[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (21 page)

I was glad I had not eaten, for when my
stomach heaved when the thing laughed, there was nothing to come up. Being so
near to so evil a creature sickened me to my bones. Aral held my arm when I
doubled over, and I swear I could feel her thought travel through her hand.

“I can’t fight it, Aral!” I cried, shaking her
off. “It’s too big!”

“What does physical size have to do with
anything in the realm of the soul?” she asked, far too reasonably for my
liking. “Even if you can just distract it from Shikrar, that would be
something!”

I grabbed her arm and drew her to me, so that
our faces all but touched. “Damn it, woman, don’t you understand?’ I snarled,
barely above a whisper. “It’s all I can do not to fall to my knees. I’m shaking
so badly I can barely stand. I’m afraid, Aral. I am by damn petrified and I can’t
do a sodding thing about it!”

She shook me off, her anger matching mine. “If
you could direct just a fraction of that anger towards the right object, we’d be
a damned sight better off.” She turned towards the battle. I could see her aura
glowing around her, bright and strong, but then she stopped. Swiftly she drew
out of her tunic the pouch that hung around her neck. “Please, Lady,” she said
as she drew out the great ruby and held it to her heart with her left hand. “Hear
me. Your kinsman has need of your aid.”

Suddenly her aura was twice as bright, and
within the blue there shone a corona of red light clear as the noonday sun
through finest stained glass.

The demon had hold of Shikrar’s tail and was
drawing him nearer, despite Shikrars desperate effort to get away. Aral lifted
her right hand in a fist and sent her power to surround the Raksha s hand. Her
arm shook, then her whole body—and her fingers began to open.

So did the demon’s.

The red light from the soulgem twined around
Aral’s sending, pulsing, and the Raksha shook to that pulse as it fought. It
reached across, trying to grip Shikrars tail with its other hand, claws
grasping—Aral stood shaking as she used every ounce of her strength to hold the
thing still, just for a moment.

It worked. Just for a moment, but it was
enough. The demon, furious, could not move. Shikrar turned back and, using his
rear claws, slashed deeply at the wrist of the hand that held him. Aral’s
strength failed and her aura winked out. The Raksha, suddenly able to move
again, watched the sharp scales on Shikrars tail slice through the remains of
its ruined hand. It screamed and spat balefire at Shikrar as he climbed. The
green fire landed on Shikrar’s back, searing, and it was Shikrars turn to cry
out.

The Raksha’s cry had been music to my heart.
Shikrar’s pain, I swear, screamed along my own back.

Shikrar, moving awkwardly now but out of
reach, flamed his fangs and claws clean as he climbed. His fire appeared
diminished, and he was favouring his injured shoulder.

He spoke then, and I truly feared for hirn: he
sounded desperately weary, in pain and out of breath. “Be warned, creature. I
am the Eldest of the Kantrishakrim. Quit this place and return to the Fifth
Hell, or by my soul I swear you will know the True Death.” And still he
climbed.

It laughed again, despite its mangled hand. “As
if you could deal it to me! I have been loosed among men, I have feasted on
souls and flesh and fear this night. I will have a taste of dragon to season
all, as none of my kind have known this long age past!”

It is very difficult to judge distances at
night, especially if you are looking straight up. Shikrar had been beating his
wings less and less often. When the creature began its speech, he seemed to
reach the end of his strength and seemed to be falling. The demon laughed and
opened its arms to crush and rend him.

But this was Teacher-Shikrar, who had
instructed every Kantri youngling for the last thousand years in the art of
flight, who had often boasted even to me that he had not taught us everything
he knew. It is true, he was falling. Directly at the demon. Very, very fast.

The Raksha reached out with both arms, its
ruined hand hanging loose, ready to grapple with Shikrar at last. The rows and
rows of teeth in that distorted mouth gleamed in the light of the dancing fire.
Shikrar was dropping like a stone, arrowing directly at its face, claws and
wings held close as if he did not dare to attack—as if he were protecting himself—but—he
held his furled wings close by his sides, not tucked over his back.

