The Sacred Hunt Duology (125 page)

“And you?”

Her expression became curiously flat, almost cold. “Kallandras must be stopped.”

• • •

Light to be seen by. Light to sing by. Kallandras' voice was wild as the wind, carried by it, harmony to it. He had never sung a song such as this, and he marveled at that lack; it was as if music,
true
music, had always been absent from his gift. But no more.

He did not like the arena; loathed the ceiling by which the coliseum was covered. There were no open spaces here, only ratholes, nooks, and crannies in which darkling spawn might hide and play their games. He would see an end to that. There, one of the so-called kin. Fine rock whipped around it in an air-borne frenzy, abrading scale and skin as if the creature were pressed, struggling, against a carpenter's sanding wheel.

Fire flared and the gale tore through it, carrying shreds of orange and white as if they were brightly colored ribbons. Only the great flames were dangerous, and to the air, least of all.

• • •

Meralonne APhaniel felt the rush of the wind before he heard its keening. Platinum strands of his hair were caught in elemental fingers, lifted as if at play. Close his eyes, and he could almost feel the turn of a new sun under a sky deeply, perfectly blue.

Open them, and he could see fire.

Shadow fled Sor na Shannen's otherwise perfect skin where his blade had scored it; blood darkened his own. The sight of both disturbed him for reasons that were
not, after all, so different. Fatigued, he took her measure and she his; stroke and counter, stroke and parry, cast and counter.

But the wind's voice grew stronger; he saw the flames of her calling shift and weaken, shrinking inward as if to avoid the touch of water or heavy earth.

“What is this?” she asked softly, her eyes narrowing.

Meralonne made no reply, but put up his sword, watching her carefully. Where his hair was light, hers was midnight and reflected fire. It, too, felt the wind's caress.

The wind's wildness.

There was only one man in the arena—one being—who could call the wild wind with such force. Meralonne smiled softly as Sor na Shannen's expression grew apprehensive. They both knew the voice of the air, but it had been a very long time since they had heard it speak with such strength.

Only when the stone balcony that overlooked the arena splintered against the far wall did Meralonne's smile dim. For if it was as he suspected, and Kallandras had called the wind, he was dangerously close to losing control of it; the balcony, the bench, the splintering of rock—these were acts of destruction that were too wild to be entirely the bard's.

And what of it? What of it?

Wordlessly, he leaped into the swirl of dust and dirt that made the current visible. He heard Sor na Shannen's voice, saw her spin beneath his feet.

It was almost exhilarating to ride the wind, and the desire to remain in its grip was strong—but that way lay a madness that Meralonne was not willing to face again while he lived. He fell, heavy and earth-pulled, toward the demon lord. Strike.

Her counter was slow; the wind tugged her arm, delaying her parry.

Shadow.

And blood.

• • •

They heard the roar of the darkness upon
Averalaan Aramarelas;
they heard it in the streets, where the New Year wreaths trembled palely and the waters began to leap above the seawalls.

Victory.

The statue of Moorelas shuddered against the horizon; the ground buckled. Word, in several languages, took to the air: the Kings would not return. The city was lost.

• • •

Marius. Karnassas. Loriel.

Names. None of them his own. And yet . . .

They were his intended. They were his responsibility, his duty.

He spoke their names with the wind's voice. That wind rose over the paltry
shield of rotting corpses, drying sticky blood in its passage. Light as empty egg shells, the Allasakari rose in the grip of the gale, shattering beneath the confines of flesh where they struck stone.

The last one, the frail one, the air kept a moment, at play with the half-tones of her screams. And then, bored, it dashed her into the height of the only freestanding structure in the arena.

The arch.

Unlike the stone balconies, the brass rails, and the rotting timber of wooden benches long past their time, the arch did not buckle; the wind's sway, as it battered the pillars upon which large, heavy stones curved was the breeze's flutter, no more. These were no normal stones to withstand such an assault—especially not built as they were into such a flimsy arch.

Nothing stood against the wild winds. Nothing.

