Duality (10 page)

“Thou shalt stay the course.”
There was none of the father in the king’s touch.
“She hast been given the strength to endure what must come
.”

“Block it out,”
Hani`ena begged Cedric.

“I cannot.”
Regret tinged Cedric’s voice. For a moment, the father revealed himself. “
He bound them and that cannot be undone. Through that binding he feels her pain and she his. He canst shield us from her, but not himself
.
”

Hani`ena tossed her head. Insects crawled into her ears, her eyes, her nostrils, but a full body shake would send Loren headfirst into the muck. She snapped her tail. Green slime clung to the long hairs and splattered against her sides. Her temper rose at that…creature-of-earth-and-fire-in-woman-form hurting her partner. Odd way to refer to a woman.

Hani`ena still directed her thoughts to the distant king. “
Does she know? Can she sense him?”

“Nay. She wouldst not harm him.”

Loren groaned.
“Would you please not speak of me as if I was not here?”

Cedric withdrew.

As Hani`ena approached the monolithic half circle of fallen stones, Loren straightened with caution and reverence. The sun was nearly gone, and this was the fourth ruin they’d explored in half as many days.

The swamp made it impossible to track their quarry. The stench of decaying plants and swamp gas hung in the air, the maddening whine of insects a constant distraction. Reduced to prudent sensing, he saw no sign of Moira. Impressive she eluded him thus far.

Hani`ena never put a foot wrong although there was no way to see what the knee-deep pools of murky water hid. All this soft, sucking wetness was not good for her hooves. They needed dry country as soon as possible.

He was not much better off. Without reaching out to Dara, and caution warned him against attempting so obvious a magic, he knew no specifics beyond that initial branding. His entire body ached. Every instinct urged him to turn around, but each time he wavered Hani`ena seized his mind. Her fierce, single-minded focus on the mission kept him in the saddle.

Loren eyed the lengthening shadows and drew his sword. Layers of moss hung like a shroud from a twisted cypress tree. The stone circle loomed ahead in the deepening twilight as Hani`ena splashed forward. “
Stop. Hold.”

Hani`ena froze. Loren closed his eyes, isolating Dara’s pain and his own sense of self. “
What else? What else is there?”

Outrage-at-betrayal. Shame-at-fleeing. Yearning-for-absent-loved-ones. The jumble of emotions crashed over him.

He grinned in spite of his own weariness. Mortal women were complex emotional creatures and thus easy to single out. He knew the instant Moira became aware of their presence.

Alarm. Stillness. Focus.

“Moira is here,”
he sent to Hani`ena.

“She shalt be armed,”
the mare warned.

He slid from her back into the cold water without making a ripple. Mud sucked at the soles of his boots. Ignoring the insects crawling over his skin, he lifted his shield from Hani`ena’s shoulder harness.

A blast of killing rage speared him.

”Above you,”
the mare sent, a split second afore an eagle’s piercing scream heralded a cloud of buff feathers.

Loren raised the shield over his head barely in time to deflect the talons slashing at his upturned face. The mountain eagle wheeled off, kiting moonward for another dive.

A bowstring twanged from the shadowed ruins. A white-fletched arrow hissed betwixt Loren and the mare. Hani`ena reared.
“Second stone, left of the flat fallen one.”

“Got her,”
he replied.

Slashing talons crashed into his shield again. The weight staggered him. Unprepared for an all out attack from a full-grown female mountain eagle, his arm sagged. A fierce round golden eye flashed, a hooked beak snapped at his nose. Conscious of her hollow bones, he threw her skyward off his shield with controlled force, not wanting to injure the valiant creature. She shot for the stars again, but he had no doubt she would wheel around for a third pass.

“Moira, cease. It is Loren. Auger Xavier sent me to find you.”

An arrow’s fletching brushed the hair covering his right ear, passing under Hani`ena’s neck. Startled, the mare shied backward with a loud splash. “
Too close.”
She snorted.

“Liar!” a woman’s voice screamed. Waves of disbelief and sorrow. “Xavier’s dead. They’re all dead.”

