The Lone Warrior

by Denise Rossetti

  Cursing, the swordmaster jinked and wove while the wind flailed at the dark air around him. Heart hammering, he sped around the final curve—and there she was, standing foursquare, her legs braced, shielding the boy and the dog with her body. Her face was upturned, gleaming pale as bone in the night and her eyes were wide, fixed on three vortexes of whistling air hovering just above her head.

  Walker’s guts cramped with horror, the blood congealing in his veins.

  The djinns rose a foot, swirling about as if confused by the multiplicity of targets.

  Gray stepped out of the well of deep shadow thrown by the tower. “Boy! ” At his side stood a man-shaped slice of midnight. The hair rose on the back of Walker’s neck. Shad. Reaching out, it wrapped an impossibly long arm around Florien’s waist and drew him back into the shadows, the dog still squirming in his arms.

  Gray, Shad and the boy vanished, but Gray’s disembodied voice carried clearly enough. “I’ve got him. Godsdammit, run!” A sorcerer of shadows indeed. Gods!

  Her back to the wall, Mehcredi panted open-mouthed like an animal.

  The djinns collected themselves and swooped like corpsebirds, ignoring Walker completely. Sharp reports split the air, small objects ricocheted off tower walls at all angles. Something scored a furrow in Walker’s cheek, but he barely registered it.

  He hurled the lighted lantern straight into the thick of them. Glass tinkled and an ear-piercing shriek lingered and died on the freezing air. One down, two to go. Mehcredi was dodging and weaving, cramped as well as protected by the stone at her back.

  Walker waded into the fray, swinging his burning staff in a wide circle.

  “Mehcredi!” yelled Gray, still cloaked in shadow. “Ten feet to your left. Quick! ” A darker rectangular space appeared in the tower wall. A doorway.

  The second djinn writhed on the point of Walker’s quarterstaff, dying in a shower of stinking sparks. Mehcredi edged sideways.

  With blinding speed, the remaining djinn lunged, the air exploding around it. Mehcredi reeled back, making the strangest noise, midway between a grunt and a shriek. Folding into herself, she slumped against the wall.

  No, no! Not when he’d only just found her.

  His brain was frozen in a stasis produced by sheer horror, but his limbs moved with the perfect precision that was the result of decades of training. Walker surged forward, close enough for the translucent creature to brush his arm, a weird touch like congealed water. In a single flowing movement, he speared the djinn with his quarterstaff, bent and scooped Mehcredi up in his arms. She moaned piteously.

  He threw himself through the door, sinking to a dusty floor, cradling Mehcredi’s quivering body with his own.

  Behind him, the door slammed and a bar dropped into place.

  “Get a light, lad,” gasped Gray’s voice. “Run! ”

  Outside, the whistling rose to a crescendo and the door rattled. Florien’s footsteps pattered away.

  “Where?” Gray said. “Where did it get her?”

  An icy ball of dread had taken up residence in Walker’s gut. “Not sure.” When he passed frantic hands over Mehcredi’s torso, she screamed.

  “Shit!” He recoiled.

  A circle of light appeared, Florien entering through a bricked archway. They were in some kind of cellar, obviously used as a storeroom, judging by the sacks of flour and dried fruit, the huge yellow wheels of cheese.

  Mehcredi was still conscious, how he had no idea. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she’d bitten her lip until it bled. The warm ivory of her skin had gone a horrible shade of gray green. Frantic, he sank his fists into her shirt and ripped it down the middle, baring her to the waist.

  “Argh!” Her body contorted.

  The blood sheeting her side shone black in the wavering light, the boy’s hand shaking as he held the lantern aloft. The dog crouched, the moaning sound he made eerily human.

  “Candles,” said Gray. He gripped the assassin’s shoulders and pressed her down. “Florien, hurry.” Shad leaned forward, joining Gray, his smoky fingers long and thin.

  Mehcredi’s face distorted in a rictus of excruciating pain. An obscene lump, like a huge, hard carbuncle, slid slowly under the skin of her ribs.

  Walker’s world tilted on its axis. His vision hazed.

  Outside, the noise of the djinns subsided to a fretful buzzing. A last rattle, a whoosh as if a huge volume of air had been sucked out of the world and then all that remained was the moaning of the wind. A pause and a hundred people began to babble, deeper voices shouting orders.

