The Griever's Mark (The Griever's Mark series Book 1) (35 page)

“Stay here, Astarti. You’ve done enough.”

I lunge upwards, grabbing for his throat. “Give it to me!”

Pain explodes in my chest as I fly back to slam into the wall.

I am still gasping for air when Heborian stalks near. He looms over me, his dark eyes furious. “I gave you my answer. Calm yourself, or I will restrain you.”

“Sire—”

Heborian raises a hand to cut Wulfstan off, but his eyes never leave me. “I’m sorry, Astarti, but no. I will not risk the knife.”

I am gathering myself to lunge for him again when the howling wind batters the wall, sending men and weapons tumbling away. I hear Heborian’s surprised cry as he skids across stone.

The wall cracks, begins to tear apart behind me.

I dive for the Drift, but here, so near the raging currents of air, I flow into them instead. I touch the strength and madness at their heart. I grapple, grabbing at the swirl, trying to wrestle it to stillness. It whips away from me. I gather all my strength and shape a net of energy. I do not know how I am doing it, but the net is Drift-work and wind, the two blended beyond separation.

I cast my net around the wind’s heart. Logan strains furiously, but I drag him and fling him from the wind.

I tumble to the torn earth of the battlefield. The mass of soldiers spins through my vision. The sky swings and slides. I smack painfully against stone then roll to a stop on something soft. I feel a curled hand beneath my back and scramble away in horror. A dead soldier.

Sections of the battle rage behind me, but the bulk of the action is hidden beyond mounded stones covered with fresh earth and the stringy roots of grass. Soldiers shout and grunt somewhere beyond, and metal rings on metal. I rise shakily and claw my way to the top of the soil-covered stones. Elbows sinking in the loose, moist earth, I lie flat on my belly.

Fifteen feet away, Logan staggers to his feet. Soldiers push and shove to get away from him.

I glance at the city wall, crumbling, almost broken. One more battering, and it will fall. Tornelaine will fall.

I think despairingly of the knife, but now there’s no time for it. There’s no time.

I deaden myself. I cannot afford to feel anything. I tell myself: this what he wants. This is what I would want him to do for me, to stop me. I will give him this gift of death because I love him.

I draw out a thread of Drift-energy and shape it into a bow and arrow.

I nock the faintly glowing arrow and take aim.

Logan shakes his head. He sways and falls to his knees. He lays a hand over his ribs, hunching around the pain. His shirt hangs in dirty, bloody strips. He flops onto his back, his chest heaving. I know that chest; I have touched its warmth and solidity, kissed its smooth planes and the ridged arc of scar. But I must put an arrow through it. I must.

Now.

Now.

Now
.

I shudder, and the bow shakes in my hands. I swallow the surge of denial, the refusal, and fix my aim, seeking Logan again. One shot. He will hardly feel anything.

The bow blurs.

Logan blurs.

With the dead weight of defeat in my chest, the pain of my weakness and cowardice, the bow hisses from my hands. My head falls against my arms. My fingers dig into the loose earth, scratching deep to the stone below. My eyes burn. I cannot. I hate myself for it, but I cannot.

Logan’s grunt as he rolls and staggers to his feet makes me look up. He shakes his head, looks my way. For one beautiful, torturous second, he seems to see me, to know me, then he is gone, his expression dead as Belos’s power closes over him once more.

I shove to my feet with a surge of rage. I snarl as I withdraw into my mooring, hovering at the edge of the Drift, at the edge of everything. Aching, mad with pain, I reach instinctively into the deep, sleeping energy of the earth, down into the deeper, angry turbulence far below its surface. I want it, need it. Nothing else can express my fury.

I plunge.

I tear through the earth, splitting wide every crack and crevice, bursting to the surface to slash and lunge at the massed army. I fling stone, stab, and smash. Shields splinter. Swords snap. Men flee. I am an ocean of earth, ruthless with power.

I sweep to the fringes where I know the Seven will be. I rip myself from the earth to grab and tear, to haul them into the crushing embrace of stone, but they vanish into the Drift. Cowards!

Furious, I grab the nearest body, to bury it in stone, and hear the scream of a young voice. I pause, half myself, half stone. I feel the air on my skin as my human face emerges. Rood, in his silver breastplate, now dented and dirty, smeared with blood, struggles in my stony grasp. I drop him with a gasp. He scrambles away, the horror in his face showing that he recognizes me.

