The Battle Sylph

by L. J. McDonald

  She was so different from Heyou, Solie realized. Airi was female. But then again, all sylphs were female, except for the battlers. She rarely took on a solid shape, didn’t even usually stay visible. Heyou did, and the other battlers as well. Of course, they were all locked into one form. Solie wondered for a moment if she’d passed invisible sylphs before. She doubted it. Her home hamlet wasn’t of much interest to anyone, let alone a sylph master.

  Oddly, she found herself missing her home and her family. They lived in a tiny house on a rocky farm, all the girls sharing a single room. Solie couldn’t really blame her father for trying to marry her off, but his choice had just been so repulsive. She missed them all…yet she still felt better off in this mercantile in a strange town, listening to Devon try to get the price dropped on a collection of clothes and supplies.

  She sighed and looked away, staring at a collection of pipes in an open box. Another pain was present: she still missed Heyou terribly. He’d pierced her soul as deeply as she had his, and she wanted him back, even with his inability to stand other men. He would have torn the store owner’s head off by now in order to get what they needed.

  Solie watched Devon argue over the supplies for a while longer, then walked to the main window for a view. Outside, horses pulled carts through the town, and she saw a few men riding, but she also knew they couldn’t afford a horse. The one Devon had been riding had been left behind at the town, and she knew that bothered him. He’d worried that it wouldn’t know how to get itself home. Solie just wished it were here. She and Devon would be walking for a long time to come.

  As she watched, a man drove a wagon pulled by two old horses up and climbed down, tying the animals’ reins to the bar out front. He came into the mercantile, and Solie stepped out of his way, noting as she did that he had heavy circles under his eyes. He looked nervous as well. He nodded to her slightly, not really making eye contact, and went to browse a shelf covered with bolts of white cloth. Having not much else to do, Solie watched, wondering what brought him there.

  At the till, Devon finished his haggling and complained massively as the storekeeper put his purchases into a bag. He handed over a few coins and turned away, pocketing the rest. But as he took his things and walked toward Solie, he passed the man who’d just entered the store. Both stopped abruptly, staring at each other.

  A strong breeze started in the shop, Airi suddenly flaring her power. Solie couldn’t figure out why. Still, Airi was hovering like a sinister transparent child over her master. The shopkeeper noticed nothing, having gone into the back with his money.

  Devon and the stranger continued to stare at each other, the smell of earth filtering into Solie’s nose. A moment later, a rough dirt wall shot up through the cracks in the plank floor between the two men. Devon stepped back, glancing over at Solie in concern.

  An earth sylph, she realized in alarm. They’d been afraid of battlers, but had some other sylph master been sent after them instead? She waited beside the two men, feeling the tension rise until she couldn’t handle it anymore.

  “Stop!” she cried out, moving between them, careful not to touch either sylph. They both pulled back, and the men stared at her in surprise. “I surrender! I surrender! He had nothing to do with any of it!”

  The earth sylph’s master’s jaw dropped open, and he gaped at her. “You what? You’re not looking for me?”

  “Why would we be?” Devon asked. “I thought you were looking for us.”

  The man’s suspicious gaze became a grin. “Cal Porter. Pleased to meet you.” He extended a hand.

  Devon shook, all the while wearing a bemused expression. Solie sagged, finally able to breathe again. The two sylphs faded back into invisibility.

  “You really scared me,” Cal told them cheerfully. “I thought you were sent by the king or something to find me, though I don’t know why anyone would know to look for me here. Or for me at all. I’m nobody. I haven’t told anybody what I’m doing, and no one’s asked. This is a good town for not asking questions. Nobody cares what you do as long as you stay out of their way. Expensive, though. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to get enough supplies, and I’m not sure what I need. I only got the one message, and that was short. Too bad Stria can’t carry messages. She can’t fly, plus I don’t like to send her away. It gets lonely here, and I need her for the wagon…”

  As he talked, he hauled the bolt of cloth he’d been looking at off the shelf and carried it to the front counter. Solie and Devon shared a look, neither of them sure how the man had managed to keep any secrets at all. He left the bolt where it was and went to find other items, grabbing poultices and salves and other objects used for healing. He jabbered nonstop, talking about his horse and his sore feet and his lack of money and his earth sylph. Solie had never met anyone quite like him.

