by Rachel Lee
Cilla extended a hand to Maluzza, clasping his firmly. “If that be the final glory of our armies—that our great peoples may live in peace—then it is glory indeed. But if you will excuse me and my sisters, Emperor, we must now retire together to our tent and focus on Lady Tess. As we speak, she is nearing the time of greatest need. They are at the gates of Arderon.”
“He was always a great builder,” Archer said as they knelt in the tree line and looked at the fortress city.
It lay on a broad plateau, partway up the side of a steep mountain, shimmering black in the moonlight. And while it had been built as a fortress, there remained a subtle beauty in its crenellated walls and the soaring spires within. Where Anahar sang of the beauty of stone, and Bozandar boldly whispered its wealth, Arderon brooded in silence. If there were within its walls people busying themselves with the ordinary tasks of life, tucking their children into bed and finishing the last bites of cooling dinners before banking their fires for the night, there was no outward sign of it.
But neither did it have the look of a city abandoned. Far from it. Along the tops of the walls, soldiers stood, wrapped in cloaks, shivering against the nighttime chill, eyes darting as if they had been alerted. Which, Archer reasoned, they probably had. His brother was doubtless as aware of Archer’s presence as Archer was of his. They had always shared that connection of knowing when the other was near, even when they could not see each other.
“He knows we’re here,” Archer said.
“Aye,” Tess said. “But strangely, for the first time since this began, he is not reaching out to me.”
“He has no need to,” Archer said. “He knows we will come to him, and that is what he has wanted.”
“His Ilduin is weakening,” Tess said, sadness on her face. “I am not sure if we can save her.”
He studied her eyes, and saw the hollow hope deep within them. “Tess, we cannot look for her. Once we are within those gates, my brother will be our focus.”
She nodded, blinking away tears. “Aye. But you were not in the chambers of Lantav Glassidor. You did not see how your brother had desiccated Sara’s mother. The shell of a woman who had once shone with the love of a wife and mother. The woman he holds in thrall there now is surely no different.”
“Tess—” he began, but she pressed on undeterred.
“You fight an old evil, Archer. Whatever past I have is mostly lost to me. I fight a battle in the present, a battle for the souls of my sisters. You have your personal reasons for walking through those gates tomorrow. Do not doubt that I have mine as well.”
He had not realized the depth of her anger until that moment. Somehow, he had gone from distrust to an uneasy truce, then to admiration and finally to loving her, and all without knowing the wellspring that had driven her through all of the hardships they had faced.
“You were a good soldier,” he said quietly.
“Aye,” she said. “That much I remember. Perhaps that is why I respect the Anari so deeply.”
The comment seemed out of place, and he studied her, arching a brow.
“We were not supposed to fight,” Tess said. “Women. In the world I came from, in the army I served. We were not frontline soldiers.”
“But it did not work thus,” Archer offered. She had found another memory, that much he could see, and he sought some way to coax her into letting it find words.
“I was a medic,” she said. “A healer in this world, though there was no magick in what I did. In that world, such things were not known.”
He nodded. A world without magick? Had the gods been so cruel as to create a world without such a light? Yet he knew Tess would not lie. “How did you heal, then?”
“We had medicines that would relieve pain or stifle the spread of infection. We had bandages and tourniquets, but much different from what we use here. Our doctors could replace a man’s blood, or even his heart itself. We could rebuild a shattered knee or hip, or give a man a new arm or leg.”
“And you claim you had no magick?” he asked.
“It must seem like magick to you,” Tess said. “But we called it science. It was sterile and precise and answered to the language of numbers.”
Archer shook his head. “I cannot imagine it.”
“And perhaps that is better,” she said. “For we had weapons that would make your heart quail with fear. They, too, were science and answered to the language of numbers. They could tear a man to pieces in a single blinding flash of fire and flying metal, leaving nothing but his boots on the ground and a pink mist settling out of the smoke. We imprinted our names on metal tags, for too often there was nothing else left by which to identify the dead.”
