“ ‘What is it, dearest?’ I asked her. ‘What has upset you so?’ And when I finally got her calm enough to where she could answer, do you know what she said?”
Willow clenched her teeth and balled her fists. “This is your last warning, Mother. Shut up.”
“Oh hush,” Tee-Ri said to her. “Do you know what she said, Tamlevar, this brave warrior of great renown?”
Tamlevar seemed caught between Willow and her mother, not wanting to offend either. He shrugged in an as neutral manner as possible.
“She said that there had been a mouse.” Tee-Ri chuckled. “That’s right, a mouse. She was hysterical, the poor child, scrunched up on her bed in the corner of the room, and she pointed at the base of the wardrobe, where she said the mouse had run.
“There was no consoling her until we had found the mouse, so I had the guards move the wardrobe, and sure enough, a tiny baby mouse scampered out. It couldn’t have been longer than my index finger. The guards chased it around the room until one of them finally caught it. He was about to crush the little thing when Waeh-Loh began to wail again. So rather than squishing it, the guardsman tossed the mouse out the window.
“Oh, but then Waeh-Loh began to scream and scream like you couldn’t imagine. The poor mouse, she cried. The poor mouse! That’s right, the same poor mouse that had so terrified the little girl, now she was heart-broken that it had been tossed to its death on the courtyard below. She made the guards go down and find the wretched little thing and when they retrieved it, they had to bury it while we all got drenched in a pathetic memorial service. And oh, how she wept, this brave little warrior you say will protect us.”
Tee-Ri’s eyes met Willow’s, and she challenged her daughter with a smug little smile. Willow’s hand was clutching the hilt of her rapier, and her jaws were clenched.
“So anyway,” Tee-Ri said, “you were saying something about Waeh-Loh protecting us?”
“It’s Willow,” Willow said. “And if you can shut your mouth for just a few moments, I will protect your sorry carcass.”
“Such a brave warrior! Truly your father’s daughter. Every bit the failure.”
She had gone too far. Willow started towards her, but Tamlevar interposed himself, placing a hand on her shoulder. She looked at it like bird excrement.
“Get your hand off me, Tamlevar.” Her voice was almost a growl.
“Her father was responsible for the fall of Ignis Fatuus, you know,” Tee-Ri said sweetly.
“You lie!”
Willow tried to draw her rapier, but Tamlevar struggled to restrain her arm.
“You’re not helping, Your Majesty,” he said over his shoulder.
“Get off of me!” Willow shouted. “Get out of my way!”
“You forget, I was there, Waeh-Loh, dear. I saw him cowering in fear as the Kards overran the island.”
“Your Majesty, please!” Tamlevar struggled to hold Willow back. She was losing whatever tenuous hold remained on her temper. Even Snyde was running to join the fray.
Willow’s fury was boiling over. Tamlevar wrapped his arms around hers and clasped his hands together behind her back. She writhed in his grip, trying to get her arms free.
“Calm down,” he said. “You’re losing it!”
“GET OFF OF ME!”
“Willow,” Snyde was saying. “Get a hold of yourself. Don’t let her manipulate you like this.”
“Help me, Captain,” Tamlevar said. “I can’t hold her much longer.”
“You can tantrum all you like, dear,” Tee-Ri said, appearing to enjoy the attention. “It doesn’t change the fact that your dear father failed us all.” Her smile was sugary and venomous at the same time. “Does it, Baera-ni?”
“Don’t you call me that!” Willow shrieked. “I’ll kill you, you lying bitch!”
She slammed her forehead into Tamlevar’s nose, and she felt it crunch. Blood poured down his face and he clutched at his nose. Willow’s rapier cleared its sheath.
“Help me!” Tee-Ri cried.
Snyde grasped Willow’s wrists, one in each hand. She drove her knee into his groin and he crumpled. She stepped past him.
