The Heart of the Phoenix (39 page)

“He’s no traitor,” Tracy said, drawing all eyes from Flanna and Torin to her. “He was the King Brom’s intended heir, and Flanna’s true father.”

This announcement was met with a long moment of total silence before the sneering Savas found his words again.

“He killed King Brom, his own blood... his own father!”

“I did not,” Torin said. “I loved my father, and I respected my king.”

“You disobeyed him.” Savas pointed at Torin, his outstretched finger trembling with his anger. “You made alliance with barbarians.”

“And he forgave me,” Torin said. “He was preparing to accept my alliance when he died.”

“You lie,” Savas said, pointing his wand at Torin. “You poisoned him to speed your ascendancy.”

“Someone poisoned him,” Erasmus said, squeezing between Torin and Susan to be seen. He held three wands, one in his right hand, two in his waving tangle of dreadlocks, all pointed at Savas. “As for his ascendancy...”

Savas averted his eyes, but kept his wand trained on Torin.

“Keep your lies and your eyes to yourself, monk!” He motioned toward the Red Soldiers, and Erasmus found himself on the wrong end of every spear and crossbow.

Susan and Nancy stepped in front of him, wands raised, and Penny saw the shimmer of raised shields.

Savas turned back to Flanna, and his anger retreated a step.

“You can’t mean these things, child. Come to us now... your father will forgive you if...”

“
He’s not my father
,” Flanna screamed. “I saw what happened the night my mother died.
He
killed her. He took me from her and left her to die. He told me we were here to close the door between our worlds, he told me how to do it, and that was a lie too.”

Penny could see his sympathy for Flanna waning with each shouted word, and knew by the raised wands all around her that the others saw it too.

“Your place is not to question our King, your
father
.” His eyes turned to the door as more figures stepped through, and Penny saw more wands raised from the ranks of the Reds. “You’ve aided our enemies. May your father be merciful.”

To the Red Soldiers around him he said, “Kill them all but the princess. She awaits King Tynan’s judgment.”

“So much for diplomacy,” Janet said behind Penny, and sent the first bolt of the battle into Savas’s face, knocking him unconscious against the sepulcher wall.

Penny threw up a shield as the first retaliatory shots came for her and Janet. The force of the blows threw her backward, but a laughing Janet caught and steadied her. Magical bolts flew from her left and right, striking down the Reds as they came through, spears and crossbow bolts flew at them in a barrage, but most rebounded off shields or were blasted aside.

Ellen screamed to her right, and Penny turned in time to see her go down with blood pouring from a wound in her temple. Katie stepped into her spot and sent a forking bolt of lightning into the crowd of Red soldiers. A half dozen fell to the ground, and more retreated from the electrified area, twitching and jerking.

A magical bolt broke through Penny’s shield, and the impact felt like a hammer blow against her chest. She cried out from the pain, but returned fire, striking the wand from a Red’s hand.

The trees came to life and began to swat Savas’s men aside.

A second volley of crossbow bolts and spears flew their way, and more shields appeared to block them. Torin caught a spear in the leg, but hardly seemed to notice. He snarled and fired spells in return.

The homunculi were strangely absent from the fight, and when Penny searched for them, she saw only the top of a bald gray head as it sank beneath the soil.

Erasmus shoved his way past Susan and Nancy, yanking his dark goggles down around his neck with his left hand while he blocked with the wand in his right. His living dreadlocks were a blur of activity, firing his other wands, snatching the enemy’s spears and crossbow bolts from the air and hurling them back. One, then a second Red Soldier turned on their comrades, breaking their line.

A sudden wind whipped through the hollow, picking up dropped weapons, dead leaves, old ash and charcoal from the fire pit and whipping them into a vortex that danced along the ground and into the confused ranks of Red Soldiers.

Penny heard Ellen scream again, in effort instead of pain, and saw her rejoin Katie at the forward line. Her wand was up, her teeth bared, the right side of her face drenched in blood. The wound seemed superficial though, to anger rather than impede her. She shouted again, lowered her wand, and the vortex exploded and rained debris down on the Red Soldiers. A second, more powerful gust blew down from the willow canopy that shaded the hollow, then turned, as if directed, on the enemy. It blew them off their feet, slammed them against the sepulcher wall.

