The Battle Sylph (32 page)
Solie blinked. “Ril’s not dead.”
Leon stared.
“I just saw him,” she blubbered in denial, feeling a wave of horror and sorrow pass over her. “Luck brought him in. He’s messed up, but he’s alive. Did he die?” She could still feel him, distant and in shock. No, he couldn’t be dead! “He was with your family when I—”
She said the last to his back. Leon was already running out the door.
Solie looked up at Mace. “Did you know Ril was still alive?”
The big battler shook his head. “He should have died. That healer didn’t do him a favor by saving him. He’ll never be what he was.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Solie protested. “He’s alive. That’s a good thing.”
“As you say, my queen,” Mace replied, and Heyou tightened his arms around her, his face buried against her neck. Claw just sighed, staring at his hands and thinking about women.
Leon charged into the mess hall, his heart pounding. He’d felt Ril, felt him the whole time, but he hadn’t comprehended. He could feel him even now, but the emotions of the battler were so shattered that he hadn’t recognized them. He had thought the numbness and horror were his own emotions. Whatever had just happened, Ril was deep in shock.
He didn’t stop for the impromptu party that had broken out, though he was not surprised at all to see it. In the face of such terror and death, people had to let go. Not ready yet to do so himself, he pushed through the crowd, finding himself slapped on the back and having his hand shaken. Once the enemy of these people, now he was tearfully thanked for saving their lives. Leon nodded and kept going, wanting to see both his battler and his family, not sure in truth which he needed to see more.
Ahead, the crowd parted enough for him to see his wife, and the question was answered as he hurried forward, suddenly desperate to get to her. “Betha!” he shouted. She turned to him, eyes wide, and suddenly she was pushing toward him as well, Ralad screaming in her arms. Leon met her near the end of the room and hugged her and the baby both. Betha sobbed in relief, pressing against him even as she struck him with her fist. She screamed at him, holding the baby safe, but he stepped back and cupped her face with both hands, holding her gently still for a deliberate and thorough kiss.
As he finished, Nali waddled up, thumb in her mouth, and regarded her father with great indignation. “Papa, Ril won’ turn into a pony,” she complained.
Leon stared down at his three-year-old daughter, wanting to pick her up and kiss her, too. “What?”
“A pony! I wan’ him to turn into a pony and he won’!”
Leon managed a smile, not aware of the tears that had
started down his cheeks the moment he saw his wife. His family was alive, all of them. “He’s not feeling well, Nali. You have to give him some time.”
“It’s not fair! He’s never been a pony!”
Leon kissed his wife again and picked up Nali, kissing her as well despite the child’s protests. Setting her down, he moved toward the corner of the room. There Lizzy knelt with Cara, facing a hollow formed between two walls and a table. Ril sat in the hollow with his knees up, wrapped in a blanket. His eyes were heavily shadowed yet blank. He stared straight ahead, shivering but not reacting to anything.
Lizzy acknowledged her father tearfully, barely noting the blood on him. Her priorities had always lain elsewhere. “Daddy, he’s sick. Do something!”
Leon dropped to his knees and reached forward to shake his battler. Ril was alive, truly alive, but the gaze the sylph suddenly turned on him was one filled with horror. “I’m crippled,” he whispered. “She left me crippled.”
“But you’re living,” Leon told him—and as far as he was concerned, that was all that mattered.
King Alcor Baldorth sat on the throne he’d graced for thirty-two years, staring forward, his crown heavy on his head, and he gripped its arms until his fingers turned white. His gut felt as though he’d swallowed a handful of nails.
Anderam, Boradel, and Flav were all dead. So was Jasar. So were the soldiers he’d sent. All of them. Worst, word was that their battlers weren’t gone—they had joined Leon and the girl. That pathetic little girl who should have been dead months ago, instead of his son.
His grip on the armrests tightened, pain starting to flare through his tendons as he stared down at the man who’d brought the news, one of a bare handful to make it back. The fool cowered in terror, afraid of what would be done to
him for bearing such bad news. Alcor wanted to kill him—would have if he could—but this was Tempest’s master, and he couldn’t afford to lose her.
Six battlers lost! Alcor sucked in a deep, shaky breath. Leon had betrayed him so thoroughly and unexpectedly. How long had the man been planning this? How long had the traitor been worming into his graces just so he could plan and pull off this horrendous coup? The man had worked for him for over twenty years, and not once had Alcor ever thought him conspiring.
In the shadows behind his chair, Thrall was laughing. Not out loud—the sylph couldn’t make any sound out loud—but his shoulders shook and Alcor could hear his breath hitching. Even worse, his aura of hate was blended with one of delight. Alcor wanted to turn and scream for him to shut up, but that wouldn’t stop the amusement. Thrall would only laugh harder.
Alcor licked his lips. “Get out,” he whispered. The sylph master kneeling before him cringed in fear. “Get out!” he screamed a second time, and the man ran off, boot heels pounding on the polished floor.
The king finally let go of his throne and put a hand to his forehead, wincing in pain. What was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t go after Leon again. He had another eight battlers…nine, if he dared go himself with Thrall, but he had no idea of how Leon had done this, how he’d turned battlers against their masters and made them his own. He couldn’t risk any more defections. Para Dubh would love for him to leave himself vulnerable. So would the southern kingdoms. So especially would the desert nation of Meridal across the ocean, the people from whom he bought trade goods at such expense. They waited breathlessly to attack with their battlers once he’d spent all of his own.
Alcor returned his grip to the arm of the chair, shuddering. He had to salvage what he could, cover up this disaster
before his own people found out, and try to get more battlers. Belican said he was too old to run many more ceremonies. Well, he’d have to train some of those useless children he had left. Alcor needed more battle sylphs—provided he could find men he trusted enough to master them. What if he ended up with another Leon? What if they came after him next?
