“We don’t want to fight you, akresha, but you’re not welcome here. Please leave us in peace.”
Her voice wasn’t loud; it never was. But as the light was oddly clear, so too was the echo of Faanshi’s words. They resounded like chimes of glass against the rumbling, rusted snarl of the Anreulag’s reply.
“You. I saw you before. You’re not one of the Amatharinor. Who are you?”
Alarrah and Gerren scrambled up just behind Julian. Alarrah had risen, her bow drawn and ready, while Gerren crouched out of the line of fire. “The Moonwise,” the steward whispered, all color draining from his face.
Faanshi pressed her palms together and bowed, just as Julian had seen her do before. It should have been ridiculous now, and he couldn’t quite stifle a choked bark of laughter—yet it was laughter born of pride, for the gesture was after all so very hers.
“My name is Faanshi, akresha. I am the daughter of Yamineh elif-Reshad Sarazen of Tantiulo, and of Jord Tanorel of the elves. Almighty Djashtet, the Lady of Time, has blessed me with magic, and in Djashtet’s name I once more ask you to please leave us in peace.”
All grew quiet as the two spoke. Those around Julian scarcely seemed to breathe, though he didn’t miss that Gerren’s guards had their own bows prepared, that Semai had appropriated the crossbow from the weapons chest, and that Lady Ganniwer was surreptitiously passing Vaarsen a reloaded pistol. No one spoke, nor made more than the slightest sounds of keeping their weapons at the ready. Even the sounds of fighting in the distance had faded, and Julian imagined that the Hawks and the elven scouts had also paused in their fighting to watch the confrontation unfolding between the Voice of the Gods and the bravest young woman he’d ever known.
“I do not know Djashtet or Tantiulo,” the Anreulag hissed. “I know only that you stand between me and Dalrannen’s heir. Stand aside, daughter of Yamineh and Jord, or you and everything and everyone behind you will burn and crumble into the ocean waves.”
Dalrannen’s heir? Julian started and shot a glance at the elves, only to find all four stricken of expression—and staring fixedly at Kestar. With furrowed brow Vaarsen frowned back at him, but only fleetingly, for Faanshi spoke again.
“And I don’t know who Dalrannen’s heir is, or what the Amatharinor are. But I do know that if you try to hurt these people I will protect and heal them. Healing is what Djashtet calls me to do.” She took a few more steps forward, one hand lifting, as she stared with shining eyes at the taller female before her. “And I can tell you need a healer. I’ll help you if you promise to leave us alone.”
Gasps sounded around Julian, and he shifted position, taking a hand off the musket to find one of his knives instead. Only when he grasped the hilt and drew did he realize the blade was in his right hand, the one Faanshi had restored to him. It seems only right, he thought even as he called out, “Girl, what the nine hells are you doing?”
“I know pain when I see it, Julian!”
“She’s right.” This was from Alarrah, just behind him, in a voice choked with barely suppressed weeping. “Mother of Stars help us all, but she’s right. I can sense it too.”
Damned if he could see it—the Anreulag, Her bone-white hair flying in magic-stirred disarray about Her gaunt features, didn’t look to him like a being in pain. She looked like a being about to destroy them all, and with one well-aimed throw, he could plant his dagger between Her eyes. But Faanshi was advancing, and now she was squarely in the line of fire between him and the others with ranged weapons. None of them could shoot without hitting her.
But to his surprise, the Voice of the Gods, the pale specter whose coming was the nightmare of the elves and the bane of every soldier who’d ever fought in Tantiulo, actually flinched at Faanshi’s approach. “I need no healer, infant! I am powerful! I am strong!”
“Who did this to you, akresha?” Faanshi neither slowed nor faltered, while the ambient brilliance in the air coalesced around her fingers in a crackling globe of white. From her it streamed toward the Anreulag, only to scatter in bursts against the power that the other was putting forth. “Who could have harmed the Voice of the Gods?”
