“Colonel says no crops go downstream this harvest,” the other officer told him. “Everything consumable is to be brought within the walls and stored for siege. We’re to make a residence plan as well.” He took a hefty swallow of his ale. “You’ve seen the crowd outside, Sam. If more come, can we accommodate them all?”
“For their sakes, we’ll have to.”
“First the Maizan, now this. What the hell is happening to the world?”
“Looks like war, lad.”
Elora blinked rapidly, shaken not so much by the news but by the resignation underlying it. Events to these men were out of their control, they could do no more than try to cope with the consequences. That same air of despondency flickered through the emotional atmosphere of the hall like a heat haze, carrying with it an unpleasant aftertaste of acid and grease that reminded her of the time she’d been caught downwind of one of the Nelwyn smelters. The effect could be endured, even though it made the lungs burn, but it was no place to linger because a lengthy exposure would kill.
She looked for Duguay, hoping to find him as the sole shining point of light amidst the gloom. Instead she found the lad who’d made a clumsy pass at her earlier.
“Uh,” he said, in the manner of boys, to break her reverie, and then as her eyes focused in on him, “hi.”
He was as stumble-tongued as the other maid had made him stumble-footed when she tripped him, bravado packed away now that he was out of eyeshot of his fellows. He had size on her in every dimension, and years, too, by the look of him, yet Elora had a strange intuition that he regarded her as the older and wiser of the pair.
“Hello,” she returned with polite reserve. She was leaning back against one of the pillars that supported the ceiling, both arms wrapped lightly around a large pitcher of beer she was holding close to her belly.
“I’m, uh, Luc-Jon.”
“Elora.”
He bobbed his head and flashed a lopsided grin. “I know. I asked. He’s pretty good,” and indicated Duguay with a jut of the chin. She said nothing, which made him react as if the ice beneath his emotional feet was beginning to crack. “You, too, I’ll bet.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind.”
Something wet and cool poked her in the side and the sad eyes of one of the household wolfhounds gazed beseechingly up at her. The dog stood as tall at the shoulder as her waist and easily doubled her weight. Big head, big body, with a keen intelligence that marked it much more as companion than pet. These were hunting animals, bred and trained originally to battle the terrible dire wolves of legend, who held such sway in these mountain forests that they were once revered as gods themselves and in turn gave rise to the earliest known tales of heroes. Those stories told of how the wolves had exchanged the true and vaguely human form they wore in their own accursed home for this most fearsome of predator shapes, and came to this world to hunt Daikini for sport.
Daikini being Daikini, so those age-old tales went, which is to say stubborn beyond all belief and even more cunning, they fought back. They adapted, by learning new ways to fight and finding allies to help them, forming a bond with these hounds that had lasted unbroken through the ages. Every other time, every other place, the depredations of the dire wolves lasted until they grew bored and departed of their own accord, satisfied that they had marked both land and people with blood and horror enough to scar them to the end of time. Against the Daikini, for the first time in their own history, they found themselves actively repulsed, leaving behind only tales and a name that was never spoken lightly, if at all, to this very day, because it still had the capacity to inspire dread in any who heard it.
This most ancient and feared race called themselves the Malevoiy.
Elora laid her hand on the wolfhound’s head, and the beast gave her palm a single lick with its broad, warm, altogether slobbery tongue.
“You’ve made a friend,” the young man said.
“You like puppies?”
The lad chuckled. “This’un ain’t been a puppy for years now, got pups an’ gran’pups of his own.”
“No fooling? I wouldn’t have guessed, to look at him. He seems as young as you.”
“You’re funnin’ me.”
“No, really.”
Elora set down her jug and folded herself at the hips and knees until she was sitting on her heels, still braced against the pillar, her head on the same level as the hound’s, who proceeded to give her a thorough sniffing. For a moment she felt a surge of panic at the thought the hound might move from sniffs to licks and thereby make a mess of her disguise, but a good look into the dog’s eyes instantly calmed those fears. He and his kind meant her no harm. Quite the opposite, in fact.
He knows who I am, she thought in amazement.
“Given his bloodline, Elora Danan, hardly a surprise.” Rool’s voice, mindspeaking inside her head, and Elora flushed hot to realize how carelessly she’d broadcast her thoughts to give him so strong an awareness of what she was seeing. “These wolfhounds,” the brownie continued, “have been bred to sense the difference between good and evil, light and shadow.”
“Rool, in his heart—!” She struggled a moment to put words to the absolute and unwavering faith she found there. “He’ll defend me to the death!”
“As would Drumheller,” the brownie replied, “as would Ryn, as would I.”
“Rool,” she said, unaware that she was speaking aloud, “I can hear it in your voice. What’s wrong?”
Sensing her sudden surge of distress, the hound whined and gave her a nudge with his muzzle.
“Anything the matter?” the lad asked, hunkering down himself and not convinced in the slightest by the emphatic shake of her head. “Thought I heard’ja say somethin’. Too blessed loud in here for anybody to make sense with less than a shout. Come on,” he told Elora in a take-charge tone he hoped would brook no back talk, “you’ve the look of someone needin’ fresh air.”
