With horror he watched the centurion tighten the noose about Kawkaw’s throat as he writhed on the ground. The other legionaries gathered to enjoy the spectacle. Kawkaw’s face went purple and his nose began to bleed, yet still his eyes stared with a savage intensity in Alan’s direction, and his thoughts were still focused on him.
“Beware . . . Isscan.” His words came in gasps. “If you but live . . . beware the treachery of the flesh-spoilers.”
A Storm Wolf grabbed hold of Alan’s hair to lift his face and inspect the triangle. He read his mind: more curses, declaiming the sorcery of witches. Through a new storm of pain in his spine and limbs, Alan kept his concentration on what was happening to Kawkaw. Two soldiers had taken hold of the traitor’s upper arms, while two more brought up a leash attached to the Leloo that pulled their sleds. Seen from close quarters, the beasts were even more dreadful than Alan remembered, with jaws slavering at the prospect of blood. The centurion shoved Kawkaw’s face into the snow to restore full consciousness. Urgently, Alan projected his thoughts, “I will tell your people of your final courage, if I survive to meet them again!”
“Spare me . . . such sentimental slobbering!”
“Tell me—what have they done with the girl?”
For a long moment, as they forced the spitting and snarling man into a kneeling posture, there was no reply in Kawkaw’s mind. But hatred so dominated the soul of the traitor that it revived in him the dregs of a final defiance. “Nature’s abominations . . . Ah, such pain!” Two of the legionaries had cut his bonds and were stretching out his arms to the right and left of him, forcing his head forward so it was no more than a foot above the frozen ground. The centurion braced his legs wide to steady himself as he wielded his sword.
Even then the traitor’s eyes squirmed Alan’s way, to snarl, “The girl . . . they fear her . . . dare not kill her . . . sorceress!”
Those were Kawkaw’s last conscious thoughts as the centurion brought the blade down, not upon his neck but upon his right arm, cleaving it midway between the elbow and the wrist. Arterial blood spurted out over the snow.
The legionaries threw back their heads and howled, in a ritual parody of the wolves their company was named after. Then the snarling beasts were unleashed, taking up the howling from their masters as they fought one another over the bloodied hand and lower arm.
Disgusted, Alan turned his attentions away and used what force was left in the triangle to probe the surrounding forest. Horrifying as the spectacle he had just witnessed appeared, his concern was not for the traitor, Kawkaw, but all the more for his friend Mo, who was also a prisoner of these same brutal soldiers. Along the river, northward, he picked up the cries and the fury of battle, but there was no impression of anybody responding to his earlier call for help. The respite was brief. Kawkaw’s stump of arm was bound with a thong, presumably just to keep him alive for more torture. Now it appeared to be Alan’s turn. The legionaries dragged him across the blood-spattered snow until he lay stretched out in the center of the small clearing. One of them pulled his head back to expose his neck. The circle of helmeted heads gathered about him, the soldiers’ eyes closed as they intoned some propitiation of their foul god and leader. The centurion lifted his sword, still scarlet with Kawkaw’s blood.
But the strike was averted as a new figure materialized from the shadows close by Alan.
The newcomer lifted his hand to stop the centurion. Alan squinted up at a small man with a pockmarked face under a black cowl, a face so emaciated it resembled a skull, and from which two sunken eyes now examined him. Alan could smell rank breath as the man bent close enough to inspect the triangle. Curiosity, and even a little fear, contorted those emaciated features as from his side he slipped out a dagger with a steely-black blade. Alan sensed power emanating from the blade, which wasn’t straight like a normal dagger but rather twisted into a spiral, like the coil of a serpent, ending in a needle-sharp tip.
A ritual weapon.
From the common minds of the Storm Wolves he also sensed a fearful respect for the emaciated man: they called him “Preceptor.”
