The Arrows of the Heart

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Zyr’s predatory gaze fastened on me, the blue intense enough to cross the distance between us, and I shivered despite myself.

  “Steady. He needs your spine, not your spleen,” Andi murmured under her breath, making me wonder how she knew.

  The men came up to us, Rayfe and Andi seeming to exchange a long and wordless communication of some sort. For all I knew, they could speak mind-to-mind.

  “I have a proposition for the pair of you,” Rayfe announced, as if he’d just thought of it. Only long training kept me from snickering, but Zyr seemed to sense it in me, a hint of amusement sparking in his otherwise turbulent gaze. “A special mission, as it were. I understand Zynda passed off the chest of map-sticks to you, Zyr, along with the charge to look for n’Andana.”

  “I’d been planning to,” Zyr pointed out, somewhat surly.

  “And yet you wasted time taunting our allies this morning,” Rayfe returned icily, staring Zyr down.

  Zyr’s attitude didn’t change dramatically, but something about his stance seemed to fold ever so slightly. If he’d had pointed ears, they would’ve flattened. “It was ill-considered, my king,” he offered. Not an apology, but likely a considerable confession for the arrogant Zyr.

  “Oh, are you implying you considered anything at all before throttling the leader of the Hawks and threatening to chase them out of my kingdom?”

  “Yes,” Zyr ground out, far less chastened than he should have been. “I considered that another of our allies was being throttled by an oaf.”

  “I didn’t need to be rescued,” I inserted, hoping for quiet dignity and coming up with frustration. “It was training, nothing more.”

  “He attacked you.”

  “I need to be useful,” I shot back.

  “And so you shall be,” Rayfe smoothly resumed control of the conversation. “Karyn, I’d like you to assist Zyr in this quest. You’ve already demonstrated you can keep your seat on his gríobhth form; Zyr, you obviously are willing to carry her as a passenger.” He held Zyr’s gaze at that, some significance behind it.

  “She didn’t care for the experience,” Zyr replied, a bitter tinge to his voice and the betrayed look he threw in my direction.

  Oh, so it was all my fault, then? I suppose I was to have gleefully taken to such an alien experience. Well, it wasn’t in me to back down. “I can learn,” I said, aware by Andi’s rustle beside me that I’d pleased at least her.

  “Don’t do me any favors.” Zyr still had that wounded gaze on me.

  “Actually, yes, do us the favor,” Rayfe corrected, glaring at Zyr, who showed no submissiveness this time. “We need all the allies we can get. This conflict with Deyrr started in n’Andana. We need to know where it is and if any of our ancestors yet live and can give us answers.”

  “But n’Andana is hidden from us,” Zyr protested. “They hid themselves on purpose.”

  “They hid themselves from the Tala by being outside the barrier,” Andi corrected with some acerbity, speaking up for the first time since her husband had taken control of the conversation. So her silence hadn’t been deference, but waiting. Interesting, their customs. “Since then they may have lived quietly, avoiding the rest of the world. It could be that there’s some magical misdirection involved, that’s guided ships away from them, but nothing that your innate magic, Zyr, shouldn’t be able to overcome.”

  “If we’re to go to war with Deyrr and possibly the entire Dasnarian Empire,” Rayfe added, with an oblique glance at me, “we could use more dragons than Dafne’s Kiraka.”

  “And if n’Andana is a denuded landscape littered with dragon skeletons?” Zyr inquired in a playful tone that barely concealed his scorn.

  “Then we need to know that,” Andi replied. “Remember that Kiraka herself advised us to use these mapsticks to find the place.”

  “I don’t know why we listen to Dafne’s ancient dragon.” Zyr made a face. “The poor thing is likely dotty with senile dementia and delusions of grandeur.”

  “Dafne?” Andi inquired silkily. “Or the dragon?”

  “Both,” he shot back. Then grinned at her groan of frustration and held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine—I’ll get out of your hair and start matching the coastline with the mapsticks. They might not correspond to anything around here, you know. But I can do it by myself.”

  “You’ll take Karyn’s help,” Rayfe commanded.

