The battler was more than two thirds of the way up the cliff, right below where Solie stood. Heyou dove, racing back to his queen’s side to join him.
Ril struggled in pain, trying to get his broken wing to work and extremely aware that he was almost helpless. Mace’s betrayal was an agony inside him, and in desperation he looked for his master. Leon was galloping across the plains toward the cliff—judging by his emotions, clearly determined to rescue him. For once, Ril was glad of it.
His young foe didn’t press the advantage, instead swooping back to the cliff. Ril could see the battler’s master standing there, and Mace climbing up from below. In pain and enraged, Ril folded his wings and dove. His orders were simple: kill the battler if he could, or the girl if he couldn’t. He was too badly hurt to fight even the young battler now, but the girl was unprotected. Screaming, he attacked.
Solie stood with Devon and the other men of the Community, watching Heyou fight the other battler. She didn’t catch the rock hitting the bird, but she did see the hawk fall and Heyou turn back toward her.
“What’s he coming back for?” Morgal gasped. “He should finish it!”
A second later, a huge shape appeared at the edge of the cliff, a massive suit of armor with glowing eyes. Solie
screamed, even as she felt the creature’s joy beneath the hate. Around her, men fell back in a panic. Devon was trying desperately to force himself to protect her, but he couldn’t make his body obey him and she couldn’t move. The huge battler looked at her…and lunged.
Suddenly Heyou was between them, trying to push the larger battler back. He screamed, but the armored creature shoved him aside and rushed at Solie again. Sprawled on the ground, shocked and surprised, Heyou stared in fright at the newcomer. Solie felt the other battler’s arms come around her, his metal gauntlets warm against her skin—
“No!” she screamed. “Stop it! Don’t hurt me!”
The helm that formed the battler’s face was only inches from her own, and Solie blinked as she realized the hate was gone, at least from him. Now it only came from above, from the hawk that was diving to strike her.
The battler threw her to one side and twisted around. Heyou caught her and rolled, pushing her under him and covering her with his body. The armored battler leaped straight up. He caught the diving bird in his huge hands and then landed back on his feet, fighting to hold on. The hawk screamed, digging its claws through his armor, beating one wing at his face. Waves of power were released, but Heyou flared his own energy to shield her. The Community men retreated, shouting, while those who didn’t move fast enough were blown off their feet.
The armored battler met the hawk’s energy attack with his own. Solie wailed in terror as the pressure in the air increased, both battlers pushing at each other with enough power to vaporize the very stone on which they stood. At last, the bigger sylph slammed the bird into the ground. The hawk went limp, his aura of hate fading. Sprawled on her back beneath Heyou, Solie stared.
Heyou regarded the huge gray battler, too, not sure if he was on their side. Instinct said he was, but for a moment
there…For a second, he’d been more frightened than ever before in his life. He lay atop his queen and wasn’t quite sure what to do.
Mace peered down, truly happy. He hadn’t felt that emotion in a very long time, and it was all because of the thin young girl under the badly frightened battler. The child had made a nearly fatal mistake, trusting the instinct that said Mace was part of his hive line. But Jasar’s orders had been clear: kill everyone, starting with the girl.
The saving grace was that Mace couldn’t kill his own queen. The order Jasar had given him was impossible, even before she ordered him to stop. Now, if only he could tell them that.
The huge gray battler was pleased. Solie swallowed, still frightened by her ability to sense others’ emotions, but she tried to focus on him anyway. He felt oddly as if he wanted to tell her something. “What’s your name?” she asked at last.
Heyou hugged her and stood, pulling Solie upright and pushing her behind him, glaring at the armored sylph. The big battler only gazed at her, silent.
“His name is Mace,” Devon said. He stood a dozen feet away, his face ash white, bloodied and dirty. “He’s Lord Jasar Doliard’s battler. He doesn’t speak.”
“He’s one of the ones that attacked us,” Morgal breathed. “Oh, my god.”
“Wh-what?” Solie looked around, wanting someone to take over and tell her what to do. Everyone stared, though, waiting for her to make a decision. It was overwhelming, and finally she had to say something just to break the tension. “You can talk if you want to,” she told him.
