Mystic Rider (31 page)

The militiamen milled angrily.

Talking while fighting was second nature to Aelynn men, as
was fighting for the sake of fighting, but Aelynners had known peace for
thousands of years, so fighting to actually cause harm went against their
inclinations. Ian sensed some of Murdoch’s tension in doing so. He had to find
some way out of this tangle before any of them unwittingly killed a man.

Wielding saber and rapier, Murdoch advanced slowly, pushing
southward along the cliff’s edge. “Your puling heart would object to a
hurricane.”

“You would drown Pierre and the chalice,” Ian said in
growing irritation.

He could feel the cup slipping away, along with his
patience. Murdoch would have them embroiled in a real battle if he did not find
a better focus for his temper. “Seek their thoughts.”

“That’s your ability, not mine!” Murdoch slashed his sword
in the direction of a soldier aiming his weapon. “To hell with this!”

Fire erupted at the soldier’s feet. The earth trembled
beneath their boots, sending showers of shale crashing to the rocky beach
below.

“
Stop it
, Murdoch,
or you’ll destroy us!” Even as the words emerged, Ian knew he’d have to act on
them — halt Murdoch’s explosive reactions before he endangered more than a dozen
men.

But the only way to stop an out-of-control Murdoch was to
slay him.

As if in protest of his thoughts, a shriek like the wail of
ten furies carried over the wind and struck his heart with the force of a blow.

Chantal —
in danger,
and both afraid and furious.

Fear gripped Ian in a fist so tight that instantly, all his
strength, all his talent, poured into one goal — reaching Chantal.

He spun around to face the plateau, and the staff in his
hands began to vibrate as raw energy filled him. The ground stopped trembling. Murdoch
bent in two and fell to his knees in pain — whether Ian had done that to him or
Chantal had was impossible to tell. Ian’s entire world narrowed to removing
anyone who stood between him and his endangered amacara.

Grabbing one end of his staff with both hands like a cricket
bat, he swung the oak with all the power in him, creating a wind of such force
that the militia stumbled backward in astonishment. Had he time to think about
it, he would have stumbled in surprise as well. He had many minor abilities and
could raise a breeze for amusement, but never a hurricane’s gale.

He lashed out again, clearing a passage with the force of
his will and the thunderous storm of his staff. Chantal’s fear and fury tapped
energies deep inside him that he’d long ago locked away. They exploded from
their strongbox now, but unlike Murdoch, whose tempestuous anger was erratic
and uncontrolled, Ian ruled his ferocity with an iron will, directing it toward
a single purpose.

Any militiamen still standing fell over their comrades in
their efforts to avoid the lashing of his mighty oak. They stumbled faster once
Ian exercised the full fury of his mental forces. He’d never unleashed his
abilities to this extent for fear of the damage he’d cause, but Chantal’s voice
held him steady.

Her screams were closer, more like war cries than panicked
shouts. Knowing Chantal better now did not ease Ian’s alarm. Her untempered
wrath could wreak as much havoc as Murdoch’s, perhaps more since she had little
knowledge of what she did.

“By the gods, Olympus, you’ll rip
all
our heads off!” Murdoch shouted as Ian’s staff spun in circles,
disarming those who dared rise behind him as well as those in his path.

The warning didn’t hold him back. Ian swung his staff with
such speed that men who raced to halt him now dropped to the ground to evade
his blows. Chantal had released the beast he kept caged inside.

She streaked across the horizon, bareback, her hair
streaming like a flag behind her as she aimed — not toward him, but toward the
cliff to the north, with half a dozen blue-clad National Guardsmen in pursuit.

In her haste, she was riding directly toward the precarious
edge of the cliffs.

Finally free of the trap of armed soldiers, Ian broke into a
sprint, running along the cliffside. Until now, he’d not felt the sweat on his
brow, but his hope of intercepting Chantal’s mad dash pushed him to his limits.
He could match the mare’s gait, but neither the force of his mind nor the brawn
of his muscle could stop animal and rider from bolting over the edge, or
falling in a crumbling avalanche of loose shale.

