CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness (15 page)

Amid the ways of dying lay the remedies. Some spells needed a long slow death and he had poisons for that. Others needed the bright flash of blood flooding from the body, and he had obsidian knives, bone needles and sinew for those. But all of the deaths brought pain. Mehahui had nursed him back from all of them. The painkiller had been one of the most faithful tools in her arsenal.

She held out her hand to accept one of the dark pills from him. “Thank you.”

A drumming sounded on the main road, heading toward the harbor.

She dropped the pill. A queasy tension in her belly held Mehahui rigid. Three creatures came into view—men whose bodies were twisted into something like massive storks with four legs. Her fear raced ahead of her mind and she had already begun to back away from the road before she recognized them as men riding horses, the exotic animals the Ouvallese had brought with them from overseas.

Warriors, clearly, and wearing the green and black Ouvallese colors—outriders, returning to the main band. If the gods were replaying their age-old game, then this unlucky chance was clearly Pikeo’s move.

Which had more influence on mortal lives: Death or Luck? Would Hia win again in her battle against her brother?

The man in front saw them and shouted. She could not understand his words, but his intent was clear. Halt. Kahe placed his hand on his knife.

In moments, the three riders had cut them off, pinning them in the middle of the crossroad. The one who had shouted, a small effete man with blond curls showing under the bottom of his black helm, pushed his horse in closer. He pointed at Kahe’s knife.

“Not to have!” His Pahenian was slow as if he spoke around a mouth of nettles.

Kahe glanced at the other riders. “I don’t understand.”

The blond pointed to the ground. “There. Put!”

Kahe nodded and reached slowly for the tie of his knife belt.

Despite the shade of the trees, heat coursed through Mehahui. The knot in her stomach throbbed with her pulse. Hia could not have brought them to this crossroad only to abandon them.

She looked around for an answer. The soldier closest to her lifted a bow from his saddle. Without giving Kahe time to disarm, he pulled an arrow from his quiver. Aimed it at her husband. Drew.

“Kahe!”

Her husband flinched and turned at her cry. Before he finished moving, the arrow sprouted from his cheek.

Mehahui shrieked. The soldier turned to her, bow raised.

Kahe flung out his hand and a palpable shadow flew through the air to engulf the soldier. His face was visible for a moment as fog in the night, then he vanished.

Blood cascaded from Kahe’s mouth down his chest. He staggered but raised his arms again.

Spooked by its rider’s disappearance, the soldier’s horse reared and came down, nearly atop Mehahui. She danced back and grabbed at the dangling reins, trying to stop the bucking animal.

Ignoring her, the other two soldiers closed on Kahe. She flung the same spell she had seen him use, sucking a living night into being.

In that moment of inattention, the horse crashed into her, knocking her down. A hard hoof slammed against her belly.

Mehahui rolled, frantic to get away from the horse’s plunging feet. Fetching up against a trunk at the side of the road, she struggled to get air into her lungs. Dear goddess, was this what Kahe felt when she strangled him?

The hard crack of metal on obsidian resounded through the forest. Kahe somehow had drawn his knife and met the remaining soldier’s blow, but the glass shattered on the steel.

Mehahui pushed at the ground, but her arms only twitched. The bright pain of Hia’s gift flared in her belly, almost blinding her. Her thighs were damp and sticky.

The soldier raised his sword again to bring it down on Kahe’s unguarded neck.

Mehahui cried out, “Stop!”

It was not a true spell, but the soldier stopped. His arm, his horse, everything froze in mid-motion.

Kahe shuddered. Then, he slipped sideways and fell heavily to the ground.

The soldier, a statue in the forest, did not move.

Mehahui crawled across the dirt road to her husband. The pain in her stomach kept her bent nearly double. Her skirts were bright with blood.

Something had broken inside when the horse had knocked her down.

No matter now, Kahe needed her. During the years of aiding him, she had seen almost every form of near-death and learned to bring him back. She grabbed the smooth leather sorcerer’s kit. With it in her grasp, Mehahui set to work to save him.

The arrow had entered his cheek under his right eye, passing through his mouth and lodging in his jaw opposite. Kahe was bleeding heavily from the channel it had cut through the roof of his mouth, but she knew how to deal with that.

