Bloodstone (20 page)

His torch nearly burned out, Durren dragged it across the beast-men’s path, igniting brush. The main body of Krad shrieked. They milled. Some hopped up and down, shaking spears and knives. Others hurled more rocks. This time the missiles fell short.

Durren kneed Ghost to a halt. Between his legs, the stallion’s heart pumped and his muscles quivered. The horse pawed the ground, shaking his head at the message of restraint. Durren sucked air through his hood. Smoke, scorched fur, and Krad stench burned the length of his throat, and sweat glued his tunic to his body, but his blood pulsed with a fervor he hadn’t felt in years. His fingers flexed on the makeshift lance, liking the weight of it, the balance.

Once a warrior, always a warrior,
said the Voice in his head.

“By Koronolan, yes!” Lifting the charred sapling like a spear, he heaved it toward a cluster of beast-men. The creatures fell over each other scattering. Durren threw back his head and laughed. Drawing the Sword of Drakkonwehr, he waved it over his head. “For Herrok-Eneth! For Drakkonwehr!” Laying his heels to the stallion, he charged the Krad line.

****

Mirianna huddled next to her father and the blind boy. Around them, the brush ring roared at the sky like dragon flame. A wall of heat scorched her face. Sweat trickled down her back and between her breasts, and smoke, thick with ash, stung her eyes.

She and her father clutched bundles of kindling, ready to toss them at any part of the ring that faltered. Pumble paced the circle, sword at ready, guardian charm between his teeth, lips caressing it in constant invocation. The blind boy stood gripping his staff like a club.

Outside the circle, Rees shot arrow after arrow. Now and then, through the blur of heat and smoke, Mirianna could see the creatures scatter where his arrows struck home. To the left, when the smoke parted, she could see the Shadow Man swoop at the Krad like a demon on horseback.

The creatures’ shrieks carried over the noise of the fire, ripping at Mirianna’s nerves. She ground her teeth, trying to shut out the sound, to keep panic from closing her throat entirely. But the noise only intensified, rushing at her ears like the roar of the fire.
Stop!
she wanted to scream, if only to hear her own voice, to prove the clamor could be penetrated, but it was too late—someone was already screaming.

“Get it off! Get it off!”

Her mind registered Pumble scrabbling on the ground with a dark, writhing mass. It registered her father, his armful of sticks flying away from his body, his hands reaching for the beast-man’s shaggy pelt. It registered a flash of sword, of knife, and the reverberation of the scream rising in her throat.

Mirianna pivoted to launch herself at her father, to stop him, but another dark mass hurdled a break in the fire ring.

The Krad landed in a crouch, a long, curved knife gripped in one paw. Yellow-rimmed eyes, set close under heavy brows, fixed on her. The creature snarled, exposing blackened teeth.

Screaming, “Krad!” Mirianna flung her armload of sticks at its face.

“Get down!” The boy swung his staff, whacking the Krad alongside the head and knocking the beast-man to its knees.

Mirianna scrambled behind the boy. “Hit it again!”

“High?”

“Low!”

The blow caught the Krad full in the face. The beast-man fell backward, blood gushing from its nose. The creature rolled, struggled into a crouch, and spat blood. It raised the knife and pivoted near the edge of the fire ring.

“Push it!” Mirianna grabbed the staff behind the boy’s hands and swung the blunt end toward the beast-man. “Now!”

Driven by the force of their double lunge, the staff rammed the Krad full in the chest. The beast-man keeled into the flames, landing with a crash on the burning brush. The creature yowled, rolled backward out of the flames, and scrambled to its feet only to crumple, an arrow protruding from its smoking hide.

Rees trotted up and jerked the arrow free. Casting Mirianna a look she couldn’t read through the smoke, he restrung it and rode off. Behind her, the boy said, “Did we get it? Is it dead?”

Nearby, Pumble mopped his face on his sleeve. His sword ran with blood. Beside him, her father stood panting, cheeks ashen. At their feet lay a dead Krad. Neither man looked injured. Heaving a sigh dangerously like a sob, Mirianna slid her hand over the boy’s and squeezed it. “Yes, it’s dead. That was amazing...what you did.”

He grinned and his face flushed. “We—we did it together.”

