by R. Cooper
“Delf?” Prityal shaped the name oddly. She lowered her head, and though Delf knew what that meant, she could not believe it, and did not parry as she should have. The fire iron deflected Prityal’s sword strike, but Delf could not move. Not quickly. Not when Prityal said, “You do not sound like Delflenor,” and pulled the dagger from her belt.
She struck like lightning.
The impact weakened Delf’s grip, her sword nearly falling to the floor. She raised the fire iron again and moved back without stopping to look at what damage had been done. Her sword arm was hot and harder to control.
When the shock of the fight cleared, Delf would hurt.
If she lived.
Prityal could not see or hear Delf as she was. She would kill Delf if Delf did not stop her, or find a way to end the magic, or leave.
Delf threw the iron forward and turned without looking to see if it connected, if Prityal blocked it as she should have. Then she ran for the entrance.
She jumped the steps to the ground below, landing hard, and scrambled up just to run again. She thought to warn the others, but they were not in danger. Rosset was after Delf’s life, or out to hurt Prityal, or both, for reasons Delf had no time to determine.
Her packs were in her room, along with the rest of her weapons, which she would not use. She might make it to Kee in time, make a run for it, but relentless, determined Prityal would give chase and Frire would overtake them.
Delf needed a shield, a proper one, and tore through the sparring ring to take one of the wooden practice shields from their array of equipment. Shouts from behind her meant one thing only, and she spun around with the shield raised and dropped her sword to hold the shield with both hands. Even with that, Prityal’s strike knocked her back several steps.
Prityal held her sword two-handed. She should have swung again. She should have feinted and slashed Delf beneath the inadequate shield. She could have taken the shield in one hand and swung with the other.
But she waited.
Delf watched her from over the top of her small defense. Her fingers were slippery, her arm numb. She assumed she was bleeding. But she kept her shield up and her stance ready.
People were still shouting. The noise was nothing. All Delf took notice of was her breath and Prityal’s. She had last heard it soft and slow as they had fallen asleep together. She still could not see Prityal’s eyes. That ostentatious, ridiculous helmet kept them from her.
“Prityal.” If everyone insisted Delf was stubborn, then she would be stubborn, and try again and again. “This is spellwork. You will win any contest between us in strength and skill. You are the greatest knight in a hundred years, and you will kill me. But I will not let him do this to you. Not if I can help it.”
Delf’s other arm was trembling but it would hold for a while longer.
“This is not a field of war.” She spoke as though persuading Prityal to sleep next to her in an abandoned field. “This is a practice yard full of innocents. I don’t care what spells he worked or which one of the Wise he thinks to offer you to. You will not hurt me. You’ll protect me. You’re sworn to.” Delf had to catch her breath again. “You’ll protect me. You said so.”
She didn’t know if her words were reaching Prityal, or if Prityal was too honorable to strike an opponent with no weapon except a shield. But though Prityal had not lowered her sword, she also had not moved forward.
“Where is Delflenor, Prityal of Ters?” Rosset’s question broke through their silence and the noise of the stunned crowd.
Delf jerked her head up at the words, the shape and the echo of them, then turned sharply to Prityal, who adjusted her grip on her sword.
“Prityal of Ters!” Delf called in a carrying voice, the very first lesson given to priests-in-training, the first bit of magic Delf had ever learned that had stuck.
Prityal seemed to still, to be listening, perhaps without breathing.
Delf summoned the voice again, although she was hoarse and the sound was rough. “I am Delf—Delflenor. Rosset has used magic to trick you. He is a magic-user in the service of Strife or Mischief, like in an old story.”
“I serve Ainle!” Rosset answered, as though Delf would take her attention from Prityal to address him.
Prityal shook her head, but even that reaction was enough to make Delf press again.
“He serves himself,” Delf told Prityal and anyone else there to hear it. “And treats you like a dagger, when you are not. You are so much more.”
“Are you a danger?” Prityal asked, tossing her head again. “You don’t hold a weapon. Even with your sword you would not… you would not fight me.”