Shaking, Mehahui turned him on his side, so he would not drown in his own blood. She broke the arrow and pulled the shaft free. Then with a pair of forceps, she tried to pry the arrowhead out of his jawbone. The forceps slipped off it. She gripped it again, but her hands shook too much to hold it steady and his mouth open. If she could not get it out, the wound would suppurate and Kahe would die despite all her efforts. Again, she tried and gouged his cheek when the forceps slipped.

Mehahui looked at the sky, tears of frustration pooling in her eyes.

The frozen soldier still stood in arrested motion. His cape stood away from his body showing the bright gold seal of the Ouvallese king on the field of dark green. A bead of sweat clung to the edge of his jaw in unmoving testament to her power.

She did not need the forceps. She had Hia. Praise the goddess for giving Mehahui power when she needed it most.

Mehahui focused on the arrowhead and sent a prayer to Hia. Channeling the smallest vanishing spell possible, she begged the arrowhead to go. For an instant, a new shadow appeared in Kahe’s mouth and then blood rushed from the hole where the arrowhead had been.

“Praise Hia!”

The other wounds would answer to pressure. From the kit she took pads of clean cloth, soaked them in suhibis flower honey and packed them into the wounds. When all was tied and tight, Mehahui looked again at the soldier. There was no time to let Kahe rest.

She held smelling salts under his nose and braced herself for the next task.

* * *

Kahe retched and his world exploded with pain. Every part of his head, his being, seemed to exist for no reason but to hurt.

He tried to probe the pain with his tongue and gagged again. Cloth almost filled his mouth.

“Hush, hush . . . ” Mehahui’s gentle hand stroked his forehead.

Kahe cracked his eyes and tried to speak, but only a grunt came out. Bandages swaddled his head and held his mouth closed.

“You have to get up, Kahe. The rest of the warriors will be coming.”

Battalion. He had to get up. Kahe could barely lift his head and somehow he had to stand. With Mehahui’s help, he rolled into a sitting position.

A soldier stood over them. His sword was raised to strike.

Kahe tried to push Mehahui away from the man and fell face forward in the road. All the pain returned and threatened to pull him back into Hia’s blessed darkness.

“It’s all right! He’s—he’s frozen.” Mehahui helped him sit again.

He looked more carefully at the soldier. The man’s cloak had swung out from his body, but gravity did nothing to pull it down. Kahe did not know of a spell that could do such a thing.

He looked at Mehahui. The shadows under her eyes were deeper. In the hollows of her cheeks, the bone lay close beneath her skin. Blood coated her skirts and showed in red blotches at her ankles.

He tried to ask, but his words came out more garbled than a foreigner’s.

Still, Mehahui understood enough. “Hia granted my prayer.” She stood, the effort clear in her every movement.

Kahe grabbed her skirt and gestured to the blood. What price had Hia demanded for this power?

She pushed his hands away. “You have to hurry. I think the main road is the fastest way back, yes?”

Kahe forced a word past the cloth in his mouth. “Back?” They could go around the battalion in the forest.

“Yes. Back.” Mehahui stood with her hands braced on her knees, swaying. “You have to go to King Enahu.”

He shook his head. “Hia’au.”

“I am not going to Hia’au. The goddess gave me the power to save Paheni, not myself. I am staying here.”

She could not mean that. Kahe clambered to his feet. The forest tipped and swayed around him, but long practice at being bled kept him standing. He had to make her understand that going to Hia’au would save both her and Paheni. No possible good could come from her staying here.

As if in answer to his thoughts, Mehahui said, “Look at the soldier, Kahe. Do you see the badge on his shoulder?”

Kahe dragged his eyes away from her. The coiled hydra of Ouvalle shone against a field of green. Where the necks sprouted from the body, a crown circled like a collar.

“That’s their king’s symbol, isn’t it? He’s landed. It’s not a single battalion, but his army.” Mehahui beckoned him. “Please, Kahe.”

He would not leave her here. Kahe clawed at the bandages surrounding his head. If he could only talk to her, she would understand.