Outside the fire ring, the clamor faded. Mirianna shook her head, wondering if it was only a trick of the blood still roaring in her ears, but when the smoke thinned, she saw the beast-men running toward the trees.

“They’re leaving,” Tolbert said, a dazed look on his face.

Pumble kissed his charm, pressed it to his chest, and kissed it again. “Just in time, too.” He sheathed his sword with a flourish. “Or we would have slaughtered them. Right, Rees?”

An unsmiling Rees looked down from his mount. “Shut up, slug-brain, and get out here. We have horses to catch.”

Pumble’s lower lip quivered, but he hid it behind another vigorous mopping of his face, this time with the hem of his tunic. Drawing his sword again, he used it to poke open a path through the smoldering ring.

Mirianna took the boy’s arm and led him out of the circle.

“Can you—” he said as she released him. “Do you see my master? Is he all right?”

“Speak of the Demon,” muttered Rees, “and here he comes.”

Mirianna followed the direction of his nod. Smoke hung across the clearing like a blanket of blue fog. The air reeked with Krad scent and scorched vegetation. Here and there, wispy tendrils swirled from smoldering brush, obscuring the ground, concealing its solidity. The Shadow Man emerged from the haze first, his head and shoulders a sharp black silhouette, the horse beneath him an insubstantial gray wraith. He glided toward them like an apparition, soundlessly.

Like a dream, Mirianna thought, mesmerized by the play of light about his body.
Like my dream.

Awareness clenched in her abdomen. The jolt radiated outward, curdling her skin and raising the fine hairs of her body in wave after wave of sensation. The man of her dreams was nothing but a figment, something conjured by her loneliness, her need for a lover...wasn’t he? The image approaching was not a man, but a shadow, a—a nightmare, not a dream. And she’d promised—she’d promised
him
—she had promised—

By the Dragon, what had she promised?

Anything.

She tried to swallow, to wet her mouth, but her throat wouldn’t open. She fought against a sensation of suffocating, of drowning in water she couldn’t see. And still he approached, gliding as silently, and as inexorably, as Death.

The Krad fled in the mad scattering of a terrified horde. It would be hours before the creatures could regroup. To be certain, Durren pursued them into the forest. He returned with the Sword of Drakkonwehr gripped loosely in his hand and the make-shift spear resting across his lap. He flexed his fingers, savoring long-dormant sensations.

Once a warrior, always a warrior,
said the Voice in his head.

Durren nodded. He marveled at how easily his body recalled its training. How the scent emanating from his tunic refreshed his nostrils. How the ache in his muscles radiated confidence, pride. Ghost, as if sensing his thoughts, arched his neck and pranced. Durren chuckled and patted the stallion’s shoulder.

It had been ages, too, since he’d laughed...for pleasure.

Ages, he thought, since he’d deserved to.

The smoky meadow dotted with Krad carcasses seemed suddenly all too familiar. Drakkonwehr had smoked, too. And carcasses had littered its courtyard. But there had been no triumph in his passage through it then.

Durren closed his eyes as a wave of humiliation washed over him.
Warrior, hah! What kind of warrior lets everything he’s supposed to defend be destroyed? What kind of warrior fails not only his mission, but his best friend, his family, and his heritage? And what kind of warrior—Damn him!—doesn’t even pay for his failures with his own worthless life!

The same kind of warrior,
said the Voice in his head,
who lives day after day with the memories.

And night after night with the dreams.
Durren squeezed his eyelids together until purple and yellow rioted behind them. It was a mockery, this being condemned to life. Cursed by Syryk’s spell with a physical being too horrible for any human to survive the sight of. Damned to never age, but to watch, alone, while everything around him grew...and died. Gall rose, bitter and searing, at the base of Durren’s throat.

Oh, he could die. But not by natural means. And not by the hand of a man. To surrender to a Krad knife, though, would be beneath any man who lived by the blade.