The Preceptor laid the dagger over the fingers of his outstretched hands, holding it out lovingly before him, then bringing it to his lips, so he could kiss its handle in prayer. Alan caught a glimpse of something silvery embossed into the handle. Then his heart faltered. It was a triple infinity. He recognized the sigil Mark had described on Grimstone’s dagger, the same sigil he had seen for himself on the helm of Feimhin’s sword entombed in Padraig’s woods—the blade on which the insects had burned. And now, as the Preceptor gripped the handle in both his hands and turned its point so it was touching the triangle in Alan’s brow, his heartbeat weakened to an irregular spidery pattering. It felt as if his life energy was leaking away from him through the triangle. The will of that cowled figure was so powerful that Alan felt closer to drowning in its darkness than he had felt in the turmoil of the river.
He had come to this world in anger. And now a final spurt of that anger rose in him. It took a firm hold within his spirit. The force of it struck back from the triangle against the Preceptor’s blade. The thin man was taken by surprise, thrown backward onto the bloodied ground.
But the Preceptor was too powerful to be more than temporarily overcome by this small show of resistance.
With a hiss, he urged the encircling Storm Wolves closer. “This one is dangerous. Kill him immediately. I want his head and the bauble on it!”
As if from a disembodied distance, Alan felt his head drawn back once more to expose his neck. The howling began again as the legionaries celebrated their lust for blood. In those same few moments, through the flaring triangle, Alan sensed other minds closing in on them from the surrounding trees. He sensed the feral instincts of born hunters, moving too stealthily and quickly for his confused mind to follow. Through the ruby on his brow he heard another mind communicate an order: Blood-rage!
Immensely powerful, the order radiated from that single focus, as, from the shadows, Alan sensed how the same mind was now focused on the centurion, with his sword arm rising. Through the triangle, Alan saw how, in the glare of the watching eyes, the figure of the centurion was haloed in blood-red.
As if sensing his own danger, the centurion whirled, his sword arm still rising. In that same instant Alan felt the blood-rage turn to fury. It was lightning quick—far quicker than he recalled of Siam. He sensed a huge body contract, as if timing the precise moment to spring, then the whip-like arc of that streamlined shape, the shriek of contact and the quick snap of fangs and rip of claws that ended combat so quickly the attacker was gone before the fountain of gore was spent. Even before the clawed feet had touched back to the ground, the blood-rage had already focused on another red-haloed figure. Alan’s head jerked back with fright at the terrifying nature of the combat and the grisly sound that had accompanied the snap of jaws.
Shackled by the crucifixion of his limbs, all he could do was swing his head from side to side in an attempt to see what was happening.
His breath caught in fits and starts as the deadly warfare ebbed and flowed around him, the blurs of movement that were all he could make out of the attack of . . . of what? Through the triangle, the sensations of hunting and attack were too strange and inchoate to remain focused on them for more than seconds. The guttural shouting of Storm Wolves was quickly submerged under a rising thunder of snarls and roars.
By degrees, Alan sensed how the attack on the Storm Wolves was precisely coordinated. A single focus of power controlled the attack, a single mind, yet a mind that seemed to be accompanied by a feral soul spirit guided by instinct, much as he had sensed with Siam at the ice-bound lake, but a mind and soul spirit far more intelligent and deadly than Siam’s. From that focus, instructions swept over the battleground, fusing spirit with purpose, and translating to a deliberate and controlled fury and annihilation.
Then, abruptly, he had his first clear vision of that focus. His heartbeat quickened and began rising
into his throat.
A massive snow tigress emerged into the clearing. With a swirl of her head, two implacable blue eyes gazed at his bound and trapped figure and blinked; then she was gone, returning to her command of a hunting party of great cats that pursued the Storm Wolves among the trees.
Shit, shit—sheeeeee-it!
Sweat drenched Alan’s face. His breath caught in his throat. His limbs writhed in a useless effort to break his bonds and his skin contracted with fright as, in a continuing ballet of death, these furies took control of the clearing, panting steam through slavering jaws, great heads swiveling through wide arcs, dilated nostrils scenting the air.
With wild eyes, the Preceptor rose out of concealment and stabbed with his twisted blade at the eyes of the leading tigress, but she evaded the weapon with a toss of a great head with a crystal embedded in its brow. A flash of power from the crystal threw the Preceptor high into the air, his snarling figure smashed back into the undergrowth.
