Once A Hero

  Larissa's dark eyes looked through me. "But you love your brother."

  I smiled. "You inhabit my dreams and know my mind."

  "I know your heart, my love, and I do not think you could bear your brother any enmity."

  "But you don't know my brother."

  "Yes, but I see how you have become Aarundel's friend. He would not accept you if you were false or fickle, and your loyalty to him and to Emperor Beltran tells me enough about you to conclude what I have."

  "My brother is a thinker. Whereas others looked at the Roclawzi past and sought ways to recreate it, he saw that our empire had been destroyed by forces from the outside. He looked for ways to make certain the people of the Roclaws could prosper without inviting another invasion by your people or the Reithrese. He determined that trading with the Dwarves and with other nations would accomplish this goal, which many of our nobles saw as an abandonment of our warrior heritage."

  I looked deep into the fire, down to where the flames had no color and the coals below glowed bright red beneath onionskin flesh of white ash. "He came to me, when I was sixteen, and outlined his plans for our people to me. He asked my opinion and told me that he would abdicate any claim to the throne in my favor if I thought he was wrong. He didn't care about power or ambition, he just wanted to do what was best for our people. He put his future and their future in my hands, and I saw I could not handle them."

  I glanced up and my eyes slowly recovered, bringing Larissa into focus and form. "I told him I was bound off to be a hero, one who would make the Roclaws proud. It was his job, I told him, to make certain the Roclawzi still existed to sing my praises. We agreed to that division of reponsibilities. I fled the land where politics almost turned me against my brother." I shrugged my shoulders. "Many of the Roclawzi lords who wanted me to supplant my brother were very angry with me, which made me more than glad to have tangled them in their own web of [cfacmes]. With that as my nearest entry into politics, I had no desire to be the emperor."

  Larissa smiled at me. "I would not have guessed that the explanation. Even with all my brother has told me."

  "Even your brother does not know about that. Aside from my brother and me, you are the only one who knows."

  Shijef took that moment to audibly crunch a bone between his teeth.

  I smiled. "So there it is. Neal Roclawzi left the mountains to become a hero. He left not to win an empire for himself, but to avoid having to lead the Roclawzi to ruin."

  "Then he has satisfied that ambition." Larissa broke a stick in half and tossed both pieces into the fire. "Has he other ambitions?"

  I watched the sparks from the fire spiral upward until they died. "I had none until I met you, but I fear Sylvan law will prevent me from satisfying them." I shook my head. "For the longest time I assumed I would meet someone with whom I would have a brood of children and live out the twilight years of my life. Now that I have met the person with whom I would like to do those things, I cannot. I suppose I will have to return to the mountains and teach my nephews all the things I had intended to teach my own sons."

  Larissa's faintly bemused expression slackened slightly. "You have no children?"

  "Despite all you have heard about the proclivities of Men, I have none I know about." I shrugged. "Given that plotters almost turned me against my brother, I was reluctant to provide them bastards of mine that they could use against him or his heirs. I always supposed I would father children someday, but the war against the Reithrese preoccupied me; then I met you, and since then no woman has kindled more than a flicker of interest for me."

  "I thought, I did not know . . ." She seemed at a loss for words and still filled with distress.

  "What's wrong?"

  Worry-furrows creased her forehead. "I realized just now that because of me you will have no children to carry on your tradition."

  I shook my head. "Fortunes of war."

  "No, do not say that." Worry melted into stern resolution. "Among the sylvanii, children are a privilege granted the few by the many in acknowledgment of their contribution to the world. My brother and Marta are being so honored because of what he has done fighting side by side with you. The thought of your line ending with you . . .

  "For me to deny Humanity your progeny . . . this is unthinkable."

  "But I have no interest in getting children on any woman. Were you and I able to create a child, that would be an honor and a child blessed in so many ways that even the gods would smile upon him. And I understand the importance you see in children, but if our lines cannot be mated, I will not overmuch regret dying without heirs of my blood."