“You saw this,” he said. It was not a question, for there was no doubt in the look on her face. She had lived in a world more horrific than he could imagine.
“I was not supposed to fight,” she said. “I was to tend to the wounded, save those lives I could. We saved many, but we could not save them all. We treated friend and foe alike, for the wounded have no flag save that of life itself. And that was how they came into our aid station that night.”
He sat, silent, watching her eyes, listening to her breath, waiting for her to continue.
“Children,” Tess said. “They brought children. Boys and girls torn open by our bombs. I…we…did not pause to question their motives. The children needed care, and care we began to give. One of our doctors reached into the belly of a wounded child, and that is when the grenade—the bomb—exploded. It tore the doctor’s arm away. I had bent to pick up something from the floor, and the blast went over my head. Parts of the child, the child whose life I had just been trying to save, fell on me like rain.”
“Tess,” he said, reaching out to squeeze her hand, but she withdrew it and shook her head.
“Five of the adults who had brought the children in drew weapons from beneath their robes and began killing. One of our own wounded had come in with his weapon, and it was on the floor beneath the stretcher. I picked it up. I heard nothing. I felt nothing. I squeezed the trigger and watched the red splotches appear on their chests, watched them twitch and fall to the ground. My weapon held thirty rounds and was set for three-round bursts. I fired exactly as I had been trained. I did not miss. When they were all down, I went around the tent and put another bullet into each of them, right through their heads.”
He did not understand the details of her weapons, but he did not need to. The truth of what she had done was not in her words, but in her eyes. Eyes that were more haunted than he had ever seen.
“The other children also had bombs inside them,” Tess said. “Our sentries had heard the gunfire and they called for our bomb disposal teams to disarm the bombs. They sent us out of the tent, bringing those of our wounded that we could move. The man whose weapon I held, we could not move him. He died before we could get back in to treat him. My commander said more of us would have died had I not reacted so quickly. He said he would recommend me for an award. I never received it.”
“Why?” Archer asked.
“Because that night, I awoke in the caravan outside of Whitewater.” She fixed her eyes on his. “Yes, I was a good soldier. I survived on instinct. I killed as I was trained to kill. I saw death. I dealt it. But never did I—never could I—torment someone as Lantar Glassidor tortured Sara’s mother, as your brother surely tortures his captive Ilduin even now. A soldier lives in darkness. Your brother creates that darkness. Do not question my resolve, Archer Blackcloak. You must settle your accounts with Ardred. And I must settle mine. I have been at war for too long to stop now.”
He drew her into his arms. “It will end tomorrow, Tess. I promise.”
He wished he could promise that it would end well.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The dawn came with a cold cruelty, light without heat, the light itself flat and comfortless, stripping the air of depth and almost of color itself. When Tess looked across the plain at the gates of Arderon, they could have been at
her fingertips or a thousand leagues distant. She pulled her woolen cloak tight around her shoulders and examined the Enemy, her eyes flickering along the tops and bases of walls, pacing distances in her mind, calculating the steps she would take as she and Archer walked up to those jagged walls, counting how many archers would have them in their sights, how many eyes would be looking upon them with hate.
“It is time,” she said to Archer, aware without turning that he stood at her shoulder.
“Aye,” he said.
They broke camp and loaded their mounts in silence, and this time Tess did not find the silence uncomfortable. They had said to each other all that needed to be said. The time for words had ended. It was now a time for action.
As they mounted their horses and left the tree line, she watched the reactions of the Enemy soldiers. A few notched arrows, only to be stilled by commands she could not hear. Their eyes bored into her, wrath transmitted by a science her old world would have denied, a magick that she no longer questioned.
Let them stare, she thought.
