The Battle Sylph (10 page)

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I got you involved with this!”

Devon stroked her hair. “I’m pretty sure I got myself involved with no help from you,” he disagreed. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“But you can never go home! And that man will be after you!”

“Yeah.” She heard him sigh. “I’m trying not to think about that. Sometimes you just have to stand up, though.” He pushed her back and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, leaving Solie to wonder what Heyou would think about him touching her. That brought on an urge to laugh and cry at the same time.

Devon smiled, though his mouth was tight and he had lines between his eyes she didn’t remember from before. She’d never known him very well, but he’d always struck her as a peaceful sort.

“We should try to get some sleep and get moving in the morning,” he told her, “once we can see where we’re going and decide where we’re going to go.”

“Where can we go?” she asked, still gulping air, if mostly sobbed out. She didn’t know the land very well—not past the hamlet in which she was born or her aunt’s town.

“I’m not sure. I think north. If we skirt along the Shale Plains and cross the mountains, we can go to the kingdom of Para Dubh. It’ll be hard, but they won’t look for us there.”
I hope,
she could almost hear him adding.

“Okay,” she agreed, not knowing what else to suggest. He had a cloak, boots, a flute, and an air sylph who couldn’t carry them very far. She had a worn-out dress and no shoes. Still, she pushed herself to her feet and took a deep breath. “I guess we should find shelter under the trees for now. Let’s go.”

Twenty-eight men were dead, all of their sylphs destroyed. The harvest was lost and they’d only been able to recover a third of their livestock. At least they had enough gear for everyone to camp in, and they still had the ability to bind more sylphs as well. They could rebuild everything, provided they were left alone long enough and they survived the winter.

Morgal stood at the edge of the bluff on which they’d made their camp, staring over his supposed domain. It wasn’t much. A collection of tents and fires, built on the back slope of the cliff. They had close to fifty tents, and two hundred men, women, and children, along with ten fire sylphs, eight air sylphs, seven earth sylphs, four water sylphs, and even a single healer sylph. Back in the valley, all of them together had been a wondrous thing—an invigorating thing. Now it just looked like a dirty camp filled with desperate men.

They’d had battle sylphs sent after them, two battle sylphs that tore into their tiny community, ripping their people apart and scattering them out into the Shale Plains. It had taken them days to regroup here, and cost them half their sylphs and far too many friends for Morgal to want to count, including all of their former leaders. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the icy wind on his face and trying not to get discouraged. He was a thin man, his face gaunt and pitted, and the shortened rations they were all on hadn’t helped. His long hair was thinning on top and graying as well. His left arm was bandaged and it hurt to breathe,
but the healer sylph was exhausted. They would have lost far more if it hadn’t been for her, and she still had work to do. He’d have to recover on his own for a while.

Behind him a light flickered, a fire in the shape of a girl staring out over the barren plain. She looked to be made entirely out of burning embers, and was appropriately named Ash. Looking at her, Morgal abruptly tensed. “Are they coming back?” he asked.

The fire sylph shrugged. “No,” she said aloud, and he relaxed. All of the sylphs were watching for attack now. They could sense each other when they were close enough, and they’d feel the battlers before anyone else. Sylphs could hide their energy, but battlers never had a reason. Morgal just hoped that “close enough” wouldn’t turn out to be too close.

He turned and went back across the top of the bluff, Ash at his side, trying not to jar his injuries as he returned to the camp. Survivors looked at him and nodded as he passed, before returning to their own work. There were a lot of men left, but with their casualties they were outnumbered by the women, attached and widowed both. And there were children as well, playing among the tents as though two thirds of them weren’t orphans.

We should have expected the attack, he thought—just as he’d been thinking since it happened.
We became arrogant, careless. We paid for it.

All of his compatriots were peasants from the mountain hamlets of Para Dubh, people too poor and unimportant to earn sylphs from the king—or the priesthood, providing one could pay enough. Most of those here were newly bound, though, thanks to a rebel priest who’d joined them and given them all a reason to set out on their own. Wanting more than the class structure of Para Dubh for their future, the first men to befriend Petr the priest had started this community, settling down on the uninhabited edge of
the Shale Plains in a canyon valley that was protected from the worst of the wind and snow. They should have been left alone there for years, but they’d been stupid. At their leaders’ suggestion, they’d started to attack air ships coming from the kingdom of Eferem to Para Dubh. It took years off the time they expected to take building up their community, and people stopped questioning the safety of it. Then the battlers came. Morgal just prayed that the battlers’ masters only thought they were killing pirates—and more, believed they’d destroyed them.

