Moonlight reflected off blood-spattered armor. Even in the night, the imposing figure in heavy arcanir plate was unmistakably Jon. At his side were a number of people, one of whom stood in a Divinity mage coat, Ella something from the Tower—and Pons.
“Is it the Emaurrians?” Ambriel whispered.
Leigh grabbed Ambriel’s shoulder and grinned. “It’s the king himself.”
He crossed the short distance with Ambriel and a couple of his officers as Jon dismounted and took off his helm. Leigh bowed. “Out for an evening ride, Your Majesty?”
Chapter 66
Leigh took up a place at the table in the royal tent. With the help of the light-elves, the Emaurrian forces had set up a camp within the protections of Vervewood. They’d arrived over a thousand strong, a sizable force to face what was still a mysterious enemy.
Jon entered, his hand on his sword pommel, clad in a midnight-blue gambeson. “You’ve done well here.”
He didn’t know the half of it. Leigh grinned. “So you came with an elementalist,” he said, tapping the table softly, “but not the one I expected.”
Braced over the table and its map, Jon met his gaze and exhaled a lengthy breath. “Master Ella Vannier. When we requested assistance from the Divinity, they sent her to us. She fought at Brise-Lames. Talented young woman.”
“Yes, yes. And as for my wayward apprentice?”
That lengthy exhalation again. “She’s… alive.”
Leigh tore away from the table and crossed his arms, pacing the length of the tent. “Alive? She’s been missing for five months, and all you tell me is ‘alive’?”
“She’s”—a shadow passed over Jon’s face—“unharmed.”
Leigh strode up to him, stood unwaveringly still until Jon moved away from the table and faced him. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Jon looked away. No expression surfaced. And then he closed his eyes and shook his head. “It would be better if you heard it from her, but… she survived terrible things in Sonbahar. Horrible, unspeakable things.” A rising intensity possessed his gaze, like raging waves in a storm.
The tent was deathly quiet, no breaths, even the voices outside falling to silence. “What things?” Leigh whispered, the words growling out of him.
Jon shook his head.
“What things? Speak.”
He grabbed Jon by the shoulders, bored into his gaze. Terrible, horrible, unspeakable things? Rielle had unintentionally killed her entire family and razed her home to the ground. Jon knew her past. And he called what she’d suffered in Sonbahar unspeakable.
That girl, weeping and wreathed in flame, melting the snow outside her burning home, reappeared from the well of his memories. Crumpled. Broken. “You tell me what happened to her. You tell me, or—”
Jon covered the hand on his shoulder, his brows knitting together. “Shadow sold her,” he said, his voice barely above a hushed whisper. “She did what she had to in order to survive.”
Leigh let him go, took a step back. And another. Sold… Done what she’d had to do. He clenched his teeth, curled his fingers into fists.
Pirate slavers had been a fact of life during his childhood on the coast of Kamerai, and as a mage, he’d seen what slavery did to its victims. Heard what they’d had to endure.
And Rielle—his apprentice, friend, love, so much more than words could convey—she’d suffered those atrocities? “I… I should have been there.”
Jon’s hand shrouded his forehead. “I know,” he said, his voice, low, broken. “I should’ve never—”
“It was just a stupid rite,” Leigh said quietly. Thwarting the Divinity had been the right thing to do, but… not then. Not with the rite. Rielle had trusted Olivia’s instincts, and he should have trusted hers. Should have never knowingly, intentionally stepped into her path. Betrayed her. They could have discussed it. Figured out some other solution. Something. “I should have been there with her, every step of the way. Through the rite. Into the dungeon. Saving Olivia. All of it.”
Jon lowered his hand and watched him with pained eyes.
“She was my apprentice, and that didn’t end when she became an adept or a master. Guiding her, supporting her—and Olivia—should have been lifelong. And… I failed them.” His fists had gone numb, so he clasped his hands behind his back.
“She’d gotten me to Monas Amar… helped me see Gilles defeated,” Jon said, picking up a marker from the map and shifting it in his palm, “and I should have gone with her to see Olivia saved. But I let everything else take precedence.”
