Her nausea and imbalance vanished as battle rage swept through her. Cold calculations, instantaneous, appeared in her mind.
The first advantage she could perceive was their intentions toward her; she could tell by their postures and the way they held their weapons that they were not advancing to kill her, but rather to take her captive, seeking to spare her from the edge of their blades.
She had no similar compunctions where they were concerned.
Rhapsody raised the sword over her head, and quickly drew a circle of protection around herself, catching the note of the sword with her own voice. The thin circle of light hovered over her head, reflecting the light of the fire, diverting the currents of the wind around her, obscuring her now as much to them as they were to her hazy eyes.
Up the road, where the cloaked figure and a number of others stood, an angry shout went up in a voice that chilled her, though she had no idea why.
The four marauders on foot before her slowed, trying to maintain her attention so that she would not notice the two others approaching from the rear. She waited, keeping her back to the closer phalanx, until she knew they were close enough, and then spun and jumped, laying on the two closer ones.
The sword rang out with a note of vengeance, the flames leaping from the blade, as she struck, two-handed, first across the eyes of one, then returned a quick sweep back, slashing the throat of the other. With her eyes closed she could not see the flashes of astonishment on their faces before they began to drown in their own blood, but she had already turned to set against the charge from behind her.
She was laying about her capably, slashing at hands that tried to subdue her, lunging away from poles swung to knock her feet out from under her, following the patterns of her training and her deep elemental bond to the ancient weapon, when Anborn reached the carriage.
The heavy thudding of his crossbow firing, catching the assailants’ notice for a split second, gave her the opportunity to drive her blade deeply into the stomach of one who had rushed her from behind, impaling him as he reached for her. Anborn fired again, a double bolt shot that dropped another horseman, then turned to behead a foot soldier who was trying to knock Rhapsody to the ground with a polearm.
With the speed and synchronicity born of training from the same master, the two silently divided up the attackers, turning their attentions to the targets each had chosen. Anborn reloaded one-handed and fired again, taking down a horseman who was charging, then turned the hilt of his sword upward, clenching his teeth, and brought it down with all the strength he could muster on the head of the marauder who stood beneath him. Following his lead, Rhapsody dodged and ran, leading those on her into the path of his bolts.
Another shout went up from the road, a ringing voice shouting orders, as the figure in the cloak began striding toward the fray.
From behind him another group of seven men on horseback rode forth, barreling down the road, as the archers dipping their arrows into the flaming barrel again.
The last of the fourteen immediate attackers vanquished, Anborn urgently put out his arm to her, leaning forward in the saddle.
“Rhapsody! Come!”
She leapt over the writhing body in front of her and ran to Anborn, reaching for him, preparing to be hoisted onto the horse before him.
“Archers, aim for the horse,” the seneschal said. “Caius — take the rider.”
She was within a half-dozen yards of Anborn when the beautiful black stallion lurched and stumbled, then crumpled to the ground, throwing the General, who had himself pitched to the side, tumbling headfirst off its back.
Her concentration shattered, Rhapsody gasped in horror and bolted for her friend. She covered the last few feet by sliding to her knees, covering him with her body, desperately checking him for signs of life. His clothes were burning; she snuffed the flames with a word, struggling to stanch the tears that had sprung into her eyes.
The General lay on his back, his eyes glassy but focused on her. He attempted to smile, his clammy hand trembling as it patted her, in a futile gesture of comforting reassurance.
“Get out of here, you pretty fool,” he whispered hoarsely. “You are outnumbered, and they are coming.”
In the distance the seneschal peered through the flames, and saw her bending over the body of the rider.
Whore, muttered the demon. Miserable, rutting whore.
Rage burned in his brain, a fury that was his own, not that of the F’dor.
He grasped the hilt of Tysterisk, not breaking his stride, and pulled it angrily from its scabbard.
As the elemental sword of wind came forth, it brought with it a gust as stiff as a gale. From the burning forest floor a wind-devil rose, funneling currents of air that caught the sparks from the burning carriage and swept them through the forest glade, igniting it. The green leaves, hithertofore resistant to the smoldering fire from the carriage, succumbed to the hot, burning wind and tore with flame, lighting the sky with an intensity vastly brighter than daylight.
The seneschal gestured to the horsemen.
“Dismount,” he said sharply. “The horses will not know they are safe from the fire with me. Follow.”
Rhapsody felt the fire rise, felt the heat around her increase to the point of scorching, watching the skin on Anborn’s face begin to blister with it.
She looked over her shoulder to where the riders and the cloaked figure had been, and saw that they were still coming, moving quickly through the flames.
She turned back to the General, who was starting to go gray, even in the bright orange light of the burning forest.
“You must help me, Anborn,” she said softly. “Live; I need you.”
The General blinked but said nothing.
Rhapsody bent closer and whispered in his ear. “I cannot escape them,” she said. “I cannot see well enough; there are too many of them. I cannot allow Daystar Clarion to fall into their hands; you understand the import of this.”
The glassy eyes of the General cleared for an instant, then began to cloud over again.
