Vengeance of the Hunter (25 page)

Kestar, barely daring to breathe, crouched down beside him. And then he had to lean aside, as the other healer came into the nook after him, insisting, “Let me through,
valann.
Let me help her.”

“She’s still glowing.” His voice sounded awkward in his own ears, with such stricken faces before him, but he could think of nothing else to offer. “She’s still alive.”

Julian raised his head and looked at him, with eyes gone hollow with exhaustion. “She insisted we rescue you. Said we’d all have to be with her, or else we’d all die. You’d better be worth this, Vaarsen. If she doesn’t come out of this, you won’t have to worry about your Order hunting you. I’ll take you down myself.”

“If you’re going to fight, then get out of here,” ordered the healer, pressing her hands to Faanshi’s form. “Otherwise be quiet and let me work to make sure she survives till sunrise.”

They obeyed her and fell silent, and to Kestar’s weary relief, neither of them demanded he leave. So he lingered, and watched, and wondered if the Mother would hear him now if he prayed to Her for help.

If the assassin prayed at all, he could not tell.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Julian hadn’t meant to sleep. He hadn’t wanted to, for far too many of his nights as of late had been filled with the nightmares he still hadn’t quite been able to shake. This slumber, to his surprise, was an exception. When he finally surfaced from it, so many hours later that he had no idea at all of the time, his first conscious thought was that Alarrah must have taken it upon herself to drop him into unconsciousness.

His second thought, immediately overlapping the first, was of Faanshi.

She wasn’t in his arms as he’d last remembered, but she proved to be nearby, curled up on a pallet beneath a blanket, a pillow underneath her head. The
korfi
she’d been wearing still hung loosely around her neck, but her face was exposed and turned to him, as was the hand that lay limply outstretched before her.

He still sat propped against the wall of their nook, and Vaarsen hadn’t budged either. The Hawk—if he could properly be called a Hawk anymore—was crumpled over in another corner, sound asleep. There was no immediate sign of Alarrah, and though Julian was conscious of voices and activity somewhere out in the main body of the tunnel chamber, no one came in to disturb them.

That left him free to lean forward and take Faanshi’s hand in his, and to drink in the sight of her face.

He’d kissed her, and that was alarming; that she’d kissed him in return, later, was more alarming still. It complicated things, and reminded him that this healer with an innocent heart was indeed a young woman. One he’d come to adore, he could no longer deny, and who seemed poised now on the verge of warm feelings for him if she hadn’t succumbed to them already. She was only eighteen, nineteen at most, and he knew the strength of emotions at that age—at eighteen, he’d loved Dulcinea with all his heart.

At thirty, he loved Dulcinea’s memory. But the woman that memory had become had hurled a challenge to him as she’d died, and in the relative solitude of his awakening, all he could think of was her final words to him.
Kill him or don’t kill him!

He hadn’t killed his brother, no matter how great the urge, for Dulcinea had refused to engage him in a contract.

Yet he’d been willing to kill Kestar Vaarsen twice now, on Faanshi’s behalf, without her even asking. He’d fought in her defense in Shalridan’s streets and in St. Telran’s, and though he hadn’t counted, he knew he must have slain at least some of the men he’d fought. One of his knives had certainly helped take the priest Shaymis Enverly down.

For Dulcinea, he’d still been the Rook. Willing to kill, but only for a price.

For Faanshi...the exact opposite of that, something for which he couldn’t begin to provide a name.

He was still pondering the question when her fingers tightened around his hand, snapping him out of his reverie—and when her eyes opened, he had barely enough time to note her sudden, joyous smile before she scrambled up to embrace him.

“Julian! Are we back in the tunnels? I don’t remember what happened, did we find Kestar?”

She’s asking for
him? A pang of something sweet and painful rolled through his chest at her smile, but a second one came at her words. “We got him,” he assured her gruffly, unable to keep from answering her hug, regardless. “He’s right there.”

Faanshi’s glad little cry was loud enough to shock Vaarsen awake, just before she leaped to him and embraced him with the same anxious fervor she’d just shown Julian himself. “Kestar, oh praise Djashtet we got to you, are you all right? I was so afraid we wouldn’t get to you in time.”

Kestar sat up, rubbing sleep from his drowsy green eyes. He smiled crookedly at Faanshi, and hugged her readily enough, but his voice was still sober with worry. “I’m alive. So are my mother and Celoren, thanks to you and your friends. But Faanshi, I’m still not sure you were in time at all. Don’t you remember the priest?”