“Yes, my queen,” Mace said.
Everyone gasped. Devon was so surprised that he fell
onto his backside in the dirt, gaping. “You can talk?” he gasped. “But you’re forbidden!” Mace ignored him, focused on Solie.
“Um…” Solie swallowed hard and leaned against Heyou, needing his warmth. He never took his eyes off the other battler, but his arm moved around her and squeezed reassuringly. That helped. “Why did you talk just now if you’re not allowed to?”
“You gave me permission, my queen.”
Why did everyone keep calling her that? “How can I be your queen?”
“You carry the pattern of the hive line. Your orders are sacrosanct.” He nodded to Heyou. “He feels it, too.”
Solie peeked at Heyou, who had started to relax as Mace spoke, his muscles loosening and his attention focusing more on the unconscious bird that dangled from the bigger battler’s fist. “Heyou?” she gasped.
He glanced at her and back at Mace. “He’s part of the hive. I got scared there for a minute, but it’s okay.” He glared at the bird. “Can I kill him?”
“No!” Solie gasped.
Galway spoke up. “You might need to.” Unlike the others, he wasn’t afraid. He just dabbed at a bloody cut he’d received on one cheek and waited to see what would happen now that the battle was over.
Not everyone was so calm. “What’s going on?” Morgal demanded. “Someone explain this to me!” He and the other locals were backed well away, gaping at Mace in horror. The huge battler ignored them.
“Can you tell us what’s going on?” Solie asked him.
Mace answered immediately. “We were sent to kill you. I was ordered to kill everyone on this bluff, you first, but I can’t hurt the queen.”
“What?” she whispered, still confused. Heyou leaned against her.
“You’re the hive queen,” Mace repeated, and pointed at Heyou. “Thanks to him. The imperative to protect and obey you supersedes anything from my master.” She gaped at him. “I felt you become the queen. I’ve been coming to you ever since.”
“Coming…to me…?” she repeated.
“Yes, my queen.”
Solie felt faint. Everything was happening too fast. She had two battlers now? “What about him?” she whimpered, gesturing down at the unconscious bird.
“Ril is from a different hive line, but he has no queen.” Mace’s eyes glowed. “You can make him yours.”
“Mine?” Solie repeated.
“This is insane!” Morgal spoke up, regaining enough of himself to be angry. “We’re not going to—”
Mace glared at him, and suddenly the hate was back, thick in the air. Morgal yelped and scrambled backward, most of the others hurrying alongside. Galway was the only one to hold his ground.
Solie stared at the bird. “Why would I do that?” she asked.
Heyou turned and kissed her shoulder. “We’ll have to kill him if you don’t.”
“What do I do?” she whispered. She shuddered.
“Let me project your pattern at him,” Mace suggested. “Your right of rule. Without a queen, he’ll have no defense.” He lifted the bird and shook him.
Solie just shivered and watched.
Ril came awake to confusion and pain. He’d been attacked, tricked, and hurt. Pain flared from his wing, and dazed, he hung upside down. Mace had him, he realized, just as the battler placed a hand around his neck and swung him upright like a throttled chicken. The next thing he saw was a girl, her eyes wide and frightened. She stood before him, staring.
Suddenly Mace focused, taking the pattern of the girl’s soul and projecting it. Ril shuddered. She wasn’t just a master, this was a queen’s mind, a queen’s pattern. Only, she wasn’t a sylph, but a human who had bound a battler to her and made him recognize her pattern as he would that of a queen. That didn’t make her Ril’s queen, though, and he screamed, trying to focus his hatred and power.
The girl stepped back, her hands over her mouth, and the young battler put his arms about her, eyes glowing red. Ril raged against them both, against one and all, but Mace forced the queen’s pattern onto him even harder. He shoved it down into the cracks in Ril’s mind that once, so long ago, had held a queen—one who didn’t take him for her mate before Ril crossed the gate for the promise of love and ended up bound to a man. No man could create this kind of pattern, but the girl did, and the harder Mace pushed, the deeper it soaked into Ril, slowly feeling more and more right, and finally he wasn’t fighting Mace at all but was helping him. She was his queen, the pattern of obedience in his mind and the focus of his life. Ril shuddered, his energy changing to match hers, and Mace let him go, cradling him in his arms instead. He was a hive mate now, as was everyone on the cliffs and inside the bluff.
