Eolyn (34 page)

The King staggered back, stunned.

Ernan, son of Kaie.

Ernan, brother of Eolyn.

Both of them spawned by the witch who murdered Akmael’s mother.

Why had he not seen it before? The circumstances of Eolyn’s childhood, the timing of the raid upon her village, the shade of her hair in late afternoon, the tone of her voice when she became angry.

Rage carved a jagged river through deep and forgotten places in Akmael’s soul. It opened a black pit under his heart, and ignited a stormy wrath fed by long buried memories of what he had been forced to endure, powerless, as a child. Of what he refused to tolerate now, as a man and a king.

Eolyn’s brother strode toward him, raising his long sword with both hands. His scar glowed white upon his flushed face. His eyes burned with bloodlust.

Akmael took his axe from his belt and gripped it with deadly calm. He steadied his stance, connecting his magic to deepest powers of the earth. “Come, then, Ernan son of Kaie. Your doom awaits you.”

Eolyn cried out in pain.
She sagged against her staff and clutched at her breast, lungs burning inside her chest.

Tahmir.

She had seen the blinding light, felt the scalding heat, and sensed the terrible emptiness that followed. Across the valley, wisps of smoke rose from the summit occupied by Tzeremond and his mages.

What has happened?

Eolyn struggled for breath, trying to rise above agony and wrap her spirit around the moment at hand. Her staff took on an ominous hum. The image of Dragon glowed fiery red inside the quartz crystal. In the valley below, the two armies were tearing each other apart.

What have I done?

People she loved were dying. Killing each other, and for what?

A small flock of ravens landed in a nearby tree, their black wings fluttering and grasping at the air. The thin branches bent under their weight. With throaty cries, they summoned the scavengers of the forest.

So quickly they detect the smell of death!

More ravens would arrive before nightfall, along with badgers and wildcats. Wolves would follow, gnawing flesh off bones, fighting over limbs and entrails.

Will they feed upon me? Upon Ernan, upon Akmael?

Where is my brother? Where is the King?

She searched the valley and found them. Ernan was charging toward Akmael, Kel’Barú high his grip, its silver white blade the only bright point on the smoke-filled plain. Eolyn shivered, remembering this moment as she had seen it, in a vision years ago in the South Woods. Horror undermined her magic. Her breath stopped altogether, and the circle fractured.

I cannot let them die
.

She called to her horse, resolved to descend from this ridge and come between her brother and Akmael. She would oppose their bloody game until they lowered their arms, or she would die trying to stop them.

But the mare reared and bolted. An ice cold wind hit Eolyn and flung her to the ground. Eolyn’s staff skittered out of reach. Startled and bruised, she tried to get up, but a foot upon her back forced her into the dirt. Grit and blood filled her mouth.

“I expected more of a challenge from a student of Ghemena.” Tzeremond spoke with deadly calm.

Three ravens landed close by and peered at her with obsidian eyes. In a flash of light they assumed their true forms, High Mages all.

Eolyn reached for her staff, but a thin tether snaked around her neck, cutting off her breath.

Tzeremond directed a white hot shaft of light into the heart of Eolyn’s staff. The oak and crystal should have shattered under his curse, but it remained whole. Not one singe marred its surface.

The wizard spat and yanked Eolyn to her knees by the tether.

Eolyn’s hands went to her throat, struggling to loosen his hold.

“Your mother was Kaie, wasn’t she?” He murmured in her ear. “The witch who murdered her own sister.”

Eolyn struck him with her elbow, but he only tightened the tether, making her choke.

The High Mages formed a triangle around them and began a slow chant in a language she did not recognize. A knot of terror took hold inside. What manner of curse could require so many mages?

Tzeremond gripped her chin and forced her gaze to the battlefield. “In truth, I am grateful to you, Eolyn, for you have brought us our final triumph. Today, all resistance to the Mage Kings of Moisehén will end, and the last of your perverse magic will be purged from our land. We have waited long for this day. We have crafted it with great patience. My Order, my King, and I.”

She squeezed words out between agonized gasps. “I will not listen to your lies!”

“You are wise not to trust me, maga, but then why would I deceive you now, when our triumph is at hand?” He stroked her hair. “You remember the boy, Achim?”

Eolyn’s heart faltered. Hairline cracks spread over its pulsating surface.

“Yes,” Tzeremond said. “I see you do. Achim was not as naïve as you and your Doyenne assumed. He saw what you were from the beginning, and he understood how to use you for his purposes. He cultivated your trust because he knew, as all my students know, that the stronger the illusion of friendship, the more brutal the betrayal. The more shattered the betrayed, the greater the power we derive from their fall. The Mage Prince has only ever wanted three things from you, Eolyn. To avenge the death of his mother, to make your magic his own, and to put an end to the perfidious defiance of the magas. Today he will see his desires fulfilled. My King will slay your brother and slaughter your friends. Then he will come to possess you, to finish what he asked me to begin.”

Eolyn fought to invoke a counter spell, but it was no use. Tzeremond had cut off her breath. What kind of fool was she, to have suspected nothing when she saw the ravens? To have dismantled her circle without as much as a glance at her back?

“Look at what is happening,
Eolyn.
” Tzeremond spoke, but it was Achim’s voice she heard upon his lips. “See this battle for what it is.”

Eolyn’s spirit was sucked into a screaming tunnel and thrown into the midst of the battle. Bears grappled tigers, knights hacked down foot soldiers. The air was murky with blood and dust. Men and women lay broken across the landscape. The stench of scorched fur and burning corpses stung her nostrils.

She heard Akmael’s war cry before she saw him. He charged her brother, and they met in a horrible clash of metal upon metal, fiercer than any beast around them. Ernan’s red locks whipped through the air. Akmael’s curls lay matted against his brow. The King’s face was dark, the magic that coursed through him ominous.

