Breath of Angel (32 page)

A fierce look of vengeance flitted across Lord Rejius’s face. Then his smug smile returned, and he rubbed his hands together as if preparing to taste a delicacy. “My harper suggests that I release my personal priestesses to dance.” He waved his hand toward Hanni and the girls. “Come, come. Dance for us while my harper plays.”

Iona turned white as the moon. Nuri’s mouth fell open. They both glanced at Hanni, who shook her head, stern faced. The entire room sweated.

“Perhaps another day.” Lord Rejius laughed, moving behind Melaia. He placed his taloned hands on her shoulders. She tried to breathe normally. “I’ll release the younger two. As draks,” he hissed. “And you will be their food. If you don’t obey me. Play. Now.” He pressed her down, his talons pricking her shoulders through her gown.

Melaia winced and sank to the floor, wondering how far she would go to get the priestesses released. Would she hand over the book? The Angelaeon? Promise him the third harp when she found it? How could she blame Trevin
for returning to Lord Rejius for Dwin’s sake if she was willing to do
anything
to save Iona and Nuri?

She shoved the thought aside and settled the harp, which had grown several leaves at its base, in her lap. She closed her eyes in an effort to compose herself. The pulse of the harp met her like a faithful friend, and she realized her fingers were hungry for its strings, her heart thirsty for its voice. She began plucking a song about friends, one that Peron had always liked. She played with all the feeling she could, as a tribute to Peron.

Halfway through the song, Melaia became aware of a fresh breath of wind ruffling her hair. She glanced up, her fingers still dancing on the strings. The pennants hanging from the gallery swayed in the breeze. “Windweaver?” she murmured, grasping at a breath of hope.

“Behold the power of my mage-harp!” crowed Lord Rejius. “Even the wind is at my command!”

Melaia clenched her teeth, glared at him, and intensified her song. Notes showered the air like the spray of a fountain. Guests rose and elbowed each other to get to a place where they could stand in the breeze. Only two guests, a steely-eyed man and a sharp-nosed woman, remained at the side table, one at each end. As they rose, Melaia caught a faint sense of their colors, oily brown and a blood-streaked gray. Malevolents. They placed their hands on the hilts of their daggers.

Then Pym entered the hall from the serving door and stood beside Dwin. Melaia’s heart jumped. How was Pym free? Why would he stand beside Dwin? What about Livia and Jarrod? Before she could sort it out, Jarrod and Trevin appeared, supporting King Laetham between them.

Melaia stared, her fingers slowing on the strings. Trevin? He hadn’t betrayed her? He hadn’t! And the king was alive!

Relief and joy and hope flooded through her like the fresh air through the windows. She began to play a wild tune of welcome to spring. It was autumn, she knew, but she felt like spring. A spring that would wake the king.

Pym leaped onto the table and thrust his sword into the air. “King Laetham lives!” he shouted. “The king is here! Long live King Laetham!”

The guests gaped, gasped, pointed. A wave of murmurs swept the hall. The king was pale and still in a stupor, but he was definitely alive. Livia swept in behind him, her dagger drawn. Hanni and the girls rose.

“This is not your king.” Lord Rejius forced a laugh. “The king is dead. I saw his body with my own eyes.” He pointed a sharp-nailed finger at King Laetham. “This man is an impostor.”

The king cocked his head, blinked his eyes, parted his lips. Jarrod held a goblet for him, and he sipped some wine. A stiff wind stirred the king’s hair. He raised his hands to his temples and tried to speak, but his eyes stared straight ahead as if he were blind.

Melaia poured herself into the music. To wake the king.

Lord Rejius whirled, his hawk eyes fixed on Melaia, his smile gone. “It’s the harp,” he seethed. In two strides he was grabbing her wrists, yanking her hands away from the harp, and twisting her arms behind her.

Trevin drew a dagger. Caepio and the actors snatched swords from among their props as Pym leaped down from the table with his blade. In response, the malevolents slid out their swords. The talonmasters blocked the entrance, while guests and servants retreated toward the walls. Wind whipped the pennants, and everyone waited for an advantage.

Melaia seized the silence. “Here’s the impostor,” she yelled to the guests. “Lord Rejius tried to murder your king.”

