This healing, though, was harder than the others she’d done. Whether it was because Morrigh was an animal rather than a person, or whether a horse was so much larger than an elf or a human, Faanshi didn’t know. But in the end, it didn’t matter. Wounded flesh was still flesh. Her magic sought the bullet gouge, willing it closed—and when the horse shifted restlessly, alarmed by the sensations, she wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered reassurances.
“You’re all right now, brave one. Hush now. You’re all right.”
Her eyes still closed, she leaned her face against Morrigh’s sleek coat. Djashtet gave horses such power when She made them. It made her feel small and fragile by comparison, though not alarmingly so. After all, she’d already experienced Morrigh’s strength and speed. Now, though, he made sense to her. Not as Julian’s horse, not as the means to get from one place to another, but as a living creature in his own right. Dawnmaiden, Noonmother, Crone of Night, thank you for this blessing.
“Faanshi. Come out of it, girl.”
Something tickled, and she had to giggle, for the horse was trying to turn his head now to face her—but no, that was Julian’s hands on her shoulders, turning her around. Faanshi blinked, shook her head to clear it, and found him frowning down at her.
Rab had come over, too, and he reached around her to put a bucket of water well within Morrigh’s reach for drinking. “You did it,” the younger assassin reported. “I think his coat may turn white there, but the wound’s closed.”
Morrigh snorted again, and as he ducked his head down to the bucket, Julian abruptly stepped back from Faanshi. Only then did her power finally subside, leaving tremors in her muscles in its wake; without the bulwark of Julian’s contact, she thought she might stumble if she moved too quickly. Yet she could not spare time for such weakness, or for the sudden sharp wish that he would return his hands to her shoulders.
For a moment, she wanted to ask him to do so.
Yet surely that was unseemly, when they were not alone, and when Rab’s face was taut with what she’d come to recognize as barely suppressed irritation. Now that she was alert again, Faanshi looked at him more closely, her brow furrowing. “They said Tornach was lost. I’m very sorry, Rab.”
He glowered at her, but to her relief, didn’t offer her the sardonic retort she’d expected. “Thank you. I’ll have to hope that the elves have a horse they can spare me, or alternate means to take swift leave of this place when the need arises. I fear it will, and soon.”
“It seems all too likely,” Julian agreed.
Both men looked as grim as Faanshi had ever seen them, and she looked back and forth between them, a frisson of uneasiness skittering all over her skin. “It was just a Hawk patrol, wasn’t it? The Wards will protect us.”
“Oh, you charming, naïve little mouse.” Rab rolled his eyes in that world-weary way he had, as if he were Julian’s age or beyond, though Faanshi was fairly certain he wasn’t much older than she. “You wouldn’t know yet, of course. They’re starting to figure it out. The bastard that shot Tornach—or so I gathered from the babbling fellow who rode Morrigh in—did it inside the Wards.”
The horse thirstily drank from the bucket as if he’d entirely forgotten he’d ever been hurt—or that he’d crossed a powerful barrier of magic, several times now. But Faanshi understood what Morrigh did not, and fear churned in her belly, stirred up by a cold rush of realization. “Great Lady of Time. But…if a Hawk chased him in, the Wards would have hurt him too.”
“You should know better than most what people will do in the name of religion,” Julian said, and she felt sick at heart, for he was right.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask what had happened to the Hawk. If the sailor had made it into Dolmerrath, the scouts must have intercepted him, and Faanshi had seen the scouts facing Hawks before. She couldn’t imagine he’d survived the fight, especially if Tembriel and her fire-magic had found him. “The Wards make humans afraid, but this Hawk crossed them anyway, despite the fear?”
Rab nodded, his mouth set in a bitter curl. “The call of duty, perhaps. I’m sure our own Hawks would have done the same, had it been them.”
