The Sacred Hunt Duology (45 page)

A scream cut the air; he ignored it. If the blade-demon came for him, he would have no choice but death; he dare not let these barriers down for even a second. Where had she learned such power?

• • •

Lady Elseth was stiff against the wall; she made no move to aid either of her two sons, although she had traveled here to protect them. She saw the folly of that now. Her dagger, clutched tightly in white fingers, trembled against her skirts.

She had never looked at a death so certain, so close.

Is this what you send for our sons?
She mouthed the words, eyes turned up to the heavens that the roof cut from view.
Is this your Death, oh, Lord?

But no; this creature, whatever it was, was not natural—and it was obviously under the control, or command, of the woman in the wall.

Biting her lip, Elsabet lifted her arm, trying to look like stone, like wall, like anything that was beneath notice. All ladies were taught some weapon-skill. Hers had been dagger. Very carefully, she reversed her grip, seeking balance, narrowing her eyes as she tried to get the best possible view of her target. She hesitated a moment. If she threw this, she would have no weapon, no method of defense at all.

But if she did not try . . .

The dagger sailed, bolstered by the force of her throw. She bit her lip and froze in place, forgetting even to breathe. The demon didn't seem to notice her.

Until the blade was a foot away, maybe two. A hand shot up, so quickly that its movement was invisible. The dagger changed trajectory in mid-flight. The shadows that pressed Zareth Kahn back faltered; the blade gathered momentum and speed.

It found its target, but it was not the target that Lady Elseth had intended. Horrified, she watched it strike and sink into Zareth Kahn's shoulder.

I
N ALL OF THE FIGHT,
the wild girl had been forgotten. Certainly Stephen did not notice her; nor did Elsabet or Zareth Kahn as the barriers he had so carefully built faltered for a crucial second. And her master, Lord Elseth, lay where he had fallen when the blade-demon had thrown his arms back in a wide, deadly circle.

He was still alive.

She would have known of his death. But his thoughts were gone from her; they had fled into patterns of pain so alien that she lost the ability to follow.

It was the only ability she lost. She crawled along the ground, nuzzling his neck with her nose, her cheek. He stirred, but he did not move or speak. The scent of his blood filled her nostrils.

She rose, leaving the floor, and planted a foot on either side of her master's prone body. She felt his consciousness flicker, and then felt it gutter as his breathing slowed.

What she did next, only she understood. And she knew that Gilliam, had he been conscious, or even sleeping, would have prevented it—without ever being aware that he did so. He could not do it now. No one could.

She began to change. Her hair, wild and tangled, stretched down in a sudden flash of brown; it widened, lengthened, and grew thick and hard. Then, in the pale crackle of the blue-light that was the contest of two mages, it became iridescent. Scaly. Her nose widened and lengthened, her jaw grew, and grew again in a sudden lurch. Her shoulders doubled in width, her arms and legs became larger, more muscular. Where there had been fingers and broken, dirty nails, there were claws of gold. Where there had been flat teeth, with canines perhaps a little too sharp, there were fangs and the jaws of death.

She roared, and the tower shook.

She roared again, and the blade-demon spun, heavy and certain in movement, its quarry momentarily forgotten. Even Sor na Shannen was surprised enough to falter in her attack.

Zareth Kahn, struggling against pain, did not; he could no longer afford to let
anything come between him and his concentration. He heard Sor na Shannen's frustrated curse with great satisfaction. Hands touched his shoulder, his side. He did not acknowledge them at all, but he knew that they belonged to Lady Elseth. She could not help, of course, but if she remained close to him, so much the better; his circle of protection had become exceedingly small and was unlikely to widen again.

• • •

Bleeding, dazed, his sight obscured by the blood that would not stop dripping into his eyes, Stephen of Elseth looked up, transfixed. The blade-demon had been a thing of nightmare. The creature that challenged it was a much more personal dread. He recognized its shape, its form; recognized its size and the death of its claws and fangs. Three times he had dreamed it, and once he had passed beneath its banner in the halls of the King.

He knew what must be done. He was certain of it. Fumbling, he reached for his belt, his inner pocket. His hands trembled as they closed around the horn that the girl had given him.

The girl.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Shuddering, he tightened his grip upon bone and silver.

No
—
not now, not yet! This is not the death that you dreamed, Stephen of Elseth. Heed me.

He hesitated, and then shook his head; the words were a buzzing at his ears, and with a little effort, he hoped to drive them away. The time for action was—

Now. The beast lunged, jaws wide and snapping; the blade-demon countered with a strike. But those long, fine, deadly tines that pierced cloth and flesh with such grace and ease, met resistance in the hide of the beast; the force of the demon's lunge was enough to score scale, perhaps tickle flesh. No more.