Wheeling, turning so perfectly the flight of the eagle was clumsy and awkward in comparison, the wind uprooted a column near the combatants' pen. As if it were a javelin, the column flew on currents of warm, rushing air to the height of the arch: the keystone.

• • •

He had to be stopped, and she knew it; knew further that in some distant time, in her youth and in his prime, they would meet again, had met—whatever it was she would have to do did not involve his death.

But it was not death that Kallandras feared, and it was not death in the end that could wound him as she had already done so many, many times. It was always thus when she walked upon the path. Nothing could be left alone; she was sent to act—and by her actions, the war took shape in subtle ways that even she could not fully appreciate. At least she was no longer a girl, to weep and mourn the actions she was forced to now, whatever those actions might be. There was very little that she would not sacrifice to achieve her goal, and she had come to realize that grief only exacerbated the pain; it did not stop her from raising the hand to strike.

Before she reached Kallandras, she heard the cracking of unnatural stone; the sundering of a union forced by magic. The air carried the sound to the heights as if in celebration of its achievement. Kallandras was her target, but she stopped a moment, wide-eyed, as the arch began to shiver, to almost shudder, before her violet eyes. There were no shards of dark marble, no falling stones, no cracking columns—and yet she
knew
, as only a seer could, that the arch was about to fall. There was a magic invested here, a power, that should have evaporated when the Gate had served its function.

She forced breath, measured and slow, from her lungs. The Gate
would
have lost its power.

Her face paled and then flushed oddly; she searched the grounds for sign of
Kallandras, pulling her lower lip between her teeth as if she were, for a moment, quite young. Was this why Kallandras called the wild wind with such force? Had he understood that the arch was not yet finished, that it played a role—unseen, but felt—even now? Her hands furled into fists, her cloak closed round her like a shield to keep debris away. She wanted to believe it.

But she saw him, standing, legs planted as if at ease, his hair a mass of unruly, perfect gold, his head tilted back as if the song he sung had become far more important than the audience for whom he sang it. There was a wildness to the cast of his delicate features, a fey joy, that she had never seen there.

Wind continued to buffet the arch.

Evayne watched, frozen between two different imperatives.

• • •

Sor na Shannen heard as well the strike of the wind's victim against the mighty keystone, the foundation of the Gate. She cried out a warning, and the wind let it pass, filling the coliseum with her sudden fear.

At another time, in another combat, Meralonne APhaniel would have been shamed to take advantage of the distraction. But that time was far removed from the arena in which the darkness sought to gain the only foothold that it would need to conquer these lands. He did not pause as she did; he did not hesitate as she opened her lips over exquisite teeth to utter her cry of warning to the Lord of the Hells.

His sword cut a path through air that ended with her throat, and he did not flinch from the delicate and helpless startlement that played across an expression of innocence abused. It was her last chance to wound him, and he took it as part of the battle, no more.

Her sword of flame flickered briefly; the ground absorbed what remained of her perfect body. He hoped the Hells had opened its embrace to her, for she had chosen her place and her plane long before this battle, and she deserved the home that she had made there.

His own sword did not dissipate; into the howl of wind, Meralonne APhaniel turned its edge, slicing a clean path through the gale. The wildness did not fight against his passage; it was wrapped around the arch that he, that they, had all assumed was a closed door.

And it was good, for if the Air were not occupied, it would know a danger, however slight, and against the wildness, here in this place, with too many battles just behind him, he had little chance.

• • •

At the heart of the arena, the balance of power began to shift. A roar, louder and deeper than the wind's voice could ever be, shook the heights and the foundations of the coliseum. All who heard it knew it for the voice of Darkness; Allasakar in anger.

Where shadow had formed a dark blanket over the dirt and the stone, the marble and the foundation of the coliseum, he called it in, wrapping it around himself like a mantle as he turned his full attention to the wind, to the arch itself.