  "But, Neal, while you and I may never be able to be together, your son and my daughter might be able to be together."

  My heart felt twisted around inside my chest. The idea of a child of mine and a child of hers being able to share what we could not filled me with happiness. Yet the happiness came with a bittersweet tinge as I realized it meant she would have a child with Finndali and I would have to [counrfe] with someone other than her. The only time before I had felt a similar conflict in my heart came when I first rode away from my home, abandoning it so I could preserve it for the future.

  I swallowed away the lump that had risen in my throat. "I understand what you have said, and I acknowledge the wisdom of your thoughts." I opened my hands helplessly. "I just don't have any interest in selecting a woman to play broodmare for me. I . . . I don't know."

  She gave me a little smile that melted away the anxiety [flssad] confusion nestled in my breast. "I will find someone you. I will find you a mate who loves you as much as I. When you are with her, it will be as if you are with me."

  "You can't do that."

  "I can, and I will because I love you too much to let you [i] out of the world. Perhaps I am being selfish, but I do not have to acquiesce to what others say is inevitable."

  "Such as my aging and withering away in front of you?"

  Larissa nodded once, her golden hair sliding down to veil her face. "I knew that could happen when I first saw you, but by then it was too late. I accept the pain that will bring me because it will be nothing in the face of the joy knowing and loving you has brought me. What we have together is too special to allow it to be hampered by laws and customs, superstitions and fears. Our love will transcend it all, even if it takes generations to do so."

  The passion in her voice filled me, and had Shijef not splashed his way out into the pool to remind me of his presence, I might have crawled across the clearing to her and courted death. Because of his intervention, I remained in place and poked the roasted quail with a finger. "It seems done. Are you hungry?"

  She nodded. "Yes. I will eat and then, I think, sleep."

  I smiled. "Yes, sleep, and perhaps a dream."

  "One dream?" Larissa feigned a pout. "Dreams, my love, very sweet dreams."

  I woke with a start as the Dreel shook me to consciousness. "What?"

  "Lifeblack floods." He pressed Cleaveheart's hilt into my hand. "The grove."

  I threw back my blankets and stood. "Keep her safe."

  Shijef growled as I started to run off. "That's a command, Shijef!" I shouted back over my shoulder as I sprinted into the night. Wearing only my breeches, I splashed through the stream. Its cold bite turned my bare feet into blocks of ice. The chill night wind puckered my flesh and burned my throat as I gulped down air. My ears strained for the sound of steel on steel and screams as I ran, but I heard nothing, and that fact worried me.

  Running in the dark along a path that meanders through a forest is not the fastest or wisest way to get from one point to another. Thick roots clutched at my feet and ankles, bringing me down again and again. Each time I fell, I bounced back up and continued on, my speed only slightly abated. When I saw large branches in my way, I ducked beneath them, but countless of their smaller, skeletal kin scourged me over the length of my journey.

  I crested a hill, then took a rolling tumble down the other side into a small valley barely
twenty yards from the circus translatio grove. I concentrated on keeping Cleaveheart in my hand as I somersaulted down through brush and bracken and somehow missed solid collisions with moss-covered stones and the few thick trees on the downslope. At the bottom I regained control of my body and huddled in a crouch, waiting for a reaction to my noisy appearance.

  Again I heard nothing, and goose pimples rose on my skin, though they were not caused by the cold breeze caressing me. Slowly, moving in fits and starts and going as quietly as I could manage in the midnight blackness, I moved to the grove. While my ears and eyes failed me, my nose did not, and even before I broke through the circle of trees, I knew what I would find. As I entered the grove, the moon's wan light carved a nightmare from the darkness.

  Elves lay twisted and strewn around the clearing in various boneless poses of death. Ambushed while they slept, most of them were naked, and those dressed wore no more than I did, save one. He had managed to pull on one boot before two arrows crossed in his skinny chest. The four or five—no, it was four, but one was in two pieces—showed signs of having been cut down by swordsmen. The copious hoorprints in the soft sward had so chewed the land that I could not clearly identify how many horsemen had attacked them, but I would not have been surprised to know two dozen or more had been in on the assault.

