Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook (43 page)

That Fae confidence was lost with the gesture, eyes becoming
wide and young despite their inhuman light. The hands, slim but hard-used, shook. And Soren shook too. A final blow
against the image of the monstrous hunter.

She reached out and touched the back of one hand; warm skin
soft beneath her fingers. Even as she
quailed internally, a need to face the practicalities reasserted itself. According to the Tzel Aviar his hands were
his weapons, and he was fully Soren's height, though his young male strength
was probably weakened by injury and deprivation. Her role here was to protect Tzel Damaris,
but also to expose herself as little as possible.

Awkwardly she took hold of the back of one wrist, glancing
up into eyes which now matched her own uncertainty. Then she stepped behind him, reaching with
her other hand for his free wrist. Uncomfortable as it made her, she pressed against his back, positioning
herself for maximum leverage should he attempt to fight or flee. He offered no resistance, adjusting to her
bracketing hold with a wary respect for his injured shoulder. And waited.

-
oOo
-

As a mage, Soren had measured Tzel Damaris against Aristide:
probably stronger, certainly more experienced, able to tell when she watched
him with palace-sight. In truth, until
he began to draw the Moon, she had had no comprehension of what he was capable
of doing.

It began quietly enough. He cupped his hands together as if to hold water and lifted his eyes
toward the tranquil sliver of Lady Moon. Those who watched from the palace would not be able to hear the low
sibilance of chant which threaded itself through the night, and she could not
guess if they sensed what it summoned.

Lady Moon, whose cycle holds birth and death. Honoured certainty of all who lived, known
before the first breath is taken and finally met after the last slips
away. But this was not the Lady's quiet
regard, familiar from temple visits. This was a dreadful immediacy. This was the sudden realisation that with each heartbeat there was no
reason but the Lady's will that there be a next.

Soren was stitched into crushed immobility, a mouse before a
parliament of owls, bound small and trembling with fear. She had never truly felt the authority which
sparked and snuffed life. Sunlight was
more forceful, that
balming
, burning touch a constant
reminder of what fuelled daily existence. But here, in a reflection of moonlight glimmering against the curve of
an impassive Fae mage's fingers, was something beyond angry heat. In Lady Moon was the essence. Tzel Damaris stood there, his chant fading to
the wind's night-soft whisper, holding souls in his hands.

And Soren was supposed to keep
him
safe.

A small movement forward with those cupped hands, and the
boy mewled, a naked little animal sound which gave her bare warning of a young
man's back becoming a bow drawn taut, his shoulders against her neck, arms
raised toward his own throat, sinews wire-strung beneath her straining
grasp. She thought she could smell death
in his hair, old and dried with fear. But he was not struggling, was caught in the grip of some agony, ecstasy,
as the Tzel Aviar brought his hands up to the bandaged chest and began to call
from the child made monster the power bound beyond his blood. Like to like.

Her challenge was to hold him upright, vibrating beneath the
touch of the Tzel Aviar. He was phasing
in and out of visibility and the next time he was visible his hands were
encased in sharp-edged light, shifting glimmers of edges and points which
formed gauntlets rather than claws. The
light left little trails, as if the air itself took wound from its
passage. Flesh would not heal so
readily. This was what killed
Vahse
.

Sheer good fortune that the boy's response continued to be
directionless agony, for Soren could barely hold him as it was. The Rose's unease began to increase, a murmur
turning to a constant hum, tangling with Tzel Damaris' steady winding chant and
the raggedly tearing gasps of the boy they were trying to save. Soren's head rang from the breath of giants,
from the struggle to which she was spectator rather than participant, and
wished for strength of resolve and purpose rather than this blank desperation
which was the only thing which kept her grip in place.

For it was becoming terribly apparent that Tzel Damaris was
losing the battle. The boy's periods of
invisibility were becoming more and more frequent and each time he vanished
Soren was treated to the sight of a Tzel Aviar being crushed by effort. Slowly a line etched itself onto the clear
brow, the colour leached from fine skin. He continued his chant as if each word was a basket of rocks he must
lift above his head, and at every syllable another stone was added. And into his eyes, those steady Fae eyes
which had surveyed them all with such detachment, crept the waver of a man who
finds himself in a trap and sees no way out. Even the Fair could lose their course.

