Clearwater Dawn (47 page)

Spellpower pulsed in the battlecaster’s hand, a twisted whip of smoke and shadow lashing out, coursing through Morghan as brands of piercing black flame. Scúrhand saw the warrior cry out. But then even in the moment that it should have taken for Ectauth to finish him, the battlecaster’s sudden scream rose in dark echo, and the tendrils of black fire wrapped tight in his fist flickered and flared out as twin bolts of white light tore through his armor and convulsed him as if he’d taken a blade in the back. Morghan reacted without seeing, screaming with pain as he twisted back and around and drove the blue-white blade through the battlecaster’s throat.

From the air, Scúrhand could only stare to where Thiri stood, eyes wide as if somehow only just realizing that her spellpower had put her captain down. Then she was moving even as cries of treachery arose from the warriors closest to her, a surge of shock and anger rising as she ran to Morghan’s side.

The dagger the girl drew told Scúrhand that her spellpower was close to spent. She unleashed a last barrage of magical force against a howling axe-fighter who struck from the side, and who fell to Morghan’s blade as the warrior spun past in a blur of blood and steel.

Then four more were on them, Thiri slashing awkwardly at the closest attackers as they pushed in. Scúrhand laid down three points of arcane shielding around them, but the fight was too fast. He could see Morghan shouting, could feel the words without hearing, telling the girl to run.

She didn’t.

Where a pair of archers erupted from the shadows, she spun toward them. Four arrows that would have claimed Morghan unleashed a shroud of blood as they tore through her.

Afterward, when he looked back on it, when he tried to remember, Scúrhand couldn’t summon up the images that should have recalled for him what happened next.

In his head, he thought he heard a scream. A voice that was Morghan’s but not Morghan’s somehow. He saw arrows fly, saw the shield the warrior had borne from the Myrnan ruins seem to pull them from the air as he fought with a ferocity Scúrhand had never seen before. And through the fury of the warrior’s movements, the mage imagined for a moment that he could see a blue-white light in Morghan’s eyes. A glow to match the steady pulse flaring now from the damasked heart of the blade as it bit deep again and again.

Scúrhand couldn’t see the moment when Ectauth fell in the chaos, but he was dead with the rest of them when Morghan finally slowed. The warrior’s armor was flecked red with gore, breath white on the air, the cold of the chasm chamber deeper now. He wiped his face and arms with Ectauth’s black cloak. He didn’t wipe the blade as he slipped it to his belt. Didn’t need to, no blood clinging to the blue-white steel.

“What in fate’s name was that?” Scúrhand was crouched in the shadow a short distance away, faint light showing above through narrow windows he hadn’t seen before. Dawn breaking outside. He had briefly considered holding the question for a better time, realizing in the end that he had no idea what that time would look like.

“That was staying alive.”

Where Thiri had fallen, Morghan knelt at her side. Her skin was white as ice and blood-streaked, the arrows fanning out across her chest. But even as Morghan fumbled bloody fingers at her neck, Scúrhand called out behind him, could see the faint rise and fall of the black shafts.

“She’s breathing…”

Morghan felt the blood weak at her neck, saw the steel-edged hunting heads where they punched out through her back. He had the skill to bind the wounds, but there was no point. The girl was at the edge of death, no way to pull the arrows without only hastening the end.

“Search Ectauth,” he whispered to Scúrhand, fear in his voice. “He’ll have healing…”

“I did. Nothing.”

Save her…
whispered the breathless voice of vengeance as it threaded through his mind, and Morghan’s vision blurred suddenly, eyes burning.

He remembered Eltolitinus, remembered the faces of the others and saw the dread in their eyes that was their last sight before the final darkness, as they were consumed body and soul. He remembered the mountain giant’s halls, heard the howling of wolves and the screams of those who had followed him. All the ones he couldn’t save.

“Save her,” he whispered, and he felt the words twist in him like a thing closer to prayer than any oath the warrior had ever spoken.

He felt the metal of the bastard sword grow warm beneath his gore-streaked hand.

Without thinking, he grasped the girl’s fingers, forced them closed around the haft. He felt her shudder, saw color twist through her cheeks as he quickly snapped the shafts that pinned her, grasped each in turn and pulled. In the dark sleep of pain, she screamed, but even as she did, Morghan saw the wounds close over as she consumed the healing power held in that blade of damasked steel, the blood-streaked skin smooth again as her eyes snapped open.

The sword slipped from her hand, clattering to the stones as she scrambled back. Scúrhand was close by now, catching the disorientation in her eyes that he knew would quickly pass. But it was the sword he stared at as Morghan picked it up.

The warrior turned away, looked to the light above and walked toward a distant flight of stairs twisting up from the shadows of the cavern.

“It’s done,” Scúrhand said to Thiri. He saw her staring to the carnage around her, wide-eyed as if waking from a half-remembered dream. “You’re safe, with us at least. If you’re still here when Arsanc sends another force to discover what happened to this one, I wouldn’t like your chances.”

She followed him shakily as he followed Morghan in turn. The stairs led on to a passage he recognized from his previous dealings with the dead Razeen. The main doors of the citadel were ahead, open now where the sentinels they’d first avoided had been called in by Ectauth. The scent of sea air and the rising sun were beyond.

Scúrhand fought the urge to break for the library, the incalculable worth of lore still scattered there. When he had searched the dismembered Ectauth, he found scroll tubes that had been slipped to his pack by quick instinct. Another time for the rest, he thought. He had a more important mystery to assess at present.

Beyond the doorway, Morghan stood atop a rise of stone a dozen strides away. He had the sword in hand, was swinging it idly, a dark silhouette against the sky.

“Vindicator,” the warrior called.

“You?” There was an edge in Scúrhand’s voice. It took him a moment to hear it, then another moment for him to recognize the fear there. “Taking vengeance against whom? You blame Arsanc for what happened here? Ectauth?”

“I blame myself. For all of it.”

There was a familiar weariness in the warrior’s voice, but something else as well. A kind of peace Scúrhand hadn’t heard in all the time since Morghan had returned from the north, but it chilled him now, the mage not sure why. In any of the previous narrow escapes he had followed Morghan into, fear had never been in short supply. But before he could think on it, Thiri’s voice came from behind him, stronger than he would have expected.

“You seek vengeance against your own past, you fight a foe you’ll never defeat.”

Morghan turned to appraise her for a long moment, a darkness flashing momentarily in his gaze. And then he laughed out loud. From somewhere below the cliffs, the call of seabirds rang out as if in echo.

The warrior shook his head. “ ‘Vindicator’ is the blade’s name. He was right,” he said, pointing to Scúrhand. Thiri’s look told him she didn’t understand, but Morghan only laughed again.

Scúrhand watched, smiling himself after a time. “Are you absolutely sure you’re quite all here?” He caught Thiri’s eye as he glanced back, but it was Morghan she moved toward.

“More sure today,” the warrior said. He shrugged as he nodded to Thiri. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

There was nothing more to say as they returned to the horses, just waking from a fitful sleep within the hissing curtain of the wind. They rested themselves only for a short while before they set off, Morghan with Thiri behind him, Scúrhand thoughtful as they rode out against the red flood of dawn.