by Jocelyn Fox
“Faster!” Kavoryk roared from behind us.
Luca grimaced but stretched his legs into a ground-eating run. I tried not to pass out as he jostled my leg. A creature leapt at his back and I lunged over his shoulder, stabbing it with my dagger. He gave a grunt of thanks and pushed himself to run faster. I felt his heart hammering in his broad chest.
We reached the bridge. Merrick stood on the other side, his slim form almost lost among the slender trees. A well-aimed arrow whistled past us, plunging into a skin-wraith’s throat; Merrick was clearly determined to still be useful. And then I blinked: the two Fae mounts, along with Vell and her faehal, stood beside Merrick. A wave of relief washed through me. Of course—they’d sent the faehal on ahead, and they’d already crossed the bridge.
I yelped in surprise as Luca gave me a little bounce, shifting his grip to hold me a little higher. He sheathed his sword—my sword, I corrected myself woozily—and started across the gorge. I clutched at his shoulder as the narrow bridge swayed frighteningly beneath us. My breath came faster as I looked down at the rushing waters far below.
“Don’t look down,” instructed Luca.
“Too late,” I replied weakly.
“Then close your eyes,” he said in a gentler voice, concentrating on navigating the rickety boards beneath his feet.
“Okay.” I swallowed hard and clenched my eyes shut even as withering shame rushed over me. I was the Bearer of the Sword, being carried like a child again, having to close my eyes because I was afraid of heights. How courageous and heroic.
Stop, the Sword admonished me silently. Just because you are my Bearer does not absolve you of fear.
But it should make me able to deal with it, I countered, still fighting against the sick feeling in my stomach as we swayed alarmingly. A sudden wind whipped my hair into my face and I opened my eyes in surprise. The wind gripped at Luca like a living thing and he struggled to keep his balance, using the ropes strung up on the side of the bridge as handrails. He pushed forward as the wind intensified to gale-force, stinging tears into my eyes.
“Go!” shouted Finnead from behind us.
Luca gave a growl of determination, lunging forward, muscles straining against what seemed like a solid wall of wind.
“Sorcery,” I gasped into his ear, and I managed to raise my head, shielding my eyes with my hand. A black robed figure stood on the plain, gliding toward the bridge with eerily boneless grace. Kavoryk stood by the bridge and raised his axe challengingly, knocking aside a garrelnost without taking his focus from the sorcerer. The sorcerer made a small motion with one hand, and Luca gasped as an invisible sledgehammer slammed into him. He fell to one knee, the board creaking beneath our combined weight. I pushed myself off his shoulder, unable to do more than clutch at the rope on the side of the bridge.
Finnead turned, the Brighbranr blazing. “Go,” he ordered, voice firm and cool.
“Not you too,” I begged.
“Take her,” he told Luca.
The Northman nodded, his face pale, and he staggered to his feet, sweeping me up again with one huge arm.
“No!” I said, beating at his shoulder with one fist.
“Hush,” he told me grimly, starting forward again.
I clenched my jaw as scathing sorrow choked me.
An orb of sapphire fire blazed across the bridge, over Kavoryk, and struck the sorcerer. The black-robed figure staggered but righted itself with apparent ease. I watched over Luca’s shoulder with growing dread. Another invisible blow struck Luca, sending him staggering against the ropes of the bridge. An arrow sailed over our heads and struck the sorcerer square where its chest should have been, but the arrow fell to the ground, broken. A second fireball erupted from the Brighbranr and enveloped the sorcerer, but it did nothing.
Enough play.
The voice sounded like bones breaking, like the screams of a man being burned alive, like the silence where a heartbeat should have been. Luca buckled and we both sprawled onto the knotted wood of the bridge. I shoved the voice away from my mind with all the force I could muster, and my vision cleared enough to see. Finnead lay unmoving, the Brighbranr pulsing slowly in his hand. Kavoryk swung his axe at the black-robed figure. The sorcerer flicked his wrist and I heard the crack of bone. The giant Northman slumped to the ground.
“No,” I whispered, pushing myself onto my elbows.
Come to me, the sorcerer said, his voice on the fringes of my mind now.
“No,” I said louder, voice breaking. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and touched Gwyneth’s pendant. Some of the pain coursing through my leg receded.
