FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  Aren gasped and tried to pull back, but the guard behind him wrapped his hands around his arms. Light flashed, the fire dimmed briefly, and the guard fell away.

  Aren leaned forward, bracing his good arm against his knee. “Did that hurt you?” Severn asked. “Drain you? You never were as good at that as I was. And I don’t imagine it’s easy while your magic is busy trying to heal you.” He placed the tip of the knife under Aren’s chin and flicked it upward, cutting him again. His other hand shot forward and grabbed Aren’s broken arm, twisting it. Aren gasped and fell forward.

  I twisted out from behind the guard’s hand. “Stop it!” I yelled. Severn grinned.

  Aren’s back heaved as he took in deep breaths of the smoky air. He looked up at Severn, then slowly stood, holding his arm against his side. Blood poured from his shoulder in a river that flowed over the hard curves of his tensed muscles, and when he raised his chin a tiny stream dripped from his face. “I’ll survive.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Someone groaned. When they both turned to look at me, I realized that the sound had come from my own throat.

  “Oh,” Severn said. “I did say that if you showed up I’d let her die quickly. Shall we take care of that now?”

  Aren’s jaw muscles flexed. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said through clenched teeth, and lunged forward to grab the knife. Orange flame flashed between them, and Aren pulled back, hissing.

  “Then stop fighting,” Severn growled. He motioned toward me, and the guard dragged me toward them.

  “Aren, fight. Run. I don’t—”

  The guard twisted my hand up between my shoulder blades, cutting off my words as I sobbed. Aren lunged at him, but halted as Severn turned his knife on me. I sank to my knees and Aren dropped beside me. He put one arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I leaned in, pressing my face to his blood- and sweat-slick skin.

  Severn laughed, a low, cold chuckle, and I looked up. “Gods, Aren, look at you. Pathetic. I always knew you had your mother’s weakness in you, but I never thought I’d see this day.”

  I felt Aren tense.

  Severn inhaled sharply, air hissing through his teeth. “Don’t.” The guard who’d been holding me fell to the ground, then climbed to his feet in a daze and began backing away. When I turned to look at Aren, he had his gaze locked on the guard. The man disappeared into the darkness and returned with a black horse that tried to shy away from the fire.

  Severn kicked out, and his heavy boot caught Aren in the side of the head. I tried to catch him, but my body was too weak, my limbs uncoordinated. We both fell to the dirt, and my stomach muscles seized in a spasm of pain. Aren pushed himself up on his good arm.

  Aren wiped the blood from his chin. “I’m not going to stop fighting until you let her go.”

  Severn tilted his head. “You know you can’t win.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Hmm.” Severn looked at his guard. “Take her to the horse. Aren, make this easy and she can go. I want to be done with you. Now.”

  Aren narrowed his eyes at his brother. “I don’t believe you.”

  “We’ll give her a head start while I deal with you, then.”

  “She makes it to the bridge. And I won’t fight you. No magic. Nothing.”

  Severn rolled his eyes. “Fine. But I make no promises after. If she returns to Tyrea, she’s fair game.”

  Aren turned to me. “I think that’s the best I can do for you.”

  “No,” I groaned as the guard pulled me away, dragging me over the dirt.

  “It’s all right,” Aren said. “Just go quickly. I have no doubt that they’ll be after you as soon as I’m dead.”

  The guard pushed me against the horse’s broad, sweaty side. The saddle leather scraped my face. I turned back. “I can’t. You go.” I remembered his objection when Arnav said I was going to die. “This isn’t how it ends.”

  He tried to smile, but looked so sad. “I think it is. I’ve done many things wrong in my time, but this isn’t one of them. You’re going to live and be safe.”

  Severn rolled his eyes. “Dear gods, you’re disgusting,” he said. “You should thank me for putting you out of your misery.” He grabbed Aren by his injured arm and lifted him, then spat in Aren’s face. Aren didn’t seem to notice.