  “Um…,” Devon interrupted. “Just a minute. Why were you afraid of us?”

  Cal glanced at him and then toward the shopkeeper, who wandered into the back again, this time searching for herbs Cal had requested. Cal leaned close. “I’m from the Community,” he confided in a whisper. “They got attacked a few days ago. I just found out yesterday. I’m getting as many supplies together as I can. Apparently they lost just about everything, and there are a lot of people hurt.”

  Solie blinked. “The Community?”

  “Yeah.” Cal nodded earnestly. When the shopkeeper came back, he accepted the herbs, then sent the man for salt. “It’s a bunch of people who don’t like how the king of Para Dubh runs everything and won’t let anyone but his toadies have sylphs. We’ve broken off and are trying to establish a place with our own rules—up north, where no one else lives.”

  Solie’s breath caught in her throat. Was this somewhere they could hide? “Can we go there?” she asked.

  “With a sylph? Sure. We can always use new recruits.” Cal puffed himself up proudly.

  Solie peeked at Devon. He was a nice guy, but she couldn’t imagine living the rest of her life on the run. She didn’t imagine he could, either.

  “You said you were attacked,” Devon said, not looking at her.

  “Yeah,” Cal admitted, his voice dropping. The shopkeeper had returned, so he led them down an aisle where he poked at some blankets. “We kind of were…hijacking some ships, and we went after this one that had a battler on it. That’s what the message said.” When he heard Solie’s breath catch he added, “I didn’t tell them to attack the ships. I thought it was a bad idea, but they said it was the quickest way to get self-sufficient. We didn’t hurt anyone and we let the crews go. We’d only gone after a couple, but then there was a battler, and…The message said a lot of people are dead.”

  “That ship had two battle sylphs on it,” Devon told him flatly. “Ril and Mace. You’re lucky anyone survived.” His brow creased. “How could you have been so stupid?”

  “It wasn’t me!” Cal whined. “I said that!”

  “Right.” Devon looked at Solie. “I don’t know that we want to hear any more. These people have their own problems.”

  Solie stared at the ground. “But…we have to go somewhere.”

  “I would almost bet you money that Ril and Leon are tracking us,” was Devon’s reply.

  “But…but with Heyou dead…” Solie’s voice caught in her throat, and she had to wipe away a tear. “They have no reason anymore.” At least, that’s what she wanted to believe. Even if it was a lie.

  “Who’s Heyou?” Cal asked.

  Solie looked away. “A friend of mine. They killed him.” She started to cry in earnest, if softly. She’d wept about him so many times, but still the tears came. She covered her face with shaking hands. Neither of the two men knew what to do. Both stared at her stupidly.

  “Maybe you should come with me anyway,” Cal said at last. “I mean, we’re all getting chased by battlers.”

  Devon sighed. “Fine. If Solie wants to. Do you?”

  She forced herself to stop weeping. She didn’t care where they went, not re
ally. Just as long as it was somewhere safe and had other people around—other women she could talk and cry with. “Yes.”

  “Fine.” Devon shrugged. “It’s settled.”

  They ended up buying the blankets and an assortment of other gear and medical supplies. Cal didn’t quite have enough, so Devon dipped into his own money in order that they could pay for everything. At least they’d gotten food, Solie thought, as she chewed on a piece of jerky and watched Devon help load the wagon. Even after all the money they’d spent, there was a great deal of space left in it for passengers.

