At Deryn’s shoulder, Brise whispered, “Good old Faren. I should have known he wouldn’t be late to a battle.”
The armed warriors’ progress through the marsh was slow, but in another few minutes they would arrive at the fire. Deryn turned to the seven sleeping outlaws. Very soon, the odds would be even.
Her senses were on full alert. To the east, the sky was turning gray. The breeze carried the scent of rotting vegetation. The first uncertain trill of birdsong rippled from the trees and then Deryn heard the crunch of stone underfoot and the rasp of a sword being drawn. The first of her comrades had reached the island.
Deryn was about to glance over her shoulder when the tenor of one outlaw’s snores changed. The man gave a dry cough and then, “Hey! Wha…” His voice rose to a shout. “Wake up. We’re—”
Faren’s cry was louder. “Go. Go.”
With a roar, the Iron Wolves charged past the fire. The nearest two outlaws were dead before they had gotten clear of their blankets.
The scene was in chaos. Deryn slipped an arrow onto the string and half drew her bow, waiting eagerly for a clear target, but friend and foe were a frantic, heaving mass in the firelight. Then a movement caught her eye, a little way clear of the main battle. The leader, Martez, had backed off from the fighting. He raised his arm. Deryn saw the demon wand in his hand.
She had no time to take proper aim. Deryn loosed her shot from half set. The arrow struck Martez in the arm, making him yelp and drop the wand. Deryn plucked another arrow from her quiver, but a surge in the fighting moved between them and Martez was lost from sight.
Heavy footsteps sounded just behind Deryn, to her right. Someone was charging toward her. She spun round to face the threat and saw an outlaw, almost on top of her, his sword raised, ready to strike. This time, Deryn’s hasty shot missed its target completely and she did not have time for another. She leapt back as the outlaw swung his sword and the point missed her by an inch. The outlaw kept moving forward, again raising his sword. Deryn ripped her knife from the sheath on her belt, but the contest was hopelessly unbalanced. Suddenly, the outlaw’s eyes opened wide in an expression of amazement. He froze for a moment before crumpling forward. His limp body hit the ground, an arrow protruding from his back. At the other side of the bonfire, Brise lowered her bow.
Deryn was still recovering from her surprise when a new sound erupted, the pounding of hooves. A rider burst into the firelight, scattering the fighters. Deryn got only a glimpse of Martez’s face as she too dived aside, and then he was gone. Deryn scrambled to her feet, nocked another arrow on her bow, and raced to the edge of the island. The horse could not gallop through the thick mud, but already it was halfway to the shore. She loosed one arrow at the fleeing figure, and missed again. Before she could get another, Martez and his horse had vanished from sight.
“Always one who gets away,” Faren muttered, standing at her shoulder.
Deryn turned and looked around. The frenzied action had stopped. The battle was over and the Iron Wolves had won.
At one side, Brise bent down and picked up the dropped wand. “The king pays a reward for things like this.”
“Nothing like getting an unexpected bonus,” Faren agreed, laughing.
Deryn also felt laughter rise inside her. She let her head fall back and stared up, marveling at the beauty of the sky, the sweet fragrance of air in her lungs, the rapture expressed in birdsong. Deryn lowered her eyes. She had to talk to Shea, to swap stories and maybe a kiss or two.
The Iron Wolves were drifting across the campsite and forming a huddle at one side. Faren also joined the group, parting them to get through to whatever was at the center. He dropped to one knee. Deryn trotted over, wondering what they had found. Her mood of elation faltered when she saw the body lying on the ground. The Wolves would not be gathering for one of the outlaws. Clearly, one of their own was injured, maybe seriously. But who?
No sooner had the question formed in Deryn’s mind than a suspicion solidified as a hard lump in her chest. She angled her head for a better view, but it was not truly necessary. With a sickening sense of certainty, Deryn realized she knew who it was, even before she saw Shea’s lifeless face.
