Echoes in the Dark (49 page)

The
spell that would destroy the Dark and might destroy them all.

He
regretted that she stayed, knew the fear gnawing at him now was part of the
price he’d paid for this great love.

Still
he wrapped his arms around her, brought her close to smell her scent, rub his
face in her silky brown hair, listen to their Songs as they wove melodically
together. He was blessed and would always be blessed if she was in his life.

Quashing
his fear into a tiny wad, he put it in a locked chest deep inside him where it
would not cause panic and shame him. Better he keep this to himself as all the
other men were doing. Though the pairbonded ones knew they would die with their
women: Bastien and Alexa, Jaquar and Marian, Marrec and Calli, Sevair and Bri.

Others
in the force: Mace and Clua, the newest male Marshall pair…
all
the
Marshalls and most of the Chevaliers. When one fell, both would die, the bond
and fate ensured that.

He
would not pairbond with Raine. He wanted her to live if he died…though he did
not think he would live long if she perished and he survived.

A
small mutter of protest came from her and she sounded as if she was rising from
the sleep she needed. He’d let that fear out already, so he punched it back
again, snapped chains around that inner chest. Held her close and murmured
words—a mixture of Lladranan and English. He chuckled deep in his throat as he
thought that now he’d linked with two Exotiques, and Raine was not from that
same place as the others, he might very well know the language better than any
of the other Exotiques’ men.

For
a moment he thought of Elizabeth, let the experience sift through him, part of
his life, part of how he’d treated—and would treat—this new woman he cherished
more.

Elizabeth
had been a sweet rippling stream in his life, but never quite his as he’d wanted,
and he accepted that was a good thing.

For
he and Raine fit so much better together. Raine was an ocean swell of love that
surprised him, inundated him, took him under. Kept him forever.

He
let Elizabeth go, the last splinter of hurt vanished.

He
could love Raine so much more because he’d had time with Elizabeth, and
Elizabeth had been—was—a good and true woman. But she’d never been meant for
him. He’d tried to force fate and had stumbled and fallen.

As
he let sleep creep up on him, and listened to Raine and breathed her, he only
hoped his true destiny had a better ending.

P
ounding came at
their door, rousing Raine. No gorgeous gamalon scale of strings attached to the
lovely harp on Faucon’s door, but small-fisted banging.

“Come
on,
Raine!” Alexa yelled in accented English. A shiver went down Raine’s
spine as she realized that she’d decided to stay. She, too, would begin to
speak English with a Lladranan accent, God willing.

Song
willing.

Struggling
from the grip of man and covers—and wasn’t that wonderful, a man who’d held
onto her all night long, when they weren’t making love—Raine stumbled from bed.
She grabbed a coverlet and wrapped it around her and went into the sitting room
to crack open the door. “We’re not up yet. Go away.”

Alexa
scowled, shifted from foot to foot. “Why aren’t you up?”

“So,
like, you sprang right into action after your task was done and your Snap,
right? Well, I want to bathe and eat.”

“But
we want to go to the Ship! Nobody will until you do, Madam Lucienne Deauville
says. I want to see my quarters. I thought we could hold another battle
planning conference there. Get our sea legs.”

Raine
stared at Alexa. “No one is going to get their sea legs on a ship floating in a
calm bay.”

Alexa
lifted wide eyes, smiled a winsome smile. “It’s a start.”

“Go.
Away. I’ll be down in about an hour.”

“Make
that two,” Faucon said in a morning-rough voice from behind her. “It’s still
very early, hardly dawn.”

Alexa
huffed a breath.

“Don’t
make me call Bastien,” Raine threatened.

Eyes
narrowing, Alexa said, “You think that man can control me?”

“Ayes,”
Raine replied and heard the word from Faucon at the same time.

Bastien’s
bulk showed behind his wife. “Come on, Alexa, a gift for you arrived from the
Castle.”

“What?
A present? For
me?
”

“And
you might want to bother, I mean
talk
to Jikata,” Raine said. “You
probably didn’t get your fill yesterday.”

“True,
very true,” Alexa said. “Later. A gift. From whom?” She began to badger
Bastien.

Faucon
chuckled and Raine turned to him, feeling a little embarrassed. She’d thrown a
different life away for this man and he knew it. As grand gestures went that
was pretty damn big.

“I
am so lucky,” he said.

She
relaxed, then lifted her brows at him. “And are you going to learn to control
and manipulate me like Bastien does Alexa?”

Grinning,
Faucon said, “We’ll manipulate each other. And Alyeka—A
lex
a—likes it.
But if everyone is waiting for you—which is only right—perhaps we should rise a
little earlier.”

“You
just want to know what Alexa’s present is.”

He
tilted his head. “I already know, her new mount is ready, the young volaran
that will come on the trip. Arrow for the Dark.”

“Oh.”
So many volaran names indicating their destiny.

At
that moment sunlight slid through the windows. Raine smiled. “Another pretty
day.”

“With
a pretty sight to come, your Ship.”

He
was
proud of her, and she was proud of her achievement. And now that she was
staying, she would call it “the Ship” like everyone else. There was only one.
“My Ship!” She tasted the word, then hurried over to the windows.

“We’re
facing east, inland,” Faucon said. “The sea’s to the west,” he teased.

She
rolled her eyes, muttered, “I knew that, but I’m used to an ocean on the east.”
Heading for the shower, she said, “I
do
want to take a good tour.” She flashed
her lover, her man, a smile. “See if all the details are right.”

S
he led several
admiring tours until the Ship felt familiar under her feet. Groups of volarans
streamed to alight on the quarterdeck, sniff around it, march along the regular
deck, then return to their Landing Field and stables.

