Dark Lady's Chosen (38 page)

“Who, you?” Derision was clear in Leather John’s voice.

Ruggs snorted. “I prefer to work from behind the throne. Let some other patch wear the motley and be the target.”

“Then who?” Leather John demanded.

“Alvior of Brunnfen comes to mind,” Ruggs replied. “After his father fell through the ice last winter—an
unfortunate
accident—Alvior has been most supportive of our cause. He’s got royal

blood—distant, but confirmed. He’s the one who maneuvered Crevan into Donelan’s sights as a spy. Meanwhile, he’s been quietly arming our side. He’s had a grudge against Donelan ever since the king gave protection to the twins his father banished. Good reason, too. They both helped put Martris Drayke on Margolan’s throne.”

Cam felt as if he’d been gut-punched. His head reeled. Alvior of Brunnfen, his oldest brother. And although he hadn’t seen any of his family in the eleven years since he and Carina were exiled, he’d never expected Alvior to side against the king. His chest tightened.

Ruggs’s words suggested that Alvior had something to do with their father’s death. And while Cam had long ago renounced the father who sent him away, the depths of Alvior’s treachery made his face flush with shame and anger.

Unbidden, memories rushed back. Cam and Carina had been barely fourteen years old when their father Asmarr had discovered Carina’s healing magic. In the harsh lands of Isencroft’s northern reaches, their father had presided over Brunnfen with an iron hand. A distant cousin to the royal family, Asmarr had no patience for the niceties of court. He was as hard as the climate of his lands and as relentless as the cold Northern Sea. For Asmarr, healing only had a place on the battlefield, something to be done for warriors by a warrior-priest. To do more “weakened the herd,” as he said.

Shamed by the birth of twins, Asmarr had submitted to the pleadings of his wife to keep Cam and Carina despite the ill omen. But when Carina’s magic manifested, neither the cries of his wife nor the begging of their youngest brother, Renn, would change his mind. Cam and Carina had been banished.

Ruggs’s statement shook Cam. Asmarr was a hard man, but he was never disloyal to the king. Alvior, on the other hand, Cam thought with disgust, had ever only served his own interests. It had been Alvior who discovered the healing Carina practiced in secret and betrayed her to their father. Cam still remembered Alvior standing with Asmarr as the gates of Brunnfen closed behind him and Carina. Alvior had been as expressionless as his father, his eyes utterly lacking in compassion.

“Won’t your patron take exception to us hanging his brother over the wall like a deer from the hunt?”

Ruggs’s laugh was cold. “Mind? I expect he’ll reward us. He’s been looking for a way to finish what his father started. They’re a superstitious lot up north. Swears that Brunnfen’s poor

harvests have been because his father let the twins live.” Cam could hear the malice in Ruggs’s voice. “The woman is out of our reach. She’s gone to Dark Haven, under the protection of its brigand lord. But if I give Alvior a chance for the crown and his brother’s head, it’s certain to fix a place for me at his right hand.”

“And the rest of us?”

“Loyalty is always rewarded.”

Cam swallowed hard. If Ruggs was correct, then Crevan had already attempted—or succeeded—in killing Kiara and the child she carried. Ruggs seemed confident that Curane had the means to destroy the Margolan army, and Tris along with it. He recalled all too well what Margolan had looked like under Jared’s iron hand, and had no illusions that it would be any better when Curane put Jared’s bastard son on the throne.
All that we fought for, for
naught
.

Grief hardened his resolve for the job he had to do this night. There was only one bright spot.
The woman’s out of our reach
, Ruggs had said of Carina. Cam was grateful that Carina was far away in Dark Haven.
Jonmarc will keep her safe
, Cam thought. That gave him a sense of peace.
Maybe I can reclaim some honor for our family, to temper what Alvior
has done.

He could see by the position of the sun that the day was far spent. With his good hand, Cam withdrew the flint and steel Rhistiart had given him from his pocket. He dragged himself closer to the bales of dry wool. Long ago, he had seen a fuller’s mill go up in flames when stray sparks from a lantern lit the dust and dung fumes. It had exploded with a boom that shattered the glass in the windows of houses. With any luck, Cam hoped to recreate that spectacle.