“I’m sorry.” My voice comes out an earthy rumble. I almost killed my own brother. What am I doing?

With a scream of horror, I plunge into myself and through the earth again, rippling through the ground to where I left Belos. This is no one’s fault but his. I might not be able to kill him, but maybe I can bind him, trap him in the earth.

I burst from the ground on the hilltop, twisting around with a crunch of stone, searching wildly.

Gone.

Chapter 36

LOGAN

I AM RAGE.

I howl with it.

I rip the ground around me.

Men scream.

Some other force has been raging around me, wild and powerful, familiar somehow.

I search for it, but it’s gone now.

I begin to dive into the wind, to lose myself, but something yanks at the core of my being, wracking me with nausea.

I am wrenched into another place, where lights shift and vanish. The Other yanks me toward him, and I think I will be ripped in half. His energies rage within him, tearing, clawing for release. I know this because he is the other part of me, or I am of him. Even so, I don’t like him. I try to wrench away, but he rears above me, and I am sucked into his madness.

We are one.

We race along, seven others beside us. It goes on forever as we skim toward that place of deadness.

I am squeezed through some narrow tunnel, then I fall to dry earth, blinded by light, swallowed by heat.

Around me, men argue. They are angry, frightened.

I gasp with relief. I am myself. The Other has withdrawn. I see in my mind how I tore through the battlefield. I see Bran’s face as I whipped at the wall. I see his horror, his sadness, his resignation. I almost killed him.

I stagger to my feet.

I find him—the Other—not three feet from me, arguing with his men, blood soaking his chest, his cheek ragged and torn.

I lunge for his throat.

He spins my way, teeth gritted.

He clenches his fist, and pain sears through me. I scream as the very root of my being is twisted, torn, beaten.

“Down,” he commands.

“You are not—”

“Your will is
mine
! Down!”

I howl with rage, but it fades as my mind dims.

I hear his voice as though from a distance: “I can’t have him fighting all the time. Break him.”

I feel my body dragged across hot, dry ground, stone scraping against my torn flesh, but I cannot fight. My mind shrinks to a pinpoint, letting through nothing but light and pain.

Chapter 37

FROM THE HILLTOP, I watch the remainder of the army flee, Martel himself a lumbering, oversized figure taking down his own men as they abandon him. But even he turns to run when the gates of Tornelaine swing open and Heborian’s men ride out with swords and lances. They will give no quarter. Anyone captured will be executed. Heborian promised as much before the battle. Funny how rebellion looks different from one side or the other. Who really is the rightful king? Does anyone have that right at all?

I shake my head. I don’t care. Not right now. Belos is gone. The Seven are gone. Logan—

I take a shuddering breath and trudge down the hill.

Bodies litter the field before the city wall. I weave among them, grateful for the sharp pains in my leg, my hip, my shoulder. Without pain to focus on, I would throw up from the horror. One man slumps around the spear in his belly. Another’s half severed neck is caked with blood and dirt. I smell the sharp odor of blood and the stink of spilled entrails. Some of the bodies shift, men not quite dead.

I round a crevice where it looks like someone dug a plow ten feet into the earth, past the soil and into the rocky bones of the hill. Two men lie crushed in stone. Did Logan do that? Or did I? My stomach heaves suddenly, and I fall to my knees, retching into the torn grass. I wipe shakily at my mouth with the back of a sleeve.

I hear someone sobbing.

I raise my head to see a man dragging himself across the rubble-strewn ground. One leg is twisted at the wrong angle and blood seeps from a stomach wound. He is headed nowhere, just moving. I go to him.

The man cringes when he sees me, but I kneel down anyway. Just as I lay a hand on his shoulder to calm him, a voice snaps at me from behind.

“That’s one of Martel’s men.”

I twist to see Rood, his silver breastplate dull with dirt, his face smeared with blood, picking his way around the bodies.

“He’s just a soldier. He does what he’s told, as Heborian’s men do.”

Rood’s dark eyebrows twitch. “What do you care about him? After the way you tore through everyone.”

I flinch. Will there be no end to my mistakes?

