Heir to the Shadows (50 page)

Lucivar took the empty cup, wanting to offer her some comfort but not sure if she could accept it from a Warlord Prince. Maybe from someone like Aaron, who was the same age, but from him?

"Mari?"

Relief washed through him when Jaenelle walked into the kitchen.

"Let's see your arm," Jaenelle said, gently loosening the bandage and ignoring Mari's stammered pleas to take care of Khevin. "First your arm. I need you whole so you can help me with the others. We're going to need some mild— ah, you've already prepared some."

While Jaenelle healed the deep knife wound that had opened Mari's arm from elbow to wrist, Lucivar ladled out cups of the healing teas and put a warming spell on each cup. After a bit of cupboard hunting, he found two large metal serving trays. Full, they'd be too heavy for Mari— especially since Jaenelle had just warned her that the kind of fast healing she was going to have to do wasn't going to hold up under strain—but the young Warlords out there could do the heavy hauling and lifting now that he was maintaining the shield.

Jaenelle solved the problem by putting a float spell on both trays so that they hovered waist high. Mari didn't need to lift, just steer.

With Lucivar and Mari guiding the trays, the three of them went to the large room. Jaenelle ignored the clamor

that began as soon as the villagers saw her and went to the ' shadowed wall where Khevin lay.

Mari hesitated, biting her lip, obviously torn between her desire to go to her lover and her duties as assistant Healer. ; Lucivar gave her shoulder a quick, encouraging squeeze j before he joined Jaenelle.

He didn't know what help he j could give her, but he'd do whatever he could.

As Jaenelle started to lift the sheet, Khevin's eyes opened. With effort, he grabbed her hand.

She stared at the young man, her eyes blank. It was as if she had gone so deep within herself that the windows of ! the soul could no longer reveal the person who lived within

"Do you fear me?" she asked in a midnight whisper.

"No, Lady." Khevin licked his dry lips. "But it's a War- j lord's privilege to protect his people. Take care of them first."

Lucivar tried to reach her with a psychic thread, but Jaenelle had shut him out.
Please, Cat. Let him
have his pride.

She reached under the sheet. Khevin moaned a wordless protest.

"I'll do as you ask because you asked," she said, "but I'm going to tie in some of the threads from the healing j web I've built
now
so that you'll stay with me." She smoothed the sheet and rested one long-nailed finger at the base of his throat. "And I warn you, Khevin, you had better stay with me."

Khevin smiled at her and closed his eyes.

Cupping her elbow, Lucivar led Jaenelle into the hallway. "Since they won't be needed for the shield, I'll send the younger Warlords in to help with the fetching and carrying."

"Adler, yes. Not the other two."

The ice in her voice chilled him. He'd never heard any Queen condemn a man so thoroughly.

"Very well," he said respectfully. "I can—"

"Keep this place safe, Yaslana."

He felt the quiver, swiftly leashed, and locked his emotions up tight. Hell's fire, even if the drugs were out of her

system enough for her to do the healings, her emotions weren't stable. And she knew it.

"Cat . . ."

"I'll hold. You don't have to watch your back because of that."

He grinned. "Actually, it's when you're hissing and spitting that you're the most useful when it comes to guarding my back."

Her sapphire eyes warmed a little. "I'll remind you of that."

Lucivar headed for the outside door. He'd have to keep an eye on her to make sure she drank some water and had a bite to eat every couple of hours. He'd slip a word to Mari. It was always easier to get Jaenelle to eat if someone else was eating, too.

As he turned back, he felt the impact of bodies against the shield and heard the warning shouts from the Warlords outside.

He'd talk to Mari later. The Jhinka had returned.

9 / Kaeleer

Lucivar leaned against the covered well and gratefully took the mug of coffee Randahl handed to him. It tasted rough and muddy. He didn't care. At that moment, he would have drunk piss as long as it was hot.

