Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook (9 page)

Like now.

She could see the muscles in her forearm shift, but had only
the faintest sensation of effort. She
watched, completely detached, as Strake's first flash of surprise was replaced
by anger. He had gone very still, and
she could feel rather than see his struggle, just as she'd been aware of his
initial displeasure at her arrival in Teraman. He was straining with every ounce of will to not bend his head. And the anger had become fear.

Then his face went blank. The implacable force crushing Soren had surged forward and simply
quashed all resistance. There was no
emotion in what followed. Strake and
Soren weren't participating, and if the thing which joined their bodies felt
anything of passion or triumph, the tiny fragment of awareness which was Soren
could not sense it. She watched,
listened to the evening chorus and the tossing of leaves, but there wasn't
enough of her left free to react.

Then, of a sudden, the stifling wealth of power
departed. Sensation, feeling of every
sort, returned.

Strake's weight was pressing the scabbard and harness of the
Champion's sword painfully into her back. For a brief moment he lay like any lover, lips pressed to one side of
her throat, shuddering from the aftermath of exertion. Then an elbow pinned her upper arm, and in a
flurry of movement he was off her. Gaining his knees, he paused momentarily, trembling with furious horror
as he clutched at the ground. Struggling
to sit up, Soren gasped as the man she was supposed to protect threw a rock and
a handful of leaf litter at her, flinching as he did so, as if she were a snake
or a water-mad dog. Then he was gone,
scrambling to his feet and stumbling into the trees.

Blankly, Soren lifted a hand to wipe at her mouth, and found
blood where the rock had struck her. For
a moment all she could do was sit there, all grit and bruises, with her
leggings around her ankles and her shirt wrenched open. She looked down at the sword's harness,
cutting directly into the skin beneath her breasts, and began to shake.

This was impossibly wrong. The Champion was supposed to protect. Protect and guide and uphold and– The Champion was the person the King could trust above all other. The purpose of the Rose and Champion was to
support the Rathen ruler. That was what
they were for.

Soren stared down at her hands, at the delicate sketch of
veins at her wrists. It did this. It was inside her, wound around her bones,
and she was nothing more than its tool. It had reached out and done that to Strake and used her to do it,
violated them both, and she didn't know why and she didn't know how to stop it
if it chose to do it again and–

A blur of white and red made her blink, and she jerked. She'd been clawing at her wrists, trying to
tear the Rose out. It stung, a couple of
the scratches deep enough for blood to be trickling freely.

It was suddenly important to stand up, to snatch her clothes
into some semblance of order. A noise
kept trying to escape her throat and she choked when she tried to swallow it
back. Reaching over her shoulder, she
grabbed the hilt of the Champion's Sword. She still hadn't mastered the trick of freeing the weapon in one easy
draw, and jerked at it savagely when it caught.

A cry, an angry shriek, burst from her throat as she threw
the sword after Strake. It spun in an
arc toward the trees, briefly reflecting apricot sky before it fell out of
sight. Soren staggered, and fetched up
against Vixen, who snorted, but didn't object when Soren flung arms about her
neck.

"A puppet," Soren breathed into the short, soft
hair of Vixen's neck. "I'm a
puppet!"

Puppet, monster, anything but a true Champion. She could hear Strake breathing. He was running, very quickly, and was already
at least a quarter mile away. He ran and
ran, and then he stopped, and made a choking noise and coughed. She thought perhaps that he was being
sick. He coughed again, and this time it
came out as a sob. Then he began to
weep.

Grimly, Soren tried to shut him away, pushing blindly at a
sense she didn't know how to control. The
sound of tearing breath faded and she gulped, hugging Vixen tighter. The mare was a marvellously solid thing. Warm and alive and as dependable as Soren was
meant to be.

She wasn't altogether sure how long she stayed there,
hanging around Vixen's neck, feeling false and wrong and soiled. The sky paled, and tiny insects rose to whine
and bite. The rush of wind through
leaves replaced the evening chorus, only occasionally punctuated by the rising
call of a star-chaser. Vixen grew
restless.

