Lark Rising (Guardians of Tarnec) (35 page)

For a moment the smoke cleared—a whim of the wind, perhaps. The square was laid bare and burning before my gaze, a chaos of debris beneath the fighting bodies of beast and man and horse. Black was everywhere; blood was everywhere. There—Taran’s steed reared to avoid a Troth who went with jaws open for his legs. And there—Cargh had swept his sword across the neck of a Troth. I shut my eyes.

And yet I could not shut out the scene, for this was a vision; the violence poured in through each of my senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and even touch pressed upon me the heat and dirt and sticky blood. I gagged and choked and reeled from one direction to another, but I could not escape my Sight.

I tripped, face-first onto the filthy cobbled square, avoiding something—no, some
one
who’d been struck. I rolled to sit up, to look, and choked, “Raif!” Raif.

He lay faceup, mouth working to catch any kind of breath. An impossible task—he could not fill his lungs, for there was a gash torn from throat to chest.

“Raif!” I screamed it this time. And then I gasped, for his desperate eyes focused on me. Saw me.

“Lark.” He struggled horribly for air, but his gaze stayed steady.

Raif was dying. He was dying—that was why he could see me.

“Lie still. Let me help!” I pushed my hands to his chest to staunch his wound, then raged to see the blood rush through my ethereal fingers. Utterly helpless, I’d be forced to let him bleed to death as others were too mired in battle to notice, and my voice was nothing more to them than the wind.

“Raif …”

He knew. He needed no consoling. But he was glad for my presence, glad he was not alone. He worked at something like a smile, gasping, “You are like sunshine on a summer day. You are brilliant.”

“No, don’t speak—!”

“Thank you for your friendship. For your bravery.”

“Raif, stop. Please! Stop.”

“Evie.” His eyes flicked to look, the blood seeping faster as he strained. “Evie.”

I was weeping, for his voice was bleak with regret. I could not bear this grief. And I said it, anything to make him live: “She loves you, Raif; she
loves
you. Please, please hold on!” I could swear his face lit at those words. “Evie will come. She will!”

“Tell her love cannot die.” Then he said, barely, “Look.” His
eyes slid downward and mine followed. His hand in the dirt opened and a little object fell out. I leaned down to peer at the thing. It was a Merith man’s ring, the thin braid of leather.

I looked up at Raif. “Your grandfather’s.”

“I got it back.” He would have said it proudly. I think I heard him say it. But it no longer mattered. Raif’s wound ceased flowing and his eyes closed.

“Raif!” My hands were in his blood, useless, and yet I kneeled there shouting at him. Shouting. Shouting. A blast of hot air rushed by from the fire, and his lashes flickered, and I thought,
He stays!
I screamed aloud for anyone to help; I screamed until my throat was wrecked—but the din of the battle was louder; the flames were louder. I sobbed with fury and helplessness, and then I looked up through grimy, miserable tears and saw her running.

Evie.

She was dirt-streaked and bloodied, but she was whole. She was beautiful. Her silver-blond hair was nearly transparent in the smoke, flying back like a cape as she ran. I croaked, “Evie, stay back,” but she was not looking at me. She’d never heard me. It was Raif she was running for, her face terrible in its dread. The breath went out of her body in one thin exhale, and too late, the Healer sank at his side, her hair spilling into the dirt and blood about her.

And from some great distance, I heard Erema make a little crow of delight, for I had exposed my cousin. “So there she is. Now you shall feel true pain, Guardian. Watch.”

Erema called out things unintelligible and frightening. And from behind the flames, a Troth reared its ugly head, breaking through smoke and fire, its milky stare fixing on Evie. I shrieked for my cousin, but she did not look up.

“Take your amulet, Guardian,” Erema cried to me. “Take it with both hands and squeeze hard. Crush it here within its net and I will save your friend.”

I had no voice left; screams would go unheard anyway.

“She will be torn asunder,” came Erema’s hideous threat. “Crush the orb or you will watch her sacrifice.”