  “Healer,” Walker croaked. “I’ll get—”

  A small bony hand grabbed his arm. “Nah,” Florien said. “He’s busy wit’ Cenda an’ the old man.”

  “Cenda?” Gray jumped to his feet. “Shit! Walker, I—”

  “Go,” Walker said dully. “There’s nothing you can do here anyway.”

  Gray opened his mouth, then shook his head and closed it again. Shad stroked a dark hand over Mehcredi’s hair and rose to join him. In perfect step, they charged through the archway at a dead run.

  Mehcredi groaned and her eyes snapped open, so dark with pain they were black. “W-Walker?”

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “H-hurts.” She grasped the wrist of his knife hand, the manic strength of her grip hard enough to leave bruises. “Cut it out.”

  But when he touched the tip of his blade to her skin, the djinn stone skittered about as if aware of his intentions. Mehcredi’s thin scream echoed off the ceiling.

  Walker clenched his teeth on a whimper like a wounded animal. He pulled away, sweat pouring off him. “I’m making it worse.”

  “Fook,” whispered Florien. “It’s runnin’ away. Fookin’ thing’s alive.”

  They waited until the trembling stopped. Mehcredi went still, save for the jerky rise and fall of her breasts.

  “L-love you.” She stopped to grit her teeth. A runnel of blood trickled down her chin. “Do it.” Her hand moved toward the knife, the movement uncoordinated but purposeful. “C-clean and quick.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Aaargh! ” Beneath his hands, Mehcredi bucked, clenching her teeth on a long groan. Her spine arched off the floor, the bones cracking.

  Florien knelt beside him, shaking. “Fookin’ hell. Do something!” His voice was clogged with tears and horror.

  A terrible rage moved in Walker like a caged beast. “I won’t let you die, Mehcredi. Do you hear me?”

  “N-no choice.” Incredibly, she tried to smile, though it came out like a grimace. “Worth it though. Ah gods! ” She writhed for a moment, then went limp. “Every m-minute.”

  Magick rose within him—the rising sap of spring, the slow inexorable strength of tectonic plates deep below the surface of the earth. His skin grew hot and tight as the power expanded, filling him to the point of pain.

  Grimly, Walker brought all his shamanic skills to bear, breathing in the stench of sweat and blood and burning as though it were an exotic perfume. Sinking down beside her, he laid his palm over the breast he’d once Marked, closing his eyes. With a moan, he brushed his lips across her slack mouth, tasting the sweet copper of her blood, feeling the faint warm rush of her breath.

  Resolve firmed within him, deep and granite hard, enduring as the earth. What did he have to live for, after all? ’Cestors’ bones, if his Magick wasn’t good enough, he’d find something else to give—his life if that was what it took.

  Very softly, he began to chant the Song he’d made for her and the Mark rose beneath his palm, the lines swimming up from the heart of her, Marking her flawless skin once again. When Walker switched to his own Song, the Mark reached out to twine up his forearm like a vine, toward his own heart.

  Ruthlessly, he tore apart the shields between them, exploiting her love for him, staring his own feelings in the face and using them. Not flinching, but accepting with all the grace he could muster. Even when it was hopeless, love had an amazing resilience, stronger even than deat
h. He couldn’t gainsay that.

  Walker sank into the essence of his assassin. At first, the sensation was disorientating, a long, lateral swoop. Down and down he spiraled through the interstices of a glittering maze, impossibly complex, many layers deep, eerily beautiful, a shifting architecture of energy and soul, shot through with prisms of rainbow color. Starstuff. Awed, he allowed himself to fuse, one more drifting mote in a world of warmth and moving light.

  In some kernel of self that dimly recalled logic, he knew the swirling shapes and patterns were only a schema, given to him by the mercy of the Ancestors—a gift of earth Magick to keep him sane.

  To feel his spirit mesh with hers was a terrifying lunacy, intoxicating, thrilling. Entranced, he drifted deeper, knowing two lives depended on his shaman’s skill. If Mehcredi should die at this moment . . .

  The symbolism changed. As he hung, floating and twisting, vivid images flickered by faster than he could absorb them, like a deck of brightly colored fortune cards fanned by an expert hand.

