She nodded.
Kindren kissed her, then slapped at the sand. “You know what? Let’s head back. There’s nothing to see here, and it makes me feel dirty spying on the one human who considers us his equals.”
“All right.”
They stood up while the giant and the mystery man continued their summit down below. Turning back, they began the journey home. The sudden winds had erased their tracks in the sand, giving Aully a moment of fright, but Kindren seemed confident. Her spirits rose ever so slightly, and she leaned into him, pressing her ear to his chest so that she could hear the beat of his heart.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling.
“For what?”
“For dealing with me.”
She gazed up at his beautiful face as he guided her along, and her heart nearly stopped when his expression darkened and he brought them both to a halt. What did I say now? she thought, but then she heard a low, guttural rumble.
They were standing before the rock face. A shape appeared on the pure sandblasted surface of stone, a creature that matched the white and taupe colors of the desert, slinking on four legs through the arch between two of the peaks, tramping over the bronzed grasses at the base of the formation. A blood-red tongue licked over a pair of wicked incisors as the sandcat stalked closer.
“Get behind me, Aully,” Kindren whispered from the side of his mouth. “Go slow, no sudden movements.”
He gently nudged her, and she slipped around his back, holding onto his thin cotton tunic with both hands. Kindren backed up one step, then another, hunkering down and holding his arms out as if preparing to grapple. The sandcat came closer still, its paws sinking into the sand with every stride, its emerald-green eyes desperate with hunger. The thing was barely as big as Aully herself, but when it yawned out a sound like a bag of rocks shaking together, she realized just how huge its jaws were. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember what Bardiya had told them about the beasts. All she could recall was some nonsense about sandcats being just as sacred as elves and humans, and they should feel honored if and when they came face to face with one. “Until it rips out your throat and eats you alive,” Kindren had quipped afterward.
It didn’t seem so funny now.
“They’re afraid of fire,” she whispered, remembering the one lesson she had taken from Bardiya’s lecture.
Kindren made a steeple with his fingers, holding them in front of his face.
“Then let’s give it a show.”
He muttered a few words of magic, and a small flame rose from his fingertips. The sandcat paused, and when Kindren swung his arm in an arc, making the fire trail in a circle, the beast backed away.
“That’s right, go back where you came from,” said Kindren. It sounded like he was laughing.
That laugh did not last long. The sandcat lunged forward, its paws a blur as it raced toward them, its maw opened wide, baring its deadly teeth. Aully screeched, and Kindren shoved her away. The fire from his fingertips fizzled in his panic as he brought up his arm to shield his face from the sandcat. Aully watched, frozen with terror, as the creature’s jaws bit down on his forearm, causing her love to scream in pain. Blood flowed down his elbow as he fell to the ground. The sandcat’s paws raked frantically against Kindren’s sides, ripping through tunic and flesh, painting the desert sand red.
Watching her love be mauled by the sandcat enraged Aully. She scampered to her feet in the shifting sand and raced toward the beast, her ears filled with the sounds of Kindren’s pained shrieks and the sandcat’s snarls and growls. She leapt atop the beast, pounding her clenched fists into the back of its neck. It was like punching a stone wall covered in moss. Her fists having had no effect, she grabbed the thing by its ears and pulled with all her might. The sandcat reared up on its hind legs, shaking itself free from her grip. The force of it flung her back, and she landed hard, the wind knocked out of her. When her vision stopped spinning, she saw the sandcat staring at her, green eyes glaring with hunger.
Aully stumbled to her feet once more, trying to run from it, but she was too slow. She felt searing pain in her spine as its claws tore through fabric. It was worse than when she’d broken her arm falling from one of the trees back in Stonewood, when she was eight. In a last-ditch effort, she dove to the side, jarring her chin and swallowing a mouthful of sand when she fell. The sandcat raced past her, sliding on its side when it tried to veer too sharply.