They couldn’t call Kestar and Celoren Hawks anymore, though Faanshi didn’t point that out. Her gaze lingered on the horse as a memory crossed her mind of her former master and the stallion he’d ridden. He’d been black like Morrigh but far more temperamental. The last time she’d seen that horse had been the first time her power had awakened, when she’d healed the head groom—and the Duke of Shalridan had let his panicked beast trample the old man, and let everyone at Lomhannor Hall believe she’d killed him instead. She hadn’t dared to defy him. Not then. She’d feared her wild new power, but she’d feared the duke more.
“It could have been fear instead of duty, if something else frightened him more than the Wards,” she ventured.
Rab blinked and looked at her more sharply, while Julian showed no surprise at all. If anything, his face grew more grim and set, the closest he’d seemed in days to the dour assassin who’d first rescued her. “If I were in the Order of the Hawk, I’d have figured out a long time ago that there was a part of the woods in this province where my people went out of their minds with fear for no apparent reason. Especially with an amulet that lit up at the slightest trace of magic.”
“They have to know the elves are here,” Rab agreed. “They’d be fools not to. So have any Hawks tried to breach the Wards before? Why haven’t they tried to burn the woods down, for gods’ sakes? Their precious holy duty should have driven them to it by now, surely.”
“It wasn’t worth the risk before. Now it is. The situation’s changed. We’re here.”
Morrigh finished drinking his fill and lifted his head again, nickering languidly and nudging at Faanshi’s nearest shoulder. She was glad for the distraction; scratching his nose gave her hands something to do, so that she wouldn’t have to think about how they shook. “I’m here.” It felt foolish to say it. It felt prideful. Part of her was convinced that the Lady of Time would chastise her for breaking Her ridahs with such a thought—and the rest braced for Rab’s inevitable sarcasm. “The duke is dead because of me. I turned the Anreulag away, and I brought everyone to get Kestar out of Shalridan. They were calling my name in the streets. I must have made them angry for all these things.”
Julian gave her a single, short nod. “We’d best hope it’s just a matter of their intending to capture you before the entire realm erupts in war. Don’t mistake me, girl—that’s dire enough. But the alternative is even worse.”
She didn’t have to ask him what he meant, since they’d both witnessed the Anreulag unleashing Her power at Arlitham Abbey—when She’d nearly killed Julian. Faanshi couldn’t think of anything more likely to provoke a Knight of the Hawk into facing the Dolmerrath Wards. Formidable as they were, the Wards merely flooded a human mind with unreasoning fear. The Voice of the Gods could burn living flesh and bone.
“We have to find out if the Anreulag is coming,” she whispered.
That Rab offered her none of his usual mockery was no comfort at all.
Chapter Six
Somewhere outside Dareli, Jeuchar 5 and 6, AC 1876
She had forgotten the warmth of sunlight on her face, of drawing fresh air in with her every breath, rather than the stale must of ages in a prison of subterranean stone. Vanished, too, had been the memory of walking openly upon the earth, with no will to command her but her own—and where she might once have walked when her own will had ruled her. Only the dimmest shadows of places she’d been sent flashed across her dreams, for only in sleep had she ever won the slightest respite from the inexorable press of the blood spell on her consciousness.
Obey the High Priest. Obey the Bhandreid. Speak the word of the gods. Destroy the enemies of the Church.
The magic had blotted out all else from her
memory. Where her jailors summoned her to appear. Hunger. Thirst. Whether there had ever been a time when she had not been the leashed fire and thunder of the Four Gods, and if so, how long ago that might have been. Her name.
Anreulag. Voice of the Gods. The echoes of the titles she’d been given rattled through her thoughts, thin and brittle, the rhythm of fleshless bones. But there’d been another echo, one that had come to her from unknowable distance, words that were like and yet unlike those with which the priest and the queen had bound her.
Ràe elari enno sul ve carya! Enno Amathilàen korthiali ràe!
It wasn’t her name. Yet she knew the words as the language of her birth, and the name Amathilàen burned through her as fiercely as her magic, each syllable a brand of fire she realized she knew better than she knew herself.
