by Court Ellyn
Fifty yards farther on, they entered a road of tightly fit flags. A knife’s edge could scarcely slide between the stones, and the surface was kept meticulously free of sticks and leaves. By whom? wondered Carah, imagining a fairy godmother with a giant broom.
“But, Uncle Thorn, which is the illusion? The beauty or the ugliness?”
He chuckled. “My niece, the philosopher.” Before he could engage in the discussion, he pulled back on the reins and tossed up a fist, ordering them to halt. “Look,” he said, pointing at the ground.
At first, Carah recognized nothing out of the ordinary. Just some green leaves crushed on the road. A sapling leaned sideways, its roots gasping naked out of the earth. Then a hillside where a broad swath of moss was churned into a ruin. To the rear, Rhian made a groaning sound. A humming, crackling ball of energy gathered in his open hand.
“Uncle—!”
“Hush,” he ordered. “Listen.” His head tilted, his eyes closed. The distant whistle of a bird descended from the trees. He looked up, and the tension eased from his face. “Dranithion,” he whispered.
Carah blinked into Veil Sight and saw half a dozen lifelights glowing among the branches. They were brighter than any human’s azeth she had seen and as silver as Thyrra’s face on a clear night. “We’re safe then?”
A bull’s bellow and a crash of underbrush swallowed Thorn’s reply. The gray gelding reared. Thorn leapt free of the panicked animal and flung out a hand. The bolt of fire struck a tree trunk, missing the ogre by a yard. The monster charged, axe reared. Rhian’s crackling orb crashed into its chest. A cascade of blue sparks rippled along its armor, its tusks, singeing green-gray skin and matted black hair just as an arrow sprouted from its neck. Several others hissed past, filling the ogre’s skull like a pincushion. Thorn sprang aside to avoid being crushed by the toppling corpse.
Carah released her white-knuckled grip on the reins.
Thorn picked himself off the flags and cast a blazing round of curses into the trees. Carah knew he thanked the archers with profanities because he shouted in Elaran.
Crisp, musical laughter rolled down from the branches. Shapes shifted from the shadows. “You don’t like being used as bait, nethai?”
“Damn it, Laniel, could you have tarried longer?” He shook his fist. “I dare you to come down and put yourself in range of my arm.”
Laniel? The Laniel? After a quick inspection, Carah decided he wasn’t what she expected. Listening to all those tales of dragons and lost princesses, she had imagined someone far more like her uncle, not this golden creature of leaf-dappled sunlight. He slung a recurved bow onto his back and ambled along the fat limb as steadily as a cat on a roof pole. “My arm is longer, nethai.”
“I’m younger!”
That gave Laniel fits. Laughter danced about the trees for so long that it bordered on insult. He wiped a hand across his eyes as if tears filled them. “Men and flies, Dathiel. Men and flies.” His gestures were water flowing over stone, and though his words were course, his voice was the nightwind. “Me and this dumb brute, we been eyeing each other all night. You see where his clan moved through, aye?” He dropped onto his seat, kicked free of the limb, and dropped the rest of the way to the ground. The other Elarion stayed where they were. Carah felt their eyes on her.
“Now I’m blind as well as old,” Thorn retorted. “Of course I see! It was a large war band.”
Laniel sobered. “More than a war band.” He knelt beside the corpse, tore a gray-fletched arrow from its throat, and used the bloody shaft as a pointer while he talked: “His platoon brought up the rear. We picked them off one by one. He took cover below the hill there. We couldn’t see him, but we could smell him. He musta thought we’d given up, when you came along.” It wasn’t often that someone was tall enough that they had to look down to meet Uncle Thorn’s eye, but Laniel stood over him by more than a hand-span.
“Where’s Captain Teriena?” Thorn demanded. “What the hell are you doing in the East Sector?”
“We’re all here, all the Guardians. Even some of the Regs. Teriena spotted the Black Marsh ogres encamped south of the highway, guessed what they meant to do, and rallied us. The naenion invaded near midnight. We arrived shortly after.”
“So where’s the party? Not Linndun?”