Aully reached around to touch her torn back, and when she brought her hand in front of her face, it dripped with blood. The sight of it somehow cooled the pit of fear and panic in her stomach. Everything she’d experienced, every bit of suffering since the Ekreissar’s march into Dezerea, came flooding back. Her father’s death, their time in the dungeons, the systematic execution of her people…her poor sister Brienna’s death at the hands of faceless attackers in some barren land. All the unfairness, all the injustice flared deep within her, flooding her with an anger she could hardly believe was her own.
Lightning sparked at her fingertips.
The sandcat whirled around, gaining its footing for another charge. Aully uttered no words of magic when she thrust out her hands. Blue lightning leapt from her palms, striking the sandcat in the side. The beast yelped and skittered, falling to the sand. A thunderous boom echoed inside Aully’s head, and all the colors in her vision momentarily reversed. She fell to her knees, completely drained.
Despite her exhaustion, she felt a new sense of control over the world’s chaos and the dark things that sought to harm her. The sandcat rose up, unable to lift its left rear leg, its side charred and blackened above its front hip. The beast licked at the wound and glanced at her, and she saw fear in its emerald-green gaze. Then the beast limped away, heading back for the three-tiered rock face where it likely lived.
“Did you see that?” Aully panted. “Kindren, did you see what I did?”
There was no answer.
She turned, groggy, and her eyes fell on Kindren. Her breath quickened and she scooted across the sand, her panic returning tenfold as she took in the blood surrounding his prone body. She reached her prone love and lifted his head into her lap. He was a mess, with deep gouges all over his torso and puncture wounds in his neck. His cheek dangled in a flap, exposing the musculature of his jaw and his rear teeth.
“Kindren,” Aully whispered.
Her hand touched his chest. She could not feel his heart beating. She leaned over him, crying, kissing his maimed face, her lips lingering just below his nose. No breath came from his nostrils. Agony filled her, and whatever rage she’d known while fighting the sandcat suddenly seemed pitifully small compared to her sorrow.
“Kindren!” she screamed.
“But what about the barn?” the deformed man said. “Does such rampant evil not need to be stopped?”
Bardiya gazed down at his old friend Patrick, who was standing next to his horse, his intense blue eyes filled with disappointment. Bardiya swore he could see contempt there as well, and it wounded him deeply. But he would not change his mind, no matter how much he was disappointing his friend. He would stay forever strong, just like the timeless Black Spire, which loomed beside them.
“I am sorry, Patrick,” he said. “I made a promise to my people, and it is a promise I intend to keep.”
Patrick shook his head, the half helm atop it shifting and clanking. “Dumb. Just fucking dumb.”
“Save your harsh words. Surely Ashhur told you what my answer would be before you came here.”
“He did.” The misshapen man looked up at him in scorn. “But I thought maybe the story of what our people suffered would change your mind. I thought you’d be smarter.”
“Intelligence has nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, that’s right. We’re talking about the great Bardiya, he of the grand ideals. Those ideals are going to get you and everyone else you love killed!”
“If that is what comes, that is what comes.”
Patrick pulled off hi
s helmet and flung it to the ground.
“Oh come on! You cannot be that stupid. You can’t! Too many people are depending on you.”
Bardiya jabbed his fists into his hips. Feeling anger rising in his gut, he took a deep breath, slowing his heart rate.
“Ashhur preached peace, love, forgiveness, and nonviolence. He created Paradise. I will not taint that by becoming all I disdain.” He swallowed hard. “I have seen the price of brutality, Patrick. I have lost control before. It will not happen again.”
“You think you’ve seen the price?” Patrick exclaimed. “You didn’t see Karak kill thousands of innocent people with flames from the sky! You didn’t see those people burned to a crisp while they were trapped and screaming!”
“I am not so free of the world as you’d think,” Bardiya said, gritting his teeth, “but I am determined to practice the words of our god. I met those who killed my parents, and I put Ashhur’s sermons to use. I forgave them. And because of that forgiveness, we have been left alone.”
Patrick kicked the helmet, but it was halfhearted, and the metal barely moved.
“You really think that’s the reason, don’t you? What about when Karak comes storming southwest, ready to burn and kill everything you hold dear? You think your forgiveness is going to help then?”
