Then, from nowhere, disaster.
An elf, already cut to the quick by Anakerie, deliberately impaled himself on Elora’s shorter blade. His hands closed about her, one on an arm, the other to her crotch, and with a tremendous heave he threw her to the lawn. Too late, Anakerie brought her own blade across his body in a blow of equal power that separated head and one shoulder from the rest of him.
Elora landed badly but forced herself to her hands and knees, taking a quick bearing so she’d know the best way to scuttle, first thoughts not for herself but for Rool. She called aloud with mindspeech and felt her heart contract when he didn’t reply.
She heard an outcry from the veranda, saw Anakerie’s charge to her side blocked by a mounted elf whose animal quickly gutted one of the Maizan with its foreclaws. She heard the approach of other horses but had hardly begun to move before she felt something light as gossamer fall across her lower legs. An instant later a scream of real pain was torn from her as those nigh-weightless strands cinched themselves so tight she thought her bones would splinter.
She tried to move but the best that could be managed was to flop about like a landed fish as she caught sight of bands of glittering energy burning on the surface of her flesh.
“I have the Danan,” she heard, and saw an elf dismount.
“Kill the bitch,” shrieked another, still on horseback.
“That is not the plan, nor was it the task set before us.”
“A pox on both. We’ve lost too many this hunt, she’s not worth the price!”
“And what is a Wild Hunt, my friend, if the quarry proves us easy prey? You are more than wrong, her courage this night is proof of that. The Danan is beyond all price. And soon she will be ours.”
From a pouch, the elf withdrew a ring big enough to fit Elora’s neck as a collar. It was gold, four fingers broad by half a finger width deep, etched with runes and sigils that flashed a sickly lime fire from some impossible depth and made her nauseous as she tried to gain a proper sense of them.
It broke in half in his grip, like any ordinary piece of jewelry, but to Elora it registered like some dreadful predator baring its fangs before its prey. She struggled against the bonds that held her, cast about frantically for something to use as a weapon. She caught sight of Rool, sprawled unmoving on a shattered flagstone, and as quickly looked away for fear her eyes would lead the elves to him while he was helpless. The elf thrust the collar forward to ring her neck with it, and looked down on her pityingly as she blocked him with her hands. She didn’t try to hold him by the arms, but instead put both hands against the collar itself, trying with all her might to push both it and elf away.
The stalemate didn’t last.
To her horror, Elora felt the metal beneath her fingers soften. It was too close for her to see, but desperation cast forth her InSight, giving her a fragmented, kaleidoscopic vision of the scene through the eyes of both her attackers. The collar began to flow like putty, sending forth questing tendrils—all suffused with that sickly radiance—around her gloved hands, through the spaces between her fingers, to reach almost languidly toward the exposed column of her throat. Without any knowledge why, the certainty came to Elora that the moment one of those strands touched her, encircled her, her fate was sealed.
A brace of brownie arrows bludgeoned the elf on horseback with the force of a battery of thunderstones, his lacquer breastplate shattering from the irresistible blows, as did the heart and bones beneath.
At the same time Elora heard a bellow of raw rage together with the whistle of something solid through the air, saw from the topmost tilt of her eyes the looming shape of Thorn Drumheller as he swung his quarterstaff like a bat with all the strength in his compact Nelwyn form. The elf’s skull broke from that monstrous impact as readily as his companion’s armor, and then another figure crossed Elora’s vision as Khory’s blade passed before her in a blur of motion to sever the dead man’s hands from his falling corpse. With a cry of her own, Elora pitched the collar as far from her as possible.
“It’s all right,” Thorn told her as she scrabbled for purchase on the slick and trampled grass. “It’s all right,” he repeated over and over, gentling her as he would any panicked child, as he had his own when they were frightened.
Yelling for Khory’s assistance, for once making no mention of her antecedents, Franjean made his way down Thorn’s sleeve until he could leap to the nearest level of steps and race to his comrade’s side.
