“But Princess Dawn can stop it.”
The chamber took a collective breath and it was my time to look over at Majira in surprise.
“How?” Queen Boralia asked, voicing my own question.
“Because I was there. I was there when Princess Dawn slew a Witch.”
Impossible! Came the mutters from the crowd. How could it be?
I blinked hard. A Witch? Someone slew a Witch? The princess slew a Witch?
“Princess Dawn is tied to the land. To the entire kingdom. She draws on a nigh endless reservoir of power; her soul is vast, of mighty lineage,” she said aloud. “And with naught but raw energy, she slew a Witch before my own eyes.”
“Unbelievable,” I muttered to myself as the court roared with speculation and amazement.
I looked over to Majira. She looked back at me.
This truly was providence.
After all these years, all these many years of watching the Witches grow in power, watching the Disciples near their terrible goal; all these years of slipping into madness, having friends die, floundering in a sea of hopelessness…
only to end up here. Here, in the court of a rising High Queen to whom I would be mentor; a High Queen who held nearly unlimited power, who could kill Witches… no magician of the west had ever slain a Witch.
I laughed and shook my head. It was a real laugh, genuine. I simply couldn’t believe it.
Queen Boralia ordered the court to dismiss amid the din. Perethon shepherded the courtiers out of the grand hall.
“Now, you two, come with me,” the queen said to us, and motioned for two attendants to lift Majira’s stretcher. “We have much to discuss.”
I followed along behind her as we exited behind the thrones.
“I will contemplate your ideas, magus. If what you and Majira say is true, there is much to consider…”
“Of course, your highness,” I replied.
“But first,” she said, turning to me with a stern glare, “find my daughter. I don’t care how many Witches she’s killed; bring her home.”
She left us then.
Majira’s stretcher was carried out following the queen by two faun attendants. She looked over to me as they passed by.
“Thank you, Bram…” Majira whispered as she was carried away.
I nodded to her. I didn’t have much else to say; even I was surprised by what I had already said. My mind burned with questions, so many questions about Princess Dawn and her Witch-killing… but I knew I would have to wait. Majira needed rest.
Then, with Majira having been carried away, I was once again alone.
I looked back to the thrones, silhouetted against the ambient light of the great marble chamber.
So this is where the new war would begin…
Not even I could have imagined.
I chuckled under my breath and put a Kov leaf into my mouth. I chewed slowly.
A princess who could kill Witches, a kingdom ripe to host a college; things were falling into place despite all.
But she only killed one Witch; and I wasn’t even sure how. It could have been a fluke, it could have been an illusion. And what kind of Witch was another question… a Coven-stalker? A Brood-master? These things were important, very important. And as for the college… it seemed the court was less enthusiastic than the queen, and even she was hesitant.
I chewed the dark liquid of the Kov leaf and swallowed.
There was still much work to do…
54
Daz
We walked through the bending yellow grass. We were almost there.
For the past two days we had hardly rested; travelling until late and rising early. There was a burning in my chest that carried me on – I was compelled to continue, filled with energy. It was the anxious excitement of something new, something totally unexpected – something I wanted to explore.
The Slave, as always, kept up admirably with my pace. He certainly didn’t have tender feet; he was tough. Not the most talkative travelling companion, but reliable and wise. I never would have guessed, seeing him for the first time on the docks of Argru’un, that this hulking uyrguk would become so fatherly towards me.
And while I mourned for my drowned sisters, I knew there was no going back. Not anymore. Ashrahaz was just a distant haze now.
I wasn’t just running away from something, though. I was running toward something. Something I didn’t quite understand; something I had resisted.
But no longer.
I wasn’t accepting the fortune-teller’s fate; I was choosing it.
The sun beat down upon my shoulders as we walked through pocket meadows, broken up by clusters of pine and hemlock. A chain of needle-peaked mountains loomed ahead, slopes illuminated by the late morning sun. The sky was cloudless and blue. Insects chirped melodically in the long, yellow grass as it waved in a gentle breeze.
I slowed my pace to match The Slave. He led the mule as it bobbed its head with every step.
I looked up at him.
“I want to say thank you,” I said.
He looked down at me.
Then, for the first time, I saw him smile. It was just a small thing, upturning the corner of his lips, but it was more than enough. He nodded acceptingly in a silent ‘you’re welcome.’
We walked in comfortable silence for a ways. It always took me a while to properly form sentences in east-uyrk.
“You never told me your name,” I finally said.
“I have no name here,” he simply replied.
No name? That didn’t make any sense. A name was something that followed you; it went with you everywhere you went.
“I do not want to call you The Slave any longer,” I explained. “You must have a real name.”
The Slave looked down to me and gave another little smile.
“Anyone can call me anything. It does not change who I am. So long as I am far from home, I am The Slave. But only in name.”
I would let him keep his mystery.
As we passed out of a pine grove, Retker’s Knoll came into sight.
It was just a bump of a hillock, carpeted in golden knee-high grass, surrounded by meadows on one side and another copse of pine on the other. There wasn’t much to it; fairly unremarkable.
The Slave stopped. He shielded his eyes from the sun.
“Horses,” he said under his breath.