“No. They’ve attacked Haredi Tower. Not sure why. My troop was sent to watch for reinforcements.” He gestured at the dead ogre and raised his nose in smug satisfaction. “As you can see, there won’t be any.” He nodded a greeting at Rhian. “Dorreah’ad arghel.” Rhian returned the nod. Then Laniel turned a glare on Carah. She might have been an ogre for all the warmth she detected in his eyes. The green stripes on his cheeks and brow only added to his ferocity. “Who’s this, nethai, and how have you not broken your vow?”
Thorn cleared his throat, uneasy. He’d told more people than just Carah about the secrets hidden inside Avidan Wood. “This is my niece, you dumb ox.”
Laniel pointed with the arrow. “This? This is wee Carah?”
“I was referring to the horse.”
Carah remembered her manners and dismounted. “And you’re Laniel Falconeye.”
Laniel’s ferocity dissipated like mist, leaving his eyes the clear gray of the early morning sky. “Aye, well, well,” he drawled, gently taking her hand, “so I’m a dumb ox. All this time I imagined you a babe in a cradle.” His grin told her he liked her better this way.
“I wasn’t exactly spot-on either,” she admitted.
“He told you about me? So he did break his vow of silence.”
“In a way. Tell me, do you really fight dragons and rescue fair maidens?”
Baffled, he glanced at Thorn, who scratched at his nape in guilty fashion. Laniel’s eyes narrowed, but he managed a dry chuckle. “Certainly,” he replied. “Every day.” He flicked the arrow toward the ogre. “There’s your dragon, and here you are, and how delighted I am to have rescued you.”
“Oh, for the Mother’s sake,” Thorn grumbled. “It was only one ogre. We would’ve taken him had you hesitated any longer.”
“I never hesitate. My timing is flawless. We dropped him exactly where I wanted him. Only, you happened to jump out of the way.”
Carah snickered behind her hand.
Thorn snickered too, but blades gleamed in his grin. “I’ll have my vengeance on you, elf. Mark me.”
“Ha, do you realize how like Zellel you sound? I don’t need to miss that old badger with you around.” He shoved the arrow back into the quiver on his belt, secured Carah’s hand on the crook of his arm, and started off. “Let’s to battle, shall we?”
Thorn stopped him. “My niece does not charge into battle. She and I have already quarreled about this, and I’ll not have you countermanding me.”
Taken aback, Laniel sputtered gracelessly, “Counter-what? Do you think I’d toss her to the ogres? Hnh, sweeping aside the naenion is your job, avedra. I mean to get Carah safely inside the guardhouse.”
“I’m not letting her out of my sight. If one hair on her head comes to harm, you’ll have her father to deal with after I’ve murdered you.”
“Tsk, tsk, after all we’ve been through together, he doesn’t trust me.” He glanced at Carah, as if for sympathy, but she kept her mouth shut. The last thing she wanted was to jump into their arena. “But what your uncle fails to realize is that I know where the naenion are positioned. Or maybe he’s just too stubborn to admit that sometimes I do know what I’m doing.” He turned to Thorn. “I can sneak Carah past their pickets, whereas you will blunder straight into them.” His hand swept over the dead ogre. “Obviously. So if you or Rhian have any objections about continuing down this road and taking the naenion from the rear, you may voice them now.”
“Looking forward to it,” the pearl fisher said.
Sheepish, Thorn added, “No objections, Captain.”
“Good. Lady Carah and I will head across country to the tunnel, if she has no objection.”
A story-time
adventure with Laniel Falconeye? Carah barely kept her delight in check. “None, sir.”
“Saffron will keep you company,” Thorn insisted.
Carah swallowed her resentment. If he had taught her fire and lightning, she would be able to protect her own skin.
Laniel called into the trees. “Azhien, Amyrith, with me. Nyria, lead the rest of the troop with Dathiel.” The branches came alive. Elarion materialized from the thickets, twice as many as Carah had been aware of. Most sped eastward, leaping from branch to branch, dizzyingly high. They were as fearless and certain as squirrels, shaking barely a leaf from place. Thorn hoisted himself into the saddle, cast Carah a parting shake of the finger, then he and Rhian cantered after them.
Two dranithion clambered down from the canopy and joined their captain. “Amyrith, take the lady’s horse and send it home,” Laniel ordered.