“Stop her,” Snyde gasped to his men. They hesitated a moment and then mobbed her. She readied her rapier to attack, but Tamlevar tackled her to the ground.
Willow screamed in frustration and rage. The Bryanaen soldiers piled onto her, too, restraining her wrists and holding down her legs while Tamlevar pinned her torso to the ground, blood dripping onto her from his nose. Her head whipped back and forth. “Get off of me! Get off of me! Let me go! She deserves it! She’s had it coming for a long time!”
“Willow!” Tamlevar shouted in ear, trying to retain his mount on her bucking torso. “Willow! Remember your discipline. Discipline, Willow. Do you remember that? Discipline!”
She thrashed until the vestiges of her strength were spent, and then she relented. She lay there, exhausted and pinned to the ground by her own soldiers. She could struggle no more. Tears streamed from her eyes.
“Such a great warrior,” Tee-Ri said, sarcasm heavy in her voice.
Chapter 43
Nobody would look her in the eye. One at a time, the soldiers pinning her to the ground relinquished their holds and eased away until there was only Tamlevar’s weight pressed across her.
“I’m going to get off now,” he said. He held one hand pressed to his broken nose and it made him sound like he had a head cold. “You can have your rapier back once you’ve shown me that you can control yourself.”
Willow sniffed and bit her lip. Had it come to this? Tamlevar was treating her like a misbehaving child. Oh, how far she had fallen! And while that bitch had provoked her, Willow knew that she really only had herself to blame.
She wanted to wipe the tears from her face, and the shame along with them, but could not as long as her arms remained pinned. Tamlevar’s weight was crushing, and she could barely breathe beneath the oppressive mass of his body. She nodded.
“Ok,” he said. “I’m getting off now.” He moved off her and air flooded back into her lungs. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, savoring the simple pleasure that the cessation of pain brought.
She climbed to her feet, her limbs feeling foreign to her. She was aware that she was the focus of everyone’s attention, yet nobody looked at her, not even Tamlevar. His attention had turned to Willow’s mother.
“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” he asked.
Tee-Ri wrapped her arms around him. “I’m just thankful you were here to protect me. She would have killed me if you hadn’t intervened.”
Willow sighed. The breath came from far deeper within her than just her lungs; it was the exhalation of her soul. She had lost. Her mother had vanquished her, humiliating and destroying her utterly. There was no point to furthering this conflict. It was over.
“I’m going away,” she said, and the words seemed unnecessarily loud in the unnatural silence.
She hesitated a moment, but nobody said don’t go. Nobody said they needed her. Nobody said anything.
Tell me not to go, Tamlevar, she thought. You had faith in me all this while. Have you none left for me now?
Apparently not. The night air was still.
She brushed a tear from the corner of her eye, and then headed up the embankment and out of the canyon.
* * *
She scrambled down the embankment on the other side of the canyon wall, passing the bodies of the assassinated leaders. Her first and last victory as the leader of the elven freedom force.
The diversion had worked perfectly. While she had been distracting the Kard warriors, the leaders had stayed in back, contemptuous of the lowbrow entertainment for their troops. It was a tidbit of Kardic culture that Willow had not so much remembered as she had intuited from buried memories.
If only she could recall all that she once knew. The information would undoubtedly be useful. Yet even as she considered this, she realized that she preferred not to remember; that she preferred tha
t whatever had happened to her in the past would remain hidden. Alas, her past and present seemed to be on a collision course, and her mother had been doing everything she could to make the experience as unpleasant as possible.
One of the dead Kardic leaders caught her eye. The pale white of his dead flesh contrasted against the flimsy dark silk he wore. There was something vaguely familiar about the man, as though he resembled someone whom once she knew. Lightning flashes of memory left after-images upon her retina of a past best-forgotten.
She shook her head violently as though to fling the hated memories from her brain. There were some things she would not, could not think of. She averted her eyes.