  I squatted next to one of the arrow-slain bodies. The shaft and fletching were familiar to me from countless battles with the Haladina. I rolled the body up and over onto its side, the flesh still warm to my touch. One of the broadheads protruded from the Elf's back, and the appearance of the barbed tip confirmed its Haladin manufacture. I eased the body back to the ground, then stalked through the clearing, counting.

  When I reached a dozen, I ran out of bodies. I went back through the camp and reconfirmed my count. The Lansorii were dead, all of them, slaughtered while they slumbered after their hard ride through the circus translatio. On the edge of the Elven Holdings they had not bothered to set out pickets, and Aarundel would have been too preoccupied with his wife to have noticed.

  "Neal!" Larissa appeared at the edge of the clearing with the Dreel rising behind her like a shadow. "By the gods!"

  Her hands rose to cover her mouth as she drifted forward, and I opened my arms to offer her a safe haven. In that moment I needed her as badly as she needed me. I saw her tears glisten in the moonlight, and I wanted to brush them from her cheeks. I reached out to do that, but the Dreel swept her out of my grasp.

  "Shijef?"

  " 'Keep her safe,' your command was."

  "Then you should not have brought her here."

  "In my care, safe she is."

  Anger erupted in me. "Then keep her on the edge of the grove. That is my new command, slave!" A third time I searched the camp, picking and poking through the collapsed tents and discarded blankets. I listened for any sound of life and looked for any clue beyond the obvious concerning the identity of those who had laid the ambush. And I looked for my friend and his wife.

  I don't know how long I searched, but by the rime I returned to where Larissa sat, the Dreel had found her a blanket. She rested with her back against the bole of a tree, her knees drawn up and hugged tightly to her chest. Her cheeks remained wet, and a few strands of her golden hair were pasted to her face with tears.

  I tossed Aarundel's ax at her feet. "Your brother and Marta are not among the dead. I saw no blood among their belongings, though there were quite a few arrows in their tent."

  "Did they run off?"

  I knelt and patted the ax. "If they had run, this would not have been left behind. Aarundel never would have run from Haladina without a weapon in hand. He also would have run toward us, to warn us. There are tracks leading away from here that I will follow in the morning. The attackers, it appears, started an area search, but abandoned it quickly. I'm thinking, though, I'll not find your brother or Marta out there."

  "Why not?" Her question came wrapped in hope.

  "A lot of things, some I probably won't recognize for days, but I know a couple of things that aren't right. Some of the wounds are bloodless, which means they were inflicted after death. The Haladina have never been neat and orderly when fighting, but they don't beat up on corpses as a rule. More important, though, there's not a single Haladina lying out there, and I'm not going to believe your Lansorii couldn't account for at least one of them, even in an ambush."

  "But who would do this? Would the Haladina risk adding to the Eldsaga by raiding here in our lands?"

  I shook my head, then balled my fists against my desire to stroke her hair and kiss away her tears. "This was an act of cruelty—as cruel as the laws that keep us apart right now—and an act of revenge. The Lansorii died because your brother dared fight beside me to overthrow Tashayul's empire. He and Marta were taken as hostages so they can be traded for something of incalculable value." I raised Cleaveheart and watched the moonlight skitter down its unblemished edge. "With this sword comes a means to win an empire, and those who staged this raid mean to have it in exchange for the lives of your brother and his bride."

