A Prince Among Killers

by S. R. Vaught; J. B. Redmond

  Aron’s insides clenched, but he couldn’t bring himself to argue with Nic, not even for Dari. The red haze around Nic grew by the moment. Now that Aron had watched the force of Nic’s graal begin to show itself, and felt how Nic’s mind-talent fueled his own, he knew he wouldn’t challenge Nic. It wouldn’t have been right, not for Nic or the battle or Eyrie—though Aron wasn’t at all certain what would have been right for Dari.

  Her look of frustration and betrayal when Aron refused to speak crushed something deep in Aron’s heart. He turned his face away from her, but he heard her clearly enough when she said, “You keep him safe. Aron, you owe me that. You keep my husband alive. Promise me.”

  The vow rose to Aron’s lips, but he didn’t speak it.

  Brother help him, he wanted to. He needed to promise Dari what she wanted so badly that tears almost found a way to his cheeks—but he didn’t. He had already condemned Nic in such a fashion once, to stay alive when death should have claimed him. He wouldn’t agree to do that again, not to Nic, or anyone.

  “Aron,” Dari cried, and Aron knew she thought he was refusing out of retribution or spite, or worse yet, jealousy and a wish that Nic wouldn’t survive the battle. Her tone made him sick, but he had to believe she would reason through his actions at some later time, when the world was calmer and more forgiving.

  “Steady,” Snakekiller said, and Aron thought at first she was speaking to him.

  When he raised his head, determined to survive Dari’s bitter gaze, Lord Ross had the lead of Dari’s stallion. Her features seemed blurry and indistinct, and Aron knew only Nic’s prohibition about shifting to her Stregan form was keeping her from becoming a giant, furious dragon.

  Lord Ross gently pulled Dari away with him as he went to assume the head position in his riding column, Nic stood below Aron, trembling.

  “Steady,” Snakekiller said again, and this time Aron realized she was comforting Nic.

  Nic swayed, and used Tek’s massive, scaled flank for support. His breath left him in quick whistles, and his graal flickered around him as Aron had seen it do before a fit, or in those frightening, dark times when Nic drifted between life and death afterward. It was gut-kicking to watch Nic racked with agony and dying, yet unable to cross over to the next life because of the damage done by Aron’s first graal command.

  Aron placed a hand on Nic’s shoulder. He imagined his own energy, sapphire-blue and soothing, flowing down his arms and through his fingertips. He hoped that would be enough to chase back the energy storm threatening to cripple Nic during the battle he most needed to help fight.

  At last, when they could no longer see Dari, Nic came back to himself enough to withdraw from Aron. He pulled his red graal energy fully into his own body, and let out a deep sigh full of regret.

  Aron moved his foot from his stirrup, helped Nic gain purchase, then pulled him onto Tek’s back behind him.

  “Thank you,” Nic said as he settled at Aron’s back and wrapped his arms tight around Aron’s waist. “For your help, and for not fighting me on Dari’s behalf.”

  “I’m not sure you’re welcome,” Aron grumbled as he urged Tek into position behind Stormbreaker and Snakekiller. “Even if we live through this battle, Dari will probably kill both of us. And I don’t think she’ll be nice enough to use some painless poison.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  NIC

  Nic’s joints cracked with each running step Tek took.

  On either side of them, bull talons bellowed as they trampled grass and saplings on their breakneck journey down the main byway. Dust clogged the air, and the stink of talon oil made it all but impossible to draw a full breath.

  Nic kept his eyes squeezed shut and his face pressed into Aron’s back so he wouldn’t scream from the bone-wrecking pain. Sweat coated his shoulders and neck, and he shivered despite the absence of cold in the air.

  They had been running for hours, but it felt like days, and he didn’t know if he could stand it another moment. He had more of Snakekiller’s elixir, but he didn’t dare drink it for fear of dulling his senses and losing his ability to understand and decide between the visions hammering at his consciousness. Whenever he began to drift into the void of blackness he had so often known following his fits, a bit of Aron’s energy would flow into him, shoring him up enough for another few miles.