  An hour later they were driving the animals out of town, headed north along a rutted old road through the forest. It was going to get a lot worse, Cal admitted cheerfully. Where they were going there were no roads, and they’d need the help of the sylphs to continue. A cold wind blew, but Solie was warm in her cloak. Airi blocked most of the wind, anyway. The other sylph materialized as a child-shaped mass of dirt and rock in the back of the wagon, playing with a set of marbles that Cal gave her. Solie watched the sylph amuse herself and thought of Heyou again. Huddling down in her cloak, she tried to find other contemplations, but it was hard. It was as if she could still feel him, wandering somewhere, lost, and looking for her.

  She closed her eyes and pulled her hood up, determined to get some sleep as the wagon slowly moved north.

  Heyou struggled through the woods, his legs covered in mud and pine needles up to his knees. He was actually getting cuts on them, and his feet were bleeding. He could feel Solie, though, somewhere far ahead, and he followed her unerringly, making a dead-straight line toward her—at least, as much as he could. Whenever he reached an obstruction he couldn’t conquer, he went around it and returned to his route, faithfully tracking his queen.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been walking, nor did he care. He just knew he had to find her. It didn’t matter how much pain he felt, or his fear. All aspects of his battler nature he kept suppressed, all except that unbreakable tie. His queen he could feel and always would.

  Just as he could feel the faint touches from other members of his hive scattered throughout this strange, solid world. There weren’t many, but they were there, and he reached for them desperately…only to feel their regret. He even felt the grief of a battler who couldn’t come to his aid, much as he wanted to. He was on his own, the battler breathed distantly. Only Solie could help him, if he could find her.

  Heyou was convinced he could. Find the queen, protect the queen. Nothing else mattered.

  He stumbled along a narrow trail, leaning heavily on his makeshift staff. It was cold out and he wasn’t used to that, wasn’t used to the sensation of cold at all, nor that of dying. Heyou gritted his newly created teeth and fought for strength, head bowed low as he kept walking. Walk long enough and he would reach her. Only, he could tell she was moving herself, faster. Didn’t she know she was leaving him behind?

  He’d never reach her, he realized desperately, not like this. But he didn’t have the energy to change shape anymore. It was all bleeding invisibly out of him. That other battler had known what he was doing.

  Heyou shuddered, determined, absolutely resolute not to give up—and stumbled, falling to the ground. The world went away for a while.

  It all came back with the sound of hooves. Heyou opened his eyes, finding that he was lying full-length on the ground and wasn’t dead yet. Everything hurt, though. And someone was coming. He forced his head up, lifting himself on his forearms, and saw the gray legs of a horse as it made its way down the trail toward him. Dazed, he looked up the animal to the big man who sat astride, peering down at him through a bushy beard and a fur cloak.

  “Isn’t this a sight?” the man said lightly, and Heyou had one final moment before he passed out to curse the fact that he’d been found by another bloody human male.

  Chapter Eleven

  Leon’s lips were tight as he strode down the hallway toward the king’s audience chamber. On his shoulder was Ril, stiff with fury, his hate flaring out.

  They hadn’t learned anything from the old man or the girl’s aunt, nor from the father—nothing more than that the girl’s name was Solie and the battler’s Heyou, and that he didn’t seem to hate her, even as she barely kept control of him. The aunt hadn’t even realized he wasn’t human, and only Devon’s father had recognized him as a battler…at least until he’d attacked the girl’s father.

  Leon had gathered what information he could and prepared to head out again, to track the pair more carefully this time, when an air sylph appeared with a message ordering him to report to the king. The timing couldn’t have been worse. If he didn’t start following the group immediately, they could escape. He was skillful, but time was every tracker’s enemy. The girl was unprepared and the battler injured. Now was the moment to find them. Instead, he was being forced to dawdle. Worse, he could see the king wanting to know what he was doing, and demanding the deaths of everyone who knew what Heyou was. The girl and the battler were even more likely to escape if Leon had to waste time hiding her family.

  Leon reached the sylph alcove before the audience chamber and looked up to see Mace. The battler hit him with his hate, but Leon was already in such a foul mood he didn’t care—and Ril actually hissed at the enormous sylph in response.