Ahead of him, a tent that looked no different than the others was pitched next to the community’s collected barrels of water. Morgal ducked inside, and the women there looked up from tending the injured. Seven survivors still lay, waiting for healing. There were more than seven, of course, but these were the worst, unable to recover without help.

That help glanced up at Morgal, sniffing toward his injury before she turned back to the man she was mending. She was hard to see, vaguely female in shape but mostly formless and decidedly translucent. She’d been fading more and more as she worked alone to save the wounded, and her master watched her worriedly. Zem was a tiny, nervous man, but more devoted to his sylph than any other master Morgal had ever seen.

Zem hurried over, wringing his hands. “Let me tell her to stop, Morgal,” he begged, looking over his shoulder as the healer put her hand on the forehead of the injured man. She shimmered and his breathing evened out and deepened, though he was still unnaturally pale. “Luck’s going to end up killing herself!”

Morgal sighed, hoping Zem was just being paranoid. “If she stops now, our friends will die.”

“But if she doesn’t, we won’t have her for the next injury!” Her master was nearly in tears. “She’s the only healer we have!”

“Does
she
want to stop?” Morgal asked.

“You know she doesn’t,” Zem wailed. “She never wants to stop. She’ll heal acne if she can’t find anything else.”

Over by the bed, Luck looked up at them and rose, drifting over to the next cot, where she sat and laid her hand on its occupant. She was healing the wounded in increments, taking a long time but using less energy. Morgal had been impressed when he first saw her strategy. He still was, even as she ignored his wounds.

“She’ll be fine.”

“But what if she isn’t?” Zem wailed.

Morgal looked back at his fire sylph. “Ash, is Luck okay?”

“Yes.”

“See?” Morgal told the man. “Ash says she’s fine. She’d know.”

“But she’s a fire sylph! Luck is a healer! They’re totally different!”

Morgal shook his head. “Just let her do her work. She knows to stop when she needs to rest. She understands how important she is to us.”

He caught Luck’s eye for a moment, but the sylph didn’t bother to respond. She only answered to Zem—who, thankfully, still answered to Morgal. If not, they both would probably have gone. If they’d only had another healer…But healers were the rarest of sylphs, and the summoning ritual wasn’t an exact process. The group could open a gate and their own sylphs could tell them what was on the other side, but they couldn’t aim the gate at all for the type of sylph they needed. They hadn’t found any other healers, nor did they have many men with the unique quality Zem had to attract one. He’d been constantly sick until Luck came through—or had complained that he was. It made her happy somehow to keep him healthy.

As Morgal stood contemplating, the sylph floated past to her next patient, pausing to lay a hand on her master as she
did. He took a deep breath and shook himself. Morgal looked away.

“I leave it to you,” Morgal told Zem, and headed outside before the man could get his focus back and return to complaining. He’d just wanted to check on the injured men. When he’d last been there, she’d been dealing with a dozen. Zem would argue until he went blue, but Luck would have them all healed within the week. Tomorrow, perhaps he could insist she take a break without the risk of someone dying.

Outside, the growing cold made him shiver, and Ash pressed close, warming him. It would start snowing soon, which was another problem. He didn’t know what to say to these people. Their real leaders were dead. Morgal was just an assistant, yet he was the most experienced leader they had. They’d formed a new council, with him in charge. But he was also one of those who’d suggested they attack the Eferem cargo ships in the first place, use them to increase their own supplies and speed the founding of their intended new kingdom. As the only one left of that group, he felt the heavy burden of the disaster.

They couldn’t afford another fight like that. Their sylphs were useless against battlers, and they would never have any for themselves. Not when a woman had to be sacrificed to bind them. None of this group wanted to kill anyone, not even a volunteer. He remembered that ship veering toward them instead of fleeing as they attacked, and that bird and armored knight both leaping down—

He closed his eyes. It was done. Most of his people had escaped, thanks to their sylphs. They’d be able to do it again.

He walked to another tent, closer to the edge of the camp. Inside, their only priest and the man who’d made all of this possible looked up from the circle he was drawing. It was nearly done, ready to be infused with energy so that
they might open the gate to the sylphs. They still had men who weren’t bound to one. They’d draw as many as they could, and if they were really lucky, they’d get another healer.

Morgal nodded at Petr and eased himself down onto a wooden chair in the corner. Ash floated beside him, now in the form of a ball of fire, close enough to warm his aching muscles without burning him. “Soon?” he asked.