Then the demon opened its mouth, and for the first time in the darkened, broken room, its voice was heard. It spoke with shadow in harsh, guttural syllables. Stephen did not understand them; he didn't want to. Transfixed, he held to the horn without pulling it from his jacket.

The beast snapped at air again; the demon was slightly faster, slightly smaller. It could not roll, but somehow, through some undulation that such a creature should have been unable to perform, it managed to drive a fist up and under the beast's belly.

There was pain in the answering roar—but Stephen barely understood it. For in the wake of the demon's attack, he could see what lay, unmoving, beneath the bulk of the beast. Gilliam.

Later, he would not understand what he did, or why; he could not have explained why the horn and the sounding of it became for a moment only dream. He moved along the wall, circling the blade-demon's heaving back, cringing just out of reach of those blades and those hands.

Gilliam!

There was no answer.

If a heart could be stopped and its body still live, Stephen would have had no heart. The shadows became cold and complete, and against them he sheltered only his fear.
Gil
—
Gil, are you alive?
Again, there was no reply.

He took a breath; it was heavy with dust and shadow. He scrambled across the ground, with an eye to the blade-demon's feet. He traveled near the wall, as far from Sor na Shannen as he could be in the small room.

Small? There were only two people in the room. Even the monsters, these living nightmares brought to life by magics and gods and the dreams of minds not mortal, had become as the shadows: dangerous, death-giving, and not quite real. The blood that still ran the course of his face, and the wounds that burned at back and arms, didn't change this.

There was Gilliam. There was Stephen.

He tried to speak, but he had no voice; tried to push the bond that had been theirs since he became of Elseth. Instead of Gilliam's answering voice, he heard William of Valentin. Saw Bryan, dead and lost. Saw Norn, lowered into a waiting grave, before Elsabet's cold, stony silence.

He crawled, and the ruptured wood beneath his fingers reminded him of Soredon of Elseth. Hunter Lord. Dead. Stephen was no longer twenty-two; he was eight—and without Gilliam of Elseth he had no life; he was empty.

Stephen was afraid. But he moved.

Gilliam, damn you, answer me! Are you dead?

But no, no, he couldn't be dead. Surely Stephen would know if he were dead; he would feel it.
GILLIAM!

Splinters cut his wrists; sharp, small bits of rock dug into his skin. He crawled. Blood touched his eyes, but he let it run. He didn't want to lose sight of Gilliam and the shadow that lay across his back. If he could see his face, even his face, it would help.

But his face was buried against the floor.

Two feet. Three feet. Above him, as if in the heavens, this clash of beast and demon, two titans in a battle that Stephen wanted no place or part in. Four feet. Five. He could not look up now, although the feet of the beast, like the feet of the great, jeweled dragons that were myth and legend, had not left their perch on either side of his Hunter Lord. Gilliam was her—it's—treasure. But he was more than that to Stephen. Not master, as he was to the girl, and not lover, as Cynthia was to Stephen, but brother.

Huntbrother.

The tenth foot. The last inch. Stephen reached out with the tips of his fingers and touched Gilliam's hand. A shock rippled up his arm, lending him strength.

He prayed that the beast would continue its fight without looking down, but
even had it done so, he would not have let go. He inched forward, and forward again, until his grip on Gilliam's hand was as solid as he could make it. Then he inched up the slack arm. Taking a breath to steady himself, planting his knees against the ground as a brace, Stephen
pulled.

Gilliam had always been the heavier of the two, but Stephen had never felt it as a solid truth until now. He pulled again, harder, gained more height as he was forced to find leverage. He cried out loudly, furiously—and silently to any person in the room that was not Gilliam of Elseth. But he did not let go.

And the beast did not stop him. Instead, although Stephen barely realized it, it moved to interpose its body fully between the blade-demon and the Elseth Lord and huntbrother, as Stephen at last managed to drag Gilliam away from the fight, and to the safety of the farthest wall.

He did not know what Gilliam's injuries were. Could not tell if his limbs or ribs were broken, if his vital organs had been pierced. Blood was everywhere along Gilliam's chest, arms, and legs. Stephen tried to think, but he could not; all he could do was pull Gilliam close and hold him, tightly as William had held Bryan's body on the green before the altar.

• • •

Elsabet saw them at last, huddled against the rock of the wall that faced the demon, the shadow, and Sor na Shannen. Her face, already white, could pale no further, and she had no breath for words. She began to move, and Zareth Kahn caught her arm, restraining her.