  Nic tried to breathe, but he couldn’t fill his lungs without a new, stabbing agony. He settled for quick, short gasps, like a beast giving birth.

  What do you see now? Aron asked through the link they shared, shielded from eavesdropping on the other side of the Veil by Nic’s abundant graal. Dari had taught him the skill, but at some point in their lessons, he had simply absorbed all she knew of mind-talents, and how to use them. Learning in such a fashion was a feature of his legacy, according to her.

  Nic wished he could touch Dari in similar fashion, speak to her as easily as he spoke to Aron, but he wouldn’t allow himself that bit of comfort at her expense. She was fierce and strong, but now that Nic sensed two lives instead of one whenever they were joined on the other side of the Veil, he felt driven to protect his unborn child as well.

  I see us dying, Nic answered Aron honestly. Quickly, almost as soon as we enter the battle.

  Aron’s frustration flowed through their link.

  What if we attack from another angle, another position? Aron’s mind shifted through various points on the approach to the valley. He knew the lay of the land much better than Nic, but in Nic’s advanced state of awareness, using his graal so freely, he absorbed Aron’s mental maps as quickly as he absorbed Dari’s knowledge of mind-talents. He ground his teeth and screamed behind his mental barriers, overcome by details and images and the sawing of his misshapen bones against his flesh.

  Then the information sorted itself into a complete picture, and he could answer Aron’s question. No approach offers us a better fate, and most would cost Dari, Kate, Lord Ross, and Lord Cobb their lives.

  Damnation, Nic! What good is your future-seeing graal if it can’t find an answer for us?

  Aron’s surge of emotion rocked Nic backward. He clung to Aron’s waist to keep his seat, and the roar in his mind almost blocked Aron’s apology. Tree branches smacked Nic in his shoulder, and pebbles churned from the road by the thundering line of clawfeet stung his ankles and legs.

  Find an answer. Nic gripped Aron’s robes and bit his lip until he tasted blood. That is the answer, isn’t it?

  Nic closed out Aron’s confused response, and focused on the images streaming through his thoughts and senses. Leaving only a portion of his attention on staying in Tek’s saddle behind Aron, he let his consciousness flow through the Veil. It took little effort to rise above the byway, high enough into the sky to have room to do what Aron suggested, and even less to keep his endeavors private.

  Nic imagined his visions outside of his own mind, until he could see dozens of smoky, wavering figures drifting before him. They had no real substance, these moving pictures of what might be, and each represented a possible future based on the next set of actions taken by Aron and Nic.

  So many.

  Too many.

  The essence of Nic’s head ached so badly he feared it would crack open. The relaxed confidence he had been feeling since he asked Lord Ross to lead them into battle left him like a passerine taking flight. Sparks spit through his senses, the first awakenings of a fit.

  Stop it. No. I won’t. I can’t.

  He pulled back from the images, dousing the sparks, helped by a rush of Aron’s cool blue energy.

  Nic pulled on that flow of soothing light more than he should, like he imagined Lady Pravda did when she drained Kate of all that made Kate who and what she was. Murder. Soul-murder.

  Nic ripped himself free of his connection with Aron.

  The pain in his body grew so great that it followed him through the Veil.

  He was running out of strength.

  He was running out of time.

  Nic swo
re and fell to the essence of his knees. With his ghostly hands, less gnarled on this side of the Veil, he pawed through the waves of images his mind created. He pushed at them. Pulled at them. Dispersed and reshaped them.

  Which one, which one…?

  Nic heard his mind’s voice, and it sounded disturbingly thin and unbalanced, like the cries of his mother in her more troubled days.

  Was this legacy what broke her mind?

  He understood her insanity now, in ways he never imagined he would.

  His vision flickered and dimmed, and for a moment he sensed his mother, sampled the morass of her cluttered thoughts and unhinged feelings. He recognized her instantly—and she seemed to recognize him. Her energy grabbed for his, and he didn’t have the strength to push her away.

  How close was she to him?