He was in a hive, Ril realized dazedly. He’d never have thought that could happen again, and he shook from reaction.
“Um, hi,” Solie managed. “I guess, um, you can talk if you want to, and change your shape. If you want.”
Oh, it was a good hive. It was a very good hive indeed.
Even with the battle over, the chaos on the bluff continued far into the night. His horse tethered where no one would find it, his cloak left behind as well, Leon made his way through the cold with only a tunic and his pants, his sword
strapped to his back and his knife in one hand. Most of the pirates were herded into their tents, making his job even easier. He crept by their guards, all of them starting at shadows so much they couldn’t tell when the darkness was actually him. They were amateurs, and there weren’t enough of them, so he bypassed them all, easily scaling the back slope.
He had to get to Ril. Careful not to let his worry rush him into any mistakes, Leon followed the link he had to his battler. Most masters couldn’t sense their battlers at all beyond the hatred, but Leon had spent years refining his bond, and he could feel where Ril was. A few sylphs in different shapes went past, but none acknowledged his presence, busy with their tasks. Only battlers made good guards.
In the tents, the pirates talked. From the sound of it, at least half of them wanted to pull up stakes and run, but Leon didn’t care. It didn’t matter to him where they went. All he wanted was Ril back. He heard the word
battler
several times and firmed his lips, honestly not sure what they’d do with their unexpected victory. Could they kill Ril? Mace or the other battler certainly could.
He could feel Ril, felt his pain and weariness nearly as though they were his own, and found himself longing for the sylph’s familiar hatred if only because it would mean he was healthy. The battler’s emotions were almost the lowest he’d ever felt, almost unrecognizable, and Leon cursed Jasar as he moved forward. How could someone actually lose control of their battle sylph?
The path he took led him to a covered well that bored deep into the bluff with steps circling downward. Leon knelt at the edge and looked. No one was guarding it. Gripping his knife, he started down.
The stairwell was at least eighty steps deep, the air inside surprisingly warm and fresh, the way lit by torches. Leon
reached the bottom and found himself in a wide atrium with polished sides, a hundred reflections staring back at him.
Several corridors branched off in different directions, and several doorways had been cut in the walls, but he could feel Ril’s presence. As he made his way down that corridor, the walls as reflective as those in the atrium, he started to hear voices as well.
“Are you on our side or not?” a male voice asked, sounding both angry and frightened. “Just answer me!”
“Please,” added a woman. “Tell them.”
“We obey the queen,” a deep voice replied. “If she wants us to protect you, we will.”
“I still don’t get this,” whined a fourth. “What’s all this crap about queens?”
Leon crept to an open doorway as another, lighter voice answered the whiner. “We came here for queens, women promised to us that we couldn’t get in our hives.” Leon peered around the empty door frame and stared in shock. The voice came from Ril, who nested in a red-haired girl’s arms. “Only, when we came through, they were killed, leaving us trapped and under the control of men.”
“That didn’t happen to Heyou,” Mace continued, his the deep, booming voice. “Solie lived and bonded to him as his master. They took it further, and she became the queen of any sylph close enough or of the same original hive line. Ril we drew in.”
“She’s alive,” Ril said softly, staring up at the girl. “I went mad when my queen died, but she’s alive.” He crooned softly.
Leon stared at his battler in horror, forgetting that he was in enemy territory and it meant death if they saw him. Ril. He’d done that to his sylph? Leon thought back to the girl, to that frightened little brown-haired girl with the terrified
eyes, and he felt sick. Ril had come for her, not for him, and he’d murdered her.
He staggered back, dropping his knife and gagging. All of Ril’s hate over the years seemed to hit him at once. No wonder the sylph had loathed him.
“Outside!” he heard a frightened voice cry.
A shadow fell over him, and Leon looked up to see Mace. The battler’s fist came down hard.
