Song Magick (21 page)

Long minutes passed. Telyn’s eyes ached from
scanning the trees across the clearing, and still there was no
evidence of the bounty hunter. Another flash and roll of thunder,
closer this time, shook the tree beneath her. Telyn wondered if
this was truly the safest place for her. The sky darkened even
more, casting the Circle into deep shadows. She could no longer see
any sign of Mithrais.

Without warning the Gwaith’orn suddenly
pulsed with energy, and a shockwave of resonance rocked Telyn
backwards and into the crook of the branches as it hit her mental
defenses with numbing force. She struggled upright, gasping, and
threw her arms around the trunk of the tree, molding as much of her
body against it as she could. Her right cheek and temple pressed
against the bark so firmly she felt it digging into her skin.

The next pulse of energy that went out formed
around Telyn instead of in front of her, and she felt the pulse
leave but it did not impact her shields. Another flash lit the
clearing, ear-splitting thunder shaking the Wood immediately
afterward. Like soundless echoes of the thunderclaps, the four
trees sent wave after wave of resonance toward a point at the
southwestern edge of the Circle. They ceased abruptly, the sudden
stillness of the air as startling as the pulses had been.

The pure trill of birdsong came from
somewhere to the northwest—Mithrais?—and Telyn struggled to see
what was happening without disengaging herself from the trunk,
uncertain that she should release her grip on the tree so quickly.
She glimpsed movement to her left, and Cormac emerged from his
hiding place, an arrow nocked and drawn against his shoulder as he
eased carefully around the perimeter toward the place Telyn
believed The Dragon must lay stunned.

She saw Mithrais through a break in the
leaves, moving with equal caution toward the area the Gwaith’orn
had bombarded with pulses. Cormac reached an area of dense
undergrowth and suddenly froze, taking aim at something on the
ground. He straightened slightly, his arm relaxing its pull on the
bow, and whistled a quick signal to Mithrais, his eyes on the
Westwarden.

An arm came up out of the bracken, leveling a
crossbow at the young warden’s chest, and Telyn screamed, “Cormac!”
as the trigger was released. The young warden was spun about by the
impact of the bolt and he fell heavily to the ground.

Telyn did not wait to see if he moved again,
scrambling down the tree with careless speed, ignoring the shocks
of resonance. She heard the hiss of an arrow leaving Mithrais’ bow
and a cry of pain. She did not know from whom it came.

As Telyn dropped from the tree, she saw
Mithrais clutching at the hilt of a dagger that had buried itself
in his thigh, and The Dragon launching himself at the Westwarden in
a blur of motion, swinging his spent crossbow at Mithrais’ head.
Mithrais was narrowly able to avoid the weapon, but the bounty
hunter struck out with his foot instead, landing a solid blow to
Mithrais’ chest and sending him backwards. The Westwarden’s injured
leg folded beneath him, sending him staggering to one knee, and the
Dragon leapt at him. Mithrais used his adversary’s own momentum
against him and rolled, throwing The Dragon head over heels to land
solidly on his back.

The bounty hunter was on his feet again with
unreasonable speed as the trees began to thrash in high winds,
swinging the empty crossbow even as Mithrais attempted to avoid it.
It struck a glancing blow, but it was enough to stun, and Mithrais
struggled to rise. The Dragon kicked him in the face, and Mithrais
went down in a crumpled heap. The bounty hunter closed on the
fallen warden, his hand moving to pluck another blade from the
bandolier, and Telyn moved out of the shadow of the Gwaith’orn.

“Vuldur wants me dead, not another warden,”
Telyn shouted, her voice hoarse and broken. She drew her sword. “If
you desire a trophy, you’ll have to work for it.”

The lightning ripped open the sky once more,
and The Dragon saw her then, a slow smile crossing his lips, the
emotionless grey eyes showing nothing behind them but death.

He straightened, replacing the blade he had
drawn, and Telyn saw that Mithrais’ arrow had found its mark. The
broken end protruded from The Dragon’s ribs, the leather jerkin
dark and stained with blood. He extracted the shaft with his free
hand without a sound or grimace of pain, and dropped it to the
earth at his feet. He moved away from Mithrais even as Telyn
advanced, drawing her dagger in her left hand and dropping into a
fighting stance within a blade’s reach of the bounty hunter.