“Never.” Delf’s blood began to fall to the ground, the sound like the start of rain. “I told you I would not.”
“Delflenor said that,” Prityal corrected, heat in her voice that nearly brought a smile to Delf’s lips.
“Ah,” Delf sighed instead, “you’re the only one who says my name that way.”
“You don’t sound like Delflenor but you speak like Delflenor.” Prityal took one hand from her sword. “I cannot see your face. Only a stranger’s. This is magic? How do I know that it is? And why has it not affected you?”
Delf forced herself to keep the shield up as she thought. “I don’t know how or why you can’t see me. But… I have hammermarks that you don’t, remember? For protection and clarity. A relic and tribute, I thought in my younger days. But those times are here again, it seems. He was right in that, if nothing else.”
Delf darted a look behind Prityal, ignoring the others until she found Rosset observing them from the base of the steps to the ruin. He was not moving quickly. Delf didn’t know what that meant, either. She focused on Prityal again. “I don’t know how it works. I’m sorry. I didn’t train as a priest for very long, and it was years ago. Have you had anything, or did he say anything that you remember? I’m sorry!” Fear put a tremor in her voice. “I was a failure and I don’t remember. That’s all I can think of, unless….”
She looked past the displeased line of Prityal’s mouth to the ugly helmet obscuring her face—obscuring her eyes. She didn’t recognize the designs on it. They might not mean anything. They might mean danger.
“You’re wearing his armor!” It burst from her. “No—you wore that before and it didn’t cause this. Perhaps the two together, his words and the armor… and the helmet.” Delf raised her head above the shield, letting Prityal read everything in her face. “Take off the helmet!”
Prityal shifted back.
“Please.” Delf pled with her eyes as well as her voice. “Please. I know you don’t like to remove your armor in front of others, and you can’t trust a stranger. But I need to you to remove your helmet. Please. I will… Remember when you said you could not expect me to remove my armor while you had yours?” She paused, hoping for an answer. She got none. Delf took a breath and kept going. “You will not strike at an opponent who is defenseless. And I won’t strike at you. By the Ladylord of Love I will not. I wouldn’t. I am your shield. Even when you do not need one, and it annoys you, I will be. So, please.”
Prityal tightened her grip on her sword hilt. It was an admission of fear that so many would never have noticed. “I can’t…”
Delf firmed her hold on her shield as much as she could, and prayed, and then let the shield fall. Some of the begleys gasped. Delf kept her eyes on Prityal,
“Just your helmet, please, my lady. Your friends told me to watch over you, remember? And even if they hadn’t, I would have done it. Trust me, lower-tier though I am.”
“You are not lower-tier!” Prityal argued hotly.
The relief at the sign of her temper nearly made Delf’s knees buckle. She laughed, a light and yet bitter sound, and Prityal tugged off the helmet to frown at her, then to blink and shake her head.
“Delflenor?” The helmet fell to the dirt. Prityal peered at Delf, then her sword, before staring at Delf for a longer time. “You’re bleeding.”
Delf
smiled for her unhappy scowl. “Yes, love, I am.” Her knees might buckle, after all. The wound was slightly more serious than she would have liked.
“You keep saying that!” Prityal exclaimed in irritation or exasperation, then sucked in a breath. “I did that to you!”
“It will be fine,” Delf assured her, too happy to have Prityal back to do more than put her hand over her upper arm and press down. She hissed and swayed on her feet but threw her hand out to stop Prityal from coming closer. “Rosset,” she warned.
Prityal turned and would have had her sword beneath Rosset’s chin if he’d been two steps closer.
He wasn’t armed except for the knife at his belt. That was likely all that spared him.
Prityal was quiet and furious. “You made me attack Delflenor.”
“If he has more skills with magic, your sword is not going to be much of a threat to him,” Delf commented, giving Prityal and the others another warning, though she had no way to save any of them. “Everyone stay back. Be prepared to run if need be. If his magic tricked Prityal, it can trick you.”