Within minutes the battle was over. Slender dark-skinned women were appearing out of the trees, organizing the aftermath with urgent whispers. They carried clothing and armor to clothe the gigantic figures who were manifesting, like liberated souls, among the shadows of the trees. Alan clenched his eyes shut with shock. The great cats were the soul spirits of . . . of some kind of warrior women.
He shouted with pain as he was lifted from the ground, his limbs cut free, then assisted in standing by the attendant women. He found himself in a circle of dead legionaries and Leloo, their carcasses still oozing blood into the snow. Kawkaw was the only other survivor within the clearing, although he appeared to be unconscious. Alan ignored him, grinding his teeth at the agony of release in his joints and ligaments. He felt shattered, mentally and physically, and the sense of intense cold was returning to his skin. But he had no inclination to feel sorry for himself.
Mo was still missing.
With an effort of will, he lifted his head to confront the gaze of a statuesque, bronze-skinned woman who was studying him with luminous eyes the speckled brown of tortoiseshell. He had no idea who she was, or what army she represented. But he was in no doubt as to what was needed, and needed urgently. He spoke with a voice croaky with exhaustion and pain:
“I need your help to find my friend!”
The Shee
“Save your strength!” The woman waved to one of her companions, who took a fur-lined greatcoat from one of the dead Storm Wolves and wrapped it around Alan’s shoulders. Then, with the help of one of the others, she offered him a turquoise flask containing a honey-coloured elixir.
“This is healwell, from the Guhttan Mountains, the homeland of the Shee.”
“The Shee?”
“These warriors who saved you.”
For a moment his eyes darted about the clearing, contemplating the slaughter, the tall female warriors now encircled by ministering smaller women.
“Drink!” she urged him. “Take no more than a sip. It will help you to recover your strength.”
He coughed, wincing with pain where the legionary had kicked his ribs. He murmured, “Oh, man!”
Then he took a sip from the flask. The elixir was as thick as syrup and it burned his mouth, like his grandfather’s poteen. But it worked. It dimmed his pain so quickly it must have entered his blood through the lining of his mouth and throat. His strength improved and the pain lessened in his limbs. He felt a little more able to think about what he had just witnessed.
A rhythmic chanting began in the distance, somewhere behind the line of trees. It sounded like a much larger force of Storm Wolves, raising the hackles on his neck. Glancing past the woman, he eyed her astonishing companions. None other than this woman had spoken a word to him.
“Who are you?” He turned back to address the bronze-skinned woman, his voice still weak but now with much less pain.
“Forgive me. I am failing in my duties as diplomat.” She allowed him a second sip of the honey-colored elixir before taking it back and passing it to one of the assistants. Then, after closely inspecting the triangle in his brow, she bowed deeply before him.
“You are the Mage Lord, Alan Duval?”
Alan stared at her in confusion.
The woman’s words implied a familiarity with his name that he didn’t understand. The tall figures standing in the background were now clothed with long capes that appeared to offer them some camouflage. Through the triangle he sensed a vision that still shocked him. Unlike Siam, where the bear soul spirit had been embryonic, the great cat soul spirit crouched immediately beneath the surface of these tall female warriors. It was an integral part of them, as if the two beings existed as one in the same person. He saw swords now being fitted to their belts by the smaller ministering women.
Great cats turning into women, armed with swords!
He realized that the spokeswoman was studying him closely. Her voice had become urgent, impatient.
“We have come in haste to meet you. Permit me to introduce myself and my company.” She stood self-consciously erect. “My name is Milish Essyne Xhosa. My matrilineage is that of a Princess of Laàsa. I was until recently a stateswoman of the Council-in-Exile. But need demands honesty between us. No council edict has sanctioned our coming here. Yet still you might regard me as an ambassador for my world.”
Alan sighed. “Hey, look!” He still winced with pain from the bruised ribs. “I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying to me.”
Desperate as he was to rescue Mo, he realized that a few minutes of composure would be more likely to help her than going out on a reckless hunt on his own. Somehow he had to enlist the help of these powerful women and, to do that, he needed to understand them. He inspected Milish, who, even without her headdress, must have been six feet tall. Her face was haughty, perfectly proportioned even to the deep shadows below the high cheekbones. His eyes darted past her once again, drawn with open incredulity to the armed women watching him from the background.
