The Second God (26 page)

I pondered that. Powerful weapons indeed, but we had no way to use them. “Is there anything you have to do to acquire these powers? Or is it a matter of waiting and hoping?”

“That is what I do not know. I have no memory of them, nor have I dreamt about them. That is a common way for a memory to resurface, in a dream. Otherwise, it is just… feelings. But when we were at the castle township and one of the elders was talking of my father, I had a strong desire to see him again. That might well be a memory nudging my mind. So perhaps, when things settle down, I will take you and Arran to meet him, and we can talk to the elders of Wild Hunter Clan. Look, Arrynyor is fast asleep. Do you think he should be in bed now?”

~~~~~

Cal arrived on his eagle the following sun, full of excitement. Arran whisked him away for his special project, whatever it might be. I was too busy with endless war preparation meetings to wonder what they were up to.

That morning I had to attend an army supplies planning meeting. I was trying very hard to concentrate, but the commander who was speaking had a dreadfully soporific voice. I wondered if I could perhaps get away with one discreet yawn.

But then Arran’s voice popped into my head, full of misery.
“Drina? Drina?”

“What is it? I’m a bit busy.”

“When the lion chewed you, how did you come back to yourself so quickly?”

“What? Gods, whatever’s happened?”

“Nothing at all. I am fine. Just… experimenting with Cal. And now I am in the nothing place, and I want to get back.”

“Oh. I just relaxed. Ly told me I was safe, and I believed him. That was—”

“Most Powerful?”

Everyone in the room was staring at me.

“So sorry. Did you ask me a question?”

“I asked if—”

“Drina?”

“Hush, I’m talking.” I realised at once that I’d spoken aloud, and clicked my tongue in annoyance.

“I beg your pardon, Most Powerful?” The commander tried not to look offended, but the pursed lips gave her away.

“So sorry, Commander, I didn’t mean you. My drusse has been involved in… an incident. I shall be back in a moment.”

I slipped into the ante-chamber, disrupting any number of waiting women, junior army people, scribes and servants, who had been busy gossiping. At my arrival, backs straightened, faces assumed serious expressions, groups sorted themselves into orderly lines and silence fell. Waving away the servants who rushed forward with trays of food or drink, I flopped into a chair.

“Now, what is going on?”

He didn’t answer, but his mind was bursting with excitement. When I looked through his eyes, there was Cal, shrieking with laughter, a bow in his hand. They were on the roof, of all places.

“Arran?”

“Oh, there you are! But you need not worry, I have worked out how to do it.”

“How to—? Oh, by all the gods, did you get Cal to shoot at you? Are you insane?”

“How else? It has to be a real threat or the defensive shell will not operate. So Cal shot me. He is a terrible bowman, I can tell you. It took him three attempts.”

That was all I could get out of him, for they both went off into hysterical laughter again. Fuming, I went back into my dull meeting, and this time burning anger kept me from falling asleep.

“Don’t you
ever
do anything so stupid again!” I yelled, stamping furiously up and down the room. “What were you
thinking
?”

“I was thinking that it was a clever way to solve the problem,” Arran said, a pained expression on his face. “How else can we learn to control this defence method except to experience it, and how else can we experience it except to encounter a real threat? We tried throwing a ball at each other, but that was not a real threat so nothing happened.
I
thought it was ingenious, personally.”

“Drina, he couldn’t have come to any real harm,” Cal said. “He wore an armoured jerkin, so even if this outer shell hadn’t appeared, the arrow wouldn’t have done any damage.”

“Except that you are the world’s worst shot,” I snapped. “Everyone knows that. You could have hit him in the head. Why not get one of the guards to do it? At least they can shoot straight.”

“None of them would have agreed to it,” Cal said patiently. “No one in his right mind would pop an arrow directly at the Drashonor’s drusse.”

“There we agree,” I said acidly.

“Well – no guard, anyway. But I can do it, and if anything
had
gone wrong, I could have healed him. You see? We thought of everything.”

I tutted with annoyance. Such foolishness! What would I have done if anything had happened to Arran? We hadn’t gone through the trials of the blood-bonding for him to die at Cal’s hands, in such an unnecessary way. Inexplicably, my eyes were full of tears. I thumped Arran on the arm to show that I was still displeased, then buried my head in his chest.

He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. “Hush, sweetheart, hush. No tears. I came to no harm in the end, and now I know how to get back to myself. I can do it whenever I want.”

“Could we all do that, do you think?” Ly asked.

“No!” I cried. “No, no, no! Don’t let Cal shoot at you, by all the gods!”

Ly laughed. “I thought Arran might be a better shot to practise with. If I get myself rigged up with one of these jerkins, he will not be able to do me any serious damage. You should do this, too, Princess. This protective mechanism is very powerful, but no use if we are immobilised for hours.”

For a while I argued about it, but I could see the point, too. So in the end, we all went up to the roof, and Arran fired arrows at Ly until he’d worked out the trick of not falling over and losing all feeling. That same excitement exploded into his mind when he realised he could do it. Then the three men all fell about with whoops of laughter, and clapped each other on the shoulder, and danced about with glee. Even the eagles picked up their elation, and hopped about nearby with chirps of enthusiasm. Except Kalmander, who perched precariously on top of the domed roof of the observation room, watching with avuncular amusement.