Raising the Sword of Drakkonwehr, Durren considered the broken blade. Directly after the collapse of the Stone Dam at Herrok-Eneth, he should have gathered his wits and gone deep into Beggeth, hunting mage-spawn. With this damaged weapon, doing so would have been tantamount to suicide, but no one would have blamed him for that when they had the fall of the whole world to lay on his head. Instead—his fist tightened on the hilt—he had not acted with honor. Rather, some dim force he even now couldn’t identify had drawn his shocked mind and battered body out of the tumult and led him like a homing bird to Drakkonwehr. There he’d stayed, a captive of honor and pride, until the desire to sustain life, however wretched, had driven him out once a year to trade in Ar-Deneth.

Durren slapped the flat of the blade against his thigh. If only he’d run the whole length of it through Syryk’s black heart when he’d had the chance!

‘If only’ is an illusion, a worthless conceit,
said the Voice in his head.
There are no second chances. A ‘warrior’ should know that.

Be still!

Why? So you can wallow in self-pity and forget the woman?

The woman.

Durren’s spine stiffened. He lifted his gaze and saw her standing above the haze, the rock ledge an island in a sea of mist. “Illusion,” he said, trying to tear his eyes from her flushed cheeks and riotous hair.

Promise.

The word shuddered through Durren. His groin quivered with it. Even his heartbeat stumbled. He forced a deep breath. She’d promised, hadn’t she? And he’d made her say it twice, to be sure.

But what could she do against Syryk’s curse?

Perhaps nothing,
said the Voice in his head
. Perhaps...everything.

“Dear Koronolan,” Durren breathed. His chest ached, his legs trembled, his hands shook. Black dots swam on the fringes of his vision, obscuring everything but her face, her body, her uncanny resemblance to the woman haunting his dreams.

What did it matter where she’d come from, or who had sent her and why or how? All that mattered as he rode slowly toward her was that she’d promised.

Anything.

****

The Imposter of Nolar withdrew early into his private chambers. He’d passed a vexing day. First, negotiations with the father of his intended bride, always a delicate matter, had suffered a minor setback. He was sure it was nothing an offer of more gold wouldn’t overcome. Second, there had arisen some sort of crisis in the vineyards. He deferred that to the steward, ordering the man not to bother him with such trivialities. The directive earned him looks askance from the steward and attendant vinedressers. No cause for concern, however. While Master Brandelmore evidently was a close and careful manager of his properties, his underlings could hardly blame the man if his impending marriage absorbed an inordinate amount of his energies. Finally, the crystal had hung heavy and restless about his neck all day, but he’d had no chance to examine its multifaceted surface.

Sinking into the chair before his dressing table, he shoved thick fingers through his hair and grimaced at his image in the glass. Not a bad specimen of manhood, but it still disconcerted him to see a stranger’s face looking back. He bared even, white teeth. One in limbo could hardly expect to choose. How fortunate he hadn’t thrust himself into a woman’s body.

He chuckled at the choice of image and considered which of the females among his household servants would be tonight’s recipient of his ‘thrusts.’ Pity he’d been such an ascetic in his previous incarnation. Such activity, which he’d quickly discovered was expected from the Master, always soothed his nerves. Afterward, he would dream of mounting his bloodstone-draped, virginal bride on the table anointed with the Dragon Chant and raising, with the force of their union, the Last Dragon. The thought of all that primal power at his fingertips always brought him to climax again, and he would bask until dawn in the glory of his prowess.

But for now the crystal burned hot against his naked chest. He extracted the pouch from beneath elegant Colanthian lace and finely woven, Bedian linen. He tugged the laces open, and the broken column seemed to leap into his palm. Even though he had ample warning of its heat, the abrupt sear upon contact made him suck in a hiss. He dropped the crystal to the tabletop and licked his stung palm.

A kaleidoscope of colors ran rampant over the table’s polished surface. He breathed a word, and the color shifts slowed. Another word and the crystal’s glow receded, withdrawing into the column itself. It pulsed first red, then amber, then red again, and dimmed entirely before throbbing with renewed fire.

He rubbed a thumb over the singed spot on his palm. The amber puzzled him until, reviewing the sequence, he realized the color wasn’t the honey of true amber but a raw yellow-orange. “Fire.” He sat up straight. “And Krad too.”

What in Beggeth?

He bent again and cupped his hands around the column, taking care not to touch it. Red light illuminated his palms, showing dark as blood in the creases and whorls. Red—
this
red—could mean only one thing: Rees and his pot-bellied partner had the bloodstone!