Prime Reaper (15 page)

“Aye, but then the strangest thing happened,” Jaborn said, turning his head to look at Arawn. “The toes began to grow back.”

Iden shook his head. “I can’t see what the hell any of that has to do with—”

“Anything a Reaper loses after the Transference, the Queen will regenerate if it is destroyed,” Cynyr said, turning his gaze to Arawn.

“That man’s toes came back,” Jaborn said. “Had they been removed before the Transference, they would not have. I was told the re-growth was more painful than when he chewed them off but—”

“Shut the fuck up, Jaborn,” Cynyr snapped, casting a quick look to Arawn. Arawn narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. He took another sip of his coffee. The conversation ended and the Reapers began unrolling their bedding for the night. Overhead, the sky was now as black as pitch, the laser flares to the north ended at last. A faint scent hovered on the evening breeze and it wasn’t a pleasant smell. Only 79

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two men sitting at the campfire had experienced that burning odor once before and knew it came from the charred remains of ghoret.

When Arawn and Cynyr finally bunked down, the two Reapers lay side by side a foot apart. Cynyr lay on his back with his hands behind his head, staring up into the darkness, unable to sleep. Arawn lay on his side faced away from Cree, likewise wideawake.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time Aingeal Transitioned?” Cynyr asked. When Arawn didn’t reply, Cree chuckled softly. “She was so damned proud of her tail. She kept swishing it, trying to see it. I thought she’d get dizzy going around and around looking at it.” He grunted. “Here I was worried about what I’d done to her and she goes over and pisses in the corner.”

Arawn twisted so he could look at Cynyr. “She what?”

Cynyr sighed. “She pissed on the floor, just as unconcerned as anything.”

“Bad she-wolf,” Arawn commented.

“I told her the same thing,” Cynyr said.

“So she took to it without a problem?”

“The only concern she had was that she could read my mind but that won’t be the case with Danielle.”

Arawn turned over so he was facing Cree. “Why not?”

“Because it wasn’t one of your hellions she was given. They gave her one of Aingeal’s.”

The Prime Reaper frowned. “Why?”

“My guess is to keep you from knowing what was happening to her and wouldn’t feel her Transitioning.”

Arawn let out a long sigh. “I am so tired of all this, Cyn,” he said. “I’d like nothing better than to go to some place like Haines City and live quietly with my lady.”

“You could do that,” Cynyr suggested. “Move out to Haines City with us. I know Aingeal would love to have Danielle near her.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

“You could retire.”

Arawn was quiet for a long moment. “If I did, who would assume the Prime Reaper status? Bevyn is next in line but we both know he isn’t capable of handling the job.” He propped his head in his hand and looked at Cynyr. “Do you want it?”

“Hell, no!” Cynyr said. “I’m happy with things the way they are.”

“Owen?”

“Maybe or Glyn,” Cynyr said. “Phelan?”

The men exchanged a look and said no at the same time.

“And Iden is just a babe,” Arawn said.

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“In more ways than just age,” Cynyr agreed.

“There’s Jaborn,” Arawn stated.

“The men wouldn’t follow him. They don’t know him and they don’t trust him, though he seems on the up and up.”

“It’s a moot point,” Arawn said, lying down again on his side. “Ben-Alkazar isn’t going to allow me to retire any time soon.”

“You won’t know until you ask,” Cynyr told him.

“I’ll think about it,” the Prime Reaper said. He tucked his hand under his cheek and closed his eyes.

Cynyr was almost asleep when Arawn woke him with a question. “What?”

“She liked her tail, huh?”

Cree grinned. “She thought it was an uncommonly fine rump she had and I’ll tell you something, Ari—there is nothing like running full-out with your she-wolf at your side, nipping at her flanks, taking her down and tumbling over and over in the grass with her. Mating in lupine form is one hell of an experience.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” Cynyr said with a groan.