Then he looked up at her through the space where a killer
strained to remain in existence, and broke his chant, slid into it two words
which could well have been boulders for their cost.

"Name him."

Panic-fuelled memory immediately proffered the explanation
the Tzel Aviar had given her beneath the dripping Rose. "A name is power, Champion. A foothold for resistance against imposed
will. He was not given one."

A name, an identity away from the purpose the boy was
constructed for, might make all the difference, for it was obvious Tzel Damaris
did not have strength enough to break the Moon-cast enchantment. But Soren jerked back in instinctive
rejection, a host of consequences unreeling through her mind. Even if she had the slightest idea what an
appropriate name for a Fae lordling was, it would be a link, a permanent tie,
in its way an act of shaping which she was hardly fit to make, Rathen Champion
or not. Define the life of this
boy-monster-prince?

But she couldn't not do it, any more than it had been
possible to send a substitute out here in her place. With her mind full of
Daseretals
,
Asteralls
and
Desterets
,
Soren leaned forward and said the only name she could manage: "
Shaol
. You're
Shaol
.
Shaol
of
Seldareth
."

And that was it. With
a sound like wire violently snapped, a bond was broken. The Tzel Aviar grunted, an earthily human
sound, and the boy –
Shaol
– sagged back into Soren's
hold, nearly tipping them both over. He
twisted, shuddering, then turned to look at her and his eyes were as green as
his sister's, but full of tears.

"My thanks, Champion," Tzel Damaris began,
rediscovering his composure, but Soren wasn't listening. All her attention, her whole focus, had been
swallowed by the panic of the Rose. And
Aristide and Strake, still together, both gasping as if they could barely spare
a moment to draw breath.

-
oOo
-

"Can you get me
into the palace? Right now?" Her voice was high with panic.

The Tzel Aviar glanced toward the balcony where Strake and
Aristide were supposed to be watching in safety, but didn't trouble her with
questions or argument. Two steps and he
had a firm hold of Soren's waist, stooping to lift up the boy and murmur
something to him.

The words must have been 'hold on' because a moment later
they launched into the air. Hopelessly
precarious, as his grip immediately slid from waist to armpit and Soren had to
cling to prevent herself from plunging to the suddenly distant ground. The thin light of the moon spared her a good
view of the effort this sudden flight cost him, but it was a close thing, for
they did not so much land on the balcony as drop on to it.

The palace exploded through Soren's mind, and she stumbled
but remained upright while the Tzel Aviar went to his knees and stayed
down. The scene before her sprang into
precise focus. Strake doubled backwards
over the corner of the balcony, a slender knife flaring into white existence at
his throat, and black lines streaking Aristide's pale hands as he held it
there. But his hands were more on the
blade than the hilt and the blood was Aristide's own. He was holding the knife back, struggling
against nothing Soren could see.

Strake hadn't called out. The guardsmen still loitered on the far side of the doors, oblivious to
the drama out in the night. Summoned,
they would surely leap to cut down the person holding the knife, not knowing he
was keeping their King alive. And be
left with a perfect scene of traitor and the man he had murdered.

The Rose was flinging scenes of the palace through her mind,
person after person, standing, sitting, sleeping. Trying to find who or what was controlling
the trump blade. But Strake had said it
wasn't able to sense magic of itself, that it would have to rely on visual
signals. And no-one, none of them, was
conveniently sitting in a circle, chanting and scribing ominous symbols.

Soren looked straight at Lady Arista. The woman was standing just inside the door
of her apartments, eyes intent on nothing, head tilted in concentration. It was so marvellously easy to reach out
through the Rose, to summon glass-glimmer thorn ghosts and–

"Don't kill her."