I leaned against the observation room wall watching them, not excited, not laughing. Even though I knew Ly was well protected with armoured leather, and Arran was an excellent shot, able to hit his preferred target with precision, fear gripped my belly and refused to let go. For as soon as Ly had satisfied himself that he could do it, I knew they would turn to me, and expect me to stand still and be shot at. By Arran! Arran who loved me and would willingly die for me was going to shoot at me, just to see what would happen.

So when they calmed down a little and turned expectantly to me, I said, “No. Not me, no. I can’t do it.”

Arran put his bow carefully on the ground and walked across the roof to me. “Sweetheart, we have discussed this. It is no use if any attack leaves you lying helpless on the ground. All it takes is a bit of experimenting, so you learn to recognise the signs and train yourself to relax. It is very easy. Ly only took a few tries to get the hang of it.”

“No.”

“Why ever not? You will not be hurt at all, I promise. I would never harm you.”

“I don’t want you to shoot me!” I blurted. “To watch you lift your bow and fire an arrow straight at me? No, I couldn’t.”

“Oh. Well, Ly, then?”

I shook my head, with a choking sound in my throat, half laugh and half sob. “That’s no better. And not Cal, either.”

“You could turn your back so you wouldn’t see it coming,” Ly said.

“No,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry, but maybe we can think of some other way.”

“How about if you try to injure yourself?” That was Cal, ever inventive. “I mean, if you don’t want Arran or Ly shooting at you, and you certainly don’t want me, I quite understand that, then take a knife and try to stab yourself.”

“Would that work?” I said.

“Of course,” Cal said. “The protection is an automatic mechanism, it will operate against any threat, even from yourself. It even worked when I shot Arran in the back.”

“You shot—? Of course you did. Why am I surprised? Very well, I will attempt to stab myself. Should I take the jerkin off and stab my chest?”

“No, just aim for your hand,” Cal said airily. “Arran, do you have a decent knife? Mine’s too blunt to be any use.”

Arran pulled a wicked looking curved blade from a sheath at his waist. I took it gingerly, and shuffled it around to get a good grip. Then, with one fast slashing motion, I drove it into my hand.

Searing pain lanced through me. Pain, and blood everywhere. I screamed and then screamed again. I let go of the knife but it didn’t fall. It was buried almost to the hilt in my palm, the blade protruding from the back of my hand.

I dropped to my knees, and screamed over and over.

There was shouting, both outside and in my head, and the eagles were screeching. Arran’s terror mingled with my own in my mind. Then blessed magic flooded into me, easing the pain. Cal was touching my face, his jade vessels filling me with magic. I closed my eyes, feeling gentle hands withdraw the knife, then someone with a cloth mopping up blood.

Ly’s voice in my head.
“You are fine, Princess. Cal is healing you. There – the knife is gone. How does that feel? Better?”

“Yes.”
And it was. I wasn’t in the best shape ever, but the pain was no more than a dull ache now.

I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was Arran kneeling beside me, tears streaming down his face. “I’m all right,” I said, but my voice was weak. “Darling, I’ll be fine. Just need a bit more magic.”

He nodded.
“Sorry. So sorry. Should have tried it on myself first. Stupid, so stupid of me.”

“Well, that was unexpected,” Cal said. “I really thought it would work. It
should
have worked.”

He sounded so affronted that I couldn’t help laughing, and then we were all laughing. Maybe it was the magic thrumming inside me, but all my fears and objections seemed silly to me now. How foolish I’d been, and yet it had somehow worked out for the best, for now we knew something new about the defensive ability – it wouldn’t protect us from ourselves.

The roof guards appeared at a run, swords drawn and bows primed. No doubt they’d heard my screams from the far side of the Keep, where they were watching at this hour. It was fortunate that they found us all in the grip of merriment, all the excitement over. Ly sent them swiftly back to their posts, then turned back to bandaging my hand. The wound was no more than a low throb now, and I guessed that by the morning there would be nothing to see except a fine scar on either side of my hand.

“Well,” I said, leaning on Arran to get to my feet. “I suppose I should learn how to manage this whatever-it-is. You’d better pop a few arrows at me.”

“If you have no objection, I think Ly should do it. He seems calmer than I am just now. Look – my hands are still shaking.”

I took his point. So I let him fuss round adjusting my jerkin to his satisfaction, and then he turned his back so he didn’t have to watch while Ly primed his bow and took aim.

“I shall hit your left shoulder,” he said. “Just in case of… any unexpected events.”

“Fine. Fire away.”

He didn’t hesitate. I saw the arrow fly, had an instant of terror when I truly believed this wouldn’t work and I would die, and then… nothing.

Before I had time to panic, Ly’s calm tones were in my head.
“Now relax, Princess. You are perfectly—”

Without any detectable sign, I found myself flat on my back looking up at a cloudless sky.

“—safe.”

“I’m fine,” I said, rolling over and scrambling to my feet. “Not even a bump on the head. But I don’t want to fall over every time.”

“That is the force of the arrow,” Arran said, turning round and dusting me down. “You will always be pushed by it, or by a sword or pike or whatever is aimed at you. But if you snap back quickly enough, you can learn to roll with it and fight back.”

“Or run away,” Cal said. “I find that to be a viable option too, sometimes. Another try, Drina?”

This time I was calmer, and I felt a distinct warmth when the arrow triggered the protection. Even so, it took me several attempts before I learned to respond to it quickly enough to avoid ending up sprawled on the ground.

And all the time Kalmander watched me, head tilted to allow his great golden eye to gaze down at us from his perch.