A taloned hand clapped over her mouth, and the hawkman dragged her toward the gallery stairs, leaving the harp standing silent in the center of the hall. All the anger stuffed inside Melaia for weeks past came flaming back. The Firstborn was the betrayer. She tried to wrench out of his grip. He was the destroyer. She kicked at his shins. Once for Peron. Once for Iona. Once for Nuri.

He shook her until her teeth rattled. “I’m done with you,” he growled in her ear.

Trevin sprinted toward them from the dais, Caepio from the stage. But the two malevolents at the guest table darted out and blocked their way as Lord Rejius tugged Melaia up the gallery stairs.

She fought him at every step, but his grip was like iron, and by the time they were in the gallery, she was limp and panting. He walked her to the edge, where the pennants flapped in the gusting wind. There he held her like a trophy.

Pain throbbed in her arms, her legs, her neck, her back. But the sharpest pain was the grief that sliced through her as she resigned herself to the fact that the Firstborn would never let her leave the great hall alive. Which meant she couldn’t wake the king with the harp. She’d never know what would happen to Iona and Nuri and Hanni, and she’d never know what might have come of her friendship with Trevin.

She bowed her head, and Lord Rejius removed his hand from her mouth. “Say farewell to your friends,” he hissed.

In the hall below there was a movement, slow and deliberate. Melaia blinked to clear the teary blur from her eyes and saw Livia strolling halfway down the opposite wall, holding her thin cloak closed against the wind that streamed through the north windows and swept out the south. Her gaze was locked on the hawkman like a cat eying a mouse. The entire hall was poised, a wave about to break, except for the king, who stood as rigid as stone, unseeing, unhearing. Melaia swallowed hard.

Lord Rejius leaned her over the gallery edge. Her knees felt as weak as water. She glanced at her friends one last time, then turned her eyes to the king, remembering her pledge not to go out with a whimper but a shout.

“Father!” she yelled.

The king’s body jerked. Jarrod steadied him as his gaze drifted toward Melaia. His arms reached out.

Lord Rejius crowed. “The king is your father? You want him?” Keeping an unearthly hold on Melaia’s right wrist, he pushed her over the edge.

She screamed. Her heart throbbed in her throat and pain knifed through
her arm as he dangled her high above the floor of the hall. With her free hand, she grabbed desperately toward the gallery, the pennants, even the hawkman.

A small drak dived through the window and shot like an arrow toward Lord Rejius. He swatted at it with one hand, then screeched at the king. “You want your daughter? Take her.”

The grip on her wrist relaxed, and Melaia plummeted toward the floor of the great hall. She clutched at empty air, the breath stolen from her lungs, and tumbled into a white presence that swept her upward. She gasped and found herself clinging to Livia as her broad white wings rode the wind, circled the great hall, and descended toward the harp.

And the wave broke.

Lord Rejius shouted commands. Two draks swooped in through the windows, and Pym and the actors rushed to block the talonmasters. Fein, the etched one, tossed Paullus a sword. He caught it, whirled around, and in one stroke slashed through Fein’s torso. Livia ran Vort through as he turned from cutting down two of the actors.

Cilla pulled a knife from her bodice and opened the neck of the guard behind Hanni. The high priestess grabbed the girls and ducked under the head table. Dwin positioned himself over them, while Jarrod left the king with Cilla and dashed to where Trevin and Caepio held off the remaining malevolents. Paullus shot to their side as the small drak darted back to harry the hawkman. Livia took to the air to deflect the large draks.

And Melaia played. Her right wrist throbbed, and pain shot into her fingers, but she forced herself to pluck the strings. Amid the shouts and crashes and screams and blood, she played. One more tune before they all died here, every last one of them.

Then she noticed the king staring at her with life in his eyes. With Cilla’s aid he began to walk toward her.

A giddy, lightheaded laugh bubbled in Melaia. She thought she was surely as crazed as Zastra, but her heart still beat. The harp still thrummed. She was alive. Her father was alive. Trevin had not betrayed her. She laughed.

A charge of thunderlight struck the harp, which deflected the blazing bolt, shattering it into sparks and jolting Melaia to her senses. As she blinked away the glare, she realized the king was near now, and she wondered if she dared stop the music.

Then she glimpsed Lord Rejius raising both his arms. They shriveled and twisted sideways as black feathers spread across his skin. His face contorted, a beak emerged, his gold eyes glared like live coals in charred wood. For a moment the hawk balanced on the edge of the gallery as the horrified onlookers stood stunned. Then with a deafening screech, he shot from the ledge, razor talons extended, a gold-eyed stare locked onto the king.

