A Prince Among Killers

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

  “I think the children are the source of the shield,” she told her grandfather, a sense of dread beginning to descend upon her like a Great Roc dropping from the sky. “I think the children are shielding themselves.”

  Her grandfather’s horrified expression summed up Dari’s feelings and multiplied them—but before her grandfather could respond, loud shouts filled the air.

  Dari’s attention shifted toward the sound.

  The Guard charging toward their protectors seemed to swell in numbers. One group in the front contained Brailing’s standard-bearers, and a thin soldier led them. He wore a bright silver helm studded with sapphires, and great eagle’s wings jutted out from either side. The sword he carried flashed in the bright light of day, and Dari saw more jewels on the blade’s massive hilt. A pale cloud of blue clung to the soldier. Graal energy. Weak, yet deadly against those who had no defenses.

  A few Stone Brothers gave startled cries and toppled off Triune’s massive battlements as the man’s killing burst billowed outward. They fell into the moat, and the water churned and darkened with blood as the mocker-fish made short work of them.

  Dari’s heart gave a stutter, then sank as she understood what was happening.

  This fresh wave of Brailing Guard hadn’t been on the battlefield when they began their charge. Led by the thin, bejeweled man with the meager but effective Brailing mind-talent, these soldiers were pouring from the woods ringing the valley.

  The villain was here. Already at Triune.

  Lord Brailing was coming for them, leading his army behind him.

  Dari staggered as new graal energy slammed into her with the force of a battering ram.

  She tried to push back, but the energy assaulting her had no real form or color or definition. Nothing she could understand or grasp to defend herself. It felt like wind howling into her face, pressing her backward, away from her grandfather, and then away from Stormbreaker and the other protectors still trying to fight for her safety.

  Stormbreaker pitched off his talon, striking the ground limp and heavy, like he might have died before he fell. Energy rushed out of him in a glittering silvery wave. Two more Stone Brothers collapsed, turning their talons loose to feed on Brailing horses and soldiers.

  More cries rose from the wooded edge of the valley, but Dari couldn’t think well enough to sort them out. Men wrapped in veils and scarves, wielding the big, curved blades common to the Altar Barrens, stormed into view, but some of them broke away and stumbled as the formless graal overtook them as well. A few more retreated, dropping their blades and hurling themselves back toward the tree cover.

  Aron reached Dari’s side, but fell to his knees, his short sword and dagger dropping from his open fingers. His legacy flared brilliant sapphire, then went dim and began to spout from his body like an uncontrolled geyser. His eyes closed, and he collapsed at her feet.

  Dari watched all this, saw every bit of it, but couldn’t cry out or even lift her sword. Her head ached as if her skull had been dissolved. Her grandfather’s protective energy broke around her, and she heard his pained, enraged shout. Once more, she could see graal coloring—the rainbow hues of her own energy, flowing straight out of her body.

  Nic!

  Her mental shout rose from her heart, her soul, flying against the energy beginning to crush her thoughts into so much dust and nothingness as she fell helpless to the battlefield before the sword-wielding Thorn Brothers.

  Nic, help me!

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  NIC

  Dari’s scream echoed through Nic’s muscles and bones.

  His teeth slammed together, his fists clenched, and he almost dropped to his knees in the midst of the halted traveling column of hundreds, maybe thousands of Mab horsemen, archers, and foot-soldiers.

  In front of him, Snakekiller held a dagger to his mother’s throat. Snakekiller’s dark blue eyes had gone so flat Nic had no doubt she would enjoy spilling Lady Mab’s blood at Nic’s feet, to avenge the thousand pains he had suffered from her neglect.

  How had this gone so wrong?

  None of this had been in his visions.

  Not the way he had used his graal to punch through the Mab lines. Those with no mind-talents never saw him, and those with legacy did, but knew him for who he was and fell away from him, fleeing what they thought was a ghost with the full measure of the Mab legacy.

