He was burning—no, it was the fire that burned. The bloody haze across his eyes turned him almost as blind as the banshee. Something screamed, but he could not tell if the sound had come from his own throat or the bird’s. He couldn’t keep this up, and he dared not slack off. It didn’t matter if he crippled himself. If this didn’t work, he wouldn’t survive to regret it.
Dimly, he felt the impact as he toppled to his knees and then his side, but he didn’t—couldn’t—give up. He sensed the banshee’s brain flare up like tinder, hot and blinding white.
And then, almost beyond believing, the brilliance faded. At first, its edges curled like pine needles as they burned out. Patches of darkness appeared in the center of the brain, dots that spread and coalesced into irregular shapes.
A racketing cry filled Edric’s skull and as quickly died. Something large hit the ground a short distance away. All he could see now was an empty void. But he could feel, arms and legs and hardness underneath him, and warmth on his face.
“Edric!” A woman called out from what seemed like an immense distance. Was he dead then, and was this the Overworld? “Edric, are you all right?”
He managed to crack his lids open. His eyes watered in the glare from the fire. The banshee sprawled on the ground, its head on one edge of the pile of burning wood. Smells arose from it—burning flesh and feathers, and something not entirely physical, the stench of burned-out neurons.
A horse whinnied, and the woman murmured to it. “Easy, easy . . . sweet girl. It’s all right. Edric, answer me—say something!”
Edric thought of getting to his feet, but his body refused to obey his wishes. He felt as if he had just fought a tenday-long battle with a horde of berserkers. Every joint twinged and every muscle ached, but otherwise he seemed reasonably sound. Of body, anyway. Aldones knew what he had just done to his mind. If he could think at all, he wasn’t dead, which the banshee clearly was.
The fire went bleary in his vision. The air felt colder, but he could not tell whether it was because he was going into shock or because the fire was dying. Or both. Outside the shelter, snow began to fall on the downward-slanting branches, or so he dreamed.
He dreamed, too, of Kyria. Of seeing her laugh in the brightness of a summer day or flushed with the exertion of a dance. The dream of holding her in his arms was so vivid that it lead inevitably to images of other, more intimate embraces. In his mind, she was as passionate in lovemaking as in everything else. The bed beneath them shifted under their combined weight.
“Kyria,” he murmured. “Kyria . . .”
Cool fingers trailed along his temples. Sleep, sleep.
He slept, this time deep and dreamless.
Hunger woke him, and cold, and the force of his shivering. His belly cramped, as after a long session of laran work. As much as he craved sleep, he knew to heed the signs of his body’s depletion. The next moment, as he forced his eyes open, memories of the night before brought him fully awake.
The fire, which should have long since gone out, was burning brightly at the entrance to the shelter. More than that, above the flames hung several skinned ice-rabbits on wooden spits. He almost swooned at the smell of meat roasting, but hunger won out. As he sat up, the cloak in which he’d been wrapped fell away. At the far end of the shelter, the mare looked up and swiveled her ears in his direction.
Kyria slipped through the entrance. At the sight of her, the fight with the banshee came back to him—dodging the monstrous bird around the fire, Kyria climbing on top of it, stabbing it with that little knife, himself seizing the currents of life energy in the banshee’s body, in its brain. Burning out its nerves with his own laran, with his storm sense, his ability to call the lightning.
Shuddering gripped him. He fought it and the sickening grayness that lapped the corners of his vision. He was alive. They both were.
“Awake at last,” Kyria said. “And hungry, I’ll bet.”
Silently Edric blessed her practicality. She didn’t pelt him with questions he had no strength to answer. Eating the roasted ice-rabbit turned out to be a tricky business because his hands were shaking so badly. Fortunately, the meat was cooked well enough so that once he’d bitten through the crispy skin, he could pull off bits. He was so hungry, he barely tasted it. Kyria offered him a handful of dried moss to wipe his hands and chin. By the time he’d done that, bone-deep weariness enveloped him.
The next time he woke, he was alone again, but no longer shivering with the aftermath of intense laran work. He was only a little hungry—Aldones knew how much rabbit he’d wolfed down—but clearer in his mind. He wasn’t dead, or even in imminent risk of dying, and the realization filled him with astonishment.
He went outside to relieve himself, noticing that the carcass of the banshee had been dragged some distance from the shelter. Snow covered the body, several nights’ worth, he judged. No wonder he’d been so hungry.
While Edric was inspecting the stiff, snow-buried carcass, Kyria came back. She rode the mare with the ease of long experience. She slid from the mare’s back, rushed up to him, and hugged him hard. Then she drew back, blushing.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to presume—to be overly familiar. I’m just glad to see you recovering. We can travel tomorrow, can’t we? We need to leave this area before another banshee comes hunting. I’m sorry, I know I’m talking too much. I’m just so glad you’re all right, I’m nervous. I don’t know what to say.”
“Please stop apologizing. We wouldn’t be here talking if you hadn’t jumped on the banshee, a deed worthy of a hundred ballads.”
“Let’s get in out of the cold, or we will undo all my heroism.”
