by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Fifty-One
Behind Chris, a gray sun lit the sky. Just as soon as he’d returned to Lael, he’d gotten the people onto their horses and started them running. Their only chance right now was to reach the southern shores of Ori Réon by nightfall. If they could find a ship, they could cross the lake and reach Réon Couteau in another ten to twelve hours. Even if Mactalde had taken the city, they would at least be able to find shelter nearby. Once these people were taken care of, they could come up with some sort of a plan for taking back Réon Couteau.
It was a tiny hope and he knew it, but for three hours he’d kept them running. And for three hours, the red glare of Koraudian uniforms dogged them through the snow. Now, deep in the hills, the Koraudians faced off across a canyon from what was left of Chris’s forces.
A metal-magnified shout echoed across the distance. “One more time I will say this! One last time, and then my mercy will evaporate as though it had never been!”
Chris dismounted his lathered horse. “What game is this now?”
On the far hillside, well out of rifle range, but within plain view, row upon row of Koraudian soldiers covered hillside. The speaker was invisible within their ranks, but the voice was plainly Mactalde’s.
“We saw the quality of your mercy yesterday!” Chris’s dry throat cracked around his voice. Mactalde wouldn’t be able to make out his words, even if he could hear them.
All around, the people milled uneasily.
Allara led Rihawn up behind him and traded him his reins for a waterskin. Deep lines cut through her face. “Why is he stopping us like this? It makes no sense.”
At her side, Quinnon ground his teeth. “He’s proving he can finish us off at his leisure.”
“I have had enough of this war,” Mactalde shouted. “I have had enough of Lael. I wish to go home to Koraud and live in peace. What I want is justice. What I want is the Gifted!”
All across the face of the hill, no one spoke. The Glen Arden evacuees shifted their weight and exchanged glances.
“Give this one life into my hand, and I will spare everything else. I swear it.”
“Never!” Worick’s voice boomed across the chasm and ricocheted against the far hill. “You’re asking the impossible!”
Murmurs passed back and forth. The people had seen Mactalde’s ruthlessness yesterday. They knew what he was capable of, and they had every right to fear for their own lives.
“Come, come,” Mactalde said. “If every last man of you truly wishes to sacrifice himself for those who brought such destruction on you in the first place, I have no objections. I admire bravery. But I also admire wisdom. I will give you until sunset to make up your minds. Perhaps your leader will decide to be generous and prove how much he cares for you. Perhaps.”
“This war is not over!” Chris shouted.
Mactalde must have heard that at least, because his laughter wafted across the chasm. “If you refer to any misguided hope of retreating to Réon Couteau, it would no doubt be kind of me to inform you that, already, my men have secured it.”
Among all the red tabards, a white coat flickered.
Chris’s gut clenched. Had Crofton Steadman thrown in with Mactalde? Nateros’s attempts to undermine Lael’s monarchy had already aided Mactalde more than once. Why not throw in with him? The enemy of an enemy was a friend and all that.
Steadman’s voice floated across the canyon. “Why is it that ever since the Searcher’s witchcraft summoned this latest Gifted to our world, destruction and death have hailed down upon us?”
The color drained from Allara’s face. “Kill Mactalde and it will stop!”
Steadman continued. “Do you hear the lies they spin to convince you to continue in bondage to their superstitions and sorceries? They want you to sacrifice your lives in pursuit of their devotion to a twisted paradigm! The witch and her minion—they have brought these tragedies upon us! Why should you suffer for their sins? Shall we not cast them out for the judgment they have brought upon their own heads?”
Chris could almost see the curl of Steadman’s scarred lip. No doubt he gloried in the sufferings of the Searcher and the Gifted.
The people listened in rapt silence. A change flitted over their features. They were listening. More than that, they were hearing what Steadman was telling them, and in their desperation and fear, maybe they were even believing it. They cast sidelong glances at Chris and Allara and whispered among themselves.