He sat in his throne room and shook, his mind imagining everything that could go wrong, everything that undoubtedly would go wrong, now that he was weakened so badly. The nightmare surrounded the king, and Thrall held his loyal position…and the battler’s laughter never stopped.
Spring brought no greenery across the Shale Plains, but pale yellow flowers started to appear on the prickly gray bushes that dotted the landscape, their roots thrust deep into the worn-out soil and showing there was still some life to be found. Life that sylphs set to work together could renew and refresh.
Solie rode at the head of the convoy in a pair of split skirts. Her horse was an ordinary gelding, a little old and its hide gray, but that was enough for her. There were some who believed she should act more regal in view of her new station, but she wasn’t so sure. There had been no one like her before. Protocol for the queen of the Community would be whatever she wanted. Right now, it was riding bareback on an old nag.
Heyou was sitting behind her. He claimed this was so he could protect her better, but she knew he just wanted to feel her up under her cloak. No one had threatened her life since Bock, not with so many battlers and every elemental sylph beholden to her. Due to Leon, Galway, and Devon’s discreet tutoring, she’d become a leader for real. The position still felt a little odd, like boots that didn’t quite fit, but she was wearing them in. Soon enough she’d feel very comfortable indeed.
She looked back over her shoulder at the rest of the convoy, smiling at Heyou as she did. He beamed back. Behind him, the Community stretched out in a line. What horses they had were being ridden or pulling wagons. Other people sat on sheets of stone that earth sylphs flowed along the
ground. Air sylphs looped above these, many transporting supplies through the air, and over everything else Mace flew as smoke and lightning, joined by Claw and six others.
With the priest Petr’s help, they’d brought over another half-dozen battlers, every one of them drawn to a willing middle-aged woman. Each sylph had come through the gate, taking the female’s offer to be their master, but were subsumed into the hive and Solie’s pattern before they were allowed any physical consummation. Apparently, the act of love made a female master a queen, but a battler bound to a queen already couldn’t turn his lover into one. She’d have to be careful of that, Solie supposed. There were any number of problems tied up in the concept of two queens, not the least of which was the fact that the battlers would go to war over it.
The women chosen for battlers didn’t mind not being queen, though, not at all. Solie had grown up in a world where women had little power and few rights. Battlers didn’t seem to get that idea, however, and no human man wanted to argue the point. Solie smiled a little. It was very hard to tell a woman she was inferior when she had an irritated battle sylph standing behind her.
It wasn’t just their masters they were fond of, either. The battlers protected every woman and female child in the hive—and at Solie’s request, the men as well. The women in the Community were the safest in the world, she supposed. There hadn’t been a single case of a woman being hurt by a drunken or violent husband since midwinter. The last transgressor had been considered fair game under the “Harm only those who seek to harm the hive” rule, and his widow now had a battler of her own.
Solie looked into the sky. Like her people, her sylphs were happy. Almost playing up there as they watched for danger, the hive’s entire complement of battlers was in the air, save two. Heyou sat behind her, his fingers tirelessly
searching for a way under her cloak, and there was Ril. She smacked Heyou’s hand.
Ril. Glancing back once more, Solie saw that Leon walked a dozen feet behind her, leading two horses. His wife sat on one of them, Ralad tied in a blanket to her breast and Cara arranged before her. Leon’s battler rode the other with Lizzy and Nali, Lizzy nearly in his lap. The twelve-year-old was twisted around in her seat and chattering, but the battler barely paid attention, except perhaps to keep her from getting too rambunctious and falling, which was something both girls seemed determined to do.
Ril never looked up at his fellows, Solie noted. He had indeed been crippled in the fight at the bluff. She had heard the battler could still change shape if he really had to, but she hadn’t seen him do it and didn’t want to ask. He’d lost more than just a third of his energy in that battle, and he observed her with eyes that were almost dead. Still, he kept his arms protectively around both girls.
Heyou breathed in Solie’s ear, forcing her to refocus her thoughts. “I think we’re nearly there.”
They’d been traveling for nearly a week toward the mountains, which had in that time seemed to grow in size until they seemed to fill the world. The group was now heading over a rise that Solie had been told would dip into a valley, one with a river running through it and a lake in the middle of what had once been dead soil. The sylphs had revived the land once, though, and they’d be able to do it again, no matter what had happened there. The Community would be able to rebuild, and this time no one would stop them. There wouldn’t be any stupid mistakes—or fewer of them, she hoped.
They cleared the rise and she saw their destination at last. Great gouges had been torn into the earth by Mace and Ril when they’d been ordered to attack. What had once been houses and barns were razed to the ground, and nearly
every bit of life had been stripped from the place. But there were spots missed. Solie saw green down there, spreading out over the land, and the dots of flowers that grew on plants more delicate and useful than the scrub bushes that survived in the rest of the plains. The valley was immense as well, more than enough for all of them.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Heyou hugged her, his fingers starting to move again. “Not as much as you,” he assured her. “But it’s all yours.”
No, it was here for all of them. Solie took a deep breath, seeing a lifetime of freedom ahead that she hadn’t been able to imagine before she left her parents’ cottage. It was good to be home, she thought, but of course as long as Heyou’s arms were around her, it didn’t matter where that was. She was already there.
THE BATTLE SYLPH
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“A fabulous read, cover to cover.”
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“Unlike anything I’ve ever read. A brilliant adventure with tremendous heart. You’ll love this book.”
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“A remarkable new voice and a stunningly original world…An amazing start to what promises to be a truly engaging series!”
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A LEISURE BOOK®
March 2010
Published by
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
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Copyright © 2010 by L. J. McDonald
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E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0817-0
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