  Leon sighed and shifted his battler to the usual perch. “I’ll be right back,” he told Ril and headed for the door. The two battlers stared silently at his back.

  A servant held the door to the audience chamber open for him and announced his arrival. Leon walked in and bowed to the man sitting on the throne. Jasar stood grumpily below the dais and glared. Thrall stood to one side behind the throne, staring at him. The hate coming from the battler was cloying.

  “Your Majesty,” Leon said. “I’ve come as ordered.”

  “Yes.” The king rubbed his chin. “Tell me what’s happened.”

  Leon straightened. The sooner he reported, the sooner he could get out of there. “The girl’s name is Solie. She named the battle sylph Heyou and took him to her aunt’s bakery in the village of Otalo, just south of here.”

  “ ‘Hey, you?’ ” Jasar repeated dryly.

  “Apparently,” Leon said. “Ril fought and injured the battler, but they escaped after the fight. I know they’re heading north, in the company of an air-sylph master named Devon Chole. I don’t know yet why he’s helping her. I’ll have to ask when I find him.” He fell silent, watching the king chew on a thumbnail.

  Alcor stared at him for a few moments, then looked over at Jasar. His eyes again found Leon’s. “Take him with you,” he commanded.

  “What?” both men shouted—Leon in shock, Jasar in horror.

  “Your Majesty!” the dandy gasped, stepping forward. “You can’t expect me to go out into the wilderness again.”

  “I can, and I do,” the king snapped. “You shouldn’t have killed that courtier. I want you out of my sight for a while.”

  Jasar jerked back and shot a hateful look at Leon, as though this were his fault. “Yes, Your Majesty. I suppose another trip on an air ship will be refreshing.” He almost spat the last word.

  The king looked amused. “I doubt Leon can track anyone from an air ship.”

  “No, Your Majesty. We’ll have to ride.”

  “Ride?” the dandy shrieked again.

  The king waved a hand in dismissal. “Report when you’re done” was his final command.

  Leon bowed and left. His face showed nothing, but he was outraged. Alcor didn’t care who knew about the battler, at least for now, but his new companion was less than useless. The last time they’d worked together, to ambush those pirates, Jasar had commandeered the captain’s quarters and refused to come out for anything. At least he’d sent his battler to fight the pirates when they attacked, but that was probably just to protect himself—and he’d ordered Mace back well before the job was finished. The only good thing about the trip was the fact that Leon hadn’t seen much of him. Now they were going to have to tr
avel in much closer quarters.

  He went out and down the hall to the alcove, well aware that Jasar was following him; the dandy’s curses were loud and relentless. Leon collected Ril and turned to his supposed partner, careful to keep the contempt out of his face and voice.

  “We leave in an hour, my lord. Make yourself ready.”

  Jasar stared as though he were mad. “An hour? I can’t possibly be ready in an hour! We’ll have to leave in the morning.”

  Leon’s eyes narrowed. “They could disappear for good in that time.”

  Jasar, however, was already walking away, Mace following. “In the morning,” he repeated, waving. “After breakfast.”

  Leon watched the courtier go, and only belatedly became aware that he was grinding his teeth. Ril peered at him appraisingly, no hatred coming from him at all, and Leon stomped off toward a new destination. If he was going to be stuck here overnight, he was at least going to spend it with his family.

  Heyou felt warm, leaning back against something that moved beneath him, hearing a steady thump in his ear. His feet were cold, though, and he could smell nothing but fur and animal.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes. He was sitting in front of someone on a horse, leaning back against their body while they rode. They had their cloak drawn around him, but his feet dangled down below to be chilled by the night air. He could hear the person’s heartbeat under his ear and could feel them breathing.

  He actually felt better than he had—in pain but not so exhausted. He blinked, simply sitting quietly for a moment. The rider had an arm across his abdomen, holding Heyou on the horse, and he smelled of old blood and dirt.

  He?

  Heyou snapped upright, pulling himself away from the man with a gasp, but the arm tightened before he could fall from the saddle.