Asunder

by Tanya Schofield

  He sighed. Whoever he was, the man was gone, and the damage was done.

  “Senna’s a good woman,” he told the unconscious girl as he returned to her side and lifted her easily over one shoulder. He walked to the mare, noting the girl’s staff lying nearby. “She’ll do what she can for you.”

  As a general rule, horses – or any other domesticated animal – became very nervous around Aggravain, and the smoke-colored mare was no exception. He, however, was not a patient man. He held the whinnying horse’s bridle in one hand, still balancing the slip of a girl in the other, and stared deep into the mare’s wildly rolling eyes.

  “Get us to Gira with no trouble, horse, and I promise I won’t eat you.” His voice was quiet, but his tone was deathly serious. The mare seemed to understand. She was the very picture of obedience, patiently waiting with Nia draped over her back while Aggravain circled back to find and change into his clothes from where he had stashed them before the change took him.

  Crossing the Deep River took longer than he wanted, but convincing the already terrified mare to swim alongside him while he balanced the girl and her staff was no easy feat. Even with the horse at a full gallop for the rest of the journey, it was close to moonrise when they arrived at Senna’s small Inn. Too close for Aggravain’s liking. There was no time to waste. He pulled Nia into his arms and kicked open the door.

  “You break it, you remake it!” Senna had her back to the door, but she shouted cheerfully over the din of the crowd.

  “Senna.”

  The room had grown quiet after the door crashed open, and Senna heard him speak her name as if he were right beside her. The smile slipped from her face and she turned, disbelieving. Her towel dropped unheeded to the floor. The room resumed some of its chatter, but for Senna, nothing else existed but him.

  After all this time, he was here.

  “’Vain.” Her voice was not as strong as she willed it to be. He was broader in the chest than he had been when he left, she noticed, and his hair was longer, but those eyes— there was no mistaking those eyes. She would know him anywhere. He stood like a statue there in the door of her Inn, holding what looked like a child. There was blood on the girl’s torn dress.

  He met her eyes across the room, mouthing more than speaking the words. “She’s been bitten.”

  Senna knew exactly what he meant, as he knew she would. She’d been there with him, in the beginning, and of course she’d seen her sister, after … Clarity returned, and she pointed the way for ‘Vain before she bent to retrieve her towel.

  “My room’s in the kitchen,” she said, confident he’d hear her.

  “Well, then, I guess I’ll meet you there, honey.” The voice of the man behind her was slurred with drink, and his hand on her hip was far too familiar for her liking. He was new in town, obviously. Her regulars knew better.

  Senna stood and leaned in close to the stranger, bracing her hand on the back of the chair. “I don’t think so… honey.” She pushed him backwards, kicking the chair legs out from under him and sending him sprawling - neatly rescuing the cup from his hand and setting the drink on the table without spilling a drop.

  “Get him out of here,” she snapped to the others. Most of them were laughing at their felled companion. “See he stays gone.”

  Senna brought her towel to the counter. “Mind the crowd, Lesha,” she told the girl. “I’ll be right back.”

  By the time she arrived in the kitchen, Aggravain had already found the discreet curtain and laid the girl down on Senna’s bed. He turned when she entered.

  “I have to go,” he told her, his face dark and serious.

  Senna stared. “Go? ’Vain, you—”

  “I have to go,” he insisted. “Will you care for her?”

  She frowned up at him, crossing her arms across her chest in the way he remembered so well. The honey-lavender scent of her threatened to overwhelm him, if the hunger of the coming change didn’t drive him there first. His whole body was alive with the need to shift, the moon was calling him and his control was slipping.

  “Senna, please.” His voice was ragged. “I can’t stay.”

  “Years,” Senna countered. “It’s been years. You can’t just leave now.”

  The girl on the bed tossed her head restlessly, moaning low in her throat. Both Senna and Aggravain felt sudden, unbearable heat and pain flood through them at the sound, and Senna gasped. She took an involuntary step back, looking to Aggravain for an explanation. He had none.