“You’re the king.”
He set the marker back down. “I’m still Jon first.”
He’d decided which side of him had won, then.
Power changed a man. Power came with duties, duties that became demands. And good men, in pursuit of good intentions, often gave in to them, sacrificed their good morals for their greater ends. Until they became something else. Someone else.
He could be himself, and do only as much good as his personal ethics would allow. And that was his choice.
Or he could become a force of greater good, unfettered, able to accomplish unimaginable good at the cost of honor, contentment, self. A man who did good even if he could no longer be good.
He approached Jon and surveyed the map with him. “Where is she now?”
Jon traced two fingers from the Bay of Amar out west and north to the Shining Sea. “She went with Brennan, in pursuit of Shadow.”
Leigh sighed through his nose. “With him?” A vile, selfish, malicious man. Monster.
“Brennan helped her return, remained by her side for everything. And I was—”
Someone cleared her throat from the tent’s entrance. “Am I interrupting?”
“Obviously,” Leigh replied, looking her over. Ella Vannier. In her early twenties, hair pulled back so tight it was questionable whether blood still circulated to her freckled face. Always eager to please, to impress. Well, in the service of the Crown, she certainly had her chance now. She hadn’t changed much from the Tower. “Is Cédric with you?”
Her frequent mission partner, a healer by the name of Cédric Fontleroy, was barely older than Ella and frequently buried in some book.
She nodded. “He was the one who cast the illusion spell to silence our arrival.”
Cédric never had been content as a healer. Leigh sighed. “What do you want? The adults are talking.”
She frowned and turned to Jon. “Sir Marin came to camp and said Queen Narenian and Lady Aiolian devised a plan for tomorrow, and they want to meet to discuss it.”
Jon looked longingly at the map and its markers signifying cavalry, infantry, war machines—the world he knew—then turned back to Ella and nodded. “Very well. Let’s find out what miracle Aiolian expects of me now.”
Jon looked out across the battlefield, past over two thousand troops–both human and light-elven united–to the lone figure on horseback, riding back and forth, shouting. Raising his sword before the firelight rays of dawn. Rallying. Captain Perrault.
And that's where he should have been. At the front, Faithkeeper at the ready, prepared to charge into battle shoulder to shoulder with paladins and the Emaurrian army.
If Queen Matryona died on the field of battle, it was likely the war would be over; Leigh had said there was dissension among the dark-elf ranks. Even if the queen was highly skilled and preternaturally fast, she wasn’t invincible, and so many lives could be saved with just one fight. Single combat. Only one of her Quorum—her inner circle—or another ruler could challenge her.
No matter the odds, he would have tried. For all the soldiers and paladins who’d followed him, for his people, for the elves, he would have tried.
But instead, here he was. Out of combat. At the back. Waiting to rally the land itself.
Aiolian stood over him in her light mail, holding a staff. Her tight gaze narrowed on him, unflinching. “It’s time.”
Two squads of Royal Guard surrounded him–includin
g Raoul and Florian—as did Ella, Pons, Valen, and Cédric. None wavered in their watch.
He’d agreed to Queen Narenian and Aiolian’s impossible plan, so there was no choice but to proceed. “Ella, it’s your turn.”
She pivoted from her post. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Her determined steps closed the distance between them, and then she stood next to him. With a gesture, her eyes became that too-vivid green Rielle’s had been on the road so many times before. Earthsight. “They’re inside. All is as it was last night.”
Last night, she’d drawn a map of Stonehaven and its exits. A map he’d memorized down to the last detail.
He nodded to her, and she beckoned to Cédric. The lanky healer approached in his forest-green master’s coat and inclined his head, shifting a dense mop of blackest-black curls. “I am ready to serve, Your Majesty.”
Jon touched his own chest, his lips, and his forehead, then lowered his hand in offering, the sign of the Goddess. His Earthbound powers were nowhere near ready for this. Projecting into a tree for too long, trying to do too much, had made his head pound for hours and his nose drip with blood. And this?