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Chapter Eight

It was a fiercely bad dream of which each man—including the healer and the steward—was subconsciously aware as they slept, but it was Cynyr who experienced it as the sleeper did while Arawn walked in the Realm of Tromluí, the violent land of nightmares. Had he not been worried about his friend, Cree would have shaken himself awake, pulling out of the private torments of Arawn Gehdrin, but as it was, he lay there reliving the last moments of the Prime Reaper’s time on his world and the experience was shattering.

Hordes of determined invaders swept down upon the Castle Annwn with battering rams
and grappling hooks, arrows tipped in pitch and catapults primed to toss boulders against the
defenders’ walls. Wagonload after wagonload of wood, stone and barrels of tar came squeaking
down from the hills as the attackers set up camp for the siege. Horsemen with broadswords—at
least a thousand strong—stood at the ready, awaiting their leader’s command. Archers,
spearmen and mace wielders likewise awaited the call to arms. The encampment of the enemy
dotted the Plains of Liath from horizon to horizon and to the foot of Mount Siochaín, speckling
the land like flies. A mighty noise accompanied the would-be conquerors and the stench of
sweating men and horses, the cheap perfume of the camp followers, filled the air.
High atop the battlements of Castle Annwn, a man in gray stood with his hands braced on
the stone ledge as he observed those who besieged his home. He was the king of Annwn and his
people looked to him to protect them from the marauders who were poised to overrun the castle.
He glanced up for a moment at the pennant that snapped in the breeze. It bore the crest of his
family—a black heron on a white background. A small banner reading
Ní neart go cur le chéile
—There is no strength without unity—gripped in its talons.

“They be a thousand to our one, Highness,” a wizened old man in the billowing red robes of
a mage told the king. “We dunna stand a chance agin them.”

There was no expectation of his people winning a victory against so many of the enemy and
the king knew it. Though the people of Annwn would fight bravely—to the last one standing—

they were hopelessly outnumbered and would fall. He bowed his head, all too aware of the only
thing that might possibly save the lives of his people.

“I must turn myself over to her, Griffith,” the king said in a low voice.

“Ye canna do that!” the mage denied. “She will kill you!”

“If I can barter the lives of my people…”

“Ye only have Queen Duvessa’s word that they’ll not attack if you submit to her, Highness,
and of what good is that? Her word is less than a spit in the ocean!”

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The king turned bleak eyes to the old man who had raised him from an orphan of five to the
thirty-eight-year-old he was this day. Griffith had been father and mother, older brother and
confessor to him all these years and he knew the mage loved him as the elderly man did no other.

“What choice do I have, Griffith?” the king asked. “Either way, I’ll die.”

“‘Aye, but ‘tis better to go down with a sword in your hand than die as that witch intends!”

Griffith replied.

“And in the doing take my people with me?” he countered. He shook his head. “I won’t do
that.”

“What if she attacks us anyway?” Cairell Banning, the king’s master-at-arms asked.

“I can only hope she won’t but if I fall, I would rather you take the easier way out than have
Duvessa’s army slaughter you.”

Cairell looked to the cauldron in which a vicious, unsettling brew had been cooked. There
was enough poison in the blackened vessel to kill every inhabitant of Annwn and all it would
take would be one tiny sip of the blood-red contents.

“Promise me if I go down, you won’t allow anyone to see what she does to me. She will want
you to see, but take that time to give everyone a cup of the brew. If she turns and leaves, then so
be it. If she orders her men to attack, I beg you let not one infant be alive when they come
through yon gates.”

“Highness…”

“Swear to me, Cairell!” the king ordered, taking hold of the soldier’s arm.
They stood staring at one another—these two men who had been friends practically from the
cradle, who had fed from the breast of the same wet nurse, Cairell’s blessed mother Eilis.

“I will not let her hurt you, Arawn,” Cairell said, tears already in his eyes.

“And I would give my life that she not hurt you,” the king said gently, and drew Cairell
into his embrace. “Promise me you’ll not let my people come beneath the blades of her butchers
while they still live.”