It resounded through her as she emerged out of hiding once more, ignoring the shift from day to night and back again as she gave herself over to the shattering of the human city. More buildings, more fences, and even wagons on the streets and ships in the harbor caught fire when she hurled lightning down upon them. Figures ran screaming from her coming. Others, bearing weapons, threw themselves into her path only to fall beneath her onslaught; none of them mattered. Some of them cried out to her in what a tiny part of her realized was prayer. She screamed back at them, never once caring whether the round-eared servants of her jailors could understand her first and truest tongue.
“Cer elva aran roè kellaì!”
That is not my name!
That much she could remember, along with the unbridled joy of giving full rein to her magic—so great a joy that, for a time, she even forgot that her strength was not inexhaustible. That she still had a physical form—and that the shape that channeled her inner fire was not invulnerable. In the glory of her anger she shielded herself from the arrow, the sword and the iron pellets fired from desperate guns. But at last her shields began to falter, and, when the city around her burned and a throng of humans in the colors of her jailors charged at her with uplifted muskets, she felt her protections begin to fall.
Bullets sliced the air all around her, bullets she refused to let touch her again.
Her magic leveled every building in sight with the thunder of its reply.
Even so, she smiled as she willed herself elsewhere. Where she went was of no consequence; the freedom to transport herself with her magic was itself a victory. When the city vanished around her, she exulted. When she reappeared upon a windswept beach with nothing surrounding her but open air and the susurration of the waves, she howled her triumph. Her bare feet met sand chilled by the fall of night and by salt water, and through that contact with the earth, she felt her power replenishing itself. Restoring her. But even as her strength returned, a memory surged of her own voice crying out, and it drew her eyes skyward to the crescent moon casting a pale shadow across tattered wisps of clouds.
Those same syllables, haunting her anew—syllables she’d shouted not very long ago.
Ràe elari enno sul ve carya! Enno Amathilàen korthiali ràe!
Blood and fire had bound her. By blood and fire she’d been freed. And only by the shadow of the moon would she die.
In her inner sight, in jagged glimpses of recollection, she saw the sword again—and the deft, strong hand that had wielded it. She saw green eyes in a face whose name she could no longer recall, but which was linked through ages, by sunlight and silver, to a baby her jailors would have had her destroy. She’d let him live because of the memory of green eyes and a sword.
“Amathilàen,” she hissed over the rush of the waves, exulting anew. She had her freedom, and now she had a purpose above and beyond the obliteration of the human city. Moonshadow. The name rang through her, one of the few sparks of clarity in the clamor of her thoughts, and she welcomed its white-hot brilliance. She would find Moonshadow, before it was lifted anew by the proper hand, and bathe it in flame until no trace of it remained.
Green eyes would be no safeguards a second time, for she was not yet ready to die.
And to defend her newfound freedom, she was ready to kill.
The royal palace, Dareli, Jeuchar 8, AC 1876
For more years than Margaine could count, it had been whispered in the eastern provinces of the realm that the Bhandreid was indestructible. Men and women too old to have fought in the war with Tantiulo still drank each year to the memory of an indomitable young queen’s rise to the throne. Over their beers and ales, they claimed that the gods themselves had shaped Ealasaid from molten iron, and that she hadn’t changed in the slightest since her coronation. She’d outlived her husband, her only child, and now, her only grandson as well. Margaine had heard such tall tales for as long as she could remember; once or twice, she’d told them herself.
But they’d never frightened her as much as the rumors that spread through the palace after the Night of Fire. That she might outlive them all. Not even a failure of her heart could stop the Bhandreid for long, or so went the whispers. Her heart was made of something more than flesh, said some—fire stolen from the Anreulag, and that was why the Voice of the Gods was bathing the city in fire. Others averred that the Four Gods had hollowed out the Bhandreid’s heart and replaced it with sacred flame, so that Ealasaid might become their new Voice. None doubted, though, the terror of the Anreulag in Her rage.
