Bride by Midnight

by WINSTEAD JONES, LINDA

  Was there pain in the Land of the Dead? Was this searing hurt to be his eternal punishment for the wrongs he’d done in his living years?

  A soft voice whispered in his ear. No, in his head. Find me. Runa beyond death or Lyssa in the Land of the Living? He was in between lives, he knew, in between the two women he loved. His sister and his wife. He had failed them both. It took great effort, but he opened his eyes. There, standing over him, was a girl dressed all in white. She was not quite solid, not quite... there. It took him a moment to recognize her, it had been so long. Runa. Runa as she would have been if she’d lived. Fifteen years old. As pretty as their mother had been, before time and war and soldiers had taken her beauty from her. So, he was dead after all.

  “Not yet,” she whispered, as if she had read his mind. “Not for a very long time.”

  “Runa...”

  “Find her, Blade. Save her and your daughter....”

  “I don’t have a daughter.”

  Runa smiled. “You will.”

  With that his little sister was gone, and the pain returned with a vengeance. He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut. “Come back,” he whispered. He had so many questions for her, so much to say.

  Again he opened his eyes. The hazy world spun and in response he pressed his hands into the dirt to make it stop. He was on his back in the forest. Sitting up was an effort, but he managed. He looked around for Lyssa, for the attackers. All he saw were the signs of a bloody struggle. He glanced down at his torn and bloody clothes, lifted a scrap of blood-stained fabric to look at the place on his chest where a blade had sliced through his flesh. He had to wipe away drying blood—how long had be been lying here? How long since he’d dreamed of Runa?—but there was no wound. There was not even a scar, other than the one Volker had given him four years ago. He checked the cuts on his arm, the gash on his leg, and found the same. Blood and torn clothing, but no actual wounds.

  Lyssa. Lyssa had healed him. His wife, his witch, the woman who had made him more from the moment she’d looked into his eyes.

  Blade placed a hand over his heart. Dammit, she had healed him there, too, though he had fought against it with all he possessed. The need for vengeance that had given him purpose was gone. It was as if there was a hole where a part of him had been, as if she had not healed him so much as ripped away a piece of his soul.

  But a new need had taken the place of that once-nurtured hatred. Blade now had a burning need to save the woman he loved and the daughter they had made, or would make. Even if his vision of Runa had been a fever dream, he knew that he and Lyssa would have babies. Daughters, like her. Sons... again, more like her than like him, he could hope, though they would be his to teach. To train.

  He had not come back from the dead to walk away from his wife.

  Blade couldn’t say if what he felt for her was real or if it was created by magic. Until he saw her safe, it did not matter.

  He searched the forest floor around him. His dagger was gone. He didn’t want to move forward without a weapon of any kind, but he would if he had to. Maybe one of the attackers had dropped a sword and he would finally have the weapon Lyssa had assured him he would use to kill Volker.

  But no. No sword.

  Blade crawled forward, brushing aside fallen leaves, continuing to search. His dagger was nearby, he knew it. Felt it. All he had to do was find the damn thing! Finally a sliver of afternoon light glinted on silver, catching his eye. There it was, half hidden underneath a pile of leaves against the base of an old tree. Still without strength, he crawled to the dagger, grabbed the hilt in his bloodied hand, and stood. His vision dimmed, his head swam, but he did not fall. Instead he rested against the tree for a few short seconds, and then he pushed himself away and started walking slowly back toward Arthes, back toward the very place Lyssa had warned him to avoid. He did not return the dagger to its sheath but gripped it in his hand.

  Perhaps he was a fool to take on the emperor’s army with no other weapon than this, but for now, it would have to suffice.

  ***

  Lyssa woke in a dark, cold room, lying awkwardly on a stone floor. There were no windows, and she was almost positive that she was underground. She felt as if she were suffocating, as if she were alone and falling endlessly, just as she had in her dreams. Dreams she hadn’t had since marrying Blade.

  But she was not falling. Nor was she truly alone. She rested her hand on her flat stomach. She’d heard her friends talk about knowing they were with child long before there was any physical indication of their condition. Edine had claimed to know the very night she conceived her first child, and a couple of other friends had told similar tales. Lyssa had never said so, since it would have been rude, but she’d thought those tales to be, well, hooey.

  Until she’d been thrown onto a horse and her first thought had been Don’t hurt my baby. Was it a real knowing or just wishful thinking on her part? Given her current situation, it was possible she would never find out. The baby seemed so real to her. So wonderfully true.

  A baby. A part of her, the part that wanted to escape from this harsh reality, wondered when—where—the baby had been conceived. On that first night, in an alleyway? In a soft bed in the home she and Blade had shared for such a short time? On a forest floor, as thoughts of true love teased her?

  She could not afford to lose herself in such wonderings. Reality could not be denied for long.

  The only light in the room crept around the edges of a door. Her head ached; her entire body was sore. She could not help but groan as she mentally surveyed the soreness. From the top of her head to the tips of her toes, she hurt.