“Do not insult me with the name from my enslavers!”
The Anreulag’s roar brought with it a new burst of power, and in the bunker, Julian and the others had to abruptly brace themselves against another tremor in the earth. Julian pressed himself against the remnants of the outer wall, gripped by blank astonishment he could see echoed in the others’ faces.
Even Faanshi paused for a moment, swaying before she regained her balance. At last she said, “Forgive me. I was a slave once. And if the man who was my master had forced me to live under another name, it would hurt me now to hear it. Is there another name I should call you?”
Horror bloomed across the Anreulag’s gaunt features, widening Her eyes and making Her bare Her teeth in a snarl of fright. It escalated swiftly to an anguished, piercing scream, and then, with an eruption of force that flung Faanshi backward, She vanished.
Julian scrambled out through the ruined wall to Faanshi’s crumpled form, ignoring all else—the cries of the others, the lessening of the power in the air, even the distant call of the horns of the scouts. Faanshi was still glowing as he reached her and pulled her up into his arms. To his relief, she was conscious. Her eyes held far more lambent gold than green, but he didn’t care what color they were, as long as they were alert and aware.
“Little eagle, you’re going to drive me into apoplexy,” he rasped as he hugged her close.
“She can’t be a goddess, Julian, someone enslaved her,” Faanshi murmured, her voice thin, though she hugged him back with a reassuring strength. “Nobody can enslave a goddess.”
“I heard. We all heard.”
“What is she? Who is she? We have to find out who she is!”
The horns grew closer, along with the pounding of several horses’ hooves. Voices cried out, in Elvish and in Adalonic, but none in that moment were vital enough to command his attention. Not a one demanded that he turn over Faanshi, and not a one could answer her question.
Vaarsen and Alarrah both came running, concern in their faces, and he could hardly begrudge Faanshi the chance to embrace and reassure her sister.
It took far more will, however, to keep from grimacing as she embraced Vaarsen too.
* * *
Every muscle in Jekke’s body ached. Her ears rang, and the world around her swam in a pain-ridden miasma of gray. She was no longer on her horse, though somehow she couldn’t remember why, or what had happened to send her sprawling on the gravel-strewn earth.
All she could remember was that she’d been singing, lifting up her voice along with her weapons, as she and her comrades rode into battle against the elves. Then the gods’ own light had erupted, and—
Then she remembered. The Anreulag had come.
Jekke could still see Her, manifesting in Her glory on the cliff, and at first She’d wreaked Her havoc on the elven heathens, just as Captain Amarsaed had predicted She would. More than that, she dared not bring back to mind completely. She could smell the reek of burned flesh and spilled blood all around her, and the cries of men, women and horses, all dead or dying, still assaulted her ears.
The report from Dareli was true. Mercy of the Mother, it was true, the Anreulag has turned against us. We’re all going to die.
Except that, for whatever reason, the gods had allowed the Voice’s sacred fire to pass her by. She lay crumpled on the ground in pain, an agony that stalked her somewhere beyond the veil of gray detachment across her senses, but one clear thought did penetrate her haze. She, Jekke Yerredes, was alive. Her face was already wet with tears, itching and sticky with dirt and most likely blood. Yet she couldn’t seem to move her hand up to wipe her eyes, and so she cried unstintingly, in shock and misery. She could find no comfort in it, not when she’d lost n
ot only Bron but also their captain, and gods only knew how many more of their force had fallen.
Unaccountably, even through her tears, her vision began to clear. Enough that she could see two blurred figures stepping into view on either side of her, each bearing muskets, and each clad in livery she’d never seen before.
“Tell the akresha,” one of them said. “This one’s still breathing. That makes nine all told among the Hawks.”
“I’ll go make the report and make sure a place is set aside for the wounded.”
Jekke couldn’t make out their faces. Both were speaking Adalonic, but akresha was a Tantiu word, and that made no sense at all. Who were these people if not elves?