Blinking, Faanshi pulled back from him. “Priest?” Julian nodded once as she glanced back at him for confirmation, and her cheeks turned sallow as she paled. “Lady of Time. Father Enverly. He was there...he...he stabbed me. And himself.”

“My best guess,” Kestar said, “is that he wanted you to heal him. They cut out his tongue at the abbey so he couldn’t speak the Rite of the Calling again.”

Julian started. “I hadn’t known that.”

“You and Faanshi both were...” Kestar looked back and forth between them, brow furrowing. “You were distracted. And there wasn’t exactly an opportune time to discuss it once you woke up.”

Faanshi sat back on her pallet and wrapped her arms about herself. Her eyes squeezed shut, while her mouth pulled into a tight, skewed line. When she spoke again, her voice had gone brittle. “I felt it. His mouth was ruined. So much pain, and I couldn’t think, and I lost control of the magic.” Her head snapped up again. “He spoke the Rite! But he died...? Did I feel him die?”

He should reach for her, Julian thought, but his gaze flashed past her to Vaarsen. The other man’s eyes held that same uncertainty, and in fact, he’d already lifted a hand. With a heavy sigh, he dropped it again and nodded. “Yes.”

“We killed him three different ways, girl,” Julian affirmed. “And we were lucky this time. The Anreulag never appeared.”

“That’s the part that bothers me,” Kestar said. “I think he might actually have finished the Rite before he died.”

“Then why didn’t She come to us if Father Enverly called Her?” Faanshi asked, going paler still. “Where could She have gone instead?”

* * *

The royal palace
,
Dareli
,
Jeuchar 4
,
AC 1876

What the people of Dareli would call the Night of Fire in years to come began when the palace shook, with a great quaking that surged up from the bowels of the earth, as if some massive beast fought its way to the surface from somewhere deep underground.

Margaine snapped her eyes when the first tremor hit, her mind latching first on the wailing of Padraiga in her bassinet, and she was out of bed and leaping for her daughter before she was even fully awake. As she scooped the baby into her arms, the doors of her suite flew open to admit her frantic maid—and behind her, two of the palace guards. “Your Highness, you must come at once,” the first one said. “We’ve got to get you to a safer location.”

His tone was respectful, but it was an order nonetheless, and Margaine didn’t waste time arguing. “Is the Bhandreid safe?” she asked, as she hastened out into the hall at the direction of the guards.

“We don’t know yet, Your Highness,” the second guard reported. “We were ordered to fetch you and your daughter.”

A second tremor shook the room, sending all four of them careening into the walls, and Margaine had to twist to make sure she took the impact on her side to protect the baby. “This isn’t an earthquake,” she cried. “That felt like something hitting the palace!”

“From underneath us?” blurted the first guard, while his companion starred herself.

A third tremor sent masonry crumbling down from the ceiling onto their heads, and Margaine froze for a moment in dread—but she could see no other option before her. Thrusting the squalling Padraiga into the nurse’s arms, she ordered the young woman and the second guard, “Both of you, get my daughter to safety. Protect her with your lives.” Then she whirled on the first guard. “Come with me. We have to check on the Bhandreid.”

Part of her rebelled, the part of her that had been living in suspicion ever since her husband’s death—what was she doing, when her first duty was to her baby and no one else? Why did she care if her sovereign lived, when she had more than a little fear that Ealasaid had brought about her own grandson’s murder?

She nearly faltered beneath her own questions as she ran toward the Bhandreid’s suite, the guard right behind her, both of them dodging falling fragments of stone and plaster and fine sculptures tipping from their bases. No answer presented itself—none that contented her at any rate—only a reflexive, ingrained duty to her queen, and an even vaguer hope in her heart that despite all her suspicions, despite all her fears, she might still be wrong.

The damage was worse in the hall that led to the Bhandreid’s rooms, and two of the royal guards lay sprawled and bloodied in Margaine’s path. She had no time, though, to stop and check either fallen man. Beyond them, the thick oaken doors into Ealasaid’s private rooms hung open on their hinges, one of them cracked and crooked, threatening to fall. Just past those lay a third guard, stirring feebly where she lay, while blood pooled on the floor around her head.

In the main room itself, as she scrambled through the broken doors, Margaine spotted the Bhandreid crumpled by the glass mosaic along one wall. Ealasaid’s face was chalk-white and bathed in sweat, and she clutched at her breast with a trembling right hand. Someone else, though, had reached her side first.

The High Priest Deglis Elirrides was crouched beside her, trying to coax her to her feet. He looked up sharply as Margaine and her guard hastened in, and to the princess’s surprise, he bellowed at her, “Damn you, girl, why are you here? You were told to defend your daughter!”

