Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (6 page)

He would send a full report on Arason as well, to Deiq personally, so there was no further need for Deiq and Alyea to travel all the way north. And in that single sentence stood the only implication in the entire letter, the warning Idisio hadn’t quite been able to make himself say directly:
Don’t follow me. Don’t come after me. I’ll fight.

With the life and strength stolen from Idisio’s insane mother surging through the young ha’ra’ha’s body, standing on the shores of the Lake where he’d been conceived and born...Deiq wasn’t at all sure who would win that fight.

He sat staring at the letter for some time, as the candles burned down and the rain tapped erratically on the roof. At last he picked the pages up, one by one, and held them to the flame of the nearest candle.

Just as the last one fell apart into a thin blur of black ash, a hot thread of agony raced from his heels to the back of his head. The chair crashed back as he jerked to his feet, teeth bared; he could feel his eyes sliding out of human-normal, and a rage with roots deep as a mountain swamped over him.

What the hells—

Even as he drew in breath to fight off the unexpected fury, the prompt behind it clarified:

Wet leaves underfoot, bared swords, the smell of blood, sweat, fear, pain: muscles straining, too many opponents, no way out—

“Damnit,” he said aloud, “you can’t stay the fuck out of trouble, can you—”

Then all coherence blurred under imperative. Rage swamped through him, deeper, blacker, and less controllable than it had been in hundreds of years:
Mine!
it screamed.
Mine, mine, MINE.

The room went away, replaced by chill damp air, the smell of wet leaves and rust and
blood, human blood,
her
blood—
and Alyea, behind him; those attacking her spread out in front of him. He spared a glance to be sure she wasn’t dangerously injured yet, then turned on the armed men.

A few bodies later, he caught a glimpse of her white, shocked face:
She’s never seen this before; she doesn’t understand.
The realization was enough—barely—to slide a bridle of rationality over his rage. He finished what he’d started, forcing himself to stay human enough to avoid scaring her further.

He turned to face her, breathing hard from the effort of standing still. “Stay or go?”

What happened, what the hells is going on, what are you doing here instead of at the palace
didn’t really matter at the moment. Either she wanted to leave or to complete what she’d come here for. Questions could wait.

She stared at him, pale and shaken. He repeated the question more sharply. That seemed to push her out of her daze; she said, “Stay. My mother—I have to get my mother out of there.”

Lady Peysimun could rot for all Deiq cared, but it wasn’t his choice. He nodded acknowledgment. With a brief glance down at the bodies, Alyea started towards the side door. Deiq snorted impatiently and moved into her way, stopping her.

“Wait,” he said. “Where is she?”

“I—” She shook her head, her eyes focusing on his left sleeve. Her face went even more ashen. Glancing down, he saw a long arc of blood spattered from elbow to shoulder.

She would have fainted, if she’d seen me the last time I rescued her,
he thought sourly; which brought back memory of his roiling, useless fury that she’d even
been
kidnapped in the first place, and added to the haze already clouding the edges of his vision.

Growling in frustration, he shoved at her shoulder hard to get her attention back. “Where?” he shouted, leaning forward.
“Where,
damnit?”

“I don’t
know!”
she snapped back, distracted from fear into an anger of her own. “I don’t know what’s going on in there!”

Her anger aggravated his already taut nerves. Not inclined to explain, he grabbed her by both shoulders and
moved
them inside, into a familiar enough place for the transition to be safe: her room, where he’d knelt, scant days ago, in terror of her dying—where she’d pitched a thankfully empty bedpan at his head, and a heavier vase at Eredion’s, and only quieted when a complete stranger—a
dangerous
stranger—allowed her to cry herself out on his sturdy shoulder. Then she fell asleep in the stranger’s arms—

Deiq would have been happy never to see that room and the memories it held again.

As it clarified around them, he saw that it held more than memories: over a dozen armed men waited, and the furniture had been pushed aside to allow for easy fighting room—

He would have to lose all control in order to fight this many, and Alyea would see it
—No. She’s not ready for that yet.

Before the waiting men could more than blink in startlement, Deiq removed himself and Alyea from that trap and returned them to the Church tower.

“Too many,” he panted as air returned for breath. “Too damn many. Stay here—”

Much as he’d rather let the stupid woman die, he’d have to get Lady Peysimun out himself. He couldn’t bring Alyea back there, not until he took care of the situation.

With his full strength returned, what was coming would make his recent charge through the ranks of her kidnappers look like a children’s dance. For a fraction of a moment, he considered calling for Eredion’s help, then dismissed the idea as swiftly. The desert lord would take too long to arrive, would only get in the way—and Deiq didn’t want him to see this, either.

Treacherous memory flickered, reminding him of the state he’d found Alyea in at Lady Arnil’s house and stoking the rage even higher. Alyea didn’t know yet, didn’t understand that sharing could transfer memories; didn’t realize that while he’d shielded his own memories fairly well, she couldn’t hide hers as effectively, and he’d
seen—

The edges of his vision blurred further, leaving him with a dangerously tight focus.

He spared another second to order himself, sternly, not to kill innocents; not to kill Alyea’s mother, or any servants, or anyone helpless. Hoping at least some part of him would remember that injunction, he drew in a deep breath and let the rage loose as he stepped into Peysimun Mansion’s inner rooms.

The rage quickly transformed, as he’d known it would, into a fierce joy. The silky feel and bitter taste of blood lit every nerve ending in his body on fire. He ripped through the room, savoring every scream, the scent of fear, urine, feces and blood sweeter than the finest bouquet of flowers.