What in the name of sense is this, my friend?
I wondered, but did not dare to use truespeech lest I distract him.

—and at the last instant he swerved and pulled
up at what seemed an impossible angle, using just the tiniest bit of wingtip,
arcing backwards and up and rolling as he went, along the line of his descent.
He seemed to miss the demon entirely, except for his tail—which he struck
deeply and embedded in the thing’s torso as he passed. His momentum threw him
around it at in—credible speed, but at a bizarre angle that it didn’t seem able
to anticipate. Shikrar’s long supple body quickly wrapped around the Raksha,
but it managed to get one arm free and raised it to strike.

Its ruined hand dangled useless from the
raised arm, mocking it, as Shikrar s full length was thrown around the creature
s torso faster and faster. His razor-sharp foreclaws sliced around its throat
as he whipped around, and he used the last of his wild momentum to slam his
upper fangs against its armoured head.

By the time the Lord of the Fifth Hell
realised what was happening it was already dead.

Shikrar had managed to lock his foreclaws
about its spurting throat and—he closed his hands. The deadly claws sliced that
hideous flesh like so many swords, and at the last the sound of bone snapping
was sharp in the night air. The thing collapsed. Shikrar unwrapped himself from
it, threw it off him, and drew in a deep breath. I drew my own with him, nearly
choking as I tried to force my human throat to breathe Fire. He seared the head
first, to ashes; then the body, scorching the surrounding stones clean of every
drop of Raksha blood, every trace of balefire.

The wild winds had died about the same time as
the Lord of the Fifth Hell, but the fire that had destroyed the College burned
on. As Rikard began to organise the survivors to put out the blaze, I moved
near to my old friend.

“Shikrar, my friend, I owe you everything,” I
said. “Life, love, and all. And to think I used to consider myself a decent
flyer! Never will I say that again, my word to the Winds, while yet you live.”

“If I’d flown a little better the damned thing
would have missed me altogether,” he said, his wings drooping in the Attitude
of Pain and his voice strained.

“So you are not yet without flaw? Even after
all this time?” I chided him gendy.

It raised a tiny hiss of amusement. “It seems
not,” he replied, and his voice quavered a little.

“Shock, I expect,” said a deep voice behind
me, and the Healer Vilkas strode forward, pale in the firelight that still
flared in the ruins of the College. “Or reaction. Or loss of blood. Most likely
all three. Do you permit, Lord Shikrar?” asked Vilkas, drawing his power to
him.

“As swiftly as you may, Mage Vilkas,” said
Shikrar, his voice shaking plainly now with pain and exhaustion.

“Aral?” said Vilkas softly. That lovely young
woman moved to join him, the soulgem still clutched in her left hand, but
before she could summon her aura once again Shikrar swiftly moved his huge head
very close to her. I was proud of her, for she hardly flinched at all.

“Lady Aral,” he said softly, “I had lost that
fight ere I had well begun, were it not for your aid. I am in your debt.”

She did not speak, but reached out her right
hand, tentatively, and touched his mask. He bowed to her touch. I turned my
face away.

Vilkas was glowing brightly. He led Aral
around to the wound   I on Shikrar s back and right flank.

I would not have believed it if I had not seen
it. Perhaps it was the strength of the soulgem, perhaps it was the response of
Aral’s soul to Shikrar’s kindness, and perhaps it was simply that Vilkas,
frustrated at being of no service in the struggle, was intent on proving his
worth. They did not cover over the wound, as we would have done with khaadish.
They healed it from the inside I out: Raksha-trace washed away with Healer’s
fire, bone-scorch soothed and burnt muscle renewed, blistered flesh eased, torn
and melted scale made whole before my eyes. It took them the  better part of an
hour, but they healed Shikrar as we watched. When their task was done, the only
indication that he had been wounded was the outline of new scale, lighter than
the rest, where that terrible burn had been.

“You who have not flown before, be warned,”
Kedra had said, flexing his wings as we climbed into his hands. “It is a wild
night for flying. The air is full of sudden drops and cross-currents this
night. It will be rough aloft.”

