“Coronation?” Feylobhar spat again. “You – a king?” She dropped heavily to one knee, wheezing. Her eyes were distant. “That will never be. Keep cowering, and you prove it so. Come closer, and I’ll guarantee it.”
Lombarde sighed. “End her, Ruoughn. Now.”
Bloodhawk crept to the center of the clearing and nestled into the headless body of Meimniyl. So close, now, Jylkir thought, her heartbeat echoing through the wood of the ylohim. Her awareness seeped into the trees, firm but maddeningly slow. She could feel it now in the chaotic eddies and undercurrents of iiyir, and she clung to the ghost of it. The waves of the shattered way-gate still muddied the tides and drowned any hope of escape through bending light, but she nurtured the connection with the Song of the First Tree.
“We’ve feared the trees of the old forest,” Ruoughn said, addressing his victorious men now rather than the bleeding ancient at his feet. “We’ve feared the Ceearmyltu.” He hefted his sword high. “No more!” The stroke of the long, heavy blade brought the sharp crack of splitting bone and the softer, wetter sound of shearing flesh.
And with that, proud Feylobhar fell, split from shoulder to waist. She landed at Ruoughn’s feet, her torso spilling squirming ropes of viscera onto the forest floor.
Jylkir didn’t simply see her death – she felt it, smelled it, tasted it – Feylobhar’s blood soaking into the soil, the end of her life as well as the nourishment left by her passing, her spirit fleeing the mortal realms… and a faint trace of iiyir surging into the sluggish tides of the grove. Jylkir followed the passage of Feylobhar’s il-iiyir, like flecks of spume sucked along by a river current.
The river leads to the sea.
Jylkir was alone. The lyaeyni and the cayl and her sisters were dead or trapped in the Veil. Bloodhawk was gone, vanished back into the trees. But now, threaded to the needle of Feylobhar’s spirit, weaving herself into the tapestry around her, she could sense the wilhorwhyr’s familiar life shining in her expanding sight. And with him was a familiar power – a fire of both dark and light.
The codex, she realized, numb rather than angry. He never meant to rescue her.
“It’s done!” Ruoghen laughed, and swung his sword into the nearest tree trunk. Jylkir flinched at the sympathetic pinch in her side. “It… is… done!”
The Maccs raised a cheer.
Lombard looked about, dour and wary, with his sword at the ready. “No,” he said. “Not done.”
Ruoughn surveyed the bloody remnants of his betrayal, bemused. His laughter retreated begrudgingly to a satisfied smirk. “As good as,” he assured the ambassador. He retrieved his sword from the tree trunk and addressed his men with the steel held on high. “The dark mysterious elves of the wood are dead. Take what you want.” He paused to pick up one of Feylobhar’s knives. “Then light the torches. Give Kazdann his due!”
Jylkir shuddered. Her fear and anger flowed through her and into the Caerwood: smoke, fire, burning – she felt the memory of it coursing back into her from the wakening Grove, of flames licking along bark, crisping leaves, charring wood, consuming her. She bore the pain, even reveled in it, because it meant that finally, through the miasma of iiyir that had sundered the sources, the Grove was answering her song.
The humans grabbed skins of oil from a small handcart and emptied the contents all around them. When the dead aulden and the living foliage were glistening with the foul-smelling substance, one of them finally screamed, “Burn the bastards out!”
And the torches flew.
The first tongues of fire sprang to life all around her, hungry tendrils licking along the perimeters of her awareness, intruding on her expanding consciousness with searing pain. The men called to each other and lit more fires, laughing.
Jylkir dove deep into the tides, losing herself within the coursing energies, and she sang to the Grove. The human faces dissolved into the glow of their fires as she swam through the iiyir, their laughter and voices distorted to a buzz, their very presence reduced to that of troublesome gnats skittering across her skin.
Jylkir twitched her arm to swat at one of the insects. Her attack was careless and awkward, like a child swinging a heavy axe in a crowd. She could no longer see with her mortal eyes, she could not control the chaos she unleashed, but she felt the forest surge, and she tasted hot blood through her roots. An old anger intruded on her thoughts, bolstering and growing her infant rage. Much as Llri’s song could calm her, set her drifting like a leaf on a stream, the notes of the ylohim’s bloodsong enveloped her in an incoherent fury, pulling her deeper into the torrent.
