CHAPTER 19
The Storm
Elaina felt on fire as soon as she awoke. Her vision was fuzzy, but she knew where she was by the white sheet that filled her view. The voices around her were muffled and lower than was normal, like telling secrets in a crypt, she thought. But she was not thinking very well.
"—going to slip one day, I tell you. Like he did with that Sarina girl years ago. And if he slips up and kills her too, what's to be done with the Prophecies I ask you?" The speaker sounded resigned to doom.
"The ashendari are watching this time, you fool. Don't talk about things out here—look where you are!" The second voice was sharp, venomous. There was a startled pause. Then,
“I didn't see that there." The first voice muttered, moving off. Odd conversation. There was movement on her right, she felt the chain shift. Off went the sheet. It was even colder. Hate that. She grimaced. A'lan's face peered down at her.
"Awake." He called over his shoulder. Elaina didn't know how true that was.
"Sarina?" She murmured curiously, voice raspy from her screams. A'lan usually ignored everything she said after a session with Keravel. He would say it was pain talking and didn’t make any sense.
This time he was listening though. Eyes like daggers pinned her in an instant. His face had gone intensely still. Handsome face.
"What did you say?" His voice was tightly reined, taut as a drawn bowstring.
"Slips with Sarina-girl and kills her." She paused and frowned, "Her. Me?” That made her worried. Why does the Watcher watch so much today?
“Said pross—prossef—"
“Prophesies?”
“—too.” she finished, using his word. Her words were going all mushy in her mouth, like a drunkards. Elaina tried to put it all together again in her head, but her head was too busy trying to ignore everything below her chin. This was important though. She was scared.
"Me? Kill me too?" She asked again. A'lan was watching her, tense and unmoving, with something like dread tightened the muscles around his eyes.
"E'dan."
His brother leaned around the doorframe, eyebrows raised. He looked calm but weary—not tired, but a man who had seen too much. "She babbling again?" he asked.
"Repeating things she heard, I think. Tell E'dan, Wielder. Tell him what you said to me." His voice was still restrained, quiet, almost strangled. Elaina blinked at him. Lots of feelings for a Watcher.
"Kills me like Sarina-girl, slips and dead." She finished obediently in a sing-song voice. Odd thing to do. She wondered why she had done that.
"No more prophesies?" she asked, concerned. It still came out pross-fees. Oh well. Those were important, she thought. Or somebody did. Or something.
The Watchers were ignoring her, staring over her head to make eye contact. They did that sometimes, like a wordless conversation. Annoying. For some reason, watching their faces made her sad.
"They killed her, Cade. After all these years. They killed her." He sounded lost. She didn't remember Watchers ever sounding like that, but she didn't remember too much. Lost. Watchers are never lost. Or angry. Sounds angry. And sad.
She peered up at him. He was right where he should be in her head, but was she sure he was a Watcher? He doesn’t feel like one, or sound like one, or look like one—could be any man. Any handsome man. Very un-Watcher. Maybe this was one of her dreams again—A'lan told her she dreamed things after the red tent.
"When we stopped seeing her." A'lan replied quietly. “We had seen her at least twice every year, before that.”
"Slips and dead." It was a whisper. There was a pause. Elaina blinked up at them. The sun was bright in her eyes. When she blinked again, purple spots still marred her sight. That sort of thing didn't happen in dreams. So this isn’t a dream?
The two of them were down by the six horses that drew the wagon, arguing over the animals’ backs as they unharnessed them in tandem.
"You will take the Wielder? She made me think of Sari every truth-blasted day we chained her." E'dan said bitterly.
"Come with me, Corin. You cannot take them by yourself." Elaina thought she heard tears in their voices. Impossible. A Watcher? With tears? Never. This is a dream.
"I'll give you time. Take the Wielder. Bring them all down, brother. I will take as many as I can. Lodamno chai, ilandri, lodamno chai." E'dan drew his black blade and leapt up on one of the horses.
"Lodamno chai, brother." Their voices were full. It’s a farewell. Elaina knew, but the words were just out of her reach. A'lan made a peculiar salute, one fist to chest, the other flat on small of his back. It made the Bloodstone chain ripple. E'dan returned the salute and rode off, his cape billowing out behind him. He looks like Death.