The Elari’s black hair glinted with colors of sapphire and amethyst. Carah handed him Záradel’s reins. He paid Carah not so much as a glance, but he whispered intimately with the horse. Záradel’s ears perked up, then she stamped a hoof, freed herself from the Elari’s grasp and ambled off through the trees.
Laniel told his guest, “Amyrith has served with me almost as long as Nyria. That’s what, a hundred years?”
The Elari rattled off something in his own language.
Laniel translated, “A hundred twenty-three, he says. Forgive him, he refuses to speak duínovan. But Azhien here? He needs to practice. Dathiel is the only human my cousin has ever seen, and that from a distance, right?”
Azhien nodded. He had the slighter build of a youth, but otherwise might’ve been Laniel’s younger brother. If Falconeye had a mane the color of sunlight, Azhien’s was wheat. They even wore the same green-gray suede and similar silver loops in the peaks of their pointed ears. He examined Carah with a nervous half-grin. “Skin is like shadow,” he said.
“Humans aren’t very shiny, are they?” Laniel remarked while he searched the roadside for stray arrows and tucked them into his quiver. Carah examined the fair skin of her arm.
“He means your skin drinks the light, that’s all.”
“Ah. Yes.”
Azhien cleared his throat and risked a chuckle. “I think maybe human girl have beard, too, like man.” It was apparent at a glance that Elaran men didn’t need to carry razors among their toiletries. Suddenly Rhian’s youthful jaw made sense.
Laniel grunted. “I told you they didn’t. Now maybe you’ll believe me.”
His cousin ignored him, curiosity abounding. “Your ears round?”
Carah tucked her heavy brown hair behind an ear to show him. What else would he pry into, she wondered, brushing off a bout of self-consciousness.
“My cousin has been sequestered in the city all his life,” Laniel said by way of apology. “One of the Regs on wall duty. He’s new to the troop. I try to make sure he doesn’t charge off and hurt himself.”
“Seven months not is new,” Azhien argued, words tangling up.
Amyrith raised his eyebrows, but that was the extent of his disagreement. He and Laniel stooped to roll the ogre off the road. They grunted, red-faced, while Azhien stood aside and added, “Besides, if not we are family, you will send me with Nyria and the rest. Let me fight. Captain. Sir.”
“I do let you fight. How many ogres did you slay today alone?”
“Yes, but only with you. Never trusting me to … ach!” He finished the rest in Elaran, then appealed to Carah, “These are two wolves in the same pack, him and Dathiel, no? ‘Do not scratch yourself. Do not leave my side.’ ”
Carah crossed her arms, deciding she liked this disgruntled Elari. “It doesn’t speak of much confidence, does it?”
Laniel watched the ogre flop down the hillside and dusted off his hands. “It has nothing to do with confidence,” he said, “only the hunger in a na’in’s belly and a certain degree of experience. Levelheadedness doesn’t hurt, either.” He unsheathed a dagger and extended it to Carah, hilt first.
She took it gingerly and examined the hilt. It was wrought from a stag’s antler and exquisitely inlaid with silver. The blade itself was double-edged and nicked from frequent use. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Hopefully nothing. Don’t cut yourself.”
“No worries, Captain, I’m the Swiftblade’s daughter.” As if that meant she’d been born with some innate skill with weaponry.
“Move out,” Laniel ordered. “You two, watch our flank. Carah, don’t leave my side.”
“See?” Azhien whispered, but Laniel heard and leveled a glare. His cousin turned his back and headed off into the trees.
Carah tucked the blade into her belt at the small of her back, then followed Laniel off the road and down the mossy hillside where he’d dumped the ogre. She saw other boulder-sized bodies scattered through the trees. The Elarion paid them no mind. Their senses were on the lookout for living enemies. Skilled eyes detected the slightest track on the forest floor; they paused to listen to sounds Carah was deaf to. She had the advantage of Veil Sight, but among the thick ferns and crowded trees the only lifelights she saw belonged to herself and the three Elarion. It wasn’t enough. On occasion, one of the Elarion would raise a hand, whisper something in their language, then the party would start off in a new direction, sometimes back the way they’d come, sometimes in a great horseshoe. Carah was hopelessly lost; she stopped trying to decipher how far they’d hiked from the road or in which direction they traveled. The terrain made for slow going, for her at least. Laniel helped her over fallen trees, up slippery embankments, through briar patches. He rarely paused for rest, and soon Carah was bruised, scratched, blistered, and breathless.