Noises spilled from the men as they scattered.
Some ran. Some tried to hide. A few of them stung her, poking and hacking at her ancient bark or slicing at her vines. She crushed them, too, tore their flesh and drank deep.
Kill them all! the forest sang, in voices like stormclouds.
Jylkir tried to distance herself from the thunder, but the rage reverberated through her, and it ripped at her sanity as a gale might scatter autumn leaves.
Death walks among us, the forest cried. Empty steps full of death.
A hollow chill crept up her back. An entreaty of nothingness pulling at her soulstring. She felt it through the forest, a warning of something unseen and unknown. She recognized the sensation that sickened the forest, for that ethereal unease had sickened her before.
Lombarde, she realized, is no mere servant of the Dark. He is of the Dark, itself.
A pod of tree-napes scampered toward her, away from the fire and the feeding of the forest, but she let them come. While all else fled her wrath, from fox to bird to worm, the napes came. They were of the wood. Their lives beat with the forest’s heart. They were warmth in the cold dark of her angry song.
The rest will die. All the men. All the firebringers and ironwielders. All of them.
“Bloodhawk,” she protested, trying to find the wilhorwhyr again, either through his own life or the trailing ember of the codex he carried, but the bloodsong now overwhelmed her completely. She could no more hold back the dread will of the ylohim than she could topple the sky.
And the sky is everywhere, she thought, despairing.
All of them, the voices repeated in her head. All of them, they droned, over and again until each word pounded like a mallet on her bones. All of them.
Jylkir recoiled from the murder she had unleashed. For one moment, the power of the ancients had filled her, power unseen and unsung for centuries. But she could not contain it. She was too young, too inexperienced, and her grasp of the bloodsong was but an understanding of a single note within a layered and complex composition. The music had left her behind much as the growing conflagration enveloping the Grove had moved beyond the torches that now sputtered in the frost dusted dirt, spent and smoking.
Memories flooded her: Du’uwneyyl throwing her down at the base of the Guard Tree; pinning her in the Graveyard, helpless and bound; subduing her again in Bloodhawk’s cell; reconciling with her sister, only to watch, helpless again, as the High Blade went to war. It’s all the same, she realized. But this time, it was the ylohim and the ancient will of the Grove holding her down, useless.
Always the timid shadow, she scolded herself. She saw her life as a breeze murmuring through leaf and limb, rustling without disturbing. She was a wisp – a bright light in the forest that led nowhere. Insubstantial. Unimportant. She almost raised her own angry song, one full of darkness and rage, to turn it against the rebellious wood and tear a hole in the smothering sky. But even as the low, growling tone built in her throat, a hint of soft melody tickled behind her ears.
The bright lilt dissolved the clinging shadows clutching her heart, familiar and welcome as the first sweet breath of morning.
Llri.
In one interval of notes Jylkir understood. It was a simple progression, she realized, starting with a jump from the root note to the third branch and a run up to the fifth before returning to the root and repeating the pattern. She recognized the framew
ork of the shaping song and added her voice to the silent ilyela chorus that resonated between the trees. She understood. Death will feed only death. Her anger would only further enrage the ylohim; it would spread as surely as throwing more oil on a fire. The way to end it was not with more death – it was with life.
The ilyela choir lifted her through the song until she could find her own way and lead them in turn. Although the songwood trees knew the ways of shaping, they could not shape themselves. That was left for the treesinger. For her.
Jylkir infiltrated the charging wrath of the bloodsong, singing in subversive counterpoint, weaving her line of melody through the sour undertones and pulling them into unexpected harmony. With the ilyela lending their strength, the bloodsong faltered.
Jylkir felt the ebb of the killing rage as the thrum of growth and life overcame the droning dirge, one note, one beat, at a time. She felt an exultation, an unknown triumph as she and Llri and the ilyela soothed the Grove back from the brink of the Dark. The madness faded to whispers, an age-old simmering vengeance, and the iiyir washed back into the flow of the world tides.