“Rosset the Magic-user,” Prityal the Just addressed Rosset with disdain, “frightening those who looked up to him.”
“Rosset the Betrayer,” Delf added, ignoring the growing wetness between her fingers. “How is that for a new epithet? Rosset, Who Turned One Knight of the Seat Against Another.”
Prityal’s voice shook. “I might have killed her.”
Rosset stood before them. If he felt shame for his actions, Delf could not see it. Yet his attitude was not hostile. He was wary of Prityal’s wrath, and rightly so, but glanced between the two of them almost anxiously.
“She could have stopped you,” Rosset answered Prityal, but looked to Delf. “She did, in fact.”
Prityal sneered at that, although she had not smoothed out her voice. “Your magic is not so powerful.”
Rosset lifted his eyebrows and held out his empty hands. “You’re right. Though I am more powerful than I ever imagined I would be back in the barracks, when I picked up silly tricks to pass the time.”
“This was no silly trick!” The tremor had returned to Prityal’s voice, and might have been mistaken for anger by those who had never seen her vulnerable. She was frightened. “Delflenor is hurt! I could have killed her, would have, but… she would not fight me.”
For a moment, Prityal turned to her and their eyes met. But Prityal would not take her attention from Rosset for longer than that.
Delf considered him, too, though the pain in her arm was growing stronger now that the immediate danger had passed, and the amount of bleeding was beginning to alarm her.
“Was this because she won’t be the chevetein?” Delf hit him with the accusation, unconcerned with whatever the begleys might think. They should know Rosset for the schemer he was, and learn not to trust him. “For that, you do this to her? Would you do the same to your begleys if they had also said no?”
Some of those begleys might have whispered amongst themselves, or stared in shock at their false, would be cheve, but Delf kept her eyes on Rosset and Prityal.
Rosset took a step forward and Prityal moved between him and Delf and kept her sword up.
“No.”
Greater people than Rosset had quailed before that tone. He stopped.
He looked at Prityal. “You can see the trouble as well as I. Delflenor stands unsteadily, bleeding and in pain, but her concerns are elsewhere.” He gestured empathically. “All of this was preventable! They held a practice shield of wood against the arm of the Tyrant-slayer! My magic should not have done anything but shown the truth! But they would not fight!”
“I am no match for her,” Delf insisted, distantly aware of the noise of protest from Prityal.
“Because you refuse to be!” Rosset leaned to the side to stare at Delf, his eyes narrowing. “Everything within your grasp, but not even for your own life will you consider it. You claim devotion, but you ignore when it is returned! Even now, you worry about the begleys, about her! What more will it take?”
Rosset pulled in a breath after the question. His eyes widened and he darted a look up to the sky, although Delf did not see anything there to draw his attention.
“Oh,” Rosset said, quietly, as if for once he had no thought for his audience. “Lord of Wisdom, I failed you. I was as distracted by the glow of the Just as anyone else and assumed that was all it was. I have never claimed those depths, so of course, I could not see it. But the sign has been there all along. The only thing that will convince them to act. I am the same fool. I deserve the fate coming to me.”
He turned just enough to face some of the begleys that must have been watching from a safe distance. He raised his voice. “I am Rosset, Who Found Them.”
Always, he thought of glory for himself.
“You have not found anyone,” Delf reminded him with a small amount of pleasure. “Prityal will bring the chevetein to the Seat.”
Prityal twisted around to stare at her, her expression grave and unhappy. Delf stared back, confused, and opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but with a speed that should have been beyond him, Rosset drew the knife from his belt and lunged forward.
Delf reached out in warning and Prityal turned, but Rosset ducked to avoid her sword and stabbed the knife into the flesh behind her breastplate, beneath her arm.
There was a great deal of noise from the watching begleys, screams, Delf thought, though she hardly registered them. Rosset pulled back and stumbled, off-balance and weak, the knife still in his hand. Prityal responded without hesitation, despite her wound. She turned and swung, and swung again when training allowed Rosset to barely dodge the first.