I will make you come to me, then. The sorcerer raised one arm and pointed. I watched in horror as a flame erupted from the dark depths of his sleeve and arced over our heads, deadly and graceful.
The dry rope and wood of the bridge caught fire instantly.
“Finnead!” I shouted, kicking at what I hoped was his good shoulder with my uninjured leg. The Vaelanbrigh remained motionless, my kick rocking his unconscious body. I rolled back over painfully. Luca stirred when I slapped him, opening his eyes with a groan. The flames raced toward us, thick black smoke swirling around us.
Forin and Farin swooped down from overhead.
“Tess-mortal!” Farin cried frantically, pulling at my ear with her tiny hands.
Acrid smoke filled my mouth, stinging my throat. I coughed and pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose. Drawing from my own taebramh, I thought of water and cool air and ice, drawing a glowing line beyond Luca’s head. The smoke hesitated and began to drift upward as though contained by a glass wall. I had no idea if it would stand against the flames though.
“Wake him up!” I shouted at Forin, trying again to rouse Finnead. The Glasidhe descended on the Vaelanbrigh, working furiously to revive him. Luca struggled to his knees. He looked over me and his face became grim. I turned and saw a garrlenost advancing on us, prowling onto the bridge with lethal intent.
Flames before us, a garrelnost and a black sorcerer behind us.
We were trapped.
Chapter 16
“Farin!” I coughed. “Wake the Vaelanbrigh!” I felt her hands clutch frantically at my ear once more and then she zipped over to Finnead.
The flames crackled beyond my glowing line. A growl from the garrelnost threaded through the smoke. The sorcerer stood impassively, watching from the cavernous shadows of the black hood. Luca pushed himself to his knees and staggered upright, chest heaving. He stepped over Finnead’s prone form and faced the garrelnost. The huge wolf-creature prowled toward him, covering half the distance to us in two strides. I felt the heat of the flames pressing on my skin, sparks sizzling against the glowing line of my taebramh. I struggled to hold it, pouring more taebramh into the boundary, sweat beading my forehead.
“I cannot wake him!” cried Farin.
I heard two wolves howling, beyond the black cloud of smoke and the roiling inferno.
Come to me and I will give them a quick death. The sorcerer’s words pounded into my mind like nails, each one a searing shot of pain. I gasped and clenched my eyes shut until the wave of nausea passed over me. The Sword sent me a wave of reassurance, but I felt a desperate sense of hopelessness. What use was it to be the Bearer, if I couldn’t use the power of the Sword to save the lives of those loyal to me? I reached for the power of the Sword, keeping my own taebramh flowing into the barrier against the fire. The wolves howled and I heard shouts from Vell and Merrick.
And there was nothing. The Sword drew into itself, a hard shell surrounding its power, leaving a vacuum in my chest, a gaping hole that punched the breath from me. I swayed and grabbed at the rope of the bridge. The garrelnost crouched, ready to spring at Luca, and the Northman raised his sword.
“If not now, then when?” I asked the Sword in a voice cracked by smoke. “Damn it, when?”
But it was silent.
I dropped to my knees beside Finnead. He still gripped the Brighbranr in his hand. I took the Bright Sword and slid
it into the sheath at his hip.
The bridge shuddered as the flames roared. I felt the wood creaking beneath my knees. The rope started to twist and dance in the heat. I swallowed hard. “Farin,” I said, “you and Forin, you’ll be able to track us. One of you stay with us, and one of you stay with Vell and Merrick and the others.”
“Tess-mortal,” the little Glasidhe warrior said, “I do not understand, I…” Her wings paused in shock as she understood my intentions. She flew at me, pulling my hair urgently. “You cannot! The gorge is deep and the Darinwel is fast!” Her voice sounded as though she was on the verge of tears.
“It’s our best chance, Farin,” I said grimly, wincing as a lance of pain shot through my leg. I coughed as smoke slipped past my weakening barrier.
The garrelnost lunged at Luca. The Northman buried my sword in it up to the hilt and drew the blade out, dripping with gore. With a roar, the wolf-creature leapt again. Luca stepped back and his foot plunged through the rickety board. He fell backward and the garrelnost twisted in midair. I saw the sword flash again in a spray of blood as Luca opened the creature from neck to tail, disemboweling it. The garrelnost thrashed and I lost sight of Luca beneath it, but as the creature rolled in its death-throes the bridge groaned warningly. I grabbed Finnead as the ropes snapped with a sound that turned my blood to ice. The bridge pitched to one side as the garrelnost jerked, and then there was a rush of wind and a suspended moment of weightlessness as the bridge gave way. For a second I stared down at the rushing water far below, and then we were falling.
