The Dark Throne (19 page)

“You are a protector,” said Luca. “That’s what you do. But you can’t blame yourself for decisions that you’ve already made.” He smiled, a little ruefully. “Trust me when I say that blaming yourself for past choices is not a very good way to live.”

I took a deep breath. “I know. I mean, in my head I know that. I do. But I just feel…I just feel like a terrible person sometimes. It scares me, how easily I was able to just leave. I mean, it was because I had a mission to accomplish and I thought I was the only one who could do it. I guess I
was
the only one who could, in the end, but I didn’t really know that at the time.”

“Thinking about the ways the world would be different if you chose differently is a good way to drive yourself crazy,” Luca said.

I had to smile. “Again, I know that in my head, but sometimes it doesn’t stop the way that I feel.”

“So feel it, acknowledge it…and then go hunt something. Or fight something with a blade in your hand,” the big
ulfdrengr
suggested, showing his white teeth in a grin that made him look very much like Kianryk.

I laughed. “Well, we’re going to go hunt a dragon, so that should count for a while, right?”

“Yes,” agreed Luca. He thought for a moment. “Perhaps you need to learn to forgive yourself, for your past failings.”

“I don’t mean to turn the conversation away from me, but have
you
managed to do that?” I asked quietly, watching his face as I posed the question. His expression didn’t change.

“I have forgiven myself,” he replied, “but I have not forgiven those who raised their blades against me. These creatures of darkness, they killed my people, and I will not ever forgive that.” He paused. “But forgiveness does not mean forgetting. I will never forget how it feels to be a slave within my own body. I will never stop preparing my body and my mind for war, so I never come under their power again.”

I nodded. “I can understand that.” My sigh crossed the air between us. “I just hope that after all this, maybe I can salvage something of the friendship that Molly and I used to have. I know that in the grand scheme of things, it’s inconsequential. There are a lot of bigger concerns…like Malravenar opening the Great Gate, and all that.” I smiled as Luca chuckled at my one-phrase description of the greatest evil their world had ever faced. “But I guess in a sense it’s all I have left of my old life in this world. She’s the only person who knew me when I was just an ordinary mortal, living my life in Doendhtalam.”

“I’d hazard a guess that you were never really
ordinary
,” Luca commented.

I shrugged. “In most ways, I think I was. I think that most people are, until they’re confronted with events that force them to reach beyond themselves.” I found a new roll of bandages in my bandolier, setting the soiled ones aside to wash and reuse later. “Some of them seek out adventure, and some of them find themselves in the middle of it.”

“Those who lead uneventful lives are hard-pressed to find the opportunity to be legendary,” Luca agreed in mock sincerity, taking the bandages from me as I awkwardly wrapped my right hand with my left. I let him wrap my hands neatly.

“True,” I agreed, “but sometimes an uneventful life sounds very appealing.”

“Ah, don’t say that,” said Luca reprovingly with another wolf-like grin. “The greatest thrill of life is brushing close to death, and escaping it. Every breath is sweeter, every sensation more intense. That is why we love the hunt.”

“Hopefully it’s just a close call for everyone during this hunt,” I replied, rolling my healing supplies into a neat bundle and packing it away in my satchel.

“That is in the hands of the warriors themselves,” said Luca, stretching. During my story telling, the songs and drumbeats had transformed from fierce and wild to haunting and plaintive. I listened to the song. As the earlier fierce melodies had risen with the smoke, so this new song glowed softly, pulsing with the embers of the dying fires.

“You think we’ll find the dragon tomorrow?” I asked, my eyelids growing heavy. The night air hung warm and still around us. I wished for a cool breeze.

“If we do not find it tomorrow, we will continue to track it. It is hard to know with wild creatures,” Luca replied. “You should sleep.”

“Should I take a watch?” I murmured, even as I arranged my satchel for a pillow.

“No,” said Luca, his voice low and rumbling. “There are more than enough young warriors to stand the watch.”

I was so bone-weary that I didn’t protest. The long grass created a fragrant cushion beneath my spread blanket, and my satchel served as a passable pillow. After our journey across the wild lands of Faeortalam, sleeping under the great dome of the sky was second nature; and with the Sword laid close at hand and my boots still on my feet, I closed my eyes and drifted into slumber.

