Lady of Mercy (The Sundered, Book 3) (27 page)

“Well, now, aren’t we the cheerful one? You just trust Hildy, young lady. I’ll tell you when gloom-and-doom are the order of the day.”

 

They met their guards at the gate, although Erin didn’t see them until they alighted from the caravan at the first of the inns that would house them. Erin was given her own room, as was Trethar; Renar was expected to room with the caravan guards. He made no secret of how he felt about this, but wisely refrained from coming to blows with any of the attendant guards. Gerald made it clear, even without the use of words, that any fight Renar picked was his own to deal with; this, of course, was met with Renar’s usual good grace. It was all an act—it had to be—but Darin still wondered how a grown man could pout so effectively.

 

“Sarillorn.”

“Erin.”

She smiled as the pale light that was somehow shadow resolved itself into two familiar bodies. The landscape curved away from her uneasily, roiling at her feet. She caught the hint of color lurking beneath the darkness of its surface, a deep metallic red, hard and cold.

As always, Belfas came first, a fine mist of light waiting upon form. He held out a hand in tentative greeting, just far enough out of her reach that she could not grasp it.

“Erin,” he said again, softly.

“Belf.”

“We haven’t seen you in a long time.”

“Days,” she replied, and looked away for a moment. A hiss
of a sigh escaped his lips, curling around her ears. She shivered. “Soon, Belfas. Soon, Carla, Rein, Teya. Soon.” Belief, foreign and welcome, lent strength and force to those words. She clenched her hands and looked down at her translucent fingers. “Where is Kandor?”

“Here, little one.” He appeared beside Belfas, his light the stronger light, his face the more peaceful countenance. His eyes, luminescent, swept over her, returning to meet her steady gaze. “You have found something that you lacked.”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” She was afraid to question it or probe it too deeply; this odd peace might prove to be fragile and easily lost.

“Tell me, Sarillorn, do you still seek death?”

She looked back at him, and then turned to Belfas. Mirroring Kandor’s gesture, she held out a slim hand, bringing it to within an inch of Belfas’ still face. His eyes were shadowed and pain lurked just beneath their surface.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “But death is the Lady I must seek, or you will never leave this place.”

“Yes.” Kandor, gentle and peaceful when not at war, was still an absolute; he had no lie in him, not even to comfort—the Sarillorn understood this, even if Erin flinched. “Perhaps you were better off before.”

“No.” She shook her head firmly, and strands of diaphanous hair traced her cheeks. “I think I was a little mad.”

“And do you now forgive God? Do you forgive the Lady?”

The intensity of Kandor’s question caught and held her tongue. The warmth that she had found faded into heat; the embers of an anger that still burned, still hurt. “I swore blood-oath,” she reminded him softly.

He shrugged, signifying nothing. And he waited.

“Not the Lady,” she said at last, gazing out into the endless darkness. “Not yet. Not now.”

“No? Ah well. Seeing you now, Sarillorn, seeing you at rest, I do.”

“You?” Beyond the one word, she could say no more. But the thought that Kandor might harbor his own resentment, his own anger, had never occurred to her. The Servants had been all grace, all light, all servitude to God; if they had questioned or felt anger or sorrow, she had never seen it.

Kandor smiled, although the smile was oddly stiff. “I was among the oldest of our number, Sarillorn. Yet even so I spent much of my time among the half bloods and the humans. I am Servant, yes, and to Lernan—but I am not immune to the effect of ... affection. It eases my time, in this darkness, to know that you are more peaceful.

“By the will of God and the will of the Lady, you are the last of our children.” The darkness held shadows that only Kandor could see; he gazed past her shoulder in silence before speaking again. “What will you do now?”

“We go to Culverne and its holdings. The patriarch of that line travels with me, as do three others.”

“And there?”

“There’s still resistance to the Malanthi rule in Culverne. We hope to contact it, to become part of it—and to use it.”

“Go then, Sarillorn.”

She nodded, feeling herself begin to slide away. “But I will come again.”

 

In the morning, the snow was thin and completely white; the sun, untrammeled by clouds, made a winter desert of blinding light. The guards donned boots and snowshoes, and Erin was shuffled off to the wagons before she’d had a chance to strap what looked like flat baskets to her feet. Robert, Gerald, and Darin all seemed reasonably comfortable with them, as did both Hildy’s guards and the guards of House Bordaril. Trethar disdained their use, but was spared any embarrassment by Hildy.

“At our age,” she said severely, “we don’t have to walk. Leave that to the boys, dear.”

Trethar, beard frosted with frozen breath, looked dour. He was many things: mage, member of the brotherhood, teacher. He was not a “dear.” But in the end, he chose to behave like any of the other men under Hildy’s command; he followed the orders that were liberally wrapped in her mother’s voice. Even the House Bordaril guards listened to her with only slight grimaces to show that they were used to a different master. It was obvious that most of them had traveled this route before. Both Erin and Darin kept as clear of them as possible without letting their previous experience with house guards show.

Still, Erin was nervous as she took to the wagons, and her
nerves, tightly strung, caused a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.

It’s the house guards,
she told herself firmly.

Hildy, however, seemed oblivious to the reason behind the shudder, and Erin found herself wrapped in a shawl, two scarves, and two layers of mittens. Winter wear, as Hildy had said, was not in short supply, and if all of it was oversized, Erin couldn’t see fit to point it out.

But when the wagons slid to a halt two hours from the inn, she threw off the woollen layers as if they were webs and reached for her sword before Hamin’s face appeared between the canvas flap.

“Hildy,” he said, in a low tense voice, “I think there’s trouble ahead.”