A scream bubbled in my throat but the wind stole my breath. With my free hand I clutched at Gwyneth’s pendant. I tried to keep my body straight and fall feet-first but the wind tossed us like play-things, and I was suddenly tumbling end over end, my grip torn from Finnead as I spun in dizzying patterns. The wind whipped painful tears into my eyes and I squeezed them shut involuntarily, gasping. I tried to reach for my taebramh, but the terror freezing my blood encapsulated it, forcing it to shrink into a small ball of light behind my breastbone, pulsing with my heart but unreachable. I wondered disjointedly if it would hurt, dying like this, slammed into a wall of roiling water. Would it have been better to burn on the bridge?
Gwyneth’s pendant flashed hot and then cold beneath my skin. The Sword vibrated on my back, rattling so hard that it jolted my spine. Suddenly there were hands encircling my arms with a steady grip, large firm hands that reminded me of my father, or maybe my brother. Somehow I was slowing through the air, the wind not screaming past, only rushing now, and the sound of water flowing over everything. I reached out blindly to grip the arm of my rescuer—was it Luca, propelled through the air by some Northern magic? Or had Finnead managed to wield the Brighbranr’s power?
My fingers passed through empty air. I opened my eyes in shock and had a brief, dizzying impression of dark, slick ravine walls hurtling past, and black water rushing up from below.
“Beware the dark water’s songs,” a voice whispered in my ear.
And then the hands were gone, and I was falling again. I gulped in a huge breath and covered my mouth with the palm of one hand, closing my nose with my thumb and forefinger and crossing my feet, just the way they taught us at school. If I hadn’t been about to plunge into a raging river, I would have chuckled at that. I doubted anyone in my water survival class had ever thought that they would be using their emergency egress technique falling into a raging river dividing the Seelie and Unseelie lands, bearing the most powerful weapon in the Fae world.
I cut down into the water like a knife, plunging into an iciness so absolute that it took my breath away and made me think for an instant that my heart had stopped beating. Needles of cold pierced the tenderest parts of my body: my eyelids and ears, lips and fingers and toes. Even as I uncoiled my clenched limbs to begin swimming, the river threw me downstream, tugging at my boots and the Sword’s scabbard. I struck out for the surface, lungs burning already, trying to balance my body in the water so the current didn’t tumble me end over end, and just barely succeeding. Prickles of panic jolted through me as my seeking hands found only water above me. My fingers felt like chunks of stone sewn onto my hands, the cold numbing them; and my feet felt like blocks of marble in my boots as I tried to kick.
The Sword sent me a little pulse of warmth. If I’d had any energy to spare I would have rolled my eyes at it: in the frigid waters of the Darinwel, all it gave me was a little pinprick of warmth? But that was a complaint to be addressed at another time, when my lungs weren’t screaming and my face wasn’t numb from the mind-blowing cold of a freezing river. I felt my limbs beginning to slow, my kicks losing coordination and my arms feeling like unwieldy sticks stuck into my torso. But then I sensed a minute change in the water, a nearly imperceptible quickening of warmth that promised sunlight, and with one final ungainly struggle I broke the surface in a frigid spray, gasping through numb lips and flailing to keep myself above the white-foamed water. Then I noticed that rather than weighing me down, the Sword was holding me up, the strap of its sheath tightening across my chest and pulling me upward each time a wave crested around me, threatening to drag me under the water. I blinked against the spray, desperately seeking a glimpse of Finnead or Luca. I shouted their names, a wave slapping into my mouth, but through my fit of coughing I thought I heard an answering shout. I swallowed and tried to slow my speed through the water, shivers wracking my body.
“Finnead?” I shouted again.
This time I heard the reply above the rushing water and my own harsh breathing.
“I have him!” Luca’s voice, strained but strong. A flood of relief washed through me. I lifted my head and tried to see him but the spray of the river was condensing into a low mist. Then a glow cut through like a knife shearing through cloth, a Glasidhe flying so fast that it was a blur of silver through the mist.
