Vengeance of the Hunter

by Angela Highland

  At that Faanshi made no sound, but her sun-golden features drained of much of their color, turning her paler and sallow. Torn between the shock on Rab’s face and the sharp flare of grief in the girl’s, Julian couldn’t quite bear to look at either of them now. “So you’ve come all the way here just to tell her this?” he demanded. “Why do you care? What is she to you?”

  “And who, precisely, are you?” put in Kirinil.

  “I am Semai el-Numair Behzad, and up until a few short days hence I was captain of what guards at Lomhannor Hall had come from my homeland. But most of our people who served the akreshi duke have turned their faces from Djashtet. I, along with a few others, remained loyal. Thus did the akresha Ulima see fit to entrust me with her final wishes—to find the young akresha and convey to her the counsel of the Nobi, if she should choose to hear it.”

  Kirinil coolly inquired, tossing a nod in Rab’s direction, “And what brought you back to us, human?”

  That his partner didn’t immediately bristle at the she-elf was, to Julian, the most telling sign of his state of mind. “I came for the Rook.” Rab’s voice was proud enough, but the gaze he turned back to Julian betrayed his agitation. “I don’t give a damn what visions my large companion claims his priestess saw. I don’t care anymore what else might have happened. Julian, I came back for you.”

  “Then we’re going.” The words escaped Julian before he knew he’d utter them, but as soon as he’d spoken, the strongest resolve he’d felt in days rolled through him. He had his weapons, his horse and the clothes on his back; with Rab back at his side, he wouldn’t need much more than that. “It’s high time we got back to business.”

  Both the elves started, and Alarrah glanced meaningfully at Faanshi. “Are you quite sure you’re ready?”

  Semai, too, gave him a long, considering stare. “Akreshi, I ask you to reconsider. Much of what I would say to the maiden I would also say to you.”

  “Julian.”

  Faanshi’s voice was softest, yet he couldn’t ignore her, for all that he was loath to turn and look her in the eye. Once he did, everyone else in the clearing diminished in importance. Her eyes had gone liquid, though mercifully, she didn’t cry. Nor did she give voice to the worry—and yes, damn it all, the hurt—he could see brimming behind those eyes.

  “I thought perhaps you’d stay in Dolmerrath awhile longer,” she said.

  He wanted to. He craved it, more than anything he could remember desiring in years. But now Tykhe had given him back his partner, and he wasn’t about to turn away Her gift. Rab had been right all along; they were assassins, not nursemaids. He had to reclaim his proper place before the girl remade him entirely. He had to remember what it was like to be the Rook.

  “You have a place with the elves now,” he told her, more gruffly than he liked, with that stricken expression turned upon him. “I don’t. I belong with Rab. And besides, the elves can’t get you and three humans back across the Wards all at once.”

  For a moment, perhaps two, Julian thought Faanshi might argue. Her mouth tightened into a tiny slash that on any other visage would have been mutinous. On her, the pique somehow only accentuated the sharpness of her grief. Before she could speak, Alarrah stepped up beside her and clasped her shoulder. “My sister has a place among us, but we’d welcome you too.”

  “Should you change your mind, you know how to find us,” Kirinil said.

  Julian ignored them both, for Faanshi stepped away from the other healer to come back to him. Without a word of warning, she threw her arms around him and hugged him close and hard.

  “Please be careful,” she whispered. “Please be well.”

  Her arms felt stronger than Julian remembered, but then, that seemed all of a piece with how she, too, had changed. Not that it really mattered. The instant she embraced him, his own arms encircled her, crushing her against him, not wanting to let her go. He drew in one long breath and then released her immediately nonetheless.

  “You should fix your ears,” he said. When she reached unthinkingly to the side of her head, he added, waving his right hand at her, “You did this, so damn it, girl, I know you’re capable. And don’t tell me you’ll try, either. Just do it. Think of yourself for once. You’ve earned it.”

  It was no proper goodbye, and it was harsher than Julian wanted to be. You would have had to do this sooner or later, he reminded himself. It might as well be now.

