He stopped and stared, truly looking at her for perhaps the first time. She was right-handed and that sleeve had suffered from all their travails, to the extent where she’d finally torn it off at the shoulder. The lines of her arm were smooth; this was a body that had always been healthy, and then honed to its keenest edge; that was clear from the easy movement of her muscles. There was a knotwork tattoo about the biceps, deceptively simple at a glance, representing the endless life cycle of birth and rebirth. Toward the wrist, covering the lower half of her forearm, a far more complex and delicate filigree, as though the engraver had sought to replicate a pattern of black lace on her skin. A startling contrast, to find so overtly feminine a decoration on such a determinedly strong figure. Whoever the woman had been, she had defied easy typecasting.
In that, she and the DemonChild were disturbingly alike.
Khory spoke out of the side of her mouth, offering only a fraction of her concentration while devoting the rest to sentry duty. She lounged loose-limbed against a boulder, her sword lying at the ready across her lap, positioned so that she had a clear view of the scene below while remaining protected by a tight clutch of trees from any attack from behind. She might be overwhelmed, but Thorn doubted she’d ever be taken by surprise. It was a comforting thought.
Ryn had shifted sideways where he lay, to clear himself from Elora. That was all he could manage. Thorn could see from the shallow, tender way he breathed that the impact of Rool’s bolt had broken bones, and he knew from experience that Bastian’s slash would be bad. Elora was on her knees, close beside the Wyr, a smear of darkness—the neutral twilight stole away even the scarlet of fresh blood—across her front, in stark opposition to the argent purity of her skin.
“He’s hurt,” she said lamely as Thorn approached.
“Any pain?” the Nelwyn asked as he hunkered beside Ryn.
Eyebrows raised in an apparently universal expression of incredulity. But his answer was as to the point as Thorn’s question.
“Hurts to breathe, hurts to move—those parts of me that still can, I mean. Leg’s numb below where I’m cut. Probably loss of blood, I’ve no sense of poison. Think I’m leaking like a sieve.”
Thorn placed a hand gently on the wound, shook his head in relief.
“It’s a mess, but he missed any of the major vessels. Your fur ate up most of the force of the blow; Bastian hadn’t accounted for that when he struck.”
“Lucky me.”
“Very much so, Wyr. Any of the rest of us’d be holding our guts in our hands and wondering how to put them back inside.”
“Nelwyn…!” Ryn hissed warningly, with an urgent flash of expression toward the side where Elora knelt.
“Was that supposed to be me, then?” she asked, in a very small voice.
“Very likely. As was I, for Anele and Franjean.”
“He knows ’em,” said Geryn, joining them. “Traveled with him, those gobshite lamb swipers.” There was a metallic thickness to his voice that told Thorn he was still bleeding, so the sorcerer fished about in his pouch for a vial and a clean square of cloth. A drop of liquid, a hurried incantation, and he handed the dressing up to the Pathfinder, telling him to hold it over his nose and breathe deeply.
“Same for me, please,” requested Ryn, good humor belied by the evident weakness of his voice.
“I wish.”
“Oh joy.”
“Not to worry, I can pull you through. I’ll need some time, is all.”
“Drumheller, we may not have any.”
“Say again, Geryn? What are you talking about?”
“Take a breath. Couldn’t smell before, ’cause o’ the crap in my nose, but it’s plain as death now.”
He didn’t comprehend what the Pathfinder meant at first, as he took in a heady mix of evening scents. Growing things, old and young, sprouting from a rich, loamy earth, touched—faintly at this point, thank heaven—by the salt tang of ocean air.
“Someone’s lit a fire,” he said without thinking.
“Tha’s a fack.”
Thorn rose to his feet, wondering if his face had gone as pale as Elora’s.
“That can’t be,” he said.
“What’s happening?” Elora asked.
“Torch, perhaps?” he wondered, knowing that was hopeless.
“Close enough t’ smell, close enough t’ see. I’m thinkin’ this is a ways off still. Thank the Maker.”
“But coming our way?”
Geryn shrugged. “Can we afford to assume dif’rent?”
“It can’t be,” Thorn repeated, as though his words alone would make it so.
