Somewhere in between, p.20
Of Mischief and Magic, page 20
The elf moved away and threw a mage light into the air, staring at Aryn with glittering, angry eyes. “Six long months. Six months is nothing to the kin. Nothing unless you seek what is dear to your heart, as Tyriel is to me. I trusted her to you. And you did not keep her safe. For that I should kill you where you lay.”
Aryn sat up slowly, staring at the elf as Irian came out of the darkness, wavering into view, solidifying and staring at the elf with cool eyes.
“And these past three months, I have searched for you, swordsman. I was led here and I have waited. Now you arrive,” Jaren murmured as he drew his blade and ran one finger down the deadly edge, ignoring the enchanter.
Aryn felt the cold fear sliding through his belly as the assassin continued to stare at him with gleaming green eyes that glowed and shifted with a morass of colors and magic that swelled from within. There was a power there, like what he had sensed inside the half-elf, but it was more deadly, finer, focused—all of it focused on him.
“I know who has her. Are you here to fight it out with me, or here to help me save her, you long-eared son-of-a-bitch?” he asked in a low, harsh voice.
A flashing smile lit the elf’s poetically beautiful face and Jaren threw back his head, his long, razor-straight hair falling down his back as his musical laughter filled the air.
“’Tis no wonder the Princess was so drawn. Not a bit of fear in you, though you’re stupid to not have some fear. And so very unmortal do you act.” Then he moved like a streak of lightning across the room.
Aryn fell back on the bed, rolled backward and landed on the balls of his feet, barely managing to draw his blade and lift it before Jaren was at his back. In such close quarters, a sword did little good. Unless it was enchanted. A long knife at his throat, Aryn breathed shallowly as Jaren whispered silkily, “Where is my lady Princess?”
“Go fuck yourself and the bloody steed that brought you here, you magicked son-of-a-whore.” Aryn didn’t bother to reach for the hands that held him. Jaren was centuries old. He slashed his roughened palm down the blade as Irian stood watching it all with what looked like very amused eyes.
“So nice of you to help me here.”
“Oh, it’s not your death he wants. He’s just bloody pissed. If he tries t’ kill you, I’ll stop him.” Irian leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his broad chest, lifting a curious brow as Jaren continued to ignore what Aryn did with the blade. Was the elf truly so ignorant of what Aryn did?
Aryn mouthed the words silently and too late, Jaren felt the magic rustle through the air just before the air above Aryn’s body grew fire hot. Aryn whirled away just as Jaren fell back silently, the front of his body scorched and smoking. Most men would have been screaming in pain, but the elf just stared appraisingly at the swordsman before lifting his reddened hands and studying the blackened, blistered flesh as it formed.
“What an interesting change,” he mused.
“Tyriel is not your lady.”
Jaren’s eyes narrowed and a feline smile, predatory and sharp, settled on his face. “And pray tell, why not?”
Irian perked up with interest as Aryn lifted the blade and pointed it at the elf. “She is mine.”
* * * * *
The firelight flickered across Aryn’s face, casting half of it in shadow as he sat staring into the night. Irian had swarmed up from the recesses of his mind and forced his damnable will upon Aryn’s body until Aryn sullenly agreed to stop for the night.
Tyriel’s cousin Kellen had erupted into fury when Aryn said he wouldn’t be traveling with them to rescue her, but he’d finally acquiesced after seeing the elvish steed. Aryn’s mount Bel couldn’t keep even half the pace, although the gelding was fast.
However, Kellen rode a plains pony when he rode anything at all and no plains pony could keep pace either warrior’s beast.
He’d given both of them a scathing send-off, but promised to send word through the Wildling clans that they believed they’d found a line on Tyriel.
Bring her back to us or you’ll face all the fury of the clans, Kellen had promised.
It hadn’t been an empty threat.
They’d already encountered four Wildlings out on a ‘roam’ as they called it, each of them asking after Tyriel. Aryn knew only one of them.
Word had already spread. They’d been gone from Ifteril just three days.