It was what I could not do. It was unbearable. The Troth was loping toward Evie, her back open and vulnerable as she covered Raif. I threw my head back and screamed anyway, again for help. Another Troth slithered by. People’s footsteps stampeded past; others screamed too. But no one saw. And I was nothing—

“Sacrifice, Guardian. They will all be sacrificed.”

—Nothing, until I heard the pounding of a horse’s hooves. Through swollen eyes I saw the huge and powerful shape of Rune wheeling in the distance.

“Rune! Help! Help me!”

Rune reared back, bloody hooves lashing up, neighing from a depth impossible to ignore. A clarion, a warning. And Evie lifted her head, stunned to see the Troth springing at her with claws and teeth spread wide—her mouth barely parted in surprise.

Rune was too far away. I whimpered, “No,” but the Troth, at the height of his leap, was suddenly gone, sword-stabbed
and flung by Laurent galloping between beast and prey. Evie never flinched; she simply looked at the Rider as he reined and turned, a barest moment of acknowledgment—

I was back on the cold stone of the Myr Mountains, huddled and shivering after the scorching heat of the market square, eyes unable to adjust to the sudden darkness. But I was laughing too, in hysterical relief. “You heard me, Rune, you heard me!”

“You dare,” Erema whispered. After the roar of battle I could barely hear her words, but I felt the ugly anger beneath them.

I didn’t care. Rune’s cry had saved Evie, and that was all that could matter. I curled into a tighter ball, laughter fading to gasps, trying to squeeze out the wretchedness of the vision. I’d never felt so sick. It was not only the vision that made me ill; the poison was spreading. I groaned and rolled on my back and wiped the cold sweat from my damp cheeks. And then I heaved over and retched, for in the blue dimness I saw Raif’s blood staining my hands—a remaining vision or impossibly real.

“You dare,” Erema repeated. “You dare manipulate.”

And then somehow, ridiculously, I was incensed. Raif, Gharain, the amulet; I could not give up. I would not give up. I struggled to sit upright, the room so close, I could barely breathe. I forced out, “You are but threats and fury as empty as whatever is within you. You cannot kill me; you need me for the amulet. And Rune will save the others.”

She shrieked at me then, and there was nothing pretty
left in her. “Look!” she screamed. “Look at me! Look at what you’ve done! Look at what you need!” And she wavered from one image to another to break me and to tempt me: she was Gharain, she was Evie, she was Ruber Minwl, she was the king, she was Raif. Each one called to me in voices that stirred or crushed, yet those I could force myself to ignore, realizing too that Erema was only repeating in image what she’d learned I’d been exposed to. The Breeders might read my energy, but they could not create from it.

I was on my knees now, my wrists wobbling as I pushed to straighten, to stall, to work it out in my sickened brain—how I could take the amulet. “Give me the orb, Erema,” I gasped. “You cannot kill me.”

“That,” she hissed, “is where you are mistaken. Destroy the orb or I will destroy you.”

My ally token; I needed words of help. My fingers scraped along the floor, reaching for the pack where it had fallen away somehow.

Her laughter bellowed, vulgar. She reared up, seeming to fill the space, stamped a foot that shuddered the mountain, and with lyrical sweetness cried out, “Rider!”

And from beneath her, the stone broke and opened. Gharain rose as he had in my dream, torso gleaming naked and wet with cold sweat and damp of the mountain. He stood there blankly, his long sword glittering in the blue light, passion emptied from his most expressive face.

“Gharain!” This could not be; it was too soon. My death dream made real, but too soon—this ending was too soon.

“He won’t hear you, Lark. I’ve claimed him.” Erema reached her hand and slid it over his shoulder, leaning in from behind to press a kiss against the curve at his neck. “Do you see?” Then she smiled, her vile mouth against his skin. “But I can give him back. Break the orb and you can be with him. Look, Lark. He waits for you.”

“You ask me to choose?” I rasped.

“
You
choose?” Her voice was ever musical in its taunt. “Nay, the choice is mine. You are here because of me. You will destroy the amulet because I wish it, or you will die because I demand it. Either way I win.”

“I will not give you what you want,” I mumbled.