“Please, please go. Hia—” her voice broke. Tears wiped her cheeks clean of dirt. “Hia has given me more power, but I only have until this evening before she takes me home. I want to know you are safe while I meet the King of Ouvalle.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Kahe had freely dedicated himself to the goddess but she had no right to demand this of his wife. Mehahui was his wife. His. Hia had no right to take her from him. Not now. Not like this.

Death combined with Luck showed the hands of Hia and Pikeo and they stood square in the middle of a crossroads. The Mother only knew what else the gods had planned.

“Hate her.”

“No. No! Do you think this is easy for me? The only comfort I have is that I am serving a greater good. That this is the will of Hia and Pikeo and the Mother. You will
not
take my faith from me.”

How could he live without her? The thunder grew louder, discernible now as the sound of a great mass of men marching closer.

Mehahui limped to his side and took his hand. She raised it to her lips and kissed his knuckles tenderly. “Please go.”

Belling through the trees, a horn sounded.

Kahe cursed the goddess for cutting their time so short and leaned in to kiss his wife. The pain in his jaw meant nothing in this moment.

The sound of approaching horses broke their embrace. Kahe bent to retrieve his sorcery kit; if he took one of the faster poisons, then he could match Mehahui’s power and meet Hia with his wife.

Mehahui put her hand on his shoulder. “No. I don’t want you to go to the goddess. Someone must bear witness to our king.”

He shook his head and pulled out the tincture of shadoweve blossoms.

“I have spent our entire marriage helping you die and knowing I would outlive you. Have you heard me complain?” She spoke very fast, as the army approached.

Kahe glanced down the road. The first of the men came into view. It seemed such a simple thing to want to die with her.

A mounted soldier separated from the company and advanced, shouting at them until he saw his immobile comrade. Moments later, a bugled command halted the force a bowshot away.

Men crowded the road in the green and black of Ouvalle. Scores of hydras fluttered on pennants, writhing in the breeze. Rising above the helmets of the warriors were ranks of bows and pikes. In the midst of them were towering gray animals, like horses swollen to the size of whales, with elongated, snaking noses that reached almost to the ground and wicked tusks jutting from their mouths. Each whale-horse glimmered with armor in scales of green lacquered steel. The black huts on their backs brushed the overarching trees. What spell had they used to bring these monsters across the ocean?

Mehahui squeezed Kahe’s shoulder. When she stepped away from him, the absence of her hand left his shoulder cold and light.

She spoke; a spell amplified her voice so the very trees seemed to carry her words. “Lay down your arms and return to your homes.”

Involuntarily, the closest warriors began to unbuckle their sword belts. Their sergeant shouted at them and looks of startled confusion or bewildered anger crossed their faces.

Then, at a command, the front rank of archers raised their bows.

Kahe reached for what little power was available to him. A rain of arrows darkened the air between them and the army. Kahe hurled a spell praying that Hia would allow him to create a small shield. As the spell left him, the air over them thickened, diverting the leading arrows but not enough.

Mehahui wiped the air with her hand; arrows fell to the ground. Their heavy blunt tips struck the road creating a perimeter around them. Designed to bludgeon a sorcerer to unconsciousness, without risking a wound that would bring more power, these arrows meant the Ouvallese army had recognized what the two of them were.

How long would it take them to realize that
he
was without power? Kahe turned to his kit when the air shuddered. A spell left Mehahui and the trees closest to the road swayed with a breeze. A groan rose from their bases. The trees toppled, falling like children’s playthings toward the road.

Horses and men screamed in terror. Trumpeting, the tall whale-horses were the first to feel the weight of the trees.

On the lead whale-horse, the cloth curtains of the black hut blew straight out as a great wind pushed the trees upright.

The curtains remained open. An ancient, frail man stood at the opening, supported by two attendants—Oahi, the South Shore king’s sorcerer. Another spell left the traitor king’s sorcerer, forming into a bird of fire as it passed over the warriors’ heads.

Screaming its wrath, the phoenix plummeted toward them. The counter-spell formed in Kahe’s mind and he hurled it, creating a fledgling waterbird. The phoenix clawed the tiny creature with a flaming talon and the waterbird steamed out of existence.

Moments later, Mehahui hurled the same spell. Her waterbird formed with a crack of thunder. The roar of a thousand waterfalls deafened Kahe with each stroke of the mighty bird’s wings.