“Bugger that, Peck,” scorned Havilhand. “I seen the greatest city of the coast turned t’ ice an’ spun crystal, an’ a fair, decent woman tore inside out b’fore my eyes. If nothin’ else holds true no more, why should this?”
“What does he mean?” Elora, again, fright skittering across the body of her voice.
“Hopefully, nothing,” Thorn told them both, “but it’s best we move.”
“I can’t,” Ryn said matter-of-factly. His senses were keener than Daikini; Thorn needed only a glance to see that he knew the truth.
“Khory,” Thorn said, “once this dressing’s applied, he’s all yours.”
“If the eagles come again, Drumheller?”
“One crisis at a time, please. You can manage him, none of the rest of us can.”
“I’ll carry the sword,” offered Geryn, to back away with upraised hands and an apologetic mien when Khory thrust it emphatically into its scabbard and tightened the sling that bound it across her back.
“My apologies, swordsmistress,” Ryn said with unaccustomed formality, and a turn of phrase Thorn associated more with a Princess like Anakerie, “for the inconvenience. And”—accented now with a shrug that was quintessentially him—“for bleeding all over you.”
“Your blood, fuzzy,” she said, slinging his arms forward across her shoulder, “keep it to yourself.”
It hurt the Wyr when she rose, there was no way he could hide it, his choked grimace sparking a tiny outcry from Elora, as though his pain had struck a resonance in her.
“We have to move fast,” Geryn told them.
“We might as well put a blade through Ryn’s heart right here and now,” Thorn snapped back at him, “and have done with it!”
“Jus’ sayin’ what’s what, is all!”
“High ground, bare ground, that’s the drill. Find us the quickest way.”
Geryn took off at a jog, moving as easily through the growing night as he would in bright sun.
“And don’t thank me,” Thorn muttered beneath his breath, “for the MageSight.”
“Thank you,” a voice said softly from the side.
“You’re most welcome, Elora Danan.”
“I told the sea to stop,” she said, after they’d walked awhile.
“I was wondering about that. What gave you the idea?”
“It was so awful below. I was so sick, I thought I’d heave out my insides. Still sore.” She rubbed herself across the belly, leavening the memory with a wan smile until that brought her hard up against the memory of Morag’s end. She blinked very rapidly, until Thorn handed her a cloth for her tears.
“I can imagine.”
“I wanted it to stop. Suddenly this way came to me. Next I knew, I was on the deck, screaming my head off. Is that how things are supposed to work?” she asked with sudden urgency and a sense from her that it wasn’t how she wanted it to be.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “No one does, really, I suspect. Some powers, like some people, don’t like being told what to do.” Elora flushed a little, at the memory of how she’d treated her own servants. “They prefer to be asked. Pride of place and being are not exclusive to the Daikinis, or to brownies, or any single race.” He smiled. “Not even Nelwyns. We each have our wishes,
our imaginings, but they’re all colored by experience and prejudice. They’re right for one, not necessarily for another. There’s craft to magic, as there is to monarchy. You start with the gift, as you might a claim to a throne; the trick is learning to use it properly. Mastering energies,” he waved a hand, leaving trails of languid rainbows from the tips of his fingers, “mastering people, mastering yourself.
“The Twleve Domains are ruled by prideful folk, on both sides of the Veil; none among them are comfortable with the idea of an overlord, no matter how sacred. That’s the trouble with prophecy,” his smile turned ironic to point the comment, “always too damn ambiguous!”
“You never used to curse.”
“You never saw me in a bad temper.”
“You’re the one who made me laugh.” There was a sense of quiet discovery to her words, a pale echo of the wonder Khory had exhibited earlier, as she labored to make connections between the decimated images in her memory. Thorn was impressed, as much by the effort she was making as by her success.
“We all did, in our way. You made it easy.”
“Why’d you leave me?” The ache of loss was naked in her tone, as it was in his when he replied.
“I thought”—a shrug—“my work was done. I had a home, family, responsibilities. I’m a Nelwyn. The adventure may be a great one, but the parts we play in it are supposed to be small, like us, that’s the way it’s always been. You were where you rightly belonged, among those best able to protect you.”
“Good thing you left, you might have shared their fate.”