Then Soren heard breathing, slow, soft and even, just within
the trees to the north-west.

It wasn't Strake.

Chapter Eight

Every hair on the back of Soren's neck rose as she slid her
arms free and turned, staring. The moon
had not yet risen, and the black blobs of trees could well hide an army. Wobbling, she took a step, trying to focus
the Rose-given sense. Whatever was out
there was little more than fifty feet away, moving at a slow walking pace,
toward her.

Immediately, she was overwhelmed by a sense of peril, nerves
all over her body coming alive. If the
Rose had screamed aloud, it couldn't have made its warning clearer.

Jolted into action, Soren ran – directly toward whatever was
approaching. She was desperately trying
to remember the course of an arc into the trees, with a flash of apricot at its
peak. Strake had shown her a basic way
of creating a protection, simply by inscribing a circle into the ground. She couldn't do it without the sword.

Guided unerringly by the connection which had existed ever
since she'd gone to Lady Rothwell's rooms, Soren plunged down the slope into
the trees. Only fifteen feet separated
her from the unseen presence as she reached, spine crawling, for a lump of
metal she barely knew how to use. She
was panting in tiny rapid gasps, convinced that at any moment a nightmare would
leap out at her: red, slavering tongue, claws like sickles, and teeth whiter
than stars. It was so close.

Soren's fingers found the worn hilt and she tried to snatch
herself out of range of a monster's leap even as it abruptly stopped
moving. She stumbled backward up the
slope towards Vixen, racing on jelly-knees, the heavy sword wavering in her
grip. The mare was standing quietly, and
merely flicked her tail as Soren approached. If the gusting wind carried scents other than apple and grass, they were
not the kind to panic a horse.

But the Rose's cry of danger was unrelenting. Skin flinching from an attack which hadn't
come, Soren traced a circle around Vixen, trying to make at least an
indentation in the grass. The sword's
hilt grew warm in her hand, which was the only sign Soren was able to detect
that she was doing more than griming the tip. The circle would, Strake had told her, keep out basic attacks.

And it was not necessary. Without even coming close enough for her to see it, the thing in the
dark began to move away.

Toward Strake.

"Oh, Lady Moon. Grace of Night. Help
me." Soren's breath was still
coming in spurts, the futile prayers juddering between gasps. He was a mage and infinitely more capable of
defending himself, but he was out there alone without even a knife. Without even his self-command, after what had
been done to him.

Vixen still didn't seem to think anything was wrong, except
that Soren was thrusting the bit into her mouth at the end of the day,
completely against routine. Soren had
never saddled a horse faster. She dared
not try riding bareback. Not in the dark
through a forest with that thing roaming around.

She could hear them both now. Strake hadn't moved, was no doubt wishing
he'd left her stumbling around after Helena. The soft, steady breathing had been moving directly toward him, but now
began circling to the right. Already
halfway between her and him.

It knows where he is as surely as I do, Soren thought,
fitting one foot into a stirrup which would not stay still. It knew the moment I touched that sword. That makes it no ordinary animal. Something out to kill him. Fae magic, Fae–

Soren fell, flat on her back in the grass.

Startled, she tried to stand back up, but her legs wouldn't
work. She grabbed at the stirrup swaying
above her head, but trying to lever herself up only sent her sliding under
Vixen's belly. The mare, far more perturbed
by Soren's strange behaviour than anything lurking out in the forest, almost
trampled the Rathen Champion in her haste to get out of range.

"Sorry," Soren said, too shocked at that moment to
do more than make inane apologies. She
tried to stand again, and this time managed to gain her feet. The world spun, the dizziness worse than
before, and she felt crushed, pulled in two directions at once by the tumult
behind her eyes.

Landing back on her knees, she groaned, lifting a hand to
her head even as the conflict died away. Vixen was watching from just outside the circle, ears pricked forward
and reins trailing about her hooves. Stars glittered above and the wind rushed peacefully over the
hills. Out in the night an unseen thing
stalked the Rathen heir. And the Rose
wouldn't let her go try and stop it.

