The Given Sacrifice (43 page)

“I . . . see . . . you . . .”
he said, in a voice from the surface of a dead star.

Existence itself wavered. She looked into those eyes, and through them into a universe
where matter itself perished with a whimpering squeal, absolute cold, utter black
forever and everywhere, where nothing happened and nothing ever would. She could not
move, for nothing did. . . .

The prisoner’s hands went down from his bristle-shaven head to the back of his collar.
A bodkin-headed arrow plowed into his forehead and sank inches deep with a wet splintering
crack of bone, and Edain was cursing as he reached for another with blurring speed
and half a dozen of the Archers shot too and men-at-arms were charging with their
swords raised, but the dead man’s hands flashed forward. Two streaks of silver went
through the air.

Time slowed, like a spoon through honey. The thickset man beside the foreign empress
flung a hand out in a desperate reach like a baseball outfielder. It went between
his charge and the weapon, and suddenly a small slim blade was standing out of his
palm. Her father grabbed at Órlaith, throwing her backward with huge and desperate
strength as he dove between her and the threat and Heuradys’ shield came around before
her.

And she knew he’d started to move an instant
before
the attacker.

As he did he jerked his own right arm up, the shield-bearing arm that reflex would
put in the way of a threat. The flash of silver went over it by the merest fraction,
and then he was falling backward beside her, his hand clasped to his throat and the
dimpled bone hilt of the throwing-knife standing between the fingers. Blood welled
out over the hand and from his mouth. Time unfroze, and she checked her lunge forward.
The angle meant that anything she did would make things worse.

A few seconds ticked by like years. Faces gathered about where she knelt by her father,
but they were more distant than the Moon. He reached with his other hand, fumbling,
and she saw what he was doing and helped, bringing the Sword up until it lay on his
breast, with her hand over his on the hilt. Light flared in the crystal pommel. For
a moment she hoped wildly and then—

•   •   •

“Hello, my darling girl, my heart, my treasure,” he said gently.

They were standing in the trampled meadow, but the grass nodded undisturbed instead
of lying flat, and there were neither men nor weapons nor blood. Her father was in
a simple kilt and shirt, smiling at her as the wind ruffled his bright hair.

That expression turned rueful as he looked down at his right hand, flexing the arm
and opening and closing the long shapely fingers.

“I was told at the time that Cutter arrow in my right shoulder would be the death
of me. And so it was, with a twenty-year stay of execution. Just a fraction of a second
too slow for me to make old bones. Well, I had it on the best of authorities I’d not
see my beard go gray . . . and I noticed the first gray hair six months ago.”

“Da!”

His arms went about her, comforting and strong as she wept. “Ah, lass, it’s sorry
I am to leave you. So, so. Grieve, but not too long; it’s the way of nature for a
child to bury her parents.”

A thought penetrated even her sorrow. “Oh, Goddess, I’ll have to tell Mother!”

She could feel his head shake. “No. She is High Queen. We were linked to the land,
and to each other. She’ll have known.

“Tell your mother that I will wait for her, in the world beyond the world.”

He held her at arm’s length with his hands on her shoulders. “You and I will meet
once more, my heart, in this cycle of the world; long ago for me, not too long in
the future for you. By Lost Lake.”

A thread of eeriness penetrated her misery. That was where the Kingmaking took place.
Nobody went there but a new made High King . . . or High Queen.

•   •   •

Then the world crashed in on her once more. Her father lay with his eyes closed, comely
even with the blood bright on this throat and lips, years vanished from his face.
She stood, slowly, the Sword of the Lady in her hand. Always before it had seemed
a little heavy, a little large, as a blade sized for her father would.

Now it was perfect, alive in her grip at the exact weight her wrist and arm could
wield, and her fingers closed around it as if it had been fashioned for her at the
place where the world began. Somehow that made the moment real, as even her father’s
face relaxed in death could not.

Slowly she raised the Sword on high. Heuradys fell to her knees, head bowed, and the
others did in a ripple outward like the fall of petals from flowers.

“I am my father’s heir,” she called, her voice strange and harsh in her ears. “And
for him and for Montival, for the land that he has watered with his blood . . . I
swear vengeance on those who did this deed!”