*
Deryn placed a final rock on the cairn over Shea’s grave. Tears smeared the scene before her eyes. She clenched her teeth, trying by force of will to stop her face from crumpling. She did not mind if tears spilled from her eyes, a mark of grief for a fallen comrade, but she did not want to look like an infant.
“She died as a true warrior. The Iron Wolves can be proud of her.” Faren patted Deryn’s shoulder and turned away.
The rest of the gathering followed, Iron Wolves and miners together, leaving Deryn alone at the graveside. She dashed a hand across her eyes before realizing that not everyone had gone.
A little way off, Brise watched with concern. “Do you want me to stay or go?”
“Why would you want to stay?”
“Because I care about you. You know that.”
“You didn’t like her.”
“Shea was too full of herself. There’s self-confidence and then there’s arrogance, and she fell on the wrong side of the line.” Brise sighed. “Maybe it was youth speaking. Maybe she’d have grown out of it. But either way, I’m sorry she’s dead. And I’m sorry for you.”
“It was so pointless.”
“Death is, but some good can come of it.”
Deryn scowled in disbelief. “What?”
“Remember what I told you. Being an Iron Wolf is dangerous. If I hadn’t gotten that outlaw who was after you, this could be your grave.” Brise’s voice caught. She took a couple of breaths before continuing. “I’d never forgive myself. I know I didn’t get through to you before. Please, now, think about it. For the sake of Shea’s memory. You can’t dismiss her death as quickly as you dismissed my words. Forget the Wolves. Become a fur trapper, like your parents.”
“My parents are in their grave. I buried them as well. And my brother, my sister, my grandparents, my aunts, even my dog. I’ve buried everyone I ever loved.” Tears flowed down Deryn’s face.
“It must seem like—”
Deryn no longer cared what she was saying. “I loved Shea. And I never told her it.”
“That’s youth speaking. You hardly knew her, and you slept with her once.” Brise put her arm around Deryn’s shoulders. “I know how you feel. I’ve been there myself, believe it or not. You’ll get over her, I promise. There’ll be others.”
Deryn shook the arm away. “And they’ll die too.”
“Oh, child, I know it hurts.”
“I won’t let it hurt me again.”
“I wish I could guarantee that for you.”
“I can. What hurts is when you care about people and you lose them. I’m never going to let myself care about anyone again. Then I can’t get hurt.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?” Deryn started to walk away, but then turned and burrowed into Brise’s arms like a child, letting the sobs come. “I can love you. You’re safe. You know how to keep yourself alive. But I swear. I swear on Shea’s grave, I’m never going to let anyone else mean anything to me again.”
The court of the demon-spawn king, Ellaye, southern Galvonia
15th year of the reign of King Alvarro II
Midsummer Day, junio 21, early afternoon
Fire cascaded over the king’s shoulders and rolled down his torso, clothing him in liquid light. Sparks bounced off the steel links of his clothing and landed around his feet as he passed, igniting the few errant blades of grass that sprouted between the cobblestones. Two ice-mages were in his immediate retinue to make sure the flames did not spread. The king’s chief marshal, Lady Kyra Quintanilla, kept pace with him, dressed in shifting bands of lilac and silver iridescence that contrasted pleasingly with her dusky skin tone. Her head was level with the king’s, but since she was somewhat shorter, it meant her feet were six inches clear of the ground. On either si
de, a row of uniformed guardsmen held back the cheering crowds of commoners as the procession exited the palace gates.
From a position well to the rear of the traditional Midsummer Day parade, Alana watched cynically. The king’s fire was real. Her mother’s levitation was an illusion. In both cases, the aim was the same—to intimidate the spectators and remind them of their proper, subordinate status. The true audience for this was, of course, the lesser nobility, people such as herself. Who cared what the commoners thought?