Only as consciousness left her did she think of the insurgents they’d left behind in Shalridan, and she had no time to wonder how the rebels had caught up with them before she sank into dreams of blood and fire.
* * *
No one, least of all Gerren, had the heart to stop Alarrah from bolting out across the open windswept ground to where Faanshi had fallen. He watched the older healer embrace the younger, and the two human men, Julian and Kestar Vaarsen, studiously avoiding each other’s eyes as Faanshi hugged both of them as well. Then Faanshi followed Alarrah to the place where Tembriel and Jannyn had fallen, and it gave Gerren some small comfort to see Tembriel moving feebly once she was bathed in healing light. He made no move to stop the rest of the humans from venturing forth in Julian and Kestar’s wake and seeing what they could do to help, for he was sure any survivors out on the field of battle would need whatever aid they could provide.
“Talnor, go back down to the stable caverns and see if the horses and those who watch over them are well.” With the humans moving ahead out of earshot, he slipped back into their own language. Gerren was fluent in Adalonic, but its syllables never felt right on his tongue, and he needed what meager comfort the cadences of Elisiyannè could offer. “Gyllerah, go with him and then search the caverns to see if anyone else remains who didn’t make it out on the boats.”
“Sir,” Talnor said, “what did she mean by calling the human ‘Dalrannen’s heir’?”
“Later,” Gerren snapped. They couldn’t talk about it, not here, not yet. Kestar Vaarsen was already suspicious of his strange status as Riniel Radmynn’s great-grandson, but this was something else altogether—something which Gerren, as one of the few historians left among their people, recognized in rising dread. “We need to concern ourselves with the living. Then the dead.”
Gyllerah spoke, even more reluctantly than Talnor had done, her voice roughened with exhaustion and grief. “But sir…your brother.”
Gerren slammed his eyes shut for a moment, just barely managing not to shout at his guards, and only with an effort did he finally answer. “Go to Kirinil’s quarters, if the passages are still clear after the pounding Dolmerrath just took. Find his body and make certain he is ready to be laid to rest, in honor, with the others we’ve lost today.”
He couldn’t bring himself to look at either of them or say anything more, and after a moment, he felt the slight breeze of their passing as they slipped on noiseless feet back down the stairs. Not until they were gone did he draw in a deep breath and open his eyes once more, and he lifted his head to survey what lay before him.
The scouts were beginning to limp out of the woods, some on foot, some leading horses that looked as tired and as harried as they. Alarrah and Faanshi ran ahead to meet them, and in short order he could see the two females moving through the trees. Faanshi’s power once more lit the day, but this time without the incredible force she’d released against the Anreulag. This was a light of healing, not of defense against one with the power of a goddess.
She’s not one of the Moonwise. But if she’d lived in the days before Astàlleramè fell, she would have been.
Moving more slowly, the humans spread out in the healers’ wake. Lady Ganniwer and Celoren Valleford applied themselves to lending supportive shoulders to those who couldn’t quite make it to Dolmerrath’s shelter on their own, while the others started a search through the trees along paths pointed out by the tired gestures of the scouts.
Two of his people, though, picked up their pace as soon as they caught sight of him by the bunker’s shattered wall. Despite their haggard faces they ran with purpose, and once they came close enough to speak, he recognized them. Nerior and his spouse Alanniel, two of the best warriors among the scouts, were both pale and disheveled. Their long dark hair was in disarray, and both were wounded, but neither gravely. Nerior’s sleeve was sliced open upon an oozing bullet graze, and Alanniel bore a long bleeding scratch across her left cheek.
“Sir…most of the Hawks are dead,” Nerior reported in a hoarse and breathless voice. “We killed many, but the Anreulag felled even more.”
“But another force has come,” Alanniel added. Her eyes had gone flat and dull, but her tone was steadier than that of her partner’s. “More humans. They came up from the south while we engaged the Hawks, and we never saw them coming because we were too distracted by the Anreulag. They call themselves the army of Nirrivy, and their messengers say their leader would like to speak with you.”