“You have led me on a merry chase,” The
Dragon said, his voice surprisingly soft and gentle. He continued
to move sideways with catlike indifference, his startling white
hair lifted on the wind that whipped through the trees. He regarded
the forest giants with that odd, flat gaze before turning it to
Telyn. “I never thought a bard would be so difficult to catch.”

“You’ll find them hard to kill, as well,”
Telyn said fiercely.

“I think not. You are only human.” He coughed
suddenly, bright blood staining his lips, and touched his fingers
to his mouth, regarding the crimson smear with interest. “I have
enjoyed this hunt, but it seems it will be my last.” The bounty
hunter raised his eyes to hers. “I have never taken apart a woman
before—at least, not for money. Perhaps we will die at the same
time.”

He grinned, blood running from the side of
his mouth, and Telyn let all her horror, fear and anger come to the
surface in a single cry of battle, her sword a deadly arc of bright
metal. He blocked her blows easily with the crossbow, twisting it
so that Telyn’s blade was caught between the arms of the bow and
ripped from her grasp, sent spinning into the air. She lashed out
with her opposite hand and the dagger, ripping a gash in The
Dragon’s arm at the same moment he wrenched the sword away, and he
backhanded Telyn across the face with his fist.

She allowed herself to roll with it in spite
of the pain, coming to her feet as the sword landed with a clash of
metal and bright spray of sparks on the grey stone in the center of
the clearing, a weak echo of the blue-white flash of lightning that
roared overhead. Telyn moved her dagger to her dominant hand and
waited for The Dragon to come to her, but he staggered slightly,
his face tightening, and drew the last blade from his bandolier,
dropping the remains of the crossbow to the ground.

He flipped the dagger in his hand, grasping
it by the blade with an apologetic shrug.

“I haven’t enough time left for games,” he
said, his voice inflectionless.

He flicked his wrist, and the hilt of the
dagger suddenly bloomed from Telyn’s breast with an oddly wooden
thunk
. She stared down at it, uncomprehending, feeling a
warm trickle running down her skin beneath the clothing. She sank
to her knees weakly, her hand reaching up to touch the hilt.

There was an inarticulate cry of rage, and
Telyn looked up dizzily to see Mithrais, airborne, taking The
Dragon down to the ground with the weight of his body. The impact
caused them both to roll free, and the adversaries immediately
located each other. Mithrais crawled over the ground toward the
Dragon, his face streaked with blood and twisted by fury, his
injured leg hampering his efforts to rise. The Dragon stood slowly,
his hand reaching automatically for the bandolier and finding
nothing but crossbow bolts remaining. He ripped one of them from
the leather and raised it, the pointed tip as deadly as any dagger,
and began to advance toward Mithrais, who was still on the
ground.

The Dragon’s motion was reversed as an arrow
hissed past Telyn’s ear and buried itself in his abdomen. His eyes
looked past his quarry, and Telyn dazedly followed The Dragon’s
gaze to see a grey-faced Cormac, once more drawing back his bow
with a guttural cry of pain and defiance, the steel bolt protruding
from his right shoulder.

The second arrow sang its high song and took
the Dragon in the chest. He fell to the ground as another deafening
peal of thunder heralded the rain, which pelted down with
bone-chilling bits of hail. Cormac sat heavily on the grass,
clutching his shoulder, the strength he had mustered gone.

Mithrais was beside Telyn in an instant, his
face a bloody mask of anguish as he examined with horror the hilt
of the dagger in her breast. Telyn looked into his eyes, and having
come to a sudden realization, touched his face gently.

“I’m all right,” she said with a giddy laugh,
faint with relief.

“What?” Mithrais did not believe her at
first, but his eyes widened as she grasped the hilt of the dagger
that protruded from her chest. Stifling a cry of pain as the steel
left her flesh, she pulled the dagger up, cutting through the
collar of the jerkin and shirt. Cormac’s wooden flute appeared
above the forest green jerkin, and then the blade that bisected the
flute. The tip of the dagger protruded only a finger’s width from
the opposite side and was stained with Telyn’s blood.

An unexpected sound arose from the bounty
hunter. The irony of the situation was not lost on The Dragon, who
laughed aloud, breath rattling in his throat.

