The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (43 page)

“They told me you were still here,” Torin said, and wondered if she could
sense the breathlessness in his voice, the feathery lightness in his head and heart. “I had to see it to believe it.”

“To make sure our good overlord thinks twice about marching south,” Dyanne replied.

Holly snorted. “That’s
one
reason.”

“Meaning what?” a bemused Torin asked Dyanne. By now, he was staring, but he could not seem to look away. After so much yearning and so much fear, it did not seem possible that here they stood, face-to-face. Every memory he’d had of her, every lost image, brought now to sudden, wondrous life.

A moment too perfect to be real.

Somewhere in the background, a troupe of musicians stopped playing, and the crowds raised a hearty applause. “That’s us,” said Holly. She looked at her kinmate, frowning in hesitation. Dyanne seemed to consider him for another moment, then nodded, at which point, Holly sheathed her knife and stepped forward.

Dyanne followed, brushing past him. “Wait here,” she bade him. “I want to hear of everything that has happened since we parted.” She then turned with a confident twist, chasing Holly through a tunnel of bodies, making her way toward the stage.

“Where are they going?” Torin asked, his gaze locked upon her departing heels.

“To perform, it seems,” Saena replied.

The tumblers onstage were making their bows, stooping to collect flowers and coins tossed up at them from an appreciative audience. A few were already headed down the riser stair, where Holly and Dyanne stood waiting. When Dyanne glanced back at him, a warm flush billowed in his chest.

“Come,” Saena urged. “Let us find a seat.”

“She said to wait here,” Torin protested.

“Would you see their act, or not? We won’t lose them, if that is your fear.”

Saena climbed into the gallery, displaying for the watchman a token of rank worn on a thong about her neck. Torin followed, but halted at the forward rail, wishing to stay close to ground level rather than burying himself amid those who occupied the tiered benches above. Saena flashed an irritated look before joining him.

Their routine was hardly an
act
, but rather a demonstration of their joint fighting technique. Some in the crowd might have thought it staged: two slender girls making work of a dozen men in padded armor. But Torin had witnessed such displays before against actual opponents much fiercer than these. Had the Nymphs not exchanged their arms for blunted tourney weapons, this troop would be suffering more than mere welts and bruises.

“I wonder who put them up to this,” Saena said, as members of the audience gasped and cheered.

Whomever, Torin owed them a debt of thanks. For he could think of nothing more mesmerizing than watching her up on that stage, executing an inimi
table array of thrusts and parries, leaps and rolls, flips and slides, alongside her kinmate. In light of their dance, he lost track of all but the rapture of this night. He knew not whether to shout or weep. Grateful he was for the reunion, but how much had he lost? How much time had he already wasted?

“Are you all right?” Saena asked him.

Her words could not dislodge his admiring gaze. He simply stood there, staring, paralyzed by Dyanne’s divine charm. Though he had envisioned their reunion a thousand times over, none of the memories, dreams, or emotions to which he had clung had prepared him for the surge of bittersweet joy unleashed by this startling reality.

“I love her,” he said to the wind.

Saena did not respond. Perhaps she hadn’t heard. But Torin had heard himself clearly. For the first time, he had uttered the words aloud, and they now rang splendidly in his ears. A renewed sense of exhilaration washed over him, a sense of liberation at having shared the truth with someone, at last.

The audience roared as the last of the “assailants” yielded, and Holly and Dyanne took their bows. As whistles and applause rained down from the gallery, Torin smiled. His sins, his sufferings—they no longer seemed to matter. Though he might never comprehend how or why, he had been given a second chance, and was determined to make the most of it. He would prove himself to this woman, and make up for the time he had squandered. This very night, he would tell her all that roiled within his heart, that they might never be forced to separate again. The notion filled him with such hope and anticipation that his body and soul shivered with it.

He watched her as she and Holly traded their sparring tools for their own weapons belts, and the wounded around them helped one another offstage. True to her word, she headed straight toward the area in which she had left him, grinning politely at those who rushed the cordon to shower her with praise. There were suitors among them, Torin was sure, and not all of them drunkards, but she only smiled and ignored them, looking around until she caught sight of him and Saena at the gallery rail.