The Jhinka had attacked throughout the night—sometimes small parties striking the shield and then fleeing, sometimes a couple hundred battering at the shield while he sliced them apart. There had been no sleep, no rest. Just the steadily increasing fatigue and physical drain of channeling the power stored in the Jewels as well as the steady drain of that power—a more rapid drain than he had anticipated. Randahl and the other Warlords had exhausted their reserves by the time he and Jaenelle had arrived yesterday, so he was now their only protection and most of their fighting ability.

Because the shield hadn't extended more than a couple of inches below the ground, he'd discovered, almost too

late, that the Jhinka had been using the piles of bodies for cover while they dug under the shield. So now the shield went down five feet before turning inward and running underground until it reached the building's foundation.

While they were fighting the Jhinka who'd gotten under the south side of the shield, Lucivar had responded to instinct and raced to the north side of the building, reaching j the corner just as one of the Jhinka ran toward the well, j The earthenware jar the Jhinka carried had contained ' enough concentrated poison to destroy their only water | supply. So the well now had a separate shield around it.

As soon as the attack on the well had been thwarted and f the shield extended, the witch storm had re-formed over j the building. No longer spread out to cover the whole village and hide the destruction, it had become a tight mass of tangled psychic threads, an invisible cloud full of psychic lightning that sizzled every time it brushed the shield.

The extra shielding and the constant reinforcement against another's Craft were doing what the Jhinka alone couldn't do—draining him to the breaking point. It would r take another day. Maybe two.

After that, weak spots would appear in the shield—spots the witch storm could penetrate to entangle already exhausted minds, spots the Jhinka could ' break through to attack already exhausted bodies.

He'd briefly toyed with the idea of insisting that Jaenelle return to the Keep for help. He'd dismissed the idea just as quickly. Until the healings were done, nothing and no j one would convince her to leave. If he admitted the shield ' might fail, more than likely she would throw a Black shield around the building, straining a body already overtaxed by the large healing web she'd created to strengthen all the wounded until she could get to them. Totally focused on the healing, she wouldn't give a second thought to driving her body beyond its limits. And he already knew what she would say if he argued with her about the damage she was doing to herself: everything has a price.

So he'd held his tongue and his temper, determined to hold out until someone from Agio or the Keep came looking for them. Now, in the chill, early dawn, he couldn't find enough energy to produce any body heat, so he wrapped his cold hands around the warm mug.

Randahl sipped his coffee in silence, his back turned toward the village. He was a fair-skinned Rihlander with faded blue eyes and thinning, cinnamon hair. His body had a middle-years thickness but the muscles were still solid, and he had more stamina than the three younger Warlords put together.

"The women who can are helping out in the kitchen," Randahl said after a few minutes. "They were pleased to get the venison and other supplies you brought with you. They're using most of the meat to make broth for the seriously wounded, but they said they'd make a stew with the rest. You should have seen the sour looks they gave Mari when she insisted that we get the first bowls. Hell's fire, they even whined about giving us this sludge to drink, and me standing right there." He shook his head in disgust.

"Damn landens. It's gotten to the point where the little ones run, screaming, whenever we walk into a village. They go around making signs against evil behind our backs, but they squeal loud enough when they need help."

Lucivar sipped his quickly cooling coffee. "If you feel that way about landens, why did you come to help when the Jhinka attacked?"

"Not for
them.
To protect the land. Won't have that Jhinka filth in Ebon Rih. We came to protect the land— and to get those two out." Randahl's shoulders sagged. "Hell's fire, Yaslana. Who would have thought the boy could build a shield like that?"

"No one in Agio, obviously." Before Randahl could snap a reply, Lucivar continued harshly, "If Mari and Khevin matter to you, why didn't you let them live in Agio instead of leaving them here to be sneered at and slighted?"

Randahl's face flushed a dull red. "And what would an Ebon-gray Warlord Prince know about being sneered at or slighted?"

Lucivar didn't know whether he made the decision because he no longer cared what people knew about him or because he wasn't sure he and Randahl would survive. "I grew up in Terreille, not Kaeleer. I was too young to remember my father when I was taken from him, so I grew up being told, and believing, that I was a half-breed bastard, unwanted and unclaimed. You don't know what it's like to be a bastard in an Eyrien hunting camp. Sneered j at?" Lucivar laughed bitterly. "The favorite taunt was 'your father was a Jhinka.'

