Hunter and Fox (30 page)

He caught a flash of discomfort from her. Shaking off his hand, she pursed her lips and stared at him, considering perhaps how to react. The second of empathy had passed as he waited anxiously for her to decide. Whatever had happened between Pelanor and his sister he could not tell, but he was sure he was not yet as powerful as the Hunter. He hoped the Blood Witch didn't know that.

She sighed dramatically. “By the goddess' third mouth, you are a fool!”

“We have no divinities in Conhaero,” Byre said without thinking. “They were lost in the White Void. Your ‘goddess' is merely another scion.”

Pelanor gave him a sharp look out of her lustrous eyes. “Surely there are few who would dare split hairs with a Phaerkorn on that particular matter,” she observed tartly.

Byre shrugged, though his body thrilled with the hint of danger in her voice, but after a moment she gave a short little laugh.

“Just to be clear,” Pelanor continued as she got off the bed, “I think I probably could indeed stop you, but you are right; I only agreed to keep you safe.”

“Then you won't interfere tomorrow?”

“Interfere, no,” her whisper caressed his ear even as her body faded to gray and evaporated into the warm air of the bedroom, “but I will definitely be keeping an eye on you.”

Byre dropped back into a hot and restless sleep, never far from the knowledge that she was still in the room with him.

Retira woke him the next morning with a gentle pat on the shoulder. “It used to be tradition for a Vaerli going into battle to watch the sunrise with his kin, to see the new day and know that not all is darkness. Down here, though…”

Byre quelled his own rising fear as best he could. “I don't need to see the sun, Father. I have seen enough of its rises and falls. Instead, I'd like to see the world of the Kindred.”

Moyan watched them go, her arms folded over her chest, and said nothing. After days cooped up in the little house, Byre thought it would have been good to go outside. He was wrong.

This city was not a welcoming one. Byre and Retira passed beneath marble archways and corridors carved from the very rock of the earth—they were very beautiful, yet everywhere doorways and windows were shut against them. No one was on the streets. A city this large should not be so quiet. Whatever the festival meant, he didn't like it.

They passed through cavernous gardens lit with a curious yellow light that came from the very walls, and fruits and plants that Byre vaguely recognized grew under its light, though distorted in frightening ways.

Yet it was the complete lack of people that sent shivers up his spine. Every corner they turned, he expected to run across some pale-skinned group of people, or find a child playing with a ball in a courtyard. But nothing happened. The air was so still and warm that Byre found he was happy to follow his father at such a hectic pace. If he had his way, they would have been sprinting, such was the air of menace and desolation around them.

It was obviously worrying Retira, too.

“This is not usual then?” Byre dared to ask.

“It is the festival,” was the unconvincing answer. “Not much farther now.” He forged ahead like a drowning man sighting land.

Byre kept pace with his father but couldn't help looking behind them. The people were still somewhere here—it was as if they were lurking behind doors with breaths held. The thought of the Witch was now somewhat comforting. Pelanor's ethereal presence was at his back, and her disembodied voice echoed in his ear, “Quickly.” So she, too, sensed something was not right.

The corridors changed. The dwellings disappeared, and it became one seamless black, hot tunnel that angled sharply down. Sweat began to run down Byre's neck, and his clothes suddenly felt very heavy indeed. Even more uncomfortable was the thought that this was just a taste of the Kindred's fires.

They came to a huge set of doors, and Retira stopped before them. Bound in gold and platinum and decorated in unfathomable symbols, they were an impressive obstacle with no handles or mechanism.

Byre reached out and cautiously touched them. They burned under his fingertips briefly before swinging open. Like everything in Achelon, there was no sound.

They shared a wary glance.

“We could go back,” Byre offered, but his words faded. They both knew it was not a real option. “Perhaps there is another way in…”

“There isn't,” Retira replied. “The Gates are at the very back of the room, and this is the only entrance.”

“Then we go on. Our lives are through this door, or not at all.”

His father nodded with a face grim and set. “Forward, then.”

The room they stepped into was a rough-carved cavern, but Byre did not have much of a chance to observe it.