It’s what we all need. It’s what I’ll do.
With a fortifying breath, he lowered to the dewy grass. The circle ringing him stiffened, tightened. If any enemy did somehow manage to penetrate the thousands of troops between them and Stonehaven, they’d find no easy opposition here.
Cédric’s gaze remained fixed on him, watchful for any signs of injury.
Not yet. But soon, he’d be a fountain of blood and pain, if Aiolian’s training had been any indication.
Jon closed his eyes, took a deep breath, pictured Cédric, Valen, Raoul, Florian, and the circle guarding him… Hundreds of yards of open plain, carpeted with lush grass, and thousands of heads and shoulders, metal spread wide and raised high… to the growing crown of ironwood trees.
Through the small leaves, twigs, branches, and limbs, inside the bark, cambium, sapwood, and heartwood, anima flowed through the pith, brilliant and live, down, down, down… A taproot burrowed deep in the rich soil, but spread from the root crown were surface roots that anchored outward, and smaller tips and hairs that went below. He journeyed to where his roots grafted to those of another ironwood, bound together below the surface, sharing life, sharing one another, at the heart of their union, a structure of stone.
He gathered his roots closer, closer, straining against the stone, crumbling, and he flowed to further networks, bound them closer, crumbled—
One ironwood to the next, to the farthest roots that separated over structures below ground, drawing the anima closer together, restructuring—
Cold.
He curled back, a root tip twining to face the other ironwoods, but—
No, warmth.
Farther roots pulled together, breaking, falling stone, until the ground rumbled and shifted beneath his root crown.
His hands ready before him, Leigh stared down the shallow ravine as the earth trembled under his feet.
“Your king is doing his part,” Ambriel murmured beneath a determined frown. He held out his bow, his fingers ready at his quiver. The light-elves, as far as the eye could see, all did the same, and the humans beyond.
Leigh watched the ravine. No movement. Just mud. “Are we certain this is where they’ll emerge?”
Ambriel stood frozen. “Listen,” he whispered.
Tremors, and—pounding. Feet. And screams.
He sucked in a breath.
A square of mud burst open. A crowd spilled out, an indiscernible mass of moving bodies hemorrhaging like blood from a wound.
Ambriel’s quick fingers nocked arrow after arrow, felling runners.
A call came from the paladin captain. A dark cloud blotted out the sun—
A cloud of arrows.
The volley fell upon the shifting crowd in the ravine, raising a cacophony of shrieks as bodies fell into the mud and piled.
“They’re fleeing,” Leigh shouted to Ambriel.
“They’ll kill you if they get the chance!” He loosed another shot.
The dark-elves pushed out in no apparent formation, scattering in every direction. Leigh cast a repulsion shield, but… there was no need. “This is wrong,” he called to Ambriel.
A bellow from within. Clear, commanding shouts. Orders.
Following the wave of dark-elves was a wall of shields. With each emerging group, it built, absorbing arrows, and spread. Each rank climbed the shields of the rank behind, rippling out of the ravine.
Ambriel shouted the attack as the paladin captain did.
The front lines pushed against the shield wall, pushed the dark-elves back into the ravine. Spears and blades shot out from between shields, but dark-elf bodies piled and piled.
The bright spark of flame lit from among the enemy ranks—and another, and another. Leigh shot force shoves through lines of soldiers, hurling them backward with trailing screams.
Tiny flames arced through the air—
He braced but was thrown off his feet. Recast the repulsion shield before Ambriel.
The soldiers, elven and human, at the front, scrambled to their feet, helping one another. Bombs. The dark-elves had bombs.
Sparks flared among the dark-elves again.
With both hands, Leigh cast repulsion shields in domes over the bombs’ targets.
Some exploded on impact, raining fire and fragments onto the shield and over it. Others bounced back into the ravine and exploded.
Great battlecries rose—dark-elves scrambling over bodies, charging. Two to three squads, while at the back, bombers lit new fires.
