Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (7 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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Gaultry had no breath to cry out at the betrayal: her own goddess, called to power against her. What was it that she had done, that this violence had come crashing down upon her? What could she have done, to draw this hate?
Pushing these thoughts away, she focused on the vine itself, searching for weakness, then almost crying in relief when she found it: as the black-green magic used the vine to mete destruction, it consumed it, withering the leaves and breaking the bark.
Above, on the bridge, a man cried out. A body with a fluttering grey cloak dropped into the water. A Bissanty body. Martin, she thought with a stab of relief. Making quick work of their attackers. She wrenched around, fighting the vines, trying to see what else was happening. Then she saw Tullier.
He was struggling in a cluster of greenery overhead, hanging more than a man’s body length above the water, like a fly caught in a web. Moving toward him on the remains of the bridge’s framework were two of the men who had first accosted them.
“Tullier!” she screamed. He turned to her, even bound amid the entrapping vine, just as the first man reached him. “Tullier!” she screamed again. The first man’s sword flashed and caught the sun as it descended. Crimson stained the vine that sheathed both Tullier and his attacker.
Her rage erupted in a flood of strength and heat. With it, her Glamour-magic leapt to power. Like golden heart-fire, it burst forth, driving in gleaming channels through the wrathful green of the magic that engulfed her. The dark-green magic was potent, but unnamed. Whoever had cast the spell had not been a master-planter, so the spell had not become a part of the vines, using some part of the plant’s inherent nature to enact itself.
Which was lucky for Gaultry, because the vines, already weakened, became vegetively inanimate and fell away, just as soon as the spell was diverted into direct engagement with Gaultry’s power. She hardly noticed, she was so riveted on Tullier’s fate.
The river coursed back from her body, repulsed by the force streaming from her body, and left her standing on a naked slab of stone as the current rushed breast-level in dark walls past her. She screamed out, throwing the channels of her power wider, and drank in the rank green magic, letting it distend the channels of her power with the volume of its sick, potent might. The vines that had wrapped her chest, still in the grip of the river’s current but freed now of the spell, were whipped away by the water’s force. Above her, she was vaguely aware as the ivy mass on Tullier’s body abruptly unraveled, plunging his limp form into the merciless current.
Black-green power fought against gold. Gaultry braced herself on the bare rock, walls of water hissing past her, her body buckling as she scrambled to overwhelm the spell. Beyond those walls, under the bridge, she sensed rather than saw Tullier’s body turn in the current and strike a rock. The sickening sound of meat striking stone carried to her over the rushing sound of the water.
That sound gave her the will to shatter the green magic. She screamed, triumphant, and it exploded from her in a cloud of infinitely small speckles of light, singing vitriol to the air.
Then—then it was just gone.
The river walls collapsed. Gaultry, taken by surprise, bobbed to the surface and began to paddle wildly, clutching at the jutting stone. She stared down the river, searching for Tullier. His dog, trapped somewhere up on the bridge, howled in despair.
Gautri
. The Sharif’s voice pierced her, the slur of her foreign pronunciation unusually enhanced.
Gautri, I need you
.
The young woman unwillingly broke her search for Tullier and turned back toward the Sharif. What she saw made her gasp in horror, newly appalled. As the spell had broken, the vines entrapping Martin’s chestnut horse had dropped away. Panicked, it plunged for the shore. The Sharif, still tangled in the reins of both horses, the first broken-legged and half-insane with pain, the other lunging, determined to regain dry land, was pinned between them against one of the bridge pilings. The tendons of the war-leader’s arms were stretched in agonized cords down across her chest.
Not long
. Somehow, even in the face of the water, the woman had regained her nerve.
Not long now
. Her words held an eerie calm.