“Or saved them. Elora, what happened that night, do you remember?”
She shook her head, slowly, purposefully, considering the question, truly seeking an answer.
“I was warm, snug abed, then I was burning. The fire that claimed Bavmorda had come for me, that’s what I thought. I couldn’t move, not any part of me.” She held out her arms and gazed at the transformed skin with a sad smile. “My skin was cast metal. I couldn’t even speak. I was thrown through sky, through sea, through the heart of the world, through stars in the heavens; I became a star myself. Everything I was, was torn away….”
Her voice trailed off and she was silent for a time. Thorn didn’t try to press her, but wondered instead how closely the truth of her journey resembled his brief fusion with the Demon. If that was so, if she’d also encountered those unworldly creatures, that would explain why the brownies were so ready to believe the worst of her. Frustration was a sour, bilious taste in his mouth; it was like being blind and trying to visualize the face of the world from a handful of random spot-flash images.
But why should I expect it to be anything else? he thought. We’re rational beings, how can we make sense out of chaos? Even the way we frame the question invalidates it.
“Then,” she said at long last, her voice as remote as the memory, “I was cold. Freezing. Screaming. I was hungry, I was hurt, I was scared. I was so scared. My bed was gone, Tir Asleen was gone. I was somewhere different, someplace strange.”
“The palace in Angwyn.”
“The courtyard, actually.” She nodded. “They built me a house, then they built me the tower. Elora’s Aerie. They were always nice to me…but they were always afraid. All things considered, I guess they had good reason.”
“Bollocks.”
They’d been climbing all the while, along a track whose shallow grade made it seem far easier than it turned out to be. Thorn’s legs felt held together by rubber bands, and those badly frayed; he doubted Elora fared much better and didn’t want to think about Taksemanyin. Even Khory was showing the strain.
“Your friends are angry,” Elora said suddenly. “I saw them with you in the tower.” She flushed, which had the effect of underlying her silver skin with a hint of rose gold like the promise of a sunrise. “I called them ‘bug men.’ ”
“ ‘Awful little bug men,’ to be precise.” Then, more seriously, after a small sigh’s pause: “I placed them in harm’s way, and left them there.”
“To save me.”
“Things happened too fast, I couldn’t do both.”
“Why am I so important?”
“Blessed if I know. But I think you are.”
“Nobody ever asked me if it was what I wanted.”
“I’m not sure our approval is required.”
“That isn’t right, Drumheller.”
He looked at her. “No offense, but that never seemed to bother the Sacred Princess Elora.”
A small smile touched the corners of her lips.
“No,” she conceded slowly, stretching out the “n.” “It didn’t.”
They were traversing a middling ridge, a subordinate offshoot of Doumhall Mount that ran along the peninsula to its end at Duatha Headland, and as they neared the top none had any notion which way to go next, whether it would be better to walk the crest for a time or descend the far side.
Geryn was waiting. He was scratched all over, bark scrapes and nettle cuts from climbing a tree. Whatever he’d seen hadn’t made him happy.
“Yeh have to run,” he told them without preamble, puffing like a bellows. “F’r yer lives!”
Thorn followed the angle of his body, and beheld a roseate glow that reached from shore to shore across the peninsula.
“No,” was all he could say, in absolute denial.
“It’s burning, Peck. Fast as a wildfire, trees candling like they was soaked in pitch.”
“No.”
With a terrible violence, born wholly from fear, the Daikini yanked him off his feet by the shoulders, till their faces were level.
“I’ve seen it, damn yer maggoty eyes! Don’t matter that this is s’posed t’ be impossible, that nothin’s s’posed t’ torch these woods, they’re burnin’ jus’ the same! An’ us with ’em, we don’t go now! Fast as we’re able.”
“Where?”
He swung around, shoving Thorn bodily toward the looming peak.
“Crest line’s good the whole way,” Geryn husked. “Made sure o’ that myself. It’s a bear of a climb, but there’s a bulge in the rocks, forms a natural break, more stone than trees beyond, no fuel for a decent burn. Reach that wall, then the slopes o’ Doumhall beyond, we’re good f’r another day.”