Melaia leaped to her feet. As the hawk grabbed for the king, she swung the harp with all her might. The blow sent the bird tumbling to the floor. Melaia dived on top of the hawk and pressed the harp down across its chest and angled head. Down, down, down.

A hiss spewed into the air, smoke curled up, a singed stench roiled around Melaia, and she was engulfed in the hot fumes of Lord Rejius’s spirit as it left the hawk’s body. It writhed around her like a vine, constricting tighter and tighter.

Unable to move, Melaia felt her body sink, heavy as stone. She couldn’t draw a breath. Her eyesight dimmed, and sounds blurred. With weighted hands she groped for her pouch and wrapped her fingers around Dreia’s wooden book.

A hot pulse shot through her like flames racing across a dry branch. Her spirit surged with new strength, and she sensed the alarm of the Firstborn at the power of the Tree. For a moment they grappled, each spirit locked in the other’s grip, breath of angel against Firstborn immortal, the Tree their bond. Melaia could feel the hawkman’s fear, but instead of fighting, she calmed her spirit and allowed the Tree’s force to flow through her. At last the Firstborn’s spirit released its choke hold and whirled away.

Melaia lay panting on top of the harp and a pile of feathers. As her eyesight cleared, she saw a large tattered drak fly out a south window, bearing the spirit
of the Firstborn on its back. A second drak lay dead on the floor nearby, while a third, smaller one sat on Melaia’s arm, preening herself.

Iona scooped up the small drak, and Nuri stroked it while Hanni helped Melaia rise. Bedraggled actors, servants, and guests surveyed the damage, tended their wounds, and took deep breaths of the fresh breeze that gusted in from the sea.

Melaia stared at the distorted body of the hawk beneath the harp. She would have the body burned. Every bit of it. But she knew it would make no difference. Rejius was immortal, and, like Benasin, he would have even his ashen body back.

“Melaia?”

She didn’t recognize the hoarse voice, but as she looked up, the people around her parted and bowed.

“Melaia.” King Laetham steadied himself with a hand on Jarrod’s shoulder.

Melaia dropped to her knees. “My king.”

M
elaia shifted from foot to foot, eying the great wooden door of King Laetham’s private apartment. Last evening when the king approached her in the crowd, it had felt so natural. He had beamed at her, and she had smiled back, and they had watched the rush of activity around the great hall. The king had spoken few words, for the exertion of walking and speaking for the first time in months had drained him. Melaia, too, had found herself exhausted, so they had parted for the night.

But this morning before breakfast, the king had called for Melaia, which had set a flurry of tasks in motion. Now here she stood, wearing a new silk gown. She exhaled slowly as Hanni adjusted her sash. Visiting the king in his apartment didn’t feel as natural. Already she missed the breakfast of barley bread broken with friends around a morning fire.

She rubbed the bandage around her right wrist, which still ached from the hawkman’s grip. “I can’t do this, Hanni.”

“Of course you can.”

“He’s the king.”

“He’s your father. Very much human. He just happens to wear a crown.”

“What do I say?”

“That, Mellie, is something only you will know.”

“Can’t you go with me?”

Hanni put her hands on her hips and scowled. “You are a priestess. Daughter of Dreia. You carry authority with you. Remember, he loved Dreia.”

“Did he? Then why—”

The door lumbered open, and Hanni stepped back, leaving Melaia feeling small and alone and vulnerable. But she recognized the blond-bearded man
who bowed to her, his twisted left hand at his chest. She had last seen him in the dungeon at Redcliff. She felt the impulse to bow to him in return. In her estimation he certainly deserved it, but the bow was reserved for the king. Such was the world of cumbersome formality.

She stood tall and nodded. “Lord Beker.”

As Lord Beker rose from his bow, the smile in his eyes told her he recognized her as one of those who had set him free. “Your father will receive you now,” he said.

Melaia took a deep breath and allowed Lord Beker to usher her inside. The sitting room was high ceilinged, its windows letting in a fresh sea breeze with the morning light. On the walls hung shields, round, square, oval, and tricornered, of leather, wood, copper, and gold. Beside a thick-legged table stood a generously padded chair, and in the chair sat the frail king, his eyes lively, obviously enjoying her awe. He held out his hands. She clasped them as she bowed.