Bardiya frowned.
“You said Karak’s forces approach the Wooden Bridge. They’ve already skirted our borders; yet instead of invading, they turn north. If what you say is true, why has the Eastern Divinity not descended on us? He has had every opportunity.”
Patrick screamed an incomprehensible curse at the sky.
“I have no idea. Maybe he’s waiting. Maybe it’s because you’re ten fucking feet tall. Who knows? All I do know is that he is closing in on Ashhur, and the god you spent your whole life dedicated to might die if you don’t get off your ass and help!”
Bardiya extended his arms to the sky in supplication. “Do you not see, Patrick? Karak pursues Ashhur because Ashhur violated his own edicts. He succumbed to violence, he assailed when he should have stood idle. It is our god’s fault that his Paradise is threatened.”
“Wait! Hold on,” said Patrick, his jaw dropping open. “You’re mad that Ashhur refused to keep his vow of nonviolence, yet you won’t condemn Karak for bringing a whole fucking army into our nation to slaughter thousands of those innocent people?” The man took a step back, looking thoroughly defeated. “My god, Bardiya…you’ve lost it. Truly lost it.”
Bardiya’s pride felt wounded, and he hated the look he saw on his friend’s face.
“Karak’s beliefs have nothing to do with me,” he said quietly. “And when a child wanders into the forest only to be attacked by a wolf, you do not blame the wolf. For myself, I choose to remain impartial, just as our beliefs have always dictated.”
“Beliefs change. Circumstances change. Even Ashhur can see that.”
“Mine do not.”
Patrick’s horse whinnied, and he placed his hand on its cheek, stilling the beast. The mismatched armor he wore was dull and scratched, and he seemed weighted down by the massive sword strapped to his back, a weapon whose presence in Paradise Bardiya had long loathed. His old friend looked like a sad imitation of the noble warriors from the Wardens’ stories, and Bardiya felt pity for him. Perhaps Patrick DuTaureau was the one who was truly lost.
“There is still time,” Bardiya said, picking up the helmet and handing it to him. “Decry violence. Turn your back on this war, and convince Ashhur to do the same. Even if you perish, you shall do so nobly. The gates of the golden eternity will swing open wide for you, and you will be greeted as a hero.”
“There you go again,” Patrick said with a sigh. “Sometimes I think you’d rather be up in the heavens than here in the flesh.”
“I wish to have both, my friend. One cannot enter the heavens if the flesh is not pure.”
That elicited a chuckle. “Then I have no chance either way. My flesh hasn’t been pure for a long, long time.” His smile faltered, and he bent down, brushing the sand with his fingertips. “All of Ker buries their dead under these sands, correct?” he asked.
“Yes, we do.”
“How many now? How many have you buried?”
“Four hundred and eighty-seven.”
“And your parents are under here as well?”
“Yes.”
Patrick stood to his full height, looking somehow both noble and ridiculous at the same time.
“I’d prepare, if I were you,” he said. “You’ll soon to have a lot more dead to bury.”
Patrick took two steps away and then froze as thunder echoed in their ears. A blood-curdling scream ripped through the afternoon sky a moment later. Bardiya felt his heart leap into his throat.
“What the fuck?” his misshapen friend said.
Bardiya whirled around. The Black Spire rested in one of the more desolate areas of the Kerrian desert, the landscape a white wilderness as far as the eye could see. The only exception was the majestic rock formations along the path leading from Ang, which were the same shade as the sand and virtually invisible. That was where he looked now. He swore he saw movement there, the juxtaposition of dark beige against light, like a tiny cape flapping in the breeze. Then came another scream, and a chill flowed through his veins.
“Up there!” he shouted to Patrick as he began sprinting. His strides were longer, his progress faster. He heard Patrick’s mare huffing as its four hooves stomped along the sandy terrain. Bardiya surged ahead like a man possessed, every fiber of his being in a panic. He wanted nothing more than to put an end to whatever torment the poor creature was experiencing at the top of the rise.