“No?” Erema laughed back, “But you already have, Lark. You are here.”

This was the world upside down and meaningless. It was all for naught—I’d journeyed far and achieved nothing.
Too soon!
I mouthed to no one. My hand fell listlessly from the pack—nothing. It was simply my time to die.

And Erema was speaking in her lovely voice, gaily saying what I already knew she’d say: “Now, Gharain, finish what you began. Finish what you meant to do.”

My time to die. I looked up at my Complement. I’d do this the Merith way, with dignity.

Gharain raised his sharp sword over his head, arms stretching long, muscles flexing across his chest. In that suspended moment I saw him in the too brief days we’d shared: I saw his glorious smile, his beautiful face, felt the connection radiating through his vibrant touch.
Stay true
, I heard the hare’s whisper.
Stay true
. I remembered Nayla’s words, remembered repeating them to Gharain under the oak in Dark Wood:
It is what we give to the Earth that allows her to provide.…
 And I remembered Gharain murmuring,
What, Lark? What do I give to you? Say it.…

Complete the circle
. I would finish what he’d begun; I would admit out loud what I could not before: my truth. I smiled up at Gharain—his blank gaze glittered, for my own eyes were filled with tears. And I repeated clearly, despite the hoarseness in my throat, the same words he’d offered to me, returning freely what I’d claimed from him: “I love you.”

Erema growled. And beneath that growl, Gharain murmured, “Trust yourself.”

The sword came slicing down.

A THOUSAND LARKS soared in flight, pulling the colors of the Earth with them on their wings and returning to her their cascading song. Four of us stood high on a peak watching them: Evie, the ragged waif, the girl with red-gold hair, and I. A bounty spread out below us—a sweep of color and texture: grays and browns of rock and soil, brilliant greens and ochers of grass and tree, the vibrant blues of lake and stream, and fruit and flower sparking the landscape with splashes of scarlet and plum. A nestling of valley within the arms of encircling hills, the depth of a lake against the soaring reach of mountain …

Awaken!
The word shuddered on the breeze. One by one the three other girls lifted arms to sky and soared up, to be lost among the larks. And for a moment I alone remained.

This is what I give to you, Guardian
, came the whisper.
This is what I give
. I was filled with the richness of it all—it poured
into my body, radiated outward; it strengthened my bones and charged my blood.

I lifted my arms like the others, exuberant. I was rooted; I flew high. I was power. I was home.

And the voice of the rowan tree echoed through my entire being:

Bring light into dark
.

Erema’s growl contorted into a howl and then a roar. It was the first thing I heard, the first thing that made me realize I was still alive, still in the middle of the Myr Mountains.

And then it was cold, and my body roiled with the hukon poison.

I was very alive.

Gharain stood above me, breath heaving as if he’d forged through battle. My gaze slid down to where the point of his sword had gouged the rock beneath my tumbled legs. He’d struck straight through me. I looked up. His eyes were no longer so blank.

He forced something of a smile. “The sword … is not for you.”

No weapons for you
. I lay there, still stunned that I was breathing, stunned that I could be alive, but comprehending the Rider Laurent’s words fully for the first time—weapons forged from the Earth could not be used by the Guardian of Life, but neither could they be used against her. The metal had sliced through as if I had not even been there.

Erema’s roar became a shriek as terrible as the swifts’
screams, making the stone tremble. Gharain’s expression turned fierce, his eyes leaving mine at last, and with his own roar of anger, he wheeled on Erema, shouting, “You do not claim me!” Like a blur, his sword went winging sideways, catching the Breeder full across the front.

He did not kill her; maybe he knew he could not, or maybe he understood this was a revenge far more powerful. The sword sliced across, cleaving the hukon from its prize. A strike through its roots and the crystal orb sprang from Erema’s chest like a gasp. We watched the amulet fling against the hewn ceiling: Erema’s shriek gurgling in thwarted fury; I cringed, thinking it would shatter—but it was a silly thought, for the orb rolled safely to one side, brighter now that it was free from its bonds. I groaned, reaching for it—