Already the wounded were retreating back through the door to the citadel, dragging their unconscious comrades behind.

Penny fired again and again, missing more often than she hit, but keeping the enemy occupied dodging instead of fighting.

Ellen sagged to her knees, the last of her energy spent, and Katie quickly dragged her back behind the line.

For a few tense and silent moments the fighting stopped, the remaining Red Soldiers watched the defenders, and the defenders waited to see if another attack was coming.

Torin noticed the spear in his leg and yanked it out with a scream. He and Ellen weren’t the only ones injured.

Susan bled from her nose and a cut beneath her eye, Erasmus groaned, and Penny saw two severed dreadlocks squirming in the dirt in front of him. Janet dropped a hand on Penny’s shoulder, and Penny saw blood on the fingers. Penny herself ached from a bolt that had broken through her shield and struck her in the chest. The magical barrier had robbed it of its lethal force, but her chest throbbed.

“Do you give up yet?” Erasmus bent and picked up his severed dreadlocks, regarded them with a frown and dropped them into a pocket of his long coat. “We’ll accept your surrender.”

Savas’s replacement stepped to the front of his crumbling line.

“We do not give up, monk.” His men reformed their line behind him, some no longer even armed, and not quite as eager for the fight. “We will not accept your surrender.”

Flanna shoved her way back to the front of the defender’s line and stepped up beside Penny.

The man’s bravado faltered at the sight of Flanna, and her resemblance to the strange girl standing beside her. “What is this?”

“This is my sister,” Flanna said.

“And this,” Tracy said putting a hand on Torin’s shoulder, “is her father.”

Penny had no reason to believe his new man would be willing to listen. She kept her eyes open and her wand ready.

“Friends,” Erasmus said, and Penny was frightened by the unaccustomed tremor in his voice. “We are about to get our butts kicked.”

“What are you talking about?” Janet hissed, keeping her eyes and wand on the men in the sepulcher. “You crazy old...”

The Red Soldiers turned their eyes up suddenly, and dropped to their knees, heads bowed.

“I am surprised to see you all here,” Tynan said from behind them. “Especially you, Tracy West. Have your old sisters welcomed you back?”

Tracy did not dignify Tynan with a response, only regarded him coldly.

“We sent you home, Flanna,” Imogen said. She stood just behind Tynan, but stepped up beside him to the edge of the trail. “Why are you still here? Have these people harmed you?”

“They rescued me,” Flanna said.

“Silence,” Tynan shouted. Then to Imogen, “You forget yourself, cousin.”

“I forget nothing,
cousin
,” she snapped back at him. “Including the reason you brought us here.”

She spoke again in their incomprehensible Latinate language, and there was a rustling and a low murmur from the gathered Reds behind her.

Penny looked to Torin and Flanna, who understood the exchange, and saw something that was almost relief.

Tynan turned, cast a stilling look back on his family, and Penny saw his red stone pendant, the heart of the Phoenix swing free from his cloak.

We have to get it from him
, she thought.
Whatever else happens tonight, he doesn’t get to keep her heart
.

Torin called out loudly, cupping his hands over his mouth to be sure everyone above could hear.

“English,” she said again, though too quietly to be heard.

He finished his speech by grabbing Penny by the shoulder and pulling her to his side.

“Penelope ‘es Torin Sinclair Fuilrix!” He put his other hand on Flanna’s shoulder. “Flanna ‘es Torin
Fuilrix!”

Their shock was audible, and Imogen’s was loudest of all.

Tynan regarded her dangerously, then stilled the unrest behind him with another sweeping glance.

Penny leaned her head close to Flanna’s to be heard. “What is he telling them?”

“He just formally claimed us as his daughters,” Flanna said, and despite the danger perched above and around them, she smiled. “He would have done this fourteen years ago if he could have, but better late than never.”

“They see you for who you are now, Penny, and they know what he did to you,” Torin said, and loud enough for all to hear. “If he had claimed you as daughter instead of locking you away in the citadel’s deepest cell, his claim over Flanna wouldn’t now be in doubt.”

“He’s not my father,” Flanna said for the third time, speaking directly to Imogen. “Penny and I saw our mother’s last memories last night. Diana Sinclair was a Phoenix Girl, she was the wife of Torin ‘es Brom Fuilrix, and Tynan killed her.”

