Path of Honor (10 page)

Saljane circled the prow of the ship. With the aid of her
ahalad-kaaslane
’s keen vision, Reisil had no difficulty making out the details of the sorcerers’ faces and clothing. The two men, perhaps thirty-five years old, wore robes skillfully painted to look like flames. Crimson tongues rose from the hems, hues of burning orange traced with blue and fading into sunset yellow at the shoulders. The sleeves were caught tightly at the wrists and billowed up over the arms. Their collars were high and straight, and on the corners of each were the same swirling vortex as appeared on their flag. Deep-set dark eyes were framed by darkly tanned, smooth-shaven skin. Their cap of ghostly white hair contrasted sharply with their swarthy darkness. They both wore their hair in a blunt, unforgiving style, cut straight just above the high collar of their robes, making their jutting features more austere.

Their companion was a woman. And though she shared their general coloring and appearance, there was something different about her. It wasn’t only the color of her robe, in shades of green mottled together to look like a forest canopy. Nor was her expression any less remote than those of her companions. But something in the set of her jaw, the line of her lips, the brilliance of her eyes, spoke of hard-reined emotion.

Suddenly there came a creaking of the capstan and the groaning rattle of the anchor chain drawn up through the hawsehole. The captain shouted rapid-fire orders, and the sailors swarmed faster. Sails were unfurled, bulging full and taut as the wind thrust into them. As the ship departed, Reisil noticed for the first time that the full robes of the sorcerers showed no effect of the wind or ocean spray spurting over the prow. Rather it was as if they stood in the calm eye of a hurricane.

Back on the cliff outside of Koduteel, Reisil shuddered at their ready show of power. It was followed immediately by a corrosive burst of envy. To be able to mold her own magic so effortlessly, so purposefully! Maybe
they
could teach her—

But the thought withered like a frost-touched vine.

Even if they would teach her, even if they weren’t here to attack Koduteel, she couldn’t reveal her weakness to them. Reisil was all that stood between the renegade Patversemese wizards and Kodu Riik. If anyone learned how little control of her magic she had, they would descend like starving wolves. The wizards and Scallas both. In that one respect, Sodur’s rumors kept the hounds at bay. No one knew she was unable to use her power.

Reisil felt a faint stir of hope at Saljane’s conviction. After all, she
had
destroyed the wizards’ circle. She
had
returned Ceriba from the brink of death, and healed many others. She knew it
could
work. She didn’t have any sense of
how
she succeeded, or why it went wrong, as it so often did. But with the plague spreading and the arrival of the Scallacian sorcerers, she was running out of time to learn.

An updraft caught Saljane, and she shot high in the air. The Scallacian ship was receding quickly along the strait. Already Reisil could no longer make out individual people. Again she wondered if there was any point in telling Sodur.

~He will know what to do
, was Saljane’s reply.
There is no other choice.

Reisil felt herself nodding.
~I’d better go
, she said reluctantly.

There was a moment of snatching, grappling emotion, each trying to absorb a little bit more of the other to carry her through to the next time. Then the thread between them severed.

Reisil drew a jagged breath. Urgency kindled in her blood, and she levered herself up, shivering. Little had changed in the landscape of the bay below. Though it felt like she’d been with Saljane for hours, only fifteen or twenty minutes had passed. She rubbed her hands over her arms and turned toward the path.

She was halted in midstep, her head twisting to the side as that grasping pressure snatched at her again. It clamped around her head like a fist. More tears rolled down her cheeks, the bones of her head compressing. She pushed back at the force with all the strength of her mind. To no avail. Suddenly she felt something digging into her head.
Inside her head!
Reisil felt it groping, unformed and wild edged, like desperate, scrabbling fingers.

Saljane? But no, this wasn’t her
ahalad-kaaslane
. Saljane’s touch was unmistakable, sharp and clean. This was uncertain, faltering, yet . . . There was a power to it, a rich consciousness, complex and—
angry
. More than angry. Murderous. Reisil’s mouth went dry, and she gave a mental wrench, slamming shut the walls of her mind.