Do you have any idea what that j means to an Eyrien? That you were sired by a male from I a hated race and that your mother must have accepted the mount willingly since she carried you full term and birthed I you? Oh, I think I know how someone like Khevin feels." I

Randahl cleared his throat. "It shames me to say it, but I it wasn't any easier for him in Agio. Lady Erika tried to I make a place for him in her court. Felt she owed it to him I because her ex-Consort had sired the boy. But he wasn't happy, and Mari and her grandmother were here. So he I came back."

And had endured ostracism from the landens and taunts I from the young Blood males—which explained why the two I Warlords now using Craft to move the Jhinka bodies away from the shield were being kept as far away from Jaenelle as possible.

Lucivar finally answered the question he saw in Ran- | dahl's eyes. "Two of Lady Angelline's friends were training Khevin."

Randahl rubbed the back of his neck. "Should have I thought to ask her ourselves. She has a way about her."

Lucivar smiled wearily. "That she does." And she might! also have some idea of where the young couple might relocate. If they survived.

For a moment, he allowed himself to believe they | would survive.

Then the Jhinka returned.

10 / Kaeleer

Randahl shaded his eyes against the late afternoon sun and studied the low hills that were black with waiting Jhinka. I "They must have called up all the clans from all the tribes," I he said hoarsely. Then he sagged against the back of the

community hall. "Mother Night, Yaslana, there must be five thousand of them out there."

"More like six." Lucivar widened his stance. It was the only way his tired, trembling legs would keep him upright.

Six thousand more than the hundreds he'd already killed during the past few days and that witch storm still raging around them, feeding on the shield to maintain its strength and draining him in the process. Six thousand more and no way to catch the Winds because that storm made it impossible to detect those psychic roadways.

They could shield and they could fight, but they couldn't send out a call for help and they couldn't escape. The food had run out yesterday. The well dried up that morning. And there were still six thousand Jhinka waiting for the sun to sink a little farther behind the low western hills before they attacked.

"We're not going to make it, are we?" Randahl said.

"No," Lucivar replied softly. "We're not going to make it."

In the past three days, he'd drained both Ebon-gray Jewels as well as his Red ring. The Red Jewel around his neck was now the only power reserve they had, and that wasn't going to hold much beyond the first attack. Randahl and the other three had exhausted their Jewels before he and Jaenelle had arrived. There hadn't been enough food or rest to bring any of them back up to strength.

No, the males weren't going to make it. But Jaenelle had to. She was too valuable a Queen to lose in a trap that, he was convinced, had been set to destroy him.

Satisfied that he'd lined up every argument that Protocol gave him to make this demand, Lucivar said,

"Ask the Lady to join me here."

No fool, Randahl understood why the request was being made now.

Alone for a moment, Lucivar rolled his neck and stretched his shoulders, trying to ease the tense, tired muscles.

It is easier to kill than to heal. It is easier to destroy than to preserve. It is easier to tear down than to build. Those who feed on destructive emotions and ambitions and deny the responsibilities that are the price of wielding power can bring down everything you care for and would protect. Be on guard, always.

Saetan's words. Saetan's warning to the young Warlords and Warlord Princes who gathered at the Hall.

But Saetan had never mentioned the last part of that warning: sometimes it was kinder to destroy.

He wasn't strong enough to give Jaenelle a swift, clean death. But even at full strength, Randahl and the other Warlords wore lighter-rank Jewels, and landens had no ; inner defense against the Blood. Once Jaenelle and Mari were away from here, once the Jhinka started their final attack, he would make a fast descent, pull up every drop of power he had left, and unleash that force. The landens would die instantly, their minds burned away. Randahl and the others might survive for a few seconds longer, but not long enough for the Jhinka to reach them.

And the Jhinka . . . they, too, would die. Some of them. A lot of them. But not all of them. He would be left, alone, when the survivors tore him apart. He would make sure of it. He'd fought Jhinka in Terreille.

He'd seen what they did to captives. When it came to cruelty, they were an ingenious people. But then, so were many of the Blood.