Fear and confusion fell away to anger, and Soren struggled
to her knees. "Let me up, you
wretched shrub," she demanded, pushing back when the Rose tried to box her
behind her spine. Whatever else, she
would not be this. She would not allow
herself to be made a puppet, would not bend to an enchantment meant to serve
and protect, and she certainly would not sit in a protective circle while
something tried to kill her Rathen.

To Soren's surprise, the tight feeling in her chest went
away. But the dizziness was worse than
ever, her head reverberating like a struck gong. This time she fell hard enough to hurt.

Staring up at stars which were squiggling in little circles,
Soren realised that the feeling of struggle was not her own. The Rose was fighting itself.

Why? Why attack
Strake and then try to leave him unprotected? Why the internal battle? It
seemed something had gone seriously wrong with the enchantment overseeing the
Rathen succession. Unless there had been
some sort of sabotage. Could Lord
Aristide have tampered with the Rose back in Tor Darest, perverting it to his
ambition?

Whatever the case, Soren had to try and take advantage of
this wobbling conflict. Climbing to her
feet, she set her jaw and pushed at the pressure within. An implacable edict. She would not be stopped. Strake was the Rathen heir and she would
protect him. That, after all, was what
everyone said she was here for.

Dizzy struggle evaporated. Even the sense of impending doom, of panic and danger had gone. But half a mile away the thing which stalked
the future King drifted closer, and she was running out of time.

-
oOo
-

Riding at night was chancy even without factors like
abandoned roads and unseen monsters. Despite the moon edging above the trees, Soren dared not attempt more
than a fast trot, and found herself occupied with ducking branches instead of
evading dagger-sharp claws. Vixen had
picked up on her mood and was
skittery
and
uncooperative, but still did not show any awareness of the presence which so
excited the Rose. It was just ahead now,
about twenty feet to the right of the road. She'd have to ride past it, within easy reach of a sudden rush.

Too frightened to hesitate, Soren drove Vixen to surge
forward, closing her eyes to slits as she tried to stare through the dark. There was no catch, no change in the even
pace of the thing's breathing. She was
sure it turned its head to watch her fly past, bent low over Vixen's withers,
but it did not so much as pause in its steady course toward Strake.

Strake.

Her Rathen had found the crumbling ruin of Aramond, and was
standing at the mouth of a street suffused with silver. He was facing away from her, staring up at
the half moon rising above the blockish shadows of crumbling buildings. Although he didn't move as Soren broke into
the open, she'd heard the sudden intake, then his deep, shaky breaths as Vixen
gained speed along the road. Steeling
himself to deal with her.

Her stomach turned over, but there wasn't time to
cringe. She reined Vixen to a halt bare
feet from him and blurted: "We have to get out of here."

For a moment there was no response. Then his head lowered, his back utterly
straight, unbending.

"We?"

Total rejection. It
shrivelled her.

"Do you imagine I have any intention of travelling with
you? Trusting you?" Scorn competed with furious loathing.

His anger reignited Soren's own. "I imagine that whatever it is chasing
you about means you no good," she snapped. "I think you know something about why the Rose wants you dead. Why it did...that to us. Why it tried to stop me warning
you." She couldn't hold back an
exasperated, frantic noise, swallowing a volcano of doubt and antagonism as the
shadow drew ever closer. "I think
we need to get out of here. You can yell
later."

Strake turned to study the forest at her back. "I don't see anything," he said,
flatly. But he searched the black and
silver trees again.

The Rose chose that moment to start pummelling Soren with a
lifetime's fear and urgency. Vixen, her
reins jerked about, danced in a little circle as Soren tried to control the
urge to run as far and fast as she could. The pushing sensation had returned, along with the dizzy argument behind
her mind, and she lost vital moments thrusting it away. It at least seemed easier, now that she knew
that she could.

"Why is it doing this?" she cried, then shook her
head. The stalker had stopped, a stone's
throw away. "There isn't
time." She held a hand out to her
Rathen, who was watching her with the wary stare of someone who has discovered
a madwoman. "Believe me, we have to
go. Now."