I strained my eyes. I saw nothing.
The Slave walked forward a short ways and pointed to the grass; it was bent and broken. A path became clear to me; someone had ridden a horse through this meadow, up to Retker’s Knoll.
My heart thudded in my chest. Could it be? Had they already passed through here?
“How old?” I asked The Slave.
“This morning,” he replied.
“Then we must hurry!” I said. “We are so close!”
I started up a jog, and he followed close behind, the mule trotting along with us.
We were so close… I couldn’t let this slip away. My mind was made up.
I ran through the golden, bending grass and up the steep rise. My blood pounded. They couldn’t be far – we had travelled so quickly, our pace had been unrelenting! Perhaps they would even be within sight from the top of the hill…
I reached the top and looked out west, toward the mountains. I was breathing hard. The Slave and the mule caught up, clattering as they went. I scanned the way ahead, searching for any sign of the dau knight and his charge…
“I didn’t know an elephant could run so fast,” came an all-too-familiar voice from behind me.
My stomach sank. I wheeled around.
Something stirred from the pines; someone rose from the grass nearby.
It was Vash-turel.
Flanking her were Ayurda and Ta’ali, her most loyal lieutenants. They glared at me. And, rising out from the pined flank of the hill, came three elvish riders. They were armed with weighted ropes and
long staves.
My heart sank.
“How…?” I began, completely taken aback – completely taken off-guard.
The three riders approached; they did not seem menacing at all, seated on their sway-backed sumpters. They lingered behind Vash-turel and her two lackeys, looking more like sheep-wranglers than anything else. Which they likely were; just hired labour.
But they weren’t here to wrangle sheep. They were here to wrangle an entirely different quarry.
“How did I find you?” Vash-turel sneered, finishing my question. “Without the Soul Slab, it was harder than it should have been.”
Ayurda lifted her left hand to show it was wrapped in a thick gauze.
They must have used blood-burning… crude and inefficient. But it worked; snatching memories from the stream of past thoughts, images of places known but unseen…
I was astonished they had survived the shipwreck. The storm was merciless, the waves deadly – I certainly would have died, if not for The Slave. How then had they survived?
Looking at the six before me, my heart sank further, further down. They were here to finish the job. The job that I had abandoned. I had abandoned all of them for dead, abandoned the entire Empire of Un and everything I ever knew… shame burned upon my face.
But something else burned. Something else far more potent than shame.
Hatred.
I looked at Vash-turel, her weasel-like face, and hated her.
She killed Avna’a. I could never forgive that.
“I must say, though – I’m almost relieved to see you here. And still with that slave. We’ll need someone to carry the baggage,” she grinned. “Gol-Gorom will be so pleased.”
I squeezed my fists until they shook.
A whirlwind of emotions swept through me – I was frozen in place, unable to move, unable to speak until I had wrestled them.
Vash-turel, Ashrahaz, Gol-Gorom… damn them. Damn them all.
I did not want to be a slave any longer. I would not be menaced by Gol-Gorom and his threat of sending me to a harem. I would not be cowed into submission – forced to shave my head, told never to see my own reflection.
There was more in life – I could see that now. Away from Ashrahaz. Away from the Empire.
I had a future; I heard it from the mouth of an old fortune-teller. I saw it in my dreams – and I saw it in the face of a dau knight I had tried to kill. I didn’t understand it, but I felt it. I felt, in some vague and hazy way, like a light glowing at the end of a tunnel, that there was something good – something more.
“Well, are you going to get down and hide or not? The mark will be here any moment,” Vash-turel said.
They all looked to me, confused by my inaction. I remained motionless. I knew what I needed to do… but did I have the strength to do it?
I smiled.
Of course I did.
“No,” I said aloud.
Vash-turel shared a confused look with Ayurda and Ta’ali.
“What?” she asked, perplexed.
I squared up to her; she was only a few strides away.
“I said no,” I repeated. “I won’t let you take the princess.”
They looked to one another, baffled.
“Have you gone mad?” Ta’ali spat.
“Or does Daz just want all of Gol-Gorom’s affection to herself?” Ayurda mocked in a sickly-sweet voice.
“You know he’s a eunuch, right?” Vash-turel joined in. “His affection is wasted.”
“I don’t give a damn about Gol-Gorom,” I retorted, quivering with anger. “Or about you. I won’t let you take the princess anywhere. I won’t be a slave any longer!”
Their mockery swiftly ended at the sound of my blasphemous words. They knew now I was serious.
“That’s fine, too,” sneered Vash-turel, curling her lip. “We don’t actually need you.”
“What’s going on?” The Slave interjected in east-uyrk, sensing the sudden change of mood.
I grabbed my shotel and unhooked my buckler from the mule’s saddlebags.
“Prepare to defend yourself,” I replied in a subdued voice.
The Slave reached over to the mule and took up his threshing tool.
Vash-turel drew her daggers with a murderous smile and got low. Ayurda and Ta’ali unsheathed their scimitars. They split apart to encircle us.
“Get the mule!” Vash-turel cried in Urvish to the three riders.
They snapped their reins and charged around to flank The Slave, staves lowered like lances and one whipping a weighted rope.
