Furyborn (36 page)

Rielle

“My dreams are strange of late. I fear… My darling daughter, please forgive me. I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

—Letter from Lord Dervin Sauvillier to Lady Ludivine Sauvillier
June 19, Year 998 of the Second Age

Rielle glanced back at Tal only once.

“Stay here,” she commanded, then ran out of the house, ignoring his shouts. She felt a twinge of guilt at leaving him
pinned under the rafter and hoped it wouldn’t hurt him irreparably, but at least there he was out of harm’s way.

He also wouldn’t be able to interfere.

She raced out of the maze, aiming for the nearest hills and the spectator stands. The acolytes’ fire had ravaged much of the maze; her path out was clear, though clogged with smoking rubble.

At last she emerged into the foothills—and
chaos.

Half the stands stood in ruins, bedraggled banners in the colors of House Courverie flying ragged in an unnatural gale. The sharp alpine scent of windsinger magic stung Rielle’s nose.

Dozens of bodies lay strewn across the ground. Thousands had come to see her trial, and now they scattered across the valley like upset ants. The air was clogged with screams, wails of pain, the crash
of elemental magic.

On one of the ridges that lined the hills, she scanned the scene with a pounding heart. She could make no sense of what she saw—people running with children in their arms, elementals in scattered duels. Who was the attacker here? Borsvall?

Every sense pulled taut as she searched for some sign of him. Corien,
here
, no longer a dream. The very idea seemed impossible.

And yet—

She straightened, her skin tingling. A sharp twinge of satisfaction that was not her own plucked a song across her ribs.

Come find me, Rielle.

“Protect the king!” shouted a familiar voice. She whirled, saw her father and a company of soldiers herding King Bastien away to safety. Others, led by her father’s first lieutenant, hurried Queen Genoveve away in the opposite direction.

Audric. Ludivine.
But she saw no trace of them.

She moved to join her father, then heard a furious shout.

A uniformed soldier—not one of her father’s—raced along a ridge, nocked his arrow, let it fly into the belly of the queen’s horse. It screamed and fell; the others nearby panicked, rearing up wild-eyed.

“Get her to safety!” bellowed the first lieutenant, shoving the queen behind
one of his soldiers.

The uniformed archer shot another arrow, just before Sloane, long black coat flying, jumped down from a collapsed viewing stand. She knocked the arrow out of the sky with her twin obsidian daggers, then thrust them at the archer. A pair of shadowed wolves burst from her blades and tackled the man, jaws open wide. One latched onto his throat, the other his belly.

Rielle
ran to him, joining Sloane in time to see the man’s clouded eyes flicker, as if a shadow had passed through his mind. The wolves flinched away and dissolved. The archer’s body jerked once; his neck snapped. His gray eyes cleared to an ordinary brown.

“What was that?” Sloane muttered, wiping the sweat from her face. “Did you see that?”

“I did,” said Rielle, a slow understanding creeping
through her.
Corien?

Hmm?
He sounded entirely satisfied.
What is it, my dear?

“These are Sauvillier colors.” She touched the man’s collar. “Why would Lord Dervin’s men attack like this?”

Something slammed into the ground, shaking the hills.

“I don’t understand,” Sloane snapped, a thread of desperate fear in her voice. “We’re their own people!”

What a tragedy it all is
, Corien
mused.
If only there was a way to stop
it.

“He’s doing it,” Rielle whispered. “He’s controlling them.”

Sloane stared at her. “What? Who is?”

If you want to stop this, you will come to me. Now.

A chill shook her.
Where are you?

Come find me, my marvelous girl. Or I will kill them all where they stand.

Sizzling booms of magic and the agonized cries of soldiers ripped the
air of the foothills to shreds. Rielle started to run.

Sloane grabbed her arm. “No, wait! Tell me what’s happening!”

Rielle knocked the flat of her palm against Sloane’s chest and sent her flying back twenty yards into a clump of grass.

She turned and ran, tears smarting her eyes, but there was no time for guilt. She tore up the hill’s rocky slope, along a series of cliffs overlooking
the still-burning maze.

The earth bucked beneath her feet, sending her flying. She landed hard, turned to see an armored Sauvillier woman wrench her ax from the ground. An earthshaker.