Margaine stopped dead. His shout was innocuous enough—it could easily have been mistaken for the directives of the guards who’d come to fetch her. But there was a terrible kind of awareness in the man’s eyes and, all at once, she was certain she was looking at the source of the letters that had mysteriously appeared in her chambers.

But she had no proof, and now was not the time for accusations. Instead she dashed forward, beckoning her guard to follow her, and snapped, “I wasn’t leaving without making sure Her Majesty lived. What’s wrong with her?”

“Heart,” Ealasaid whispered, in a tiny, rattling gasp that Margaine could barely hear. “Run, you foolish girl. Run while you still can.”

Then the greatest tremor yet shook the chamber. The High Priest roared an order, and before Margaine could react, her guardsman was hefting the Bhandreid’s limp form into his arms and running out the door. Deglis Elirrides should have followed; Margaine herself spun to do so. But with an iron grip, Elirrides clamped down upon her arm and forced her to turn with him to face the far corner of the room.

“Father and Mother, Son and Daughter, forgive me,” he whispered. “Your Highness, I don’t want to do this. I wanted to save you and your daughter. I tried to warn you.”

“You left the notes?” Margaine could barely shout the words, for all her strength went to struggling to break free. “Did Her Majesty kill Padraig?”

“No,” the High Priest said sadly. “She has always given the orders, but I am her eyes to see and her sword to strike. And I’m afraid, Highness, that you’re going to have to join the prince. I can’t let Her destroy us all.”

She shrieked her fury, but had no time to demand who he meant, much less to fight the man. Before she could draw the knife beneath her dressing robe, half the room seemed to explode as lightning erupted around them.

The High Priest pulled forth an amulet from beneath his own robe and began to chant, holding the amulet high, until it became a dazzling star between his fingers.

Answering light, cold, pure and pale, swelled through the room. The source of that light materialized in its center, and all Margaine’s thoughts went blank at the sight.

She was tall, taller than Margaine, and seemed to tower all the more for the extreme gauntness of Her frame. Hair as white as bone fell in disarray all about Her face, and through the snaking, roping strands, fathomless eyes of no color the princess could name blazed with primal hatred. For a fraction of an instant She paused—and then raised a thin hand to hurl lightning directly at the priest.

His amulet flared, scattering the fire in all directions, and all the while he kept chanting. Over his litany the being who had invaded the chamber screamed in a voice like steel scraping along stone, no voice that Margaine could recognize as human. It took her a shocked, breathless moment to realize that the words weren’t human, either.

They were Elvish.

“
Ràe elari enno sul ve carya!
Enno Amathilàen korthiali ràe!
”

“By this living flesh I command You, back into Your depths, witch!” Elirrides thundered.

He dropped his amulet—and whipped out a knife and drove it straight into Margaine’s side. Pain drove her to her knees, and for a few more blinding moments, it drove all else from her consciousness. Then her sight cleared, just enough to see the pale figure begin to smile through Her wild hair.

“She is not of the blood of the line that binds me, priest,” she said, this time in Adalonic so heavily accented that Margaine could barely make out the reverberant words. “I am your plaything no longer.”

“You are the Voice of the Gods! Prince Padraig’s blood still powers the binding!”

Horror rolled through the princess. This intruder, this wraith, was the Blessed Anreulag.

And Padraig had died to contain Her—at the High Priest’s hand. And at the Bhandreid’s urging.

Contain Her from what
?

Her uplifted hands bring lightning to the unjust
.

Those were her only clear thoughts as she finally drew her own knife and shoved it dazedly upward. Where she struck she could not tell, but Elirrides howled in pain and lost his grip on her. Margaine crawled away from him as fast as she could, even as the Anreulag raised both hands and blasted his crumpled form with vengeful fire. The stench of burning flesh filled the room, and Margaine didn’t dare look—that reek and the abrupt cessation of his amulet’s light were all the signals she needed that Deglis Elirrides had just sacrificed his life.

The Anreulag turned to her.

“He shed your blood to bind me,” She intoned. “You shed his blood to stop him. Do you seek to bind me, human girl?”

Pressure erupted somewhere within Margaine’s skull, making the words echo through her hearing, until she had scarcely any room in her mind for anything besides awareness of elemental, ancient wrath. “N-no, Blessed One,” she coughed. “Mercy, Anreulag!”

“That. Is. Not. My. Name.”

Each syllable struck her consciousness like a new lightning bolt, but no lightning seared her flesh, not yet. In desperation she forced her eyes open and her head up, trying to look upon the form that loomed over her now. “I didn’t know! What should I call You?”