The Inheritance

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  Heart beating swiftly, Elansa’s fingers closed round the phoenix, the ancient inheritance of her family. The sapphire slipped along her skin, warm from his own skin. The magic wakened, roused to feel the beat of woodshaper blood beneath her skin, the rhythm of a heart attuned to its magic beneath her breast.

  With more certainty than she had felt in many a long week, Elansa looked up at Brand and said, "There is a thing you have to do, Brand, to make this work"

  He stood still, listening.

  "Drive whatever is down there out into the sunlight."

  Brand's was a long holding look, as though he had her by the shoulders. Right into her he looked, and she knew he wasn't gauging her trustworthiness. For good or ill, he'd made that reckoning. She felt herself seen, as she had prayed that gods would see her. She felt herself known and found worthy. Madness! She blushed, her pale cheek turning rosy.

  "Go on, then," he said, and there was no way to know if he saw her color. "Do what you must, and I'll see that whatever is down there ends up in the court between the first wall and the second."

  Elansa wanted to stand upon a height, but she didn't run to the Tharkadan where Brand had posted all his watches. She'd not be but a small figure, unheard and unrecognized at that height. And she wanted to be heard, she wanted to be recognized. An army of elves was coming, and she wanted to be seen by them. She had a warning to give, a command that no one interfere with what she would do, for her sake and theirs, for she feared that if she didn't defeat what haunted this place it would rampage out of Pax Tharkas and ravage the armies without. For goblins, she did not care. For elves—she was their princess. She could not let that happen.

  Cold wind caught her breath as Elansa ran onto the second wall. Char, still on the heights of the Tharkadan, saw her and called out.’ She didn't hear what he said. Neither did she stop to look at him. Out on the plains she saw what Brand had described: two armies running fast. Even at this distance, she saw each was making a run for Pax Tharkas. Without doubt, the elves would reach the fortress in good time to hold the ground before the first wall.

  Char called again, and again Elansa didn't look around. Looking for a way down to the first wall, she realized there was only one. Once, a long time age, there had been two, each tower having access to the wall from the lower regions. She could not go down into the deeps of the East Tower, but she could try the western tower.

  The cold winter wind at her back, singing in her ears, Elansa ran along the second wall until she found the door into the West Tower and the long stairway down. She pulled on the door, and almost yanked it from its ancient hinges. Pale light ghosted in behind her as she ran down the stairs, making her best guess about how far she must go before she found the way out to the first wall.

  She didn't hear Char’s warning cry, and she didn't know that a shadow slipped along the second wall and into the stairwell behind her.

  In the gray light and shadows, Elansa ran, not bothering to count the flights down. The door she wanted was the last she would find, for none other would lead out. There were no levels beneath the first wall.

  Her breathing sounded loud in her ears, and in her heart she wove a prayer to Habbakuk, her Blue Phoenix. The sapphire talisman grew warm on her skin, pulling to the beat of the blood in her veins. The beloved rhythm carried her, and she ran to the beat of her heart and a god's magic. In her mind she saw not the damp, glistening walls of an ancient tower. She saw a phoenix with wings wide spread, head proudly lifted. She heard not the echo of wind in the closeness but the triumphant cry of the phoenix, the god rising from the ashes of its own pyre. Life from death, spring from winter, fire from ash and ever the world turns from darkness into light, from despair into hope again.

  It was a time before Elansa realized that the breathing she heard echoing in the tower, the panting from running, was not only hers.

  Elansa stopped, heart pounding. She listened, her own breath held, and heard it. The understanding struck her like a blow. Someone had followed her.

  A rough curse grated in the silence. She knew the word. Whoever was following her spoke in Common. Her heart pounding against the cage of her ribs, she recognized the voice. Arawn had followed her. Elansa pressed herself against the stone wall. Cold moisture soaked her shirt, the stone-sweat chilling her.

  She listened to him breathing. She knew he was still, and then she knew he moved again. She didn't hear his footfalls. He was too quiet, but she heard his breathing coming closer, step by step. Down and down, nearer, and the closer he came, the harsher his breaths sounded. She smelled him now, the rank sweat, and when she looked up, she saw him as a darker form in the blackness of the stairwell, outlined in the red glow of his life force.

