands to weapons, turning; Alowan didn’t appear to notice.
“Let’s move her,” the woman that Jewel had allowed through said.
Alowan, eyes shut, said quietly, “She cannot be moved. Do not interrupt me. Do not allow anything to separate us.”
The gods, Morretz thought, knew a strange, rough mercy. The Chosen drew swords and turned, united again in purpose, to face the last of the threats that the foyer held: the great beast.
All but two.
Arrendas ATerafin stood by Torvan’s side. They had entered the House Guard at almost the same time, decades past; they had seen so many of the same battles, the same political squabbles, and they had survived the bloody contest that had been the House succession.
“Go to the north,” Arrendas told Torvan. “You’re injured. You can’t fight here.”
It was true. Torvan made no attempt to staunch the flow of blood from the wound Jewel Markess had made in his shoulder. But his pallor was not entirely due to blood loss.
“I cannot leave. If not for me—” Torvan bent, closing his eyes for a moment as he awkwardly approached the floor. But he forced them open, forced them to see clearly, and retrieved the sword he had flung away in the first shock of despair and horror.
The creature—the demon—that had ridden him had allowed him that much freedom. Pain. Despair. He raised his head and looked at the great beast. The demon had feared it. Torvan understood why; it was death. He didn’t think he would ever fear death again.
The Hunter Lord—Lord Gilliam—somehow held the beast at bay, his dogs worrying its flank, the naked, wild girl growling as if she were one of them. But Stephen? He held, for a moment, the arms of the blue-robed woman, and he was as white as Torvan himself.
“Arrendas,” Torvan said quietly.
Arrendas understood instantly what Torvan asked. Nor did he dissemble; it was one of the things they had in common. “I won’t do it. I’ll ready my weapon for battle, but not murder.”
“Is it murder?” he said quietly. But he turned, then, and he met the wide-eyed gaze of Jewel Markess, who still knelt on the floor to one side of The Terafin. She was—almost—weeping; her eyes held tears at bay, but they could be seen. Her wound grazed his shoulder. A little lower, a little higher, and it would be over.
“You should have—” but he could not say it, not even now—not to her. He turned away. Turned back to Arrendas, who understood, in a way that was beyond Jewel, what had happened and what must follow. “We swore our oaths, Arrendas ATerafin. We are the Chosen. We pay the penalty for dishonoring her choice.”
But Arrendas would not be moved, and his reply was colored by heat that could have been anger, had there not been some hint of desperation in it.
“And she decides whether or not that penalty is to be paid.”
And will you spare our lord nothing? But he did not say it. Could not; it implied a weakness in The Terafin that he would not bring to light.
“It is not up to you—or me—to decide that for her.”
If not us, Torvan thought, his own anger rising from the seeds of despair, then who? We’re the Chosen. We choose. But he turned to look at the woman to whom he’d sworn his life, and the words would not come.
He turned away abruptly, seeing for a moment the fall of a sword he could not prevent, and he headed toward the front of the line; Arrendas, in a silence that was in its own way as angry, followed.
But they left off anger, they left off despair, and even thought, when the beast roared and charged, and the line of the Chosen broke.
We failed. And then: I failed again.
But she’d tried—that had to count for something. Maybe it would. Maybe it would, later, if there was one. She tried not to cry because crying was for children. She wasn’t a child now. She was Jewel Markess, and she was the den leader.
If The Terafin survived, it wouldn’t be because of Jewel or her den. It wouldn’t be because they’d planned, they’d chosen a course of action, and they’d followed it. It had amounted to nothing.
Not nothing, she thought, and she looked at Torvan’s back. But he faced the beast. And he wanted to die. Whatever she’d done for him, he didn’t consider it a mercy.
Jewel sat by Alowan’s side. Sat surrounded by the silence of her den. Even had they talked—and they didn’t so much as lift hand, never mind voice—she wouldn’t have heard them. All she could hear was the roar of the beast. The roar of a maddened god.