She acquiesced until she’d risen once more to her feet, then made her apologies.
“You’re right on both counts,” she told him, “the noise and the need for a break.”
“So stuff ’em,” she was told conspiratorially. “Stuff him, too, while yer at it. Everyone deserves a moment to play hooky, this’n’s yours.”
“Right now I can’t. I’m really sorry.” That was where she meant to end it but her body acted of its own accord, the line popping free before she even realized she was speaking. “Some other time, maybe?” She swallowed hard, not sure which of the possible answers was making her the more nervous.
“I’d like that,” he said. “Soon, yah?”
The grin she answered with popped every bubble in his head about her being older, for it was as youthful and conspiratorial as his own.
It stayed with her out onto the porch and beyond to the broad expanse of the parade ground. She cast about for some sign of the brownie, was about to call with mindspeech, when Bastian reached out to her instead. The eagle stood atop the apex of one of the blockhouse watchtowers, which gave him a commanding view of the entire yard. InSight did the same for Elora through his eyes, and since he already knew where to look, that single glance was all she needed to guide her to her friends.
Ryn had been locked inside a corner of the horse barn reserved for wild mounts who hadn’t yet been broken to the saddle. The timbers were as stout as any in the fort and Elora doubted even an ogre’s punch could easily break them. Moreover, massive ringbolts had been mounted on the walls and floor, the prisoner shackled so comprehensively he couldn’t do more than stir. The weight of the metal alone that bound him was probably greater than his own. There was no provision for hygiene either, beyond rushes strewn haphazardly over the floor, and Elora’s nose wrinkled in acknowledgment of the smell.
All this she saw through Rool’s eyes. There was a pair of guards at the entrance to the stable and all the windows had
been latched shut.
“Ryn,” she called softly with mindspeech.
There was no reply as a small form dropped lithely from a chink in one of the wall seams.
“It’s no use, Elora,” Rool said with a disconcerting edge of bleakness to his utterly professional tone and manner. “A wasted effort.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded in a whisper. “He hasn’t answered me,” she realized. “Surely he heard—!”
“No doubt.”
She fingered his long canvas duster, a fresh double line of parallel slashes that opened one whole side of it along Rool’s flank.
“I got too close,” he said in answer to her unspoken query. “I approached him like a friend. My mistake.”
“He attacked you?” She didn’t bother trying to hide her incredulity.
“He was hungry, I was meat. He was bound, I was free. Who knows? So used to seeing him play slybones all the while, you forget how fast Wyrrn can really move when there’s need. Happily”—a ghost of a smile that lacked the smallest scrap of humor—“brownies can move even faster.”
“I don’t believe this.”
He nodded. He’d expected this response.
“Ride with me back inside, then,” he said, meaning that she should use her InSight to bond her thoughts and spirit temporarily with his, a more complete merger than she normally utilized when she just wanted a peek through another’s senses. “But what you find won’t be pretty. Bastian,” he continued in the same matter-of-fact tone, trusting the eagle to hear him, “watch over her body while she’s spirit-strolling.”
“Always,” was the reply. “And I won’t be alone in that regard.”
Both girl and brownie looked over their shoulder as the wolfhound dropped heavily to his belly. His dark coat was ideal camouflage for the heavily shadowed alley, only the glint of his eyes gave him away.
“I must be getting old,” Rool muttered disgustedly, “to be so lackwit as not to notice something big as that sneaking up on me.”
“Maybe it’s because he meant us no harm?”
“Fine. What’s Faralorn’s excuse?”
“Duguay?”
“Back at that tower, Elora, I had spirit-scents from the goblin, the two elves, the ogres. I marked the carrion smell of all the leavings piled in the ground floor. Nothing more. Nothing since, where Duguay’s concerned.”
“You telling me he’s not real, Rool? I helped the man heal himself. Trust me, he’s as real as any of us.”
“Oh aye, girl, I can see him, hear him, touch him. On every tangible level, he exists. But go a step beyond and there’s nothing but fog. The only spirit-scent I read off him is a residue of yours, from that healing.”
“Are you saying he has some magic?”
“I don’t know what he’s got, or even what he is! I’ve never seen the like of him before.”
“Why haven’t you said any of this before now?”
“There’s a saying: Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. You weren’t about to abandon him, I wanted to learn what he had in mind.”
“He’s done nothing but help, Rool.”
“To serve whose purposes, Elora Danan?”
“I don’t care right now. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s Ryn who needs us.”
She was really angry, which wasn’t the ideal state of being in which to use her InSight in this manner. It made for a rough ride, and unfortunately the person she bonded with was the one who bore the brunt of the grief. In Rool’s case, the net result was a moderate to awful headache.
She pressed on regardless, reaching out to Ryn with her thoughts the moment the Wyr came into view. Her heart leaped to see him and the sight only made her rage all the more. He was manacled in a sitting position, on the floor, arms and legs outstretched, shackled seemingly at every major joint: wrists and ankles, elbows and knees, plus waist and throat. A spiked skullcage enclosed his entire head, locking his jaw closed tight on a thick gag.
