Authors: Robin D. Owens
Ivrog grunted. "Good idea. Try also to rest. Perhaps a little
spelltune or two about how you will be at your best on the Field."
A little laugh welled in her throat. Affirmations? "I will
fulfill my true potential on the Field."
She felt Ivrog nod. "Sounds good. When you de-trance, let me
know, and I'll trance myself."
"I will fulfill my true potential on the Field." She
tasted the words again, wondered what sort of tune to give them, then sent a
last glance at the quickly disappearing Castle, her first home on Lladrana.
She'd liked her suite there. Trees were in full blossom, and a rising
bluebird's cheerful mating call followed them away.
A
nguished, Bastien stood staring after Alexa, then looked down at
himself. Funny, it didn't look like the heart and guts had been torn from him
to lay spilled on the ground. Maybe the jerir had prevented it, or all the
other scars on his body.
Didn't prevent the ripping pain, though. He ran his hands over his
chest. No cavity. Not outside.
Cold sweat beaded on his temples, ran down his face. He doubled
over, gasping with agony, and finally the torment hit his brain.
What had he
done? He'd sent his Pairling off to battle without him. She could die!
Fool! Idiot! Moron!
Fool! Idiot! Moron!
The feycoocu's words echoed
his own, screamed into his ears as a warhawk's cry.
"So where have you been?" he croaked.
Taking care of things.
Typical that she spoke in riddles. He jerked upright, forced his
fear down and started to run to the pentagram in Alexa's
home. He'd never run so fast, but as he skidded over the threshold into the
entryway, he felt their Song dim. She was gone. Gone from the house.
Faucon slammed into him from behind. They both rocked before they
caught their balance. Panting, Faucon said, "Just heard, the battle is at
Prevoy's Pointe."
Big mountain, just over Lladrana's border. Rough country, and far.
Far from the Castle and even farther from here.
Bastien jerked his head back toward outside, in the direction of
the stables. All his best horses and volarans were here. He grinned at Faucon.
"Have I got a volaran for you."
Grinning back, Faucon said, "Great. Where's Alyeka?"
Bastien took off at a run. Faucon matched him.
"She went with the Marshalls."
Faucon's mouth opened, closed.
"Wise man," Bastien said. "Feycoocu!" he
yelled.
The bird circled his head.
I am here.
"Go to Alexa!" he shouted.
Not yet. I must keep an eye on you.
Bastien gritted his teeth. That sounded familiar, at least.
The volarans had left their stables, and now shifted around in the
corral. As word spread amongst the Chevaliers, they congregated at the stables
where the prime volarans waited.
Bastien threw open the gate. "Take your choice! I hear the
fighting will be good at Prevoy's Pointe."
Alexa's stable master, Pierre, led Bastien's strongest volaran out
of the stables. The stallion had flown in from a wild herd just three months
before and had demanded the best. He and Bastien had trained only enough to be
able to work as a team. The stallion wore no bridle, only a thin halter, reins
and a saddle.
Bastien mounted.
"Wait!" Alexa's little butler puffed up to Bastien,
carrying a box painted with Powerful symbols and bound with magic. "My
Lord, take this."
It was the box containing his shooting-star atomball.
"You're right. It could come in handy. My thanks."
Bastien stowed it in a bag behind him.
The butler wiped his perspiring face with a handkerchief and bowed
as far as his large paunch would allow. "Good journeys, My Lord."
Bastien nodded. "A good journey and good fighting. A safe
home to you." He settled himself again, and the volaran fidgeted a couple
of steps in preparation for taking off.
The feycoocu screamed from the stable eaves.
Go to the Castle
first, Bastien.
He looked up, jaws clenching.
No!
His volaran backed up a couple of steps, reared. Bastien kept his
seat.
I
have told your volaran to fly to the Castle.
He will
take you there with all speed.
The feycoocu clicked her beak and Bastien
could have sworn she smiled.
You will not arrive too long after the battle
started.
That turned his bowels to water. He wanted to be there
before
the
battle started, to support his woman.
You must go to the Castle first. The Song says so.
She
shot into the sky.
"Urvey, Pascal!" he yelled.
They were there, volaran-back, at his elbow. "Go with Faucon,
use distance-magic to reach the battlefield. Protect Alexa."
Both looked too damn young, but their faces white, they nodded,
then wheeled their volarans to follow Faucon.
To the Castle, now!
commanded Sinafin.
Dread made him stiffen in his saddle. He heard her faint bird cry,
looked up to see a small, flapping speck. As he watched, it winked out. Gone.
Some otherwhere.
For the first time since he was a child, he trembled.
Bastien tranced for most of the trip to the Castle; otherwise he'd
have gone mad with the tension. When he arrived, his stallion set him down in
an echoingly empty Temple Ward.
For a moment he just sat and stared. Never in all his life had he
seen the Temple Ward deserted. From his earliest memory, it had bustled with
life.
Then he wondered what he was supposed to do. "Sinafin?"
he whispered. It was safe to use her name, and he was sure the magical being
would hear.
Nothing.
He glanced at the sundial on the flat wall of the keep and decided
to wait a quarter hour. Dismounting, he walked his stallion to the trough, left
him there. Bastien stretched his legs by crossing to the cloister entry near
the map room, then paused. He really didn't want to see what was going on. He
wanted to be where the Marshalls were preparing for battle.
Testing his Song with Alexa, he found it calm but rising, building
energy as she neared the Field.
His volaran's angry neigh made him pivot. He stared at his father
on the ground near the flying horse.
Reynardus picked himself up and dusted off his tabard.