Alana’s father, Jacian, was indulging in a similar display of gamesmanship, although rather less successfully. He was some way behind the king, dressed in golden armor and riding on a huge white bear. Alana frowned at the sight. The bear was a creature of the northern snows and was suffering in the heat. Its distress was obvious.
Her father had chosen to ride the huge bear as a demonstration of his ability to control the most ferocious of beasts, but as was often the case, what it mainly demonstrated was his poor judgment. Everyone (or at least, everyone who counted) knew that a beast-charmer’s prowess was measured by the intelligence of the animal dominated, not its size or aggression. A kitten was harder to control than a wild bull. The nobles would have been even less impressed if they had known that the bear was drugged. Alana had prepared the concoction herself that morning, on her parents’ orders.
The gold armor was also a sham, made of painted tin, rather than pure gold. The issue here was weight, not cost. The Quintanilla family was wealthy enough to afford the gold, but her father was middle aged, overweight, and hopelessly out of condition. Was anyone impressed by his military posturing? In the hierarchy of magical talent, beast-charmers came well below fire-mages and illusionists, and no amount of gold paint and drugged animals was going to change it.
Alana sighed. Maybe she was being over-cynical, and the sad thing was that her family would have been delighted if she could display a quarter of her father’s ability. Since the day she had been born, they had watched her, hoping for some latent talent to suddenly awaken. After twenty-four years, they had finally given up. She was a member of the nobility by accident of birth alone. Her demon-spawn heritage had left no legacy of magic in her.
Ranks of ordinary people lined the street. Alana studied them as she passed. She was the same as them, but the commoners would never accept one of the demon-spawn living among them. Anger at the demon-wrought devastation had not faded, even though the Age of Chaos had ended almost two hundred and fifty years before. If Alana left the protection of the court, her life would be at risk.
Her gaze jumped from face to face until the crowd became a tableau of open mouths and eyes, a wall of noise, animated and awestruck. If you did not know better, you might read the atmosphere as one of celebration, but beneath the facade lay fear and hatred. Alana could feel it flowing in waves as if it were a physical force, pressing down on her chest. She stumbled under its weight.
“Careful.” Reyna grabbed her arm, catching Alana before she fell.
“Thanks.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
Concern etched fine lines around Reyna’s eyes. “It wasn’t one of your dizzy attacks?”
“No. I wasn’t watching where I was going. Sorry.”
Reyna’s expression showed that she was unconvinced, but before she could say anything, Princess Caritina set her own shoes alight, requiring that the ice-mage attend to her royal charge.
“No, no, Cari. You must be more careful.”
“Didn’t mean it.” The toddler gave one of her most endearing, gap-toothed grins.
Over the previous few months, Caritina had been showing signs of getting her fire magic under control, much to her nursemaid’s relief, but it was not surprising that the excitement of the parade had affected her. The talent for fire mastery ran strong in the descendants of Queen Jacaranda.
“Remember what happened to your bed.”
“Got a new one now.”
“You can’t get new feet.” Reyna sighed and took the girl’s hand.
Alana smiled at them and then went back to brooding about the crowd and her place in the world. Did walking with Reyna and the infant princess make it all the more obvious that she did not have as much magical talent as the three-year-old? Despite her mother’s status, Alana’s inclusion in the Midsummer parade owed more to her role as partner to the royal nursemaid. Her own family would have been happier if she had been absent altogether.
For her part, Alana would also much rather have been somewhere else. Only Reyna’s entreaties had persuaded her to take part. Increasingly, Alana found herself trying to avoid large gatherings. Her dizzy attacks were becoming a frequent reaction to crowds, and while common sense told her they were a purely psychological reaction, her body responding to the stress of the occasions, this did not give her any more power to control them. She was so much happier alone in her garden.
“You can’t hide from the world behind your plants,” Reyna had said repeatedly.
Alana was still waiting for her partner to add a good reason why not.
The ranks of commoners again drew her attention. How much of their hostility toward the demon-spawn nobility was due to resentment of the current inequality and injustice, and how much was due to history?