Ril stood in the queen’s quarters and changed shape the way a woman changed clothes, trying to find one that he liked.
Sitting on a hay bale brought in to serve as a seat, Solie giggled at him. Heyou lay sprawled across her lap and watched from upside down, while Mace stood silently by the door. The older battler had been happy with the first form he’d changed to—that of a man taller than anyone else, his body heavy with muscle—but Ril couldn’t make up his mind. He’d spent so long as a bird, and before that he’d been whatever shape he wished, or more often none at all.
The queen wanted them to fit in, though. Ril looked at his reflection in a strip of mirror-shiny wall and focused. He made himself taller and leaner, his hair blond and short in the back, while bangs hung in his eyes. He looked like one of the heroes in Lizzy’s favorite storybook, he thought. His irises were gray, but his eyes were as hard as those he’d had as a bird.
“That one’s good,” Solie told him helpfully.
Ril looked down and sighed. It didn’t really matter. He could have stayed a bird for all the difference it made. Adjusting the loose tunic he’d been wearing over his body while he changed forms inside it, he went to sit next to his queen, leaning back against a sheet that covered the hay. The floor was cold.
The others were content. Solie was pleased with their presence. Mace was as calm as if he’d always been guarding her and wasn’t still bound to a master he loathed. Even
Heyou was satisfied, once he managed to convince himself he wouldn’t have to share the queen’s bed along with her sovereignty. Ril couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. He felt restless somehow, happy to be in a hive with a queen but still feeling that something was lacking. Of course, that had always been his problem. He’d come across the gate because of what he’d been missing.
He glanced at the queen. Whatever it was, it wasn’t her problem. She caught his gaze, looking puzzled, so he turned away. No sylph could hide their feelings from a queen for long. He was just lucky that what she could pick up of his unintentional projections was limited. The queen of the hive he’d been hatched into would have felt his emotions like a siren. She just wouldn’t have cared.
Solie frowned, obviously not sure of what she was sensing, and looked down at Heyou. He smiled at her happily.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and all three battlers tensed, waiting. It was a woman, and Mace opened the door when she knocked, careful to keep his body between the newcomer and the queen. Ril tensed as well, ready to destroy even a female if he must.
“Are you going to get out of my way? At this rate the poor child will have to do everything for herself, since no one else is going to want to get near her. She might not enjoy having only you three for company the rest of her life.”
Mace stepped back, peering down in bemusement at a past-middle-aged woman in a black dress. She shoved him aside with one elbow and entered, carrying a covered tray. Bringing it over to the bale, she set it down and glared at Solie.
“Are you planning to sit in here forever?” she snapped, hands on her hips.
Solie blushed, and the three battlers stared at each other, not sure how to handle this. Queens didn’t get scolded back home.
“And you,” the woman continued, turning on Heyou. “Off! Are you a cat? Her lap is not the proper place for your head!” Grabbing the young battler by the ear, she hauled him into a sitting position, still berating him.
Over by the door, Mace snickered.
Ril went back to watching the woman. She was loud and brash, but most of her bravado was just that. Underneath she was as frightened as the others, if determined not to show it. Still, she smelled female, fertile, and strong. She was no queen, but she was intriguing.
She glared at all three battlers in turn. “It’s not polite to stare,” she snapped, then turned back to Solie, ignoring them. “Eat your lunch, dear,” she said, “and do come outside. You’ve been in here all day. It’s started snowing and it’s quite lovely. I can use your help in the kitchen getting the evening meal ready, and these useless slobs can help too. You’re absolutely going to ruin your reputation holed up alone with three men.”
“They’re not really men,” Solie pointed out. She sounded uncertain.
“They’re lazy, and they’re only good for fighting: they’re men. At least they don’t drink.” She patted Solie’s head. “I’ll expect you in an hour.” Turning, she shook her finger at the rest. “And you three, behave yourselves! You’re not so big I can’t switch you if I have to.”
Solie sighed as the older woman swept out and all of the battlers returned their attention to her. “She’s right. I think I’m starting to feel trapped,” she admitted.