“The elves?” Elora asked, the best she could manage a raw and husky whisper.
“They’re done,” Anakerie replied, where she stood alone.
They were all of them a sight, scored with blood, and some of that their own. Their clothes were a ruin, stained with sweat and filth and torn in the bargain. About them all was the stench of death, an awareness of the lives they’d taken, but more of the fact of their own survival. None could quite believe it.
“What,” Elora tried again, “happened here?”
“What better way to win a war,” Thorn noted idly, as if they were having a discussion over dinner at Black-Eyed Susan’s, “than to strike off your enemy’s head and possibly claim their greatest talisman, their true hope, for your own?”
“Murder me, you mean?” Anakerie asked him, taking a moment to see for herself that he was whole and relatively unharmed. Their glance lingered only moments on one another, and the touch of his fingers to hers as she passed was even briefer, but both spoke volumes.
“You, and the Chancellor, the Factor, as many of the notables as could be put to the sword. It worked at Angwyn for the Deceiver, why not here as well?”
“There are those who learn from history,” she said in grim appreciation of the stratagem, “solely in order to repeat it.”
With a terrific wrench of the legs, baring her teeth in a howl to match, before any of the others could make a further move to help, Elora broke the bonds that held her. The effort left her panting, in a spasm of shuddering sobs that she buried along with her face in the folds of Thorn’s robe.
“That was a tanglefoot web,” Renny noted to no one in particular. “Those can’t be broken.”
“It’s magic,” Khory told him. “Can’t hold her.”
Renny held up the collar they’d tried to affix about Elora’s neck. “This is magic, too. It’s a Slave Ring. It binds the wearer, body and soul. They’re said to be worth a King’s ransom.”
“Keep it away from me,” Elora cried out, as did Thorn, with a different pronoun.
“If this has been keyed to you, Elora,” the constable said, “it’s a danger for as long as you live. Unless you find the Mage who made it and have him release the binding spell.”
“Destroy it, then.” She hunkered herself closer to Thorn, gathering her sore legs snug beneath her for their protection.
“To be honest, I don’t know if that’s possible.”
“What’s the danger, if she’s immune?” Anakerie asked.
“This is old, milady,” Renny told her, and the others as well. “None can relate its origins, all that is known is how to bring it into being—by means so foul I will not relate them—and then make use of it. You saw how she fought, her soul knew full well what it faced here. She’d have accepted death before this collar. The Slave Ring is an abomination, as is the fiend who commissioned it. Neither is to be trifled with.”
Elora turned tear-streaked cheeks to Thorn. “The wheels have no hub to anchor them.”
He nodded. “And so begin to spin ever more fiercely out of control.”
“And that’s your role, little Sacred Princess,” Anakerie mocked from up by Ryn as she tended as best she could to his wounds and tried to make him more comfortable, “to hold things all together?”
“There’s a pattern to all things, damn it,” Elora flared, Anakerie’s gibe bringing her to her feet. “A structure.”
�
��An order, I know. You talk like Mohdri, and make about as much sense. Listen to him long enough, you find yourself wanting to believe he really does mean best. A little present pain, to balance against a future of prosperity.”
“Except he’s wrong.”
“And you’re right?”
“The circles interlink because the world is one. Actions and reactions, each affect the other throughout the whole. The air turns cold and Daikini suffer. But so does Lesser Faery, and who knows, perhaps the dragons do as well. In every tale, every history, they’re spoken of as the source of genius, of inspiration. Theirs is the Realm we visit in our dreams. But if there are none of us to dream, what becomes of them? If there are no dragons to inspire our dreams, what ultimately of us?
“The Wall exists, that’s a plain fact, and the Daikini of Sandeni had learned to live with it. As the Cascani have learned to live with the Wyrrn. As an elf and a Daikini did so Renny could be born. It’s not so hard.” She looked across the garden, eyes brightening with tears she would not shed at the sight of so much carnage before they finally came to rest on the collar in Renny’s hand. “If you give yourself a chance.”
