Brightly Burning (49 page)

Pol sighed again, shook his head, and patted the top of the bed beside him. She accepted the silent invitation and sat beside him, pulling her legs up onto the quilted coverlet and curling up against his shoulder. “Lan couldn't be anything but indifferent to Elenor—or any girl, for that matter. He's already lifebonded. To his Companion,” he added, to cut through any more questions.

Ilea squirmed around and looked into his face, her own features a mask of incredulity. “You
aren't
joking!” she exclaimed, stunned, and even a little shocked. “Oh, no! Poor Elenor!”

“And poor Lan, and poor Kalira—that's his Companion—” he replied. “Herald-bond
and
lifebond? They're never out of each other's heads, and if anything happens to Kalira, Lan just goes—crazy—” He shook his head. “When she was hurt, he couldn't think of anything else, and it was no use attempting to get him to try. No one his age should have to cope with a full lifebond. It's not healthy. He doesn't even know who he is, yet, but now he's inextricably bound up with someone who isn't his age, his sex, or even human.”

“But apparently in his case, it's necessary,” she brooded, putting her head back on his shoulder with a sigh of her own. “If what I've heard is true.
She's
the controlling force on his Gift?”

“Exactly, and I'm not sure she could do that if they weren't lifebonded. But he's never going to be
himself,
whole and entire, and he's never going to be independent. Is he?” he asked her doubtfully, leaning back against the pillows and making them both more comfortable.

“Ask Elenor. I'm not the Mind-Healer. Or, rather,” she corrected hastily, “
don't
ask Elenor. I'd rather she didn't take him on as a Cause; there's nothing more certain of cementing misplaced infatuation into permanency than being Needed.”

Pol heard the inflection that turned the word into an icon, and he agreed with her. “I talked with her back when I first saw this happening,” he said, hastening to let her know that he hadn't shirked his parental duties. “I tried—I really
tried
to make her understand that she—she couldn't hope to compete—I
tried—
”

Ilea wrapped her arms around him, and he relaxed into her embrace.
Gods, it's so good to be with her again—

“I know you did, and I know you didn't try anything as stupid as flatly opposing her,” she said into his ear. “Nothing feeds romance like opposition, and you know it.”

“She'll talk to me about it, sooner rather than later, I think,” Ilea continued, as her hair tickled his nose and he tucked it under his chin. “I don't know what else I can do, but at least I can keep track of how she's feeling.”

“Satiran reminds me fairly often that parents can't cushion the blows our children set themselves up for,” he murmured into her ear, breathing in the warm scent of herbs that always clung to her.

“I'm not going to think any more about it until tomorrow,” she said firmly.

He was perfectly willing to go along with her on that score.

MIDMORNING, and they were less than half a day from the Southern Border and the war, and yet there was no sign of the conflict here other than the wear on the roads. They were no longer on the main roads; this was the way that Ilea had passed coming up here, and they were all returning to report to the main quarters of the Lord Marshal. This was a pine forest, a very old one; the scent was fantastic in here, but the boughs all overhung the road, completely blocking the sun and leaving them in half-light no brighter than twilight.

Pol led the way, unburdened for once. Ilea was up behind Lan, and Elenor behind Tuck. Ilea was a perfect passenger, actually; she was friendly and made intelligent conversation; Lan much preferred her to Elenor.

“We moved the Headquarters to White Foal Pass just before I left,” Ilea told him. “That's why this little road hasn't been trampled to bare dirt yet. It looked to the Lord Marshal as if the Karsites were going to make a big push there. It would be the logical place to go with as large a force as they have. White Foal is the only pass where they get big numbers of men through quickly.”

“Not to mention the value of pushing us back at
White Foal
Pass,” Lan replied grimly. “There's an awful lot of symbolic significance there if even I can see that. . . .”

Ilea nodded. He felt her hair move against his shoulder. Then, before he could continue his thought——something dropped down out of the tree head of them.

Frozen between shock and total terror, Lan jerked on the reins, and Kalira shied sideways.

It—no,
he
—landed on the pillion behind Pol, knocking Satiran sideways with the unexpected weight. Hooves skidding on the icy road, Satiran shrieked as his hind feet slid out from underneath him, but the black-hooded man grabbed Pol around the chest and shoulders and pulled him sideways. They tumbled to the ground together, Pol fighting to get his arms free and shouting, Satiran scrambling to get his feet under him again.