Cynyr tossed in his sleep, grunting. Cold sweat broke out on his face and under his arms. He could feel the weight of the sorrow that was pressing down upon Arawn Gehdrin. He could taste the metallic tinge of fear that flooded the king’s mouth as he descended the steps of the curtain wall and entered the barbican. He could hear Arawn’s rapid heartbeat as he bid his guards open the gate for him to leave.

“Highness, please don’t do this!” the chief guard pleaded. “Not for us!”

Arawn put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “If not for you, for whom?” He squeezed. “If the
gods are with us, she’ll be satisfied with my head on a pike and leave the rest of you alone.”

“She’ll not be satisfied until the lot of us are in our graves,” the man said. “Stay with us,
Highness. Take the poison and foil her evil plans for you.”

The King of Annwn shook his head. “If there is the slightest chance she will leave you be,
Pierce, let you live, I must take it.”

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Whimpering, Cynyr flipped over to his belly and grabbed a handful of his blanket, twisting it in his sleeping agitation. He took every step across the winter field with Arawn as the king walked toward the center of the horde that had congregated to hand him a humiliating defeat. Total silence had settled and not even a horse neighed as warriors parted quietly to allow the man they had come to break walk past them. Some even removed their helms in respect of Arawn Gehdrin’s bravery. It was toward a bright scarlet tent that Arawn headed and Cynyr wanted to reach out and stop him, to pull him back and into the safety of Castle Annwn but—as with all dreams—there was no turning back. The end would come whether Cynyr woke or not.

The woman who lounged upon a satin mound of thick pillows was the most beautiful Cynyr
had ever seen. With long, red braided hair that hung well past her lush bosom, green eyes spiked
with sooty lashes and a mouth to tempt a monk, her smile when Arawn entered her tent was
predatory. She gazed up at him with a sultry look, her lush lips pouting prettily.

“So you have come to spare your people, my love,” Queen Duvessa of Cearbhall said in a
sensual voice. “A wise choice, Ari.”

He went to one knee before her, his head bowed. “I am yours to do with as you please, my
Queen.”

“Such a devoted husband,” the queen said, and when Arawn raised his head, gave him an
arched look. “When it suits you.”

“It matters not what you do to me, ‘Vessa,” he said. “All I ask is that you allow my people
to—”

“Our people,” she corrected him.

A spasm clenched Arawn’s jaw. “I ask that you allow my people to live.”

Queen Duvessa tilted her head to one side. “Did you have Griffith brew up your little potion
for them to drink if I decide to attack,
mo tiarna
?” When he didn’t answer, she smiled hatefully.

“Oh I know you did. You don’t trust me.”

“You’ve given me no reason to trust you,” he told her.
She sat up—her abundant breasts nearly spilling from the low-cut, diaphanous pale green
gown that barely covered her curvaceous figure. Drawing up one shapely leg, she clasped her
knee in her hands and arched a brow. “And why is that, Arawn?” she countered. “My father had
to drag you kicking and shouting to our Joining Day. He had to chain you to my bed until you
performed your husbandly duties and then—like a thief in the night—you broke your fetters and
fled back to Annwn at the first chance you got.”

Arawn lifted his head. “I had no desire to be shackled to you,” he said.
The queen’s eyes flared at the insult but she let it pass, leaning back instead, one arm thrown
over a silken pillow. “Or to any woman save your little trollop Jilline,” she said, acid dripping
from her tone.

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At the mention of the young woman Arawn had loved since childhood, the King of Annwn
trembled with impotent rage. He wanted to throw himself upon his wife and wrap his fingers
around her swanlike neck, to choke the spiteful life from her whoring body.

“My men enjoyed her immensely. Did you know that?” she taunted him, rubbing salt into
the gaping wound that was his heart. “They used her until there was nothing left and then I had
them throw her to the dogs for she was nothing but scraps by then. I am sure she was a tasty
morsel though.”

Arawn dug his fingernails into his palm until blood seeped from the half-moon wounds but
he kept silent. As much as he hated the woman in front of him, as much as he longed to tear her
apart with his bare hands, he dared not if there was the slightest chance she would leave his
people in peace.