  A life, he saw a woman’s life. He was privy to the soul of another.

  Deeply humbled, he watched myriad scenes flash past in a blurring instant, saw all the dreams and realities that had created the unique being that was Mehcredi of Lonefell. There she was with a cavalcade of strangers—a fat old man with a stained apron tied around his middle; a group of children laughing and pointing; a giant of a man with a Northerner’s white blond braids; a woman in a maid’s gown, her mouth pinched and angry.

  Out o’ the way, she snapped. Ye great daft lump.

  Guards, skiffmen, stable lads, tavern wenches, even the Master of the Assassins’ Guild, they accelerated past, so numerous he grew dizzy.

  The impact was overwhelming, shocking him to the bones. He’d thought he’d known about her childhood, told himself he understood how Mehcredi the assassin had come to be. What arrogance, what godsbedamned folly. Unforgivable. Seeing it this way was like a length of cold steel in the vitals, a razor edge to slice him into bleeding gobbets of horror and pity and fury.

  Mehcredi’s existence hadn’t been a life—except in the sense that her lungs continued to pump, her heart to beat. A bleak string of hours and days amounting to years of . . . of nothing. He could scarcely comprehend it, such a wasteland, people—ordinary, presumably normal human beings—looking right through her or cuffing her out of the way, telling her with every absentminded buffet that she meant less than the kitchen cat.

  Fuck, how was it she was even sane?

  A dark warrior strode out of Mehcredi’s memories. Walker’s blood chilled to ice. Reeling, appalled beyond measure, he stared. Leanly muscled, cold-eyed and dangerous, this man stood head and shoulders above the rest like some heroic colossus, impossibly capable, impossibly strong. Finger bones gleamed like ivory in the wealth of his black braids.

  Was that how she saw him? A dark hero out of legend? A wounded soul waiting for the love of a good woman? Despite himself, his lip curled. Gods, she was such a baby. Could she have chosen someone less worthy? A man closed to all emotion save savage driving hatred, a cold-blooded executioner. No, of course not. She didn’t have the experience, the perception, to see it how pathetic he truly was—trying so desperately to atone for his failure to die with those he’d loved.

  Brusquely, he turned aside, looking elsewhere. Ah, there lurked the dark side of Mehcredi, ugly smears of pride, of fear and anger. So she was human. What of it? With a wry smile, Walker withdrew his attention. He’d never thought his assassin a paragon, and he’d trespassed enough.

  Brightest of all, shone the strong, glowing beacon of her soul, shot through with courage and humor and an extraordinary innocence.

  His guts turned over. On some level, he thought dully, he’d always known. He loved her, this strange tactless girl with her shining honesty and generosity of spirit, so clean and bright in contrast with the dark stains on his own weary soul.

  By the First Father, she deserved everything life had to give!

  He threw his head back, his fists clenching. Hear me, You Who Came Before. I am Welderyn’d’haraleen’t’Lenquisquilirian, earth shaman, last of the Shar. Give me this woman’s life and I swear by my Song, by Your Honored Bones, I will give it back to her.

  He was almost certain he’d squeezed his eyes shut, but nonetheless, he stared deep into the heart of the stars, into primeval chaos and fire, the source of all life.

  I will set her free to live. My oath on it, willingly given.

  Starstuff sizzled over his skin, crisped his bones, moving through and over him like the ch’qui.

  Walker gasped as it released him, sloughing off his skin. The final impression lingered, a light caress between his brows, sweet as a mother’s farewell. Gods, the thing was done.

  He opened his eyes, looking straight at a rangy, straight-backed old woman with a coronet of white hair. She smiled into his eyes, her own a familiar, mesmerizing silver. Irresistibly drawn, Walker drifted closer, noticing as he did so that the image throbbed with an irregular rhythm. It took him a moment to realize the pulse of it was faltering, ebbing further with every beat.

  Mehcredi and her future were dying before his eyes.

  Fuck! Gasping, he flung his will after the djinn stone, tracking its hideous spoor by the ripped filaments that waved, broken and pathetic in its wake, by the echo of an agonized cry.

  In all that energy and light, there was only one void, one space full of . . . nothing. Walker swooped, flying toward it, leaving no trace of his passing. The stone felt so utterly alien, so wrong, he recoiled instinctively, but to his surprise, he could sense no evil.