“Nay, lady. He lives. I have seen the healer, Dara. She helped Xavier escape. We have been to Jakop’s Crossroads and Artur Barach gave Xavier a horse. Even as we speak Xavier rides southward for help. He brings Hengist and Sezeny back.”

Wariness. Rising hope.

Overhead, the eagle screamed and wheeled.

Loren turned a cautious eye skyward. “I have come from Artur’s to help you home.”

“Xavier canna ride.”

Her mountain brogue, softened by years with Hengist, was back.
By stress
? he wondered. “I agree he flops about like a crow-scare. Nonetheless he went.”

“If ’tis really ye, ye’ll know what Hengist said t’ye afore he left t’change fer battle.”

“I had no chance to speak to him afore we left. But the night afore, the two of you snuck into my chambers from the secret passage that connects the green guest chambers to the sewing room. You carried the last bottle of your uncle’s drenieval whisky and the changling-glass goblets my cousin Sirona gave you as a wedding present.” Loren cast a jaundiced eye skyward to the huge raptor’s wheeling silhouette. “Call off your feathered guardian. You know I mean no harm.”

“Ealga isna mine t’ command.”

“Behind you,”
Hani`ena blasted.

A sharp pricking betwixt his shoulder blades froze Loren in his tracks. How had he missed the other’s presence? Even with all of the emotion roiling off the three females, he should have caught another presence. He opened his heart. Naught. His empathy told him there was no one there, a fact belied by the weapon at his back. He had never encountered a being with enough control to deflect elven empathy. “
Who? What?”

“Northern tribesman. War spear.”

“Hands up. Move an’ I’ll skewer ye like a wild boar,” the unknown man stated in the same mountain brogue as Moira. No emotional inflection at all.

“How did you miss him?”
Loren sent.

She did not deign to reply.

“Hold, Trys. He’s a friend.” From the growing gloom, Moira slogged toward them, pale and bedraggled. She wore her clan colors of black and grey plaid, further muted by mud, in a knee-length pleated skirt and a loose, long sleeved blouse. A bronze wolf’s head brooch pinned a fringed woolen shawl to her right shoulder. The arrow notched into her bow pointed toward the water.

A huge black wolf-not-wolf shadowed her, his back as high as her waist.

Loren stared at the creature. It curled a lip. Whatever it was, and for all its outward appearance it was
not
a true-wolf, Loren sensed no evil from it.

“Loren, thank th’ Goddess ye survived.” Moira released her ash bow with one muddied hand and reached out to grasp his.

Bone deep weariness. Numbness from too much fear going on for too long. Both came through her touch. He noticed the broken nails and work-blistered fingers. Her hand trembled in his. She had not had an easy time on her own.

“Loren, ’tis me bossy older brother Trystan. Ealga an’ Niadh here travel with him. Loren, put yer arms down. Trys, ye too.” Moira glared at both of them with flint grey eyes dulled by lack of sleep. “Since ye both appear t’ have th’ same idea, ye might as well dispense with th’ chest-beating an’ turn an’ meet face to face.”

The spear’s touch disappeared and Loren turned to face the man. Ealga plummeted toward them, snapping her wings open at the last moment to land on Trystan’s shoulder. Loren noted the extra padding in the talon-scarred shoulderpads of Trystan’s leather jerkin. He had had her for a long time. “I never met one who commanded the loyalty of both eagle and wolf.”

“I command naught.” Trystan’s posture showed no change from bearing the bird’s considerable weight. “They’re free t’ come an’ go as they will. They stay by choice.”

Loren had never met anyone who either did not experience emotions at all or buried them so deep they could not be sensed.

Moira’s brother was big by mountain man standards, half a head shorter than Loren but more muscular. He stood with the loose easy grace of a born fighter. His tangled shoulder-length hair sported random braiding; both hair and beard were grey. Hard blue eyes stared at Loren. Trystan’s skin was weathered and tanned but paled by ash and decorated by a series of swirling blue tattoos down the left side of his face. A wolf’s head amulet hung about his neck on a sinew cord.