I’m not so different from Kippin, in that respect...
He’d had similar experiences before. The joy he felt in wreaking such destruction had contributed to his centuries-long spiral into depression. Right now, though, the cruelty of what he was doing meant nothing.

Dimly, Deiq regretted that he couldn’t simply pull the lives from his opponents, like ripping the silk from a cob of corn; that would have been faster, and much more pleasurable. But his ha’reye heritage forbade it as a waste—he didn’t need that energy at the moment—and his human heritage, although only a trace element at this point, still screamed against it as obscene.

For once,
the tiny coherent part of his mind observed,
both sides agree.
At another time, that might have made him laugh.

He slammed through another door into a broad central hallway. Groups of armed guards stood at either end. The front ranks held spears and swords; behind them, bowmen had arrows nocked and ready. Clearly they thought him trapped. Whichever way he went, the other side would send arrows through his back.

His grin widened.

Even as the archers’ hands drew back in the tiniest shift, he dropped out of human time into
other-
perception and flung himself forward. Everything froze around him, each human in-breath taking multiple heartbeats, plenty of time in which to destroy them all—

—and the air filled with a fine spray of white dust that must have been dropped from above moments before, just as he set his shoulder to the now shattered door.
Stibik—
stepping
elsewhere
wasn’t possible through a cloud of that.
Gods,
they’d thrown a lot of it into the air—he could feel it settling like a million insect bites against every bit of exposed skin, slowing him, pulling him sharply out of
other-
perception and back into a nearly human speed.

Deiq spun, eyes shut, and desperately tried to launch himself back into the room, to get the remnants of that door between him and the dust—

—a net fell over him—

—a hard blow to his stomach drove the air from his lungs, forcing him to suck in a fresh breath of stibik-laden air—

—and everything hazed, twisted, and went black.

Eredion had been given a chance, at one point, to walk away from it all. To leave Bright Bay, to just keep going, on into the northlands, start over again where nobody knew him as Eredion Sessin, ambassador to Bright Bay. Where nobody
expected
anything of him. Rainy days like this tended to remind him of that, and to make him question the wisdom of staying.

He sat in his favorite chair and stared out the fine glass windows at the dreary day outside. Just the window itself—a recent installation by, of course, Sessin artisans—reminded him of things he didn’t want to think about. He’d sat here many times over the last few years, staring at sun and rain alike through what had been thickly bubbled squares of glass, his view of himself as distorted and gloomy as his view of the outside.

Replacing the glass had only helped the latter.

Slender hands pressed lightly on his shoulders from behind.

“You’re looking sad again, my lord,” Wian said in a low voice. She released his shoulders and came around to settle on his knee.

“I have a lot to be sad about,” Eredion said, then snorted. “And now I’m sounding juvenile.” He sighed, twining his fingers through hers, and forced a smile.

“True,” she said, “on both points.” She grinned.

Her mischievous cheer lifted his own mood, and his smile turned more genuine. “You’ve changed quite a bit in the last few days, Wian.”

Her smile flickered and dimmed. “Yes, I suppose I have,” she said, and turned her head to stare out the window. “He’s still out there, isn’t he?”

“Kippin? Yes. We haven’t found him yet. Or Kam.” There hadn’t even been any clue as to which way they’d gone, which worried Eredion more than a little; but surely they wouldn’t have been so stupid as to stay in Bright Bay?

Studying Wian’s still profile, he decided she reminded him of a wild bird perched on his knee and ready to burst into flight at any moment. Her dark hair, now neatly trimmed and pulled back into more than a dozen thin braids with silver threads woven into each, still hung well past her shoulders. The bruises had faded from her face and body, leaving only the occasional patch of yellow or tracery of blue.

There was no removing the network of scars Rosin—and later, Kippin—had left over years of abuse. Wian’s whippings had been far worse than Alyea’s single episode; her back was a mass of scars layered over scars layered over scars.

The marks Kippin had left on Lord Alyea, in stark contrast, would already have healed to near-invisibility: one of the benefits of being a desert lord. The only scars Alyea would ever have were the ones placed on her body prior to her blood trials.

Eredion rested a gentle hand on Wian’s back, thinking about the tangle of old scars there; wishing he could erase them, along with the deeper, less visible hurts inside her soul. It was easier to think about Wian than about...all the others, today.

The grave-keeper was dead, and while replacing her would be Oruen’s job, the meetings they had held to help some of the survivors of the Purge had to go on.
Had
to. And that was Eredion’s business, as soon as he could think of a place half so secure to resume the meetings.

Not even a thief with nerves of steel would eavesdrop in a graveyard.

“He’ll come after me,” Wian said, the words barely audible. “I can feel it.”

Eredion didn’t say anything. Wian didn’t need false reassurances.

She turned into him, curling up in his lap like a child. He wrapped his arms around her, and they sat in silence for some time. At last she gave a great sigh and uncoiled to stand up, her hand pressing on his shoulder lightly for a moment.

“There’s another of those letters,” she said unemotionally. “I left it on the entry table.”

“Thank you.”

She padded away. He sighed, got up to retrieve the letter, then settled back down in the chair, his mood even darker than it had been.

“Bloody Scratha,” he muttered as he flicked the packet open and unfolded the pages. He read them over, shaking his head in disbelief. “Bloody
lunatic.
If they ever get wind of this, the loremasters are going to have him
castrated—
if he’s
lucky.”

He refolded the letter and went to put it with all the others.

Under Ninnic’s rule, being Sessin’s ambassador to the northern court had involved a number of hideous tasks, but at least Eredion had been able to stay in the background, mostly invisible to the common eye. Rosin Weatherweaver had liked keeping him isolated. Everything Eredion wrote, every letter he received, had been screened by fanatically loyal Northern Church priests.