The woman stared at Rielle with a face made of stone. Her eyes were an unseeing gray. The woman’s mouth twitched; Rielle recognized that smile.

“Come find me, Rielle,” the woman croaked, raising her
ax once more.

Rielle flicked her wrist. The earth rose up like a cresting wave, then opened up and swallowed the woman. A terrified scream rang out, then fell silent.

Getting closer
, Corien whispered.

She turned, following the trail of his voice along the cliffs. She ran past dueling soldiers, gathered churning knots of wind in her hands and knocked them all aside. An arrow shot past
her, barely a miss.

Then she heard a familiar voice cry out, “Lady Rielle!”

She whirled, saw a group of people huddled against a rocky outcropping, young Simon Randell and his father among them. Fifty yards away, a dozen Sauvillier metalmasters advanced on them, palms outstretched, flinging an endless cyclone of blades.

And Audric stood between them and his people, Illumenor casting
a brilliant shield of light around them.

But the metalmasters were fast, and their weapons faster. The blades tore themselves into smaller pieces as they flew, spinning so fast between their casters’ hands and Audric’s wall of sunlight that they became a storm of sparks and steel. They bore down on him, relentless, ricocheting off his blazing shield again and again.

Audric’s heels sank
into the ground beneath the pressure. He lowered his head and let out a furious roar of pain. Light scattered across the ground like fallen stars.

From behind Rielle came a terrified cry: “Save him!”

Ludivine.

Rielle whistled for Atheria, power rushing down her limbs to pool in her palms. Atheria dropped from the sky, raced low across the clifftops.

Turning, Rielle whipped her
arm in a circle. The metalmasters flew back from her, their weapons crashing to the ground.

She spun back to Audric, thrust out her palm. A blast of wind slammed into him, sent him flying back through the air right as Atheria passed by the cliff’s edge. The chavaile maneuvered sharply to catch him, then climbed back into the sky.

“Rielle, no!” Audric reached back for her as Atheria carried
him away to safety. “Rielle!”

What a delightful development
, Corien crowed.
I would say how noble of you that was, Rielle, but we both know the truth, don’t we?

Rielle raced past the people Audric had been protecting and threw herself into the knot of metalmasters. They’d recovered, retrieved their weapons. Their eyes gray and clouded, they lunged at her. Daggers came flying. She pivoted,
dodged them. An angry tongue of metallic-tasting magic wrapped around her foot, yanking her down. She slammed her palms to the ground; tremors cracked the earth open. The metalmasters stumbled, and she leapt up, ducked under a chain’s angry lash, then thrust her forearm at the group and watched them fly. Some skidded off the cliff’s edge.

She turned, searching wildly for Ludivine, found her
and Garver Randell helping the survivors down a cliffside path.

“Lu! Over here!”

Ludivine looked up, hair mussed and cheeks bloodstained. Their eyes locked; Ludivine smiled breathlessly at her.

Then, an enormous metal-tipped hammer spun across the space between them, slammed Ludivine in the gut, and knocked her screaming over the cliff’s edge.

Furious instinct took over Rielle’s
body. She spun on her heel, punched the air so hard that the metalmaster who’d thrown the hammer flew back one hundred yards. His skidding body carved a furrow into the ground before slamming into the mountainside.

Rielle stumbled to the cliff’s edge, searching the ruins of the maze far below for signs of Ludivine’s body—and finding nothing. The smoke was too thick, the distance too great.
Shock swept through her in waves. She clung to the rock, her vision rolling.

“Lady Rielle,” said Garver Randell, approaching carefully up the cliffside path. He extended his hand, Simon watching wide-eyed behind him. “Please, my lady. Come with us.”

Oh, my darling girl.
Corien’s voice was as gentle as it ever had been.
Let me comfort you.

Rielle stood, pushing Garver’s hand away. She
turned, unsteady, and gazed through tear-filled eyes across the hilltops.

Where?
Her thoughts felt sluggish.
I can’t… Corien, she’s…

Follow the sound of my voice.

She did, running first slowly and then frantically. A terrible clouded grief yawned inside her, threatening to swallow her whole, but beneath even that was the pulsing
need
—to see Corien, to know that he was real.