But there was no comforting peace in the absence of the bloodsong’s ire. Jylkir opened her eyes, blinking away smoke and coughing. There was pain. The forest burned all around her. Waves of dry heat buffeted her skin, and she cringed at the smells of charring wood and boiling sap in her nostrils.
Jylkir tried to rise, but she could barely lift her head. She had left her strength in the singing of the songs. She had perhaps saved the Grove from the Dark, but she would not save it, or herself, from the fire. The world spun around her, and she felt consciousness slipping, but through the shifting grey and black haze around her, the napes began landing on the upper limbs of her tree, and she wondered….
There was a grunt from below her, and a hand grasped the branch where she sprawled. The gloved fingers struggled to find purchase, and for a moment she dared hope, she dared to believe that the wilhorwhyr had come with the napes to rescue her from burning to ash.
But the man who pulled himself up was not Bloodhawk. He was not salvation.
Lombarde stood, wavering and bloodied, the left side of his face swollen and purple. He stepped carefully toward her, drawing his blade, watching her, gauging her. The napes issued a shrill warning from behind her, but she waited, helpless, unable even to kick his legs from under him.
Lombarde said nothing, but Jylkir saw her fate in his dark eyes.
Death walks among us.
“Give me the codex,” he said, blood leaking from a mouth of broken teeth. He seemed oblivious to the pain. “Give it to me, and I’ll give you a quick death.”
Jylkir tried to smile, but her lip barely twitched. She tried to curse him, but only a moan escaped her lips.
Lombarde moved another wary step closer. “Give it to me, or I will have to take you back to him.” His eyes followed some movement in the trees above and behind her. “Believe me, death is the merciful option.”
The ambassador flinched as a nut bounced off of his injured cheek, and a tree-nape shrieked with pleasure. More nuts and more shrieks followed, but he withstood the assault with a sigh. “And call off your cat-monkeys. Unless they are throwing magic acorns.”
A feathered shaft struck him in the chest with a crack and a deep thump, knocking the breath from his lungs. He staggered back, and another arrow seemed to sprout next to the first, pinning him to the tree trunk. He sagged and dropped his sword, his head lolling to one side.
Bloodhawk alighted on the branch between Jylkir and the dying Malakuuri, dropping from some position she assumed was within the pod of napes. Another arrow was nocked and drawn to his cheek.
Jylkir stared up at him, still motionless. Thank you, she thought. Bright, curious eyes met hers, and an elder nape, its furry face as white as its drooping moustache, reached out to comfort her, stroking her long hair as it might a napeling that had fallen from a tree.
“Well… played,” whispered Lombarde, straining to lift his head. “I knew… cat-monkeys….” He coughed. “Something not right. Now I know. Won’t… won’t fool me again.”
Jylkir could only guess that somehow Bloodhawk had disguised himself within the pod of napes, both physically and within the tides, though she had never heard of such a thing. Another trick of the wilhorwhyr, no doubt.
“It only needed to fool you once,” Bloodhawk answered, and loosed the third arrow.
“Not,” hissed Lombarde, as the last of life drained from him, “so… simple.”
As he expired, his face wavered for a moment. She would have assumed that the effect was a by-product of the waves of heat rising from the fires, muddying the air, but there was a darkness, too. A shadow passed before her eyes, and a chill ran the length of her body. She shivered, shoulders hunched against the cold, even as the inferno blazed about her.
Whether she blinked or passed out she couldn’t say, but when next her eyes opened, Bloodhawk was lowering her by a thin cord of rope into a trampled space between the raging flames. There she joined another prone body, a large man burned, bloody and broken, his breath coming in labored rasps. Bloodhawk joined them there in an instant, surrounded by the pod of napes dancing and waving their arms at the fire.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry that I was so late to your aid. I had to save him, first.”
Bloodhawk brought a skin to her lips, and sweet nectar cleansed her tongue and brought fire to her belly. She recognized the healing draught as jujoehbe juice. She wondered idly which corpse he had taken it from.