She didn’t know how she knew it was a god, but she usually didn’t; she accepted the knowledge as if it were fact. Because it was. Somehow, this beast was the Hunter God, and it was wild. It was death.
The Hunter’s Death.
She couldn’t speak. She didn’t make a sound when the wild girl stopped in front of the beast’s massive, slavering jaws and roared at it. Her voice was high, human, framed by fury and desperation; it contained nothing as simple as words. She glistened with sweat; her matted, lank hair flew around her face as she shook her head, snarling, the flat of normal, human teeth exposed.
Almost, he paused, this god, this creature. His eyes seemed to see the girl, and her voice seemed to touch him. He hesitated, lowering his head, and Jewel heard the intake of a dozen breaths—but hers wasn’t one of them.
She knew that the creature would not kill the girl.
And she knew that no such compunction would stop it from doing what it did next: It leaped over both her and the Hunter Lord who had approached his death with such grim determination, and it crashed into the line of the Chosen, breaking it.
She flinched, closing her eyes, lifting her hands to her ears, as it found its first victim among those who defended the ground upon which their lord now lay. The fact that Jewel was right beside her signified nothing to either the Chosen or the god. Jewel, and her den, would never be that important.
But they could die just as if they were. The struggles of those who wielded power often crushed, first, those without any.
Her gaze was drawn to one of the Hunters. Not the dark-haired, angry one who seemed to command the dogs as if he could speak their language, and who even now was turning toward the back of the hungry god, but the other, the blond, the man who was polite, diffident, and adept with words. The man who had offered The Terafin her due and had demanded, in silence, that Lord Gilliam at least attempt to do the same.
He was white. He stood, horn in hand, watching, and he trembled. Jewel, who had lived with fear for most of her life, knew the feel and the taste of it. She’d daydreamed for most of that life of becoming so powerful that she never need to feel fear again. It had been a child’s dream, a fool’s dream.
The most powerful woman she had ever met lay near death beneath the hands of a healer. The most powerful man she had ever met fought a demon as if the foyer in the distance existed in an entirely different world.
The beast snarled and roared, and a higher snarl joined his in counterpoint; the wild girl, pale hair flying, had leaped somehow among the Chosen upon whom he was attempting to feed. Her throat shouldn’t have been able to make a sound so loud and so furious—but this time, the beast noticed her, and when he leaped, he didn’t leap to avoid her.
His jaws clipped her forearm, and even as the wild girl pulled back, Jewel could see that her arm was red—red and white. She staggered, but she made no sound.
Lord Gilliam did, as if he could somehow feel her pain. He moved, then, and moved quickly, wielding a long, heavy spear, with a very odd head. He jabbed the beast once with it, twice, and the beast deigned to notice the irritant; he turned the who
le of his body from the girl—from the Chosen—and at last faced the only man who had raised weapon against him and drawn any blood at all.
“Stephen!” Lord Gilliam cried. “Take them to safety, now!”
She felt Stephen’s fear ebb, shift, change, but it was still in Stephen, still governing his pallor. He moved to obey—no surprise, Jewel would have—grabbing two dogs, and nudging the wild girl to the north, behind the line of the Chosen assembled to protect their lord.
The Chosen themselves re-formed, men stepping into positions their comrades had occupied scant minutes before.
Stephen took a few steps, looking to the wild girl, the dogs. Jewel thought, Jewel knew, that this was somehow wrong. She couldn’t breathe. She felt fear—her own, his, it didn’t matter—and with that fear, a certainty that Stephen himself did not possess.
And then, face still pale, breath still shallow, Stephen of Elseth turned. She caught a glimpse of his face as he did; he didn’t seem to see her, or The Terafin, or Alowan. He didn’t see the Chosen who stood between him and Lord Gilliam. He saw the beast, and he flinched, but he held his ground.
“Evayne,” he said, his voice unsteady.
