Bones of the Empire (73 page)

“I had no idea,” Liris gasped, clutching her arm to her side and trying to pull herself away with her good arm. Sliding up to the temple wall, she pressed her back to it. “Dorralt didn’t tell us. He wanted us to hate you, not fear…”

Raeln leaped on her, ripping and tearing with his claws while Liris screamed for mercy. Gradually, he managed to slow his anger. He stopped, backing away, and the deer wildling woman came up beside Raeln.

Liris cowered in a ball, trying to shield her face. She trembled, whimpering as she glanced longingly toward the temple doors, only a few feet away. “Mercy, please!” she whined. “I’ll never hunt wildlings again. Just let me abandon Dorralt. He’ll kill me himself. I’ll tell you where he’s hiding in the temple. Anything…”

Raeln looked down at the little wildling woman, and she shook her head. Without a word, she turned and walked away, crossing her arms as she went. There was a strength in her that Raeln had to envy. He had not handled Greth’s death anywhere near so easily.

“Mercy?” Raeln asked, kneeling beside Liris. “You want me to show you mercy?”

“Please,” she begged, hiding her face under her torn, bleeding arms. “Dorralt lied to all of us. Let me go and die alone.”

“I spent my whole childhood hearing about the honor of treating a foe with true mercy.” Raeln shoved her arm out of the way so he could see her face, squatting over her so she could not slide away. When she tried to push him back, Raeln easily overpowered her, pinning her arms against the wall as he brought his face near hers. “Today, I will do what someone would have wanted me to do. He made it perfectly clear how I should handle something like this. He told me about how one must be allowed to face their death on their own terms.”

“Yes…please. You’ll never see me again. Dorralt is already moving the anchor to another. There’s no reason to kill me. Do what your friend wanted and show mercy.”

Raeln got up and paced a moment before kneeling again. She watched him with obvious fear, as though unsure whether to run or remain perfectly still. None of her injuries had even begun to heal. Idly, Raeln ran his claws through the bleeding wounds on his arms again, which Liris watched with wide-eyed horror.

Adjusting his positioning as Liris sat up and inched away, Raeln continued. “One of your kind killed him. The last thing he told me was that mercy among our kind meant knowing when to kill those you love. I don’t love you…”

Before Liris could react, Raeln pushed her over and drove his claws as hard as he could into the base of her neck, aiming for her spine between her shoulders. She went tense before collapsing to her side, gasping for breath.

“Greth died by my hand as a mercy for the only person I have ever chosen to love.” Raeln wiped his hand on Liris’s robes as she looked around frantically, unable to move more than her face and eyes. “A knife in the heart, because he asked, no matter what it did to me to put that knife there. He got mercy because I owed him anything he could possibly ask for. You, I owe nothing to. You’ll die how one of your sisters tried to make Greth die. You will lie here until your body gives out, scavengers feed on you, or the mists find you. Somehow I doubt even this is enough to kill you, but if you cannot heal, you get to be like this forever…or until Dorralt shows mercy. I certainly never will.”

Getting to his feet, Raeln ignored Liris’s gasped pleadings and went to the deer, who still had her arms crossed and stared angrily at Liris.

“I owe you a debt of thanks,” he said, though he was not sure she heard him. She did not even blink, only flicked of one of her ears. “You saved my life. I cannot ever make it up to you for what you lost—”

“Save my pack-leader,” she said, her eyes narrowing and both of her ears flicking angrily. “Feanne and Estin are in trouble. We came to find more help. Save Feanne and Estin and you don’t owe me anything.”

“Raeln…my name is Raeln.”

“Alafa,” she replied, sniffling as she shoved past him and stomped her way toward the temple. “No time for this. My pack-leader needs us.”

Raeln grabbed Alafa by the shoulder, and when he forced her to turn around, she took a swing at him, as he had expected. He caught her hand in his and pulled her into a hug, letting her sob uncontrollably into his chest. “I know,” he whispered, holding her tightly. “I’ve been there too. Give yourself a minute before we go anywhere.”

“I…I can’t do this…” she whimpered, pawing at his shirt as she cried. “Everyone else is dead…”

“My whole village was wiped out,” Raeln said without really meaning to. “My sister was turned into one of them. My…Greth died in my arms because of a Turessian. Trust me when I say that I will do everything we can to help Estin and Feanne, but we both need our heads in the right place.”

Nodding, Alafa pushed away from Raeln and looked over at Liris. “I want to kill her. I want to pound her head in every time I think of Barlen or my fawns…”

“Save friends first. Kill later. I’ll teach you how to actually use a sword before we come back to Liris.”

Alafa smiled weakly and then halfheartedly kicked snow onto Liris. “Let’s go.”

Raeln led the way up to the broken doors of the temple, with Alafa right at his tail. A short distance behind them, Mairlee appeared and followed at a quick walk, her attention largely on the sky. The other four dragons were having more difficulty staying ahead of the mist tornados. Shaking her head, she lifted her skirt and hurried to catch up.

“I can sense the fighting inside,” Mairlee warned as she got closer, wrinkling her nose. “Most of the Turessians there are yours, but Dorralt has a few holding the halls against the Marakeer. Turn right when we get inside. I will push left and distract them long enough that you might be able to get through. Go for the central plaza. Nowhere else in this place matters now. If I die, the pattern lies in your hands.”

They walked through the broken doors, and Raeln found himself gawking at thick green vines that had grown over the damaged sections of the wooden doors. It looked as though the vines had actually torn the temple open, though they could not have existed more than a few minutes. Even Dalania’s magic could not have grown them that fast and strong.