“Here,” said Farin urgently, towing a rope as thick as her entire body. “Forin is tying the other end to a tree.”
I reached out with frigid fingers to take the rope from Farin, but my hands refused to work. “You’ll have to tie it to me,” I said through numb lips, my words punctuated by chattering teeth. As Farin wordlessly worked, zipping around my hand like a miniature comet, Gwyneth’s pendant flashed hot again at my throat, and I felt a pulse ripple out through the water. Then a wave slapped me in the face and I inhaled water. I pushed down the panic flooding through me as the river pulled me under. Vaguely I felt a tug at my wrist and I struggled to the surface, chest burning. Coughs exploded from me as I tried to regain my balance in the water again, each one searing through my chest like the stab of a knife.
Farin had tied the rope around my wrist and looped it over my palm, giving me a good grip. I closed my numb fingers over it clumsily.
“It is tied to a tree!” the Glasidhe scout piped into my ear. “Pull yourself to shore!”
“How much rope do I—” My question was cut abruptly short as the rope snapped taut around my wrist, jerking me under the water as the current tried to sweep me forward and the rope held me in place. The muscles in my shoulder felt like strings ready to snap. I twisted in the water, fighting the current, and managed to get my other hand on the rope, pulling myself back to the surface. “Son of a bitch,” I gasped.
“Sorry,” Farin said above me.
I shook my head, my wet braid slapping the water. “Don’t apologize. Go help Luca.”
“We do not have another rope,” Farin said anxiously, hovering by my ear.
“Then I have to get to shore faster,” I said grimly, teeth chattering. One small benefit of the icy water was that it had numbed the pain in my injured leg, but that was balanced against the fact that my body was slowly shutting down in the cold. I quickly realized that swimming against the current would get me nowhere fast, so I angled my body and struck out for the rocky bank, just barely visible through the spray of the white-foamed river. The rope tied around my wrist meant that I only had one arm to swim, but it prevented the river
from sweeping me downstream. I made sure that the rope was taut so I wasn’t expending unnecessary energy fighting the current. Farin stayed just above me, shouting encouragement over the rushing river. My harsh breathing rattled in my chest, punctuated by coughs, but I forced myself to keep moving, motivated by the thought of Luca rushing downriver, pierced by cold and trying to keep both his own head and Finnead’s above water.
“Almost there, Tess-mortal!” Farin urged.
The bank was in clear sight now; Forin had tied the rope to a twisted low-growing tree, its claw-like branches brushing the gravelly ground. I kicked my deadened legs desperately, throat burning as I gasped for breath. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Forin flying fast toward his twin; they conferenced for a moment and then Farin dipped close to me.
“There is a waterfall, Tess-mortal! They might not survive!”
I didn’t even have the energy to swear as I struggled toward the shore. Even my mind seemed numb. My taebramh was rendered unreachable by my exhaustion, and the Sword refused to help…I gave one last desparate kick, struggling against the frigid water…and my boots scraped against something. Gravel, I realized belatedly, and I pushed off with my good leg as hard as I could. I landed on my knees in the shallows, blinking dazedly, rocks cutting into my legs. Using my free hand and my good leg I awkwardly pushed myself through the fast-moving shallows, too tired to wince as I scraped the skin from my hands and knees.
“Take the rope,” I gritted out. I clenched my jaw to still my chattering teeth.
Forin worked on the knot by the tree and Farin applied herself to the swollen waterlogged knot by my wrist.
“Cut it,” I panted.
Farin’s small dagger flashed as she sawed at the rope. I reached around her and held it taut with my other hand, gripping it only by wedging it between two of my frozen fingers. It parted with a wet tearing sound, and the two Glasidhe flew off with it suspended between them. I dragged myself onto the narrow strip of muddy rock-studded bank. I had to look to see if my legs were out of the water because I couldn’t feel them enough to tell. Three claw-marks punctured my right thigh, the blood washed mostly away by the river. Using my good leg to maneuver, I scooted myself backward until I was a good distance away from the rushing waters of the river. My shirt clung to my skin and I noticed with detached amusement that my fingernails were blue. My teeth weren’t chattering anymore either, and a strange sense of warmth flooded through me. My eyes began to close, lulled into sleep by the mysterious warmth. The Sword vibrated but I was so tired, exhausted from my swim and the battle. My eyes slid shut.