Clearwater Dawn (25 page)

“This is not about law,” Lauresa snapped. “This is about you being afraid.”

“The death a renegade sorcerer can deal, the people have a right to be afraid.” There was no deference in him now, Chriani seeking actively for the rage, feeling it spread like a warm draught through frozen limbs.

The princess was silent a long moment. Then her cold gaze shifted from Chriani’s, glancing to his chest where a bandage she shouldn’t have been able to see covered her own name. Chriani felt a moment’s crippling uncertainty, followed her gaze to realize that she was looking instead at the bow still slung at his shoulder. He’d almost forgotten he was carrying it.

“I used to watch you at the harvest fest each year,” she said quietly. Something changed in her, he thought. A sudden sadness he couldn’t explain, hadn’t been looking for. “I remember you winning the archery competition two seasons past, splitting the target cleanly at two hundred paces against Konaugo himself. If it had been me shooting that day, I would have just as likely killed the wardens at either edge of the range even had I spent every waking moment in practice since the last time you adjusted the set of my arm.”

Chriani felt a sharp spike of uncertainty slam through him. In his chest, in his gut, the anger recoiled sharply. He heard the owl’s cry again, heard the sudden beating of its wings as it took to the air, unseen.

“My mother has a power beyond you,” Lauresa said. “You have ability beyond me. Should I fear you?”

Where she turned, the princess stalked off toward the watchfires of the perimeter with a sense of purpose that told Chriani it would be foolish to follow her. It was a good thing, he thought. He felt dizzy suddenly, his thoughts racing, the echo of her voice twisting in him like a knife point.

I used to watch you at the harvest fest each year…

In the war room, he’d looked in her eyes for some sign of recognition, some sign of memory for the years they’d spent together as children, seemingly a lifetime ago now. He hadn’t seen it then. Had caught only the dull reflection of the emptiness he’d felt inside himself in the month since the princess’s marriage was announced.

You trained me well
, she’d said on the field a week past.

All along, the princess had remembered him. Through the three years he’d pined for her, then forgotten her, then gone mad with a feeling he was still afraid to name.

Lauresa kept her secrets well, he thought.

He wanted to follow her but didn’t, turning away from the encampment instead, fighting the urge to run for the moon-twisted pillars of willow through which she’d disappeared. He stood there for a long while, tried to fight the ache in his head and at his chest, flaring again. Around him, the night was silent. As the wind blew through the glade behind him, he saw the intricate play of red and white light through the leaves. The Darkmoon was high in the sky and past half-full, its dusky light unusually bright where its larger twin was shrouded with cloud in the west. The Clearmoon was pushing ever-closer, night by night. Lauresa’s wedding was likely timed for the approaching conjunction, as many events of state were. The two moons rising as one, their edges almost touching sometimes.

Along the scree of the creek bed behind him, he heard the faint crunch of ice and gravel beneath the sole of an armored boot.

Chriani moved fast but not fast enough. From out of nowhere, less from the shadows than seemingly from the shimmering moonlight itself, a figure erupted in a blur of twisting limbs, and Chriani felt the boot that had warned him with its telltale sound slam into him hard. He managed to twist just enough, felt his hip take the brunt of the force that would have split his ribs had it caught him straight on, then he was spinning away, steel slashing empty air where two knives hacked through the space he’d been standing in a moment before.

He had the bow in his hands, had drawn and nocked an arrow without even realizing it. One quick shot away, firing blind, hoping for an instant’s distraction, but there was no one there.

Chriani fought to breathe, tried to focus. All around, the ground was a morass of frozen mud and turf, every footstep sounding out in the chill silence, but he heard nothing now. He was still turning to scan the shadows when he was struck again. A hail of blows rained down where movement erupted around him, the figure suddenly there as if he’d unfolded from the air itself.