In the back of his mind, Ian was aware that Murdoch might
grab this opportunity to chase after the chalice on his own. It no longer
mattered. Swinging the staff to send sprawling a soldier who approached from
behind, Ian focused, seeking the connection that bound him to his amacara,
hoping to warn her of the danger. He was almost there…. Just another moment…

Her thoughts were clouded with unheeding fury, and the
recklessness of her intent nearly brought him to his knees — she thought to save
him
. In desperation, Ian swung around,
knocking down two more men. He had no time for indecision. And no time for
disobedience.

“Murdoch!” he yelled at his nemesis, who was already halfway
down the crumbling rocks to the beach below. When Murdoch only hesitated, Ian
channeled his amacara’s compelling tones. “Waterspout, Murdoch!” he thundered.

The resulting reverberation forced Murdoch to scramble
upward again. “Blast you to Hades, Olympus, I can’t control the sea,” he cried,
but miraculously, he acted upon the command, running along the edge of the
precipice to join Ian.

Intent on her goal — a point jutting toward the sea to the
north of them — Chantal was merely a furlong away from the precipice, her
pursuers an equal distance behind her.

In an age-old ritual of obeisance, Murdoch held out his
sword to Ian’s outstretched staff. “You’ve never done this,” he protested.
“You’ll kill us both.”

“Better that I die than live without her. You needn’t
follow.” Ian staggered as Murdoch’s erratic power surged into the already
pulsating staff. “Now!”

They opened their minds, as they once had as children. Only
then, it had been child’s play, and Murdoch hadn’t needed guidance. Now, Ian
had to take the full brunt of the storm, remain standing, and harness the
energy in tandem with a man whose mind he no longer knew.

Surging through Murdoch, the force of wind and water slashed
into and through Ian, wild and unmanageable, until he channeled his strength
through the staff and sword, achieving the center of power that Murdoch
desperately sought through a haze of pain.

Together, from that core of strength, they commanded the
wind and waves. The air whipped and the tide rose, crashing along the jagged
point where Chantal was headed. If they worked swiftly enough, they could catch
her, prevent her fall….

At the cliff’s edge, Chantal wheeled her horse. Her pursuers
hauled on their reins to prevent crashing into her.

To Ian’s horror, as the National Guardsmen fought to control
their mounts, Chantal’s horse reared. For one startled instant, their eyes met.

In that one moment she was there, full of life and roaring
her defiance. In the next, she tumbled backward off the horse and disappeared
over the cliff, onto the rocks below.

Power and fury swept through Ian to Murdoch. The howling
waterspout rose to its full menacing height — too late to save Chantal. With no
other alternative, Ian raced to leap into the rising storm to follow her down,
not caring whether he lived or died.

With a scream, Chantal flung herself free of the horse and
tumbled off the edge of the cliff, straight into an unanticipated gale-force
wind.

Dying for her cause was not her intent.

She landed on a grassy ledge hidden directly beneath the
cliff overhang and hastily grabbed a boulder to keep from being blown into the
sea below.

Above her, the mounted soldiers trampled the plateau a
distance away, wary of meeting the same fate — not knowing what she had known: that
the jut of the cliff hid a grassy area and a clear path down to the water.

Despite the wind, her heart pounded with terror and
exhilaration. She could not describe the primitive rush of excitement she felt
at outwitting and outriding a troop of trained cavalry. Bruised and filthy, she
slid down the muddy path through the rising wind, toward the crashing waves, to
duck under an outcropping of rock.

The full impact of Ian’s grief abruptly blasted her exhilaration
like ignited gunpowder. Panicking, she glanced from beneath the overhang. Where
was he?

An unusual blast of wind whipped her skirts and toppled her
sideways. Alarmed, she pressed back into the lee of the overhang. Below, the
extraordinary wind caught the wild waves and whirled them ever higher. She
blinked in astonishment as a wall of water rose and swirled from the cove.

A waterspout!

Horses pounded the ground above her head, running to escape
the dangerous gale. Shouts of alarm echoed over the wind’s howl. She prayed
frantically as water sprayed across the cliffs, raising fears of Neptune rising
from his watery grave. She could think of no other reason for the wind and
water to blot out a clear summer day.