“Trouble?” Picking up Erin’s castoffs, she held out a bundled hand, and Hamin helped her out, into the daylight. Erin followed, a tense and dangerous shadow.

The first thing she saw were the backs of the caravan escort; Hildy’s in their plain winter wear, and the Bordaril guards in their crested livery. They had weapons ready; three had long-bows, strung, with arrows nocked.

All this, Erin took in, in a warrior’s glance; it had no time to register before her eyes were scanning the horizon. She cursed the snow, the light, and the conditions of the north that were so unfamiliar to her.

“There are men on the road, dear,” Hildy said to Hamin.

“Yes,” Erin replied, before Hamin had to think of something to say. “There are. I think about fifty.” She took a breath and then exhaled it in a warm, wet cloud. “I don’t see Church crests.”

Hamin raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got good vision.” He left Hildy’s side and came around to stand at Erin’s. “What else do you see?”

She squinted and muttered something dire about the sun. But as her eyes slowly adjusted themselves, she saw that at least one banner flew.

“Field of emerald green,” she said, shading her eyes. “Gold; I think it’s a crescent, curve up. I can’t tell; we’re too far away.”

Hildy said something very, very unladylike.

“Hildy!” Hamin’s jaw dropped.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Hildy said. “But that’s enough of a description.” She shook her head. “I think we’d best pull back.”

“It’s Vanellon, isn’t it?”

She nodded grimly.

“But they wouldn’t dare—the last time they tried to launch trade war here, they were wiped out to a man, and they had to pay a sizable compensation to Bordaril.”

“Yes, dear, we know that,” she replied. “Get young Jenkins, please.”

Young Jenkins was a man in his late thirties; he had served Bordaril for all of his adult life and had trained under their auspices for most of his youth. He wore three stripes and his age with equal dignity, and an odd sort of strength that might have been menacing in a different light followed the line of his brow and his dark eyes. He bowed to Hildy as he approached, but that was all the formality the situation allowed.

“Vanellon,” he said tersely. She nodded. “Retreat?”

“I think it best, dear. We don’t have the numbers or the strategic location that would make any other option wiser.”

He nodded again, perfunctorily; it was clear to even Erin that he had no intention of pursuing any other course, regardless of what Hildy recommended. It was also obvious that he was angry; his lips were white around the edges, his eyes narrowed, and his jaw muscles twitched.

Hildy stepped aside and began to make ready to turn the wagons, and the horses, in the confines of the road. “I can’t understand it,” she muttered to herself. “They wouldn’t dare do this unless something had changed.”

And Erin felt it then; a sudden surge of power that made her bones ache with remembered pain.

Hildy froze and then swung around to see Erin’s body crest along the snow top. She took Erin’s urgent command, and magnified it with the strength of her voice and her voice’s imperative. No one in the caravan could escape the notice she gave. They fled, saving questions for later.

Hildy paused only long enough to cut the nearest horse from its straps; up and down the caravan, others had already made a similar decision. Then she, too, took to the dubious shelter that barren trees offered. She had no need to ask Erin why; the ground rumbled beneath her feet like a constrained giant.

Power crackled in the air, distorting vision in a visible, red aurora of light. The hair on Erin’s neck, fine and soft, stood on end. Her skin tingled, and her teeth ached with a chill that had nothing to do with the winter.

She heard the screaming then, a thin wild note that pierced air and the barrier of distance with pathos and ease. Cursing, she pulled her sword.

A Karnar was on the field.

 

Just as he had been taught, Erliss bound his blood-power in a net around his dying sacrifice. He could see lines that reached from his fingers around the whole of the young man’s body; they were red but bright, a fine, strong weave that tightened as Erliss concentrated. He traced each thread, each narrow line, and finally pushed.

Sweating, he held one hand aloft. The sacrificial blade gleamed red and silver as it met his palm; it bit, but did not
sting as it passed beyond his thin skein of flesh. The red robes—an early gift from Vellen—that swirled around his arms and legs were a flag; in a field of white, red dominated all.

Gently, almost nervously, he reached down and placed his open wound against the throat of the dying man. Blood met blood as Erliss joined the net he had made for God.

God answered. There were no words and no command, no ceremony, and no grand welcome. Nevertheless, hand upon death, Erliss felt the pulse of the Dark Heart as it became, for moments, his own.

He rose, and those Swords that had attended him in the ritual moved away like black-linked shadows.

Do not pull too much,
Vellen, had said. Erliss did not feel, at this moment, that that was possible. Without care for archers, he strode to the front of the assembled line and gazed down the snow-covered road. There, casting tiny, fragile shadows, his quarry began to flee. It was important that they not retreat.

For the first time in his life, he had no doubts at all about his ability to stop them.

 

Darin knelt in the snow. His cheek brushed bark and branch, growing red with little cuts.

“Darin, are you all right?”

Renar touched his shoulder gingerly, and Darin spun around, Bethany clutched and levered as if to strike. He stopped himself, or Bethany stopped him—he wasn’t sure which. Shaking, he tried to look out to the road.

I know.
He bit his lip, while he listened for the shouts of Bordaril guards as they gave and took their orders.

“What is it?” Renar said, speaking more sharply than he had ever done.

“P-Priest.” Darin swallowed. “A priest is—is with them.” The road trembled again, and Darin rose, seeking safety in the thick of the woods.

“How in the hells can you see that from here?” Renar said, his forehead creased. “Even I can’t—” the rest of the sentence was lost as the ground began to buckle like simple, white linen, folding slowly into itself.

Initiate
, Bethany said, her voice no less harsh than Renar’s had been.
Ward.