Sun-god, Andion-King, if ever you loved me—
From the corner of her eye, Gaultry spotted the black crown of Tullier’s head, downriver now and moving swiftly away. She looked at the
horses, at the Sharif, unable to come to a decision. The Sharif, for certain, needed help right now, but Tullier—
“Go for the boy!” Martin, his sword a red slash of gore, appeared atop the bridge’s wreckage. Even as he spoke, he threw himself recklessly across the broken gap, sloshing down crazily amidst the torn hulks of wood and vine. One of the horses reared in terror. The Sharif howled, her arms newly wrenched. But at least Martin was there—
Gaultry flung herself loose into the stream, heading toward the point where she had last seen Tullier’s head.
Rocks and debris snarled the river’s course. At its present midsummer volume, the current was not swollen to the top of its strength, but it was powerful enough to be frightening. Under good conditions, Gaultry could swim like an otter, but she was badly winded and her desperation to reach Tullier served against her. Her position, low in the water, had her terrified that she would lose him in a swirling eddy, or in the lee of a half-submerged log or stone.
She crested a mossy ridge of rock, tearing her knuckles against it, and, wallowing for a moment against that edge, once more caught sight of him. Somehow he had managed to escape the main current and pull himself over to the edge of a shallow, bankside pool.
“Tullier!” Gaultry screamed. “Tullier!”
Above him stood a man with sloping shoulders and sallow skin. One of the bridge attackers. He had escaped the wreckage of vine and wood and run along the bank to intercept them. As Gaultry watched, he raised his sword.
Tullier was too weak to protect himself. He stared up, his ice-green eyes steady, ready for what was about to happen.
The man hesitated. Something in Tullier’s expression slowed him. Looking down at the boy, his lips moved. Gaultry was not close enough to hear the words, but Tullier made no effort to answer. She scrambled forward in a frenzy, desperate to reach the bank before the sword descended.
The man, seemingly unaware of her approach, cast the god-sign for Llara, a jerking lightning bolt slash at the air, and touched his hand to the edge of his blade. He was the fast man, the one who had clambered across the chaotic tangle of collapsing bridge and vine to reach Tullier. His fingers caressed his blade’s edge—the blade that was still slick with the boy’s blood. As Gaultry watched, he deliberately sliced the honed edge into his palm, then clenched his fist. Blood started from between
his fingers, mingling with Tullier’s. The Bissanty man stiffened.
“Llara-born!” he said softly. This time Gaultry was near enough to hear. The man stared at Tullier with fascinated horror. “I have struck the Llara-bom.” Eyes widening in agony, the man drew his blade up.
Tullier, hunkering down just a little beneath him, shut his eyes.
The man let out an indescribable cry. His blade flashed down, unerring.
Gaultry screamed again, this time in pity.
The Bissanty-man was a soldier of Great Llara, and he was very quick. His cry was cut short as the force of his own blow disemboweled him, and his body struck the water, the sword falling from his dying hand. A wave washed past Gaultry’s body, and she felt a horrible cooling around her in the water. Icy certainty pierced her: As punishment for striking a boy who was his own goddess’s kin, the man’s soul had died with his body.
Gaultry, stumbling out of the water at Tullier’s side, pulled him up by his shoulder, dazed by what she had witnessed. She had not understood this implication of the boy’s Imperial god-blood, had not understood the threat Tullier posed to the Emperor’s will that his own sons should succeed him. From what she had just witnessed, so long as Goddess Llara reigned as Bissanty’s patron, no citizen of all the Imperial lands could draw a drop of the boy’s blood and hope to claim the Grey Goddess’s blessing—and what man could live, knowing the punishment his Goddess would wreak upon him?
This power of death over life, this was the prize the Emperors of Bissanty fought so jealously to possess.
Tullier’s shirt was dark with blood. He rolled listlessly onto his side as she lugged him out of the water, revealing a deep, water-leached gut wound.
Frantic, she pulled him against her own body, trying to warm him. He was conscious enough to cling to her, throwing his arms around her neck and pressing his head against her as she stumbled up the bank. She tried to lay him down on a bed of moss, but he refused to let her go.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said, his voice faint. “But this leaving you—”
“Tullier.” She would not let him slip away like this. “It’s not your time yet.”
“I had a month of living,” the boy gasped. “That was better than never being alive.”