Chriani saw a face he’d never seen before. Frozen for one long moment where he blocked one cross-hand strike, ducked back to avoid another. Older than he was, fair-skinned and placid. Human, white hair cut ragged and short, cheeks marked with precise lines of ritual scars below unblinking eyes the dead black of a midnight storm. As the figure lunged, Chriani could fairly feel his intensity, focused in silence where his foot lashed out again to dropped him.

The figure wore a loose tunic of grey-white, shining like a beacon in the moonlight, the incongruity screaming in Chriani’s head, wondering how he could have possibly gotten so close without being seen. But then even as he stared, he saw the tunic and the body beneath it ripple suddenly, as if some shadow had crossed the sky. And then the white figure was gone again, a faint shimmer twisting along the edge of the trees.

Chriani fired off two shots blindly, wanted desperately to hold onto the bow, keep its familiar presence in his hand, but he was too close. Slinging it to his shoulder, he drew the battered short sword, managed to bring it around where he heard footsteps coming in from behind.

Where the figure unfolded from shadow, Chriani returned a half-dozen devastating strikes as he was pressed back, the assailant’s knives ringing out against the battered steel of the borrowed blade. His eyes ached where he tried to watch the figure, the shifting light seeming to play across and through him. If he stared, if he focused, Chriani could hold the image, but the instant he faltered, blinked, let the emotionless face shift to the corner of his eye, it was gone again.

The assailant wore no other armor, carried no other weapons or gear. Where Chriani saw them completely for the first time, the razor-straight knives were nearly the length of his forearms. It was the boots he fought to avoid, though, slamming into him again and again in a kick-striking style he’d never seen before, faster than he could comprehend.

Where he slashed up and around with the sword, Chriani felt it somehow hit home even as something struck the side of his head. There was a sudden flare of white light and he was stumbling, falling back across open ground. He slipped through a stand of tall shrubs and out the other side, fire burning along his back and chest, his left leg going numb where the assailant had connected with it mid-thigh.

His thoughts were unfocused, vision a blood-red blur in the twisted moonlight. He limped for the shadows, staggered to a stop as he sheathed the sword, pulled the bow again. He fought to calm himself, pushed the rage away as he felt for the instincts, felt for his senses as his mother had taught him. Listening, feeling.

He was ready when he heard the telltale scrape of steel on stone behind him.

He loosed the arrow, then had another nocked faster than he could ever remember shooting before. Not knowing exactly where the assailant was, but knowing that he had to be on one side or the other of the first arrow — shooting not to hit but to flush him out. Unless the assassin had somehow managed to bypass the reflexes of every warrior who’d ever faced a hail of bowshot, he’d dodge just slightly away from whichever side the first shot went harmlessly past.

Chriani sensed the faint blur of movement, the first arrow flashing past harmlessly a half-stride to the right as the figure twisted and he shot again. He heard the strangled cry, caught a glimpse of the white shaft shattering that meant he’d struck bone at the shoulder.

Then the assailant was gone again, twisting away to shadow where the trees suddenly shook with the movement of his passing. No sign of him where he must have pushed through the copse, but Chriani saw blood on white bark where the Darkmoon’s pale light played out.

It took him a moment to orient himself, his head still pounding where he tried to clear it.

He saw light through the trees where the figure had disappeared. Chanist’s camp.

He hadn’t realized how far Lauresa had led him, or perhaps he’d simply been pushed back farther under the assailant’s attack than he’d thought. Beneath the trees, frost-streaked shadows showed the armored imprints of the assailant’s footsteps pounding away ahead of him, but there was no sound. He watched the trees, the shadows to both sides, the firelight ahead, too far. Not close enough to shout even if he’d been able to raise a voice, pain tearing at his lungs with each breath.

He could see the officers’ pavilion bright in the light of a high-banked fire, the far end of his range. He could make out the distinctive figure of Konaugo pacing there, fitted a single shaft to the string and fired without hesitation. Another followed it even as the first hit, and he heard frenzied shouts rise to all sides where the fire suddenly flared in a shower of ash and sparks. A third shot went long, tearing at the canvas of an adjacent awning, figures flattening to both sides.