She scrambled up the next hill, attempting to leave her past behind. At last, she could rest. And she was so very tired. She felt as though she had been running her entire life, either chasing some unreachable goal, or more often, fleeing some inescapable pursuer. She didn’t know how much longer she could run.
“Willow.”
She spun, drawing her rapier.
Snyde was following her down the hillside. A torch burned in one hand, and his other hand gripped the hilt of his sheathed blade. His eyes flickered red and orange in the torchlight.
Willow tried to think of something to say, caught halfway between tears and a smile, her precious discipline smashed to pieces.
“Are you all right?” he asked when he reached her.
She smiled, shaking her head.
“Willow, are you all right?”
She continued shaking her head. “No,” she said in a sing-song voice. “No, no, I’m far from all right.”
Snyde’s face was a portrait in compassion. He reached out to her.
Willow pushed at him. “Don’t you dare!”
Snyde grabbed her shoulder, held on.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s all right. You’re all right. I’m here.”
She slapped him.
“Nicely done,” he said, rubbing his cheek. His eyes gleamed like a wolf’s.
She slapped him again, but this time he slapped her back.
She raised her hand for a third time, but he caught it. She brought up her other hand, but he caught that, too. He spun her into him, theirs arms crossed in front of her chest.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. Tears leaked from her eyes. She didn’t have the energy to struggle.
“It’s all right, Willow,” he said. He let go of one of her arms and began unbuttoning her blouse.
“No,” she said again, but did nothing to stop him.
“Yes.” He unfastened another button. “It’s all right.”
She reached to stop him, but changed her mind and covered his hand with hers.
“Yes,” she said, her voice filled not with desire but with resignation. She had messed up everything else in her life. Why not make love one last time?
“It’s all right,” Snyde said. “Everything’s all right.”
Chapter 44
Willow lay on her back looking at the gradually fading stars. Dawn was approaching and she had not slept, nor had she thought a single thought. She had existed during the night, and nothing more.
Next to her, Snyde lay sleeping, his face angelic in repose. He snored softly; a kind of gentle pig-like grunting that others might have found endearing. She merely noted it.
What was left of this strange, lonely creature named Willow? Who was she, and what had she become? She was adrift in her own life, with nothing to which she could moor herself.
She had been the famous elven Captain of the Guard in Bryanae. No more. If she ever set foot again in Bryanae, her life would be forfeit.
She had sworn loyalty to the royal family of Bryanae. Now the Prince had been kidnapped right in front of her, the Queen despised her, and the King …
She closed her eyes and concentrated a moment.
… the King was somewhere far away to the northeast. She was the only living soul who knew where he was, and she had done nothing to bring him back to Bryanae. Another failure.
Next was Tamlevar. She had promised Elidon she would protect him and keep him from harm, and now he was lost in a foreign land surrounded by enemies.
Her precious discipline was gone, shattered. She didn’t know even where to begin putting that wall back together again. The last vestiges of it had been swept aside like crumbs when Tee-Ri had soiled the memory of her father.
Willow tried to summon an image of her father, but was unable to do so. Was he fading from her memory? Would there be nothing at all left of him?
A distant sound caught her attention. She lay there, willing her ears to hear the sound again. Nothing … nothing … and then there it was again! The sound of a boot scuffing on dirt.
Willow sat up in the dim light of dawn and hunted for her clothing.
“Whasamatter, Your Majesty?” Snyde said, barely conscious.
“Shhh,” she whispered, and gently placed her hand over his mouth.
Snyde came fully awake in an instant. He questioned her with his eyes.
“Company,” she whispered into his ear, and then removed her hand from his mouth. She found her weapons, but did not put her sheathed rapier in her belt.
He listened for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Wait.”
As if in answer, there was another scuffing sound. There was either one very clumsy individual, or a handful of stealthy ones. Willow had no reason to expect the former.
Snyde’s eyes widened and he nodded. He fished into the pile of his clothes and withdrew his monocle. Idiotic but Willow had no time to criticize his fashion sense. She rolled onto her knees as quietly as she could and then eased herself into a crouch.