Immediately his sister was there, not physically but inside his head. The Second Gift came whirling back, only more powerful than he had ever experienced it. Byre could feel her walking in his shadow even if she couldn't feel him in hers.

He stopped following their father and paused to let the beauty of it wash over him. She had changed; one taste of her mind in the chamber of torture had revealed that, but now he had a chance to see just how much.

Byre could have wept at the dark corners and narrowed corridors of his sister's mind. She was not the child she had been, nor the person she might have turned into. She was battered, bruised, and surrounded by failure.

Through curiously doubled vision, Byre walked on. He would say nothing to their father; he'd made his feelings known about Talyn. Also, it would be cruel to mention the return of his Second Gift when such pathways were forever blocked to Retira.

The sacred room was stark, beautiful, and carved from the dark-gray stone of the earth. It eerily counterbalanced the flickers of vision Byre got from Talyn. She was in the pale glory of the Bastion, and it too was deep in the earth.

It couldn't be just fate that brought both of them to these places at the same time. But he could sense no awareness from his sister, and the Second Gift felt curiously stunted. It was a one-way connection. The Kindred certainly had a strange sense of humor, to give so much but keep the best bit in reserve.

“Are you all right, son?” Retira held out his hand as if Byre was a child once more.

Even though he wasn't, he smiled and nodded. The double vision and the intrusion of Talyn's thoughts made him feel that if he blinked at the wrong moment, everything would shatter like glass.

Byre's eyes drifted to the elaborate hangings that were the only decoration in this chill chamber. His father was talking and gesturing to the huge granite slab at the very end of the room, but Byre's concentration kept shifting to the iridescent embroideries. He could hear the whispering of the Kindred beyond the granite, but he was sure they weren't the only beings in the room.

“Byre?” His father turned again and stepped toward him. It seemed very slow, as if he were battling against unseen winds. The air was thick, and his head felt as if it were not set on his body properly. The hangings around them were different in his vision. In one version they were merely decoration. In the other he observed a corner being twitched aside. Byre saw the muzzle of the blunderbuss and the explosion of shrapnel that would follow. His body moved, even if his mind could not work out what was happening.

Catching his father around the waist, he had him on the ground before the second reality could happen. A heartbeat after they both hit the floor, the gun roared and the air was alive with tiny, deadly missiles. His father's face was a curious mixture of horror and delight. “The Seventh Gift, it has returned to you!”

It was the only explanation. It should be impossible, as Byre had never reached the right age to get the Gifts before the Harrowing, but even as he thought about using them again they seemed to slip away. It was a strange Gift indeed to leave him at the moment it was most needed.

Neither of them had time for further conversation. The elegant hangings were ripped down and two dozen Rutilian Guard swarmed out. Retira and Byre scrambled to get out of their reach and climbed frantically up rows of carved seating. Suddenly, it was all about survival, when only moments before it had been something else.

Then Byre glanced back over his shoulder—just for a second. Everything changed.

It was the Caisah; Byre had never seen their tormentor, but it could be no other. He was tall, dressed in shining armor and actually smiling. While the guard swarmed after the two men, the Caisah jerked a woman with her hands bound out from behind the curtain—as pleased as a street magician with his trick.

At his son's side, Retira gasped. The effect of seeing both the Caisah and Moyan like that must have been quite the shock. As they watched, the tyrant grasped her around the throat and casually lifted her off her feet. She hung limply, tears streaming down her face, while the sounds of her choking echoed around the room.

Retira shot Byre a look of desperate anger. “Your sister's master! I wonder how far she can be behind?”

He touched his father's shoulder. “She is not with him, so there is hope.”

“Come down from there!” The Caisah beckoned and threw down Moyan as if she were no more than a child's toy. His troops rolled her body out from under his feet as he stepped closer.

Byre judged the distance to the stone gates. It was too far to run. Even if he outdistanced the Rutilian Guard, he wouldn't be able to avoid the Caisah's magics. His only chance lay in the mercurial unpredictability of the leader himself.