  Severn checked the blade of his knife and tested it by slashing at Aren’s arm, several shallow cuts that painted his skin with blood. Aren twitched and his lips pulled back in a snarl, but he didn’t resist. Severn touched the blade to Aren’s throat, just hard enough to hurt, to draw blood. Taking his time. Enjoying it.

  Aren’s face relaxed. He’d known this end was coming since he decided to help me.

  And that’s love.

  Silence descended over me, blocking out the sounds of the fire, the river, and the wind. That power that I now recognized as my own magic roiled inside of me, ready. I sensed that I could hold it back, perhaps for long enough to make it to Belleisle.

  I wondered what a place called “beautiful island” would be like, and decided I would never know. One more time.

  A rushing noise filled the silence, as though a mighty dam had been opened, and everything inside of me was tossed in the power of the force that gripped me. Light bright enough to wash out even the pain in my head burst around me, and I fell to my knees. My arms swung out in front of me, and the magic tightened every muscle in my body in excruciating spasms as it swept out of me and toward the people who stood near the fire.

  The horse behind me screamed and bolted.

  Aren’s eyes widened, and Severn turned toward me, startled. The remaining guards yelled, but all fell silent at the same instant. I tried to hold on, to watch what happened, but the white light ripped through me and stole my sight, leaving me blind and falling into a darkness I welcomed with everything that was in me. I was ready for the end, and went hoping that Aren would be spared from whatever it was that I’d unleashed.

  Chapter XXXIII

  Aren

  I HAD ONLY A MOMENT to react, to realize that she had released her magic and to shield myself from that flood of raw, destructive power. I began to change and halted the transformation in the instant when I was without a body. Everything in me screamed for physical form, and trying to hold it at bay was like drowning, like trying not to take the breath that would kill me. It was the most dangerous magic I’d attempted since my first transformation, but there was nothing else I could do.

  Even without a body I felt the blast pass through me, though it felt more like a hot breeze than the punishing wave that crashed over the others. I had no eyes to watch what was happening, but I was aware of lights being extinguished all around me. Severn’s burned red, and didn’t disappear like the others. Instead it seemed to rush away, growing smaller and more distant in the instant before the others were destroyed.

  I felt myself slipping away, being pulled in a thousand directions, scattered. I fought to call my physical self back to me. For a moment is seemed that it wasn’t going to happen, that I was as dead as any of the others. Then it came rushing back, blessed weight and form, blood and bone and muscle, as though grateful not to have been forgotten. The world took shape around me and I gasped in air that now burned with cold. Severn had taken his fire with him.

  Piles of cloth littered the moonlit clearing. I crawled toward one, but there was nothing there. No bones, no ashes, nothing to indicate that someone hadn’t just stepped out of his clothing and gone about his business elsewhere.

  I was fortunate that the first items of clothing I found were large. I struggled into them as quickly as I could, but my muscles refused to work together properly. When I tried to stand, my legs bucked under me. Perhaps this was the price I was to pay for my experimentation.

  At least I was alive.

  I pulled a dirty cloak around my shoulders and dragged myself to where I last remembered seeing Rowan.

  She seemed to have disappeared, too. The pile of cloak and boots seemed far too
small to hold a body.

  “Rowan,” I called, my voice a hoarse whisper. No answer.

  I dragged myself closer and found her curled on her side. The faint moonlight played off of her pallid skin, giving her a ghostly appearance. I collapsed beside her and pulled her close. Her body was limp, and she didn’t respond to my voice or my touch. I shook her gently, and her head rolled from side to side. She wasn’t breathing.

  “No,” I groaned. “What did you do?” She could have got away. I wanted to be angry with her for releasing the power she knew would kill her, but I couldn’t. Hadn’t I been willing to do the same for her?

  I tried to push myself up, but my arms gave out, and I lay with my head resting against her chest. I closed my eyes.

  Thump.

  I reached out and pressed my fingers to her throat. There was movement. Barely a tremor, but her heart was beating. I put my face near her mouth, and felt a slight warmth as she exhaled. It was enough. I didn’t know how, but she was alive.