Mactalde raised his voice again. “Master Redston, didn’t I tell you I would recognize you as the true leader of Lael? I’ve even cleared the path for you! Tireus can no longer impede your destiny. So take it! Seize it with both hands! Act like the leader these people need and give yourself into my hand.”
The people shot furtive, wide-eyed glances at Chris, and their murmurs increased.
These people had no defenses and no hopes. They would all die tonight. Some of them to the cold, most of them to the sword. And wouldn’t it be his fault, once again? What choice did he have besides surrender? He dropped the waterskin at his feet and reached back to take his reins.
Allara clamped her hand on his arm. “Think. You can’t do this. The worlds are breaking. If you surrender yourself to him to save these people, you condemn the lives of everyone! Mactalde is the one who has to die.”
He stared across the canyon. “What if it’s not true? What if there’s nothing I can do to stop the breaking? What if the only thing I can do for anyone here is what I do right now?”
If he turned and walked away from Mactalde, he was sentencing these people to death, and he knew it. He would have to live with that for the rest of his life. How much easier would it be to gallop straight into the Koraudian lines in exchange for at least the possibility that Mactalde would keep his word?
Sacrificing himself for the immediate good was what he wanted. Staving off the hollow agony of guilt was what he needed. But, in a sense all its own, wasn’t that walking away too?
“Chris . . .” Her eyes pled with him. “Don’t do it.”
He couldn’t outgun Mactalde, couldn’t even try anymore. But maybe, just maybe, he could outwit him. He had one chance here, and he wasn’t about to walk away until he had given it his best shot.
He moved her hand from his sleeve. “No, I won’t surrender. Not yet anyway.” He turned to mount. “Send somebody to find Orias Tarn.”
Allara shook her head. “I don’t understand. Where are you going?”
“To the Cherazii.”
_________
Orias rode with Chris, up the hills, into the deep forests. This plan would never succeed. The Cherazii were a people of honor and justice, not mercy. And even had they been otherwise, they had been betrayed once too often to remember it. Had not Orias himself betrayed them?
But he rode with Chris anyway. If the Gifted failed, the Laelers would undoubtedly sacrifice him to Mactalde’s demands. In their fear, too many of the fine gentleman and high nobles of Lael were falling under the spell of Nateros. The Gifted would die, and the hope of victory would die with him.
And Orias would never find redemption.
So he led Chris back through the rough hill country, five hours south to the nearest of the Cherazii’s transient settlements, a camp used by those emigrating from Koraud.
They were within half a league when the rustling he’d been hearing for the past hour materialized into a pair of Cherazii sentinels: Cabahr Laith and a red-haired youth.
Cherazii protocol demanded a civil exchange of greetings between Cherazii and strangers found wandering near a settlement. But before Orias could speak, the youth launched himself at Chris’s horse. His leap lifted him almost to eye level with Chris, and his vambrace-clad forearm hammered into Chris’s chest and felled him from his horse.
The last spark of his hope blinked into darkness. He galloped to Chris’s side. “Forid!” Enough.
Laith’s lip curled. “Orias Tarn.”
The red-haired warrior thrust his knee
between Chris’s shoulders. He rifled Chris’s clothing and cast aside whatever weapons he found.
Pitch clambered halfway over Orias’s shoulder. “Podd! Eck sit ti Retteloj.” Stop! He’s the Gifted.
Laith looked at Chris. “So you’re alive yet.” The angles and planes of his face betrayed nothing.
But Orias recognized the anger in his eyes. The last time he and Chris had seen Laith had been that long ago day when the Koraudians had massacred Laith’s caravan—and Orias had corrupted the Gifted into resurrecting Mactalde. Of all the Cherazii they might have met today, Laith was the one most likely to kill them on sight.
Laith nudged his horse forward. “What business brings our noble Gifted so far into the hills? Did you not know this is Cherazii country?”
Already, the back part of Orias’s brain, where his battle fire never completely died down, was charting tactics and identifying the best places to defend and attack.
The youth wrenched Chris to his feet.
Chris spat snow and mud. “I’ve come in search of an alliance with your people.”
