The Grand Crusade (45 page)

Alexia smiled. “It was a gamble to use that strategy, but it paid off.”

“There would have been no taking Fronosa otherwise.” Crow frowned. “We couldn’t have done it as the Aurolani did—infiltrating renegades with the Murosan refugees who had been given sanctuary there.”

“I am very glad it worked. Your attack utterly broke them.” Alexia gave him another kiss, then rolled to her right and stretched her legs out. The sweat on her stomach quickly cooled, so she reached down with a toe and drew a blanket up over both of them. “Have you any idea how much I have missed you?”

Crow rolled onto his left side, resting his head on his hand, and traced a finger over her jaw. “Well, since it took you only ten minutes to demand a full and private debriefing from me concerning the situation here, I would guess it was a lot. Almost as much as I missed you.”

“We can debate in the morning who missed whom more, my love.” Alyx turned her face and kissed his finger, then flicked her tongue at it. “There have been many cold nights

”

“I can toss another log on the fire.”

She looked into his eyes and could see the reflection of the red coals from the small room’s hearth. “It wasn’t that sort of cold, Crow. It was a soul-cold. I needed and wanted you physically, yes—very much—but I also needed the sound of your voice. I needed to hear your thoughts and to share mine with you. To share everything with you.”

He smiled, and it warmed her heart to see him do so quite so easily. “There is no doubt, then, that we were in similar states of need. The days of our being apart are ended, however.”

“True.” She reached up and took his left hand in her right. He rolled onto his back as she brought his hand down and squeezed it. “With you beside me, I have no worries.”

“Nor do I.” His voice came warm, rich, and deep, music to her soul as well as her ears. “Sleep well, lover.”

She nodded and was fairly certain she said, “I love you, Crow,” before she drifted off. She could not be sure and as sleep claimed her, she determined she would say it twice in the morning, and find a way to prove it to him.

Crow’s convulsion brought her awake, snapping her eyes open. It had been forceful enough to tear his hand from hers. She tried to turn her head to look at him, but could not. Paralysis had seized her body. For a moment she thought she was dreaming and stuck the way one so often was in dreams. What she saw, however, convinced her she was very much awake.

And yet trapped in a nightmare.

Alyx didn’t know where she had come from, but thesullanciriMyrall’mara stood at Crow’s side of the bed. Her pale form glowed, almost making her seem like a ghost. Alexia would have believed she was, and that what she was seeing was a hallucination of some sort, save that she could hear the strained whisper of the pillowcase as Chytrine’s creature held the pillow down over Crow’s face in a tight grip.

Thesullancirilooked at her. “Fear not, child, you shall not be long separated from him. He will only abandon you for a little while.”

Myrall’mara’s cold voice coiled a viper in Alexia’s guts. She struggled against the incapacity of her limbs to move. She couldn’t twitch, she couldn’t even feel a shiver. Something, magick or something else, held her prisoner as her enemy slowly smothered her lover. Panic rose in her, born of a feeling of impotence, but she forced it away.

Alyx turned inward and in the blink of an eye she found herself on the wheeldeck of Maroth’s boat in the Communion. The Black Dragon stood there with the metal construct. “Why, Princess, this is a surprise.”

“I need help, now! Myrall’mara is smothering Crow and I can do nothing.” She grabbed the Black Dragon’s hand. “You must help me.”

“Of course, daughter.” The man’s tone became steel. He gripped her hand tightly in his. “Go back. Take me there. Maroth,attend me”

Alexia willed herself back into her body and there, at the foot of the bed, the Black Dragon appeared. He came around the end quickly, his shape shifting as he did. Myrall’mara’s head turned and thesullancirigasped. The Black Dragon’s mailed left fist came around in a backhanded blow that caught her on the side of the face and knocked her back into the wall.

The pillow came off Crow’s face. He loudly sucked in a lungful of air. The Black Dragon looked down at him, his inhuman visage gone, transformed into something Alexia found very familiar and yet a face she had never seen before. The Black Dragon looked down at Crow and at her, then smiled.

“So proud,” he said, his words trailing to whispers as he faded from existence.

Snarling, Myrall’mara dove across the bed. Her clawed hands passed through where the Black Dragon had been, but his disappearance left her sprawled over their legs. She snarled, then she shifted around and straddled Crow much as Alexia had done before. She ground her hips against his in a parody of their lovemaking, then batted away his weak hands when he tried to shove her off.