She blinked her eyes clear and fixed them back on Anakerie. In three quick steps, she stood before the Warlord and all took note that when she scooped up her long sword and held it at the ready, Anakerie made no move to stop her. It was strange then, to think that their aspects had suddenly reversed, the Warlord, who was twice Elora’s age, becoming more the child.
“What’s happening?” Elora asked in a quiet, measured tone that Anakerie knew well, having used it often herself. It had nothing to do with being royal, but everything to do with leadership. “What have you done?”
“What I’m supposed to,” Anakerie replied with a wan smile. “Find a way to win. That’s why I have spies. So I would know the Chancellor’s ‘surprise’—that little demonstration on the lakeshore and the cliff—almost as soon as the idea was presented to him.”
She didn’t move, as though she herself had suddenly become enmeshed in a tanglefoot web, and while she spoke in a military monotone, her eyes grew ever more haunted with the realization that she had committed an offense that was unforgivable.
“With so many people on the Wall, and every eye on us out here, who’s to notice what’s going on behind their backs?”
“You’re talking of the populace, not the military,” scoffed Renny. “You can distract them as much as you like, the army will still be prepared.”
“We have our own sources, Anakerie,” Thorn agreed. “We’d know of any mass troop movements.”
“Who said anything about ‘mass,’ peck?” The word was normally an insult, one that Thorn did not tolerate. From her lips, it was an endearment and an old joke between them. “And who says this has anything to do with Sandeni?” That was to Renny. “Elora understands better than I, I wish I’d realized that sooner. Sandeni is a battle, Mohdri wants to win the war.”
“How?” Elora demanded of her.
“He’s been drawing all the magic of the world into himself. If he becomes preeminent, if all power derives from him, then so will absolute control. He can define the relationships between the Realms, establish a peace, and then enforce it. The best way to do that, he believes…”
“No,” Elora breathed, thunderstruck, as comprehension came to her.
“…is by claiming the power of the dragons. At the very least, there won’t be a sorcerer in any of the Realms—maybe the lot of them combined—who can actively defy him.”
“What’s that to do with Sandeni?” Renny asked.
“There’s a World Gate,” Elora said. “More ancient than the city, some believe one of the most ancient in the world, a portal to the Realm of the Malevoiy. The lords of ancient Faery who do not come to earth, as we Daikini who are wholly of the earth do not go to Faery. Who have to be the gatekeepers to the Circle of the Spirit. Where is it?” The question came in a rush of words as she grasped Anakerie by the shoulders. “Where’s the damned Gate? Tell me!”
“I don’t know! Truth, I didn’t want to know. I want the war to end, I want no more blood and no more suffering, on either side of the Veil.” She broke Elora’s hold on her to sweep her arm around, encompassing the battle site. “Mohdri is a horror, something twisted and unnamable, for all his shadow plays at benevolence. He may mean well, I believe he’s forgotten how. There’s an anguish in him that undercuts his every goal.” She looked suddenly from Elora to Thorn, then down at Ryn. “He has no faith, in himself least of all. But for all of that, the Elora Danan I thought I knew was no match for him, even with Thorn Drumheller by her side.
“I was raised to wear a crown,” she said at last, proudly for all her sorrow. “I have a people to care for. I don’t have the luxury of fighting a lost cause. Except that may be precisely what I’ve done.
“I’m sorry,” she said, meeting Elora’s eyes. “I should have had faith.”
“I had none,” Elora said as gently in return. “But I learned.”
She faced the others. “Whatever madness Mohdri has planned, we have to stop it.”
“The problem is,” Renny commented, “the Castellan’s forces know where they’re going.”
“They may not be the only ones, but we have to get up to the tableland.”
“The cable car—!”
“Too slow! Horses,” Elora cried, “where are horses, we need horses!”