Ernan faltered before his adversary. The blade of the Galian wizard glanced off Akmael’s armor and slipped against the King’s axe. The weapon betrayed Ernan time and again, in subtle but crucial ways. With each swing, Eolyn’s brother tired a bit more. Yet Ernan did not seem to notice. Lost in his obsession for vengeance, he was unable to recognize his dream unraveling.

And Akmael…

Akmael, Eolyn realized with icy dread, was toying with her brother, letting him stumble, fall and come back only to give him another debilitating blow.

Ernan staggered and leaned over, struggling for breath, eyes blinking rose colored sweat.

Kel’Barú slipped useless from his hands.

Eolyn let go a desperate sob.

The King moved in for the kill.

Eolyn cried out to Akmael to stop, but she had no voice. Such was the power of Tzeremond’s curse. Eolyn saw, but could not be seen. She heard, but could not speak. She could not turn away or close her eyes.

The King drove a fist into Ernan’s face. Her brother’s head snapped back, burgundy streams flew from his lips. Again Akmael hit him. Armor and mail tore away strips of flesh. Ernan responded with a few blind swings, but his nose had caved in, and his cheeks were being transformed into raw pulp.

Stop it, Achim!
Eolyn’s heart collapsed into the pit of her stomach.
Stop!

Ernan sank to his knees, keeled over, and lay on the ground, his breath reduced to a rasping gurgle.

The Mage King towered above him, shoulders heaving. His face was filled with contempt, his eyes black as a moonless night. He took the haft of his axe in both hands and brought the blade down upon her brother’s throat.

The Syrnte captain studied Rishona,
a frown upon his face, his steed restless beneath him.

“My Lady,” he said, “If we join the battle now, there may still be an opportunity to—”

“I said, go!” Rishona replied. “The windows have closed. My brother is dead, Ernan has fallen. The Mage King will have his victory, and there is nothing our warriors can do to stop it. Our time here is finished. There is nothing left in this place to die for.”

He nodded his assent. “And you, my Lady?”

Rishona drew a shaky breath.
I do not know. Perhaps I have nothing left to live for.
“I will follow shortly. Let me say one last prayer for my brother, that he may find his way across the abyss in peace.”

He signaled the men. They scattered silently through the woods, disappearing fast among the shadows.

Rishona watched them go with a heavy heart and broken spirit. She dismounted and paced circles among the trees, gloved hands clenched at her sides.

Oh, Tahmir.

Loss ripped through her soul. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Sinking against a tree, she struck the bark with her fist.

Beyond the woods, battle cries were undercut by the low thunder of a second charge, the charge she had intended to meet.

Regret closed tight around her heart. She looked in the direction of her warriors, but they were already well away.

Have I made a mistake?

For the first time in memory, she could not see a clear path to the future. She felt lost and alone, abandoned by all her guides and loved ones.

Gathering damp leaves in both hands, Rishona buried her face in the aroma of earth and water, of death and renewed life.

Of home.

Was that not what she felt when she wandered these hills? Rishona had always pretended to be a stranger from a distant land. Yet she belonged to this place of rich loam and wet forests, more than she had ever belonged to the desiccated plains of her grandfather’s people.

Rishona was still at one with her mother, Tamara, when terror overtook them, when brutality invaded the once quiet place that was Tamara’s womb. But Rishona had refused to die with her mother. She had fought and pushed, begged and pleaded, until Tamara used her last breath to force her daughter into a ruthless world. The babe Rishona had landed hard on wet leaves, ears ringing with the last agonized cries of her mother. Cold air had rushed into her lungs, bringing with it the smell of blood and sweat, of rotting earth and brackish water.

Even among the Syrnte, it was rare to remember one’s day of birth, but Rishona knew it was her own wails that brought the forester out of the woods. When the man wrapped the orphaned babe in his cloak, the boy Tahmir had appeared as if out of nowhere, eyes wide with shock, lips trembling in apprehension.

“You’re to take care of your sister now.” The forester had placed her in Tahmir’s arms. “She’s to depend on you.”

Ever since that day, Rishona had deferred to Tahmir, to his plans and judgement, to his caution and courage. And after all these years of pursuing a dream of justice, what had they achieved? Nothing.

“You spared me!” she cried to the heavens. “When assassins drove their knives into my mother’s belly, you spared me. For what purpose, if not this?”

A whisper sounded beneath Rishona’s knees. Sinister and primal, it rose from deep within the earth, like the hiss of a thousand snakes.

Have the Gods abandoned you, Rishona of Moisehén?

Rishona’s breath stilled. Her heartbeat slowed. She knew this call well. She had heard it often in her dreams. With trembling hands, she pressed her palms against the earth.

Your destiny is not lost
.
Avenge him. Avenge them all.

Closing her eyes, the Syrnte princess summoned the Ones That Speak for guidance. They hung back, reluctant to shape the future under the brutal swirl of the present. In their silence, she found only remorse. The excruciating emptiness of her brother’s death, the relentless shame of her own failure.

Rishona choked back a sob and wiped the tears from her face. Rising to her feet, she retrieved a crossbow and sent her gelding deep into the forest. Then she turned toward the hill where Tzeremond held Eolyn. With cold determination, she chose a path to its summit.

The tether seared Eolyn’s throat
as Tzeremond whipped it away. She crumpled to the ground, gulping air between bitter sobs. Pain clawed at her ribs, like a beast tearing her apart from the inside.  She cursed the Gods for not letting her die as a child, for leading her to Ghemena, and then to Mage Corey. Most of all, she cursed them for delivering her to Akmael.

Tzeremond circled her. The ominous chant of his mages continued. Churning clouds blocked out the sun. Thunder sounded overhead.