The crushing pressure vanished. Her head reeled, and Reisil crouched down, her head bent between her knees, rubbing the back of her neck with shaking hands.

It was an attack. She had no doubt of that. But what? Who? She thought of the sorcerers, and fear scuttled down her back. But how would they know her? How would they find her? Not the sorcerers.
Wizards.
Who else had reason to hate her that way? She glanced over her shoulder with a sudden sense of someone watching, fumbling inside for her elusive power, a weapon to defend herself.

Nothing. Just as when the
nokulas
had attacked on the way to Veneston.

“Chodha!”
she swore, pushing to her feet. Fear pimpled her skin as she scrambled back onto the path, turning toward Koduteel, fleeing like a rat with a cat fast on its heels.

R
eisil slipped and skidded along the path, coming dangerously close to the cliff’s edge. Still she did not slow down, depending on the march of ancient jack pine, white spruce, junipers, and bare-twigged tamarack to keep her from falling into the bay. She flung herself through a narrow notch between a rock shelf and a flourishing cluster of bittersweet, still wearing its deadly wealth of scarlet berries. On the other side, she ducked beneath a low-slung limb, sliding on the slippery stone as she straightened, losing her balance. She cried out and twisted, arms flailing. She caught one arm around the low limb, hanging there as she scrabbled for purchase on the path below.

It was this accident that saved her.

Even as she clutched the limb, an arrow pierced her cloak and stuck fast in the wood beside her forearm. Reisil stared at the vibrating black-and-white fletching for a bemused moment, too surprised to realize she was being attacked. She screwed her head around to look over her shoulder.

Her pursuers swarmed silently down the path, their faces hidden beneath closefitting gray scarves wound tightly around their heads. So quickly did they move, so well matched to the storm-gloom was their apparel, that Reisil couldn’t count how many of them there were. At least four. She saw the glint of knives and the curve of bows. In only seconds they would reach her.

Reisil fought for footing, kicking and sliding on the rock. Her grip slipped, and she fell, ripping her cloak free and landing hard. Instantly she rolled under the limb and scuttled on her hands and knees down the path. She reached the narrow notch and lunged to her feet, shielded by the rock shelf. She wasted no time checking how closely they followed. Heart caught in her throat, her lungs constricted and she careened along the path, grabbing branches and brush for balance. With every step, she expected to feel an arrow driving through her chest.

She raced past the point where she’d sat communing with Saljane. She might lose them if she could make it to the Fringes, but it was still half a league away, and she had to cross an open slope in between. They would have no difficulty shooting her then. She didn’t dare trust her magic against them.

Her legs felt sluggish. Her lungs screamed agony, and her throat was an icy ache. Behind her she thought she could hear footsteps closing in. She sobbed, yanking her cloak free from where it had caught on a wind-twisted bush. An animal whine escaped her chest as she struggled up a steep rise. Her feet slid from beneath her, and she caught herself on a juniper branch, crab-crawling upward on her hands and feet.

Lady help me!
she cried silently as she topped the rise.

The Lady did not answer. But something did.

It swept over her in an appalling maelstrom of black rage. Aimed at her, for her. Single-minded, unswerving, fanatical.

The attacker from the cliff’s edge.

It crashed over her mind, smothering in its boiling fury, dragging her under and under.

Reisil screamed.

She choked, struggling against the frenzied tide. Only the long months of unremitting diligence in segregating her mind from Saljane’s made it possible to sever this alien connection.

But she could not so easily rid herself of her body’s spasming reaction. She gagged. She vomited, bitter juices spattering her cheeks and running over her chin to stain her cloak. She kept running, instinct goading her. But that rage stayed with her—like clots of worms twisting and sliding beneath her skin. Her legs began to shake, and she slowed, everything inside her shrieking to run faster.
Faster!