“Our mounts are in the stable,” Anakerie said. “Take them.”
“And what of you?” Thorn asked, taking her hand in both of his. She was sitting on the topmost step, Ryn’s shaggy head resting on a pillow improvised from the cloak of one of her slain escort. She’d bundled the Wyr snugly in her own.
“I’m not a free agent.”
“Nor is this a hopeless cause.”
She smiled. “Oddly enough, I wasn’t speaking of the responsibilities of state. I mean those of blood.”
Ryn tightened his grip on her other hand, though a baby’s would have been stronger.
“Keri,” he husked, his voice a ghost of itself, as he very nearly was, “don’t do this!”
“Hush,” she told him, flashing her eyes back and forth between him and Thorn. “And don’t call me that, only the one I love can call me that.”
“Dissembler,” Thorn said. “As I recall, only your brother could.”
“Mixed blood,” Ryn said weakly, “don’t only live in Sandeni. Shamans among the Wyrrn read prophecy as well as anyone; they knew the coming of Elora Danan would herald a time of change, and great danger. They had an indication of the role Angwyn was to play in those events. Our mother was Wyr, and though she loved our father from the moment she first saw him, she believed it a hopeless love because of the difference between the two races. A shaper spell was used to cast her in the semblance of a Daikini, and she set forth to win the heart of Angwyn’s king. He never knew that his firstborn was pledged to the service of the Wyrrn. Should prophecy come to pass, one twin would remain on land, while the other would be spirited away to sea, in hopes that whatever fate the Cataclysm presaged, one of them might survive to unite and lead both kingdoms.”
“You never knew?” Thorn asked of Anakerie.
She shook her head. “When the Black Rose captured him and enchained his soul, that was my revelation. Wounds to the flesh we don’t share, but our spirits…
“I have to take him home, Thorn. I have to find our home. Then I’ll see about our destiny.”
“We’re all of us lost souls in that regard, Anakerie. Cut loose from all we’ve known, the better to build anew.”
“You’d better go.”
“I’ll find you again, Keri.”
“In better days, I pray.”
They said no farewells, save for a kiss that started small and quickly blazed with a passion fierce as any signal bonfire.
Already mounted, Elora met Thorn at the front, and reached down to take him by the arms and set him on the saddle before her.
“Hold on,” she warned as she kicked the animal into motion, “this won’t be a fun ride.”
Seven of them departed Cascani House at a gallop on a quartet of horses—Thorn and the brownies riding with Elora, while Khory Bannefin, Duguay, and Renny Garedo rode alone—past a host of folk rushing in the other direction to offer what belated assistance they could to those within the grounds. More than once they were challenged as they made their way as best they could out of Kinshire, but Renny’s badge of office cleared the road. Elora wasn’t surprised to find Duguay waiting, utterly unscathed. She would have sent the others to find him if he hadn’t been there.
The road was clear and straight along the shoreline, and these were horses bred to eat the miles. They quickly settled into a steady lope that wasn’t as fast as an outright gallop but which could be maintained for hours, and raced through the chill night toward the Wall.
“I need your help, Thorn.”
“Asked and done, child.”
“The horse is yours, I need to cut loose.”
He understood her shorthand, and as she cast her InSight up and over the crest of the plateau, he applied his own to the thought processes of their mount, offering reassurance more than guidance as they sped along their way.
Elora shot faster than any arrow, closing her mental eyes on horseback, opening them miles farther ahead to find herself staring at a paper-strewn tabletop, badly lit by a scattering of candles amongst the detritus of too many meals taken at the work space.
The professor had dozed off. Having no time to wake him and explain, she quietly usurped control of his body, first by puffing out every light so he wouldn’t inadvertently set the library afire, not to mention himself. One flame had been a little too close to a sleeve for comfort. Darkness was no impediment for her, MageSight worked quite effectively even through another’s eyes.
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