  “I’ll return,” Aggravain promised, shouldering past her and out of the kitchen. As quickly as that, he was gone, leaving Senna with nothing but questions and memories and a scrap of a girl getting blood on her blankets.

  Senna’s frown deepened.

  “Well, let’s see to you, then.” She spoke under her breath, not expecting a response. She got none. Laying her wrist on the girl’s burning forehead, Senna shook her head. It was as bad as she remembered from when ‘Vain had been attacked, though that had been many years ago.

  The bandage on the girl’s arm was clumsy and soaked through with blood, but it was a good start. Senna stripped away the cloth, revealing the wound, and even her steady nerves faltered at the gruesome sight. It was almost exactly as she remembered. When they were younger, Aggravain’s shoulder had been torn apart like this, though not down to the bone.

  What did ‘Vain expect her to do? Yes she was a Healer, but she was a midwife— not a miracle worker. Senna stood and rummaged through the herb jars on the counter. Her magic was not without limits, and healing this girl was sure to test them. Best have some non-magical help as well. She brought the jars and some clean towels to the girl’s side.

  “Let’s get a look at the rest of you,” Senna said, taking a seat on the stool by the bed. There could be more than just the bite affecting the fever, she knew. Better to focus her magic where it would do the most good, and save the herbs for the rest.

  She parted her hands and held them over the girl’s body, taking a deep breath. With dim, unfocused eyes, Senna let her fingers brush over the girl, following the heat from her wounded arm to her forehead to her toes and back up to her belly.

  After a long moment, she blinked and refocused her eyes.

  “Well,” Senna said to the empty room, considering the strange red-haired girl once more. She returned one of the herb jars to the counter, then turned and leaned against the sturdy wood, nodding to herself.

  “Well,” she said again. “That certainly changes things.”

  25

  Brody Douglas blinked dizzily at the too-bright, upside-down world, surprised he was even alive. Everything hurt, he realized. He stretched carefully, taking a slow, deep breath. Finally, he rolled over and sat up, testing his bones. Nothing was broken, at least. His head, though, felt as if it were about to split apart, so intense was the pain behind his eyes as he tried to remember what had happened.

  There was a man, he thought, frowning. He had brought Nia to a soft, mossy place, he had laid beside her to sleep, and he had woken to a stranger with a knife— his knife. The blade was raised high before Brody even knew what was happening, but he had still managed to hold the blade away just long enough … long enough for what? His eyes opened. The beast had attacked them, yes, he remembered now. His thoughts lined up, and he began to feel more like himself.

  Huge, the thing was, and snarling with teeth that filled its whole head. Knocked both him and the murdering lout aside like they weighed nothin’, it had, and after that he couldn’t remember a thing. Brody squeezed his temples between the heels of his hands, but the pain would not ease. If his head would just quit achin’ like fire he could maybe think straight.

  He looked around the clearing— but this was not the clearing he remembered. Where was he? Brody rubbed the back of his head and drew in a sharp breath when his fingers found more pain, and blood. The beast had come out of the darkness, he remembered, he had been thrown back, but then what?

  Running. When he awok
e he had been moving through the trees, away from the beast, away from Nia. It was a coward’s run, and Brody knew his mama - may her soul rest peaceful - would be shamed to see her boy leave a girl in danger to save his own skin. Of course he’d tried to turn around, but his limbs wouldn’t obey. It was like he wasn’t even there, he could see but not speak, or turn his head. Worse, he sensed the stranger nearby - the one who had taken his knife, the one who tried to kill Nia, but he couldn’t move to look behind him.

  Brody’s heart beat faster as he recalled that panic, the feeling of being trapped and helpless while his body moved farther away from Nia. He had sworn to protect her, and he meant to do it. He’d fought as hard as he’d ever fought then, willing his feet to slow or his head to turn, even to make some sound, just to regain any control at all.