  “They’re meant to be used by shapeshifters,” Zyr argued with his king, most unwisely, I thought. “Why should I be burdened with a mossback afraid to fly?”

  He had a point, and I stewed in my embarrassed uselessness. They clearly wanted him to babysit me, to keep me out of trouble, and to keep him from whatever animal urges drove him to be watching out for me even when I’d definitively told him to leave me alone.

  “You need another set of eyes,” Andi put in. “Karyn is strange to this land, so she’ll see what you do not. We also need to keep records, which she can do.”

  “In Dasnarian,” I put in. “Not in Tala.”

  “The Tala are not known for meticulous record-keeping,” Andi told me with an enigmatic smile. “What matters is that the map-sticks are matched to known coastlines and categorized, so that we can begin to search for unknown coastlines. I have a feeling you’re uniquely well-suited to this mission.”

  “Someone else can help with—” Zyr started.

  “It has to be Karyn,” Andi interrupted him. “I’m saying so.”

  Rayfe regarded his queen with a considering gaze, though only for a moment. “That makes it a royal command from both your king and queen, Zyr. Better start sooner rather than later.”

  “As you desire, Your Highnesses,” Zyr inclined his head, barely a hint of annoyed sarcasm in it, gaze flicking to me and then away again. “You have but to command me and I obey.”

  “That would be refreshing,” Rayfe returned in a dry tone. “Then let’s—”

  He broke off, every line of his body going alert, head lifting like a hound’s to the scent, but eyes fixed on Andi. Beside me, the atmosphere around her thickened. I braced against the need to throw myself to the sand, instinctively hunching against the lightning that seemed sure to strike.

  “Trouble,” Andi said, terse and tense. Shouts of alarm wafted up the beach. “There.”

  I hadn’t blinked, but Rayfe had become a huge black horse so fast it felt as if time had skipped a beat. Andi vaulted on his back and they took off in a cloud of sand.

  “Can you ride?” Zyr demanded.

  “What?” I couldn’t parse the words in my shock at the abrupt turn of events.

  Zyr’s hand shot out, clasped my wrist. “Wake up! Can you ride a horse?”

  “Yes, but…”

  He’d become one too, tossing his head impatiently at me. I clambered onto his saddleless back quite a bit less gracefully than Andi had, remembering how earlier this morning I’d mentally compared mounting the gríobhth to this. That had been easier, as the Zyr-horse stood quite a bit taller and pranced fitfully in his impatience.

  As soon as I had my seat, he took off like an arrow from a crossbow. If I hadn’t had the reflexes of many summers racing my brothers through the meadows of the vast Hardie estates, I’d have precipitously tumbled to the sand. But my habits kicked in there, too, my knees clamping tight to his sides, holding me in place as I pulled the bow from my back, stringing it, and setting an arrow at the ready.

  Down the beach, a furious battle took place. Some sort of creatures churned in the surf, the Hawks’ swords glinting in the sun as they surged and struggled. Blood flew in the air, mixed with the brighter seawater, discernable as different because of its oily, black denseness.

  The signature of Deyrr’s creatures.

  Zyr galloped at a furious pace, faster than any horse I’d ever ridden, without sign that he might ever tire. In the still distant fight, Andi swung off Rayfe’s back fairly short of the actual conflict. He went straight from horse to wolf, bolting into the fray, while she
stood back. Though she stood in broad daylight, it seemed as if shadows streamed to her. All around her, the air darkened, that thunderstorm I’d glimpsed in her eyes manifesting in a vast cloud shot through with blue lightning.

  A bird dove at her, something large and unlike any that I’d seen before. Andi ducked, but it raked her face, catching her hair in its talons. Reflexively, I shot an arrow through it. Definitely of Deyrr, because the creature barely staggered in the air, the arrow making its flight unwieldy, but it gave no cry of pain or even acknowledged the hit. I nocked another arrow, tracking the thing as it wheeled around for another attack. For the precision I needed, however, I couldn’t be rollicking at this speed.

