THREE DROPS OF BLOOD (27 page)

Kettin led the original team of Valors up to the door of the tower, disguised in another
illusion that directed the eye away from them. Megassa and Pirkin insisted on being part of the
venture, because all six claimed first rights of breaking in to rescue Queen Glyssani. After all,
Kettin had reasoned when he petitioned Efrin to let them try their plan, the queen had been
kidnapped while they were in her castle, so that made it their responsibility, perhaps even their
fault.

Efrin had argued against the kidnapping being their fault.

Mrillis saw clearly that he argued to hide the internal battle of worry and pride over
Megassa putting herself at risk.

Eventually, however, the Warhawk agreed their plan was a good one. While he stood in
clear view and confused and harassed the rebels inside the tower, the team of six Valors would
ply their joined magic talents against the door. Even if Timark convinced his followers that he
was not the imposter, the door would open and Glyssani would be rescued and the siege and
rebellion would end today.

One way or another.

It was that last part that made Mrillis step back and think over the plan one last time,
checking for flaws, some weakness they hadn't seen. Yes, he worried because Megassa had
walked into a dangerous place--but he shouldn't worry, because she had proven herself as a
warrior and had
imbrose
to assist her. The five Valors with her had enough assorted
magical talents among them to make any despot quake in his boots and consider surrender. He
shouldn't worry, because Efrin's plan was a good one.

"There's still a chance something could go wrong, isn't there?" Meghianna murmured,
stepping up next to him. She offered him a crooked little smile when he rested a hand on her
shoulder. They stood in the shade of Efrin's tent, where those in the tower could not see their
features and guess what powers came against them.

"There is always a chance of something happening which we did not prepare for." He
sighed. "We assumed, correctly, that because of Timark's vehement stand against magic, he is
actually using magic for defense. So far we have been able to counter the measures we have
encountered--the tunnel and the cleared zone around the tower, and the monsters that congregate
in the wilderness around that. There is always the chance that he has some other weapon, hidden
inside the poisoned magic that fills this place. We have not been able to identify the numbers and
strengths of the enchanters and Valors who might be aligned with him. Or what sort of magic
they practice."

"Blood magic, you think?"

"We have learned to watch for it, in the decades since the Nameless One fell. No, I do
not sense it. Maybe it would be a relief to know there was blood magic here, because we know
something of its limits and strengths."

"But not all." She licked her lips and stepped away, so she could face him. "What if the
Nameless One never fell? What if he's like the insects you showed me, that burrow into mud and
sleep for years, and then awaken when water softens their prisons?"

"We have considered that," he admitted, and found himself fighting to continue looking
her in the eyes. Mrillis didn't know right in that moment if he feared seeing a glimpse of Endor,
or a hint that Meghianna feared her great-grandfather reaching through the generations to
awaken some magic deep in her soul, that would allow him to control her.

Beyond them, in the brilliant golden light of late afternoon, Efrin roared and postured
and scalded the air with curses. Mrillis saw Meghianna flinch at a particularly blasphemous
string of words, and a snort of amusement escaped him. The fragility of the moment shattered.
He rested his hand on her shoulder again and gave her a little shake.

"Have you said your prayers, child? The Estall only asks that we do our best, and then
he will stand in the gap."

"The problem is that we don't know what the great, overarching plan for the World is,
and whether victory here is part of that plan." The wry twist to her mouth and voice, the
self-deprecating humor in her eyes, comforted him.

"You have seen Efrin and Glyssani married and producing his heir. I will trust the Estall
that vision is a promise of what must and will be."

"The third drop of blood of the prophecy." She shivered a little, then a moment later
pressed her hands to her ears and let out a shaky laugh. "Must Papa be so foul?"

"Timark talks like that when he's in a good mood," Markas said, coming up to the tent
doorway to join them. He shrugged, his mouth twitching as he visibly fought not to laugh.

"Abomination!" a woman shrieked from the arrow slit over the tower door. Something
dark and glittering spewed through the air.

"Is that his chief enchanter, the creator of the tunnel?" Meghianna murmured.