Ril frowned, knowing he was part of the problem, but the bond was still so new, not even a day old! He felt newly hatched again, incapable of even thinking of leaving his queen. She was right, though. She might be a queen, but she was human as well. She’d go mad with them present all the time.
He pushed himself to his feet, announcing, “I’ll go stand
guard.” As long as one of them was with her, that would be enough, and someone should watch the perimeter anyway.
His tunic brushing his legs—an odd new sensation—he walked down the hallway and up the stairs, one person going so far as to flatten against the wall as he passed. It was snowing outside, and the accumulation drifted down the steps under the awning, but Ril didn’t feel it under his bare feet, not really. He shivered a little as he stepped outside. He had fixed his broken wing when he changed shape, but the injury to his form was still there. Not enough to care about, but enough to notice.
Everyone certainly was aware of him. He knew he stood out, walking around in bare feet and a tunic too big for him, and he didn’t know what they’d been told about the battle the night before, but he also didn’t care. He walked to the edge of the cliff and surveyed the Shale Plain. It wasn’t completely covered in white; he could see spears of gray rock throughout. Nothing moved out there, however, and he felt all the life forms on the cliff and below, as well as inside: the other sylphs, their masters, and everyone else. Absolutely everyone. No one felt hostile to him. No one was a threat.
Mace appeared beside him, dressed more completely than Ril with the addition of pants and boots. He stared out over the plain as well.
“If I thought I could, I’d go after my master now,” the battler remarked. “He’s cold and frightened—he’d be an easy kill. But I don’t want to leave the queen that long, or find out that he can still give me an order I have to obey.”
“You’d go back to the home hive if you killed him,” Ril pointed out. “He’s your tie here.”
“No. My pattern is tied to the queen now as well. She can hold me here if he dies.” Mace looked at him. “Your master is still here, but with the queen to tie you to this world instead, he’s no longer necessary, either.”
Ril closed his eyes, feeling a hate inside of himself strong enough to taste. It radiated out, and he heard people scream. Reluctantly, he pulled it in. Solie had given her orders: no auras. He could still feel it, though.
“Yes,” he breathed.
“I like it here,” Mace remarked. “I can guard the hive easily from here.”
Ril turned away, knowing the other battler would watch the plains for as long as was necessary, and that Heyou was protecting and nourishing the queen. He turned back to the hive stairs, and he didn’t need an aura to frighten the people who saw his eyes.
Heyou watched Solie eat, happy just to be with her, to have other sylphs around, and other battlers. It never would have happened back home, but he was her lover, not the others, and she’d made it clear she would only have him. He’d never felt so loved.
Solie ate some stew and shook her head. “You’re staring again,” she pointed out.
“Oh, sorry.” He looked away, at the room. It was dim, lit only by candles and oil lamps, but was warm and secure. All of the others would move down here when the work was done, if the humans could be convinced to live underground. The dwellings would probably become more appealing once the outside really started to get cold. Heyou liked it. The design was similar to his old hive, if a bit different in shape. Still, if his queen wanted to live out in the snow, he’d be just as happy to go with her.
Solie continued eating her stew, and also the single piece of bread she’d been given. They weren’t on severely restricted rations yet, but she savored the bread, knowing it wouldn’t last all winter. Finishing, she looked down at her tray. “What happens now?” she wondered aloud.
“Who says anything has to happen?” Heyou asked.
She shrugged. “No one, I guess. I suppose we won. We have three battlers. Who can stop us now?” She made a face and scratched her head. “It’s so strange, though. I have a lot to get used to.”
Heyou grinned. “Think how Ril and Mace feel.” They’d told him a little about their lives since they’d crossed through the gate, and it made him cold inside. This new hive was heaven, even without comparing it to the nightmares they had been forced to endure.
She smiled back at him and twitched her shoulders. “I was thinking. I got you because they did that ritual and the prince didn’t kill me. That’s how the ritual is supposed to work, isn’t it? You get a battle sylph by offering him a woman. What happens if someone else figures that out? Someone who thinks we’re an enemy?”
Heyou didn’t answer.