  Not the way he and Snakekiller set Tek free before soldiers could skewer her with pikes and reached his mother’s personal guard on foot, or how Snakekiller’s hood snake illusion sent the horses thundering away, dragging their riders with them, weapons and all. His mother had been thrown—which Nic had not foreseen, any more than he had caught a glimpse of the way his mother had drawn her silver dagger and tried to thrust it into his heart, her blue eyes wild with terror.

  “Abomination,” she had shrieked, taking him for a mane. “Monster!”

  If Snakekiller hadn’t grabbed Lady Mab, Nic might indeed be shifting into a mane.

  “He’s your son,” Snakekiller was telling her. “Nic is not a mane or a ghost or some cruel illusion. He’s your own blood, your heir.”

  “Dari,” Nic said aloud, turning his head toward Triune’s castle, where his wife and friends were now under some attack he couldn’t sense or understand.

  There was no way to divide his attention between his mother and Dari.

  “Hold her another moment,” Nic told Snakekiller, then closed his eyes and sent his mind blasting through the Veil.

  The abrupt change in sights, smells, and sounds sent tremors through his physical body, and once more the sparks of a fit began to rise and flicker through his mind. Nic ignored this and struggled to move through the world carved over the world, until his awareness hovered over the madness spreading out around Triune.

  A thick gray cloud of graal energy hovered above the battlefield, seemingly leeching the power and life out of everything beneath it. Nic could sense nothing below that cloud, and see very little beyond the cardinal red blaze of Thorn Guild robes. The color drew him like a beacon, but as he tried to drop his awareness through that strange gray fog, it repelled him like an iron shield.

  His real body wavered again, but he made himself think of Dari, of the baby she didn’t even know she was carrying. Of Aron and Stormbreaker, of Lord Baldric and Zed and Raaf and all the many people he had met at Triune. His graal surged back to him, driven by the rush of his emotion and his wish to protect those he loved. More sparks danced through his mind, and his muscles began to weaken so badly he wasn’t sure he could hold his body upright.

  Nic imagined his energy to be a thin red blade, and he stabbed his awareness downward at the cloud, aiming to reach the person he thought could help him the most.

  Aron. But where was Aron?

  Nic couldn’t find him, even a hint of him.

  The shield caught his energy again.

  Held him.

  Trapped.

  Nic doubled his effort to rip his awareness free of the shield’s grip, even though he didn’t have the energy to support it.

  How could he have left Dari—or Aron? Any of them?

  What had he been thinking?

  The essence of Nic’s knees buckled, and he knew he was collapsing in the physical world. His thoughts twitched and jumped as the fit moved across his awareness—only to be driven back by a solid wave of silver and deep blue hues. Vagrat mind-talent, healing and strengthening. Cool, blue Brailing energy, very like Aron’s but not Aron’s, joined this flow—and red graal, Mab legacy, so blindingly ruby it made Nic blink on both sides of the Veil.

  The shared energy washed into him, lifting him upward and helping him re-form his mental strength into the sharp, powerful point he needed. He spared no thought for the body he was leaving behind as he threw himself at the shield over Triune, this time bashing his way straight through to the other side.

  The screams of children shattered through his consciousness, but he couldn’t accept the reality of suc
h young, tiny cries in a battle. It had to be some trick or illusion of whoever had mounted this graal attack.

  Below him, soldiers slammed sword against sword along the walls of Triune and all through the valley. Arrows and stones flew through the air toward the castle. The Altar Guard was hammering down from the Barrens and Outlands, and Lord Cobb and his small group of Guard were charging up to meet them before they could crush what was left of the Ross Guard and the Stone Brothers on the battlefield.

  Dozens upon dozens of soldiers wearing many different dynast uniforms lay dead. Still more had collapsed, many in front of the main gate and keep. Graal energy rose from them like colored rivers, flowing toward the covered carriage Aron had identified as Kate’s location.

  Dari…

  Nic drew on all the knowledge he had absorbed from Dari, drawing yet more information from the minds and energies assisting him. He let his graal flow over the battlefield, lower than the menacing colorless shield, forming his own barrier and cutting off the flow of energy to that carriage.