~~~~~

It took five suns for the army commanders to convince Axandor to allow Ly to summon his war-beasts. Even then he wouldn’t leave it to Ly to determine the best options. He called him to a meeting to explain the various war-beasts at his disposal. Arran and I went along too, out of curiosity. We’d encountered them more than once, and we were both interested to know more about them.

“We had sketches made during the war,” Axandor said, spilling several large sheets of paper from a tube, and uncurling them. “You can tell us about each one – what they might be useful for, the dangers, and so on.”

He spread the papers over the polished table and laid paperweights on the corners.

“Oh, these are clever,” Ly said. “Just marks on paper, yet they have the very likeness. The rinnfarr is not quite right, but the rest are very accurate.”

“You do not have art in the Clanlands?” Axandor said. “No drawing or painting?”

“Nothing like this. We have many beautiful things – rugs and blankets, or carving in wood or bone, but we do not paint, as you do, or weave wall hangings. But I have not seen anything like this on your walls.”

“Well, these are just rough drawings,” Axandor said. “The pictures on the walls – we like colours, you know? Proper pictures. These pencil drawings would be very dull to look at all the time.”

“I cannot agree,” Ly said. “I think these are beautiful. Look at this fur on the tapran’s neck. And the way the feathers are drawn on this eagle. I should like to have these on a wall.”

“I’ll get them framed, if you like,” I said. “Or copied if the army wants to keep the originals. Or we can send an artist to the Clanlands, if that would be allowed, to look at them close up and get the details right. Which is the one that’s wrong?”

“This one, the rinnfarr.” He tapped the paper.

“As in the Rinnfarr Gap? Same word?”

“Yes. I imagine the Rinnfarr Gap has sharp stone columns on either side, like tusks. But we will not need the rinnfarr to harass the supply lines. The armoured plates and tusks make it formidable in battle, but it is too slow-moving. Now the lions and wolves, and the tapran and moa… all those could be used. They are very fast.”

“And how soon can you have them in place?” Axandor said.

“The summoning will take a few sun-crossings, and then they must gather for the march. Then a few more sun-crossings to reach Greenstone Ford. But you will have to tell me what you want them to do, whether destroying the supply lines entirely or merely making life difficult.”

“I will talk to the commanders, but…”

Once they got into the detail, I lost interest and made an excuse to leave. Arran followed me outside, where my bodyguard sprang to attention.

“Are you all right?” Arran said. “The room was very stuffy.”

“Oh, I’m fine, but all this war talk… it’s depressing.”

“The golden army started it, and I like seeing Ly as part of things here. He always seemed a bit detached before, but now he is truly Bennamorian, I believe.”

“Is he? I’m not so sure whether it isn’t the other way round – he’s turning us into Clanfolk.”

Arran chuckled. “Both, I suspect, and nothing wrong with that. I like being Clan, so far, and I think he likes being Bennamorian. He is certainly a great asset. These war-beasts will make all the difference.”

But I couldn’t quite forget Axandor’s words – could Ly control them? “So long as Ly is on our side,” I said.

Arran looked at me in surprise. “Of course he is! How could you doubt it? Really, Drina, sometimes you just look for trouble under every stone. Relax. Ly is one of us now.”

~~~~~

The numbers and types of war-beasts were agreed, and Ly was given authority to summon them.

“How does that work, exactly?” Arran said. “You just… sort of think about all these beasts, and they come to wherever you are?”

“Well…” Ly hesitated, with a sideways glance at me. We were getting ready for bed, but he was still fully dressed, sitting cross-legged on the little balcony that led off the bedroom.