Champion's Bond

by Rinelle Grey

  Bekinda’s voice called out, “Kriss?”

  “Come in,” Kriss called back.

  Jasyn sat up beside her.

  Kriss looked him over, but he seemed to be none the worse for his ordeal last night.

  Bekinda’s face brightened when she saw Jasyn. “You’re all right. We’ve all been so worried.”

  “I didn’t mean to worry anyone.” Jasyn’s brow furrowed.

  Bekinda laughed and waved a hand to dismiss his comment. “As if you did it deliberately. Well, I guess that makes our plans a little easier. I take it we’re still going forward with the attack?”

  Kriss’s eyes flicking to Jasyn quickly caught his angry frown.

  “We are,” Jasyn said firmly. “I wounded one of them fatally. He couldn’t have survived the night. The other…” His eyes narrowed. “The fact that I’m still alive shows that she has no magical training at all. She’s no match for me on her own. If she even survived. They were a bonded pair, so I could have taken her out as well.”

  “So we have an edge over them?” This was the best news Kriss had heard all week. After Jasyn being alive and conscious, of course.

  His nod was definitive. “We do. I can only assume they sent their most powerful mages after us last night. With them out of the picture, we should have no trouble at all.”

  His words were encouraging, but his tone wasn’t. Kriss looked at his face carefully, noting the strained lines around the corners of his eyes.

  “How are you going?” she asked. “That attack last night knocked you out for quite a while. Are you sure we shouldn’t wait one more day for you to recover fully?”

  Jasyn shook his head. “That would give them a chance to recover and make new plans. We need to strike now.”

  14

  Taking a Chance

  The pass seemed longer than he remembered.

  At least he was here and he didn’t have any lingering effects from the woman’s magical attack. She had thrown a lot of power at him, even if she was untrained. Strange that it hadn’t affected him more.

  But he wasn’t arguing.

  He should be further towards the front of the troll force running towards the human village, but Kriss had insisted that a dozen trolls go ahead to clear out any humans before she and Jasyn emerged from the pass. Apparently his injuries last night had shaken her.

  Jasyn stepped around a dead troll who had fallen across the four human corpses. He didn’t look down to see who it was. There were going to be losses. He couldn’t let them get to him now, or their sacrifices would be in vain. He needed to focus on his goal—getting that gem and removing the human threat.

  The end of the pass was up ahead. Soon he’d see the village. Jasyn gathered up his magic, letting it roll down into the village ahead of him.

  A rainbow of colours danced between him and the end of the pass. Between him and the first group of trolls who had raced ahead and were smashing through the human’s wall.

  As he watched, the colours separated and arranged themselves neatly into a full spectrum, one colour fitting and merging tightly with the one next to it. Trapping them in the pass. Jasyn flung his magic at it, searching for a way through, trying to batter it down or find a crack.

  But it was firm. He’d never seen anything like it.

  Were the two mages who had come after him last night actually not their most powerful? Had he grossly underestimated the humans’ magical power?

  Had he brought all the trolls here to die?

  “Stop!” He held up his hands and the trolls behind him halted.

  None of them could see the barrier. Kriss didn’t say anything, just waited for him to speak.

  “There’s a magical barrier,” he said quietly. “Right in front of us. And no way through.”

  As if they couldn’t believe him, a couple of trolls walked up to the barrier, feeling it with their hands, beating on it with their swords.

  It was all pointless. All of it.

  “How high does it go?” Kriss asked.

  Of course. Without even stopping to answer, Jasyn turned to the barrier and sent his magic skimming up it. Up, up, and then he was over and flying towards the village.

  He let a portion of his consciousness fly with the magic to find out who was controlling this barrier. That person would be the one with the gem. If he found them and attacked them while their magic was busy holding the barrier, the trolls could make it through and take the gem.

  He followed the stream of rainbow magic back to the village. On top of one of the wooden towers stood four mages, holding hands.

  Four of them? Four mages working together, sharing their magic and sharing one gem? That wasn’t possible. He and Kriss were able to share their magic because of their bond, but only two people could be bonded at once.

  Couldn’t they?

  He recognised the human female mage who stood in the centre. She was the human warrior who had attacked him all those years ago. Except… there were two of her. Twins.

  For a moment, he was reminded of the panels in the graveyard. But those twins had killed each other long ago. These twins were different. They weren’t fighting each other, they were working together.

  Holding hands, they stood between the two men. One man, tall and noble looking, was the one Jasyn was sure he had fatally wounded last night. The other, shorter and stouter, he didn’t recognise.

  His brain struggled to take it all in. What did this mean? He knew that twins had a similar bond to husband and wife, he’d seen it before. Theoretically if both twins were married, they could share a four way bond. But only if they married separately, which would be against the village’s law.

  Something in his heart shifted. Had they… had they moved away from the twin marriage law?

  The four of them stared straight at him, their eyes wide. Magic streamed from them, clear and bright. Blue-green from the warrior twin, yellow from her sister, and red from her sister’s partner. The tall male mage, standing on the other side, was a deep purple.