Chapter 11

A
hand on my shoulder awoke me, and I jerked from the blackness of sleep, my heart suddenly racing. A large hand covered my own, which I realized had instinctively gone to my boot and the dagger sheathed there.

“Easy,” said Luca, sitting on his haunches next to me, his face shadowed in the gray light of early morning.

I blinked and took a deep breath. “Sorry,” I said, my voice scratchy with sleep. I sat up and stretched, testing the new soreness in my limbs.

Luca chuckled. “At least you didn’t actually draw the dagger on me. If I remember, I did that once…so you don’t need to apologize.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Well, that dagger didn’t really have a sheath, so I don’t know if it’s quite the same.”

Farin flew over to me, her aura soft and sleepy as though she were only half-awake. She landed on my shoulder, almost losing her balance as I stood, legs clumsy with sleep. I raised my eyebrows as she let loose a stream of epithets in the Glasidhe tongue. “It’s a little early for so much cursing, Farin,” I commented. “Sorry that I stood up, but I need to get moving or I’ll fall back asleep.”

Farin trilled something into my ear, her voice so high it made me wince.

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal. If you cut down on the high-volume, high-pitch noises this early, I’ll try to warn you when I move, okay?” I said to the diminutive warrior.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she whispered into my ear, her face so close to my earlobe that her breath tickled my skin. “I am just excited to tell you that the scouts are in conference with the wolf-queen!” She lowered her voice even more, wings quivering. “And we will be hunting
dragon
today, Tess-mortal!” I could feel her trembling in anticipation as she crouched on my shoulder.

“Give me a few minutes to get ready?” I said, the leather of the Sword’s battered sheath cool and familiar under my hand.

Farin leapt into the dim air without comment, hovering just overhead as I adjusted the Sword’s sheath on my back, situating the strap across my chest. I slung my satchel on my left hip, my engraved plain blade on my right hip, and I checked the daggers in my boots out of habit. After rolling up my blanket and making my pack ready to strap behind my saddle, I stood for a moment in indecision, holding out my hands. The bandages looked bone-white even in the weak predawn light. For the first time, I hadn’t noticed the sharp ache of my hands as one of the first sensations after awakening. I let myself have another moment of hesitation, and then in one fluid motion I drew my plain blade, gripping it as though going into battle, unsparing of my hand. It didn’t hurt, but my newly healed skin tingled, sensitive to the texture of the leather about the hilt. I took a deep breath, hefting the sword in my hand, a pure joy washing over me at the familiar feel of the weight of the blade, the muscles in my arm and back tightening in unconscious anticipation.

I swung my sword experimentally, moving it in the familiar drill patterns that Ramel had taught me long ago. Again my hand prickled, but it was a manageable discomfort nowhere near the pain I’d expected, and a smile stretched my lips as I ran through the drills faster and faster, reveling in the slice of the blade through the air and the flash of the sword in the dim grayness of the early morning. I swung the blade in a half-crescent pattern, then spun into a pivot, and another blade met mine with a clash. In an instant I recognized the broad blade as one of the twin swords that Luca had strapped to his hips in the courtyard at the Hall, and I grinned, meeting his eyes, our swords still locked. “Only one blade?” I asked. “I would have liked to see you with two. I didn’t know that’s how you prefer to fight.”

“Why fight with one blade when you can have two?” he answered, disengaging my sword, holding his own blade up in the guard position. “But I thought you might like to test your hands against another blade, not just swinging the sword, and I only need one blade for that.”

I recognized immediately that he wasn’t offering a contest—he was offering to be a dummy, a purely defensive sparring partner. Indignation flashed through me but recognition of the good idea quickly followed: a bit of warm-up, a bit of sparring, but nothing to rile the competitor in me enough to push me past the limits of good sense. I glanced up and saw Farin hovering above us, well out of range, watching with interest. I could see vague figures here and there, readying their own packs or stretching their bodies after the night’s rest, but there was no sense of urgency yet.

“Do we have time?” I asked.

“Vell is meeting with the scouts. We have time,” said Luca, making a little motion of invitation with his blade.