Amyrith darted past, high overhead. Not fair, Carah thought, watching him leap nimbly from branch to branch. Several yards behind, Azhien paused to press an ear to the bole of a tree, listening for vibrations, perhaps. Carah took the opportunity to lean against a sapling and catch her breath. Laniel had to stop and wait. “Uncle Thorn’s stories left out this part,” she gasped.
Laniel chuckled. “You sound just like him. He had trouble keeping up too, once upon a time.”
“You chose the most difficult path imaginable, didn’t you?”
“Only because the naenion occupy the level ground.”
“How much farther?”
“Not far.”
Twice more she forced a rest, and twice more Laniel said, “Not far.”
“You’re as infuriating as Uncle Thorn, you know that?” She scrambled up a muddy slope, grabbed a branch for support, but it was covered in hooked brown thorns. They stabbed through her riding gloves. She gasped, released the branch, started to slide back down the slope, but Laniel grabbed her wrist and hoisted her up. Rather than offer a jest, he pressed a finger to her mouth. Carah held her breath and listened.
A low growl of thunder rumbled through the trees. Another followed it, and another.
Carah remembered the blasts of lightning that tore through Bramoran’s banquet hall. “Saffron, are they safe?”
The crystalline voice at her shoulder replied, “Is a battlefield ever safe?”
Laniel offered small comfort, “Let’s hope they’ve drawn the naenion away from the tunnel.”
They crept forward now, careful to avoid bumping into leaves or crushing twigs. Carah tried to match Laniel step for step, but his stride was too long. As softly as she stepped, how could she still be so damned noisy? Laniel didn’t complain, however. The rumbles of thunder had grown to booms and cracks; the crunch of leaves was immaterial. Turning sharply to the left, he whispered, “We’ll try this way.” But straight ahead, over the lacy leaves of a shrub, Carah glimpsed a hint of stone wall, the battlements of a tower. She craned her neck, looking for lightning or fire flashing through the trees—and took one step too many. The earth she thought would be there wasn’t. She slipped through the shrubs, down a muddy bank and splashed flat on her rear in a shallow stream.
Laniel stood atop the bank,
biting laughter off his face. “But that way works, too.” Graceful as a deer, he leapt down after her and plucked her to her feet.
She shook him off. “Don’t touch me. Son of a bitch.” Her riding leathers sagged, heavy with water, then clung cold and uncomfortable.
Falconeye pointed downstream, at an array of boulders that jutted from the opposite bank. “There’s the tunnel. Looks like the naenion haven’t found it yet. Come along.”
A cry descended from the trees. “Brannië!” An arrow blurred past, thucked into flesh. An ogre toppled down the far bank. Their cover blown, half a dozen more surged from the underbrush. How could such massive creatures hide without a trace?
“ ‘Vedra!” one roared. “Get it!” The ogre died with the order in his mouth. An arrow bored through his red eye. The rest of the squad charged over the bodies and down the riverbank, clubs and axes raised.
Laniel dealt Carah a shove. “The tunnel. Go!”
She ran, slipping over stones, the water dragging at her feet. Scrambling around the mound of boulders, she glimpsed a gate of bronze bars tucked into a hollow. Her arms swept aside a curtain of ivy; her fingers fought the latch. The mechanism was too intricate. She swore and turned to call for Laniel.
He spun with a short sword, dived and slashed, fending off two ogres at once, fierce as a cornered badger. Another rammed a tree trunk with his shoulder, trying to dislodge Azhien. Between jolts, he planted an arrow in the ogre’s skull. Other arrows hissed from a limb higher up, presumably where Amyrith perched, but the boiled leather the ogres wore was thick. An ogre with gray fletching buried in his thigh and several arrows in his breastplate broke away from the skirmish. His red eyes pinned Carah. She ducked behind the ivy, scrabbled frantically with the gate’s latch, but in three strides he was upon her. “De pit for you, ‘vedra.” His clawed fingers tangled in her hair and dragged her out of the ivy and along the streambed. She screamed and kicked, churning the water. One hand clung to the ogre’s wrist, to relieve the tearing, throbbing in her scalp; the other freed the dagger from her belt.