“They haven’t seen to his wounds, Rool,” she said with mindspeech. “One’s close to festering.”
“I can smell the rot, Elora. Can you work from here? I’ll go no closer.”
“What happened before? How’d you get into trouble?”
The brownie sounded chagrined. The fault was his. “They didn’t bind his fingers.”
“His claws…” she began.
“Are very sharp,” he finished.
“I’ll fix the damage.”
“You can sew?”
“Heavens forfend, no! I’ll simply sing the appropriate song of shaping and remind the threads of how they used to lie together. The little darlings will do all the work for me.”
It was a splendid deadpan delivery and he fell for it like a brick.
“You can’t do that!” he accused after due consideration.
“Of course I’ll sew it,” she chortled, delighted to get a bit of her own back against the brownies. “I learned a lot of useful skills in Torquil’s household.”
“Proper marvel you are, that’s obvious.”
“Hey, what can I tell ya, being the Sacred Princess isn’t what it used to be.”
This was a tiny interlude of repartee but absolutely necessary for Elora. There was no way she should attempt a healing with her spirit wrapped tight in skeins of violent, negative energy. To reach out in anger might well make the wounds worse and, by example, flashfire the infection she had sensed into full-blown gangrene.
As with Duguay, the first requirement was to assume a measure of control over the active life processes, most notably pulse and respiration. The difficulty here was that she was manipulating two physical bodies while her spirit was apart from both of them. If something went wrong, the first set of reserves she’d have to draw on would not be her own but Rool’s, since she was sharing his body. Worse, since the energies she wielded were those of primal fire, any kind of uncontrolled surge would consume him utterly.
He knew that full well but didn’t raise the point. His trust was absolute, as was her determination never to betray it.
There was no resistance from Ryn to her incursion but she pulled back from him regardless, as if that merest touch was poison.
“What?” Rool asked her, sensing shock and distress and a horrified grief.
“It’s not Ryn,” she said, aghast.
“A changeling. Some double, you mean?”
“No, no, nothing like that. It is Ryn, yet it’s not. Rool, it’s a spell. He’s been cursed.”
“Ah. A very good one, it must be, for me not to notice.”
“I spotted it just as I began to merge with him, like a spiderweb beneath the skin. I’ll have to be really careful here, Rool, I can’t finish the healing all at once.”
“Should you try at all? You might be trapped yourself.”
“It doesn’t feel powerful enough to hold me, but damaging the pattern might have an effect on Ryn. There’s a total absence of spirit, or self. What’s held here is the shell of him, able only to function in its most bestial state. It has nothing to do with being a Wyr, I don’t believe even the most crazed of them would act so. His humanity’s been stolen, and replaced by this brute.”
“Very sly.”
“You talk like you admire what’s been done!”
“Abomination this may be, Elora, but an exercise in supreme cunning nonetheless. You have the essence of the man all for your own and at the same time prevent him from resisting you in any meaningful way. He can’t turn to friends for help, or explain what’s happened, and he’s so dangerous he has to be locked away lest he slaughter those who wish to save him. Should the body somehow escape, as Ryn obviously has, he won’t be that hard to find.”
“Rool”—her voice was rough with dismay as she fought back tears—“I don’t know from spells. I can, I can hel
p his body heal itself, but that spiderweb inside him, that was grafted on by someone else. It isn’t natural. I’d have a better shot manipulating the iron of those chains.”
“Help him as you can, Highness. Then let’s get out of here.”
She worked on only one wound, and that only to erase the infection. It was a long way from healed but it was all she wanted to try until she had a better idea of the limitations imposed on her by the spell that held Ryn.
The yard was silent as she slipped free of Rool’s body and returned to her own. Torches burned along the parapet and at intervals throughout the yard, but almost none of the windows visible were illuminated. The scene possessed the eldritch stillness of deep night.
“How late is it, I wonder?” she asked rhetorically as she took a wary look about.
“Late enough for all good souls to be in bed. We shouldn’t tarry.”
“You’re not going to.” The forcefulness in her tone made the brownie look sharply up at her.
“I’m of no use to Ryn,” she said, “neither are you. There’s only one person who can help him.”
“Out of the question.”
“Don’t be obstinate, Rool, you know I’m right.”
“Observation and conclusion, top-notch. Where this is leading, madness.”
“Someone has to tell Thorn.”
“Bastian can go, I’ll stay with you.”
“That won’t work. Because we were merged, you saw what I saw, Rool. Firsthand observations are critical, especially since you can explain it a whole lot better than Bastian can. You’re both of the Circle of the Flesh, that’s true, but Bastian’s wholly of the world; he’s bound to the Realm of the Daikini. Rool, you’re of the Veil, you have a comprehension of magic, an insight and understanding, that he doesn’t. No offense, Bastian,” she added hurriedly with a mindcall to the eagle, fearing she might have hurt his feelings with her blunt assessment.
“None taken. And she’s right.”
“I won’t leave you alone,” the brownie insisted stubbornly.
Shadow Dawn Page 21