  Once more the shrieking cries of little children troubled his mind, but with another blast of determination, Nic reversed the flow even as the people he was shielding began to wake and lurch to their feet.

  Nic located Dari, and in an instant he assessed her condition and used the healing energy at his disposal to reduce her pain and bring her back to nearly full strength. Lord Ross was next, and needed very little assistance to roar and grab his sword as he dragged himself up to stand beside his granddaughter. Nic went to Aron next, but reviving him was harder. More of his sapphire light had been taken from him, and Nic wasn’t certain how much he had been able to return.

  Children were screaming. Brother help him, they sounded so real he wanted to sob and reach out to them, hold them, cradle them, and put a halt to their misery.

  Stop! Dari cried. You’re killing them. We’re all killing them!

  Nic turned her loose, confident she was once more able to see to herself, especially with Lord Ross and Aron to assist her. Flickers of lightning let him know that Stormbreaker was coming back to himself—and there, near the carriage, multicolored energy, but not Dari’s twin. Too different. Too strange.

  This was mingled graal, many types, not fully differentiated, or even fully formed.

  Many small wisps of consciousness.

  Children?

  Nic’s question rippled through the Veil, along with the full force of disgust and horror he felt, followed by intense shame.

  Had he just used his graal to crush the minds of babies?

  He opened his eyes, shouting as he came back to himself. On either side, someone had hold of his arms, supporting his weight.

  Snakekiller and his mother were no longer standing in front of him.

  Nic automatically looked at the ground, searching for his mother’s blood and body—but he saw nothing.

  The billowing red clouds of his own graal dissipated enough for him to see the nearest Mab soldiers, standing in absolute silence, and seemingly in awe. He knew most of the higher-level fighters in Mab’s army had enough legacy to see his, and to know it for what it was. That was probably all that had saved them thus far.

  A few had removed their helms to look at him more closely.

  “Steady,” came Snakekiller’s voice in one ear, and the command was so familiar that it helped him to marshal his strength and begin to find his balance again.

  “Nicandro,” was the whisper in the other, and Nic heard the rattle of his mother’s voice, fragile but connected to his reality, at least for this one moment in time. “I know your energy. I know your essence. It’s you. It could be no one else.”

  Snakekiller turned him loose to face his mother, and he managed to turn to her without falling. He could still feel the hot ruby energy she had lent him, part of what had kept him alive and beaten back the fit that tried to claim him as he saved Dari.

  Lady Mab didn’t let go of Nic’s arm, and he felt her trembling grip tighten as her eyes widened. They were light steely blue, the color of a winter sky drenched in sunlight, and this day, at least, clear enough to make Nic believe she understood what was happening around her. Her pale blond ringlets were pulled tight into a bun, the stray strands held in place by her circlet with the red dragon head pendant dangling in the center of her lined forehead. From her neck to her feet she wore a fitted black leather tunic and skirt split and tied at her knees—the only proper fighting garb for a noble lady. The leather had been stitched with runes and etchings of dragons announcing the power and skill of Mab warriors. She also wore silver vambraces, though she had left her midsection unprotected to better wield the swords belted to her sides. At her waist, the bags holding the chevilles of her dead children and husband hung like the poisons and elixirs and stones carried by Stone.

  “You fell,” she said, reaching her free hand up to trail her fingers across Nic’s scarred cheek even as her fingernails pressed through his tunic into the scant meat of his forearm.

  “I was pushed,” he said, distracted by her touch, and the warmth and tortured surprise in her voice. “I think I flew.”

  Lady Mab didn’t challenge this. She just kept staring at him as her many commanders pushed through Mab’s ample ranks, drawing in for a closer look at the young man who had just given them such a huge display of the Mab legacy.

  “My son!” she cried out to them. “Nicandro Mab lives, and he returns to us this day.” Then, more quietly, she added, “A grown man, tall, if scarred and crippled. You are the hob-prince no more.”