He made a bed of kindling-dry wool near the pile of bales and wedged the flint under his good knee as he struck at it with the steel until sparks lit the dirty fluff. Cam repeated the effort down the length of the bales, painfully dragging himself along until he reached the outer wall. He looked back with satisfaction as the bales quickly caught fire. Before the smoke had grown thick enough to alert Ruggs and the others, the filthy wool caught like dry wood, until the flames roared toward the ceiling, engulfing Siarl’s body in a proper pyre.

Ruggs opened the door with a curse, and the flames rushed toward the fresh air, forcing Ruggs and the others back. Cam flattened himself against the furthest corner, against the cold outer wall and waited to die.

All at once, the air around him seemed to glisten like fire. The dusty air exploded with a bang, blowing a hole through the rickety old wall. Deafened from the blast and burned from the

fiery bits that rained down on him, Cam crawled with all his might toward the hole as a second explosion lifted the floor beneath him. The gases from the dung pits erupted, and the force threw Cam through the air. He was burning and freezing at the same time. The old mill was a conflagration, sending a pillar of fire high into the frigid night air. Cam laughed through his pain. He landed hard in the deep white snow and surrendered himself to darkness.

DAY 6

“Don’t move.”

Jonmarc roused from an uneasy rest to find himself staring at the business end of a notched crossbow. The bowman was a
vayash moru
Jonmarc didn’t recognize. Three of his fellows crowded into the pilgrim’s chamber, and two of the others held their bows trained on Gabriel.

“The quarrel might not kill you,” the bowman said to Gabriel, who had not moved from where he leaned against the wall, “but it will him,” he added with a jerk of his head toward Jonmarc. “So I suggest cooperating.”

Outside, the bells tolled the third hour of the morning. Although the
vyrkin
shaman had healed Jonmarc’s injuries that were life threatening, too many other wounded fighters had needed his assistance for him to bother with the rest of Jonmarc’s wounds, intending to heal them later. Exhausted and injured from the battle, stiff from the beating Malesh had inflicted, Jonmarc knew he was not up to another fight. Gabriel’s burned and blistered skin had hardly begun to heal, and Jonmarc took that as an indicator that the
vayash moru
had sustained vital internal damage that was not apparent. Gabriel looked ragged. The odds were against them winning this battle, especially when Jonmarc spotted four more
vayash
moru
armed with swords waiting in the ruined temple.

“Malesh was destroyed,” Gabriel snapped. “The war is over.”

The dark haired man whose bow was pointed at Jonmarc shook his head. “We were sent by the Blood Council. You’re to be brought before them for trial.”

“The Blood Council?” Jonmarc started to sit up, then thought better of it as the bowman calibrated his aim.

“What nonsense is this?” Gabriel’s voice was thick with disgust. “The Council dissolved.”

“Lord Rafe issued the order for your arrest. You’re both to be brought to answer to the Council for your actions. The charge is treason.”

“Treason!” Gabriel snarled. “By whose measure?”

The dark haired man’s face was stony. “You betrayed the Blood to side with the mortals against
vayash moru
.” He met Jonmarc’s glare. “And you betrayed your sacred oath as Lord of Dark Haven when you made war against our kind.”

“I have a few things to say to Lord Rafe,” Gabriel said.

The dark haired man signaled for the other
vayash moru
to enter. “Bind them. We’ll carry them to the carriage on the road so that there are no tracks to follow.”

A crossbow fired. Jonmarc flinched, expecting to feel the razor-sharp point lancing through his skin. Instead, he saw Gabriel stiffen, his face tight with pain, eyes wide. The bolt pierced his heart.

“That will make sure he doesn’t attempt anything heroic,” the dark haired man said, meeting Jonmarc’s gaze. “He’ll recover. The Council’s only requirement was that you be alive to stand trial. They didn’t specify in what condition.”

Jonmarc gritted his teeth as a
vayash moru
came forward to bind his wrists and jerked him to his feet. Another
vayash moru
lifted Gabriel as if he were weightless and carried him from the room. Jonmarc looked around the temple at the wreckage from the battle. Where Malesh had fallen lay a pile of charred clothing. Jonmarc winced at the sight of the large bloodstain that marked where he had gone down before Gabriel reached him.

Outside, the snow was trampled and dark with ash and blood. Just as the bitter wind struck him, a
vayash moru
grabbed him hard from behind, squeezing his cracked ribs in an iron grip. Jonmarc fought back a cry of pain as they lifted off from the ground, traveling in a rush of air and snow to touch back down on a rutted road a few minutes later. An expensive black carriage waited for him. The team of four black stallions snuffled and pawed at the snow impatiently. His captors trundled him none too gently into the carriage, thrusting Gabriel in behind him like a piece of luggage, and locked the carriage door.