  “I’ll consider it,” Faanshi answered. “Julian, I...I’ll miss you.”

  He could have responded in kind—should have, if he were a wiser man. The impulse that seized him was one he should have throttled in its sleep. Yet before he could think better of it he lifted his hands to her cheeks, leaned forward and brushed a kiss across her brow.

  The second one, featherlight and reverent, met her lips.

  Only then did Julian realize that his vision had cleared completely, bringing the world around him into crystalline focus. Thus he had a perfect view of all the faces around him, Alarrah’s and Kirinil’s and Semai’s all gone carefully bland, while Rab actively gaped.

  Nine-fingered Rab never gaped, and Julian didn’t want to think about what it meant that he was doing so now. Not when Faanshi herself was staring up at him with amazement, frozen where she stood. Tears began to roll down her cheeks, and he couldn’t stand to look at them, not now.

  “Let’s get out of here, Rab.” He whirled and swung himself into Morrigh’s saddle, and as Rab leaped onto Tornach to follow him, delight igniting in his face, the Rook began to ride.

  Chapter Nine

  Dolmerrath, Kilmerry Province, Jomhas 28, AC 1876

  The elves allowed the guardsman Semai to accompany them back into Dolmerrath. The man’s presence at the Wards should have alarmed Faanshi; it had certainly surprised her. Yet in the wake of the triple shocks of the news he’d brought, how Rab had come with him and how Julian had abruptly decided to abandon them, alarm seemed all at once beyond her. Numbly, she noted Semai’s request to remain awake when crossing the Wards. For her own part, Faanshi welcomed the opportunity to avoid thought, at least for the short time required to go back the way they’d come.

  When she woke from Alarrah’s imposed slumber, she found herself in one of the little caves the elves kept for guests. Sparsely furnished, the chamber’s primary decoration was the delicate engraving of the shapes of trees into the stone walls. Chips of glass and polished stone were embedded in the branches, giving the engraved trees leaves made of color and light. The light reflecting from the charmed mirrors in the walls had changed its angles, testifying to the progress of the day—more than she’d expected, in fact, for the light now spoke of morning rather than late evening, and she wondered all at once if she’d slept through the entire night. She heard no sound except for her own breathing, and that of one other, just beside her.

  “Enorrè,” Alarrah greeted her when she opened her eyes.

  Faanshi sat up cautiously in the bed. Nothing seemed physically awry; if anything, she felt somewhat more alert and rested than she had just a few hours before. Her magic was at peace, with no complaints that she could sense that Alarrah’s had overpowered it to make her sleep.

  Still, the other healer hadn’t done anything for the numbness that had seized her spirit.

  “It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? You didn’t wake me up with your magic. You let me sleep,” Faanshi said.

  “I thought perhaps you’d need it. I don’t normally have to put someone under to take them across the Wards and back again so quickly.” Alarrah smiled, but only slightly, and it didn’t brighten the sobriety of her eyes. “Not to mention that you’ve been spending a great deal of your strength in the use of your own power.”

  That cracked through her shell of numbness, enough that Faanshi winced and looked away. “The Lady of Time appears to have decided to take that problem out of my hands.”

  Alarrah snorted and rose from the chair she’d been occupying to take a place beside her on the bed. “Self-pity doesn�
�t become you, and neither does self-blame. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up again so that I’d be here to talk you out of both. Do I need to explain that what happened out beyond the Wards is not in any way your fault?”

  Drawing in a long breath, Faanshi thought before answering that, while snatches of the ridah rhymes chased themselves across her mind. Courage and strength had been the ones she’d sung the most in her prayers as of late. But there was more than one kind of courage, and at any rate, wisdom seemed somehow more important now.

  “I knew he was going to go,” she admitted. “I just didn’t know when. He never said so, when he woke up properly again, but I could sense it in him. I frightened him.”

  “Because you’d changed him?”

  “Yes. But also because...” Faanshi had to pause then, for heat rushed across her cheeks, and she found herself at a loss for the proper words. “I slept in his arms because he wouldn’t rest if I didn’t. He seemed to need me. Not just because of the magic. I...I’d never slept in anyone’s arms before.”