Jylkir was able to nod, though her legs shook when she tried to stand, and she fell back to her knees. She gazed at the crumpled body, too exhausted to be surprised by the revelation that her life had come second to Prince Ruoughn’s.
“Why?” she croaked, not quite exhausted enough not to at least be curious.
“Because,” explained the wilhorwhyr, helping Jylkir to her feet, “if we manage to escape this fire, he’ll have quite a tale to tell his mother. And I intend he gets that chance.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
VICTIMS OF TRUTH
GUILLAUME had not flinched from the faerie lights, to his great pride. It had all unfolded so quickly, and not at all as he’d expected. There was no shadowyn assassin hiding in their midst, ready to plunge a dagger into Hiruld’s back. No traitor lurked in their ranks.
Poor Bells locked away and my son in the hands of cowardly underkin, the king thought, sparing a glance after the retreating column of the Prince’s Guard. That’s what you get for trusting wizards and bards and little, stunted men from the bowels of the earth.
Willanel called the knights to order, his blank face pale but stoic, and Vanelorn helped shore them up into ranks. Shimmering rainbows sprang from the blinding light in the field below, and all about them – above, below, between and behind – materializing into armored warriors. They were graceful, and wondrous, and alien. The steel of their weapons and armor reflected light in subtle hues of blue and green.
Aulden.
As the fae invaded their midst, Agrylon looked across Saint Kaissus Field to the Mneyr pavilion, one eyebrow crooked upward in what the king recognized as an expression of alarm. The wizard barked an unintelligible word, eyelids fluttering, and a dome of bluish light coalesced around them. The air crackled, enveloping the pavilion in a cloudless storm.
Guillaume was amazed at the speed with which the wizened man transformed from stately lord high chamberlain into a fearsome Black Robe. The man was ancient. He’d lived through battles that were already history by the time Guillaume was born. He’d survived the great civil war, and orchestrated the greatest destruction ever unleashed by mortal hands. Though perhaps taken aback, the wizard was not daunted for long by the unexpected arrival of the faerie host.
And even then, Guillaume had been first in the pavilion to draw his sword – not Vanelorn, not Willanel, and none of the young pups staring gape-mouthed at the aulden onslaught. No matter how old or dead he felt in c
ourt, his heart still pumped life into his old bones for battle. If this fight would be his last, he would ensure it was also his best, a death fit for songs and fables.
Despite the pride in his reflexes, Guillaume was quick to recognize both his peril and the providence of the planned defense against attack from Shadow. Aulden, he thought with a wry grin. Agrylon never foresaw this. He’s more old fool than he lets on. Just like me.
Fortunately, whatever sorcery the fae had used to penetrate Saint Kaissus Field, they did not pierce Agrylon’s wards so easily. The pavilion was alive with magic of its own, and it slowed the aulden and rooted them in the mortal realms. Aulden or shadowyn, he thought, his grin thinning to a grimace, they’re all the same.
Below the pavilion, his subjects were less fortunate. The aulden winked in and out of existence like fireflies, here, there and gone again, blood and death in their wake. It was impossible to judge the enemy’s number. Are they forty or four hundred? He couldn’t tell. It was irrelevant. Whatever their force of arms, the result was a massacre. But he could no more help those dying below than he could his son, or the man next to him. It was all he could do to fend for himself.
Another of his royal guard fell before him, and the king slashed at the aulden woman who stepped over the corpse. He dealt her only a glancing blow, and she showed no sign of slowing her attack. He barely managed to turn aside her thrust.
A flash of lightning sent her backwards, stunned and smoking. Agrylon’s war-staff effused a trail of crackling white light as the wizard spun it protectively about his liege.
At least, between wizards and bards, the former stay to fight, Guillaume thought.
“The swords,” Agrylon yelled, his voice reverberating even through the clamor of battle. He pointed with the tip of his war-staff, which crackled in waves of blue fire, indicating the swords thrust into the pavilion’s crest. “I have released the wards! Take them!”
In Siege of Daylight Page 70