  A mile?

  Two?

  Not far, and riding on horseback.

  He hadn’t thought his mother capable of going into battle, least of all mounted and armed like one of her Guardsmen.

  Was this some new insanity, or some trick of the rectors seeing to her care?

  Whatever it was, Nic was sinking into her mind, losing himself in her joyous greeting—as if that could ever happen, as if it could ever be real.

  A burst of Aron’s graal woke Nic’s nerves and pulled him back to safety, then increased his focus on his true goal. Nic shook as the sense of his mother lessened, until he could control it, until he could force it far from his mind and heart, despite the tears rising to his eyes.

  He watched Aron’s blue energy weave through his own red graal, and stared at the images of the future through their combined strength. The flavor and style of Aron’s graal became part of his understanding, and the mixing of truth and possibility gave Nic new purpose.

  He attacked the images with a fervor, grabbing for the right one, the correct one, the one they needed and must have.

  Come to me, he urged, much as he had urged Dari to return to herself when she had briefly been lost to him when she lost her connection to her twin again.

  When the images wouldn’t cooperate, Nic snatched at more of Aron’s graal.

  Aron gave freely of his energy, and Nic flung the force of Aron’s power and his own at the rushing array.

  Come to me! He shouted the words aloud, on both sides of the Veil.

  The sound crushed against his ears, his awareness, until his teeth seemed to rattle in his skull. His vision darkened again, and this time, no energy came to rescue him. Nic pitched forward, tasting blood and smelling nothing, seeing nothing, into darkness, into a great, cold, black void—

  With only a few streams of images.

  With just two or three possibilities, instead of thousands.

  Nic’s body screamed for release as he grabbed at the pictures and studied them. Pain clawed at him, dragged at him, but he ignored it. He refused it. If all his limbs fell off and he bled to death as he searched, so be it. Perhaps he could get the proper images to Aron, who could carry on in his stead.

  As Nic stared at the moving pictures, sorted through them, rearranged them, he let the frozen truth of the future creep over him, toe to head.

  So there was a way. Maybe a few ways. A few paths, at least, where Dari and their child and even her family survived. Or where Aron triumphed in the battle, and Eyrie didn’t plunge into endless bloodshed and destruction. His mother. Triune. The armies.

  Dear gods and goddesses, any and all, known and unknown—how was he supposed to choose the fates of people he loved?

  How could he pick between them, or select Eyrie’s welfare over the warmth of smiles and faces and heartbeats he knew almost as well as his own?

  None of these possibilities worked out particularly well for Nic, and all of them would require new sorts of courage he wasn’t even sure he possessed.

  But how—how could he?

  How could anyone do this?

  Nic let go of the images as he felt himself sinking down, down, back through the Veil and into the body that was even now rebelling and attempting to die without him.

  He knew what came next, the fit, the long recovery—but he couldn’t allow it.

  Help me, he said to Aron, and Aron did, this time costing himself so much of his own essence and energy that he slumped forward on Tek. They both slid in the saddle, and Nic’s fit sparked and fizzled in his mind, spreading, threatening to rise over every effort he and Aron were making.

  Thunder ruptured the silence expanding through Nic’s brain, and lightning forced stars into the places where sparks had been.

  He sat up straight, towing Aron with him, but Aron was already regaining his balance.

  Beside them on the back of his bull talon, it was Stormbreaker who sagged now.

  “No!” Aron’s shout broke through Nic’s stupor, and the two of them thought as one as they closed their eyes and joined their graal, seeking to return the essence Stormbreaker had loaned them.

  A massive snake exploded into Nic’s awareness, blocking the energy he had released and sending it rushing back into his own body. Aron gave a cry as the same thing happened to him. As they both opened their eyes and turned to their left.

  “It’s rude to reject gifts,” Snakekiller growled. She glared briefly at them, then returned her attention to the road. “Especially so close to our destination.”

  Nic could have sworn he heard a hissing sound laced through each word. It took a moment for Snakekiller’s meaning to reach him—a moment, and the slowing of Aron’s talon, and the talons on either side of them.