  “Especially not a man’s? I suppose you hadn’t ever been kissed by one before, either.” Alarrah settled an arm around her shoulders, and her gaze gentled as Faanshi shook her head. “I thought not. What did you think of it?”

  The warmth in Faanshi’s cheeks spread at that, until it seemed as if all her skin from her brow to her throat had caught fire. “I like holding Julian.” That much was simple, as clear as her magic’s demands when it met illness or pain. “As for the other, I liked that too, very much. But I don’t understand why he did that, if he was going to leave with Rab.”

  “Ha. If I had to guess, I’d say you already know the answer to that. He would have died, except that you remade him, like a sword reforged. That would frighten anyone, human or elf.” Alarrah tilted her head, considering. “And I think perhaps he needed to leave, if he can’t learn what he’s been remade into here. But not without showing you that you’re important to him too.”

  “He still left.”

  To that, Alarrah chuckled faintly. “I know that isn’t very helpful. But it’s all I can offer you right now.” Then that brief glimpse of mirth faded. “That, and to tell you that I’m sorry for the loss of your okinya.”

  Tears that had been dammed by magical slumber welled up again across Faanshi’s sight. “I hadn’t thought of what might have happened to her. I’m free because of her and I didn’t even get to say goodbye. And I don’t even know why the akreshi Semai came to find me. He never did before.”

  “He’s waiting to speak with you. If you’re willing to meet with him, perhaps we can find out.”

  * * *

  Faanshi had barely begun to learn the curving routes that wound their way through Dolmerrath, and so she had to rely upon Alarrah to guide her to where they needed to go: a smaller chamber, out of the way of the great central hall of trees. Like that grander chamber, this one was open to the sky somewhere high overhead, letting sunlight spill down to limn the stone of the walls in gold. There was no tree here, living or sculpted; instead, a delicate, multitiered fountain bubbled softly. She couldn’t tell where the water came from or went, but then, that seemed to be the way of things in the haven of the elves.

  The man who’d introduced himself as Semai kneeled, eyes closed, by the fountain. His face behind its korfi was turned toward the light, and Faanshi found something familiar in the calm set of his large frame. He looked like Ulima had always done in her meditations, or in prayer.

  He’d mentioned Djashtet. The thought that he might in fact be praying to the Lady of Time made her pause; it seemed wrong to disturb him. But as she glanced at Alarrah for guidance, the she-elf inclined her head once in encouragement.

  And so she stepped forward, calling softly, “Please pardon my intrusion, akreshi. I’ve come to speak with you if I may. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting for so long. I’ve only just woken up.”

  His head lifted and turned to her. After a moment he rose and settled on a curve of smooth wood that served as a bench beside the fountain. “Do not fear, young one. One does not reach my age without learning the value of the ridah of patience.”

  It was strange enough to be addressed with relative amicability by a man who wasn’t Julian or Kestar; it was stranger yet that the man was of her mother’s people, and of her okinya’s faith. Still, he was a man, and one who had served the duke who’d once been her master. More unnerved than heartened, Faanshi couldn’t bring herself any closer to him than the opposite end of the bench. “I don’t remember you from Lomhannor Hall,” she ventured. “But I wasn’t permitted to speak much with anyone from Tantiulo there.”

  “You were likewise kept a secret from us. We knew whispers of you, nothing more. The akreshi duke had us believe you had died with your mother.”

  She settled gingerly on the bench, conscious of wrapping her arms by reflex around herself. Alarrah kept back, so silent by the chamber’s entrance that Faanshi wasn’t sure Semai even knew she was there. For her, though, the she-elf’s presence was a comfort. “And now my okinya is dead too. How did she die?”

  “By the hand of the duke. He came to her in the night, and I can only guess at what moved him to that act, for he too was dead when the other guardsmen and I found him.” When she started at that news, Semai added, “If it brings any comfort to you, we could tell that the Nobi had struck him down in return, for her dagger was in his breast.”

  The duke was dead?