"Lodamno chai." Elaina repeated. She thought she might know what that meant, maybe. When I can think.
"Into the storm," A'lan translated softly, watching his brother disappear. His face was smooth, but his dark eyes made her want to cry. Through the Link, she felt the other Watcher moving away from her.
Abruptly A'lan turned from his brother. Before she could blink at him, he was no longer standing, but kneeling beside her, strong fingers closing on the collar on her neck. When did he move?
The chain trailing from his wrist grazed her fresh wounds, making her flinch. There was a soft click. The weight of the stone was gone. In another moment, she heard an identical noise. Stunned, she watched A'lan wrap the chain around the collar quickly. What in Arith? Must be a dream, for sure. She couldn't move anyway. That often happened in dreams, didn’t it?
He disappeared inside the wagon, emerged a moment later with his saddlebags bulging. Jumping down from the wagon tongue he tied the reins of five horses together. Then he came back for her. Ignoring her cries of pain, he wrapped the sheet snugly around her and hoisted her onto the lead horse before swinging up behind her.
Wheeling the horse one last time the way E'dan had gone, the Watcher dug his heels in and they galloped off in the other direction. Men leapt from their path as they charged through, leaving angry shouts in their wake. But none raised a weapon or called the alarm. In seconds they were free, racing away from the other wagons, the cookfires, and the tents across an empty field. Elaina scrambled for her power.
It filled her like the noon-day sun, warm, familiar, and radiant. She was too tired to do anything at all with it, but to hold it! Bliss. The burning wounds faded into the background. All was well. She was free. It slipped away, and she was dimly aware she was losing consciousness as well. Her last thoughts were vague and mist-shrouded.
The crash of thunder split a still blue sky. The ground shook, setting the horses ears back in fear. They ran faster. She frowned.
Something was missing. The other Watcher. For the first time since her capture, she couldn't have pointed to where he was. One was right behind her, but the other?
He was gone.
She felt A'lan tense behind her, but when she looked back at the fireball that lit the horizon, his dark eyes were looking straight ahead. There were no tears on his face or in his eyes, but his expression made her want to curl up and weep. At that moment, with blood running fresh from wounds broken open in their escape, with the burns aching in time to the hoof beats, Elaina knew that she was hurt less than the man behind her. Darkness covered her eyes.
A'lan felt the tension go out of the body in front of him. It was harder to hold her up, but at least she wasn't in pain. The horses were running on pure fear from whatever had been thrown around in the camp. They could sense the Elements, animals could, and it made them nervous.
He pushed the thought of what was behind him back into a dark corner of his mind. Not now. Now he had to get away, to get them both away. For one thing, he was not a slave to those people anymore and he wanted to be rid of them. And then there was the girl.
They wanted her—that was reason enough to his mind to take her away. But it was more. She wanted to be free, she deserved to be free. Like Sarina had. Sarina. He pushed the thought away
. This was no place for that either.
Wind caught the sheet around the Wielder, cracking it like a whip and trailing it back onto him, peeling it off her. The camp was long out of sight and the horses were tiring quickly. Reining in, he dismounted, holding the limp form of his companion in the saddle with one hand. With the other, he dug about in the bags for something to cover her with, since her camisole no longer properly managed the job. At last he freed a long black coat.
It wasn't easy, but he worked smoothly and efficiently. By the time the horses’ sides had stopped heaving he sat again behind her, and the coat was buttoned up to her chin.
He hadn't the time to be gentle, any of the wounds that had not broken open during their flight were open now. It did not show on the black wool, but he could feel the wetness of her blood through the sleeve of the arm he had around her waist.
After the first push, he slowed the horses to a canter and trot every so often to let the beasts rest, but never for long. The first fell underneath them after a full day. The Wielder did not even flinch. He hauled her onto another, but it had been running too—just not carrying the two of them. The second ran itself to death that afternoon. They would have to stop at nightfall, or risk losing another. A'lan had gone almost straight north from the road. If he remembered correctly, they would be close to a tiny hamlet called Beradon just after sundown. With any luck, the Drethlords would not be able to look far enough, fast enough in every direction. Cade was counting on it—the Drethlords didn’t have enough horses to ride that many into the ground. It would take extraordinary luck for the Drethlords to catch them now.
But then, he’d never known Keravel give up on a thing he wanted, either.