“Stop staring and start running,” Marilee chided, facing to the left in the wide hallway. Only a few feet past her, Raeln could see scores of undead in melee with Marakeer and Turessian wizards, struggling for every inch of space they could get. There were nearly as many bodies as people standing.

Flicking Raeln’s burned and cut arm with her fingertip, Mairlee repeated, “I told you not to stare.”

With a suddenness that made Raeln’s heart skip, Mairlee transformed into a smaller version of the red dragon he had seen fly overhead. Her body filled the hallway, even with her wings folded, but she rushed forward like a snake darting down a hole. Dozens of Marakeer and Turessians ducked into side rooms to avoid being trampled, but the undead had no such opportunity. Blood and mangled bodies were all Mairlee left in her path.

Shivering, Raeln grabbed Alafa’s wrist and led her the other way down the hall. He practically dragged her as she stared wide-eyed the way Mairlee had gone. When Raeln saw movement ahead of them and stopped, Alafa ran into his back.

“What have we here?” asked a robed man, leading three others into the light of a window set into the roof of the temple. All of them stunk of sweat and fear, though they gave no hint of that in their demeanor. “More wildlings?”

A roar behind Raeln made the entire foundation of the temple shake, and the four Turessians put hands to the walls to maintain their balance.

“That would be one of the dragons we brought with us,” Raeln told the Turessians, whose calm appearance was becoming more frantic by the moment.

A group of the Marakeer growled and chittered as they came up behind Raeln and Alafa, forming a line that blocked the hallway. Alafa blinked up at the giant bear-creatures. Her eyes hinted at a level of panic that had gone so far beyond fear that she no longer shook or even tried to run.

“Kill them,” Raeln said, and the Marakeer charged.

“It’s time to be stupid,” Raeln told Alafa, smiling down at her. She blinked long and hard before nodding. “Estin told me stories about this trick. Let’s see if he’s making them up.”

He flexed his fingers to ready himself to fight if it came to that. Then Raeln walked straight toward the violent battle between the Turessians and the Marakeer, with Alafa practically hugging him. He kept his eyes on the ground as they went, doing everything he could think of to look like less of a threat. More than once he saw a Turessian look his way and sneer. Before they could manage to hurl a spell at him, they were drawn back into battle with the Marakeer, who seemed unwilling to relent, no matter what magic was thrown at them.

Raeln and Alafa walked straight past the four Turessians into the empty hall beyond without having to take a single swing at anyone.

Smiling and pulling Alafa up alongside himself, Raeln whispered, “Estin told me that recklessness confuses anyone trained to fight. We weren’t the real threat. They had to make a choice of who to attack, and that favors us.”

Alafa stared at him with wide-eyed amazement before looking around in the dark hall they stood in. “Now what?”

“Where is Feanne? You said she was in trouble.”

“Yeah,” Alafa replied, scrunching her muzzle as she thought. “Linn said one of the weird pointy-eared humans—”

“Elves.”

“Yeah, those. They had some kind of magicy thing for seeing things far off by looking through a metal tube. They told him that Feanne and Estin were in here, and that they saw Feanne fighting against scary dead people and Estin climbing something…”

“Something?”

“Yeah. Linn said to find help and get into the temple. You’re bigger than any of the other real people out here, unless you count the big bird-bear things. I saw some furless that tried to help, but they don’t count.”

Raeln sighed and listened for any sign of battle. The echoes of fighting from outside made it almost impossible to pick out anything that was not out there or directly behind them. “Are you going to be all right to go on?” Raeln asked, and he saw her bare her teeth angrily—not an expression he expected from a deer.

“Ask me after we kill them all.”

Swallowing hard, Raeln looked around the hallway, but he could not see anything moving. “How good’s your sense of smell?” he asked, looking both ways in the hall. “Find her and I’ll do anything I can. Feanne’s my friend too, and I’m too slow at this. I can’t smell anything in here. I doubt we can go back the way we came, but I have no idea if they’re in one of these rooms.”

Alafa nodded, knelt down, and sniffed the floor. She scooted around on hands and knees for a moment before her ears and small tail perked. Pointing toward the eastern route around the temple, she said, “She’s that way. I’m sure of it. Estin went the other way. He’ll be fine. She’s probably picked a fight with everything she can find.”

“C’mon.” Raeln took her by the wrist to help her up as he started walking quickly the direction she had indicated. “Let’s get our pack-leader back.”

Raeln maintained a light jog for several minutes, surprised at the sheer size of the temple. More than once they passed fallen Turessians, who bled and smelled like any from Raeln’s army—the last clan that had sided with Dorralt, he guessed. From what he could see, they had been brutally mauled by something clawed, whether that meant Marakeer or Feanne, he could not guess. There was no time to see if any of them were still alive and ask. Each time they passed a body, Alafa kicked them in the head with one of her hooves before hurrying to catch up with Raeln.

Gradually, the sounds of combat grew louder. Raeln pushed himself a little faster, mindful of Alafa’s shorter stride. Soon he spotted a group of Turessians filling the hall ahead. They worked in unison, trying to land spells on something moving fast in front of them. It only took a moment for Raeln to catch sight of red fur. Beyond Feanne, he could see Turess weaving spells with speed and intricacy, apparently shielding Feanne and himself. That gave Feanne the advantage, and she darted through the humans as they tried to physically grab her. Each time she got close, she tore at the men and women with her claws, paws, and fangs before getting away again. It was gruesome to watch, but Raeln spotted her using maneuvers he had taught her, mixed in with her usual animal ferocity.