Jonmarc struggled to lift Gabriel as gently as he could without putting any pressure on the arrow that pierced his chest. He managed to get Gabriel onto the carriage seat, where he slumped to the side and sat unmoving. Only his eyes moved, and Jonmarc clearly read pain in Gabriel’s gaze.

“Lovely end to a perfect day,” Jonmarc muttered, sitting down on the seat facing Gabriel.

The carriage bumped and jostled roughly as the horses raced through the night. After more than a candlemark, the carriage slowed. Out the frosted window, Jonmarc could see the silhouette of a manor house.

Where Wolvenskorn was notable for its great age and Dark Haven for its austerity, this grand home was much newer, in the style of King Staden’s palace. Made from brick and granite, the three-story structure was topped with a carved stone railing. Gargoyles and grotesques looked down on the entrance, which was flanked by two equally large wings of the building. Candles glittered in every window as if the grand home awaited guests for a ball. Jonmarc felt his gut tighten. Too tasteful to be Uri’s home at Scothnaran, not ascetic enough to be Rafe’s country villa, this had to be Astasia’s manor. That alone did not bode well.

Guards came to unlock the carriage door. Jonmarc, wrists still bound, was escorted by four
vayash moru
, two of whom carried crossbows loaded and aimed at his back. He resisted the urge to smile at the threat his captors perceived him to be, even bound and bloodied.

Let them wonder
, he thought, though he was acutely aware of the fact that he was hardly ready to hold his own against mortals, let alone
vayash moru
. Behind Jonmarc, another
vayash moru
carried Gabriel, who hung limply in his arms like a corpse. They walked up the broad stone steps and into a front hall that glittered with gold and crystal reflected from mirrored walls and a gleaming white marble floor.

The guards hustled them past the finery to a room at the end of a long corridor. The lead guard opened a door to a small, windowless room that appeared to be an unused pantry. It was bare and lit only by a single overhead lamp. “You’ll wait here,” he instructed curtly. He drew a knife from his belt and advanced on Jonmarc, who eyed him warily, but the guard slit the cord that bound his wrists and sheathed his knife. Jonmarc’s guards prodded him inside, while the man who carried Gabriel set him down hard on the bare floor. With one swift move, he jerked the arrow from Gabriel’s chest and stepped back as Gabriel groaned and fell backward. When the door locked behind their captors, Jonmarc edged closer.

“Gabriel?” He kept some distance between them, having no idea how lucid Gabriel might be. “Are you all right?”

“That depends on your definition.”

“Where are we?”

“Airenngeir. Astasia’s manor.”

“Does the Blood Council usually meet here?”

“No.”

Jonmarc cursed. “This just keeps getting better.” He paused. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Short of feeding me the idiot who shot me with that arrow, nothing I can think of.” Gabriel groaned and pulled himself up to sit against the wall. His shirt was stained dark with ichor.

He grimaced and let out an uncharacteristic expletive.

“I thought you could heal just about anything.”

“Heal, yes. But not immediately. The greater the damage, the longer it takes. If you hadn’t noticed, I’d seen better days before I got shot. Chest wounds are particularly slow to heal and they hurt like hell.”

“Yeah, well, for the record—getting bitten in the neck doesn’t feel great either.”

Gabriel glanced at him. “It can be nearly painless. Malesh wanted you to suffer.”

Jonmarc was silent for a few moments. “Why didn’t he try to turn me?”

“Malesh knew that you’d never accept him as a master. He probably didn’t doubt that you’d kill him the first chance you got, even if it destroyed you as well. He knows first-hand how a fledgling can turn against his maker. And if he ever tried to influence your thoughts, he would have realized you have a certain… natural resistance. You have no idea how much effort it took for my compulsion to break through your shielding at Westormere.”

Again, they sat in silence for a while. “What now? We both know the trial’s a farce.”

Gabriel shifted and gritted his teeth against the pain. “Astasia and Uri may have clamored for it, but Rafe is usually a fair man, if rule-driven. The question is whether or not they’ve included Riqua. She’s not in here with us, which is a good sign. On the other hand, they must know she’s at Dark Haven. That would make her less than impartial.”