  Gathering himself, he flung the totality of his will around the thing, squeezing, pulverizing, desperate to obliterate it. The old woman nodded and smiled. But the stone’s very otherness made it cold and slick. It slipped through his grasp as if greased and slid away.

  The old woman flickered and faded.

  Noooo! Walker gave himself to the bargain he’d made, to the wisdom of his Ancestors.

  Without hesitation, he hurled himself at the djinn stone and enveloped it, hanging on grimly, ignoring the bone-deep chill, the utter emptiness sucking at his soul.

  After an endless time, the thing quivered and grew still. The old woman reappeared and quirked a brow, her expression one of gentle inquiry.

  Walker breathed again, but each time he tried to withdraw, the djinn stone would reanimate and strain to be off like a hound on the leash. He was snared, caught forever, as if he held a hungry tygre by the tail.

  If he let go, Mehcredi would die—one ugly, screaming inch at a time. But if he didn’t, what would be his fate? Would he die with her? He shivered. Perhaps not. A living death as a mindless husk, someone to wipe his ass and shove pap down his throat . . .

  Think. Think.

  Ah well. He’d calculated the cost almost as soon as he’d seen the wound. With slow deliberation, Walker delved deep in his soul for the ch’qui, force-feeding his Magick with the stuff until he had silky skeins of it, the same sweet healthy pink as her pretty nipples, glistening with life like the slick ruffles of her eager sex. Petal after petal he formed out of the Magick at his core—his heart, his soul, his life—placing each one with the delicate precision of a surgeon. As he did so, he chanted—snatches of the Song he’d made for her during those endless cold nights on the trail crouched over a tiny campfire, snatches of his own Song—twining them together in a tight spiral of sound and ancient Magick.

  When it was done, the last notes fading away, he laid the ugly pellet in the heart of a perfect, dew-kissed desert orchid. One by one, the petals curled over, each overlapping the next, until the djinn stone was encased, its darkness eclipsed by a shell of glimmering pearlescent pink. Walker permitted himself a tired smile. No longer dull and mindlessly cruel, the djinn stone shone with the soft ineffable beauty of starstuff.

  Infinitely slowly, he released his grip, a fraction at a time. The thing lay quiescent, Mehcredi shielded from its effects by his Mag
ick—by his love.

  All around him, like a benediction, broken filaments of light wove together in healing tangles. ’Cestors be thanked. Relief turned his bones to water. All he could manage by way of triumph was a warm glow. He was so drained, he wondered if he’d ever be able to summon the ch’qui again.

  Vaguely, he considered the implications of giving a part of his soul into another’s keeping. He gave a harsh soundless laugh. Now there was the ultimate intimacy for you. So much for keeping the world at arm’s length. Would he wither and die when he sent her away? Perhaps he’d have to follow her at a discreet distance for the rest of his life. Exhaustion made it hard to care.

  The old woman held out her arms, tears streaking her cheeks. When Walker stroked her white hair, she laid her head thankfully on his shoulder. The beat of her heart grew stronger and stronger, a mighty gong that shook the world, until Walker’s own pulse could no longer exist independent of it and they were one.

  Closing his eyes, he let the reverberations pull him under.

  35

  A huge rock was crushing her chest. No, not a rock, a bloody mountain. Mehcredi breathed carefully through her nose. Mustn’t annoy the mountain.

  “Mehcredi? C’mon, I brought Scrounge. If Prue catches me . . .”

  Odd that a mountain should have a boy’s voice. Something like a warm wet flannel swiped over her cheek. A doggy tongue. Blech. She levered an eye open.

  They looked healthy enough, both of them. Good.

  Gods, she was tired. She let the eye flutter shut.

  Too late. The darkness wasn’t comfortable anymore. Mehcredi groped for sense, for memory, but all that came to her was Walker’s face, set with concentration, his body moving in a lithe, savage dance and djinns exploding in showers of evil-smelling sparks all around him.

  Djinns!

  She gripped Florien’s skinny wrist, not noticing him flinch. “He’s all right?” She dragged in a rasping breath. “Not—?”

  “Walker?” Huffing with displeasure, the boy peeled her fingers away, one by one. “Nah, too fookin’ tough.”