  Chapter 21:

  The Cleansing Effect Of Fire

  Spring

  A.R. 499

  The Present

  ***

  THE RAVEN ON Atholwin's shoulder hopped into the air, and as it spread its wings, it began to change. Feathers melted back into black flesh that stretched taut between the bony fingers of the demon's batwings. Its head expanded and fattened while flattening. Its two eyes swam up into the center of the forehead and merged, then split apart into three eyes that formed a triangle pointing down at the serrated beak. The bird's feet remained the same, but the body and legs changed to become more anthropomorphic. Little infant arms sprouted from its sternum, vestigial limbs that could only clap and grasp and, at points, looked as if they were part of a baby trying to fight its way to freedom from inside the demon.

  Gena recognized it from descriptions given of the foul creatures that had served Reithra. It was a ferghun, a demon from some obscure pit of her inferno that seduced men through their fear of death, promising them much and denying them everything in the end. Such creatures, as nearly as she could determine, had not been seen on Skirren since the fall of the Reithrese, and the presence of this one meant Atholwin had dabbled in dark practices best left forgotten.

  Fear sent a jolt through her that burned away the magical fog generated by the syncopated candle flames. With a deliberate speed that seemed ever so slow to her, she brought her hands out from beneath the thick bedding, flicked the primer covers off, and thumbed back the talons on Durriken's flashdrakes. Stabbing the first handcannon forward, she pulled the trigger and braced as the talon sparked into the primer pan. After a heartbeat or perhaps two as hers raced, earsplitting thunder followed a bright flash and gout of smoke.

  The first ball took Atholwin clean in the chest. It made a neat round hole over his heart amid the peppering of unburned powder that flecked his robe. The old man sighed explosively, then seemed to collapse in around the wound, while his dagger twisted and bobbled up out of his grasp. His body flew back into one of the two swordsmen behind him, but before they could collide with the candlebearer, Gena fired the second flashdrake.

  The shot blew straight through the ferghun and the muzzle-flash burned a ragged hole through the center of the beast. It screamed in the voice of the raven, wrapped in anguish and threaded with madness, then began to dissolve from wound outward. Behind it the candlebearer snapped forward in an abrupt bow as the ball took him in the stomach. His candle dropped, the flame dying seconds before he did, and Gena felt her ability to work magick return.

  Dropping the flashdrakes in her lap, she grasped the heavy coverlet and threw it forward to entangle the lone standing swordsman at the foot of the bed. Without moving from her place, she swung her hands wide and gestured at the two remaining candlebearers. Even as their eyes cleared and focused on her, the black candles they bore immediately and completely combusted. Each man reeled away in a fl
ash of light, with singed hair stinking and white robe burning.

  The first swordsman regained his feet as Gena rolled from the bed, but never got a chance to close with her. The door to her room disintegrated beneath a powerful kick. Berengar, his eyes blazing, swept into the room, turned the swordsman's thrust with a casual parry, then riposted with a slash that carried clean through the left side of the man's chest. A recovery and a lunge sent the entangled swordsman stumbling back into a human torch, and the both of them crashed against the wall. The tapestry hanging there immediately caught fire, and flames leaped from it to the canopy over Gena's bed.

  "Come on, this place is a firetrap!"

  Gena scooped the flashdrakes and her old clothes into her satchel, then picked up her boots and ran out behind the count. As big as a bear and growling in a suitable manner, he stalked through the house awaiting attack. She followed behind him with a spell or two in mind to use if any more demons opposed them, but they reached the courtyard unmolested.

  "Wait here." Berengar turned to head back into the manor, but black smoke had already begun to pour out of the doorway. He ducked his head and disappeared into it, then came running back out coughing loudly and swiping tears from his eyes. "Too much fire."

  "It was a tinderbox. Lots of debris and old wood."

  Berengar smeared soot across his face. "When I heard the flashdrakes go off, I came running. Now my boots and clothes are burning up there." He scowled for a moment, then looked from the building to Gena and back. "You said the first spell every magicker learns snuffs fires. Can you?"

  Gena shook her head. "Magick I can work, but miracles, no." She reached out and pulled him back away from the building as burning wooden shingles crashed down amid a shower of sparks. "Let it burn, all of it, then scatter the stones and salt the earth."