She turned to him, her expression anxious, her violet eyes almost dark. “What?”
“Take care of them.”
“What?”
“Take care of Gilliam and Espere and his stupid dogs.”
The robes Evayne wore shifted at her feet, twisting round her legs, as if they were part of her, part of what she felt. As if, Jewel thought, almost numb, they could feel what Jewel herself could feel.
“Promise it,” Stephen said. His voice did not rise. It did not grow steadier. The fear ate him, ate away at his ability to stand his ground. Jewel thought he would stop. She thought he would turn and flee, for she was absolutely certain she would have. “Promise it. Promise that you’ll watch them no matter what age you travel in.”
“But I—”
“Promise it.”
Jewel didn’t know him, but she understood that part of his fear. It was what she herself would have asked, although she would have used different names; the force of the desire for the safety of the people that she loved had guided her for most of her conscious life.
And it had led her to darkness, to loss, to death.
But it had never yet led to her own death. She started to rise, and her legs locked beneath her, her body denying her impulse to reach out, to touch Stephen of Elseth.
“I—I promise, Stephen. But—”
“Swear it by Bredan,” he said, his voice lower now, although it was not notably steadier. “Swear it in his name.”
“I—” Evayne hesitated, as if that name meant something to her. “I so swear. But—”
And Jewel knew. Knew what he would do. Even Evayne didn’t seem to understand it. Or perhaps she was unwilling to do so; there was something about the way she sought Stephen’s side that implied much. Had she known, she could have touched him; had she known, she could have grabbed his arm, or his tunic, or even his hair, which flew past in a golden blur.
But she stood, mouth half open, as he turned and ran. He ran fast. Almost as fast as Lord Gilliam had.
He didn’t run to the north, to safety.
He didn’t run toward Lord Gilliam, who had taken small wounds and who had offered them, but who had not—yet—fallen to the beast’s great jaws. No, he ran into the shadowed wreckage to the south.
He stopped there, winded, his back against a partly crumbled wall. Jewel could see his face—even at this distance, although he stood beneath no magelights. She could see that he held the plain, bone horn in a shaking hand, and could see the way he lifted it to his lips. He drew a shallow breath.
She knew nothing about him, nothing at all. Nothing about his childhood, or his life, or the lands he had come from. But she didn’t need to know any of that; she could see the way fear warred with determination and shame, and her breath caught when he lifted the horn again and sounded the first note. It was followed by another, both long; they were quiet and shaky. But the next two, two short notes were louder. Two long notes followed.
Jewel thought he would fail, then. Knew that somehow, if the horn stopped there, he would fail. She held her breath as he drew his.
He blew three notes.
She would remember the notes—all nine—for as long as she lived. And she would live, now.
As she knew it would, the great beast faltered, turning from Lord Gilliam and his spear as if they were no longer necessary, no longer of value. He raised his head, testing the air as if a breeze had followed the last of the dying notes, and then he turned toward the shadows, which held nothing now but corpses and Stephen of Elseth.
It was not the corpses he sought.
He sprang away from Lord Gilliam with a speed and a suppleness that his size and his weight should have made impossible, and he landed, cracking stone.
Lord Stephen didn’t raise a weapon; he had no spear. He dropped the horn, and he met the gaze of the beast; he spoke no words at all. Made no plea. But he had time for none; perhaps, in their fashion, wild and savage gods could also be merciful.
He did scream, once.
Lord Gilliam of Elseth’s answering scream was louder, longer. No new wounds suddenly erupted across his flesh; no shadow, no mage fire, and no lightning struck him. But had they, he would have made no sound.
His voice broke, and the scream trailed into something like animal keening; his dogs howled, and the wild girl, arm still bleeding, began to howl as well. Lord Gilliam staggered, dropped his spear, fell to one knee. The Chosen closed around him, their swords and shields facing out, toward the beast.
But the beast was done, Jewel knew, with killing. What was left?
Feeding.