His eyes were clouded with his own death as
he gasped through the bloody froth that tinged his mouth, “Hard to
kill...indeed.”

A final sigh escaped his lips, and the grey
eyes stared sightlessly into the rain.

Chapter
Fourteen

Telyn stirred, reluctant to awaken. The bed
was soft, the linens smooth against her skin, and the smell of
freshly baked bread pervaded the air. It was a dream from a long
time ago, she thought drowsily, when she and Emrys had stayed the
winter in Rothvori. She had been ill with a fever, confined to the
tapestried bed in her favorite chamber, and Riordan had sent up
cups of hot milk and loaves of sweet bread with raisins and spices.
The delicious scent had awakened her.

The door clicked softly shut, and Telyn
opened her eyes with a start. Overhead, she saw the beams of the
upstairs room in which she lay, and recognized it as the Tauron
guild house where she, Mithrais, and Cormac had been brought the
previous night. The light streaming in through the single window
was bright, and she felt that it might be as late as mid-afternoon.
The table beside her held the source of the divine smell; someone
had left a small tray of currant bread, cheese, and a cup of
broth.

Telyn felt better than she had in days,
refreshed and clear of mind. She stretched luxuriously and then
gasped at the sudden, sharp discomfort as the newly applied sutures
in her skin stretched painfully. Wincing, Telyn pushed her body up
gingerly to sit against the head of the bed and pulled away the
loose neck of the white gown, glancing down at the wound. The deep
cut between her sternum and the soft rise of her left breast,
perhaps two inches long, was sutured with black threads.

Besides the vivid bruise on her cheekbone
where his fist had connected, which promised to be a spectacular
black eye, it was the only injury she had sustained in the
encounter with The Dragon. The bard was content with that. She was
alive, Mithrais and Cormac were healing, and The Dragon was
dead.

* * * *

They had arrived at the Tauron guild house, a
large, two-story building that lay outside the city gates, not long
after dark. Their arrival had not been unexpected, for the door was
flung open in a spill of yellow light and the wagon surrounded by
several wardens and a healer before it had even come to a full
stop.

The bolt that penetrated Cormac’s shoulder
had passed between muscle and bone, without permanent damage, but
the injury that Mithrais sustained during his battle with The
Dragon was more serious than it had initially appeared. Her efforts
to stem the bleeding from Mithrais’ thigh wound had been
unsuccessful. Coupled with exhaustion, blood loss had brought him
to the end of his strength before they reached the Southern road,
even with the assistance of Rodril and Halith, who had arrived
shortly after the storm blew itself out. He had been drifting in
and out of consciousness during the rough, headlong ride to the
Guild House in a wagon hastily procured from a settlement.

Telyn tried to follow Mithrais and Cormac as
they were taken into the infirmary, but Rodril stopped her with a
gentle shake of his head.

“You are in need of attention, as well. They
are in good hands.” Rodril interrupted her protest before it
started. “Your weapons are military issue. It’s clear you have
trained as a soldier, so don’t force me to make it an order.” To
have that glower directed at her was intimidating, and Telyn
submitted meekly.

Rodril led her to an upstairs room which held
a bed, two chairs, and a small table. He left her in the care of a
second healer, who cleaned and sutured her wound. The healer
clucked over the bruises on Telyn’s cheek but pronounced that the
bone was sound.

Someone brought a bowl of hearty stew, bread,
and a cup of strong mulled wine. The healer insisted that she eat,
staring at her expectantly until Telyn took a few bites to placate
him. She ended up eating the entire meal with a ravenous appetite,
surprised that she had not noticed how famished she was.

Rodril reappeared after she had finished the
wine, and the healer took the empty tray, leaving strict
instructions that Telyn was to rest as soon as possible. The tall
warden ducked beneath the low beams in the room and sat in the
chair opposite the bard, a smile transforming his features.

“Mithrais insisted that I tell you he is
well. There was a small piece of the blade in the wound which kept
it open; it has been removed and he should recover quickly. The
surgeon has given him something to ensure he sleeps and regains his
strength. You may see him tomorrow. Cormac is also resting. The
bolt is out. They are both young and strong, and will be fine.”