  Jasyn followed the rainbow of colour back to the pass. The barrier was still intact. The four humans would hold it.

  He could take them out.

  The barrier would fall.

  And then there would be a slaughter. Humans and trolls killing each other, just as they had for centuries.

  He didn’t want that. He never had. Yes, he’d grown to see the value of fighting for his beliefs, but only if there was no other way. He still believed that true peace couldn’t be won by fighting.

  To find true peace, you had to take risks.

  Jasyn pulled back his magic behind the barrier and let it drop.

  “What happened? Did you find out who had the gem? Did you kill them? Why is the barrier still there?” Kriss demanded.

  “We need to stop fighting,” Jasyn said quietly.

  The trolls stopped hammering on the barrier and stared at him.

  “What?” Kriss demanded. “Now is not the time to give up, Jasyn. I have trolls dying down in the village. We have to get to them!”

  “Their mages are too powerful,” Jasyn said. “There are four of them working together. Two twins and their husbands.”

  His words penetrated Kriss’s fighting haze. “Two twins and their husbands? That means…”

  Jasyn nodded. “They’ve broken the twin marriage law. Maybe they’re ready to challenge some other perceptions as well.”

  Kriss frowned. “This could be the worst mistake we’ve ever made,” she warned.

  “Or it could be the best thing we’ve ever done,” Jasyn countered. “The only way to know is to take the chance.” He reached for her hand, and for a moment, she held her fingers stiff.

  Then they curled around his. She nodded, once. That was all the answer he needed.

  Jasyn turned back towards the human village. He could see the humans’ eyes on him. He held up the gem, then put it into his pocket. Without it touching his skin, he lost the ability to access his magic.

  The b
arrier in front of him became invisible, though that didn’t mean it wasn’t still there.

  He fought the inclination to defend himself, to put up some protection against the humans. Without his magic, he was completely and utterly at their mercy.

  He hoped he wasn’t making the wrong decision.

  Jasyn could just make out the humans standing on the tower. They just stood there, not moving. Below them, Jasyn could hear the cries of trolls and humans alike, still fighting in the village.

  Kriss’s hand twitched in his. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Just wait,” Jasyn said. “They’re as thrown by this as we are.”

  And then it happened. He caught a minute shiver as something changed in the barrier. Had the humans dropped it? He reached out a hand to check, and encountered nothing.

  “We should attack them now. There’s nothing holding us back,” Kriss whispered, as if she thought the humans could hear her.

  “This is our one chance for peace.”

  He could see in her eyes that she knew it as well as he did. She didn’t object further. Just stared at the trolls and humans still fighting in the distance, her face haunted.

  “Stop!” Jasyn yelled.

  The trolls in the village stopped fighting and turned to look back at him.

  That was the moment the humans had been waiting for. They fell on the trolls, attacking them at will. Kriss’s hand tightened on Jasyn’s and her breath came out in a hiss.

  The human woman, the warrior twin, shouted and the humans stopped fighting as well.

  Jasyn let his breath out in a sigh.

  A truce. He’d called a truce with the humans, even without speaking with them.

  And it had worked.

  But it wasn’t over yet. Even though the trolls in the village retreated back to the pass, tension still crackled in the air.

  Could they take this further? Could they resolve this once and for all?

  Could the humans lift the curse they’d placed on the trolls all those years ago?

  Would they?

  All these questions ran through his mind as the four humans walked up the path towards the pass, hand in hand. He’d never seen so much power in one group before. The trolls didn’t stand a chance against them. They never had.

  These mages could have wiped out the entire troll camp last night. But they hadn’t.

  Jasyn had to hope it was because they had compassion and understanding. And that they could extend these to the trolls, even though they looked different.

  The humans stopped just in front of him.

  “Stay back,” Jasyn ordered the trolls behind him. “Weapons down. We don’t want to startle them or we’ll all end up dead.”

  The trolls obeyed without question. Jasyn squeezed Kriss’s hand and took a step forwards to meet the humans.

  Kriss stepped with him, her head held high. He’d never been more proud of her. He knew she would willingly fight any one of them, but this show of trust took far more courage than fighting did.

  “We don’t want to fight you,” Jasyn said quietly. “We want peace. We want our freedom.”

  The humans exchanged looks, confusion on their faces.

  “Why are you here?” the tall male with the purple magic, the one that Jasyn had attacked spoke up. “Why attack our village?”

  Somehow, Jasyn didn’t think that telling them he planned to take the gem would go down too well. But he had another reason, one that had been behind everything he’d done in the last two years. “You mages made us like this.” He gestured to his body. “We want you to fix it.”

  They exchanged confused glances again. Didn’t they understand what he was saying?

  A cold chill ran through his body. What if they couldn’t understand? He could hear that his voice sounded different to theirs. What if the curse didn’t just affect their bodies? What if the humans really couldn’t recognise the words he was saying?

  How could he ever make peace with the humans if they couldn’t talk?

  “Why have you never tried to talk to us before?” the warrior twin with the blue-green magic demanded.