Quickly Rhapsody traded swords with him, rolling him onto his side and slipping Daystar Clarion beneath his rigid body, then took his hand and concentrated on his true name, speaking it to heal him, to make him whole with it.
“Anborn ap Gwylliam, heal,” she commanded in her Namer’s voice. “Rest in curative slumber, appear lifeless until these men leave.” She chanted his name over and over, keeping an eye on the shapes approaching rapidly through the billowing smoke of the fire.
The General’s eyes cleared, and the color returned to his skin at her words. He tried to rise, but Rhapsody pushed him gently back to the ground and bent so that her lips were next to his ear.
“The sword will protect you from the flames,” she whispered. “Keep it safe, Anborn. The foresters will come when they see the fire; if you wait here, and feign death, help will come. Can you hear me?”
Anborn nodded slightly and closed his eyes.
The marauders were now within twenty yards. Rhapsody leaned over Anborn, her chest against his shoulder, and kissed his cheek.
“Live, live for me, Anborn,” she said. “Get word to Ashe about what happened here; tell him, the children, and my Bolg friends that I love them. Remember that I love you as well.”
The General squeezed her hand. An understanding passed between them, the instinctive shared comprehension of the duty, of harsh reality, and of what Kinsmen do when death looms.
Rhapsody stood, Anborn’s sword in her hand, struggling to regain her concentration, and stared into the swimming conflagration before her.
The figure in the cloak gestured to the others.
Three of the men stopped and trained their crossbows on her.
The other four, armed with swords, knives, and poles, began circling, splitting up to surround her.
As the marauders closed ranks around her, a detail occurred to her, pathetic in its irrelevance. She concentrated on the fire within her, calling forth a sliv
er of flame that licked up the blade of Anborn’s sword, a pale imitation of the rolling waves of Daystar Clarion, so that if her assailants had discerned the fiery blade they would not notice the difference. The irony and insignificance to her impending confrontation made her snort with wry amusement.
“Drop your weapon,” said the figure in the cloak in the common tongue.
There was something chillingly familiar in his voice, an aspect that made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. She stood stock-still, refusing to dignify his command with a response.
The crossbowmen set the hammers.
The swordsmen closed ranks.
The Lady Cymrian did not blink.
The figure in the hooded cloak came to within five yards of her and stopped.
“Not even so much as a flinch,” he said, admiration in his pleasant voice. “You are just as you were, a fighter to the end. And it’s just as stimulating now as it was then. More so, in fact; you are even more beautiful than you were. Who could have imagined it?”
Her grip on the sword tightened.
“You would stand and fight, wouldn’t you? Even surrounded as you are, outnumbered eight to one, you would still not yield.” The man in the hood inhaled deeply and let out an encompassing, pleasurable sigh. “This is going to be such fun.”
Rhapsody said nothing, just checked her grip, her heart pounding. She numbly thought of her unborn child, keeping her heart out of the dialogue, and silently begged its forgiveness.
The cloaked man chuckled, signaled to his men to hold the line, then sauntered casually forward.
“I told you I would return for you one day,” he said, his voice barely containing his excitement. “I am so sorry that I am late.”
Rhapsody’s already tremulous stomach went cold. There was something in the voice that horrified her soul, that harked back to a time of darkness beyond comprehension, but her rational mind assured her, in the midst of her rising gorge, that it was not possible.
A stench of the old world, like the reek of an open grave, permeated her nostrils, making her dizzy, nauseated.
When he was standing directly in front of her, the man took down his hood. His face was wreathed in a cruel smile, his light blue eyes glittering brightly in exhilarated anticipation.
“Hello, Rhapsody darling,” he said.
The Lady Cymrian’s face went slack, then white, even in the light of the burning forest. Her grip on Anborn’s sword slackened as her hands became suddenly cold and sweaty.
The blurry face that had been shielded by the hood was familiar and yet alien. She thought she recognized the shape of it, but there was a skeletal aspect to it that she knew she had never seen on a human face before, a kind of feral angle to the lines in cheeks, a demonic fire in the familiar blue eyes. A chill ran down her back and radiated through her, and suddenly the death she thought she was facing a moment ago paled by what stood before her now.
“It’s not possible,” she whispered.
“How cliché. Now, Rhapsody, surely I took you in enough exotic positions, put you through enough paces, to prove to you that anything — anything — is possible.”
Horror crept over her like blood oozing from a mortal wound.
“No,” she choked. “No. No. No.”
The seneschal laughed aloud. “Do you remember how aroused I used to become when you said that to me? Harder than a sword hilt. I used to make you say it before I knobbed you, and during sometimes, because it made the feel of your inner muscles all the more thrilling, knowing that you were resisting me, but could do nothing to stop it.” He leaned forward slightly, casting a glance down, then laughed aloud.
“Look,” he said. “It still has the same effect!”
Rhapsody shook her head violently, her thoughts jumbled, her breathing quickened, her eyes darting around, seeking escape.
“No,” she said again. “It’s not possible.”