  Elansa bolted. She clattered down the stairs, not caring if she made a racket. She wanted speed. Discovered, Arawn had no more need for stealth and silence. He, too, wanted speed, and he had more than she. He caught her on the next landing and slammed her hard against the stony wall. Grunting, he pinned her arms against her side, kneed her in the belly, and laughed when the shock of the blow drove the air from her lungs.

  It was the only sound he made but for the harsh rasp of his panting breaths.

  The weight of him held her as he clawed at her shirt, tearing it at the neck. Her head hit the wall as he forced a kiss, his lips rough and cracked with cold. She tasted blood, then she drew blood. When she bit him, he growled and shoved her harder against the wall. Holding her pinned with his shoulder, he ripped her shirt wide.

  Struggling, Elansa tried to knee him but could not move. Raging, she tried to scream, and could make no sound that wasn't lost in Arawn’s own mouth. He shifted his pressure, shoving his shoulder against her neck, freeing a hand to loose his trousers. In that instant, light flooded the stairwell, cold and gray and damning.

  "Bastard!" The cry echoed down the stairwell. "Whoreson bastard!"

  Elansa heard the whistle of something heavy sailing through the air. Arawn jerked against her, and then he fell, sinking to his knees and toppling over. Booted feet thundered on the stairs. Her name echoed in the stairwell, from a voice so ragged with rage she would not have known who'd come to her aid if she hadn't seen what had killed Arawn. A throwing axe was sunk between his shoulder blades.

  Shuddering, Elansa backed away from the wall, her shirt hanging in rags, icy wind running down the stairs to touch her with cold fingers. Suddenly unable to breathe, she stared at Arawn, then she stared at Char. The look on him frightened her as much as the body at her feet. He looked at her, and she didn't think he was seeing her. He looked at Arawn, dead, and she knew he was seeing someone else.

  His brother, killed by his hand. And what had become of his wife, the woman who had betrayed him with his brother? She had not asked Brand. Remembering his grief, the remorse he tried to burn away with the fire of drink, Elansa was afraid to know the answer.

  "Char." She crossed her arms over her breasts, with her two hands clutching her shoulders. "Char; I—"

  I am not the woman who betrayed you with your brother. I am not she and have no part in your grief.

  She said nothing like that. Simply, she said, "Char, I'm cold."

  Startled, the dwarf looked up. He drew a long breath then snatched his cloak, the ragged wool, from his shoulders and held it out. Shaking, she took his cloak and covered herself as best she could.

  "Girl," he said, his voice rough. "What are you doing here?"

  Elansa looked past Arawn, down to the place where the door to the first wall showed dark in the wall. "I have… I have something to do." She began to shake harder, and then she forced herself still. "Char, I have to go out to the wall."

  The dwarf put his foot in the small of Arawn’s back and yanked out his axe. He wiped it clean of blood on the corpse, and then looked up at Elansa. His one eye shone in the dim light. Like obsidian, she’d once thought, and bright.

  She told him, as best she could and with spare words, why she'd come. "Whatever it is down there, it—they—w
hatever it is, Char, goblins are dead of it. We don't know if they came in from the hob’s army, or if they are from somewhere else. They died cursing in their own tongue, though. They were goblins, no doubt. Whatever killed them isn't finished."

  She lifted the phoenix, holding it in her hand. Cries drifted up from below, voices Char knew well. With battle cries, hazing shouts, and mockery, Brand's outlaws engaged an enemy.

  "Brand is driving whatever it is out into the courtyard between the first wall and the second. I… I will use the magic, as I did in the caves."

  He cocked his head to get a better look at her. She felt herself judged, weighed in his look.

  "Brand and I have made promises. Believe me, Char. You must believe me."

  Whatever Char saw, he trusted. "Come on then," he said, kicking Arawn’s corpse over the side. He nodded in satisfaction when it hit the floor with a sickening thud. "Come on. We'll go to the wall."