  The beasts came to a halt at the top of a hill, just off the main byway, and Nic gasped at the sight spreading beneath them like some terrible dream come to reality.

  “Goddess be with us,” Snakekiller whispered, the hissing in her voice replaced with a flat, cold hopelessness.

  Yellow sands, bare rock, and blue-gray mists framed a massive valley, Triune’s valley, but the ground below was so full of soldiers Nic could scarcely make out the patches of green grass so plentiful in the grounds around the Stone stronghold. Guardsmen wearing the steel and copper colors of Dyn Altar were moving to fill barrens and outlands, showing no fear of the mockers and predators they had battled most of their lives.

  Soldiers with the blues and yellows of Dyn Brailing occupied the grassy sections of the valley, lighting huge pyres of fire that would set arrows ablaze, towing battering rams and catapults into place, and heaving ladders toward the tall walls that formed Triune’s main resistance. Small groups had breached the moat using boards to stretch across the mocker-filled waters, and they clustered along the bottom of the massive main gate and keep. Its twin towers rose high, high above these breakaway soldiers, who seemed to be digging.

  Nic wondered if it was possible to tunnel under the castle’s walls.

  “Where are the sheltered?” Aron murmured, and Nic felt him shift in the saddle for a better view of the village toward the back of Triune’s inner grounds. It did seem deserted, as did much of the castle, but Nic had supposed that was because of the number of Stone Brothers and Stone Sisters waiting in grim stillness along the thick battlements connecting the castle’s many towers. Here and there, colored garments stood out amongst the gray robes and weapons. These fighters had to be sheltered or other allies, come to fight alongside the guild.

  Still, there were nowhere near enough guild members or people to account for the castle’s population. Grazing fields, paddocks, barns, woods, bridges, byways—even the House of the Judged—everything seemed to be standing open and completely deserted.

  “They’re withdrawing to the Ruined Keep,” Stormbreaker murmured, sounding so weak Nic almost didn’t recognize his voice. “Stone’s last line of defense, and the last hope of those Stone protects.”

  Stormbreaker gestured in the direction of the Lost Path, and Nic saw that the side gates were indeed open. From what he could see through the dense mists, Stone Brothers and Sisters were lining either side of the path, shepherding apprentices a
nd their many charges into the dangers waiting in the clouds of the Deadfall.

  “The trial,” he said, as much to himself as to Aron. “Every guild member knows the way, and knows the dangers of the path. Because of the trial, they know exactly what to do, and they don’t fear the Deadfall like everyone else.”

  “And there are supplies, checked regularly and restocked,” Aron said, sounding awed and chagrined. “I never understood—but, yes, all the children and infirmed will fit inside the Ruined Keep, and the guild and other able adults will defend them. The mockers and manes and predators will be like an extra army, this time in the service of Stone.”

  Nic held on to Aron as he stared into the valley.

  He had heard that no army had ever successfully laid siege to the fortress at Triune—but what of two armies?

  And if his visions of his mother and Mab’s forces were true, Stone would soon be contending with three massive forces, assuming they joined in the same aim and didn’t fall to fighting each other.

  Nic reached out with his graal, careful to keep his search private, and estimated the positions of Lord Ross and Lord Cobb.

  “The others are nearly in place,” he told Aron and Stormbreaker and Snakekiller. Then, to Aron, he said, “Do you sense Kate?”

  Aron searched the ground below with new intensity, and Nic did what he could to share his graal strength with his friend, wondering if this might be the last time.

  “There.” Aron pointed to a spot near the center of the main gate and keep. “I’ll get word to Dari and Lord Ross before we start down the hill.”

  Nic thought he could make out a large covered carriage, and some red-robed figures surrounding it. A tiny flow of multicolored graal seemed to cling to the carriage. If he hadn’t been looking so closely, and sharing energy with Aron, Nic wouldn’t have noticed it at all. It was similar to Dari’s, yet different, and Nic supposed that even identical twins might have some differences.