His uncharacteristic passivity frightened her. Wadding up the tail of
her tunic, she pressed it against his wound, desperate to stanch the flowing blood.
“Gaultry,” he pleaded. “Let me go.”
“Shut up, Tullier,” she said harshly. “We’ll get a healer for you and you’ll be fine. I won’t let you die. Mervion—” Tullier held half her sister’s Glamour-soul, and Mervion was a great healer. Perhaps if she could reach out to that part of her sister in him—
He clutched at her reflexively, a shudder of disappointment running through him. “Of course,” he said. “If I die, I’ll take part of Mervion. Just take it,” he groaned. “Take it and let me die—”
“Shut up, Tullier,” she said. “That’s not my point.” Though as she spoke, the possibility that he might really die—and take half Mervion’s Glamour-soul with him—was like a dagger in her heart. She could not let that happen, any more than she could let Tullier die, here, while he was under her protection. “Elianté’s Spear! What I mean is that I’ll try reaching to Mervion’s power in you to help you. Mervion’s the healer, not me. If you relax, I’ll try to reach out to her soul in you and buy us some time.”
“Yes!” he croaked, suddenly eager. “Do it!”
She stared at him, doubtful. What had she suggested that made him so suddenly change his mind?
“Open yourself to me.” She stroked his cheek, trying to calm him. “Relax. Let my magic move through you.” His water-softened hair felt cold under her fingers. “Remember how it was when we were together in Bissanty. Purple and gold—our magic twined together. Goddess-Twins! That alone should be strength enough to keep you here.”
“I want you—” Tullier started to say, then coughed, and did not finish. His grip tightened around her fingers with surprising strength. “Just do it,” he finally managed, his voice weak.
She held him tightly against her. His flesh was river-cold, as though the stream had taken his warmth as well as his blood. For a moment, she was afraid that he was too far gone, his soul already retreated to the house of the Gods, past recalling. The overloaded channels of her power felt weak and shrunken, depleted by the effort it had taken to disperse the wrathful black-green magic, but she ignored that, and once again reached out.
Just as she was sure she could attempt her push no longer, waves of imperial purple swept across her vision. She redoubled her efforts, recognizing
the great mass of power and soul that was Tullier’s god-blood. Veined with blood red streaks and pulsing like a heart’s beat, it curdled backward, drawing her inward to a plane where the senses beyond vision slipped away. Distantly, Gaultry felt Tullier’s body spasm against her, his nails digging into her skin as he clutched at her neck, an almost sexual embrace. But none of those things felt real. Only the edge of his wound was real, the edge of the wound and the blood that still flowed from it.
The shroud of purple dallied, ripe like grapes ready for harvest. Gaultry’s urgency had not communicated itself. The golden edges of her Glamour touched the Blood-Imperial and it responded languorously, cleaving a supple fold in its center to form a cradle for her. Warmth flushed through her at the contact, and Gaultry’s sense of pain fell away.
“Death wish,” Gaultry muttered, wishing Tullier would concentrate harder on saving himself. If she allowed him to keep the pace so slow, surely she would lose him—and with him, perhaps, herself. This in mind, she fought with renewed vigor against the rising lassitude, her rising sense of comfort, and forced herself to focus on the horror of Tullier’s wound.
She did not know how long she remained there, fixed in contemplation, but suddenly, shining like a beacon, Mervion’s golden half-soul rose up above her, radiating soothing balm. Gaultry felt pure closeness with her sister—the beloved twin whom power had parted from her.
Abruptly, that moment passed. Mervion’s power shrank. Gaultry saw suddenly how it could be used as a tool to cauterize and close the big breached vessel in Tullier’s gut. She reached out, confident now, halfway between the spirit plane and the riverbank where the boy’s bleeding body lay. In this place, she could twist Mervion’s power into place, almost like a bandage, as purple waves of strength caressed her, interfusing her with fresh strength. It was heady, this sense of Tullier’s god-blood, intermixing with her own Glamour.

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