Three days of solid, hard riding, Aryn brooded, and the blasted elf looked as rested, and as out for blood, when they stopped as when they started.
He lay on his bedroll, smoking a long, oddly scented pipe, stroking a crescent-shaped metallic stone of black at his neck as Aryn stared into the night.
The swordsman had no idea how closely the elf was watching him. And likely wouldn’t care either.
He had sat for the longest time alone, undisturbed, aware of nothing but a sense of her…somewhere in the east. Closer and closer.
Now Irian was at his side, lowering himself to his haunches, his rough-hewn features puzzled, curious, almost too afraid to hope. His voice, when rarely he spoke in a voice for somebody other than Aryn alone to hear, had a deep, rippling quality, like a stone cast into a well.
“I sense something…Tyriel…but not her. I know not what.” Irian glanced over as the elf rose to his feet in one smooth graceful movement, his muscled body gleaming in the firelight. “It sensed me. Doesn’t know me. Mayhap you, brother mine. Come.”
Aryn was already mounting Bel bareback.
Irian disappeared into the night, inside Aryn, guiding him to the source of what he had sensed.
When Aryn slid from his mount sometime later, what he saw pacing in the moonlight was the last thing he had ever expected.
The elvish stallion was taller, broader than Bel, with larger eyes that had the uncanny, unsettling ability of glowing. It resembled a horse, the way a tame house cat resembled a wild mountain lion some faerie minx had tamed.
But this elvish steed looked very unlike the mount Aryn had seen just months earlier. His neatly groomed coat had grown long and shabby, his eyes no longer had that ‘settled’ look in them. He looked vaguely lost as he turned considering eyes Aryn’s way.
He looked…wild.
But he kept cocking his head at Aryn as the swordsman slid one leg over Bel’s head and circled the clearing, his intelligent eyes trained on the swordsman’s face, rapt and fascinated. Curious. Hungry.
And then Jaren charged in, lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl as he launched himself in a low tumble at the elvish stallion that ended with him underneath the beast, a long wicked blade drawn and ready.
His own mount went nearly wild, pawing at the air, her screams filling the night.
Aryn kicked Jaren’s wrist, hard enough, he hoped, to numb it and grabbed the elf’s ankle, hauling him out from under the stallion.
“He betrayed his mistress,” Jaren snarled, flipping to his feet, snarling at Aryn and whirling back to the stallion.
“He looks rather lost to me.” Aryn turned back to the stallion, rubbing the beast’s black face, his cheeks and neck with gentle hands, staring into the dazed, helpless eyes.
“Pretty mistress…good hands…she never came…”
The voice filled the air, echoing in their minds...and around them, clear as day.
Even Jaren stumbled back in shock from it.
Aryn recovered first, and brought the stallion’s attention back to him. “Tyriel. She was coming to you that morning. She never came, did she?”
“The elvish mounts are fantastic creatures, but none can comprehend that well.” Jaren moved again in Kilidare’s direction. “’Tis like a guard dog. And he sorely failed at his job.”
“Nevernevernevernever.”
Aryn ran his hand again down Kilidare’s cheek and slid Jaren a look. “We go to find her. The lady. The pretty lady with the good hands, your mistress.”
“Evil man, evil dark take…I scent…not see…bad taste. Bad taste—we know.”
“Evil man?” Jaren asked, stopping in his tracks. “How do you know his scent?”
“Town, demon mark…all over her. His scent, all over. He take, I feel, then pretty mistress gone.”
Jaren’s face was blank, simply stunned.
Aryn smothered a smile as he continued to stroke Kilidare, soothing the bewildered stallion.
“We will find her,” Aryn murmured soothingly as the great beast rested his head over the human’s shoulder, a huge shudder wracking him.
* * * * *
Tyriel knew the end was finally nearing.
Her heart was failing her and the thought brought her peace.
She lay wearily on the cold floor. It was cold in the dungeon, but she’d long grown used to that. If she were to feel warmth again…well, that might shock her weakening heart into stopping altogether. Not that she’d mind dying warm.