Meanwhile, Snyde had put on his monocle and was gazing off into the direction from which the noises had come. He shook his head. “I can’t see anything.”
She didn’t reply. She began to move towards the sound, remaining as low as she could. Snyde grabbed his rapier and began to dress.
She reached the top of the hill and peered down it towards the canyon off in the distance. Tamlevar was still there with that bitch, Tee-Ri, as well as with the handful of elves and men. If there was a threat, they needed to be made aware of it.
A movement caught her eye. She hunted for the source, but couldn’t see it. Then another movement, in a different area of the plain. This time, her eyes tracked it.
A hooded figure moved stealthily across the plains towards the canyon. His body was camouflaged by its dusty-brown cloak.
Now that she knew what to look for, she scanned the area again. She spotted another one. And then another. And then two more over there. And another two over in that direction, too.
Snyde eased up beside her. “What do you see?” he whispered into her ear.
“Assassins. At least six of them. Moving towards the canyon.”
Snyde peered at the plain through his monocle but seemed unable to locate them.
Willow sighed, palmed the monocle from his eye, and placed it in his hand. She pointed to each assassin in turn.
Now Snyde saw them. Then he pointed. “There’s another one over there.”
Bringing the total to seven.
“What are we going to do?” he said.
She eased down the hill and then tugged on his leg. He slid down beside her along the stony incline.
“There’s only a handful or so,” she said, keeping her voice low. “We can take them.”
Chapter 45
It was sheer peevishness that motivated her. All she had to do was shout loudly enough to be heard by Tamlevar and the soldiers in canyon, and the danger posed by the assassins would be eliminated. But these damn barbarians had ruined her life and she felt like returning the favor.
“Is this long enough?” Snyde asked once he had unrolled the coil of rope from his pack. It was about six feet, which was shorter than she would have liked, but it would suffice.
She nodded. “It’ll do. Now,” she said, pointin
g at a tree a dozen yards or so away, “get me that limb there.”
Snyde bowed with a flourish. “Anything else?” he said, his voice laden with sarcasm.
“Yes. Drop the attitude and pick up the pace. We only have a few minutes.”
“Are you going to tell me what you’re making?”
“Better than that,” she said, removing her leather jacket. “I’ll show you.”
It had been a while since she had made one of these and in a perverse way, she was looking forward to it.
* * *
Some eighty years ago, she had been sent to assist a Kyrnish outpost in its defense against some marauders. The outpost was little more than a keep with a surrounding village. The marauders were a nomadic tribe of C’hi-Wa that had been working its way north along the coast.
Willow had organized a defense primarily involving archers and crossbowmen from the keep battlements. It was her intention to slay these brigands before they could approach the tower.
It surprised her, therefore, when a deadly rain of stones fell upon them long before the archers were able to fell a single opponent. The enemy had a unique weapon, one that in later years, Willow had successfully replicated numerous times.
* * *
“What in the Icy Inferno is that supposed to be?” Snyde said.
Willow was finishing securing the rope to the top of the staff.
“The C’hi-Wa call it a ba,” she said.
The ba consisted of a long staff, two lengths of rope, and a leather pocket. Willow tied one end of the first bit of rope to the end of the tree limb that Snyde had retrieved. She tied the other end to the leather diamond she had cut from her jacket. Then she secured one end of the second length of rope to that diamond.
It worked like a fisherman casting a line. You fitted a stone into the pocket formed by the diamond. You gripped the staff with one hand, and held the free end of the rope against it with the other.
Then you swung the staff, which hurled the pouch with the stone up in a wide arc. When the pouch reached its apex, you yanked the rope. The pouch opened and loosed the stone with tremendous force.
The range of this weapon was dramatically greater than that of a longbow or of a crossbow. It had taken her by surprise that first time, and she had learned from the experience.
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