He heard the alarm raised, the troops still vigilant after the last one, false or not. But where the assailant’s tracks pounded steadily toward the light, Chriani saw them veer off suddenly. A half-dozen long strides, then the steel tread had slowed to follow a set of calfskin boots that carried on down from the wood’s edge. Small footprints, slender. Spaced close together where she’d been walking slowly.

Lauresa.

Where the wood thinned ahead of the open ground below the pavilions, Chriani ran without thinking, head pounding in time with the pain that twisted across his right side. He saw no sign of the princess ahead, frantically scanned the shadows even as he silently hoped she’d made it back beyond the near line of the sentry fires.

And then from behind him, footsteps. The ambush he should have been waiting for, distracted by the sudden fear that the princess’s tracks had engendered in him.

Where the darkness shimmered again, he saw the knives flash out where he jumped back, too slow. He felt white-hot pain at his shoulder as cold steel cut him, but the assailant was still moving, spinning impossibly fast. Where the whirlwind kick struck hard, Chriani felt it nearly take his head off, needle-sharp points of white light burning behind his eyes. Then he hit the ground with a lurch that told him he’d blacked out on the way down, something he couldn’t afford to do again. He felt the knives slam down behind him where he rolled, fumbled to pull an arrow as he stood, but it was no good.

Three lightning fast knife-strikes knocked the bow from his hand, blocked the feeble jab he made with the arrow, narrowly missed his heart where he stumbled back. The kick that followed dropped him again. Still no emotion in the scarred white face where it vanished once more, but as Chriani pushed himself to his feet once more, he scooped two handfuls of freezing mud, flung them in a half-circle around him. There, the haze of light shifted, dark streaks hanging in the air for a moment before they blurred out. Chriani ran for the faint shimmer that marked the assassin’s movement, no idea where the strength in him was coming from.

As he’d fallen, he felt the hidden scabbard digging into his side, but even as fast as he fumbled the Valnirata blade from its belt now, he felt it knocked from his hands, skidding unseen to the dark forest floor. Then another drop kick took him in the chest, and Chriani went down for the last time.

His heart was pounding where he tried to rise, only his arms wouldn’t work. The same pinpoint flare of pain that had numbed his leg was spreading from just below his heart now. He managed to look up, saw the heavy bootprints circling slowly around him.

Where Chriani focused, he brought the figure back into blurred vision, his eyes stinging where blood was running freely from his forehead. He saw the assailant bend to the ground, pick up the bloodblade where it had fallen. He looked to Chriani, then. Smiled for the very first time.

And then there was a burst of light around them that swallowed the moons and the dark sky at once, and the figure in white was pulled off his feet, slammed back by an explosion of white-hot flame.

Chriani saw the bird, then. The same twisting shape he thought he’d seen swirling in the fire that Irdaign had thrown against the stones the night before. Only it was Lauresa at the edge of the clearing this time, a rage in her that he could feel like the blast of heat that made him squeeze his eyes shut as he clumsily scrambled away.

Through the darkness, her voice rang out with the song she and her mother had made together. The white figure was up and running for her, impossibly fast, but where her voice pitched and peaked, she twisted her hands above her head and Chriani saw knives of pure light erupt around the figure, cut him down with a scream.

Where it twisted past him, Chriani saw the bloodblade, knocked free where the figure hit the ground in a haze of black and red. The assailant screamed again, Chriani feeling it. Something in the sound of that agony drove his own movement as he rose, stumbled forward six steps. He snatched the dagger from the ground, didn’t slow, all his dead momentum carrying him as he drove into the figure, hit him hard from behind.

Then suddenly there were ropes of black shadow in the clearing, twisting in between Chriani and the figure even as the dagger was wrenched free of the assailant’s back. Chriani watched him torn away by the force of Lauresa’s spell, holding the figure aloft even as the firesong rose to consume him.