A sinking feeling invaded Bastien's gut. He didn't want to do what
destiny had prepared for him. Slowly he walked to his father.
They stared at each other for several heartbeats.
"Is this your volaran?" demanded Reynardus.
"He is his own."
A tic appeared next to Reynardus's mouth. "It was always that
strangeness that fried my temper."
"Where's your Shield, Uncle Ivrog?" Bastien feared the
answer.
Reynardus's lip curled. "Gone. Shield to the Exotique, I
believe."
Maybe if he hurried, fate wouldn't overtake him. Bastien jumped
onto his stallion and wheeled him toward the east, where the wall was lowest.
"You aren't leaving me here!"
Bastien didn't look back. "Yes, I am."
Before the volaran could take off, the whisper of wings came to
their ears, and another flying horse set down in the courtyard without a sound.
Except the dull thud of Bastien's heart as it accepted destiny.
The volaran was thin and scraggly with huge, sad eyes. Bastien
recognized her as the mare to the late Chevalier Perder, who'd been lost the
day Alexa had saved Farentha and Dema.
Time to accept the inevitable. He and his stallion turned,
observing the winged horse stepping delicately up to Reynardus, who stood
frozen with fear.
"Your volaran is here, Father," Bastien said quietly. It
was a time for stillness.
Reynardus opened his mouth. No words emerged. A first in Bastien's
experience.
The volaran nudged Reynardus with her head.
You know,
she
whispered. Reynardus looked shocked, as if he'd never heard a volaran. It
hadn't happened very often to Bastien, but he'd heard an occasional word, even
a phrase.
It's time.
She bent her neck.
With a high two-note whistle, Bastien magically saddled her. He
took a deep breath in, released it on a sigh. "I'll be your Shield."
Reynardus spun on his heel, his mail clinking. "You!"
"Me." He breathed deeply again. "Me, or no one at
all." Glancing at the sundial, he saw fifteen minutes had passed. "I
must fly to the Field."
The muscles in his volaran's haunches bunched.
"Wait!" Reynardus shouted and jumped onto the volaran.
The stallion whickered.
I will help in the distance-magic.
Bastien's lips felt cold. "Let's go."
A tiny threnody unfurled from Reynardus to touch Bastien's mind.
He allowed it in. The connection between them snapped into place.
And Bastien knew the burden his father had carried since his Song
Quest. Alexa's and Reynardus's lives were intertwined, and one or both would
die this day.
A
lexa's heart started pounding as soon as they came out of the last
distance-magic spell. She and Ivrog had traded off who kept touch with the
volaran and who went into trance. By the time they'd reached Prevoy's Pointe,
they'd found the rhythm of their Song together, and the Song they'd share
during battle.
She looked down at the field and terror whipped through her—for
herself, but more for Lladrana and all the people deep in the interior who had
never faced the horrors. The common folk would be easy prey. Hideous visions
coalesced in her mind.
All along the boundary line for as far as she could see was a
snaking line of monsters, prowling. Mostly renders and slayers, but many
soul-suckers, and five dreeths. Great clumps of the horrors milled near the
three gaps between the fenceposts.
Ivrog landed. Alexa jumped down and staggered to the Marshalls'
standard, raised by a huge, old brithenwood tree. Reynardus still hadn't
arrived, but all the other Marshalls were there, along with major nobles and
their Chevaliers, and some strangers. Alexa stared for a moment at richly robed
men and women, then
understood they were the Sorcerers and Sorceresses.
She counted twenty. They stared back at her.
Thealia stood in front of another animated map, this one of the
current battlefield. She nodded to Alexa, but finished with her question to the
Sorcerers. "Can you of the Tower hold a forcefield to narrow gaps between
the fenceposts so the horrors push through at a rate we can handle them?"
Jaquar looked at his colleagues, garnered nods. "We can, if
that's how you wish to use our Power, Swordmarshall Thealia. But it will take
six of us at each break to hold such a forcefield. That will leave you with
only two of us for offensive battlespells."
Everyone looked at the dreeths.
Thealia grimaced. "That's how it will be, then."
"What are they waiting for?" asked Alexa, pleased when
her voice came coolly.
"Apparently, you," Jaquar said. "Look, they're
moving, pouring through!"
"Everyone in position!" Thealia ordered, and her words
reverberated across the field. She gestured to a pair of battlemares. "For
you, Alexa and Ivrog."
"With your permission, Alexa, I would prefer to stay
volaran-back. I promise you I can Shield you best from there," Ivrog said.
Alexa mounted the horse, squared her shoulders and put on the helm
that Ivrog had handed her. "Sounds good to me." She grinned, more a
rictus than a real fighting grin. The adrenaline should dump into her system
soon. God, she needed it. Her insides were so watery with fear, she thought
they'd slop around.
She should do that old Roman salute and the "we who are about
to die, salute you" thing. She shuddered and wiped her hands on a hank of
saddle blanket in front of her. Her dreethskin leathers wouldn't dry her hands.
She supposed this fear would always hit her.
She gulped.
We who are about to die, salute you.
She tried
to remember what that was in Latin, but couldn't. She'd always been bad at
languages.
"Attack!" screamed Thealia.
Alexa pulled her baton from her sheath and set her mount galloping
to the nearest breach of the border, and into the fray.
W
orldly power always demands a price, and I wanted power,
said
Reynardus, mind-to-mind with Bastien.
Bastien's link with his father seemed odd...because it was
unusually easy. They were more alike than either would have wished. Their
father-son Song, suppressed for so long by each, ran strong and clear.