Earlier, when she’d been riding, she’d felt Ian’s presence
in her head, giving her courage. It was as if he were the air current beneath
her newly fledged wings. She’d felt invincible when she should have been
shaking with terror. Now his agony tore at her heart.

Finding a strong handhold, she peered from her hiding place.
Her gaze was drawn to the cliff on her left, where two tall masculine figures
raised their weapons in salute to the tempest. Then, to her horror, they
deliberately dived off the edge, into the howling maelstrom.

Ian!

The cries escaping her throat matched the silent screams
echoing in her heart.

Not Ian, please Lord,
not Ian!

The waterspout sank to the sea as abruptly as it had risen,
dragging Ian and Murdoch down with it.

Below, the waves crashed against rocky outcroppings,
splintering any debris caught in the sea’s deadly grip. The wind died as
abruptly as it had arisen.

Releasing her handhold, Chantal fell weeping to her knees.
This had to be a nightmare from which she would surely wake. No storm could
behave like that.

Ian couldn’t be gone.
He’d been too vital, too alive, too…honorable! She’d scarcely had the
opportunity to appreciate all that he was.

Now that she was faced with this sudden black hole in her
existence, she was crushed by the realization of how much a part of her he had
become. Shaking, sobbing, she knew this was the one death from which she could
not recover.

* * *

Ian spluttered and shoved his wet hair out of his face as
he climbed up on a tumble of boulders battered by crashing waves. The cliffs of
this coast were little different from those of his home. He’d never descended
them quite so precipitously, but treading deep water and climbing slippery
rocks to escape the sea were second nature to him.

Murdoch emerged from the swirling tide a moment later,
snarling and whipping his hair back as he, too, climbed onto the rocky
platform. Sitting, he yanked at his boots. “You’ve been practicing diving,” he
growled. “It’s a wonder you didn’t split open your fool head.”

Ian ignored his companion’s complaint. He desperately scanned
the bluff above, looking for tatters of cloth or the broken body of his
amacara. She’d thrown herself off a cliff…to save
him
. Saving lives was
his
duty.
That she’d undertaken it for him… He rubbed at his suddenly blurry vision and
continued his search.

Moments ago, her voice and mind had filled him with
animation, helping him command energies he’d never dared release, opening his
eyes to a future far wider than he could possibly have imagined, and now…

He couldn’t deal with his soul-devastating grief.

His near-fatal dive had forced him to recognize what he
should have seen all along; Chantal’s spirit, her sincerity, integrity, creativity — her
love —
were her accomplishments. That
the chalice had allowed Chantal to obscure its presence meant it
trusted
her. If the chalice was
sentient, it had been telling him that it would welcome the shelter of only a
man, or woman, of purity and enlightenment.

And he’d been fretting over worldly assets like Chantal’s
physical
gifts, not the beauty of her
soul!

And because of his selfish carelessness, he’d lost
everything.

Shattered, refusing to believe such life and love could be
extinguished so uselessly, he continued to search the rocks towering over them.
His mind was blank of everything but what his senses told him.

Oddly, instead of feeling her absence, he felt her
heartbroken anguish.

She was alive!

Her mind was fully open, but he could not reach her through
the storm of her grief.

Hope soared, but decades of experience had taught Ian to
restrain foolish emotion. With Chantal by his side, maybe… Someday, please
Aelynn, he would dare open his heart again.

“I’ve not performed the waterspout dive since we were
foolhardy youths,” Ian replied with only half his mind. He knew better than to
ignore Murdoch entirely, but his senses were occupied with searching for
Chantal.

For Chantal, he’d learned to coordinate his physical senses
with his mental ones, call on his passion as well as his experience. She’d
showed him how to be whole again, and he needed her to balance his energies
while he continued to learn.

Barefoot and carrying his ruined boots, Murdoch waded
through the receding surf to stand beside him. “I’ll pull back the waves,” he
said quietly, with what sounded almost like sympathy. “If she’s caught beneath
them, perhaps we can still find her.”