They watched as the darkness didn't fall, like the dust it appeared to be, but shot through
the air in a long streak, straight for Efrin. Markas stiffened. Mrillis rested his other hand on the
boy's shoulder and they waited for the shield of woven Threads to protect Efrin. He silently
counted backwards from five. On
one
, the darkness hit the shield with an audible sizzle
and splattered like some thick syrup hitting a rounded surface, curving up and around. A flash of
blue-white light erupted around Efrin, burning the darkness away.

The hidden woman shrieked more words, and Mrillis flinched as he recognized a string
of Encindi oaths tied to blood magic. So, that speculation was truer than he or Meghianna had
guessed. It surprised him a little that a woman of the Encindi had been allowed to attempt magic
of any kind.

Blood magic, death magic, was reserved for men, because women were too closely tied
to life to be effective at dispensing death. At least, that was the theory and the practice all those
years ago, when Flintan still existed. Who really knew how the Encindi ways had changed in the
decades since their scattered remnants became outcasts and aliens in the lands they had tried to
conquer? Just because the Nameless One had reduced Encindi women with any magical talent to
vessels and tools for his plans didn't mean that strong ones had not emerged and gained power in
the years since his supposed fall, and learned magic of their own.

What if, as Meghianna feared, her great-grandfather still lived, wrapped in sleep like the
seer Graddon, directing his followers like puppets? What if he could even now see them through
the eyes of this woman full of foul magic?

"It would take a great twisting and warping for a woman to practice blood magic,
wouldn't it?" Meghianna offered, as more darkness streaked from the tower window slit and met
the shielding with the same results. "She would have to be even more evil than the Nameless
One. But why don't we sense the blood magic at work?"

"Because just as in Endor's day..." Mrillis sighed. "Blood magic and
imbrose
have learned to work together without one canceling the other out. One shields the other. For all
we know, untamed star-metal allows blood magic to flourish."

"Then you need to clean up the rest of the poisoned land as fast as you can, don't you?"
Markas said.

"Indeed, Highness," he said, as a blue-white haze rose from the shadowy group gathered
in front of the tower door. "What are they--"

A blinding flash erupted in the air, streaking straight up and slamming into the window
slit where the woman let out an inhuman howl. The darkness exploded in a shower of white
sparks and a poisonous yellow haze that dissipated in two heartbeats. A massive, smoking gap in
the wall replaced the window slit.

Efrin shouted, letting out a war cry, and withdrew Braenlicach from its sheath,
shredding the illusion. As the smoke and dust and powdered stone gushed out from the new hole
in the wall, the six in front of the doorway became fully visible. Mrillis watched, his vision
partially turned sideways so he could see the Threads at work, as Kettin and two others flung
loops of Threads around the door and then all six reared back and yanked hard.

The door fell off its hinges with a resounding bang and echo as Efrin leaped forward,
Braenlicach blazing in eye-aching scarlet and gold light. The warriors hidden behind their own
shielding illusion echoed his battle cry and the shield fell, revealing them standing all around the
tower less than a bowshot away.

Stunned silence rang out from the tower with nearly audible intensity. Mrillis gripped
his companions' shoulders and swallowed down his cheers as the first invaders spilled through
the doorway into the tower and no one appeared to move to stop them.

"What are you waiting for?" Meghianna shouted. She scooped up the helmet waiting for
Markas, shoved the boy forward and slapped the helmet down on his head. "Your mother needs
to see you before anyone else."

Mrillis laughed and slid his arm around her shoulders as they watched the boy race
down the narrow aisle the soldiers made for him. He caught up with Efrin just as the Warhawk
pounded up to and through the door of the tower.

"Now let all history report that Efrin Warhawk and King Markas the second were
partners in the rescue of good Queen Glyssani," Meghianna said, satisfaction thick in her voice.
Then she let out a long sigh and leaned hard into Mrillis' support. "And pray the Estall we don't
have to do anything like this again for a long time."