Startled, Gerren asked, “Does their leader offer us a name?”
“She does, sir. Khamsin elif-Darim Sarazen, Duchess of Shalridan, of Nirrivy and Tantiulo.”
* * *
The windswept expanse of an ocean cliff was almost the furthest thing from a southern desert that Khamsin could imagine. But when it was strewn with the bodies of the dead and dying, it began to look almost familiar—and when the stenches of blood and burning struck her nostrils, a part of her that had lain buried for twenty years stirred into sharp and acrid life. She remembered those smells. More important, she remembered how the earth had shaken in Tantiulo, and how the very air had turned to fire when the Anreulag walked among the soldiers of the Clans.
She remembered it so vividly that she issued the strictest of orders to hold her regiment back from engaging the Hawks when the Voice of the Gods appeared, for it’d been all too clear that She was in no mood for mercy, or for making alliances with anyone foolish enough to come near to Her. Khamsin hadn’t had to order her people twice. Indeed, she’d slipped a prayer of gratitude to Djashtet that none of her people had bolted out of their formation.
Not that they were truly her people, not when she was the only Tantiu woman among a force of white-faced northerners. But she had married one of them, and their fortitude made her proud to lead them now.
At her command, when the Anreulag disappeared, they moved forward to see what She’d left behind. Khamsin’s soldiers found dozens of dead Hawks and nine live ones, though several of those were direly hurt. Dead elves also littered the bracken, but these had defenders, scouts in green and brown who narrowly missed shooting her anxious messengers before they could blurt out the words they’d been ordered to relay on her behalf.
But they’d taken her message, and come back with the news that the leader of the elves would allow her approach.
She left orders to the men and women who followed her to hold their camp, and took with her only Idrekke Sother and Cortland Grenham—the latter as Khamsin suspected she was about to find her missing young kinswoman at last, along with the fugitive Hawks and the assassins who’d infiltrated Lomhannor Hall. Father Grenham had given some of them shelter at his abbey, and thus had a greater chance than she of cajoling them to their cause. Likewise she elected to approach the elves on foot, for horses would speak too strongly of power to a people from whom her husband had once culled his slaves.
It took surprisingly little effort to find where the elves were congregating. She, Sother and Grenham had but to follow the trail of blasted ground, charred wood and shattered stone to the hole in the cliff top. They passed any number of elves clad in green and gray and brown, occupied with the grim task of carrying slack bodies away
from the field of battle. More elves in truth than Khamsin had seen since the war in Tantiulo, and she couldn’t entirely suppress a shiver of nervousness at the weight of two dozen unreadable gazes turning to track her progress. The duchess allowed none of that unease to reach her countenance, however, and Sother and Grenham took their cue from her. They walked without hesitation toward the remains of a wall of stone, before which several more elves and humans had gathered.
In the heart of that group, two figures with shining hands were attending wounded fighters. Only then did Khamsin pause, for she recognized one of the healers. Her young kinswoman had changed her appearance since she’d fled Lomhannor Hall; she was wearing a strange mix of Tantiu and elven garb, with a green korfi around her head standing out in contrast with her simple shirtwaist and trousers. The golden-brown hands haloed in light, however, were unmistakable. Khamsin had seen those hands at work more than once, and the sight of them stopped her in her tracks.
If she were still at Lomhannor Hall, my husband might still be alive.
Her husband’s escaped slave. Her dead sister’s daughter.
Faanshi.
“That’s her,” Sister Sother murmured. “By the Allmother, she’s healing them all.”
“Behold the young lady who can banish the Anreulag and restore health to the hurt and sick,” Father Grenham said, with an arch sideways glance at Khamsin. “She who the people have begun to call Saint Faanshi. I submit for your consideration, my lady, that you should approach her with utmost care.”
Victory of the Hawk Page 14