Chapter Eleven
JEWEL’S KNEES LOCKED. She wasn’t sure when she’d gained her feet, but all around her, her den was also standing. They waited, in loose formation, around Alowan, whose hands hadn’t left The Terafin’s face.
Jewel didn’t want to watch the god feed, but she couldn’t look away. And because she couldn’t, she saw the glimmering of the magic that would transform the beast. Light, brief and brilliant, seemed to strike it—but the light came from within, sharp and harsh. It radiated outward, and as it did, it pulled at fur, at scale, at fang and claw, as if all of these things were no longer solid. But it pulled them in, as if light could devour.
As it did, the form of the beast, already shifting and pulsing, began to fall in on itself, the long tail shrinking and dwindling, the shoulders shedding armor, fur, and height. Even the massive head rose up from the ground, as if lifted, and began to condense.
Stephen had done this, somehow.
Jewel knew it, watching; the Chosen knew it as well. They saluted him, in ones and twos, their faces—where they could be seen at all beneath their helms—pale.
The foyer was utterly silent. Jewel glanced at the end of the hall that had once contained Sor Na Shannen and Meralonne; they were gone. Whether they were dead or not, she couldn’t tell; she doubted it. But her certainty had deserted her, as it so often did. She felt tired.
Tired enough that she spoke no word to her den, not even in den-sign; she didn’t tell them to move, to leave, or to hide. She watched as the beast became, at last, something that could be called a god.
He was not, in appearance, human. His eyes were like gold, but brighter, warmer, as he turned away from Stephen’s savaged corpse. There was no blood on his lips, no blood on his hands. There was, however, blood upon the antlers that rose from his forehead toward a ceiling that no longer held a chandelier.
He wore robes, but the color was hard to define; it was all colors, and no color, and it hung in loose folds from his shoulders and his arms, trailing over the upturned faces of the dead like a benison as he walked. He glanced at the living—Chosen, wild girl, healer-born, den. But he spoke to none of them; the lone Hunter Lord in the hall drew the brunt of his attention.
“Hunter,” the god said.
Jewel had never heard a god speak. His voice wasn’t a single voice; it was a multitude of voices, perfectly timed. Young, old, male, female, it shook the air, although it wasn’t loud. “Hunter.”
There was majesty in the single word, and in the voice, that both contained and demanded respect. Respect came in many forms. The Chosen stiffened. The den? Carver fell to his knees; Angel dropped to one, struggling. Finch, Teller, and Jester fell to the ground as well, but not to bow, not to offer respect; they sought shelter behind the mailed legs of the Chosen who still stood between their lord and the god.
Only Jewel remained on her feet, drawing her arms tight around her chest.
But if he noticed, this antlered god, he said nothing, did nothing. He didn’t lift his gaze from Lord Gilliam’s face. The wild girl stood to one side of Lord Gilliam. She didn’t growl, didn’t speak, and would not leave him as he stepped forward.
He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even angry, not yet—although Jewel thought it would come. But his face was wet, and if he wept silently, he still wept. He wasn’t afraid of tears. He wasn’t, Jewel thought, afraid of anything anymore.
The god watched Lord Gilliam for a long moment, and then he lifted his hands, in two fists, skyward, as if there were something in his grip and he had just pulled it, hard.
She felt the mists before she saw them, and she knew that everyone else could see what she saw; she could hear the intake of their breath. But they watched and waited while those mists rose up, until at last they enclosed the wild girl, the woman in midnight robes, and Lord Gilliam.
Only then did she breathe.
Meralonne APhaniel came from the north. He wasn’t wounded, but he wasn’t happy, and the light that had limned his face was guttered. He looked weary. He approached the Chosen, and they lowered their swords to allow him to pass.
“The demon?” Morretz asked, for The Terafin, lying beneath Alowan’s hands, could not.
“She is gone,” he replied, with a bitter twist of lips. “But not, alas, destroyed. And I am without my pipe.”
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