Blood Warrior

by Lindsey Piper

  Despite the physical bullying, she’d never gotten the impression that he aimed to do her harm. When he called her “goddess,” his tone was sarcastic and acidic, but she’d heard something near to reverence. Years of hearing it from her followers meant she recognized unconscious awe. He didn’t realize how much he gave away by insulting her with that particular word.

  She struggled through the crowd, dodging frantic hands that beseeched her for help—or held her back—but she wore a tight smile. Here she’d thought herself incapable, or more arrogantly, above using her physical senses. Tallis was right that she’d become complacent.

  What had she expected to happen? That Pashkah would simply let her go? The properties of a psychic Mask—many Masks, in her case—only extended so far. She could’ve hidden forever had she lived an unassuming life, especially had she emigrated. But because Dragon Kings could no longer bear children, she would’ve lived day to day without purpose. A useless hermit.

  Anger swelled in her chest, fighting for a place where her aching breath huffed. Pashkah would not take this from her, and neither would Tallis of Pendray. Whatever she needed to do to escape, she would do. She was the only person able to reveal Pashkah’s treachery and reunite her people.

  Raghupati was dead. Omanand was dead. She mourned the loss of two men willing to make a difference, standing beside her and perhaps helping to bear a few of her decades-old burdens.

  Thankfully, the Black Guard had scattered into the crowd, leaving the altar a solitary heap of rock.

  Tallis grabbed her arm. “Let me go first.”

  “By all means.”

  The deepening shadows of evening meant his features were harder to discern. The color was gone. She’d liked his hair, tipped with a silvery sheen, and she’d liked his deep blue eyes. Too bad. She was stuck with a deranged Pendray whose looks were a hindrance to her ability to concentrate.

  A distracted Indranan courted death by a ready sibling. And so the cycle of death and madness continued.

  Creeping through the archway, Tallis kept his back to the altar and circled to the rear. His stealth was impressive. He was in tune with himself and the vagaries of the physical world—typical of the Pendray, as was his stubborn lack of sense. That came standard with their kind.

  “What am I looking for?” he whispered over his shoulder.

  She caught Chandrani’s arm as the larger woman swayed, still clutching her head. “A span of rock with flecks of copper,” Kavya said. “It’s not sandstone or granite. It conceals a tunnel for escape.”

  “I knew you weren’t that naive.”

  “Perhaps I was.” She glanced back to where the Guardsmen were rounding up women. More and more men had been pushed to the eastern side of the valley, contained by guards holding Dragon-forged swords. That gold-touched gleam on otherwise ordinary steel was unmistakable. They wouldn’t be able to fight back, or even flee. Only the Dragon knew their fate. “I had been hoping for unity, not planning for worst-case scenarios.”

  “The arrival of a twice-blessed sibling is certainly that.”

  “Twice-cursed.”

  “Do your clan words matter to me?”

  Kavya had underestimated the extent of Pendray rage lurking beneath his cool surface. He radiated the tension of a gale-force blizzard wind. He was different in that he held back what other members of his clan basked in using at any opportunity. At least, that’s how the Pendray were described in rumor and disdainful talk.

  “If he kills me, he’ll lose connection to reality. His mind will be all that matters. He’ll live there and refashion the world to match what he sees. That could mean anything.” She nodded toward where bodies lay motionless on the altar. Blood had started to congeal around her fallen allies. “I doubt it will be peaceful.”

  “Turns out you won’t need me to discredit you. The Sun led her people to slaughter, with your brother as the heavy.”

  “You know nothing,” Chandrani said with unflinching vehemence. Despite her bleeding temple, she pushed Kavya forward and took up the rear defense. She held her saber with practiced steadiness.

  The bubble of relative safety behind the altar muffled sound. Rock protected Kavya from the audible nightmare her people were enduring, but nothing buffered the suffering they shouted in silent, psychic screams. Her stomach was a solid cramp of tissue that wouldn’t loosen. Nothing could undo this damage, even if she restored some sense of unity.

  How confident she’d been that afternoon.