It was true that during the Age of Chaos the demons had killed untold millions, and inflicted wholesale ruin on the world, but the demon-spawn were not to blame. If anything, their ancestors had suffered the most, losing their very souls when the demons possessed them. The avatars had been mindless puppets, devoid of free will, used and discarded by the demons. They had been no more than tools, through which the demons fought their magical battles. Without exception, their lives had been short and their ends violent.
Although children conceived and born to the avatars retained some of the demons’ magical powers, there was no collusion with the demons and it was unfair to hold the demon-spawn descendants to blame. Yet when the demons had left the world, at the end of the Age of Chaos, the common people had hunted down the demon-spawn and slaughtered any they could find.
Who could say how many had been murdered? The more fortunate were able to hide. Some led secret double lives, concealing their abilities. Others had fled to remote areas, such as the large family who had sought refuge in the mountains inland from Ellaye, overlooking the desert springs. This was the group who had ended the persecution of demon-spawn in the most decisive manner, when the matriarch of the family had led them in the brief battle to take control of Ellaye and subjugate the common folk.
Only after Queen Jacaranda founded the Kingdom of Galvonia had it become apparent how many of the demon-spawn had survived, passing themselves off as ordinary people and keeping their magical abilities hidden. So if her ancestors could do it, Alana reasoned, why not she? After all, it was not as if she had any ability to hide.
Her parents would object, of course. Alana wished she had the courage to confront them and demand that she be allowed to leave Ellaye. But they would not listen to her. They never did.
The head of the procession reached its destination. The central square was decorated for the occasion. Flags hung on the building fronts. The trees lining the edge were covered in glowing red and white blossoms—an illusion, but a very effective one. A platform had been erected in the middle. Since it was made of wood, King Alvarro II had to end his display of fire magic before he mounted the steps. Lady Kyra could have continued appearing to float above the ground, but it would not be prudent to outshine the king, and Lady Kyra had not reached her current rank without a shrewd grasp of politics. The third person to join them on the platform was Orrin, the king’s newly appointed high counselor. Alana eyed him with surprise and suspicion. This was a departure from tradition, but Orrin had been showing signs of wanting to change things round.
Orrin cultivated a long beard, possibly in an attempt to disguise his age, and seem older and wiser than he was. Alana would have put him at nothing over thirt
y, but it should not be difficult to find out for certain, if she felt so motivated. Although a new arrival in Ellaye, Orrin was actually a distant cousin of hers. One of her relatives would know when he had been born.
His rise in the king’s favor had been spectacular. How far did Orrin’s ambitions go? Alana had heard rumors of his plans for the country, and the monarchy. The stories he was weaving seemed like nonsense to her, yet he had, apparently, convinced the king that they held some truth.
Alana’s gaze hardened. Was she being fair, or was it just that she did not like mind-mages? Even if you accepted the commonly voiced belief that their so-called magical talent was nine-tenths trickery, it still left the conclusion that the remaining one-tenth involved poking around inside other people’s heads.
Orrin stepped forward to address the crowd, usurping the role of herald. “Today we celebrate the founding of the glorious Kingdom of Galvonia. The day when Queen Jacaranda led her family down from the mountains, and accepted her divinely allotted mission. For one hundred and seventy-six years, she and her noble descendants have been true to their calling. For you, they have established order and security. For you, they have fought back the windigos. For you, they will lead the world onward to a new Age of Wonders.” Orrin paused, dramatically. “People of Ellaye. I give you your king.” His voice had been loud. Now it rose to a shout. “All hail his majesty, Alvarro II.”
The watching crowd broke into a respectable imitation of a cheer. The king now claimed the front of the podium and began the traditional address.
Alana edged closer to Reyna. “Do you think he’ll get the people to buy it?”
“Who?”
“Orrin.”
“Buy what?”
Wolfsbane Winter Page 5