Another repulsion shield dome. Another. Another.
“Take them down!” Ambriel barked. “The Emberaiths! Now!”
Arrows cut toward the fires, some into shields, others into flesh.
Dark-elves penetrated the front lines with shields, blades, and spears. An ear-splitting battlecry cut the air from the exit.
Queen Matryona, outfitted in battle regalia with a pair of bearded crescent axes. Protected by three squads of her Royal Guard. At the edge—
Over a face mask, a white-hot scar across a nose. Varvara.
As the Emberaiths let loose a salvo of bombs, the queen and her guard charged through the human-and-light-elf front ranks, cutting a swath of carnage and shield-bashing their way through.
Leigh cast shield after shield, gaze darting between Ambriel and Varvara. She dodged a slash at her neck, plunged a short sword between the ribs of a light-elf. As she yanked it free, she ducked low as a sword cut above her head, and whipped her shield through an Emaurrian’s feet before crushing its edge onto the man’s neck.
“Varvara!” he shouted, casting another shield at an arcing firebomb.
Those honey-hued eyes found his across the field.
“You can stop this!” he yelled in Old Emaurrian.
Behind her, the queen pointed an axe at him and barked out a short string of words.
With a cry, Varvara stiffened and charged for him.
Chapter 67
Screams cracked every corner of Jon’s blinding-white vision as he opened his eyes and blinked, his heart thudding in his chest like a hammer.
The clangor and shouting of battle rang nearby. His fingers brushed Faithkeeper’s pommel. Too slow. Lethargic. “Horse,” he bit out. “Bring me… my horse.”
The voice sounded raspy, aged and tired, but it was his.
Hands braced his shoulders as he tried to sit up, and the world spun around him—shadows, faces—and voices blurred into one another, words braided into unintelligible chatter. And behind it all, a din of screams, calls, and metal striking against metal.
A harsh voice scolded the others, who quieted, then two hands grabbed his shoulders as a blur filled his field of vision. His head throbbed as if it were getting hammered into the ground, but he squinted his eyes until the blur came into focus and became a face.
An alabaster face, hardened with sever
e, angry lines, framed by tight braids white-hot like fire. Dark, night-sky eyes gleaming with ancient, burning stars. Aiolian.
He tried to speak her name, but she grabbed his face with a hand.
“Do not try to move. Do not try to stand. You have done your part, and you are fortunate to be alive.” She lowered her chin, spearing him with an intense glare, then stood and faced someone. “I must join my people. He must rest. Do not let him move.”
With one last glare at him, she picked up a staff off the ground and strode away.
Pressure assailed both sides of his head as if it would split in two; he reached up, but a hand held his. He turned to look, and the ground spun again.
A black mass of hair—a man. Cédric.
Warmth seeped into his palm, into his bones, and up his arm to his chest and up to his neck and head. As the ache eased, tension fled his body in ripples, and he threw his head back, colliding with—a chest.
He craned his neck—freckles, a confident nod—
“We have you, Your Majesty. You’re safe,” Ella declared, and glanced at Cédric.
“His entire body is under strain, and I’ve never seen migraines like this,” he said with a shake of his head. “Massive, and new ones keep forming before I can dissolve the old ones. Pressure unlike anything I’ve ever—”
“Horse,” Jon rasped. While they sat here playing nursemaid, thousands were risking their lives on the field of battle. These two mages, and Pons, Valen, his Royal Guard, and he—they could be out there, saving them.
“You’re in no condition for that.” A warm, calm voice. Pons crouched, giving him a once-over. “I question your ability to stand right now, let alone mount a horse.”
Jon frowned through the haze. “Armor.”
Pons grunted a laugh, then beckoned to the Royal Guard. Two paladins came forth with his gauntlets, knuckle-dusters, and helm, the only pieces he wasn’t wearing.
“Don’t encourage him,” a deep voice mumbled from behind him. Valen. “He could be on death’s doorstep and still clamoring to fight.”
By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Book 2) Page 69