  Too confident. Too arrogant. She’d created a place of spiritual safety that belied actual safety. Northerners and Southerners had put aside their differences. There in the valley, when had any needed to use telepathic attacks? Never. They’d been taken by surprise, and they were fighting back, but with two deadly sweeps of his sword, Pashkah had proven all of them to be woefully complacent.

  “There,” she said. “That block.”

  Tallis sheathed his seax and dropped his pack. He squatted before the boulder that concealed the exit and pushed.

  “Help him or cripple him?” Chandrani asked. “I can do either. He didn’t hit me that hard.”

  “Half your face is covered in blood. He knew just where to hit you, didn’t he? Can you read my thoughts?

  Chandrani shook her head, appearing ashamed as if she were to blame.

  Kavya touched her friend’s cheek—the only skin left exposed by the riveted armor. “Help him. We’ll deal with him later.”

  “I won’t let him hurt you.” Chandrani’s expression remained impassive, but the conviction in her voice was unmistakable. She never lied. She never exaggerated. Her only failing was in thinking she could do everything herself.

  They were very alike in that sense.

  “Now isn’t the time to discuss my fate,” Tallis ground out, with his shoulder to the copper-flecked stone. It was half his size. “This was your escape? How did you expect to move this?”

  Chandrani pushed Tallis aside. She touched a hidden place along the valley wall. The boulder opened like a door on a hinge. “Brains over brawn, Pendray.”

  “Too bad for you, sister,” came that dreaded ghost-soft voice. Pashkah had intoned for the crowd, but delivered his sincerest threats in whispers.

  He stood flanked by two members of the Black Guard. Each held a terror-stricken young woman, while Pashkah was armed with the same blood-drenched sword he’d used to commit public murder. “Brains would’ve been useful today, Kavya. Now it’s time to see what sort of deity you’ve really become. Come with me or these young women become my next victims.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  He’ll kill them anyway,” Tallis said calmly.

  Pashkah focused his intense eyes on Tallis. Neither malice nor temper shone in those shaded depths. “Pendray can speak? You learn something new every day. Next I’ll expect dogs to write poetry.”

  Tallis held back his temper at the slight. He focused instead on Kavya. She was more calm in the face of her brother’s threat than she had been on the receiving end of Tallis’s kisses. What that meant would have to wait. Getting out alive was all that mattered.

  “You know I’m right,” Tallis said to Kavya. “They’re damned by an accident of fate.”

  “And you believe in fate, you blood-hungry Reaper?” Pashkah’s soft voice was mocking with laughter, although his unnerving expression never changed. He reminded Tallis of how Kavya had appeared when addressing her flock—that slippery facade—but he couldn’t tell whether it was a Mask or some Indranan trickery. The man was rich with the power of madness. “You’re such primitive creatures. It’s a shame we’re obligated to include you among the Five Clans.”

  “Go.” Tallis had sheathed his seaxes to move the boulder, which meant he felt damn near naked. He flicked his gaze between Pashkah and Kavya. “Get your woman out of here and go.”

  “I’m not leaving while he lives,” Chandrani said.

  Pashkah blinked . . . and Chandrani screamed.

  She colla
psed onto her knees. She pressed her hands around her skull.

  “That’s what you get for being a thorn in my side for too long, Chandrani, dear. Anyone who protects or harbors my sister will receive the same.” Pashkah trained his viciously vacant expression on Tallis. “I wonder how little effort it would take to lobotomize a Pendray.”

  The charged-up urges gathering in Tallis’s blood had become a hurricane contained within skin. He smiled broadly. “I’m up for it if you are.”

  That unreserved joy seemed to upset Pashkah more than the words, with his brow drawing into a blink-quick frown. “Try me, Reaper beast.”

  Tallis let himself go.

  With seaxes instantly in hand, the world whirled into shades of scarlet and lead. His peripheral vision became steam. Formless. Irrelevant. His focus trained on Pashkah’s sword. In the heartbeat’s worth of time between ordinary and extraordinary, Tallis had identified the weapon as the crux of the standoff. Without it, Pashkah could injure but not kill. The Black Guardsmen still held their captives. They might kill the young women if they escaped through the archway, but Tallis wouldn’t let their vulnerability influence Kavya. Nor would he divert his energy.