  We needed to get away from that place as quickly as possible. I didn’t know what she’d done to Severn, but he was still alive somewhere, and certainly furious. It seemed we both knew tricks that the other was unaware of.

  Or maybe he knows all of mine, after all, I thought. He’d been prepared for my eagle form. I cursed myself for underestimating him again. No, he would be back sooner or later, and I didn’t have the strength to protect us. I couldn’t stand, let alone carry or even drag Rowan anywhere. Some connection between my mind and my body had been broken when they were separated. All I could do was try to keep her warm and hope that both of our conditions were temporary—and that she’d done enough damage to Severn to keep him away for a while.

  I tried to imagine all of the magic I had ever used coming out of me at once, and thought it might have looked something like what had just happened. I didn’t doubt that the binding had been broken, but there was no magic in her that I could feel, and when I tried to reach out to her mind there was nothing. It wasn’t like before, when she’d been there but inaccessible. Now she was completely absent, her body an empty shell. She wasn’t sleeping, not dreaming, not drifting nearby. As long as her body was alive, though, it was possible that she could be brought back.

  I’d exhausted my own supply of magic in finishing my transformation, and anything that came to me went straight to healing my body. But that didn’t leave me completely helpless. I curled my body around hers, laid my mending arm over her waist, and wrapped my cloak around both of us. Still the cold night air pressed in around us, greedy, stealing every bit of warmth.

  My people know a number of deities, the great unnamed Goddess and a seemingly limitless pantheon of lesser gods. They’d shown little concern for me over the course of my life, and for the most part I’d done them the same courtesy. Now, though, I closed my eyes, and I begged.

  Get us through this night. Let me get her to safety. Keep Severn away, and I’ll do anything. I’ll change. If you demand it, I’ll go back and face whatever I now owe to my family. Just let her come back, let her live. I didn’t even know who I was praying to, only that I needed to hold onto those thoughts to keep me from going mad.

  No sense of peace or assurance washed over me, only exhaustion that threatened to pull me away. I would have to rest, and try to get Rowan away in the morning. I dozed a few times, but my sleep was fitful and interrupted by noises and disturbing dreams. By the time the sky began to fade to gray, and the stars disappeared, I could control my body better, but still lacked the strength to carry Rowan.

  As I saw it, there were three options. One was to change again, fly as quickly as I could, and try to bring someone back to the clearing to help. That was no good. It would be too much of a risk to try another transformation before my magic and my body recovered fully. Or I could try to get Rowan back to the caves. But the fairies would be gone, and we’d be lost.

  The last option was to follow through on my original plan to take her to Belleisle, and leave her there in the hopes that Ernis Albion and his wife would take care of her.

  My chest tightened. The thought of leaving her there had been wrenching enough before, when she would have been able to take care of herself. She’d have hated me for lying to get her there, but she was resilient and clever. She would have moved on. She was far stronger than she realized.

  Was.

  Now she was helpless, at least until she woke, and leaving her with strangers seemed unthinkable. But there was nothing else I could do, and the longer I waited the more likely it was I would lose her completely. It was time to go.

  As I searched the clearing for anything that might be of use to us, I found that the destruction was more shocking than it had seemed in the dark. Not only were there piles of clothing scattered about (from which I picked the warmest and cleanest items I could find, as well as a few weapons), but branches had fallen from trees, and in a space just outside of the fire circle I found bridles, saddles, and assorted horse gear in jumbled piles. It would break Rowan’s heart if she ever found out she’d done that.

  Something crashed in the trees behind me, and I lurched back toward Rowan. A black horse appeared, wide eyed and snorting. His reins had become tangled in a branch, and it dragged behind, frightening him.

  “Shh, it’s all right,” I murmured. He shuffled sideways, and I followed. He pulled back, and I stayed close. We continued the dance for a few minutes, until he allowed me to remove the branch.