She no longer feared this day. Everything in her life had prepared her for these moments. She would prevail, or she would die. Regardless, she would not bend. Terror had plagued her for far too long, but in these past days she had pushed it into a box that she now nailed shut. Ardred wanted her to fear, but he was not her lord, and she would not give him that duty.
Beside her, Archer gripped the pommel of his saddle tightly, as if the uncertainty she had carried for so long had been taken from her heart and placed into his. But if he doubted his resolve, she did not share that doubt. The man beside her had endured too much to get to this place, to this bleak morning. He would not waver. She would not allow it.
As they neared the gates, a uniformed man stepped in front of them, his hand on a sword. Tess’s senses tingled with the presence of Ilduin Bane on his blade, but she did not hesitate to meet his eyes.
“We come to see my brother,” Archer said, his voice betraying none of the uncertainty Tess felt in his heart. “Stand aside, or die.”
“I am Overmark Ras Lutte,” the man said, “commander of the army of Arderon. Though I am under orders to let you pass, know certain that I would slay you where you stand if it were permitted me.”
“Your courage is not in question,” Archer said. “And if it be a fool’s courage, you cannot be faulted for that. Now show your final act of loyalty, for you owe him no more than that.”
Tess saw the man’s eyes shift with Archer’s words. Whatever thrall Ardred had once held over this man, it was now broken. They were eyes that foresaw no victory and no reward for faithful service. They foresaw only death. Yet he stepped aside and withdrew his hand from his sword to usher them through the gates.
She barely registered the stout grace of the city’s inner buildings, which seemed to rise from the ground as if they had been birthed by the mountains, though not the beautiful act of birth she had witnessed in Anahar. Everything here spoke of defiance, defiance of the mountain on which the city rested, defiance of the gods who had shaped that mountain. Defiance of the fate Ardred had been dealt. The city was a statement of will, not of beauty.
She understood that defiance. She, too, had been cast into the fates of this moment. She, too, bore scars that no science or magick could erase.
This place fit what would happen here.
Beside her, Archer stiffened in his saddle, and she followed his eyes to a face she had seen only in dreams.
Ardred sat on a gleaming black throne, it doubtless, too, hewn from the Plain of Glass. Yet he wore no dark robe, and there was nothing in his visage to proclaim the evil he had wrought. Instead, his pale golden robe seemed to shimmer in the bleak dawn light, and his face was that of an angel. Tousled blond locks rimmed eyes that simmered with inner strength.
She could well imagine how this man had taken her sisters in thrall. Only after one knew him would the cruelty of his heart be apparent.
“Brother,” Archer said as they drew near.
“Brother,” Ardred replied, rising as they dismounted. For a moment, it seemed they might embrace, but then their eyes hardened. Ardred’s gaze shifted to her. “And you are the Weaver.”
“I am Tess Birdsong.”
“A name that whispers of springtime,” Ardred said, smiling.
She did not return the smile. “My mother chose it as she heard birds singing on the day I was born. It is in her honor that I bear the white rose.”
He nodded. “I remember.”
And then she knew. Every step in her life had been taken under the gaze of his hateful eyes. He had taken her from that world and into this one, as he had taken Ilduin before, as he would take them again.
“Release my sister,” Tess said quietly. “You have wrung from her all that you can. Let her die in peace.”
He lifted his hands as if weighing his thoughts. “I would do so, Tess Birdsong, if I could. But you know as well as I do that, if I did, you and my brother would tear me and this city apart. He and I weigh equal in the scales of the gods. Neither can overwhelm the other alone.”
“It was never their will that we do so,” Archer said. “That was your choice, brother. And heavy has been the price for your folly.”
“My choice?” Ardred said. “My folly? I did not act alone, brother. I did not cause the rain of fire. You, too, chose this struggle. If it be our folly, then it is a folly we shared together. Now let it end. For only one of us can prevail this day.”
Tess stepped between them. “Release…my…sister. You have no rightful claim on her. The Ilduin are the daughters of Elanor, and belong to no man.”