Thesullancirismiled at Alexia, then slipped her hands around Crow’s throat. “Better he dies this way, seeing me. Seeing me as I was when I delighted him.”

Her fingers tightened, but only for a moment. A black metal hand closed on the back of her neck. She shrieked and clawed at it, scoring the metal with bright silver scratches. Maroth lifted her from Crow, then shook her hard. Alexia heard a loud snap, then thesullancirihung from his hand limply, and the glow that had suffused her slowly died.

As it went away, control returned to Alyx’s limbs. She turned and reached out, gathering Crow to her. She pressed her body to his back and kissed his shoulders and head. She could feel him breathe, even hear it. “Tell me you are all right, Crow. Say something, please.”

He coughed once, heavily, then let his left arm rest on hers clumsily. His grip on her wrist lacked strength, but he was moving. He whispered hoarsely, “That wasn’t a dream, was it?”

She kissed the back of his neck. “It was, in a way. It was the dream I had a long time ago in Okrannel. My nightmare.”

Crow cleared his throat, then shifted in her arms to face her and enfold her in his arms. “Myrall’mara I recognize.” His voice failed for a moment. “The man who stood over us

Do you know who that was?”

She wanted to say, “No,” but she could not. She clung to Crow and rested her head on his shoulder. “In the dream, my father saved me, saved us. It couldn’t have been, but

”

Crow reached up and stroked her cheek, brushing away tears. “It looked like your father to me. How he was here, I don’t know.”

Alexia took a deep breath, and began to explain to Crow about the Communion of Dragons. It surprised her that she could, and part of her

wondered if Maroth’s presence in the real world meant that the Communion was somehow destroyed. Her prohibition against speaking about it certainly was, for the words poured out of her easily.

As she spoke, she reexamined everything in her mind. She recalled first meeting the Black Dragon and taking umbrage at his calling her “daughter.” That she really was his daughter made more sense. If he was her father, he must have projected himself into the Communion in that last second before his body was destroyed at Fortress Draconis. He had lived since then in the Communion, gathering information and orchestrating plans to defeat Chytrine.

The implications of all that shook her. He had known of her through Preyknosery, and that neither of them had told her the truth felt like a betrayal. Then again, both of them were holding themselves to a higher duty than all others in the world—destroying Chytrine. For her father to have known of her, and to be denied the chance to hold her or touch her without dying, had to be agonizing. There was no doubting his love for her, though, as he made the ultimate sacrifice in coming to save her.

Crow nodded as she explained her thinking. “That would be your father. He would have carried his duty beyond the grave. And he would be very proud of you.”

“I think he was proud of us both.” Alexia smiled despite her tears. “In your memoirs, I can see how much you liked my father. I know he liked you. He told me I could trust you well before we grew close. He even talked to me about how I felt when I learned who you really were.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And I think he was happy to know I was well loved.”

Crow’s arms tightened around her and he held her as she sobbed. She’d always hoped that her life would make her father proud. She wanted to live up to the heroic example he’d set. She never expected his approval, since he was dead. In an instant she knew she had it, and then had lost her father again.Not lost, really, but found he was even more of a hero than anyone expected.

She nestled in the cocoon of Crow’s arms, with tears running down her face. He kissed her forehead and whispered soothingly. He clung to her tightly and never slacked his embrace until she gently pushed against his chest.

“A bit of a shock, all of this. I’m sorry.”

Crow’s right hand tipped her chin up and he looked her straight in the eyes. “You never have to apologize for what you feel, Alexia. All this—from asullan-ciritrying to murder us to seeing your father and having him vanish—would have wrung emotions from Chytrine. That you feel them is proof that the goals your father set for you have been realized. You are not a killing machine, a general who will spend troops as if they were copper coins, but a thinking, feeling person who is capable of weighing every factor that impinges on a battle. Without that skill—without your feelings—you would fail. It will take time for you to come to grips with all this, and that’s okay. I will be here. I will support

you as you need it and want it. Your father loves you, I love you, your troops love and trust you. You are everything Chytrine is not, and you will be victorious.“

Alyx sniffed, then shook her head and choked back more tears. The lump finally cleared her throat, allowing her to speak in a whisper. “I could not feel more loved than now, here in your arms. With you I can be myself. I can have my doubts and work them out. This is but one of the gifts you give me. I love

you.