Laith barked a laugh. “The only reason I don’t kill you right now is because there are more than just a few of us who deserve to watch you fall.”
Chris pulled his shoulders back against the hands that restrained him. “Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t want to make things right? We only have one chance left—all of us. Take me to your elders, that’s all I ask. If they decide to execute me, I’ll submit. But first I need them—and you—to listen to me.”
For a long windblown moment, Laith watched the Gifted.
Chris stood in the face of almost certain death and obviously knew it, but he never flinched. Any Cherazim would admire that.
“Perhaps we will listen,” Laith said. “Perhaps not. But I will take you to Elder Averr.” Again, he looked at Orias, but that glance offered no touch of admiration. “Both of you.
_________
They rode the rest of the way to the camp, and as they entered beneath the stone arch, Orias’s stomach lurched. How many years since he had ridden the streets of a true Cherazii settlement? The enclaves in Koraud had mimicked the ways of the homeland, but until right now he hadn’t realized how much the Cherazii had abandoned in their self-imposed exile.
Hundreds of stone longhouses, organized in concentric circles, rode the hilltop, but the heffron trees hid all but the nearest. Most of the walls and roofs had been packed with sod, and beneath the snow, what remained of the summer grass embraced the houses and joined them with the hill itself.
Ornaments hung from every eave: azure birdhouses, scarlet wind chimes, yellow and purple pennons, and candle globes in every imaginable hue. Between the houses, the circular garden plots would normally have bloomed with flowers and vegetables, but now they lay crushed and barren beneath the snowfall. Dogs and Rievers and the occasional donkey ran through the streets.
The people rose from their work and watched, without expression, as Laith led his prisoners through the streets to the circular plaza at the camp’s center.
He stopped in front of the elder’s longhouse. “Elder Averr, I bring you traitors for judgment by the people!
The elder’s grandson ran through the house’s indigo door and brought back his grandfather. Seragon Averr entered the snow glare and watched with only the slightest crook of an eyebrow as Chris and Orias, along with Pitch and Raz, were pulled from their horses and shoved to their knees in the mud-swirled snow.
“It’s all right,” Pitch whispered. “It’s going to be all right.”
Raz peered around. “Like rotted eggs it is.”
Averr surveyed them without so much as a fine gray wrinkle moving in his face. He wore his hair in two white braids over his shoulders and covered his head with a tricorn cockaded in the same red as his cape. His shoulders and chest were still broad enough to impressively fill the blue wool of his knee-length tunic, and four short-handled stilettos rode in sheaths on both sides of his boots.
He crossed his arms and slid his hands into his opposing sleeves. “So I find myself once again face to face with the Gifted.”
Chris tilted his head, confused.
Averr stepped forward. “You remember. The day of the great battle at the Aiden River. We met at the base of the Karilus Wall. I told you I awaited proof of the new Gifted’s worthiness.”
Recognition flickered in Chris’s eyes. “And did you find proof?”
Averr cocked his head. “Yes.” He glanced at Laith. “I have heard the eyewitnesses. I have no doubt that you, with the traitorous aid of one of our own, did the forbidden. Do you deny it?”
“No, I do not.” Chris met his gaze. “And I am willing to submit myself to whatever punishment you deem fit.”
Averr’s eyebrow lifted. “This is why you ride to find us?”
“Not exactly. I’ve come to ask for your help.”
More than a few Cherazii broke their impassivity to murmur amongst themselves.
Laith prodded Chris’s shoulder with the haft of his poleax. “Why would we help you?”
Chris sat back on his heels, head up, and addressed them all. “I’m here because I’m out of options. We all are. The worlds are breaking.”
Laith shook his head. “The Cherazii want no alliance with a traitor and a thief.” He opened his fist and revealed the creamy pulse of the Orimere. “He carries it as if it were a common bartering rock.”
Averr claimed the stone and looked at Chris. “How did you come by this?”