The seneschal sighed blissfully. “This is better than I had hoped. I feared you might have actually been happy to see me, and then it would not have been so enjoyable. You were such fun to vanquish, Rhapsody. I’ve never had the equal to it. I cannot wait to know that feeling again. But let me just state right now that you will not be able to resist me, in any sense of the word. Don’t become resigned, however; that will make the conquest less enjoyable.” He took a step toward her.
The sword in her hand was pointed at his throat in the next heartbeat.
“Stay away from me, Michael. I may die, but I will take you with me.”
The three crossbows were lifted and pointed at her head.
The seneschal nodded to the other men as he untied his belt.
“You want to take me, Rhapsody?” he said teasingly, with an unmistakable undertone of menace. “It would be my pleasure to oblige you.
“Hold her,” he said.
28
OFF THE NORTHERN COAST
From the deck of the Basquela, Quinn could see the smoke begin to rise far away over a towering cliff face in the mammoth, unbroken rockwall that rose up from the shoreline and ran the length of the coast.
He watched the sky nervously for a long time, waiting for the signal, but it was not yet forthcoming.
Finally he turned to the crew, who were watching the sky as well.
“Let’s take her in a bit more shallow,” he said to the mate, who nodded. “We wanna keep drawin’ deep as long as we can, to stay out of sight, but we don’t wanna keep His Honor waiting when he’s ready to embark.”
“No, we certainly dunna,” the mate agreed hastily as the sailors scattered to their posts.
“Did you pull any eels?” Quinn inquired of a motley deckhand who had been fishing since daybreak.
The sailor shook his head. “Just blackfish. They’re pretty oily.”
“The creature don’t like blackfish,” Quinn objected.
The deckhand shrugged. “That’s all that were bitin’. If it’s hungry enough, it’ll eat ’em.” He tossed the bucket he had hung on the deckrail to the captain.
Quinn scowled and caught the bucket, then hurried across the deck to the door that led down into the dark hold. He seized the battered lantern that hung on a hook next to the door, lighted it quickly, then carefully made his way down the creaking wood ladder to Faron’s makeshift abode.
The creaking of the ship was louder down here in the dark, the stale reek of bilge vying with the unholy stench that lurked beyond in the shadows.
When the gleaming green pool was in sight, he rattled the bucket noisily.
“Faron?” he called, nerves in his voice. “Breakfast.”
The green pool began to roil, and the creature broke the surface, water streaming from all of the openings in its hideous head. Quinn struggled to contain his revulsion; the green glow of the water was from the monster’s waste, and to see it pouring from its misshapen mouth made his stomach turn violently.
The bulbous eyes fixed on him in the dark, the wrinkles in its face bunching around what would have been a forehead on a human, its distorted features set in a look of evident displeasure.
“No, he’s not back yet,” the captain muttered. “Soon.”
The creature hissed, saliva spraying from the open sides of its fused mouth.
“I brought ya some nice blackfish, Faron,” Quinn said in as soothing a voice as he could muster.
The creature spat, screeching in anger.
“I’m sorry — ’twas all we could muster. This ain’t your home by the docks, Faron; eels don’t abound here.”
Faron eyed him contemptuously.
“Well? Do ya want ’em or not?”
The creature stared at the captain for a moment longer, then nodded, a look of ominous purpose in its cloudy eyes.
As Quinn took a few steps forward, Faron reached into the depths of the shallow pool, fishing around for something. When he found it he held it up.
Quinn held up the light to better see what it was.
In the creature’s gnarled h
and was a ragged oval, glittering with color, though its surface was primarily gray. Quinn had never seen such a thing, but had heard the seneschal refer to the monster’s ability to read the scales, and supposed this must be one of them.
“You showin’ it to me?” he asked. “Is it for me?”
The creature nodded, beckoning the sailor nearer with its grotesquely twisted hand.
Hesitantly Quinn came forward and held the lantern closer. He bent forward, trying to stay far enough away to keep from inadvertently touching the freakish being in the pool that the seneschal seemed to love so dearly.
The light from the lantern flickered across the etching on the scale’s surface. At first Quinn could not discern the pattern of the lines, but after a moment, the image became clear; he stepped back in horror.
It was the crude rendering of a gallows, a body hanging limp from the noose.
“Me?” Quinn squealed, recoiling. “Are you saying that is for me?”
Faron’s eyes gleamed triumphantly, and a hideous grimace that might have been, on a human, a smile, spread across the wrinkled face.
The sight of the arrogant look in the monster’s eyes made the panic in Quinn change to anger.
“Bugger you, Faron,” he said nastily. “Sit in your shit and rot, you floating freak.”
The creature’s smile only grew brighter.
Quinn shoved the pail over to the edge of the pool and scurried back up the steps, trying to ignore the hideous popping and rending sounds behind him.
NORTHERN GWYNWOOD, IN THE FOREST
“Shoot me now,” Rhapsody said to the crossbowmen, without taking her eyes off the seneschal.”Until my last breath, I will kill whoever approaches me.”
The seneschal crowed with laughter, his fingers working at the laces of his breeches.
“Oh, Rhapsody, how I’ve missed you these many centuries,” he said, fondling himself as he struggled with the lacings in his excitement. “You always know how to make the event all the more thrilling.”