  Was Blade dead, or had she been quick enough—and powerful enough—to heal him? She would probably never know. If he did wake and find her gone, he would surely take the opportunity to escape from her and the chaos she had brought to his life. In spite of what he’d said, in spite of the kiss... any sane man would run. With a distance between them the magic would fade away and he would be free to go on without her. At least, she hoped that was true. She wanted him to survive, to live.

  “You are awake at last,” a man whispered hoarsely. He was in the room with her, too close. Lyssa scurried away from that voice, stood, and placed her back against the wall. Her muscles ached from the struggle and the awkward ride, but fear made her forget the pain for a moment. She heard the snick of a match, watched the flame flare to life, saw it catch the wick of a fat candle. The opposite corner of the small room was lit, illuminating a man in a dark cloak. His face was turned away from her, lost in deep shadow.

  “What do you want with me?”

  He took a step toward her. She had no place to go, nowhere to run, but she pressed her back more firmly against the wall as if she might be able to move through it if she tried hard enough.

  “You should be grateful to me and my men for saving you.” When she saw his face she caught her breath and held it. In her mind, she had seen Blade kill this man with a sword. It would probably not be wise to share that information.

  Volker.

  “Grateful?” She choked on the word. “Your men killed my husband, hit me over the head, and now I am prisoner in this dank, windowless room. Grateful?”

  “Yes, grateful, witch. My girls very much want you dead, but with your husband gone, I don’t see how you’ll be much of a threat to our plans. I should like the opportunity to study you before I see to your disposal. If you are useful to me, perhaps I will let you live.”

  Lyssa had been afraid before. First of a witch’s prophecy, then of being truly alone. For weeks now she had feared herself, feared what she had become—or was becoming. Then there was her terror of losing Blade—to his need for vengeance and a sword, or to the indifference he had shown her in early days. Loss was loss. But she had never before suffered this kind of fear. This man meant to study her. While she did not know exactly what that might entail, she doubted it would be pleasant. And since she had no intention of helping him in any way, she would soon be dea
d.

  All that blood she’d seen in her mind as she’d thought of Arthes... it was hers.

  Blade had suffered from fear himself, and now she understood in a way she had not before. He had feared her ability to change him, to take away the pain in his heart. If she could heal him deep inside, could she heal others? Her touch had removed the dark magic that gifted the sentinels who’d killed Blade with unnatural silence. Would a touch shift this man’s soul from evil to good? She took a step forward, raising her hand slowly as she approached him. She attempted to harness the power that until now had come and gone with little control on her part. If it was hers, then she should—must—learn control. Just a few steps; that was all it would take to reach him.

  “It will not work,” Volker said with humor when she was two steps away. “I know what you can do. I’ve been warned. At least, I have been told what you should be able to do. It’s all very interesting and a bit unexpected, I must say. With your partner dead, you should be weakened, but even if that is not the case... I understand that you were able to heal your husband’s heart in the last days of his life because he still had a little bit of it left. I do not.”

  And suddenly she was afraid of him in another way. A man with no soul, no heart. If she touched him, would she absorb that horrid darkness instead of offering light? She could heal, she knew that now. Could the same pathways that allowed her to heal also make her vulnerable to evil?

  “How do you know so much about me?” she asked. “Are you a wizard?” A demon? A monster?

  “No. My girls, my lovely demons, they told me all about you. The witch and the blade, one to heal and one to kill. You two are—or rather were—a part of their collective consciousness, a shared fear, a shared prophecy. They say that together you could’ve ruined my plan. Alone you are nothing more than an annoyance.”

  More. Yes.

  His lovely demons... Ksana? The woman Lyssa had sensed on Level Two? Apparently that Ksana had sisters. Of course she did...

  Vellance’s words came back to Lyssa as clearly as if the old woman stood beside her now. “Do you think the Isen Demon is the only darkness that blights Columbyana and the lands beyond? There is more darkness than light in this world, girl. The light must fight to remain the stronger of the two.”

  Lyssa dropped her hand and took a step back. Again, her back was pressed to the cold wall. Calling upon a gift that had apparently been enhanced by her fear, she once again reached for the magic she had tried to deny. This time that magic came to her much too easily, as if it was and always had been a part of her. She saw the darkness that surrounded the man—Volker, the man Blade had come to Arthes to kill—as if it were a tangible thing. There was not a drop of light, not a glimmer of hope, in or around him. She absolutely must not touch him.

  Shaking, she returned to her corner, bowed her head, and closed her eyes. Volker chuckled, and it was a frightful sound. No doubt he thought she was praying fruitlessly to the gods and goddesses, or to the One God, but she was not.

  Blade had found her in the forest when he should not have been able to. The thick woods were vast and not easy to navigate, and yet he had located her as if he’d known all along where she would be. If she had healed him, if he lived, could she reach for him as he had reached for her? Could she touch him in spite of the physical distance between them?

  And if she could reach him, what would she say? Should she beg Blade to save her, or tell him to run in the other direction, far and fast?

  It didn’t matter. She tried, but there was nothing. As strong and real as her newfound magic had felt moments earlier, as much a part of her as it had become... maybe it had not been enough this time. Maybe her powerful and otherworldly connection with Blade was gone because he was gone. Tears slipped down her face, and she felt a new despair.