  He went before, she followed behind, and all the while she tried to find her way back to the magic. She could not even think of the words of a prayer. Something had fled or been driven from her, and all she could think of was the pressure of Arawn’s shoulder against her throat, his hands on her right before they dropped to tug at his trousers. She heard her own breathing as rasping, and when Char stopped her, his hand on her arm, she pulled away from him.

  "Don't," she grated, feeling Arawn’s hand like a ghost behind Char's. "Don't touch me, don't."

  But he didn't let go. He held her arm till he knew she wouldn't stop shaking. When he understood that, he took her hand instead, gently closing his fingers round hers. "Nah, now," he said, his voice gruff with trying to be tender. It was a long unpracticed emotion. "Nah, now, girl. Don't let that remembering poison your magic away."

  She shivered, holding his cloak tight at her throat. It was not made for an elf, too short for her, but enough to cover her for modesty if not warmth.

  "There," he said, "you're all right."

  He said so, and she laughed, a brittle, breaking sound. She had not been all right in months. She had been prey in the eyes of outlaws, an unwilling bedmate to one, nearly raped by another. She was not all right. She turned from him and looked into the valley. In the rising light, the waking day, she saw her hope. An army came riding, so close now she imagined she saw the plumes on their helms and heard the ringing cries of their horses. Behind, and closing, she saw another, darker force afoot. There were the elves and the goblins, and it seemed to her that the goblins far outnumbered the elves.

  Char didn't let go her hand. "Take hold of your god, girl. Let him hear you."

  She let the weight of the talisman sit in her hand, the silver chain slipping over her fingers. "We know a thing about gods," she said, wonder filling her voice as the magic against her fingers throbbed like a heart beating.

  "We do," the dwarf said. "In Qualinesti, in Thorbardin…" He looked away across all the distance of the two courtyards, past the Tharkadan and to the mountains rising between him and Thorbardin, the kingdom under the mountain, the fabled city where he could never again go. "They forget, or never knew, the humans out here. But we know, you and me. We know. Trust your god, Princess."

  Princess, he said. She had not been named so in all the months since before the winter.

  In the courtyard between the first wall and the second, a voice rose up from the shadows against the tower wall. Wailing, keening, it sounded a death knell.

  "By Reorx!" Char went white.

  Elansa’s hand shook. She clenched it round the talisman, and magic pulsed, catching the beat of her blood again.

  "Hush," she whispered, perhaps to herself, perhaps to Char.

  In the silence, she heard two things: a brittle rattling as of bones being shaken, and the low thunder of horses running. Char's voice rose in a sharp curse. Elansa looked down at her hand. The sapphire glowed, the black shadows of her finger bones showed through her flesh. High above, in the bowl of the sky, the light of day quickened. Behind, the valley and the low thunder of horses running, the elven army bound for the gates of Pax Tharkas, headlong to some battle of their own and soon to find a princess. Below, the keening and the rattling of bones.

  Brand's voice rose above all the sounds, the thunder and the bones. "Swipe the heads off ’em! Don't waste your strokes!"

  She lifted her eyes and looked into the courtyard between the two walls. Not but shadow did she see, for the day had not yet broken the night below. And then, as the keening rose, the voices of things long dead, she saw the little pricking gleams of the first light on honed steel. One shadow moved from out of the darkness, only a shape, but she knew it: Brand, and he was looking up at her. She felt it.

  "Char!" His voice boomed, echoing against the walls. "Char! Don't leave her!"

  And the light broke, at last seeping into the dark place between the first wall and the second wall of ancient Pax Tharkas. Elansa saw then, what until now she had only heard.

  They had been the valiant guard of a great king. They still wore the wretched rusted remains of their gear—helms, leather gauntlets, a scrap of silk waving from the thin bones of a neck, and tattered ring mail hung on skeletal shoulders. In their heads, they had no eyes, only dark holes. In their mouths were no tongues, yet the keening howls never ceased.

  "Reorx preserve," Char groaned.