Orias stiffened. Laith already knew, of course. They all knew. But before they could legally punish Orias, they required definitive proof he had played an active role in Mactalde’s return. They needed Chris to hand him over to them.
Raz scowled. “The Orimere has always belonged to the Gifted. Why shouldn’t he have it?”
Pitch murmured a shushing breath. “Don’t.”
The violet scar that threaded Laith’s cheek lay perfectly straight. “It is the Cherazii’s right to provide the Orimere to the Gifted. But we have not provided it to you, I think. The Orimere is never passed on without a great ceremony. We have had no such ceremony since your crossing.” He tilted Chris’s head back with the tip of his poleax. “The Orimere was stolen.”
Chris held his ground. “Not by me.”
“Who then?”
Pitch reached over to grip Orias’s fingers.
Chris shook his head.
“You protect a traitor,” Averr said. “You think that gives us reason to trust you?”
The cold air burned Orias’s lungs. Chris was trying to protect him, the God of all knew why. But in protecting him, he would doom himself as well. Couldn’t he see that?
If Orias knelt here in silence, if he kept his words buried under his tongue, he would be worse than a traitor and a heretic. What kind of coward accepted protection from the hand of a man whom he had already betrayed once? If his own life must be the price for the Gifted’s freedom, then so be it.
He lifted his hand to his collar. “If you seek the traitor—” he unbuttoned his coat and pulled down his jerkin to bare his shoulder, “—then here he is.”
When he had agreed to Mactalde’s terms, they had marked him forever as a minion in their service. Tattooed in red against the milk white of his skin, the unfurled wings and cawing mouth of the Koraudian Blood Eagle bruited his false allegiances.
Silence roared through the piazza. Chris closed his eyes. But he must know the truth was their only chance. Wasn’t that why Orias had come with him, in spite of everything? To convince his people to aid the Gifted in a final battle?
“Orias Tarn.” Averr’s chin dipped in recognition. “I heard the rumors, but I chose not to believe. You have fought with the enemy?”
“Aye, I have fought with the enemy.”
Behind him, someone swore. The haft of a pike punched him in the kidney and ripped the air from his lungs. Someone else hit him upside the head.
Raz leapt to his feet. “He did what h
e had to!”
Laith left his poleax against Chris’s throat as he addressed Orias. “And now you ride with the Gifted. What are we supposed to gather from that? That you are a traitor twice over? Or that there is so little difference between the Gifted and the Koraudians that in betraying your people you serve them both alike?”
Orias pushed himself upright and burned the pain away from his mind. “I have done what I have done. I am the one who deserves to be punished. The Gifted fights for Lael, and in fighting for Lael, he fights for the Cherazii. If we do not help, we doom our own lives. Even more, we doom the traditions we have spent our existence protecting.”
“Twenty years ago,” Averr said, “we were betrayed by a Gifted, and we thought no blacker treachery could darken the pages of our history. Perhaps we were wrong.”
“That’s not true.” With both hands, Pitch held onto Orias’s fingers. “Orias has not betrayed you. He has come back. You see?”
Averr shrugged.
What Orias had done, he had done. And what he would suffer for it, he would suffer. That was the Cherazii way.
Averr turned and paced a few steps in front of Chris. “What is it you think you could do against Koraud, even with us at your back? Mactalde has all the odds on his side. We have nothing left with which to fight him.”
With his head leaned back on the end of Laith’s poleax, Chris could only follow Averr with his eyes. “What if we did?”
Laith hacked. “Once Mactalde’s taken Réon Couteau, you’ll never shake him loose from behind those walls.”
Averr’s pacing carried him past Chris, and he turned to walk behind the prisoners. “Not even an army could conquer Réon Couteau. And a siege of attrition would take years. There’s not a single way in that won’t bring certain death.”
“Certain death for an army maybe. But not for me.” Chris raised his voice. “We can bring the fortress down around Mactalde’s ears.”
Pitch stared. “How?”
“I’m going to blow it up.” His voice deepened. “There’s a secret built into Réon Couteau. It’s either a weakness or a strength, depending on who’s exploiting it. And, when we’re ready, it’s going to be a weakness.”