  He remembered the moment in the village when he’d been picking up the book the old man had held. As if she’d tried to talk to him then. No, she’d been too busy trying to kill him. Jasyn rolled his eyes.

  She checked and stared at him. And in that moment, he could see understanding of their predicament, if not their words.

  “The mages made us like this, you can fix it,” Jasyn said, even though he knew it was useless.

  Or was it?

  “Mages,” she repeated. “You’re talking about the mages?”

  Jasyn nodded quickly. “Yes, the mages. The mages made us like this.”

  She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t understand. If only there was some way to make it clearer.”

  The tall male human, her partner, swore. “There is. If we view each other magically, it should add some meaning to the words. Maybe enough for us to understand each other.”

  It was worth a try. Jasyn reached for the gem in his pocket and shifted his view.

  “The mages made us like this,” he repeated.

  The human woman sighed and shook her head.

  He couldn’t believe it. He’d finally managed to stop the fighting for long enough to talk with the humans and they couldn’t understand him. It was so unfair. Damn those mages who had cast this curse.

  The woman frowned and reached out her magic towards him.

  Jasyn’s instinct was to retreat, but he made himself stay still and keep his magic contained.

  She twitched at something in front of his face that he couldn’t see. What was she doing?

  “The mages made us like this,” he repeated.

  This time, it sounded different. Even he could tell. His voice was lower, less hoarse.

  He sounded like a human.

  And he could see from their eyes that they heard the difference too. They understood.

  “We want you to fix it,” he repeated quickly, before the chance was lost.

  The humans looked startled. They exchanged looks. “We need a moment to discuss this,” the tall male said.

  Jasyn nodded and looked over at Kriss. She looked as nervous as he felt. He squeezed her hand, hoping to comfort her in some way.

  The warrior twin was watching him and Jasyn’s met her eyes. She looked uncomfortable.

  The humans retreated and talked quietly. Jasyn took the moment to say to Kriss, “If they do agree, I think you should be first.”

  “Me?” Kriss’s voice was high. It was unusual for her to show so much emotion in front of the other trolls. “I’m not sure I…”

  “I need to watch them, just in case. And it needs to be one of us. We can’t ask any other troll to try something we wouldn’t do.”

  Kriss swallowed. “Yes. Of course. I wouldn’t let anyone else go first.”

  She was braver than he was. Not that he wouldn’t be the first to step up if there was someone else who could watch the humans. But that was because he was more comfortable with magic than she was.

  The humans finished their discussion. Jasyn held his breath as they walked back to the trolls. The tall human male, the one who had made a miraculous recovery, stepped forwards. He seemed to speak for all of them.

  “We have one question before we make our decision,” he said.

  Jasyn nodded, waiting.

  “Why did you stop fighting? You could have killed us earlier with your magic, but you didn’t. Why?”

  He hadn’t expected that question. His respect for the humans went up a notch. Luckily, his answer was a simple one. “You chose to remove the twin marriage law.”

  The humans all stared at him, then at each other, their eyes wide. Jasyn hid a smile. Apparently he’d surprised the humans as much as they’d surprised him.

  “You mean you decided to talk to us instead of attacking because we chose to disobey that law?” the human male clarified.

/>   Jasyn nodded. Then what the human said sank in. Disobey the law? Did that mean it still existed? He took a deep breath to calm his panic. If these four powerful mages had chosen to disobey it, then the trolls could as well.

  The humans looked shocked. One of the twins, the warrior one Jasyn thought, shook her head in disbelief. “How did you know about the law?” she asked. “Do your people remember what happened here?”

  Jasyn could see no reason to hide the truth. He needed to know how far the humans were prepared to take this truce. Reaching under his fur jacket, he pulled out the book he had taken from the human village during the very first battle he’d been at, and held it out to her. “We didn’t know anything about the past until I found this book. It explained it all.”

  Her eyes widened. She reached out her hands and Jasyn gave it to her. She flicked through the pages, staring at them as though she’d never seen them before.

  The tall mage spoke. “Well, after deliberation, we’ve decided that we will attempt to remove the curse under one condition.”

  Jasyn turned to him. “What’s that?”

  “That you give us your gem.”

  Of course. He should have seen that coming. Jasyn looked at Kriss. She stared back, her face impassive. Then she gave an almost imperceptible shrug. She was letting him choose.

  He looked back at the humans, studying each one of them. The two twins stood in the middle, their brown hair in identical braids. The one who held the book was watching him, her face grave and serious. Her sister looked apprehensive. The male next to her rested a hand on her shoulder. He seemed the least invested in the decision. He looked like he was merely waiting for an answer, not caring what it was.

  They seemed so harmless, yet he knew that wasn’t the case. “Why should we trust you? How do we know you won’t kill us once you have the power?”

  The four exchanged glances again. “We don’t want to fight anymore. Underneath it all, we’re all the same. No one else needs to die.” The tall mage’s expression was smooth and honest.

  Jasyn had taken a big chance coming here in the first place. He’d already put all the trolls’ lives at risk. If he backed out now, they’d never know if it was possible to undo the curse. They might never have the chance to live over the ridge in peace.