  In the courtyard Tianna shouted warning, but too late. A man's voice rose in agony then choked as bony fingers clutched his throat, clenching. Ballu died and in the instant he fell, Ley swiped the head from the undead thing that had killed him.

  These things Elansa saw and heard, but only as though there were distance between her heart, her mind, and the soul that now sought to engage a god's magic. That, the magic of the talisman, the power of the rising phoenix, began to touch her, first as a caress, almost tenderly.

  Low and wondering, she said, "Char, move away now. Move away."

  Her voice had a hollowness to it, the same sound it had taken in the caves before she'd called out to the god. The hair rose on the back of Char's neck. He knew about gods, but it had been a long time since he'd been comfortable with their doings. He moved away, but he did not leave her. He took up his post at the door, never taking his eyes from her as, to gods few believed in but they two, she lifted the wondrous sapphire to the breaking light and began her prayer to the Blue Phoenix.

  Lindenlea’s heart rose to see the ancient fortress. On wings it rose, and it sang old songs, remembered old tales. The Peace of Friendship, it had stood a long time in the gap between warring kindreds, a monument to their hopes for the end of fighting. It had been that, for a time. Seeing it now, bestriding the gap between two arms of the mountains, she saw it marred by the hard hand of time, the gates in the wall sprung, fallen from hinges, the old chains that had pulled them open or closed useless. Still, she thought it was a magnificent embodiment of what it is to love and defend.

  "There!" she shouted to her weary troops. With her lance, she pointed. "There! We'll hold it and wait for the prince to drive the goblins to us."

  One of the soldiers laughed and said he thought those goblins would shatter against the wall of elves before they ever hit the walls of Pax Tharkas, and Lindenlea laughed with him.

  "That's the plan, my friend. Now, all of you, we'll make the ground before the first wall ours. Don't set camp, but rest the horses and yourselves. You've done well today, my warriors. Rest, eat, and make ready to rid the Outlands of these goblins for once and all."

  A cheer went up, starting from the middle ranks and rippling forward. The sound of it lifted Lindenlea’s heart, making all the long weary ride through the night worth the ache and effort. She laughed, and they cheered louder. In moments, though, the sound took on another tone, a wilder sound as a rider came galloping from the west.

  "Goblins!" he shouted, brandishing his lance, his face alight. It was maimed Demlin, who had come to Pax Tharkas in hopes of finding his princess. "Goblins coming right to our doorstep!"

  More an
d better news he had. Scrambling down from his frothing mount, the scout made his salute to Lindenlea and said he saw the sun on lances across the plains.

  "And not too far away. The prince is coming, my lady, with all his army."

  Lindenlea praised him and thanked him for his hard riding. She sent him to the others, to rest and await the battle to come. Alone, astride her mount and watching the great silent fortress where, it was feared, the hobgoblin had found a trove of magic, she thought long about the tactics that would be needed. She wondered whether she would lose many of her warriors.

  "To you all," she said, and gestured as though she were raising a cup in salute. "To all who will fight. To those who will ride home and those who won’t."

  It was in that moment Lindenlea saw the two figures on the wall. Keen-eyed, she didn't have to squint to see that one was a dwarf and the other was a woman dressed in rags, her hair a-tangle, an elf perhaps, or a human. The woman lifted her hands, and from her fingers something dropped, blue and glinting in the new light.

  "Hear me!" cried the woman. She flung her head back, the wind caught her hair from her face. "My Phoenix! Hear me!"

  "Dear gods have mercy," Lindenlea whispered when the woman called out, her voice ringing against the stone of the mountain.

  Beside her, Demlin shouted, "It’s the princess!" Lindenlea saw Elansa turn, obviously startled and shaken. She staggered against the wall, torn from the magic.

  "I cannot believe what you say, cousin," Lindenlea called up to Elansa. "You are captive, you are—"

  Elansa could not stand alone, ripped from her magic and shaking. She was forced to lean on the dwarf's shoulder. This Lindenlea saw, but she did not see that the dwarf had to hold her steady with a hand at her back.