The Slave took no time to react; as the first rider approached, he swung the threshing tool in a sweeping arc. The chained head slammed into the horse’s front limbs with such force that the animal buckled and screamed. The bones of its forelimbs snapped like dry wood and the rider was flung from the saddle.
Vash-turel advanced on me; I looked down on them all, each a head or more shorter than me. I could not retreat; it was a three-on-one.
I did not need to retreat.
I knew these girls. I knew how they fought – and I knew I could best each of them in single combat.
Ayurda was already injured from blood-burning; her left hand was indisposed. None of them had shields. Ayurda and Ta’ali were not sword-fighters by profession; they were trackers, infiltrators, interrogators, poisoners.
I was a sword master. I was the greatest fighter in Ashrahaz – and today I would prove it to these cowards by taking them all on at once.
Ta’ali lunged at me from the right, almost in perfect unison with Ayurda.
Almost perfect.
I parried Ta’ali’s blade with my own and deflected Ayurda’s slash with the polished face of my buckler. Our clash rang out amid the screams of the thrashing horse.
From the corner of my eyes I caught a glimpse of The Slave grabbing hold of the rider’s weighted rope; with a savage tug he wrench him from the saddle and into the grass.
Vash-turel waited for an opening as I battled the other two; she skulked just out of reach, curved daggers at the ready.
Ayurda swept low with her scimitar, aiming for my legs; I retreated back from her and toward Ta’ali. Ta’ali was caught off-balance by my lunge; she parried just in time, cramping herself up.
I tried to press my advantage against her but Ayurda slashed at me again. I deflected it with my buckler.
Vash-turel leapt forward, one dagger out; I tucked in my buckler and batted her dagger away. She recoiled with a curse.
Ta’ali slashed at me; I parried with my shotel, then knocked aside her blade with a sudden riposte. Ayurda feinted a slash but then drew back for a lunge. It was sloppy; I saw it a mile away.
Before she could leap forward with her deadly point, I slashed out with my shotel. It caught her off-guard; the tip raked into her arm and she stumbled back.
Vash-turel advanced again, filling in the gap where Ayurda had stumbled. I caught the sweep of her dagger with my shotel as I recoiled. Then, with my buckler, I swung at her; she disengaged and my swing met with nothing but air.
Ta’ali stabbed for my exposed ribs. I tried falling back, but I was too slow. The tip of her scimitar pierced the flesh of my ribs; a last-dich effort to withdraw was all that prevented her blade from plunging deep into my chest.
Cold pain shot through where she had stabbed me. I spat into the grass and took up a defensive position.
Three on one… harder than it seemed.
Meanwhile, The Slave was defending himself from the elves. Only one was still mounted; the other two were on foot, staves lowered like pikes. The mountainous uyrguk swung his threshing tool in a broad arc, keeping them back.
Vash-turel caught sight of The Slave and withdrew from our fight to attack him. I tried to prevent her disengagement, but Ayurda blocked my lunge.
“Slave! Look out!” I cried, choking on my own laboured breath.
He didn’t turn in time. Vash-turel lea
pt at his exposed back. I screamed as I saw both her daggers plunge into his shoulders; he roared aloud and reached around for Vash-turel. Grabbing on with both hands, he threw her bodily toward the advancing elves.
Ta’ali took advantage of my distraction by swinging at me. I tried to deflect her blade once more with my own, but I was too slow. The power of her cut pushed through my defense as the edge of her blade bit into my hip.
Ayurda slashed at me again; Ta’ali did the same. I couldn’t keep up. I was hurt, I was being worn down. Ayurda’s assault resulted in blood as one blow deflected off my buckler just to rebound against my upper arm. I hissed in pain.
“Not so good after all,” Ta’ali taunted.
I snarled and whipped my shotel out toward her. She fell back defensively, but I pressed my attack; I managed to undercut her block, catching her forearm as I did.
Nothing fatal, but something to remind her never to taunt me.
I looked over at The Slave. He was bleeding heavily through his loose shirt; blood poured down his back. Yet still he fought on, bravely engaging the elves. He grabbed one of their staves and yanked him forward; once within reach he grabbed the elf by the neck and struck him with a closed fist.
I looked down at my own wounds. My hip, my ribs, my arm… I was bleeding. I was hurt. But far from finished.
Vash-turel reappeared before me. Her daggers were wet with blood. She grinned and held them up to me.
“If the wounds don’t get him, the poison will,” she hissed.
“I’ll kill you!” I screamed, lunging for her.
But Ayurda stepped into the way, eager to defend Vash-turel.
It was her last mistake.
I punched Ayurda’s sword hand away with my buckler, and stabbed low into her gut with my shotel – then I tore downward. She wailed in agony, dropping her blade as she did.
Ta’ali was already on me before I could push past her fallen comrade. I saw her coming and twisted around to block with my buckler; it was too little, too late. With rage in her eyes she brought her scimitar down in an overhead cut; my buckler merely softened the blow. Her blade still chopped down into my left shoulder, close to my neck; I felt my collar-bone snap. I screamed.
Day of the Hunt (The Faun Quartet Book 2) Page 44