Not that she’d mind dying. At all.
“It won’t be long now,” she said to herself, her voice raspy from weeks of disuse.
Tainan might have finally forgotten her.
She hoped he had. She was tired of looking at him and remembering what life had been…before.
His guards still remembered her, but their cruelties were nothing like their master’s. She could no longer block them out as easily, but her strength was so far gone from her, it took little for her to black out.
While she shuddered to think of what they did to her in those periods of darkness, she was grateful for that escape.
Soon, she wouldn’t have to think of any of it.
Not ever again.
Soon, she’d fly free. Perhaps she’d even find her mother waiting for her. Perhaps she’d find peace.
Her heart did another skipping bump and she smiled at the feel of her own heart dying.
It didn’t hurt. She hadn’t known if there would be pain or not. With her mixed blood, it was never easy to say which trait she’d inherit.
When it came to heart ailments, it seemed the elvish in her had won out again. Her heart’s strength was merely…slipping away. Ever slowing beats and eventually she would drift into a sleep that could linger for days or weeks.
Without the treatments her people knew, she would be dead within a month. And mostly likely even those would not help. Human or elvish will made up for so much.
Tyriel had no will left. No desire left to live and suffer and fight.
There was a brush on the edges of her mind that felt oddly familiar as she drifted closer to sleep. The contact warmed her and almost stirred her to curiosity. But her exhaustion won out. Still, that presence warmed her as she slid into sleep.
For once, she didn’t feel alone.
The crashing of doors, the burning smoke didn’t faze her at all.
* * * * *
The low, sprawling house, so lavishly built, wasn’t at all what Aryn expected.
When the songs were sung of heroes heroically rescuing the Princess, it was from a towering, craggy cliff, or a cave buried deep in a jungle.
But the steed had started to liven, and purpose had returned to his eyes. The wildness had slowly leeched out of the intelligent steed over the day and half since they’d found him but now, he truly resembled the beast Aryn remembered from years past.
And he knew why.
They’d found her.
Somewhere in that stately home, Tyriel lay trapped, beaten, alone, likely thinking she’d been abandoned.
We’re coming, he thought, wishing he could send the thought winging to her.
This was where Kilidare had led them, where Aryn’s heart and soul had been guiding him. They had stumbled through a thick, obscuring fog that tasted metallic, almost poisonous, burning and stinging Aryn’s eyes.
“’Tis illusion,” Jaren said quietly from atop his mount. His dark-green eyes shifted to a paler color as power rolled through them. One hand lifted and his fingers spread, flexed, and a mist of light formed, then dissipated. “It feels deadly, but it isn’t. It’s just a protective shield. It hides something.”
The something had been this place, this house. After the light had dissipated from Jaren’s hand, the fog surrounding them had started to lift. And as they moved, it lifted ever more until they moved into a circle of free air. By midday, it was all gone. And at nightfall, they came to the edge of a clearing in the woods and that low sprawling structure came into view.
In the light of the full moon, Jaren said, “I feel her, her strength wanes.”
And the stallion near went mad, scenting her. Aryn could feel her, too.
The strategist in him would prefer a plan of sorts and he muttered just that out loud.
Jaren slid him a narrow look, his eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark. “As would I, swordsman. But her time runs short. I did not leave my Princess with good words between us. She is young, too young, too good a woman to die in such a place as this. And I know this scent—’tis my fault she is in there. At the time, I did not believe he would come seeking her so quickly.”
Aryn lifted a brow, quizzically.
“Didn’t you wonder how I knew you were in the city?” Jaren’s humorless laugh came, faded. “You are in the presence of one of the few psychic warriors known among the kin, swordsman.”
Irian was oddly quiet.
The blade at Aryn’s back was becoming heavier, the way it had in the early years, before Aryn had realized just what he held when he first took up the blade. “Know you, friend, it grieves me that it led to this. If I had known she would come to any danger, any pain…never would I have risked her, never.”