  “Zyr, stop!” I cried, not really expecting him to hear me, much less obey with such alacrity that I nearly went over his head this time. But my wild childhood served me well and I kept my seat. I followed the undead bird as it stooped… and I released a breath with my arrow. Sending it straight through the thing’s skull. Headless, it dropped to the sand, where it flapped and floundered, still trying to reach the queen.

  “Go,” I yelled, and Zyr leapt into the gallop. Riding an intelligent horse was like nothing I’d experienced. He circled around Andi’s cloud. With her hands upraised, she stood in the center of the storm of her own making, unseen winds tossing her long locks as if in a gale that touched no one else.

  A great creature rose in the waves. A many-tentacled monster, thrashing and lashing at the Hawks who danced in and around its strikes like small birds harrying an eagle. As I watched, a tentacle wrapped around a smaller figure, yanking her off her feet. She screamed and I knew it was Wren. I sent an arrow into the tentacle holding her, knowing it to be futile even as I did it. With a normal animal, the pain might cause it to flinch. But Deyrr’s creatures, fueled by foul magic and no motivation of their own, never showed care for their safety or wellbeing, never even felt pain, so far as I could tell.

  Zyr skidded to a stop, dumping me to the sand as he melted into the panther I’d seen across the breakfast table. He must’ve shifted more slowly than usual, because I hit the ground gently, still on my feet and never dropping the arrow I had nocked at the ready. Scanning the area for a target while Zyr raced into the fray, I spotted more birds diving down. As they headed toward Andi, and with monotonously steady intent, I figured them for the enemy and began picking them off with arrows to the head.

  They fell, to the sea or to the sand, still struggling to reach their target: Andi. Which made me wonder how they knew to look for her and why.

  No time to think about that, however. Archery requires a peacefulness of mind and spirit, so I concentrated on that, mindful of how swiftly I emptied my quiver. More animals—Tala, I knew, by their growls and roars of aggression—streamed past me, some plunging into the foaming surf to assist, others setting up a perimeter around the area. Other birds joined in the aerial battle, attacking the Deyrr birds so that I dared not shoot, for fear of hitting one of ours. I should save my last few arrows regardless.

  Seven wolfhounds ringed the queen, setting up a circle of protection, so I looked to the fight.

  The black panther clawing its way up the spine of the sea monster had to be Zyr. Even in feline form, soaked with seawater, fur slicked with blood both Deyrr and human, he had a careless grace I recognized. He buried his jaws where the creature’s body narrowed to its head, jerking back and then spitting out chunks of putrid flesh and bone. It made my stomach heave, but he did it again. A tentacle plunged at him, trying to knock the cat aside, and he howled a feline ululation that made my hairs stand up. I sighted an arrow on the monster’s eye, now visible above the water as it reared up. I could at least blind the thing.

  A man moved into my line of sight, and I aborted the pull. He climbed up the monster’s head, using knives I realized, as he had no claws, planting one over the other for purchase, booted feet bracing. Tays. No one else had that beard. He came up just ahead of the Zyr-panther, sawing at the other side.

  Suddenly, the monster convulsed. People variously screamed, shouted, roared and screeched.

  And the tentacles went limp, dropping people in the water.

  ~ 8 ~

  Like a doll dropped by a careless girl, Queen Andromeda fell to her knees.

  I ran to her, then skidded to a stop when a wolfhound wheeled on me, fangs bared and dripping a warning growl. “I’m an ally,” I yelled at it, to no avail as it didn’t back off in the slightest. Maybe it was an actual animal and couldn’t understand me. Or it could be one of those staymach creatures in different form. Ridiculous that I couldn’t tell the difference. I couldn’t even shoot the thing because it might be someone important. Such was the chaos the Tala brought to everything they touched.

  “Let her through.” The queen sounded terribly weary. The hound obeyed immediately, giving me the impression of a sweeping, even gallant bow as it stepped out of my way. I sank down in the sand next to Andi. Her cheek dripped blood, but I saw no other injury. Nothing to account for her extreme lassitude. Ripping a piece of cloth from one of my underskirts—still damp but at least rinsed clean—I dabbed at the blood on her cheek. No sign of poison. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  “Is the attack over?” she asked in turn.