Elenor screamed, and kept screaming, a high, thin, terror-filled wail; Ilea didn't make a sound, but her hands clutched Lan's upper arms so tightly it hurt. Lan's stomach flipped, but it was the only part of him that could move. He couldn't even breathe—

The man had a knife, a black-bladed knife that didn't reflect light at all; it drew Lan's eyes and filled his gaze as the man brandished it.

He'd wrapped his legs around Pol's body, trapping Pol's arms so the Herald couldn't get to his weapons. He shouted something as he and Pol struggled on the ground—it was Karsite, something about demons—

:Lan!:
Kalira shouted at him, but he couldn't shake off his paralysis—

The attacker grabbed Pol's hair, pulling his head back. Satiran, still shrieking a battle cry, whirled. His hooves pounded the ground a hair away from Pol, but he couldn't trample the man and not get Pol, too.

Tuck fought with Elenor to keep her from leaping into the fray. Ilea frozen and rigid, only whimpered.

The dragon within Lan flamed into life with a roar, ready to kill.

The dragon uncoiled in a rush, craving death, fire, destruction. It lunged at the restraints that held it, raged against the bindings, filling Lan's mind and soul with a dreadful lust.

No!
He couldn't. That was a man, not a bundle of straw!

:Lan!:
Kalira shouted at him.
:Now!:

This was all happening too fast, he couldn't think!

Only fire would save his friend. He had to let the dragon kill!

No!
Pol was—Pol was a fighter! He could—surely he would free himself—Lan couldn't kill a
man
—

As the man struck at Pol's throat, Pol wrenched his head down and to the side and his hands grabbed the man's feet, twisting in a move Lan had seen Odo demonstrate a dozen times. Lan's heart pounded, his head felt full to bursting—

Blood fountained, as the man slashed his knife across Pol's eyes instead of his throat, blood gushing everywhere, staining the snow, dyeing the Whites a terrible crimson.

And something inside Lan parted with a
snap.

Pol screamed. Ilea and Tuck screamed. Elenor was still screaming.

Lan's throat closed, his hands clenched on the reins, and his vision tunneled—but the Karsite exploded into flame.

Ilea scrambled down from the pillion running for Pol. Lan barely noticed. He was bathed in fire, tiny flamelets dancing from the tips of his fingers, floating in the air around him. This was what he had been born for—

The dragon within him exulted in its freedom, and ravaged the Karsite within and without. Bound to the dragon, one with the dragon, he
was
the dragon now, and the dragon was rage and flame and hunger. The Karsite died instantly, but death was not enough, not nearly enough! He spun in a circle of fire and danced a
volta
of revenge as the Karsite burned and burned and burned.

THE knife fell, as Pol tried to squirm out of the way, and the blackened steel sliced across his face.
Gods!

A streak of agony, darkness, the hot gush of his own blood over his cheeks.

He screamed, the sound tearing from his throat, but kept fighting. The next stroke could be the final one—

He held to consciousness and twisted the Karsite's ankles until the man himself shouted in pain, then wrenched himself free of the Karsite somehow, still screaming in agony.

He scrambled away over the snow on hands and knees, horrible pain making him
want
to curl himself into a ball and just lie there screaming. He heard a strange sound behind him, as if something very large and soft had plummeted out of the sky to land in the snow as he scrambled, blind and still howling with agony, toward the place where he thought the rest of them were—

Teeth grabbed his collar and hauled him unceremoniously out of harm's way, dropping him literally in Ilea's lap.

Only then did he fall into blessed unconsciousness.

Lan ignored the mind-voice—until it resorted to a sort of mind-
kick
that finally got his attention.

Shaken out of his entrancement, this time the mind-voice penetrated the wash of fire and the terrible joy.

Oh, gods—
He shook his head and wrenched himself out of the meld with the dragon, fighting to get his eyes open.

Without his full attention feeding it, the dragon found itself quickly enchanted again by Kalira. Sullenly, it coiled itself deep inside his mind, and dropped into uneasy slumber. Jolted back into the real world, Lan opened his eyes on a black patch in the snow that held
nothing,
nothing but a bit of melted metal—not a body, not even bones. Nothing but ashes.

Ilea sat on the bare road, Pol's bloody head in her lap, a frown of fierce concentration in her face. The gash across Pol's eyes closed even as Lan watched, but there was no doubt that the knife had cut right across Pol's eyes, blinding him, perhaps forever.

Gut-wrenching guilt hit him and nearly knocked him out of the saddle.
Oh, gods, what have I done—

“Don't sit there feeling sorry for yourself,” Ilea snarled with a touch of hysteria in her voice, without looking up. “I need hot water and bandages, and I need them
now.
And a fire, before he goes into shock. And don't wallow in guilt until after you've got it going.”