That was when I learned that dragons are
liars. It wasn’t rough aloft, it was bloody terrifying aloft. Still, K6dra got
us there alive, so I was inclined to forgive him. I did wish at the time that
it hadn’t been so dark, or so frightening, because I didn’t expect to have the
chance to fly again.

He landed outside the wall just as Shikrar
released the survivors from the Great Hall. Vil and Aral went to join their
friends; the rest of us milled about, helpless, but not willing to leave.

My eye was drawn first to a pair of
observers—actually, they stood so close together it was hard to make out that
they were two people. As it should be.

Once I knew that Lanen was free and safe in
her husband’s arms, I found a quiet corner from which to watch the proceedings.
It was obvious that greater folk than I were needed, and they all rose to the
challenge. When the students were taken to The Brewer’s Arms I followed, and
managed to get a room to myself. To be honest, I didn’t want anyone around who
might smell Raksha-trace on me and overreact.

Maran, you’re at it again.

To be honest, I wanted to be by myself to
think things over. I had seen Lanen in the wild firelight. Truth to tell, my
eyes had not left her. She had stood, her arms around Varien, all through the
battle. If she’d been in pain, injured, tortured, she could not have done so.
In fact she hardly let go her husband all through the battle, all through the
aftermath—and he held her every bit as tight.

What did she need me for? What would she gain
by seeing me? At this stage, surely I would only remind her of unhappiness. I
could leave tomorrow, while the rest of them were busy making whatever plans
were to be made. Just slip away, unnoticed. No one would miss me, least of all
the daughter I’d never known.

Aye, Maran. You’ve been saying the same thing
for the last twenty years, but you’re here now. You’ve come the width of
Kol-mar to get here and got the blisters to prove it. Goddess, you’re a coward.

I shuddered. Truth is awful. I am a coward.
That night, at that moment, I could no more walk up to my daughter and greet
her than flap my arms and fly.

Weariness saved me, in the end. I was too
damned tired to wake early and leave. As I laid my head on the pillow, my last
coherent thought was, Perhaps it will look different in the morning. Goddess be
my aid, let it look different in the morning.

VRikard turned to me in amazement when Vilkas
and Aral set to work. “Sweet Lady Shia! I’d no idea we could heal those
creatures!”

“I’m not sure anyone else could,” I said. I
was well impressed. “I know young Vilkas is capable of astounding work with
people, but this …”

“Do you have any food for them?” asked Rikard
suddenly. “Healing a human is hard enough on the body. They’re going to be
starving.”

“Hells. No,” I said. I’d forgotten that
Healers need food and drink and a great deal of rest after working. As do their
patients.

“I’ll arrange something, for all of them,”
said Rikard. He turned to go, then paused and turned back. “Ah—do you know what—er—dragons
eat?’

I blinked. “I haven’t the faintest notion.
Cattle, perhaps?” I considered the creatures’ teeth. “You’d think they’d need a
great deal of whatever it is. Fresh meat surely never hurt anything with teeth
like that.”

Rikard went off muttering, but in the end he
was saved the effort. Rella had more sense than the rest of us. She had held
back during the fight—or at least, I hadn’t seen her—but she appeared now,
leading a cow with a rope, while Rikard was still trying to gather those
students who were capable of movement. Behind her came Hygel, bearing bread and
ale and a promise of beds, or at least a roof and a blanket, for those who
required them.

Rikard very kindly obliged by looking after
the rest of us—Lanens infected demon wounds, my aching jaw and demon scratches.
As for the others, when the last scale was restored, when they at last released
their combined power, Vilkas and Aral drew a deep breath, drank each a full
pint of ale without pause, and proceeded to eat enough for four men between
them, along with another pint each. When at last they were replete, Rella,
Will, and I helped them stagger after Rikard and the meagre remnants of the
College of Mages towards The Brewer’s Arms. They just about managed to stay
awake long enough to fall into their beds. Rella and I left them there.