Imogen faced Tynan, chin out and hands on her hips. “What do you have to say about it?”

Tynan regarded her, his face expressionless, his eyes cool, but Imogen did not back up or back down.

“Flanna is the child of a traitor,” Tynan said, casting his cold glare over them. “I took her as my daughter and she has repaid me with her own treachery.”

Imogen reverted to her native tongue, and Tynan replied in kind. The exchange was short, and ended when Tynan drew his wand on her.

Her own wand was up in a flash, but not quick enough to deflect his attack.

A bang and a scream as Imogen flew backward into the man standing behind her.

Shouts from above and below, drawn wands, and a few tense seconds before the first bolt was fired. It came from above and struck Tracy in the chest, knocking her to the ground. Roars of anger drowned her cry of pain, and the tentative peace broke.

Erasmus fought off the renewed attack from the sepulcher, simultaneously defending his back against attack from above. The trees came to his aid, jabbing, smacking, and clobbering all they could reach. A short redheaded man fending off the willow limbs with a spear spotted Zoe holding the trunks of a pair of trees at the hollow’s perimeter, her eyes open but rolled up to the whites, and took aim.

Penny fired at him, missed.

“Zoe, look out!”

A large gray hand on a skinny arm reached from the sepulcher wall and yanked the wand out of his hand. A second later Rocky and the wild homunculi burst from the wall and joined the fight.

Zoe came out of her trance to see the homunculi cleaning up the rest of the Red Soldiers below, and smiled. One of the hollow’s tallest willows bent low with a great protesting groan, and slammed itself against the door to the citadel of the Reds just as reinforcements arrived and began to bang on it from the other side.

“Penny!” Ellen tackled her to the ground. “You almost lost your head.”

Ellen’s own head had stopped bleeding, but the layer of blood covering her cheek was gruesome to look at. She smiled and offered Penny her hand.

They were barely on their feet again before Penny had to duck to avoid Ronan’s leaping form. He cleared the distance from the floor of the hollow to the top of the trail, and taking hit after hit, rampaged through the army of Reds. Penny saw bodies flying in his wake.

“Come on,” Ellen grabbed Penny by the arm and dragged her. “Your dad’s asking for you.”

They came to Torin and Flanna crouched low and talking. He saw Penny and pulled her down into the huddle.

“Is Rocky still here?”

“Yes!” Penny didn’t have to search. She could feel him close by, and the moment her thoughts turned to him, he turned up at her side.

“The box,” Flanna asked Rocky. “Did you find it?”

Rocky gave an abrupt shake of his head.

“We need him to find it,” Torin shouted. “If it’s still here.”

Rocky gave a nod and was off.

“We need you to take the fight to them,” Torin said. “Keep them out of here.”

“What’s the plan?” Ellen pushed herself into the huddle and regarded Torin hopefully. “There is a plan, right?”

“Yes,” Flanna said. “I’m going to open the gateway again, and we’re going to get the Chaos Relic back before it’s too late.”

Penny felt the barest flicker of hope before she recalled Erasmus’s warning, and her own memory of the gray man who had discovered it in the rubble of the House of Mirrors.

“No, you can’t touch it!”

“Don’t worry,” he said, forcing a smile. “We’ll think of something.”

“Just keep them away from us,” Flanna said, and hugged Penny so tightly it hurt. “I’m sorry for everything I did, now let us fix it.”

Penny hesitated, nodded. “Be careful!”

“You too,” Torin said, and bent to kiss her cheek. “I love you Penny.”

“I love you, Dad,” Penny said. She found her father’s eyes, then her sister’s, and though she had a bad feeling about the parting, turned away and strode with Ellen back to the fight.

Disaster was all around them, their one chance at salvation too slim for anything but a fool’s hope.

“Stand back,” she said to Ellen, and then let all of her anger and fear burst from her in a bright sheath of flame.

“Zoe, give me a boost!”

She felt a dozen slim willow whips slip down around her, first yanking her from the ground, then swinging her back toward the defeated Red Soldiers by the sepulcher door. Then she rushed forward as they reversed their swing, felt them loosen as it reached its apex, and she flew through the air into the midst of the fight on Clover Hill.