“And what about Ril and Mace? They came wanting women.” Solie gave a choked laugh. “I’m definitely not sleeping with any of them. They’ll get lonely, won’t they?”
Heyou shrugged, not sure what to say. “There are a lot of women here,” he mused. “Maybe they can find someone.”
“You mean, to date?”
“Um. Sort of. Mace said he’s been with hundreds of women. We don’t have that chance at home. There’s only ever one queen in a hive. But we can love any woman. He’s already looking at the girls here. He told me.”
Solie’s eyes got wide. “I never thought a battler would be allowed to have girlfriends…”
“Mace wasn’t. He just slept with them.”
Her jaw dropped. “He
what
? Wait a minute, you said hundreds?”
“Sure.” Heyou shrugged.
Solie closed her mouth and started giggling at an image that was in her mind all too absurd! “The Widow Blackwell is going to be livid! Can you imagine?” She pressed her
hands over her mouth, sniggering at the thought of Mace sneaking into the single girls’ tents and the widow chasing him out with her spoon.
Heyou laughed along, made happier by Solie’s amusement than by the situation. She was the queen and her pattern was primary, but sylphs could absorb as many patterns as they wanted. That was what let them bond to a master in the first place. The others would have to find new masters eventually. In this energy-poor world, they fed from the humans to whom they were bound, and Solie couldn’t support three battlers on her own forever.
Of course Ril and Mace couldn’t keep their former masters. Solie had ordered them not to take their rage out on men, telling them that human males weren’t like those from other hives and therefore enemies. After meeting Galway, Heyou could believe this. But the masters who had enslaved them? They were the worst enemies any sylph could ever imagine. Much better to find a willing woman and see one’s former master dead. Surely Solie wouldn’t begrudge them that.
The council had never been much, composed as it was of men who’d survived the original battler attack and tried to take charge without much experience or even interest. The fact that those same two battlers were now living among them didn’t help any, and the Community teetered on the edge of total collapse, almost everyone wanting to grab their families and run. Seated at a rough table at one end of the largest tent, the council members were nearly swamped by the petitioners gathered before them. Nearly every ablebodied man had come.
“How could you let this happen?” one shouted, his voice rising over the grumbling of the others. “We had flocks and fields, homes of our own. Now we’re stuck in some sylphriddled hole with the very battlers who drove us here!”
Other men shouted in agreement, and Morgal frantically tried to wave them down, truly regretting the deaths of the men who had first led the Community. They were the ones who’d drawn the people together and kept them that way, encouraging others to bind sylphs and to use them to cultivate the harsh ground. They’d had a full harvest in the field to take them through winter…until the battlers blew it apart, and the town along with it.
“Calm down!” he shouted. “Please!”
“Make them leave!” a different man shouted, his face filled with fear. “Or kill them!”
Morgal scoffed. “You can’t kill battlers!”
Over by the tent flap, Galway watched them argue. Looking down at Devon, he saw the younger man had a hand raised, not trying to get anyone’s attention but merely touching his nearly invisible sylph for comfort. He looked exhausted. All of them were. And their weariness and fear were going to cause them problems they might not be able to fix later.
Galway pushed away from the support pole he was leaning against and stepped forward, lifting his own voice. “If you threaten the battlers, you’ll put them on the defensive. They’re only a danger if they feel they have to fight.” When the gathered crowd glared at him with mistrust he added, “Treat them with respect and they’ll have no reason to bother anyone.”
“You’re on their side! You came here with them!” This accusation came from Zem, the man who’d bonded the Community’s only healer sylph.
Galway shrugged. “True. And Heyou never laid a hand on me.” He waited a moment in the ensuing silence. “Think on this. You say you were driven here by a battler attack. Well, now you have three battlers. They won’t let anything happen to this place unless you make them leave, which I doubt you could. They won’t desert the girl, and if you
threaten her”—he raised a finger—“they’ll raze this entire mountain.”
A cold shiver ran through the room. Galway just nodded. “Like it or not, they’re staying. Why not make the best of it? We’ve got battlers. That means the next attack that comes won’t be so horrible. Think it won’t happen? Would you be holing up in a fortress if you didn’t?”