Rood crouches beside me with a crunch of chainmail. “You—” He cuts himself off, shakes his head. He starts again, “Without you, Tornelaine would have fallen. Our victory is yours.” He finishes stiffly, “Thank you.”

“I almost killed you,” I whisper.

“But you didn’t.”

“But—”

“If you hadn’t done what you did, the wall would have fallen. Belos would have taken the city. I would be dead by now. And so would everyone else. Enjoy your victory.” He rises abruptly. “I have to find my father.” His face reddens, and the unspoken correction—
our
father—hangs in the air.

I say nothing.

He hangs there a moment, then the rushing air of his disappearance stirs my hair. I turn back to the wounded man. He’s gone still. I nudge him, roll him over. His eyes stare, wide and sightless, into the sky.

* * *

I stand in one of the yellow and white striped physicians’ tents at the edge of the field, the afternoon sun blazing through the canvas. I wring out a clean, wet cloth. Carts lumbered from the city once the victory was certain, and the tents were soon buzzing with activity as men bearing litters brought the wounded inside. The new stitches in my thigh and shoulder throb, but I refused to return to the city. I’m not ready to face anyone there.

I bend over the man on the table, gently scrubbing the deep gash that runs from his wrist to elbow. One of the physicians, a portly man in a white apron streaked with blood, peers over my shoulder.

“Do you need someone to stitch it for you?”

“I can do it.”

I catch the physician’s nod out of the corner of my eye as he hurries off to tend the more seriously wounded.

The man on the table grits his teeth when I take the needle and thread to his arm. My stitches are clean, even, necessary, but it still feels like I am only hurting him. If only I knew something of Healing.

When the stitching is done and the man has joined the other lightly wounded in preparing bandages, I walk to the opening in the tent. I duck into the fresh air, glad to leave behind the stink of death and injury. I move away, and the moans from inside fade. Men with litters continue to scour the field.

“Astarti!”

I look up in surprise to see Bran hurrying my way. Dirt streaks his face and his red-gold hair clings in sweaty clumps to his forehead.

I acknowledge him with a lift of my chin. “You’re all right?”

Bran stops before me, his worn face anxious. “Are you? Rood said—”

“I’m fine,” I say woodenly.

“What are you doing here?”

I draw away. “Helping clean up the mess I made.”

“None of this is your fault.”

“Then why does it feel like it?”

He doesn’t answer me, but he jerks his chin, indicating for me to follow. Reluctantly, I do. It is easier than arguing. We walk between two of the striped tents, stepping over the stakes and angled ropes, to emerge into the open space behind. The city wall looms over us.

I ask, suddenly worried, “Is Aron all right? And Korinna?”

“Aron is fine. Korinna took at arrow to the arm, but she’ll be all right. She and the other injured Wardens are already on their way to Avydos for Healing.”

This drives us to awkward silence as the injured Keldans groan within the striped tents. There will be no Healing for them, only the slow, natural reknitting of flesh. Or death.

When we reach the end of the line of tents, Bran takes a deep breath that I know will be followed by words I do not want to hear.

“So. Belos has him.”

My heart deadens.

“He is Leashed?”

I let my eyes tell him. I can’t bear to say the word. Bran deflates as his last hope leaves him.

I accuse, “You knew he would not be dead. You didn’t tell me.”

Bran looks at me steadily. “I thought it possible. I didn’t want to give you false hope.”

“How did you know?” My voice is angry, like this is somehow Bran’s fault, but he doesn’t seem offended.

“I’m a scholar, Astarti.”

I grit my teeth at this non-answer.

“Only my mother knows for sure. It is her secret to tell or keep.”

I flash with anger. “It’s not hers. Logan has a right to know where he came from.”

Bran looks at me sympathetically, and I tear my eyes away. He changes the subject. “I saw you tear him from the wind. You’re blending Drift-work and earthmagic.”

I shrug. “I guess.”

His silence makes me prickle with dread. What is he thinking?

I admit, “I understand now why it’s forbidden. You saw what I did with it.”

Bran hesitates before he says carefully, “Yes.”

I wish he would tell me it wasn’t my fault, but he doesn’t, and I won’t ask him to. Instead I ask, making things worse, “Did I kill any of our own?”