  When he succeeded, it was only in tangling his feet, and Brody remembered all too clearly the sight of the rocky ground approaching as he fell. Then there was a bright flash of pain, and nothing … until now. He brought his hand up to his face, his fingers gently exploring the raised lump just beside his eyebrow, brushing dirt out of the dried blood there.

  The stranger was gone, Brody realized, looking around once more to get his bearings. He had sensed him so clearly while he ran, but now there was nothing but a blinding headache and a sick fear in his gut that he was too late, that in leaving Nia behind he had doomed her to be devoured by the beast that had somehow ignored him. He had to find out.

  Brody rubbed at his hip. Getting to his feet seemed a terrible difficult task. He forced himself up, though; balancing on one foot with his head pounding like thunder, like drums, like agony itself until his bad leg stopped threatening to crumple beneath him and he felt steady enough to continue.

  He listened for the river and turned, scanning the ground in the morning light. Now he could see. He was dizzy, not blind, and the signs were clear enough. Brody closed his eyes in a long blink, taking a deep, steadying breath. His head, by the Lich, his head felt as if it would burst any moment, and shamed though the thought made him, he almost wished it would.

  Brody Douglas scolded himself, and pulled his body up to stand straight in spite of the pain. Nia was his intended, his dreams had told him that. He would not leave her to a fate unknown, not while he still had strength in his bones. He didn’t know how far he’d run in his blacked out state, but after a stop by the river to drink and cool the burning ache in his head, he would follow his own cowardly path back to the clearing in hopes of finding her again.

  That was the right thing to do, and if there was anything more worth doing than the right thing, Brody Douglas didn’t know what that was.

  26

  Jovan moved through the forms of the fight, taught to him years ago by his mentor in the Paltos arena. Practice awake, Berton had said, practice asleep. Your muscles remember, your mind forgets. The routine is the only thing that’s real. He had fought to find this peace. There was plenty to forget. Too many nights of Melody, of hovering just on the edge of a dream that was not his own, hating every moment but unable – no, unwilling – to leave.

  “Rygus.”

  He ignored the word. It was irrelevant in this place, there was nothing but the weight of his sword and the clearness of his mind. No one else could be here. Not her, not anyone. This was his time, his dream. In remembering his training, he would reclaim what he was meant to be. No more, no less. No memory, no expectations, no regret. No guilt.

  “Jovan!”

  The voice was insistent, and Jovan released the illusion of the sword in his hands with a growl for whoever dared interrupt. Turning, he saw Rhodoban leaning against a tree in a cloak of green Jovan had never seen him wear.

  “It is you,” Rhodoban said. “Whatever you may call yourself out there, Jovan is your true name?”

  Jovan nodded. “How did you know? Edwin?”

  Rhodoban shook his head impatiently, moving to Jovan’s side in one long stride. “There is no time. She needs you.”

  Before the warrior could offer protest, Rhodoban grabbed his arm. Immediately Jovan’s dream … flexed. Darkness swept over the two men, darkness dotted with countless stars. Rhodoban took a deep breath, and they were suddenly much closer to the brightest of the stars, though it was more like a beacon of light— shining with a greenish tint that none of the others had. One more breath and they were within that light, surrounded by it, part of it.

  “Stop,” Jovan said, too late. He wanted no part of Rhodoban’s magic, or the girl of which he spoke.

  Rhodoban hushed him.

  “I sought her out,” the mage whispered, “to ask after my twins.” He pointed to Melody, who paced restlessly some distance from them. “I found her like this.”

  The air around Melody shimmered as if she were a candle flame, and her lips moved rapidly though the two men heard no sound. Her dress was alternately fine and shredded; now clean, now soaked with blood. Her hair flickered from black to red, long to short, braided to curls. Just looking at her made Jovan dizzy – dizzy and angry.

  “She is sick,” the mage said. “Terribly sick. We must do something, and soon.”