Reisil stumbled down the fork leading from the bluff and around the eastern wall of Koduteel into the Fringes. Not far now the open greensward where she could not hide, where her only hope lay in crossing far in advance of her pursuers. And still she slowed, her entire body beginning to quake.

But deep within, she felt something kindle, something that responded to the brutality and rage, something that was feral and cruel. It flickered and swelled, hot and greedy. It streaked along her bones, heat licking her nerves with scorching strokes. Her hair rose on her arms and neck, and unformed, unbounded energy crackled around her fingers. A red fog blurred her vision. Her tongue grew parched and she could not even blink, so dry were her eyes. She felt her skin burning, felt her lips splitting, smelled the acrid stench of burning hair.

Ruled by the thing growing inside her, Reisil lurched to a halt. A savage joy blossomed in her chest. Her magic had answered her need at last.

Reisil turned, licking her lips. Her chin dropped, and she hunched her shoulders. She swiveled her head back and forth slowly, scanning the path behind from beneath lowered brows. Her nostrils flared. Her fingers flexed and curled.

Movement. She jerked her head up. Blurry shapes moved on the path, where she thought the path ought to be, for she could no longer see it through the veil of red sweeping across her vision. Her lips peeled from her teeth. She brought her hands forward fingers spread, holding them straight before her. The magic flew from her like a bolt of lightning, blood scarlet.

There were no flames or crash of thunder, no screams. Silence congealed. Crickets and birds alike froze in place, camouflaging themselves in stillness. Even the booming of the harbor cavern muted.

Reisil swayed. For a single, exquisite moment she felt unalloyed jubilation.

Then the veil dropped away, and she came to herself. She smelled the sour odor of vomit staining her cloak. She felt a breeze on her cheek, icy, like the whispering kiss of a soul-shattered
rashani
. A chill swept her, prickling the hairs on her legs.

Reisil retraced her steps. She reached the foremost of her attackers. All that was left was a mound of ash, vaguely human shaped, like a gray shadow cast upon the ground. Already the wind was eroding it. There was another one a few paces back and to the left, and one more to the right.

Reisil crouched to the ground, elbows on her knees, laced knuckles pressed hard against her lips. She wanted to cry, to shout and to beat the ground with her fists.

The wind picked at the ashes. For the second time since the Blessed Lady had gifted Reisil magic, Reisil had used it to kill. More than that. To annihilate. And both times it had been like riding the storm winds with Saljane. A wild, dreadful ecstasy. She ground her knuckles against her teeth. What was she that she should savor killing so?

Another thought struck her like a blow from an executioner’s ax.

Was it her own fault that she could not use her magic to heal the plague victims? Deep inside, would she rather kill than heal? She had never felt much remorse for destroying the wizard circle. She had believed it was the only way to protect Kodu Riik. But was it? Couldn’t she have disabled them somehow and left them alive? And these men—certainly they had wanted to kill her. But was that reason enough for a healer to kill?

She could argue that she had no choice. That the power had taken her, that she had no control over its use. And that would be true, Reisil acknowledged scornfully. She had feeble control at best. It was no justification. It was an indictment.

A memory tickled in the back of her mind and pushed upward, flowering like a thornbush in her mind.
The damage you could do . . .
The Demonlord’s words had accused her, and she had defended herself, certain she would always serve the Lady faithfully. But now she was not so certain.

Her gaze swept over the three dissolving shapes. She had erased all evidence of who and what they were. And she had
laughed
. She could go and chase the other one, for certainly there had been at least four. Had the other twisted an ankle in his chase and been left behind, saved by luck? Or did he even now train his arrow on her exposed throat? Reisil lifted her head, chin elevated, inviting the unseen hand to loose its arrow. Nothing happened.

She stood, staring up the path. If she went to Sodur now, she might meet that last assassin. Everything in her revolted from the sudden eagerness at the thought. Disgust curled her lip.