Talyn's memory was still leaking through him, and the snatches he gathered told him there might still be a way. The Caisah's arrogance could be used to gain them time, at least. Taking hold of his father's elbow, he helped him to his feet. Both of them walked back down as confidently as they could.

The guards looked unconcerned as two Vaerli approached their lord. No one demanded Byre's stick, so assured were they of their master's power, but they did look very surprised when Pelanor materialized out of the air to stand at Byre's side.

“Ah yes, I was wondering when you would show yourself, little Witch.” The Caisah waved one finger at her admonishingly. “Remember what happened last time we met, and behave yourself.”

Retira blinked in minor confusion, but Pelanor made no reply.

The tyrant turned his attention to Byre. “You…I know you from somewhere…”

Straightening his shoulders, Byre replied. “I am Talyn the Dark's brother. We met briefly on the day you took her.”

A slight smile at that, as if it were a treasured memory. “Are you perhaps angry I didn't take you instead? Still, I saved your life as well, so maybe you'll forgive me.”

Retira was squeezing Byre's shoulder, reminding him of his duty, or perhaps warning of the dangers of conversation with the Caisah. Despite everything, he was capable of being charming and there was something intriguing about him—a being like Vaerli, but not.

“And you,” the man-not-man continued, his stare shifting to Retira. “We have met as well.”

“There were many of us at the Bastion that day.”

The gaze dropped away, and the Caisah passed his hand over his face. When he spoke again it was in a far less confident voice. “I remember you all. A terrible thing. Terrible.”

Suddenly Byre understood. The Caisah was like one of the madmen that gave up the memory disciplines. The weight of so much time and recollection was driving him as insane as any Vaerli with the same affliction. Despite himself, Byre darted a look at his father. He and the Caisah shared more than just Talyn.

Byre pitied him then—despite everything he had done to the Vaerli. Living with memory was never an easy thing, and must be even more so with the weight of so many horrors.

“So you should, too.” Retira angled his body toward the Caisah and shot his son a look of desperation that surely meant something. The older Vaerli pushed in closer. “You're a murderer and an oath breaker, coming to our Bastion and using the name of our Seer to gain entry like a thief.” His voice boomed in the chamber, and even though he was much shorter than the Caisah he managed to somehow to look down his nose at him.

It wasn't the best tactic, for their captor only smiled. “You know why I came. It is you who broke the Pact!”

At his back, Byre felt Pelanor draw closer, her presence a chill to his right. The words should have been important to him—his father and the Caisah were, after all, arguing about the most infamous day in Vaerli history, one that he had only seen the aftermath of. Yet, realizing what Retira was doing, Byre tried to edge closer to the Kindred's door. Pelanor drifted with him.

They were as silent and as subtle as possible. Luckily, the Rutilian Guard were hovering around Retira as he blustered and roared at the fuming Caisah. They could see no danger in the silent Vaerli and the tall, dark woman at his side.

“Then why did you have to take my daughter?” A silence fell and even Byre paused. He couldn't help but hear the break in Retira's voice.

“You know why,” the Caisah replied, his voice cool. “You know what you did when you…” His gaze flicked up and observed Byre. Whatever revelation he had been about to utter he swallowed it. His gaze hardened, and Talyn's memory told that this was a very bad thing. “Come here,” the Caisah commanded, used no doubt to obedience from his Vaerli Hunter.

That was the exact moment when chaos erupted.

“Run,” Retira yelled, throwing himself upon the Caisah. The guards' first reaction was to protect their liege, and the way to the door was suddenly free. Pelanor disappeared into the air, wrapping her chill presence about Byre. He turned to obey his father.

He didn't see what terrible power the Caisah called on, yet the world seemed to twist and bang against his ears. Then he saw his father sailing past him, thrown through the air like a broken leaf. Retira hit the door hard, and the room reverberated to the sound of his breaking bones.

Byre ran—but this time to his father. He didn't care about the door anymore, or his foolish quest. All he cared about was holding Retira, trying to stop the blood and trying to keep the life in him. It was awful and ugly, and he'd seen it hundreds of times before, though it had never been his own father.