  Had her mood been lighter, Faanshi might almost have laughed, but as it was, that one single concept seemed too large to fit within the bounds of her awareness. A fierce little gleam of satisfaction kindled within her at the thought of the man who’d been her master meeting the Lady of Time’s justice. Yet it couldn’t ease her sorrow, not completely. “Then I’ll thank Almighty Djashtet for this last blessing she helped Ulima bring me. But, akreshi, I don’t understand why she also sent you to find me, or why you would come, even if she asked it.”

  “Firstly, and simply, I did it because she asked it.” Semai never shifted where he sat, and neither did he take his gaze off the cascade of water flowing down from the top of the fountain. She might as well have been sitting near a statue, speaking with the voice of the rock around them both. “Most of our people in this land have turned from Djashtet, but she remained ever faithful as a Nobi of the Djashtethi should. Secondly, I confess that I was curious.” Now his attention did shift to her. “It pleases me to hear you speak of the Lady of Time as well, even in this place of the Hidden Ones.”

  “Yes.” Faanshi sat up a little straighter, for of this, at least, she could speak without the slightest hesitation. “I pray to Her as Ulima taught me.”

  “Good. Then I may speak plainly to you of what the Nobi said to me of Djashtet’s will. This man who left you before the Hidden Ones brought us here—he was the one who freed you from the duke? The akresha said that he lacked an eye and a hand.”

  “That was before I healed him.”

  This, too, she could say with confidence, though it gave her no joy to see her visitor start and lean forward, peering at her with a surprise that was clear even through the cloth that hid most of his face. “Then they spoke truly of you in the guards’ barracks. But you don’t look like one who will shake two lands in Djashtet’s name. You look small and fragile.”

  Which was true, but the observation heated Faanshi’s cheeks nonetheless. “I cannot help my size, my blood or what magic Djashtet saw fit to give me, akreshi. Nor do I have any idea of what you’re talking about.”

  A deep chuckle escaped him. “But you have enough command of that gift now to give a maimed man back what he lost. And that, young one, is the heart of what the Nobi sent me to tell you—that as long as you heal in Djashtet’s name, you will be as an earthquake to both the nations that birthed you. From what I have seen, the ground even now begins to tremble.

  “But the Nobi also spoke a warning. Those who protect you must be as one until you can protect yourself, or else th
ey will not survive the shaking of this realm. Neither will you.”

  Now Alarrah drew forward to join them, until she stood half-in and half-out of the sunlight from above. “What would you have us do, human? Send her elsewhere? I’ve been to your land. I know how your people treat those you call casteless—little better than the humans here treat any with our blood in their veins. My sister has more of a place here than she ever did or ever will among your kind. Every soul in Dolmerrath would die to protect her, as they would any other of our number.”

  “Dying is exactly what you will do if the Nobi’s wisdom is not heeded,” Semai said. “She was very clear. The swords that would defend her must strike as one, or all will be lost.”

  His voice was nothing like Ulima’s. Yet in the blunt cadences of his words Faanshi fancied she could hear an echo of her okinya, and a frisson of unease skittered along her skin. Despite Alarrah’s assertion, she could count on one hand’s fingers the ones she truly believed would guard her with their lives. Her sister and Kirinil had already proven it. But Ulima had returned to Djashtet, and of the two men whose lives her magic had saved, Faanshi could only think one thing.

  Neither of them wanted to stay.

  “They can’t.” She strove to speak with strength, for Alarrah was right; self-pity did not become her, and Djashtet frowned upon it besides. Yet she couldn’t keep her voice from curling in upon itself, pained and small. “Kestar left. So has Julian, now.”

  “Then I suggest, young akresha, that your next course of action should be to get them back.”

  * * *

  “This is beginning to grow repetitive,” Kirinil said dryly when Gerren’s small informal council convened once more to bring Semai el-Numair Behzad’s news before them all. “We spend our lives avoiding humans, only to have to chase down one, and have another leave us, and now we have to go and get them back again? Faanshi, I’m pleased to have you with us, but Mother of Stars. It would be foolhardy beyond belief to act on nothing more than a secondhand report of a dead woman’s vision.”