Ardred laughed. “And has not my brother wielded you like a flaming sword? Have you not other Ilduin with your army, pledged to Annuvil’s will, laying waste to those who oppose you? I watched your blood burn Lantav Glassidor, Tess Birdsong. Do not claim to be a daughter of the gods, when you act at the will of a man, a man with whom you lay, not as an Ilduin but as a woman.”
Fire raged in Tess’s belly as he spat out the words. Nothing she had done was hidden from him, and nothing was sacred. Not even love itself.
“Your jealousy is undimmed, it seems,” she said, stepping closer to him, her eyes fixed on his.
“Tess,” Archer said, reaching for her arm. “He seeks to turn you. Do not let him.”
“He would turn me?” Tess asked, shaking free of Archer’s arm. “He would turn the Weaver? He has not the power. Not in his spent Ilduin, not in his army, and not in his beguiling eyes. Ilduin are born of sacrifice. Those he has taken gave themselves in the will of gods, even if they knew it not. As will I. But he will not turn me.”
She looked through his eyes and into the dark cell where a woman sat on a bed, old and frail, her heart long since devoid of light, her eyes hollow, only her soul left to burn with the chains that bound it.
“Ertalah versahmnalen!” she cried.
Ardred recoiled at the words, and in his eyes she saw the woman smile her last before her soul fled, leaving only the detritus of a human form sagging to the floor.
The sword appeared in his hand as if by conjuring, though he had drawn it from the folds of his robe. The blade gleamed with a cold, golden light. The metal seemed to bleed, and as each drop fell, the gold turned to an impenetrable darkness before hissing on the ground.
Behind her, Archer drew Banedread, but she shook her head. “Sheath it, Annuvil! Your time is not yet come.”
Archer met her eyes. His brother’s face no longer bore the guileful openness it had only moments before. He knew he could not possess her, and now Ardred meant to kill her. Weaver or no, Archer knew his brother’s prowess with a sword, and now his brother held Banegeld…a sword he had forged in the depths of a time long forgotten, tempered in the emerald fire of jealousy. The sword that had slain Theriel. The sword that would slay Tess.
He could not let it happen again.
Yet as he tried to lift Banedread, it was as if his sword bore the weight of the wo
rld itself. For a moment, he wondered what dark magick Ardred had conjured, but when he looked into Tess’s eyes he saw that it was not Ardred who stilled his hand. It was Tess herself.
“Sheath it, Annuvil!” she commanded again.
The sword of the Weaver sparkled with blue light, yet she made no move to draw it. Ardred meant to kill her, and she meant to let him.
Their eyes met, and suddenly he was cast back into a scene from the First Age. Theriel, too, had carried the blade of the Weaver. Theriel, too, had kept it sheathed as Ardred stole up on her with Banegeld held high. His wife could have spared her own life, and yet she had let herself fall with the blade that bit deep into her breast.
Tess was willing to do the same.
Why? What gain could come from such empty courage?
Theriel’s blood had spilled forth onto the ground, and for a moment he had looked in horror at what he had done. But then his face had hardened and he had hewn through a heart that he knew would never have beaten with love for him.
Archer’s breath caught in his throat as he watched his wife’s murder, painted in his mind’s eye by the magick of the Weaver. He saw Theriel’s face twist with the pain of the blade within her. The face he had kissed. The breasts he had nuzzled in the quiet sunset after their marriage, now torn and red as blood fountained from her chest. In her last instant, her eyes softened, and Archer saw his own reflection in them. And then she had fallen still.
And he knew.
Theriel had died on the wings of a promise that Archer had never seen. Her last thoughts had not been of fear and pain, but of hope and love.
Hope for this moment.
Love for him.
His heart squeezed as he slid his sword back into its sheath. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched Tess turn to face his brother. The next moments seemed to pass as if time itself had all but stilled.
The rage in his brother’s eyes.
The firmness in Tess’s face.