“Don't break the circle, Lady,” he said, his voice tight. “I cannot protect you.”

But what of my sons?
She wanted to shout it; she didn't. The fingers that dug into her arm were solid, strong. As she hesitated, he grunted. The barriers that lit the room gave ground, closing more tightly around them. Zareth Kahn cursed, unmindful of manners and propriety. She cursed with him, but silently, silently.

The barriers fell back again, bowing to the greater pressure of the less-exhausted mage. All of her life, Elsabet had known of magic, and magic's existence—but it had been as real as any God save the Hunter God. It would never be so comfortably distant again.

Zareth Kahn turned to her. She could see the dark circles beneath his narrowed eyes. The line of his jaw was thin and tense; his dark hair clung to his face in damp, thin curls. “I'm sorry, Lady,” he whispered.

She had no weapon with which to aid him. Although her dagger was within easy reach, she did not dare to pull it from its sheath of flesh, and had she done so, she wouldn't have thrown it again. That had cost them much; perhaps this battle itself.

So she did what any intelligent person would have done in her place. She prayed.

First, to the Hunter God, that merciless scion of death and fertility that had so marked her land and her people; that had succored those in her care while
destroying the two men who had become entwined with each root of her strength. Her eyes were drawn by the flash of blades and scales; by the roar of a beast and the dissonant syllables of a demon. Perhaps He had already answered a prayer that had not yet formed; it was not enough. Without pause, she continued, one hand now near-burrowed into Zareth Kahn's shoulder, one pressed firmly against her lips. She prayed to the Mother, for she knew of the Mother's mercy; she begged Luck to turn a smile upon them; she pleaded with Justice to intervene.

She was good at prayer; she had prayed just so, once a year, for all of her adult life—and for much of her childhood as well, a shadow at her mother's side. She knew how to draw strength from pleas; knew how to lose her fears, for a moment, in their intensity, although fear was the base of her whispers by the altar-side. And she knew that though the fiercest of prayers remain unanswered, the time taken to utter them gave her the space in which to find the dignity to face all travails as the noble Lady that she was.

But this one time, she was wrong.

Mercifully, gloriously wrong.

There was the sharp song of a crackle, and above them all, human, demon, and god-born beast, the fierce blue of cloudless sky destroyed the darkness of shadow. It was so total, so complete in its presence, that Elsabet of Elseth only recognized it as mage-light when it began to shimmer.

“The Order!” Zareth Kahn whispered, as his eyes began to shine. “The Order is here!” Hope gave him strength, and with a great sweep of his uninjured arm, he strengthened his barrier, pushing it in one great jolt to the foot of the wall. There, illuminated briefly by a power that was not hers, Sor na Shannen's face was a study in dismay. And then, the shadows roiled about her feet, drawing up and ever up, until she was consumed by them.

Zareth Kahn cursed and surged forward, only to be halted by Elsabet's strong grip. The tines of the blade-demon whistled past, an inch from his chest. “She escapes!” he shouted.

Light struck the shadows, hard; it was not the multi-layered wall that Zareth Kahn had built, but rather the thick, sudden blast of lightning. Rock sprayed up in answer to that strike. The shadows cleared as if by gust of strong wind, and beyond them, for the first time since the hole in the wall had been made, Elsabet could see the halls, and the stairs, beyond. They were full now; men and women in the robes of the Order—and some perhaps less formally clad, stood arrayed there, arms held out, hands twisting in an incredibly complicated dance.

Zareth Kahn could see this as well, but he did not let his barriers drop. Instead, he pulled in just the smallest filament of their power, draining the light above him at their unspoken consent.

“The blade-demon,” he said, his voice quiet, although the words resounded like a shout in Elsabet's ears, “must be destroyed. The beast that fights it must not.”

The sky of their magic began to twist in a spiral of blue and crackling white, a pool being slowly stirred. It gained momentum, moving more quickly with each turn, each spin, until it was dizzying to gaze upon.

And then, in a sudden surge, it came
down
, funneled by the will of the mages of the Order. The blade-demon, arms extended, body rippling in mid-leap, was struck. It screamed and froze. The light intensified until it could not be gazed upon by any of the untrained; eyes watering and narrowed, Elsabet looked away.

But she heard its cries, smelled the charring of demon flesh. And she heard one other cry, wordless, that she recognized: Stephen's voice. Her heart froze, and all danger, all magic, all unnatural combat, were forgotten in that instant. Wheeling, she let go of Zareth Kahn's arm and stumbled toward the wall. Her eyes still watered, and only the glow of the mage-light penetrated the darkness that same light had left her for vision. But she knew where the cry had come from. Knew what it must mean.