Laith pulled the poleax away and exchanged a glance with Averr as the elder circled around Orias and back into view. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about what’s behind the waterfall. What’s beneath the castle. Caverns that go all the way back into the cliff and undermine the entire fortress.”
Something that might almost have been hope tickled at the back of Orias’s mind. The Cherazii histories contained rumors, legends almost, passed down from those who had built the fortress. They told of caverns carved by the water, caverns honeycombing the cliff beneath the castle.
“You know how to access the caverns?” he asked.
Chris watched Averr. “I have a map.”
“You have a map.” Averr stopped in front of Chris and motioned Laith back a step. “You have a map, Master Gifted, and you have courage. Perhaps you even have honor, in spite of everything. I can’t say that with any certainty, but what I can say is I believe you when you tell me the worlds are breaking.” Above, silent lightning veined the swirl of clouds. “You are not innocent, but you are repentant. And I believe you are the only one who can mend what you have broken. And for that reason alone I release you to your fate—whatever it may be.”
Chris eased to his feet. “But you won’t come with me? You won’t fight?”
“I think you had best take your life as gift enough and run from here.”
He hesitated. “What about Orias?”
Averr turned to Orias. He did not hide his disgust. “Tell me, Orias Tarn, will you willingly bow your neck to the blade of justice?”
Pitch jumped up. “No! You don’t understand!”
Orias had awaited this from the moment Chris had asked him to come as his guide. The words almost brought a sense of relief. He would atone for his great mistake, and, after that, it would be over at last.
“I come,” he said.
Averr motioned to the Cherazim behind Orias. “Bind him.”
Hands seized him and twisted his arms behind his back. He didn’t fight. So long as Chris was free and so long as a chance remained he might kill Mactalde, that was all he had left to care about.
Chris accepted his chewser and sword. His thumb clicked on the hydraulics, and the blue-lit buzz filled the piazza. He didn’t raise the gun, just let it hang at his side.
“Let him go.” His words were without threat. He had to know he had no chance of fighting and winning here. He ignited his firearm only to get their attention.
Laith laughed. “Don’t renew my opinion of your folly. You ask to flout Cherazim law and still expect us to pardon you?”
“I expect you to look beyond yourselves. Orias made a mistake. So did I.”
“Aye, you did at that. And now you stand in our midst and demand exemption for a traitor?”
“I’m not leaving without him.”
“Go,” Orias said. “This is now between me and my people.”
Chris faced Averr. “I need him.”
The elder stared back. “You need a traitor?”
Pitch scrambled to stand at Chris’s side. “The Gifted belongs to me. I found him. And I belong to Orias. We must be together, we must help each other.”
“The worlds are breaking,” Chris said. “King Tireus is dead. Lael is staggering with its losses, and Mactalde is calling for my head even as we speak.”
“Then give it to him,” Laith said. “What do we care?”
“You should care because . . . you’re a piece in a larger puzzle.”
The Cherazii regarded him in silence.
“Let him go.” Chris flicked off the hydraulics and holstered his pistol. “And if you change your minds and decide you want to raise your steel in the greatest battle of your lives, then you’ll follow me to Réon Couteau.”
A minute passed, a long, interminable minute, and then Averr turned to the men who held Orias. “Let him go.” He looked at Orias, and something in his mouth quirked. “For the sake of your misguided friend, I give you back into the hand of the God of all. I pray whatever death He metes to you will be worthy of your sins.”
Orias’s hands fell free. They were releasing him? Because the Gifted had asked them? Never had he expected that. A single breath burst from his mouth.
Someone forced his reins into his fingers. He mounted, his joints like wooden hinges, and he rode through the ranks to join Chris. In silence, they left the camp through the archway.
“They will not fight so long as I am with you,” he said. “You’re a fool not to leave me here.”
Chris faced the trail before them. “I can’t leave a man to die a traitor when I am guilty of the same crimes.”