  The sword was the key.

  He homed in on the glinting golden glow. The power of the Chasm lived within its luster. Tallis’s swords would be cleaved in two if struck by that blade. Nothing commonplace could withstand its potency.

  He whipped his body into a greater, faster rage—hyper-focused, yet frighteningly mindless. The part of him that had lived too long among the humans dropped away. He was a creature of energy and the elements. The earth flowed up through his feet. He struck quick-patter steps across the valley’s granite floor.

  Slicing Pashkah’s hand off should’ve been an easy task. But the fleeting moments before he sacrificed his rationality left him open to telepathic attack. Pashkah lanced his body with pain and filled his thoughts with bile, sugar-spun lies, and dizzying misdirection. Tallis saw images of flowers, bloody teeth, entrails, grains of sand in an hourglass no larger than a child’s palm. He felt the wind against his face as if fire and acid had joined with a tempest to flay his face.

  His gift fought back. He hadn’t given in to its entirety in years. The monster was immune to Pashkah’s meddling, because the monster dwelled deeper than consciousness. Whatever Pashkah was doing to his higher thoughts no longer bothered Tallis. Whatever had sparked the confrontation no longer mattered. All that his deepest instincts remembered was the sword.

  He spun his seaxes like fan blades. But when he attacked Pashkah, he did so with his teeth.

  He bit.

  A scream echoed down to where Tallis existed, as if his mind had plummeted into a well. His jaw locked. He wouldn’t let go. Only when a chunk of flesh ripped free did he rear back. The sword was limp in Pashkah’s hand, but he was strong. He held on to it, swung, missed.

  Tallis spat the mouthful of flesh onto the ground and smiled.

  Clutching his wrist, Pashkah continued to rage in a distant corner of Tallis’s mind, but Tallis attacked with his seax. Steel sliced skin and muscle. A crack of bone was satisfying. A second splintering sound was even better. His enemy shrank back. Female shrieks split the air. Only when Pashkah fled through the archway did Tallis turn on the guards.

  It was intoxicating to be so pure, so graceful, so at one with his body.

  The first guard lost a foot. The second tried what his leader had done—mental attack. Yet he was quicker to give up a useless tactic. He shoved his captive away and drew a broadsword that had originated in the Isles where berserkers ran mad. Did this Indranan expect to best Tallis with a Pendray weapon? He nearly laughed. He was smiling with the contentment of a man who’d been unexpectedly released from prison.

  Two strokes later, the guard’s sword clanged to the ground. The hand that held it still gripped the hilt.

  The women had stopped screaming. They huddled around golden, silken Kavya.

  Tallis needed to get them out before his rage subsided. The return to his waking mind promised untold pain. Whatever Pashkah had inflicted wouldn’t dissipate quickly. Tallis needed the animal to protect himself from that crippling agony.

  “Kavya,” he said, like a wolf given leave to speak. He shouldered his pack. “We go.”

  She glanced at the freed women, who continued to whimper. “They’re coming with us.”

  “We go. Now.”

  “With them.” She was angry and terrified. Disgusted and amazed.

  Beautiful.

  The animal was honest. Tallis wanted her. He wanted her in every way a man could have a woman. Rough. Fast. Merciless.

  With tenderness.

  He would take her. One day. She would fight it and love it and he would hold her in the aftermath.

  Tallis beat back his animal cravings. He needed to get her free before he could indulge in primitive thoughts. Other than visceral pleasure, a Pendray wanted nothing more than freedom. No walls to keep him contained. There were too many walls in that blood-drenched valley.

  The big woman led the way. Tallis surprised himself when he handed a seax to Kavya. She stood up and gripped it, both hands steady. Tallis liked that. He couldn’t protect her if she cowered like her charges. Only then did he realize that he’d never lent one of his weapons to anyone.

  “Out.”

  She obeyed, after hurrying the two weaker women through the exit. Had he already possessed her? Claimed her? His animal rage knew the truth. He’d tasted her, kissed her, touched her.