A bear in manacles was being led onstage. By the time Dyanne and Holly reached him, the audience’s focus had shifted, and he had her attention almost to himself.

“Well?” she asked, virtually aglow beneath the wash of firelight and a thin sheen of sweat.

“Seems neither of you has lost a step.”

Her lips parted, and there it was, that revealing, dazzling smile that had first captured his devotion a lifetime ago.

“Begging pardon,” Saena broke in, “I must excuse myself.”

Torin turned. “What? Why?”

“There are your provisions to see to,” she said roughly, “and my father as well.”

Something in the way she spoke raised a twinge of alarm. “Your father?”

“Was wounded during the battle,” she said, confirming his fears. “He will
be well,” she assured him, “but I vowed not to leave him alone any longer than I must.”

Before Torin could apologize, she turned to the Nymphs and added, “I can entrust him to you, can I not?”

“We’ll keep him safe enough,” Holly said. Her impish grin seemed part pledge, part warning.

Torin felt he should persuade Saena to stay, else offer to attend her…until Dyanne showed him another smile, and said, “It might be best, in fact, that we don’t let him out of our sight again.”

Saena scarcely received a nod as she took her leave.

“Come, then,” Dyanne suggested. “Let us hear your tale.”

She slipped past to lead him onward, weaving her way toward an aisle stair. Torin followed in a daze. Now, more than ever, it felt to him as if their destinies were linked, woven together by a divine hand. A trick of his own passions, perhaps, but Torin had to believe otherwise. He had to believe that Dyanne felt it too—that somehow it was meant to be.

As they climbed the gallery steps, the wind from the south strengthened. High overhead, the sky’s mantle of clouds grew dark and menacing. The citizens, well accustomed to such weather, scarcely noticed. Torin smiled, basking in a soothing familiarity. The bellow of the ocean amid shrieking winds was to him a glorious harmony, while the tang and thickness of the air was like the security of his bed, wrapping him in a shield of comfort no blanket ever could.

He scanned the benches as he climbed, searching for any faces he might know. Some waved or called greeting to the Nymphs, but none seemed to recognize him. An outsider still, though that was not how he felt. He was stronger here. He was quicker, more alert. Most of all, he was happier, immersed in a sense of having found his true home. This was where he should have been born, he thought. Come what may, this was where he must remain.

“Dyanne,” a voice hailed, low and even.

Torin could not place it, though it struck a familiar chord in his memory. Then he saw the tall, stone-faced man emerging from his seat among a clutch of comrades, rising in welcome.

Jaik.

The sight of the man gave him pause. Dyanne, however, showed no hesitation as she turned toward the former Wylddean wedge commander, who was urging his benchmates to make room. As she reached him, the soldier greeted her with a gentle embrace, before leaning down to kiss her on the lips.

As sudden as that, planks and timber turned to quicksand beneath Torin’s feet, freezing him in place.

Holly came up behind him. “You remember Jaik, I’m sure.”

Dyanne withdrew, looking back at her companions with what might have been an embarrassed grin. “Jaik, look who we found returned from the dead.”

The soldier eyed Torin, his typically placid expression rippling with surprise. He glanced back at Dyanne, who nodded reassuringly, then thrust forth his hand. “You look well, I’d say. Welcome back.”

The warmth of the man’s greeting was a shock in and of itself, and jolted Torin into clasping the outstretched arm. “Jaik,” was all he could think to say.

Inside, he was reeling, bent beneath a tempest of foul memories he had done his best to forget: recollections of Jaik’s lavish attentions…Dyanne’s evident interest in the soldier…a hint of attraction between the two, displayed while en route to recapture Neak-Thur, almost from the moment the two had met.

That’s
one
reason
, he heard Holly suggest again.

“Join us?” Jaik offered, gesturing to the bench.

Torin nodded because he did not know what else to do. It would seem rather uncouth of him to drive the Sword through this man’s stomach. He might have done so anyway, but for the knowledge that Dyanne would not thank him for it.

Instead, he shuffled after Holly down the length of the bench, ignoring a line of stares from men he did not recall. They might have been Northlanders, whom he had fought against twice. Or they might have been Southlanders, like Jaik, who had turned cause to save their own necks. Some smiled and welcomed him as if they were old friends, while others nodded curtly or ignored him altogether, focused as they were on the entertainment below. The bear onstage was doing a dance around its handler. It made as much sense to Torin as anything else.