  “She is not my concern,” Jovan said, not bothering to lower his voice as he turned away from the sight of Melody. The memories had come in a flood of images and emotions that threatened to undo him the moment he laid eyes on her, and surrounding it all was pure, raw fury. So she was sick. Kaeliph was dead.

  Rhodoban stared at him in disbelief. “Not your concern?” he asked. “Are you mad? She is everyone’s concern!”

  Jovan crossed his arms, still not looking back. He wanted out of this dream, but couldn’t work out how to force himself awake. “She is not my concern,” he repeated, digging his thumb into the hollow of his collarbone in an attempt to wake up.

  “How can you say that?” Rhodoban took his arm again, pointing. “That girl is the only hope we have!”

  Something snapped inside of Jovan, and he spun towards the relentless mage. “Then we have no hope at all!” His voice came out as a shout. “She let my brother die when he needed her most,” he continued, only slightly lowering his voice. “She has the power, but she will not help. In her hands, we’re all lost.”

  While they argued, Melody had stopped her pacing and padded closer on hesitant bare feet. She had been reaching to touch Jovan’s broad shoulder when he yelled, and she flinched back. It was all so confusing in this strange, fevered sleep - nothing was real, everything hurt, and she had no control over anything.

  His angry words tore at Melody’s heart. Even in a dream he hated her. It was too much to endure, and she sank to her knees, covering her face with one hand. Her other arm, heavy and hot, hung at her side.

  Jovan, feeling her fingers on his back, whirled towards her.

  Rhodoban caught at his arm. “Be gentle,” he said.

  Jovan shrugged his hand away. “You knew.” He pointed at Melody, and his voice was venom. “You knew what he meant to me, and you let him die.” The knowledge burned in him, seething in his gut. He said it again. “You let him die. You saved my life, but you let him die. How could you?”

  Her appearance continued to flicker in the strangely shimmering air around her, and when she looked up at him her red-gold eyes were glassy. Tears clung to her lower lashes.

  “I tried.”

  Even in the dream, the power in her whispered words struck the two men, who suddenly knew what it had felt like. They were with her, in her, feeling with her the last beat of Kaeliph’s heart beside her own. They felt her pour every scrap of power she could summon into his body to keep him alive, if only long enough for Jovan to reach his side. She had known that the wound was impossible to heal, yet she had continued to try, maintaining the connection, giving everything she had.

  In that moment, with his last breath, Kaeliph had been as much a part of Melody as Jovan ever was. She knew - and now Jovan and Rhodoban knew - that Kaeliph had chosen. Jovan’s brother had known that protecting Melody from the soldier would
expose his back to the other man, leaving him vulnerable. But Kaeliph also knew what the girl had meant to his brother, and Jovan was more important to him than anything. Kaeliph had made the choice.

  Staggered by the unexpected realization, Jovan and Rhodoban also felt Melody’s empty, unbearable anguish at being cast aside for failing in a task she would have given her own life to complete.

  Rhodoban reeled, stumbling back against one of the dream-trees, nearly shocked awake by the intensity of it all. Especially in a dream, this should not be possible.

  Jovan felt it rip through him, stealing his strength and his breath and his anger in one brutal blow. He had been able to keep his feet though every word Melody had spoken before this, but now—

  Kaeliph’s heart, stopping … Melody’s heart, breaking. It was more than he could bear. His knees turned to water and he sank down hard before her, his lungs desperate for air. Jovan braced himself against the mossy ground with one hand, fingers clenched as he forced himself to breathe.

  He had known, hadn’t he? Not about his brother - the sudden clarity of Kaeliph’s love and devotion to him had blindsided Jovan, that was what sent him to his knees. But surely, somewhere inside of himself, he had known about Melody.

  She would have saved Kaeliph, if she could have. Jovan knew that. Just as she had pulled him back from death, just as he endured pain and blood to save her— she would have done anything for either of them. How could he have thought differently? Melody had trusted him, and he had betrayed her. He had wrapped himself in anger, shutting her out completely, after everything she had been through…