As they crept closer, their presence muffled by the deft touch of Jaren’s magic, Irian spoke somberly into Aryn’s mind.
“It’s not your fault, Irian. Tyriel has always done what Tyriel wants to do—and her actions shouldn’t have put her at risk, but they did. That isn’t your fault.”
“Ahhh, but my wanting her so desperately clouded my thinking. And my fear, that clouded what little rational thought I had left.”
Aryn slid the enchanter a wry glance as Irian walked through a tree without blinking an eye.
“You love her,” Aryn said quietly. “Don’t think I don’t know it. Don’t act like I’m not aware. The person who is to blame is Tainan. And Tainan alone. Not you. Not me, though I will kick my ass from now until the day I die. And certainly not Tyriel.”
“Do not be so quick to acquit me, brother of my soul. There are things you cannot know about me. Things I haven’t told a living soul in more millennia than even I can recall.”
Aryn drew the blade at the door. Jaren took the back. Very few servants were here. Very few living souls. But many, many magicked traps and creatures. As Aryn drew the blade, he also called Irian, pulling the enchanter willingly inside himself, so that the two were one inside his skin.
Five humans. Including the most important one. Tainan Delre.
And the ever-weakening soul of a very battered Wildling elf.
Aryn launched himself at the door, words he didn’t know he knew pouring from him. And not a drop of blood was spilled, not a grain of salt flung on the ground. The magic was well and firmly inside him, and in his rage, the accouterments so many enchanters needed were forgotten, no more than props to the power Aryn now wielded easily.
Irian smiled bitterly. His task was nearly complete. But at such a high cost.
Fire erupted the moment Aryn’s body touched the door. At the same time, the very foundation of the building shook as Jaren’s magic breached the barriers that surrounded and protected it. Under the onslaught, it buckled.
A berzerker, Aryn lifted his sword and cut through one guard, severing his torso from the waist up.
Aryn’s eyes gleamed red with rage as he scented Tyriel on the body of the huge man who came running at him, blade drawn. Aryn flung one hand up, slicing it along Asrel’s edge for blood, smearing his blood on the face of the man who stopped, frozen in abject terror at the sight of the warrior standing before him with death and vengeance in his glowing blue eyes. The images continued to shift—from a tall, leanly-built blond man, with an almost inhuman beauty with eyes that burned bright with fury, sweeping down on them like an avenging angel, to a sinister-looking, towering warrior of a man with wildly curling black hair and rough-hewn features in barbaric garb, a wicked smile on his face, the very devil to prey upon your fears.
The guard screamed and screamed, as the man rubbed a smear of blood down his cheek, then impaled him on the tip of the sword, pushing it in slowly from his belly, downward.
“Why is it I smell her on you? All over you?” Aryn asked hoarsely, his rage tightening his throat. As the blade forged through his internal organs, it burned them, searing them, charring them. “My lady—you beat her, raped her and whipped her. If I could spare the time…” A growl ripped from his throat as he twisted the blade.
The blade scraped over the guard’s internal sex organs, and then outward, and his screams locked in his throat.
“Die…slowly,” and he jerked the blade forward, ripping bone, tissue, muscle, and the man’s cock from his body.
In the hall, Aryn came face to face with Tainan.
Jaren had planned on taking this bastard.
But both Irian and Aryn had other plans.
Of course, Tyriel was more important, but if they happened upon him…
“Bury Asrel deep inside his black heart, my brother. Such a simple blow, and he will not expect a physical attack from an enchanter.”
Irian formed. Larger than life, full of vengeance, rage, anger, his black hair whipping around his face, the ancient enchanter’s voice rang out in a way it never had as he cursed the sorcerer in a tongue no longer spoken. His hand closed into a fist, then he slapped it against the stone wall behind him, setting the old stone manor house to shaking until even the foundation quivered.
Tainan paled as Irian’s focus narrowed on him.
“You die today,” Irian said, his voice still ringing with that booming echo. He flung his hand toward the thinner, trembling man and a streak of red sliced down Tainan’s face.