Margaine didn’t dare give a moment’s credence to most of the whispers. That was the path of hysteria—and with what she now knew of the Bhandreid and the High Priest, she was perilously close to that regardless. Ealasaid had ordered her out of her sight, and soon enough, Margaine found she had no other choice.
None of the palace guards were so bold as to openly constrict her movements. But hours after the Bhandreid’s arrival in the great hall, the princess found herself strongly encouraged to stay out of the public areas. “For your own safety, Highness, and that of the heir,” the guards told her. “Her Majesty wishes you to look after your daughter in case the Anreulag comes back.”
I’ll just bet she does.
Which was, after all, the very reason she and Padraiga had to flee.
She forced herself to present a serene mask to every guard or servant she met, male or female, young or old. Most of the guards maintained their decorum and alertness, but some of the younger ones did so with strained faces and fear lurking behind their eyes. The servants scurried about their duties with uncommon furtive quiet, flinching at the slightest unexpected sound, as though afraid the ceiling might collapse on them all. They’d look to her for an example. She was the wife of the late prince, the mother of the heir, and that would still count for something even against the force of the Bhandreid’s disfavor. She didn’t dare give a single guard cause to lock her in her chambers, or worse yet, take her baby away from her.
But in the end, she knew she wouldn’t make it out of the palace without help.
And so she applied herself to appearing to do as the Bhandreid wished, taking shelter in her chambers and looking after her daughter. No one looked askance, then, when she sent out an anxious request for Doctor Corrinides to attend her and the baby at his earliest convenience.
He found her waiting in her chambers, pacing back and forth as any worried young mother might do. That was mostly artifice, for the sake of the seemingly unending stream of palace servitors who seemed to have no better purpose than to check on her at irregular intervals. Some of it, however, was fear she could barely repress.
Tamber Corrinides looked little better rested than the last time she’d laid eyes on him, though that was no surprise. No one older than little Padraiga seemed to be getting much rest, anywhere in the palace. Nonetheless, the doctor came into her sitting room with his usual brisk stride, his gaze alert and solicitous…at least until he saw the baby playing peacefully in her bassinet, and the determination with which Margaine turned to face him.
“Your High
ness, what may I do for you?” the doctor inquired, his eyebrows up. “Do you need help for yourself, or for your child?”
“Both.” Margaine pulled in a breath and straightened to her fullest height, aware of the fragile appearance she was surely presenting in turn. Yet there was nothing to be done for that. She would have to trust that her resolve would let her present the proper strength. “Doctor, what would you say if I told you I have every reason to believe that my daughter’s life is in danger?”
He blinked at that, as she knew he must—but Corrinides was made of sterner stuff than his own unprepossessing appearance might suggest. In the slightly startled and entirely bland voice Margaine had anticipated, he replied, “I’d point out that the same could be said of everyone in this city, my lady. May I trouble you to be more specific?”
She’d barely needed to rehearse the argument in her conscious thoughts, for a nightmare of her husband and daughter falling beneath a knife in the hand of the Bhandreid hadn’t lessened its grip on her for the past three days, waking or dreaming. Time and again she’d seen the High Priest lunging to seize her and drive a knife into her own flesh. Her blood, dropping in crimson streaks on ancient stone, turned to droplets of flame as it fell. And the flames, in turn, surged and grew into the shape of a ghostly figure with dead eyes and a voice of thunder and doom. The Anreulag, turning on her in vengeance, was the last thing she saw behind her eyes every time she clawed her way out of sleep.
That is not my name!
“I saw the Voice of the Gods just before She began Her attack upon the city,” Margaine said. One tiny part of her faltered at speaking that name, but she could not afford to distract herself with the memory of the Anreulag’s snarled rejection of Her title, not now. “Were you aware of this, sir?”
The doctor frowned and shook his head. “You saw Her in such a state, and She allowed you to live? One could ascribe many motives to the acts of the Anreulag these last few days, but I can’t count mercy among them.”
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