The
Chevaliers and Marshalls grinned, even when they saw the hammocks strung with
little room between them where they’d sleep. At noon Alexa dismissed the last
lingering Chevaliers, welcomed Corbeau and his family, who brought lunch. Along
with them came all the Exotiques and their men, including Koz, Marian’s
brother. They adjourned to the main cabin belowdecks that Raine called a lounge
and Alexa a war room.

Raine
and her charts of the course were up first, pointing the way with her
forefinger, talking about tides and shoals and wind patterns. All the
information was in her mind, easy to recall, and she knew fatalistically that
her father had been right. She would have to Captain this Ship of her own.

Then
they rolled up the other maps and brought out the one of the island. It was
mostly volcano, no good harbors, no cove that would accommodate the draft of
the Ship.

“So
the plan is that we go in at dawn. They shouldn’t be able to see the Ship,
Raine and Marian and Jikata will be cloaking it.” Alexa hesitated a little on
Jikata’s name. They didn’t know her very well yet, only that she was key.

They
all looked at Jikata, she merely nodded. “If there’s such a songspell, I can do
it.” Then she looked around pointedly. “As for the City Destroyer weapon knot,
Marian showed me the spell yesterday evening and I can handle that, too, the
lead and the ritual and the Power.
But
we
must
practice as a
group. I understand that you have been practicing together, which is all to the
good, and the Singer brought in people whose voices approximated yours, so I
have had some practice that way.
But we must practice together.
Is that
clear?”

“Clear,”
Marian said.

Jikata
looked at Alexa. She gave a little cough. “Clear.”

The
rest of them spoke together. “Clear.”

Nodding
decisively, Jikata said, “Good.”

After
one more cough, Alexa said, “Now the actual battle plans.” She shifted a map
with geographical gradations away to reveal a map of the island easier to read.
“I anticipate that the minute we drop the cloaking spell, or invade, the Master
will order out the horrors. Hordes of horrors.”

Raine
felt sick but nodded.

“The
sailors who wish to fight will land with the first wave of Chevaliers. The goal
of those fighting outside the volcano will be to distract the monsters and the
Master from us Exotiques who are going in.”

“In
a volcano?” asked Jikata. She moved closer to the map.

Alexa
said, “It’s mostly inactive.”

“Huge
mountain,” Jikata murmured.

“You’re
so right,” Alexa said. “Here’s a ledge where all of our volarans can land.
We’ll take the gong which will also distract the Dark, and maybe the Master,
because the Dark wants it, and wants it intact. It’s dangerous and should be
destroyed. The feycoocus will hide it.” Alexa gestured and Marian rolled out
another map that showed a cutaway of the mountain.

“We’ve
been working on this map for weeks and we owe the intelligence to Sevair, Bri’s
husband, who attached a spyeye to the Master. Since he doesn’t bathe, we’re
still receiving information. Circlets monitor the eye twenty-four seven and we
may even get information during the battle.”

“Priceless,”
Bastien said. He was leaning against the door, arms crossed.

“So,
we land here, and send our volarans back to the Ship.”

No
one wanted to doom the volarans, and the knot’s magical shield could
accommodate a limited mass.

“Then
we take the gong—” Alexa trailed her finger down and across the mountain “—to
an inactive lava tube here. The Master rarely uses these tubes, so he won’t
think of them as access points first.”

“Take
the gong,” murmured Jikata. “I don’t hike.”

“
Ride
the gong,” Alexa said. “There’s probably snow, and if not, we have, uh—” she
waved “—anti-grav.”

Raine’s
mouth dropped open. Her mind boggled, trying to imagine what Alexa was saying,
then she decided she didn’t want to.

“It
will work!” Alexa assured.

“Yeah,”
Bri said, grinned at Alexa, who beamed back.

Raine
and Jikata looked at Calli. She shrugged with an amused smile. They turned to
Marian, who sighed. “Crazy as it sounds, it
will
work.”

“Anyway,”
Alexa said briskly, “we ride the gong down the mountain to the tube. Then we go
down the tube to this cavern.”

It
was a huge space in the middle of the mountain.

Jikata
frowned, tapped a well-kept nail on figures. “Are these the dimensions?”

“Ayes,”
Alexa said. “Plenty of room to do a ritual.”

But
Jikata was shaking her head, pointing down to another tube angling deeper into
the mountain, threading her finger down it to a smaller dome-shaped cavern.
“And these are the dimensions for this chamber?”

“Ayes,”
Marian said.

“Do
we have any information on this room?”

Marian
shivered. “Not much. I think I was stashed there for a while. The old Master
called it the larder.”

“Is
there food in there?” Jikata asked.

“One
moment,” Jaquar said as he leafed through papers. There was quiet until he
looked up. “No, the old Master kept prey for the monsters there, but nothing’s
there at last report.”

“The
acoustics will be better in this chamber,” Jikata said.

“But—”
Alexa started.

Jikata
raised her head and there was something in her manner that had them all
stilling. “There is a chamber of these exact dimensions in the Caverns of
Prophecy, where I spent a great deal of time. If I were to speculate,” she said
slowly, “I would say that Amee has ensured the chambers were identical.”

Alexa’s
eyebrows rose. She rubbed her hands. “Guess we get a little more of the gong
thrill ride.”

“Oh,
joy,” Marian said.

“Then
the feycoocus take the gong to where it can be destroyed. Jikata takes the
stage and we’re her girl backup group. There’s a time during the ritual for a
warning. That’s when we mentally notify the guys outside to break off fighting
and retreat to the Ship, which has been hiding in a cove. Then we Destroy the
Dark.”

Raine
was sure it wouldn’t happen like that.

“We’re
going, too,” Bastien and Luthan said in unison.