"If ever," Mrillis added. He brushed a Thread over her, measuring how much the effort
of maintaining the multiple illusions had taken out of her. "Oh, well done, Queen of Snows. Let
history also say that you are by far the cleverest and strongest who ever held the title." He
decided he would wait until much later to warn her that the effort, the flow of magic through her
in such high quantities, had washed the last golden and red tints from her hair, leaving it blazing,
almost crystalline white.

"One last task. I don't care how much they stunned that filthy enchantress with that
brilliant attack..." Meghianna held out her hands to him, physical and mental.

Mrillis bowed to her, head and shoulders, and grasped her hands. They closed their eyes
together, and together reached with the force of their wills and spirits to pull hard, sharply, at the
braided rope of Threads they had formed, connecting all the star-metal fence posts together. The
ground shuddered and geysers of light and flame and dust shot up in the air as the buried
star-metal transitioned from solid to liquid and streamed upwards to meet in one silvery-blue,
blazing, churning mass high over Tantagar, illuminating the briefly raging battle.

Mrillis felt Meghianna tremble deep inside at the effort to bring all the streams of
purified ore high up in the air, when their natural tendency was to take the shortest path to
intersect--forming the ball of purified star-metal in the middle of the open ground in front of the
tower. Everyone in the valley and the tower would have been vaporized, reduced to steam and
dust in an instant.

"Just a moment more, my dear," he whispered, and drew on all his strength and
experience to cool the mass. It condensed and the light dimmed in the space of four heartbeats,
forming a spinning, smooth sphere as tall as a man, blue-black and glossy as a lady's mirror.

A howl of pain and rage echoed across the valley as the rumbles in the ground and the
hissing of falling dust and rock faded. Mrillis shuddered at the evil in the cry, and knew the
enemy enchanters had been tied to the star-metal to control the untamed, poisoned magic. How
many of them had died?

More important, how many had escaped?

* * * *

Meghianna resisted the aching need to sit down somewhere dark and quiet and slide into
oblivion. She needed to see her father and sister and Queen Glyssani emerge from the tower and
know everything had turned out right. She busied herself with domestic preparations during the
wait, flinching every time she heard a shout and the faint echoes of metal on metal that rang from
the tower. Someone--though judging by the fading sounds, a decreasing number--insisted on
resisting the Warhawk's forces. She knew her father would turn his tent over to Queen Glyssani,
and no matter how comfortable Timark might have made his prisoner, the rescued woman would
want to wash and change her clothes and rest. Meghianna suspected Timark would have utterly
abandoned his civility after his mask had been ripped away by the kidnapping, and she would
find Glyssani half-starved and filthy and parched. She prepared a sweet, healing herbal infusion
and hung a massive pot of stew over the fire. Excited, victorious warriors were always hungry,
according to Megassa.

Her sister would be delighted to finally have been part of something dangerous and
important. Meghianna hoped the blood and brutality of real battle wouldn't have shocked
Megassa too much.

She remembered a boy who had come to the Stronghold for healing in spirit and body,
after his first bloody, brutal battle against Encindi raiders. He was only seventeen, fresh from
intense training at the Warhawk's fortress, and as his dead father's heir, in charge of the defense
of his family's mountain estate. The boy--why couldn't she remember his name, now?--had saved
his mother and sisters and nearly everyone in the estate, but at a terrible cost to his peace of
mind. Meghianna prayed Megassa hadn't been forced into something totally against her nature,
for the sake of saving someone's life, especially her own.

Mrillis met the first returnees from the brief battle, directing the wounded and those who
helped them to the tent set up for healing. Meghianna stayed in front of her father's tent with
Ynessa, waiting for Efrin to bring Glyssani and Markas and Pirkin out with him. She didn't know
whether to be amused or irritated at how Ynessa did nothing but pace, nearly tripping over the
camp stools set around the fire, nearly knocking over the bowls waiting for the stew or the cups
waiting for the hot drink. Despite the prejudice against her for her Rey'kil blood, obviously
Ynessa had high enough rank and respect that she wasn't used to domestic chores.