  Just as Vellance had predicted, she was alone. And just as in her worse nightmares, she was lost in the dark.

  ***

  Lyssa had saved him, of that he had no doubt, but Blade could not call himself fully healed. He was weak, and there was still a lot of pain in his chest. What if Lyssa had only healed his skin and beneath... beneath he was ripped to shreds?

  No, the pain was lessening as he walked, not getting worse.

  As he had found her before, he would find her again. The feeling pulling him back toward Arthes was more powerful than ever before, as if a long silken thread connected him to Lyssa and was reeling him back to the city. If the attackers had left horses waiting nearby, it was likely she was already there, but in whose hands?

  He didn’t know, but he would find her.

  As he walked he thought of Lyssa, and of Runa. Normally thoughts of Runa were so painful that he turned to drink or violence to push her memory away. But this time, after actually seeing her again—however briefly, through fever dream or a visit to the Land of the Dead—he did not crave whisky or a good fistfight.

  He was capable of love; he was not entirely broken.

  Blade tried not to think of Runa’s words about a daughter. A daughter that was, or a daughter that would be? A real visitation and message from the dead, or a wish?

  Or a fear.

  No matter, the thought of a child was a distraction, and at this moment he needed to focus only on his wife. If he found Lyssa, if he saved her... he would never again deny her. He would share her bed every night, if she would have him. If she wasn’t already with child, she soon enough would be.

  But first he had to save her, and he had no idea from who, or what.

  ***

  Not far from Arthes, the man who had used the name Stasio for the past six years changed course. Instead of heading west toward Tryfyn he turned to the north. His time in Arthes was finished, for now. He was needed in the mountains, where others of his kind had gathered.

  When he could see the mountains of the north in the distance, snow-topped even though spring had arrived and illuminated by moonlight, he dismounted and removed the long robe he’d worn for the six years he had served that fool Miron Volker. The robe had served his purpose. While someone might send out a search party for the wizard Stasio, they would have a hard time coming up with any description other than the long, black, hooded robe.

  The robe was enchanted. Some would remember him as being tall. Others would insist he was short. Some would say Stasio was a young man; others would argue that he was old. A few might remember a limp. None would remember his face.

  The girl walked toward him, coming from the north to meet him. Though the night was cool, her arms and feet were bare. Long pale hair caught the moonlight, as did her plain silvery dress. He had been expecting her.

  Guiding his horse by the reins, he walked toward her. There was no need to hurry. When she was close enough to hear him, he said,

  “Linara, yes?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  Linara was not the name this beautiful creature had been given at birth. Before her mother had died she’d named her child for a beautiful and poisonous flower. Ksana. This woman child was the first of the Ksana demons, the most powerful. Moonlight lit her face. She was by far the most beautiful of a species of unbearably beautiful girls.

  He had not met her, not in person, but they had communicated in a way only the most powerful among them could. Across a great distance, with words and with emotion, in dreams and in quiet moments, they had come to know one another well.

  “I am here,” she said simply.

  “As I see.” This night, this meeting, had been planned for the past two years. The day, the place, the hour. “Did you kill the woman who dared to falsely call herself your mother?”

  Linara smiled, and his heart—which was small and hard and had never known love—hitched in his chest. Such a smile could bring down emperors. “Of course not. Kill a Fyne witch and you bring down the wrath of a powerful clan you do not wish to face.”

  “You ran away?” he asked. “How very... ordinary.”

  “I told my mother... Sophie... that I had to get aw
ay, that I needed to be alone for a while. She didn’t like it, she tried to talk me out of leaving, but she understood. Too many people know my secret.”

  When they met on the road they both stopped walking. He reached out and cupped her cheek in one hand. “We have much to do, Linara.”

  “Yes, I know. And I am ready.”

  “One born, one hatched, one created... they were talked of in hushed whispers among wizards long before the first of your kind was born. Those three will stop us, if we don’t stop them first.”

  “That’s why I’m here... Stasio? Should I call you Stasio?”

  She turned about and they walked side by side toward the mountains. Far in the distance, visible only to one whose vision was extraordinary, a speck of dragon’s fire lit the sky.

  “For now, that name will do.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lyssa slept fitfully on a cold stone floor, without a blanket or a pillow. Her supper had been a piece of hard bread. There had not been enough light to see if there was mold on the bread or not, but she had eaten it anyway. She was starving. She had to eat, for the baby if not for herself. For a few terrible moments she had wondered if there really was a baby, if the idea of a child—Blade’s child—was anything more than a fantasy, a wish.

  No, the baby was real. She had come to accept that; to embrace it.

  By her reckoning it had been a full day since she’d lost Blade. The hours moved too slowly here, but she could not allow her fear to cause her to become so disoriented that she lost all track of time. She ate, she slept, and she did her best to keep her wits about her.

  She dreamed not of Volker or of being trapped in a cold room of stone, but of Blade. In her dream he came toward her. Sometimes he ran, but often he could not. There were times when he could barely walk. He was too tired, too badly hurt. She saw him steal a horse, saw him race toward Arthes and her, and she heard him call her name. Sometimes in a whisper, sometimes with a shout, as if her name were a war cry. Again and again, she heard him call her name.