  “I am not,” Nic said, surprised to realize that term seemed so strange to him now, “though in truth I cannot tell you what new nickname I’ll earn for myself in the days to come.” He wasn’t certain what he was feeling, beyond increasing urgency to win his mother’s allegiance and take her forces into the fight to save his wife and his friends. Was he as heart-cold as she was, to be thinking so simply, with no regard for her emotions or welfare?

  Lady Mab’s chilling gaze shifted to Snakekiller. “It was Stone that saved my son?”

  Snakekiller’s palm rested on the hilt of the dagger she had drawn in Nic’s defense, now sheathed at her hip. “And hid him from the rectors who would have killed him.”

  At the mention of rectors, Lady Mab turned her head away from Nic and spit on the ground. When she looked back at him, madness had edged out some of the reason she had managed to capture and reflect in the cold blue depths of those eyes. “They’re all dead. I had every rector in Dyn Mab put to the sword.”

  Nic’s mouth drifted open, and he sensed Snakekiller tensing beside him. Beyond them, some of the commanders hung their heads, as if they knew what a monstrous crime this had been. They would have been helpless to stop it, short of outright rebellion against their own dynast leader—the crazed woman who was Eyrie’s queen.

  “All of them?” Nic whispered to his mother, growing numb inside at the thought of Temple doors ripped from their hinges, and the guilty and innocent alike slaughtered on the floors of their own churches.

  His mother let go of him and folded her arms. “It had to be rectors who killed my children and my husband. Your father—your brothers and sisters! And when you fell from the tower under their care, I knew.”

  Nic still couldn’t quite grasp her words, or believe them to be true. “But all of them? All over Dyn Mab?” He thought about Lord Brailing’s Watchline massacre, and couldn’t see a difference between the two deeds. “That would be hundreds.”

  “That many fewer traitors to nip at our flanks as we marched out to meet our enemies.” His mother’s eyes grew ever more narrow as she spoke. “Loyalty is a tricky thing, my son. Those who do not stand with you stand against you—which I’m sure by now you’ve realized.”

  Nic wondered if his mother had seen who he rescued when she lent him energy to stop the attack on Dari. He wanted to lift his leg and force her to stare at the second cheville he now wore to bind him to the granddaughter of the man his mother had hated, seemi
ngly without reason, for most of her life. The man she had first blamed for the deaths of her family, and the dynast she had been crusading against despite attacks from other dynast armies.

  “We have much to discuss later,” he said. “For now I must know your intentions. When you take your forces onto the battlefield at Triune, against whom will you fight?”

  Lady Mab gave him a look that said perhaps he was still slow in the mind, after all. “We will fight any who stand against us.”

  The commanders encircling them shifted. Armor rattled, and swords clattered. They didn’t speak, but even at such a distance, Nic saw the anger on many of their faces.

  “Lord Brailing and Lord Altar attacked you.” Nic tried to hold himself together, but he was feeling smaller by the second, his own thoughts beginning to swim as he tried to reason with his mother’s twisted perceptions and irrational plans.

  How many times had he done this in his life?

  And had he ever succeeded?

  “Helmet Brailing is a doddering fool,” his mother announced, straightening her vambraces. “Bolthor Altar would never harm me.”

  “Until they broke off attacks to head for Triune to capture or kill a friend of mine, their armies were ravaging Dyn Mab’s countryside.” Nic heard himself speaking, his words choked off by pain in his heart and his body, too. This was too much. He couldn’t reach her. Why had he thought anything might be different now?

  I might as well climb the nearest tower and leap off. That would do as much good as talking to her.

  The thought passed through his mind more than once as she kept speaking.

  “Kembell Ross is another matter. With his Sabor, he could be a threat like no other, the one dynast lord who could take the throne from us.” She patted Nic’s arm like he was little more than a child. “That’s what you must remember.”

  The Sabor would never participate in treachery, even at Lord Ross’s command. They were loyal allies, but not oathbreakers. Nic kept this to himself, saying only, “Lord Ross battles on the side of Stone and Cobb—and Mab as well. He has nearly given his life to see me safely this far.”