To
stop him from doing anything worse.

His trail led her into a cave beneath a large hill. She ran through a nest of cramped stone passages, the walls trembling on either side as the fight behind her continued.

At last, she rounded a corner into a circular cave. Tree roots snaked up the walls. A small opening in the center of the ceiling gave her a glimpse of the sky.

King Bastien rose
from a boulder against the wall. Lord Dervin sat on the floor. Gray clouds clogged each man’s eyes.

At the sound of footsteps, Rielle turned to see her father walking toward her out of the shadows.

She hurried toward him at once. “Papa, you’re all right!”

“You found me.” Her father’s mouth curled into a slow smile. “Well done.”

Rielle froze. He extended his hand, gray eyes unblinking
on her face. She brushed past him, searching the room’s shadows.

“Manipulating my father’s mind,” she declared, “is not the way to win my heart.”

“Shall I release him, then?” murmured a voice.

She whirled at the sound. A column of still black watched her from the corner. Her mouth went dry; her heart skipped up her throat.

“Release all of them,” she ordered.

“As you wish.”

A ripple shifted through the room. Lord Dervin looked around in confusion, his eyes clearing.

King Bastien shot to his feet. “What is the meaning of this? Why are we all here?” He glared at Rielle’s father. “Armand?”

“I don’t know, my king.”

At the touch of her father’s hands, Rielle turned to face him. “Papa, I’m so sorry.”

“Are you hurt?” He smoothed back her hair. “What’s
happening here?”

“Rielle is leaving you, I’m afraid.”

Rielle turned—and there he was.

Corien.

He moved slowly across the room, light-blue eyes fixed on her face. Tall and slender, hands held carefully behind his back, sleek dark coat buttoned at his shoulder and trailing to the floor. Pale face, cheekbones high and elegant, a full mouth that curved with delight at the sight of
her.

Rielle’s breath came high and thin. Her dreams, as vivid as they had been, had not done him justice.

“My God, Rielle,” he murmured, his hungry gaze raking down her body. “I didn’t think it possible, but you are even more exquisite now than you are in my mind.”

Her father stiffened with fury at her side. “Rielle, you know this man?”

“Who are you?” King Bastien stepped forward,
a furious expression on his face. “Why have you brought us here?”

Corien took one step closer to Rielle, then another. His eyes never left her face. “I wanted to make sure Rielle didn’t run from me. And you won’t, will you? Not with all these very important men so dangerously close to me.”

“You won’t hurt them.” She shook her head, her voice cracking. “I forbid it.”

“Queen of my heart,”
murmured Corien, putting a gloved hand to his chest, “my greatest wish is to please you. But you must promise to leave this place with me, tonight, or I’m sorry to say you will force my hand.”

Panic and craving waged a war in her chest. “But I can’t, I need more time.”

“More time? For what? To be poked and prodded, studied by lecherous magisters and ordered around by an idiotic king too
frightened to face the truth?”

Lord Dervin stared at his hands. “I never meant for this to happen.”

Corien laughed. “As if you could have stopped it!”

“Rielle, who is this man,” her father demanded, “and why does he talk to you this way?”

“He’s an angel,” Rielle bit out.

Corien’s eyes flared with displeasure, even as his smile grew.

King Bastien drew his sword. So did Rielle’s
father, shoving her behind him.

“That’s impossible.” King Bastien looked as though someone had kicked him in the gut. “The Gate is strong. It was meant to hold for—”

“For a long time,” Corien snapped. “Not forever. Rielle, it’s time to go. Unless you’d like me to demonstrate firsthand what I’m capable of?”

Rielle swallowed hard and moved toward him, her power itching to touch him even
as her mind screamed to stay put—but her father threw out his arm and stopped her.

“You will stay away from my daughter, whatever you are,” he said, “or I will—”

“Do what? Kill me?” Corien chuckled. “My dear man, I’d like to see you try.”

Rielle’s father didn’t hesitate. He lunged at Corien, raised his sword to strike. Then his body jerked, his eyes clouded over, and his sword crashed
to the ground.

“No!” Rielle ran to him.

He looked at her, head tilted unnaturally to the side, and struck her hard across the face.