There was sound now, that hadn’t been heard from within the ravines. A crackling that boot soles make striding across a bed of dry nettles and twigs. Smoke was thickening as well, reminding him of autumn nights in the village, with the scent of a score of hearthfires spicing the breeze.
“Can you manage, Khory?” Thorn asked, after shaking himself free of the Pathfinder’s grasp. Geryn was growing more agitated by the moment, as though his body were shot through with lightning, so full of energy that he could hardly contain himself. He wanted to run, he couldn’t abide the delay.
“I run,” she said flatly, “he dies.”
“So set him down,” Geryn snapped, “do him quick, as a mercy, an’ let’s be off. Damnitall, the time!”
“No!” This cry came from Elora.
“He risked his life for us,” she protested further, rushing to help as Khory eased her burden down. “I owe him mine! We can’t just leave him.”
“He can’t go, Highness, we can’t stay, simple a’ tha’!”
“He’s right,” agreed Ryn.
Thorn knew that, had rationality marshaled like a conquering horde inside his head to provide all the arguments and justifications needed for the decision. But there was a wild giddiness within him as well, a residue of the Demon’s chaos that flew in the face of presumed common sense, a resonance of the healing madness that gripped him up on the Scar. He felt as though he’d walked away from so many friends and companions, always for good and noble and necessary reasons, he couldn’t bear another such. He wanted the fight.
“Bollocks,” Elora said, closing the subject as far as she was concerned, though Thorn knew he c
ould probably overrule her. She was trusting him to save them, trusting him to give himself the chance to try.
Geryn tried to make the decision for them, by yanking Elora by the arm and tucking her close.
“Be daft an’ die, if tha’s yer will,” he told them. “I’ll not weep for fools. An’ I’ll sure not let the Sacred Princess burn with yeh!”
He got the words out but didn’t make it farther than a single step before Elora wiggled her legs between his, in a move she’d seen Khory make, and tripped him up. They sprawled together, but she planted a foot against his flank and heaved him clear. His recovery was quicker, but she had a knife, drawn from the deep folds of her bundled gowns, which she’d been carrying like a talisman since coming ashore.
“Don’t do this, Highness,” he implored. “I beg yeh!”
“Don’t touch me like that. Ever.”
“I’m sorry, I just want to keep yeh safe. Please.” He was edging fractionally closer, a crabwise sequence of tiny motions that Thorn recognized too late to be of help, as his warning cry coincided with Geryn’s lunge for Elora’s weapon.
She flinched and slashed wildly; he got a hand on her but also caught a shallow gash along the opposite forearm for his trouble. Had it just been the two of them scrapping, he likely would have overmastered her, but Khory’s sword hissed clear of its scabbard, the reinforcement prompting an immediate backpedal from the Pathfinder as he scrabbled beyond their reach, tumbling ass over teakettle to the base of a small depression.
“Does she mean so little,” he raged, recovering his feet, “that yeh’ll let her burn?”
“She means so much,” Elora answered, surprising them all, “that they’ll let her make her own decision, and accept the consequences.”
“Fools!” The Pathfinder turned full face on Thorn, dark emotions plain as he worked himself into a violent state. “T’ place yer trust in the Peck when all he does is leadja from disaster t’ disaster! Yeh saw what hap’ned t’ the shipmaster; d’yeh want the same fer yehrselves? If there’s evil come t’ Angwyn, by the Blessed Bride, I say it’s him! Aye, Peck, it’s yer doin’, all the horror tha’s fallin’ on the land, damn me fer not seein’ tha’ from the start an’ stoppin’ yeh when I had the chance. Yeh say yer tryin’ t’ save the Sacred Princess; well, I’m askin’ if stealin’ her ain’t what brought down curses on all our heads? Shoulda figured yeh were in the dungeon fer good reason an’ by God left yeh there! Yeh care nothin’ fer Angwyn, yeh care nothin’ fer her!” In any other situation, they’d be at blows by now, the Pathfinder trying his best to beat any and all foes to bloody pulps. But his rage could find no such release so long as Khory blocked him with her sword, which left him nothing to turn on his foes save parting words, and with them he was gone. “Demon yeh were named, it’s Demon yeh are an’ I pray yeh burn fer it!”
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