  But he’d never bedded the woman called Kavya.

  His goal was not to enjoy her sultry charms and resilient spirit, but to make her look a fool. The reasons no longer aligned, especially when he crawled behind her into the escape tunnel. The tight space and his heightened awareness of taking up the rear guard consumed his attention. He couldn’t rely on his gift in that tight space. While crawling, Tallis battled to overcome the sense of suffocation that whipped his beastly side into a fit of panic. Two states of mind fought for control, but not entirely because of the necessities of war.

  They fought because of a woman.

  Tallis wanted Kavya of Indranan as much as he wanted to destroy the Sun.

  —

  Kavya didn’t like the idea of Tallis following her in that confined tunnel. He was the most vicious creature she’d ever seen.

  Yet, hadn’t she needed just that? Some ferocity on her side? The women she urged forward, toward the open air, would be dead without him. Kavya would be prisoner to her brother. Would he have dragged out his torture and taunting? Or would he have simply pushed her against the altar for two Black Guards to restrain? One slice later, she’d have met the Dragon in the afterlife.

  She shuddered even as she crawled. For the most part, the hollow beneath the mountain was natural. A few of the smaller passages had needed to be widened because none of her armored bodyguards could’ve traversed the narrow length. A few modifications to nature had created a tunnel she’d never thought she would need.

  Her sense of self-preservation had kicked into the stratosphere when faced with her brother’s insane placidity. Although they hadn’t seen each other in more than twenty years, he’d recognized her as surely as she’d recognized him. The Masks had done their jobs, but now he would be able to track her mind’s false persona. He knew what she looked like as a grown woman and knew who accompanied her in flight.

  Even if he stopped for the night to tend to his arm, which she doubted, he would be in pursuit. Soon. Relentlessly.

  His arm . . .

  She shut her eyes for the span of a panting inhalation. Tallis had bitten her brother. Her shock had been nothing to Pashkah’s expression of agonized surprise. When Tallis had spit and smiled, Pashkah of the Northern Indranan, so insane and formidable, had appeared afraid.

  That was a precious memory she would keep as long as the Dragon granted. It softened her hatred of the man following at a steady crawl, behind where she sought purchase on the slip
pery rock. Tallis of Pendray had saved her life, and he’d done so by terrorizing her brother—a treasure to offset whatever misguided vengeance had brought him into her valley.

  She heard Chandrani’s voice in her mind. “Almost there. Another hundred meters.”

  That eased Kavya’s anxiety. Chandrani had recovered her telepathy. But what awaited them at the end of their crawl? How fast could Pashkah’s men circle around? Would they be able to find the exit in the dark? Of course they would. They’d only need to search for five conscious minds emerging from the side of a mountain. Select few Indranan were skilled Trackers. If Pashkah had tempted one to join his rabble, he would be able to find them at a distance of twenty or more miles—some rumored as many as a hundred.

  Locating a half-crazed Pendray mind should’ve been the easiest means, but during his rage, Tallis had seemed impervious to Pashkah’s attacks. Kavya had felt that ambient energy like the heat of an open oven.

  Chandrani had hurt Tallis. Pashkah had done something. Maybe he wasn’t shielded from every Indranan. Only Kavya? Why?

  Tallis was a complete unknown . . . aside from his exceptional means of fighting. He’d been able to take down Chandrani without the use of his gift. Kavya had never known a man able to achieve that feat.

  Chandrani’s mind linked with hers again. Kavya could see what her bodyguard saw, which was near-total darkness. At least the darkness was empty of Guardsmen with glinting swords and voracious thoughts, eager to use their twice-cursed powers on any susceptible mind. Their intentions had been clear enough when holding the young women who continued to crawl through the tunnel. They’d hoped Kavya would go peacefully into her brother’s custody, and that in return for their service, they would be awarded the women. They’d each clutched soft flesh a little tighter, greedily, ready to use force.

  The Indranan had been damned for generations. Force—force against women—was the heart of their divided, hateful clan, as intrinsic as murderous violence between siblings.