Aristide, his gaze fixed on the region of Strake's
collar-bone, face completely expressionless. Asking her to spare the life of the mother he hated. Soren blinked at him, then turned her
attention back to that distant room where, the beginnings of a frown creasing
her brow, Lady Arista reached out with her hand as if plucking some unseen
string. Light flared around the hilt of
the dagger, and abruptly Strake and Aristide between them were able to move it
a fingers-width back. Aristide began
muttering some attempt at
counterspell
while Strake
inhaled sharply, as if he had been holding his breath.

"Mimic casting," he said, in a tight but remarkably
unflustered voice, even as the knife began edging toward his throat again. "Spell tastes of Aristide, as if he
activated it. But it's not. We won't be able to hold it much
longer."

Soren stared back at Lady Arista, who was now gazing with
considerable affront at the thorny vines surrounding her. But not casting. She'd just
interfered
with the attack – that had been obvious enough. Which meant it was someone else, one of the
palace
hundreds
was doing this. The Rose's panic, fury, competed with her
own. This was her greatest test, where
she had to truly be the Champion, use the tool of palace-sight, save her
Rathen.

And she couldn't! She
was staring at them all, all she knew to be mages, all she suspected, anyone at
all. At Aspen, staring at the door of
his room. Barons, ambassadors stilled in
the middle of evening activity, reacting to a second sudden excess of power
nearby. Any of them could be the caster.

Frantically, Soren tried to expand her focus, to see them
all at once, every person in the palace, all of them, searching for the one who
shammed or betrayed effort, malice, anything. Lady Arista reached out again, doing something which made the knife
flare, slip back.

And there, at the palace's heart, someone reacted. A slight jerk, a frown, then leaning forward
as if to push harder.

"
Halcean
?!
"

Off in the Champion's apartment's, Soren's aide reacted to
her name, her eyes widening, focus shifting. She had heard.

"
Halcean
. Stop." Soren could scarcely believe what she saw, but she could still deal with
it. All around
Halcean
,
seated so innocuously in her room, the palace's defences uncoiled. Milk-white threat. Soren couldn't keep the hurt from her voice,
but her tone still made clear the consequences of refusal: "Stop
now."

And, face white,
Halcean
obeyed. Surrounded by thorns as long as
her forearm, she made a simple chopping gesture. The light surrounding the trump blade went
away and both Strake and Aristide let out their breath. Metal rang as it fell to the balcony.

"Why?" Soren asked then, struggling against
roiling anger larger than her own. The
Rose was fully roused, still curling and twisting at the back of her mind even
though the crisis was past.

She watched dismay war with fear on the woman's face and she
spoke, but lip-reading was still beyond Soren. Only sorrow was evident, and regret.

Strake touched her arm then. "Your aide?" he asked, shortly. He was staring at the Tzel Aviar, still
kneeling, and the boy who stood behind him. Huge moss-green eyes in a smudged face, blood on his clothes, and hands
which could not cut. Soren tried to
think with a head which thrummed with second-hand fury, anxious to divert her
Rathen from any confrontation.

But Strake simply and very deliberately turned his back on
Vahse's
killer. Aristide
reached with bleeding hands for the fallen trump blade. Lady Arista emerged from her apartment in
search of the source of the casting and the guards on the far side of the
balcony door seemed finally to realise something was wrong. And the vines about
Halcean
stirred.

Inside her but separate from her Soren felt anger turn to
malice, to vengeance. Eyes widening, she
pulled the vines back, willed them away. They swayed, lifted, then coiled down.

"No." The
words were a whisper through frozen lips. Just loud enough to bring Strake's attention back to her, to see the
strain on her face as she pushed again, harder, with all her will.

"What?" Strake had hold of her arm.

"It wants to
kill
her." Numb words, forced out. She was shaking now, sweating with the effort
it cost her to hold the vines back.
Halcean
, eyes huge, sat mouse-still in her chair, watching
a vicious tip turn inches from her face. But Soren wasn't going to let it happen.
Halcean
had betrayed them, yes, tried to kill
Strake, and she would pay for it. But
not like this. Soren would not allow it.