  I scratched behind one of his ears. He had thick legs, a wide face, ridiculous mule-ears, and his left flank was covered in ugly scars. In that moment, though, he was the finest horse I’d ever seen.

  “Never in my life have I been so happy to see an animal,” I told him.

  Getting Rowan onto the horse was awkward. I nearly dropped her once, and something fell from one of the big pockets on her pants. I set her gently on the ground again and picked it up. It was the dragon scale she’d taken from Ruby and kept with her all this time, nearly unrecognizable now that its hard surface was cracked in a dozen places. A few pieces snapped off when I touched it. I gathered up the pieces and tucked them back in Rowan’s pocket.

  It was a strange way to ride, trying to hold Rowan, wondering if she could feel anything and whether I should be worried for her comfort, stopping occasionally to make sure she was still breathing.

  The air grew misty as dawn approached. We reached a place where the river moved more quickly, gaining momentum as it neared its end. It plunged over a cliff and into the ocean in a great waterfall.

  We followed the coast along the edge of the cliff until an island emerged from the fog, and then a bridge. I’d never seen the bridge before, and now understood why Belleisle was so often described as being nearly inaccessible. Sheer gray cliffs defined the strait on both sides. A long, arching bridge seemed to grow directly from the land, tapering toward the middle into an invisible junction. The curve was high and steep, the wind and waves hard. I turned the horse back toward the forest and kept riding south.

  The rest of the ride seemed impossibly long when I thought about the need to get Rowan to safety, and terribly short when I thought about what would happen when we arrived. In truth, it took perhaps twenty minutes to reach the bridge that had seemed so distant in the haze. It looked even more treacherous from where we stood at the point where the solid stone structure melded into the mainland. There were no hand-holds or railings to offer support or protect from the elements, and the smooth stone arch seemed to narrow toward the middle, making every step more dangerous than the one before.

  I left the black gelding at the edge of the forest and carried Rowan onto the bridge, holding her close, supporting her with my arms under her knees and shoulders. She felt so much heavier than she had when she was awake and aware and full of life. My muscles began to ache as we started across the bridge, and the place where my left arm had broken the night before felt the strain in a sharp line of pain. But I kept walking. The wind whipped our hair and clothing, a
nd high waves crashed far below.

  No more hesitation, I told myself. You owe her this.

  A man started toward us from the island side of the bridge, an unburdened mirror of my own journey. We would meet in the middle, and I supposed that was the closest I’d ever come to seeing the mysterious land of Belleisle.

  Apprehension clawed at my stomach, and I wanted to turn back. Crossing the bridge might have been the best thing for Rowan, but it felt like I was abandoning her to an unknown fate, and each step I took was the most difficult thing I’d ever done. I reminded myself that part of the reason we so despised the people of Belleisle was that they were weak—kind and compassionate. That could only help Rowan now.

  The man who met us wasn’t Albion. He was my age or slightly younger, blond and strong and capable-looking. I hated him immediately.

  We met in the middle. He slowly removed his gloves and folded his arms across his chest while mine shook with the weight I carried.

  “You know why we’re here?” I asked, my voice not nearly as strong as I’d have liked it.

  “We do,” the stranger said, sounding as though “we” encompassed all of the people who really mattered. “My father received a letter from the merfolk yesterday, and we’ve been expecting you. Expecting her, I should say. I don’t suppose I need to tell you that you won’t be going any farther.”

  My jaw tightened. “I thought as much.”

  The man held out his arms, and after a moment’s hesitation in which I almost dropped her, I let him take Rowan. By then my muscles were so tight that I could barely straighten them, but I’d have taken her back in a second if he’d offered her. He didn’t.

  “How convenient for you,” he observed as he studied Rowan’s face. “You get to leave her here and forget about her, and no one would think poorly of you for it, because you can’t come anyway.” He gave me a cold look. “That is, if they were inclined to think of you at all. She’ll be well cared-for here. Not that it matters to you, I’m sure.”