“My companions are bred for war since ancient times. The others are their helpers, known as Aides.” She bowed in the direction of her taller companion. “Ainé bears the Oraculum of Bree upon her brow. It is the mark of Kyra—the hereditary leadership among the Shee.”
Alan studied the ferocious-looking woman called Ainé. Her hair extended, in luxuriant tufts of sideburns the color of ivory, down the sides of her down-covered face to the angles of her jaws, and there were symmetrical markings, like large brown freckles, over her brow. There was a scar, like a sword cut, running from her left brow down onto her cheek. Her eyes were the same eyes he had seen in the snow tigress—huge and a glacial blue. There was a rippling strength in her broad arms and shoulders. Her facial markings resembled Maori war tattoos, but hers were as natural as the decorations on the wings of a butterfly—thick brown marbling that followed the center of her brow in two widening tracks, with stripes like broad ribs moving out to either side and dappling down over her cheeks to fuse with the luxuriant sideburns. He saw a puckering of scar tissue in the center of her forehead, broken veins about a flat oval of glistening crystal that was embedded there, like his own ruby triangle—what the stateswoman, Milish, had called “the Oraculum of Bree.”
There could be no doubting that this giantess, Ainé, had been the fulcrum of command during the battle action, and that her soul spirit had been the snow tigress that had thrown off the Preceptor. Inspecting the crystal in her brow more closely, it looked as if a wafer of jade, perhaps an inch long by two-thirds of an inch across, had been welded to her skull. Its surface was as smooth as a pearl’s, yet deep within its surface he saw a constantly changing pattern that pulsated, like silk held at a constantly varying angle to the light.
“The Kyra’s companions are Muîrne, the teacher, and, by her side the warrior-in-noviciate, Valéra. If you cheat death on the road that lies before you, this will be your debt to them.”
Although there were other Shee present, Milish did not trouble herself to name them. Alan turned
from Milish to speak urgently to the Kyra, Ainé. “There was a girl with me. Her name is Maureen—Mo. The Storm Wolves have taken her. We have to save her.”
The Kyra met his gaze. She was astonishingly tall, at least seven feet, with thick fair hair coiled into a braid and fastened over her left shoulder with a plain silver pin. But there was nothing romantic about her: she looked more like a bloodied survivor from countless battles. “Why risk many lives to save one girl?”
He recognized that deep, authoritative voice. It was the same voice that had called out to him in the river.
She took a step closer, grasping the hilt of the sword that dangled from her belt. “A cloud of blood hangs over the province of Ulisswe. Word has spread of the arrival of the Mage Lord Alan Duval, the Redeemer of the Olhyiu, bearing the Oraculum of the First Power of the Holy Trídédana on his brow. And now we see that the rumor is true. The hearts and souls of the oppressed have been set aflame. Already new rumors are spreading of the destruction of a platoon of Storm Wolves in the icy north. Such hopes have been stirred even more by the flight of the Temple Ship, its new master heading south to confront the Council-in-Exile at Carfon.”
Redeemer of the Olhyiu! The Oraculum of the First Power of the Holy Trídédana . . . Alan’s hand reached, instinctively, to the ruby triangle embedded in his brow.
Was that what the old woman had really done to him—embedded an oraculum of power in his head? And how had word spread about him—or for that matter the killing of the Storm Wolves around the lake? He shook his head, desperate for explanations, yet aware that it just wasn’t the right time.
“We have to save my friend.”
“Tell me why we should save one girl when the armies of the Death Legion have taken to war. They are fanning out over all the occupied lands. Rebellion is in the air. Many villages and towns are in open insurrection. It was this rumor of the Mage Lord that led us to you. It is also the reason why so few of the Storm Wolves could be diverted to this ambush. The Shee are moving eastward from the Guhttan Mountains in such numbers as have not been seen since the fall of Ossierel, though they are too distant yet to assist us.”
The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) Page 25