The last line of the walking dead faltered and suddenly toppled as the power animating them withdrew; the kin who had been capable of withstanding the wind's onslaught—and there were not a few—regrouped and banded together. Their Lord's power had been summarily withdrawn, but without it they were not helpless; what they lacked was a leader. Sor na Shannen was gone, as Karathis before her, and Allasakar spared them no thought.

Swathed for a moment in his full glory, he stood out like a beacon—proof for those who had always doubted that un-sullied Darkness could be glorious and beautiful, a thing beyond compare. He gestured, and the shuddering columns at the Gate stilled; gestured again, raising both of his arms as if to catch the wild wind and hold it captive.

As he did, his darkness grew, and the shadow he cast, with little light behind him, was dark and long.

• • •

Gilliam made his way down the steps, feeling, as he approached it, the heaving of the ground upon which the coliseum stood. There was no huntbrother to steady him, but instead of denying the loss, he let it come, let it in. His pack was as safe as it could be in the streets of the outer city; he had had no desire to lose them to this battle, when he had already lost so much, and he had chosen to leave them in the care of the Priests of the Mother.

But in doing so, he crippled himself. He had one set of eyes and one set of ears, instead of the many he normally used to gain his vantage. Espere was with the healers; she would not come to him before he came to his Lord.

The Horn was at his side, secured there by Evayne; the Spear was in his hands. He gripped it tightly, as if it were alive and might at any moment evade him.

As he approached the coliseum's floor, the voice of the wind lessened; he could hear the clash of metal, the scrape of sword against unnatural skin, the cries of victory and of warning. He could see the fallen; they were all the Kings' soldiers, or subjects. The kin did not leave corpses.

But he did no more than glance at his surroundings; the Hunter Lord drew his attention and held it. For he was the Death, and every beast in the forest that hunted, every creature that killed, was a part of his body. Just as the God did not speak with a single voice, but rather a multitude, a single form could not contain him. Fur glinted, and fang; claw and horn, muscles rippled beneath hide and the flash of iridescent scale.

The Lord of the Hells roared in fury. Gilliam tensed, willing himself to inch forward, toward them.

And then Allasakar did, of all things, the least expected: He pulled back from
the Hunter and turned away. Stunned, Gilliam of Elseth watched the muscles in the hind legs of the beast as they rippled perfectly, tensed for the leap. Where they touched ground, claws sparked against the flat stone tiles upon which the blooded altars stood.

Did the Lord of the Hells understand his danger? How could he, and turn his back? Gilliam's mouth went dry; breath was almost painful, and he could not force it deep into his lungs, although he tried.

The Lord of the Hunt drove himself forward into the broad, black back of the Lord of the Hells. Unfurling like a dark eruption, great wings grew out of the shadow with which Allasakar was cloaked; a great wind rose out of the hollow of those wings as they descended and rose, descended and rose.

Gilliam had heard that the swans of the Western Kingdoms were deadly when confronted in their lair at the wrong time, and he had always thought the rumor a lie that only a gullible child would trust. Seeing these wings, he knew that he'd been wrong.

But the Lord of the Hunt had a grip on his prey, and like the broad-headed, strong-jawed alaunts of the Breodani—like the finest and the truest of the
Bredari
—his hold was not easily shaken.

The wind howled in rage; the corpses of the Allasakari and the Essalieyanese soldiers were torn from the ground, along with chunks of marble and stone and dirt, twisted in wide and swift aerial circles, and thrown like blunt javelins at both the arch and the Lord of the Hells.

The Hunter did not let go.

• • •

She could see it now: The Lord of the Hells was somehow gaining in power as he fought on two fronts against the wild air and the Lord of the Covenant. And in the warped and twisting light of a God-battle, the lines of his shadow became sharp and hard.

He had stepped clear of the Gate and stood upon the mortal plane—or so it had first seemed, and still seemed if one had no way of shaping, of altering one's vision to fully understand the darkness. Evayne a'Nolan had twice walked the road in Winter; she could shape her vision, her interior sensitivity, if she let the darkness in. And that itself was a danger.