He did not dodge the second.
His hand flew through the air, severed from his wrist, the knife leaving his useless fingers.
Rosset fell backward into the dirt. He was grasping his arm with his other hand. Red blood sprayed his face and neck. He did not make a sound.
He must have been a mighty knight, once.
Prityal stood over him, breathing hard. “I will see it to the end, not you.”
“Will you?” Rosset panted. “The sun will soon set. There is not much time. We are in need of a champion. That’s how it was once done. And it will not be any other way but rough, not with her. Not with them dragging their heels. You must get to the Seat. That is the only chance. If only they would—”
He broke off with a groan, squeezing his wrist tight and shutting his eyes.
Someone behind Delf swore. It was followed by a quiet gasp from someone else, and then another.
Prityal tipped her head back, looking away from Rosset, and Delf followed Prityal’s gaze, only to freeze as an illusion melted to nothing before her eyes.
The ruin Rosset loved was a ruin indeed. The thatch on the roof was poorly done, and protected only the front of the roof. One side of the building showed more walls for structures half-destroyed by time. The entrance was hastily repaired, with chunks of stone missing from the arch that Delf had not noticed before.
Shock moved through those around them, as if others saw this for the first time as well.
Prityal looked back down to Rosset and exclaimed in bewilderment. Delf looked but only saw Rosset, frailer now with pain or sorrow, an old figure worn to nearly nothing by time, or perhaps the energies required by his magic.
He had spelled the ruin to look grander than it was, and Delf’s hammermarks had not revealed the truth, or not all of it.
“He is old,” someone murmured in a flat, stunned voice.
Delf looked at Rosset again, but again only saw the same man she had met and spoken with.
“Ancient,” Prityal added, dismayed and probably lashing herself for striking someone elderly, even though he had attacked her. Her tone was almost weary. “You made a spell for that? Was your age a disgrace to you?”
Delf frowned, and swayed a little on her feet, and glanced around at the people now regarding Rosset with shock.
; “Did he trick everyone?” she wondered, though she did not think she was heard. Her hammermarks had spared her some of the effects of Rosset’s illusions. Although her marks must not have been as powerful as she had thought because she had still not seen the ruin as it was. She would have to correct that, someday. “No wonder Tili was less than impressed. He would have remembered the ruin as he had originally seen it.” The others around them all seemed to be speechless, watching Rosset bleed and unable to act, all of them like knights in combat for the first time, too afraid to move. “This was magic,” Delf used her priest’s lesson once more, and spoke in a carrying voice to draw their attention. “It is no longer just a story, or for priests. He used magic on us, all to make his name a little grander.”
Rosset kept his eyes shut. If he had more spells to work, he was too weak to manage it. Delf nonetheless did not approach him.
She thought she might have to warn Prityal of further magic interference, but Prityal stepped away from him and cleaned her sword on her surcoat before sheathing it, more concerned for the metal than the fabric. Delf did not mind, though her surcoat would be stained forever.
That action was enough to spur some of the others to move, slowly circling Rosset, and then kneeling to help him.
Delf focused on Prityal. “Did it pierce the padding?” she demanded, already reaching out to pull Prityal closer, staining the surcoat even more with her bloodied hand. “His knife. Did it? Are you hurt?”
Prityal pushed her off with alarming ease. “It’s fine. My doublet was not already slashed open. Let me see to you.” She hissed the moment she got Delf’s arms down and got a better look at the wound. Delf glanced down to the torn fabric, now soaked red, and caught her breath.
“I hit you there,” Prityal said quietly, pulling apart the slashed edges of Delf’s doublet. “Where the padding was already torn and you had no protection.”
She had done it on purpose, against an enemy. Delf did not fault her for it.
Delf dragged her gaze elsewhere, deciding she’d rather look at Prityal’s beautiful face than the slash across her upper arm. “I told you the fox meant well. It must have been trying to warn us.”