“I love you, too, Alexia.” He kissed her again, then nodded toward Maroth. “If you don’t mind telling me, what is that thing holding a deadsullancirP. How does it work?”

“That is Maroth, the Communion boatman.” Alexia wiped away tears and sat up in bed. “Maroth, you can put her down. He follows simple commands, but I have no idea how he works.”

The automaton did as he was bid by casting Myrall’mara’s body aside. His arm returned to his side, then something clicked in his chest. A faint line of shifting, varicolored light grew from throat to abdomen as the metal chest plate parted. Both halves swung open and, nestled there in his chest, much in the same way Rymramoch’s Truestone rested inside the puppet, was a dark, opalescent stone set in gold. The colors in it shifted the way an aurora undulates across the sky.

Alexia felt a fluttering in her stomach. “I think I now know a lot more about how he works than I ever wanted to.”

Crow sat up beside her, hugging his knees to his chest. “That, I’ll presume, is the missing piece of the DragonCrown.”

“I think that’s a safe assumption.” Alexia rubbed a hand over her face. “It used to be secured in a place where Chytrine could never find it. Now it’s in this world.”

Crow nodded. “Not like we needed it, but now we have yet another reason to make sure Chytrine is defeated.”

Resolute did not move when he came awake. Part of him remained still so he could listen for sounds of the enemy around him. Another part wanted to assess his injuries. The pounding in his head indicated why he was just then waking up, and the fact that he was waking up suggested his wounds weren’t fatal. That would have been taken as a very good sign under normal circumstances.

But things felt far from normal, and the biggest reason Resolute did not move was because he was disgusted with himself. Last he could recall, he had left Kerrigan with Trawyn, Oracle, Bok, and Rym to try to get inside the ward ring and find the DragonCrown fragments. He’d led the Grey Misters off to attack the Aurolani hunters, and it had been a savage and swift assault. Akryalnirithey had working on the wards cast a spell and stepped forward, then instantly burst into flame. Even if that had not temporarily blinded many of the gibberers andturekadine, the shock of the creature’s screams would have been enough to distract them.

The Grey Misters attacked fiercely and Resolute had felt utterly in his element. With Syverce in his left hand, he flicked bladestars through the night. More than one of theturekadinefell to those weapons. The gibberers who came at him with longknives found his slender sword more than a match for them, and his skills with it made him nearly invincible.

Resolute allowed himself a little derisive snort as that thought came to his mind. That tiny bit of motion let him feel the crust crack on his scalp, and a small trickle of blood rolled down behind his right ear. The pain in his head spiked, but tolerably so. He flexed some muscles and found himself mightily bruised, but with nothing else broken as near as he could tell. He didn’t want to chance gross movements yet, but soon would find himself impatient to do so.

Anger pulsed through him. Thinking he was invincible, he’d charged off into the darkness after several of the gibberers. As he caught one by the scruff of the neck, the creature mewed piteously and just went limp. Resolute had been prepared for anything but that. The creature’s legs became entangled with his own and he went down hard. He cracked his head on a tree and struggled to get up, but by then three or four terrified gibberers had surrounded him and beat on him with sticks and rocks until he passed out.

He did recall, a couple times, being carried along, and the presence of more than four pairs of hands on his body couldn’t be denied. He assumed that once they’d run off, the Grey Misters had not pursued them and, without leadership, the gibberers had reformed and were trying to figure out what to do next. One of them had to be of above average intelligence because they’d kept him alive. There was not asullanciriin Chytrine’s employ that wouldn’t like to be able to

deliver him to her feet.

If his head hadn’t hurt so much, he would have shaken it. His thinking he was invincible was pure hubris. Somehow he had come to assume that, because he had fought for Vorquellyn’s redemption so hard and so long, fate would let him be there to see it. It was an unwarranted assumption, and the hollowness of it battered him. His role, in many ways, had been one of mentor. He had trained Crow, both before and after his disgrace. He’d trained Will and even had a hand in training Kerrigan. His last moments with Kerrigan, telling him he’d have to take command and knowing that the boy actually could, should have been a clear signal to Resolute that his part in things was over.