  I scanned the scene—the tentacles still limp, even the birds I’d shot had stopped their lifeless flapping. “It looks like it,” I assured her. Though very odd that the creatures had all stopped. Usually the Deyrr-animated creatures had to be chopped up and burned. The only exception had been when Zynda used her sorcery out on the Hákyrling to zap the flock of undead fish-birds with a blue light that…Oh. Foolish me. “Did you magic them dead?” I had no idea how to phrase that better.

  Andi smiled slightly, likely for my neophyte phrasing. “I tried something, though I wasn’t sure it would work.”

  “Well, they’re all unanimated again, so it must have.”

  “Time will tell,” she replied enigmatically.

  A huge wolf came bounding at us at top speed. Though I knew it had to be Rayfe—and the way the guardian wolfhounds all immediately deferred to him confirmed it—I very much wanted to run away as fast as I could. Andi held up her hands and began speaking before he finished shifting to human form.

  “I’m fine. The baby is fine. Relax.”

  Rayfe scowled, the expression uncannily like the wrinkled muzzle of the snarling wolf. “What did you do?” he demanded, running his hands over her, checking for injury as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “My job,” she snapped. “Isn’t that the first thing you said to me—that Annfwn needs me? I did what needs to be done to protect our realm.”

  He gave her a long look, then sat back on the sand, a collapse as equally weary as hers. “As I recall, the first thing I asked you was whether you should risk moving after falling off your horse.”

  “I didn’t fall off,” she replied with coolly injured dignity. “Fiona fell—entirely your fault—and I perforce went with her.”

  “Perforce,” he echoed, mouth twitching.

  “Perforce!” she insisted.

  I felt as if I’d witnessed an argument in code.

  Rayfe raked a hand through his hair, then leaned an elbow on his upraised knee. “Andromeda. You cannot jeopardize yourself or the child.”

  I really wished I could excuse myself, but I couldn’t withdraw politely without interrupting, so I made myself as small as possible, looking studiously away as if observing the clean-up. They were pulling bodies out of the surf and onto the sand. I couldn’t tell who, however. The beach was otherwise empty. Just our circle, still guarded by wolfhounds, and the group dealing with the aftermath of battle. Everyone else seemed to have retreated to the cliff city, where people thronged on the balconies and overlooks. I wondered if Thalia was up there watching. If so, then at least her parents had restrained her from divebombing the fight.

  “I want this baby as much as you do,” Andi was saying, “but for you and I, being parents will always come second t
o our duties to Annfwn. You know that.”

  “Still—”

  “And I have my duties to the Thirteen. I didn’t relinquish my birthright or my loyalty when I married you. Annfwn now stands as the gate to bar Deyrr and Dasnaria from overtaking all the original twelve, as well.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “There is no ‘but.’ Besides, we don’t even know this child will survive to be born, much less any time beyond. I refuse to base every decision on something so far out of our control.”

  “If Zynda returns as the dragon, that could change.”

  “If she does, if the dragon magic dampening works as you all hope, and if we haven’t fallen to Deyrr’s undead attacks by then.” She listed the points crisply and I listened in fascination despite myself. Zyr never had gotten to the part about what Final Form had to do with babies. “I’m prioritizing. There’s no sense in ensuring the future generations of Annfwn if there’s no Annfwn to leave to them.”

  He visibly clenched his jaw. “Sometimes you are so unrelentingly mossback that I regret more than usual that you were raised among them.”

  “You make it sound like I was raised by wolves,” she shot back, clearly stung.

  “No, because that would’ve been preferable,” he ground out. “Then you wouldn’t talk about our unborn child as simply another data point in a spectrum of priorities.”

  I really should have excused myself by now. Had I ever heard a husband and wife argue? No, I surely hadn’t because a Dasnarian woman doesn’t argue with any man, let alone her husband. Still, though Rayfe clearly seethed with anger and frustration, he showed no inclination to beat his wife. Possibly that was due to her delicate pregnancy, but I rather thought he wouldn’t regardless. An odd opinion to have about a man with so much beast in him. Strange, too, that Dasnarian men were much more domineering and demanding—and inclined to easy violence to subdue the weak—with no animal nature influencing them.