I hefted the sword once more, feeling the roughness of the leather grip beneath my skin, and then my mind cleared of conscious thought as I lunged forward, launching an attack of sweeping blows, the sound of our swords singing out over the dew-drenched grass. The shock of each blocked sweep vibrated painfully through the center of my hands, but I gritted my teeth and pressed on, my feet tracing the complex pattern of movement that I’d compared to a dance when I’d first begun to learn swordplay. Luca blocked a particularly vicious downward cut of my blade, his sword level with his face, his light blue eyes gleaming in enjoyment. As my muscles warmed, I moved my blade faster and faster, until we were dancing through the long grass, our blades blurs of silver in the strengthening light. I made the mistake of locking my sword with Luca’s, one of the worst positions for a smaller fighter when faced with a larger, stronger opponent; and he didn’t let me off the hook, bearing down steadily on my blade until I gasped, pain flashing through my hand and up my arm. Immediately he released his pressure, and in a flash of obstinacy I tossed my blade into my left hand, the gleaming point snaking up to kiss Luca’s throat. He grinned as I stepped back, swinging the blade a few times in my left hand.

“Perhaps
you
should fight with two blades,” he said. I noted the slight sheen of sweat gleaming on his brow with satisfaction.

“When I was first learning to fight, I had to learn with my left hand,” I explained, still passing the blade through the air in glimmering arcs. “Remember, or weren’t you paying attention to that part of the story last night?”

Luca grinned, sliding his blade back into the sheath at his hip. “I remembered, I just didn’t think I’d get a demonstration this morning.”

I grinned in reply, the dawning light shining on the engraved names of the war dead on my blade. Then, suddenly, the Caedbranr sounded a clarion call so loud that it rattled the sheath on my back and rumbled through my bones. Immediately I sheathed my sword, Luca following suit. “Something’s happening,” I said, my skin prickling in the aftermath of the Sword’s alert.

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” said Luca, one eyebrow raised. Kianryk trotted past us, loping through the long grass to join the shadowy forms of Rialla and Beryk a distance away. Luca straightened, tilting his head slightly as though listening to a sound only he could hear. “Come.”

We left our saddles and supplies stacked neatly as they were, and I walked with Luca past the blackened rings where the great fires had burned the previous night. I spotted Vell standing on the crest of a knoll, a group of Sidhe already gathering about her. Two
faehal
stood to one side, steam rising from their foam-laced flanks even in the still-warm morning air. They wore no bridles and only the suggestion of a saddle, typical of Seelie riders, and I quickly turned my attention to the two riders standing before Vell. One of them was Merrick. I glanced at Luca. “It’s good to see our little band using their skills to rise through the ranks.”

“He’s a good navigator,” replied Luca. “It would make sense.”

“And,” I said out loud, mostly to myself, “Vell would trust him, since we traveled together. Or at least trust him more than a scout she doesn’t know.”

“Perhaps,” said Luca.

To my slight embarrassment, once the gathered warriors noticed Luca and I, they silently cleared a path for us, sliding to one side or the other in that graceful Sidhe way. I couldn’t very well ignore it, so I drew my shoulders back and walked toward the center of the gathering. Luca followed half a stride behind me. Vell wore her same magnificent armor, but had foregone the cloak; and Arcana, standing silently to one side, hadn’t been coaxed into the breastplate again. Finnead and Gray flanked the High Queen, the paint on their faces still perfect and gleaming, as though they hadn’t gone to sleep. Merrick himself looked travel-worn, smudges of ash on his pale skin, his dark hair curled against his forehead, damp with sweat; but as he spoke to Vell, his eyes lit with an exhilaration that reminded me of the look on his face when I’d given him permission to join our band of travelers.

Merrick spoke quickly in a low voice, too quietly for even those of us who were closest to Vell to hear. He unslung the leather cylinder he used to carry his maps from his shoulder, and drew out a rolled map. The second scout, a tall female Seelie unfamiliar to me, spoke as Merrick unrolled the map. Gray stepped forward and held the map with Merrick. The dark-haired navigator motioned with his free hand, speaking in a low voice to the High Queen. Vell studied the map, her back to us now; I heard her ask a question, and Merrick nodded, trying to suppress his grin. Vell gazed at the map for a moment more, then nodded sharply and turned, her golden eyes appraising the silently gathered crowd. We waited, the air still and heavy about us. Then a smile turned up the corners of her mouth, growing into a fierce grin as she surveyed her warriors. She raised her eyebrows. We held our breath.