“Yes.” The priest nodded, kneeling to continue with the circle. He was bald, and his scalp was heavily scarred, as was the rest of his body. When Morgal had first met him, Petr had no tongue, though Luck had eventually been able to regrow it. Morgal didn’t know entirely what the man had done to earn his punishment, but he’d been tortured and his earth sylph destroyed before he was dropped into the wilds to die. Morgal’s former leaders had found him, and in return he’d given them the secret of summoning sylphs. He had no new sylph of his own, though. Morgal could understand that. He couldn’t imagine ever replacing Ash.

He watched the priest work, knowing it took more than just learning the patterns to make the ritual successful. Petr had years of experience, and Morgal was beyond grateful that he’d survived the battler attack. Neither man spoke of the fact that Morgal himself had only survived the battle because he’d grabbed the priest and run, leaving the others to fight alone. They each carried their own wounds. He just sat and watched, and hoped that the sylphs to come would be enough to ensure their survival.

Heyou floated back to cohesiveness as discreetly as he could as the sun rose, sensing for the other battler with every bit of awareness he had left. He could feel his foe hovering on the edge of his perception, aura muted and resting.

He didn’t bother to congratulate himself on wearing the other sylph out. Heyou was badly hurt, his form torn and his
energy low. The pain was nearly overwhelming, but he didn’t dare wait any longer to heal. He wasn’t so sure anymore that he would. Once he would have stayed where he was and either lived or died, but Solie needed him. She was out there with that man, and he had to get to her.

Slowly, less a part of the world than a cloud of dust motes but still in agony, Heyou wafted from his hiding place and across the shattered floor of the cottage, headed away from the other battler. His aura he swallowed completely, leaving nothing for his enemy to feel or track him by. He felt nearly blind without it and as naked as he now understood Solie was when he’d first met her—defenseless. It was…humbling.

He flowed across the floor and out through a crack in the wall. There the early-morning sun shone down on him, warming his edges as he shadowed across the lane and into the woods. From there he fled across the orchards and the hills, following a tenuous link that took him slowly northward, in the direction his queen had gone.

It was incredibly hard, his energy cloud form disrupted so badly that it could barely keep its shape. Heyou finally had to stop and resume human shape, giving himself a framework in which to exist before he tumbled into oblivion completely.

Doing so hurt as much as the blow he’d taken from the other battler. Heyou knelt on the leafy, moldy ground and pressed his face to it, weeping from the pain, his skin cold for the very first time under his worn tunic. Physically, he looked as Solie had wished, but he could feel the injuries inside. His enemy had crippled him.

“Solie,” he gasped. She would make everything better. His queen would feed him the energy he needed, and he knew he had to be with her. That instinct was still incredibly strong, if tempered by exhaustion and a strange new loneliness. He’d never been lonely before. Angry, yes, and
determined, but never lonely. He couldn’t defend her anymore, but he could be with her, as she could be with him. That was worth surviving for.

Heyou forced himself to his feet by sheer force of will, choking and shuddering as he did. He could feel the harsh ground under his bare feet and stumbled, falling to his knees. That hurt more.

Finally, he found a broken sapling about his height and stripped the branches off, used it to help him stand. Leaning on it, he slowly moved to follow his queen.

Deep in a dream about Lizzy, Ril twitched and came awake, his eyes blinking open as he glanced around in the earlymorning light. For a moment he’d thought he felt…He ruffled his feathers, listening intently with something other than ears.

He’d been sure he killed the other battler—or damaged him so severely that his energy would continue leaking out until he died. Now he wasn’t quite so sure. He shifted and half spread his wings, ready to race in whatever direction was necessary so he could finish the job. But he couldn’t sense anything. Not clearly.

Leon, who had been talking to a frightened old man outside a crater that used to be a cottage, looked at him with one eyebrow raised. He didn’t say anything, though.

Ril had seen many masters talk to their sylphs, asking them questions that they weren’t allowed to answer. Leon at least had never been so stupid. He held his tongue, letting his battler search. Ril ignored him and focused, looking for that faint tinge of hate that would reveal his quarry.

He turned his head, and Leon turned as well, walking slowly in whatever direction Ril looked, carrying him forward. They traveled across the ruins of the town to the devastated cottage into which the battler had crashed, the old man following uncertainly at Leon’s beckoning. There,
Leon shifted Ril to his arm and held him up, stepping carefully inside, waving dust out of his face. Ril looked down and his master knelt, lowering him. Ril gripped Leon’s forearm hard.