Edric stood back while Kyria led the mare into the shelter. “Is there any more ice-rabbit?”
Laughing, Kyria showed him where she’d hung the rest of the cooked meat. He built up the fire while she rubbed down the mare with what looked like plaited strips of inner bark. She explained that she’d gone in search of fodder for the horse and had found patches of dried grasses that were only lightly covered with snow. “It’s not enough to put back the weight she’s lost, of course, but better than nothing.”
As they ate, Kyria asked about the fight with the banshee, clearly curious to hear Edric’s understanding of the story.
“I don’t know how to describe what happened,” he said. “It’s not something I can put into any words you’d understand. I haven’t told you before, but I studied for some years at Tramontana Tower.”
“You are a laranzu, then? And Gifted with laran?” Kyria asked, her face filled with awe as if he were a direct descendent of Aldones, Lord of Light.
Edric hated that she looked at him like that. Once, long ago, those with psychic Gifts had been revered, sometimes worshipped. His teachers had no patience with such superstitious nonsense. “Laran isn’t divinely granted,” he said, “nor is it sorcery. It’s a talent that some have to varying degrees, and to use it safely requires training and discipline. What I did with the banshee involved laran, although I do not believe anyone at Tramontana, or Arilinn or Hali, for that matter, has ever done such a thing.”
“I have heard that the leroni at those Towers are the most powerful and skilled on all Darkover. Clearly, they don’t know everything.”
Smiling at this, Edric got up and went outside. While they had been eating and talking, night had come, and swiftly, as if a star-studded cloak of inky velvet were suddenly thrown across the shoulders of the world.
Kyria came to stand beside him, so close he could almost feel her warmth. His laran barriers were still in tatters from his battle with the banshee, and it seemed as if they had lost their separate skins, that all he had to do was breathe in her essence and they would be one person.
“As for my own consent,” she had said just before the banshee attacked, “you have had my heart since the first moment I saw you.”
As you, b
eloved, have mine, he thought.
But how could he hope for such a joy? She was not free to give herself to him, any more than he was free to accept such a gift. He would marry whoever would most benefit Aldaran, an alliance dictated by politics instead of love, even as she had been betrothed to Scathfell.
Too heartsick to find words, he turned away from her and went back inside the shelter.
12
As Edric and Kyria loaded the horse and left their shelter, the swollen red sun had cleared the eastern peaks, although shadows still lay like violet pools across the last night’s drifted snow. The trail rose into the barren heights, how far they could not tell. Fortunately, there was only a little wind and the sky was clear. They went on foot in order to spare the horse. Climbing would generate body heat, at least as long as their strength lasted, and if luck were with them, they would descend before the next nightfall.
Kyria kept her eyes on the trail, silent for so long that Edric feared he’d offended her. “Before all this happened, the banshee attack I mean, something troubled you,” she said with that disarming frankness of hers. “I asked but you never answered. The time to do so is now.”
“It is of no importance.”
“I don’t believe you. Something lies between us—an ancient feud between our families, I know not what. Everything was easy when we knew nothing of each other’s histories. Then it all changed, and I wish we could go back to being simply Edric and Kyria, nobodies out of nowhere.”
“Leave well enough alone.” He could not meet her eyes, could not even look at her. “I will escort you to a safe destination and be on my way.”
“If I had not seen you take on that banshee with your bare hands, I would think you a coward for refusing to answer my question,” she said, her temper rising.
“I’m not so brave as all that. You were the one who jumped on top of the banshee with only a cooking knife.”
She slowed her pace to negotiate a steeper section of trail. Loose stones littered the ground, making the footing treacherous. “Which of us is the more reckless, then? You may have the title if it pleases you. I don’t want it. I freely acknowledge the foolhardiness of any man who refuses a woman who takes on banshees with only a cooking knife.”
Edric laughed, despite himself. What would life be with such a woman by his side? Then the moment passed, and he sobered. She would not give up until she had wrested the answer from him, and he would not lie to her.
“Very well,” he said, keeping his eyes on the trail before his feet. “I will tell you, although afterward we may both wish the words unsaid. What happened was Scathfell.”
“Scathfell? My promised husband?” She halted abruptly and then hurried to catch up with him. “What is he to you, that you speak his name with such feeling? Have you a grudge against him? Has he wronged you or your kin? Or is he guilty of some infamous act, some vile perversion?”
“I know nothing of him personally, either good or bad,” Edric temporized. “But the name Scathfell is recognized throughout the Hellers.”
“Then you know more than I, for all I know is that he is richer and grander than my own family, and generous as well. None of us expected me to marry so well.”
Edric went on in silence. Why would Gwynn-Alar Scathfell send halfway across the Hellers range for a wife who could bring him nothing in the way of political or financial advantage? Why make an offer that an impoverished family could not resist? “You said that you and your promised husband had never met,” he said. “Why then did he seek this betrothal?”
“Truthfully, I have no idea. I’m boyish and have a lamentably sharp tongue. Alayna is prettier and sweeter of temper, and would make any man a better wife. You’ve met her, so you know it’s true. No, do not laugh. I have no false modesty when it comes to such things.”