“I’ll have those wagers now, sirs,” Jaik said, grinning proudly as he followed down the row with an arm around Dyanne.

“Well fought, lass,” one older man grumbled. “Lucky you are, Jaik,” said another. “You’ll never convince me those men weren’t bought,” complained a third, smirking at Holly, “but a right good show nonetheless.”

Holly sat, then Torin, then Jaik, with Dyanne on his far side. As the last of the debts and compliments were paid, attentions drifted back to the dancing bear below.

“You and your dragon, you picked the wrong people to hunt, eh?” Jaik offered quietly.

Torin winced, then glared, but held his tongue as he found Dyanne peering at him from around Jaik’s chest.

“Savage beast,” Jaik went on. “We had to spill half its marrow before it ceased to struggle, and lost ten thousand men in the process. We’ve been sweeping up the rubble and burning the dead for three days now.”

The man as Torin had known him had always been stern and straightforward. He did not seem to be trying to give offense. Yet Torin did not know what the soldier expected of him. An explanation, perhaps? Yes or no, Jaik was hardly the one he felt like explaining himself to.

“I hadn’t thought to find any of you fighting for Lorre,” he countered.

Jaik laughed. “That makes two of us. When I rejected Lorre’s offer, I expected that was the end of me. But the old tyrant surprised me—surprised us all—by setting us loose.”

“Us?”

“General Chamaar, me, Gilden and Bardik—all of the high-level commanders who came against him, and who refused to join his army. I guess he realized that a man cowed into service is not the most dependable of officers.”

“So, what happened?” Torin asked. Moment by moment, he found his anger and jealousy dissipating as a result of Jaik’s brotherly manner. The man did not have to be sharing any of this, yet did so without mistrust, as if they were comrades-in-arms, rather than enemies and rivals.

Or perhaps it was merely that Dyanne’s presence continued to soothe him. With her looking on and listening in, eyes bright with interest and lips drawn back in a pleasant smile, how could he know anything but gratitude and delight?

“We fled south,” Jaik continued, “thinking to gather our scattered forces and renew our siege. But the commanders and I, we got to sharing what we’d learned. For the vast part, those who serve Lorre do so with genuine fealty. He demands structure, discipline, but that’s not the same as enslavement. The more we spoke of it, the more we realized that he offered us a life better suited to our warrior spirits—reckless and wild, yet not without order and purpose.”

A great stretch in reasoning, Torin might have thought, had he not deemed long ago that Lorre was less a tyrant and more like a stern father seeking to shelter his many children from the ills of the world. Whichever, he could hardly speak to the cravings of another man’s spirit, save that he and Jaik might have had more in common than he wished to believe.

“You all came back, then?” he asked.

“A good deal of us. Chamaar accepted a governorship far to the north, while Gilden and Bardik and I took up standing offers to join Lorre’s vanguard, here to the south.”

“Are they…are they here?” It was past time that he forced himself to inquire as to which of his former comrades had survived.

Jaik nodded. “Bardik is here somewhere, likely halfway through his second barrel. Lancer came out as well, but I believe his flock of nurses convinced him to return to his chambers for more rest.”

Torin could not help but smile in relief. “What of Arn? And Gavrin?”

“Arn? He went his own way. Too much of a mercenary, that one. Could never sit in one place. I don’t know any Gavrin.”

“Yes you do,” Dyanne prompted. “That weasel of a flank scout, the one who recruited us.”

“Ah, him. No idea. Disappeared even before our defeat. Skulked off to the Southland, be my guess.”

And a safe one at that, Torin decided. A rogue, through and through, never
more at ease than among those of his own ilk. It surprised him, though, the hole he felt at not knowing for sure. “What of those whose ways you swore to defend?” he asked. “Will you let Lorre make thralls of them all?”

“Wylddeans have no oaths—or none I was ever called upon to swear. We at Neak-Thur banded together against the only threat we knew, never
really
knowing what we were fighting against. Regardless, Lorre’s primary goal in taking Neak-Thur was to solidify his southern border. He’s come to realize, however, that he has stretched himself rather thin. Having lost half his army here, he may have us retreat north.”