Trystan revealed naught. No concern, no curiosity. The picture of perfect control. “We should get ye someplace warm an’ dry,” he told his sister. “Ye need rest.”

Loren caught something else, an intangible sense of “different” from the man. He glanced down at Niadh. It stared back with unlupine intelligence.

“I’m fine.” Looking anything but, Moira tucked a lank strand of sable hair behind her ear.

Loren frowned. “He is right. You need to get someplace warm and dry. You have more than your own health to think about.”

“Me sister can see t’ her own health.”

“You have not told him,” Loren realized.

“Told me what?” The bearded man turned to his sister. “Are ye ill?”

“Naught ye need worry ’bout, Trys. I’ve been dethroned an’ I’m hidin’ in a bug-infested swamp. Me lord husband is Goddess knows where. I’m fine. Couldna be better.”

Loren shook his head. “Enough. We both know your courage. That is not the issue. If you do not tell him, I shall. This is too important.”

Moira flinched. “How d’ye… Who told?”

Trystan frowned.
Concern. Worry.
Loren caught the first crack in the man’s control. “Ye’d best tell me now, li’l one.”

She sighed. “He’s right. I woulda told ye anyway. I just havena found th’ right time. I’m with child.”

Trystan’s eyes widened and dropped to her still flat stomach. “A bairn?”

Moira nodded. “Midwife Lacey confirmed it just afore—” Her voice wobbled, then she closed her eyes and straightened her narrow shoulders. When she opened her eyes again, her voice had steadied. “Auger Xavier swore it’s—he’s—a son. Hengist planned on namin’ his firstborn Alvar after his grandfather, but he dinna get a chance t’ hear about th’ bairn. I wanted t’ be sure, an’ then th’ battle…” Her voice trailed off.

“Are ye well?” Trystan asked.

“Well ’nough.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and changed the subject. “’Twas no time. Jalad struck so quick I barely escaped.” She looked down, ran her fingers through Niadh’s coarse black fur. Waves of dread rolled off her like a dark cloud. “Fare they well, our people?”

Loren caught Trystan’s eye and shook his head. “They shall be fine, Moira, once Hengist returns.”

Trystan’s jaw tightened. Something feral green flashed in his eyes. “Let’s get ye out o’ this water. Some nice lizard soup be just th’ thing on a cold night like this.”

Her wan face paled further. “Bastard.”

“Our parents were well wed e’er I showed. She hates lizard anything,” he told Loren. “E’en though they’re perfectly edible.”

“Except norricks,” Loren stated.

Trystan laughed. “Weel, aye. They’re ghastly, e’en skinned an’ boiled afore roasting. But they’re no’ poisonous.”

Loren’s face screwed up. “Nay, they just taste like oily mud. You have to be desperate to resort to them.”

Moira clutched her stomach.

“Ye dinna look well, sister.” Trystan’s face was the picture of innocence. “Was it sommat we said?”

Moira turned back the way she’d come. “There’s another flat stone behind that upright one.” She pointed. “’Tis big enough fer all three o’ us t’ sit ’round a fire, an’ two o’ us shoulda be able t’ lie down at a time whilst a third keeps watch.”

“The standin’ stone should shield most o’ th’ light from anyone comin’ from th’ south or th’ west,” Trystan observed. “But we canna do much about smoke. Damp wood smokes.”

“I’ll risk it with these bugs. I’ll e’en sit downwind.”

“Come, Moira.” Loren headed for the campsite. “Let us get you where you can dry out. I shall get a fire started.”

Trystan turned to Niadh. “Time t’ go huntin’, lad.”

“No lizards,” she called after his retreating form.

Laughter floated back to them.

Moira reclined on one arm and watched Loren through narrowed eyes. “Why’d ye blather on o’ th’ bairn? Ye’d no right. ’Tis me news t’ share.”

“You were with him for how long and said naught?”

“’Tis not sommat needs worryin’ after.”

“That child is all the more reason for Jalad to come after you with his last man and breath.” He banked the fire for a long, slow burn. “He shall never stop hunting you. That child is the future.”