“You must allow me to disagree, damisela carya,” Edric said, smiling despite himself. “I cannot imagine—” He was about to say, a more desirable wife and companion.
“But I am the elder,” she went on, “and so it was only proper that I be the one when Lord Scathfell sent a marriage offer for a daughter of my House.”
“And what is the name of your House, if it is not forbidden for you to say?”
“’Tis no great and terrible secret, if that’s what you mean. We may be poor, but we are honorable and respectable for the most part. Not outlaws like those reish, those stable-sweepings of Sain Erach. I am the daughter of Pietro Salvador, Lord Rockraven.”
Edric reeled as if he had been physically struck. He felt the blood drain from his face. Rockraven . . . the lightning-control Gift.
Kyria put her hands on his shoulders, searching his face. “Please tell me what is wrong. And no more evasions like what you said, or didn’t say, about Scathfell. Why does the name of my family offend you?”
“I am surprised, not offended.” He took her hands in his and lifted them to his lips until he realized what he was doing. “We are distantly related. Aliciane of Rockraven was my grandmother.”
Kyria’s face lit with a smile. “Great-Aunt Aliciane? Who could have guessed? She scandalized the entire family by becoming barragana to Old Lord Aldaran, you know. Her father disowned her, or so I was told, and her story is still used as a warning to us girls. That’s what I meant about my family being mostly respectable.”
After they had climbed in silence for a time, she said, “Aldaran . . . If you are descended from my kinswoman, you must be a member of that family, then? A distant cousin?”
Here it was, the truth that could not be hidden. “I am actually the lord of that realm, although my mother has acted as regent during my long sojourn away from home.”
Kyria’s mouth formed an O. “Vai dom! I had no idea—”
“I am still the same plain Edric you met in the traveler’s shelter. I still put on my socks like any other man, as you know.”
“I do, indeed.” She blushed, perhaps remembering how she had warmed him that first night in the grove.
“Surely there is no need for formality between two people who have fought a banshee together. I would rather you judge me for what I have done, not as Lord Aldaran.”
“But you are Lord Aldaran, just as you are a Tower-trained laranzu. I know you do not like me to fuss over those things, so I will do my best to be irreverent.”
“Always.”
“Yet this explains why you spoke the name Scathfell with such heat. I have heard of the feud between Aldaran and Scathfell, who has not? You are kin, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he replied, “and the families were once on good enough terms to consider an alliance by marriage. The betrothal ended with the death of the Scathfell boy, which they blamed—rightly or wrongly—on Old Lord Aldaran, and relations have never recovered. They have reason to hate us, and we in turn cannot forget how they attempted to seize Aldaran by force.”
“The war that ended in King Allart’s Peace?”
“The very same.”
“It’s a sad thing when men who ought to be as brothers are at each other’s throats,” she said. “I hope you and the present Lord Scathfell are on better terms.”
“I’m not sure we’re on any terms at all,” Edric said, focusing on putting one foot in front of another. “I certainly haven’t had anything to do with him since I left home to study at Tramontana, and Mother is far too good a diplomat to needlessly incite trouble.”
They went on for a short time in silence. “Regardless of the feud between Aldaran and Scathfell, I now understand the reason Scathfell went to such lengths to bind you to him.” Edric heard the bleakness in his own voice, but Kyria deserved the truth. “The lineage we share, our Rockraven blood, is why Scathfell wanted you. You’re right, it had nothing to do with you, Kyria, or any wealth you might bring him, but because of something far more valuable than gemstones or land: what you carry in your genes.”
Ky
ria frowned. “What? A predisposition for assaulting banshees with cooking knives? A talent for trapping small fur-bearing animals?”
“Storm sense. Which, in its fully realized form, means the ability to not only detect but control cloud and rain and lightning. It runs in my family, and yours.”
“Why would Scathfell want me? I am no battle witch.”
“You not only carry the potential but the ability itself. I know this because I have sensed your mind from the time we met in the shelter. You have laran. Untrained, to be sure, but present nonetheless.”
Kyria looked away, and for a moment he thought she would reject everything he’d said. Then she lifted her head, her expression forthright. “Ever since I was a little girl, I could feel when a storm was coming. My father said I used to have nightmares about lightning even when the sky was yet clear. But my nightmare storms always came. I was never mistaken.”
“We are alike, for I have the talent, too,” Edric said. “I can not only sense storms, I can send them where I wish. I can, if you will excuse the colloquial phrase, call down lightning. I went to Tramontana Tower to learn how to control my Gift so that I would never misuse it, as has been done in the past.”
“That’s how you killed the banshee. It just crumpled, though you never touched it. And afterward, you slept as if dead, as if you had drained your life force.”
Edric nodded. “I hope that will be the end of it, that I will never be forced to either use my laran or see someone I—” love, say it! “care for perish horribly.”
Realization dawned. “Now I see what you meant when you said Lord Scathfell had no interest in me as a person. Any Rockraven daughter would have sufficed, so long as she could give him sons with the lightning Gift.”
Thunderlord Page 12