Though the wind blew past his ears with the force of a hurricane, he could still make out the sounds of tormented crying as he drew nearer. Images of broken bodies painted his vision, memories of his parents in the grove, their bodies bleeding from a dozen wounds. And then he crested the rise, and all his fears proved true.
The elf girl Aullienna leaned over the body of Kindren, the young prince of Dezerea. Deep gouges crisscrossed the pale skin on her back, and the elf boy’s body was mangled, his flesh slashed in repetitious four-pronged patterns. Punctures dotted his body too, large half circles, and the flesh of his right forearm had been shorn away, leaving behind a glistening mess of muscle and sinew. The elf girl did not look up as Bardiya approached, but kept her forehead pressed against Kindren’s chest, bathing his body in her tears.
“What in the bloody underworld…?” he heard Patrick gasp from behind him. Sand kicked up as the horse he was riding skittered to a stop.
Bardiya slid to the ground, his massive knees digging into the desert floor. Only when he placed his giant hand on the unmoving chest of the elf prince did Aullienna acknowledge his presence. Her gaze lifted to him, eyes bloodshot, tears forming thick rivulets down her face. She opened her mouth to speak, a pleading look coming over her beautifully innocent features, but only a shrill moan came out.
Reaching out, Bardiya placed a finger to her lips, quieting her. He then leaned over Kindren, placed both hands on his chest, and closed his eyes.
“Please help him,” he heard the girl say, her voice a whisper.
The young elf was perilously close to the end. Bardiya prayed and prayed, knowing his lips were moving, though he could not feel them. At first there was nothing, and it took all his carefully trained willpower to tamp down his panic. His mind was full of questions and doubt, but he had to push all of it away. Taking in a deep breath, Bardiya continued to pray, forgetting his role as a leader of men, forgetting the power he wielded, the decisions that lay on his shoulders, the future shrouded in danger. He was here, now, with a life in peril…and through him, that life could be saved. That was what mattered. That was all that mattered.
Ashhur, grant me strength, his mind whispered.
The damage to the elf’s body became clear to him: the severed muscle, the torn fibers in the boy’s flesh, the gouged stomach, the sna
pped bones. Each wound struck him as if it were his own, and the burning sensation in his hands was as if he’d plunged them into the heart of a star. Much like when he’d healed Davishon—his would-be elven assassin—the pain lessened as Kindren’s body mended itself, fractured bones binding with their broken halves, burst blood vessels closing, skin knitting itself shut. A final burst of energy flowed from his palms into the elf’s chest, shocking his stilled heart back to beating. A gasp reached Bardiya’s ears, and his mind returned to the physical realm.
He fell back, his energy drained. It took great effort just to lift his hand and wipe sweat from his brow. He opened his tired eyes and looked on as Aullienna cradled her mate’s head in her lap, her tears of sorrow replaced by ones of relief. Kindren’s eyes were open, but he looked like he did not understand what was happening.
“You are hurt, child,” Bardiya told Aullienna wearily. “Come, let me heal you.”
“Rest a moment,” he heard Patrick say as Aullienna continued to hold Kindren. Bardiya twisted his head around. His friend was sitting atop his horse, staring at him and shaking his head.
“Her back is bleeding,” Bardiya said.
Patrick shrugged.
“Let the nymph have her moment. The boy almost died.”
“He should have,” Bardiya whispered, and he heard wonder in his own voice.
“Yet you brought him back,” said Patrick. “Good job, big guy. I just hope you learn your lesson.”
“And what might that be?”
The redhead pointed to the couple on the ground.
“What you just did there? It was all because of Ashhur. Your god gave you the power to heal. You prayed to him, and he lent you his own strength so you could bring someone back from the brink of death. Amazing, if you think about it. And you’ll never, ever be able to do that again once Karak has destroyed the god you love. The next time you try to save a life, you’ll have to watch someone die instead.”
Bardiya stood on weary legs, and as much as he wanted to deny his friend, he did not possess the strength to argue. Patrick’s face hardened.
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