Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) (36 page)

I turned my back on him.

And the temple shook as if in an earthquake.

The soothsayer of Ker had said
only darkness can cast out darkness.

He had been wrong. I knew with a certainty that allowing the ancient god’s darkness inside me would only turn the whole world black. Only light dispelled darkness. We had to hold on to our light if we were to win.

Swords clashed in the distance, then suddenly, much closer, men shouted. Marga growled, pacing inside the circle, looking out as if expecting an attack.

Orz had the same body language, although he stood still. But his attention was fixed on the street leading to the temple square, his sword ready in his hand.

“We must save the city,” I told him.

A hollow, an accidental sorceress, and an untrained battle tiger.

Against the most powerful army in the world.

To his credit, Orz did not laugh at me.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

(Holding Together)

We hurried toward the sounds of battle, leaving the hissing god and his offers of power behind us.

“We shall do what we can,” I told Orz.

I could heal. That had made a difference at Karamur’s siege, although I had many Shahala healers there with me.

Then I thought,
I could, sometimes, communicate with animals.

I had on the pirate ship when I had called the fish. But what good was that now? What could I do? Call fish onto dry land?

My spirits flagged.

I wished I could call to Lord Karnagh. Alas, my spirit song could not reach men.

Then my eyes popped wide with a sudden, dizzying realization. I could call their tigers!

I stopped in my tracks. And then I sent my spirit song north. Soon I felt the tigers, and through them, their masters. I knew that the animals heard me. I felt them stir. I knew they were coming.

On the river, they could reach us in but a few days. I asked them to hurry their bonded lords if they could.

When city soldiers rushed by, I sent news with them to the city fathers that reinforcements were on their way. Hope could double a man’s strength. Or even triple it. I rushed, with Orz next to me, to also pass the good news on to our soldiers.

That hope was enough that day to hold the inner wall. The enemy could not breach it. When darkness fell and the fighting ended for the day, we were still safe.

That night, once again, Graho came to see me. He looked dead on his feet. I offered him food and wine the servants had brought, which he accepted.

He did not stay long. We both knew that the battle would start again the next morn. We needed to be ready for it.

And the following day
was
more difficult. The enemy had somehow sighted their siege machines so they could send their projectiles over the half-ruined outer walls and hit the inner walls more often than not.

When the first, small section crumbled, it did not seem as if we could hold out long enough for the Selorm lords to reach us.

But then Graho brought the children.

“Stay with us,” he asked me. “They have never done this before. They are scared.”

I had a feeling I was about to witness their secret powers. I went with them—with Marga and Orz—as the children scrambled straight up to the wall, to the base of the section the siege machines were hitting most frequently, near the temple.

With pinched faces, flinching from the loud battle noises, they placed their little hands upon the wall. And I could feel as they poured their spirits into that wall until the expanse of stone was almost like a living thing.

“They hold things together,” Graho said next to me, his voice filled with worry.

I stared at him.
Hold things together
. A powerful skill indeed for a nation who lived on small islands covered in fortresses, nothing but walls, which every enemy would do its best to demolish.

That we had an unexpectedly easy passage through the hardstorms made sense all of a sudden. The nine had been holding the ship together. And Graho’s confidence that the makeshift barrel raft would not sink came from his knowledge of their gift.

“What can I do to help?” I asked.

He watched me with true desperation in his gaze for the first time. “Make sure they are not injured.”

I sent my spirit to them. The next hit reverberated through my arms, through my very being, as if I was holding up the wall and not the children.

I cried out in anguish, feeling as if my bones were pulverizing from the inside, as if my body had fallen between millstones and the great stones were grinding.

The children remained standing, for I had taken the pain of all nine upon me.

If Orz had tried to pull me away, I would not have let him, but instead, he came behind me and wrapped his arms tightly around me to keep me from falling. He made soft sounds in his throat that might have been whispers, but if he was at last talking to me, I could not comprehend it, I was so overtaken.

When my knees buckled, he held me up. And the children stood. And the wall held, hit after hit.

At the periphery of my senses, I could feel the soldiers’ spirits revive, and word spread through our defenses that some great magic was afoot, that the sorceress had once again wrought something.

They talked to me as some priests talked to their temple statutes. I could not respond. I could but take the pain. And Orz held me throughout the day.

I would only let him carry me back to my quarters when night fell and the siege machines went silent.

Graho came to see me some time later.

“The children?” I asked.

Orz was cleaning his sword on the balcony.

“Well and asleep, all thanks to you,” Graho responded to my question.

“They do what they can. I do what I can,” I told him. “So this is why you have not sent them away in the boat.”

He nodded, his gaze haunted. “I still do not know whether I have made the right decision. I risk losing them. Yet if I sent them to safety, we risk losing the world.” He paused. “We make our choices, do we not? Either we fight for light or let darkness creep in.”

“And once we choose, we do what we must,” I agreed.

“The sorcerer is not with the Emperor’s troops outside.” He said the very thing that I had been thinking about just before he had arrived. If the sorcerer had been here, he could have counteracted the children’s power
and
mine.

“Where is he?” I asked, more than a little troubled.

“Mayhap he found out that you were in the city and fled.”

This I very much doubted.

Graho bowed. “You truly are a great sorceress.”

I could only shake my head. I was too tired to protest.

“I had seen you on the ship, bundled against the cold, weak with hunger. Then soppy wet, carried to shore and dumped in a heap by the tiger.” He made a helpless gesture with his hand.

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to say I did not look like much, Prince Graho?”

He held my gaze. “You looked like the woman my heart wanted,” he said simply. “I saw that. But I had failed to see the power.”

He watched me for a long time. “I want you to be my princess. And when I am crowned, I want you to be my queen. But whatever choice you make, when this siege is over, the navy of Landria shall be at your service, no matter how hard my lord father might object.”

“Does a prince overrule a king in your kingdom?”

“I am the admiral of the navy.” He gave a slow smile. “My captains will obey me above all others.”

I thanked him, too tired even to be relieved.

He stood, and once again dipped close to steal a quick kiss, just a soft brushing of the lips.

“Prince Graho—”

“That takes more courage than you think, Sorceress. I am never altogether certain that you will not smite me.”

His words turned my frown into a smile. The way he spoke, with that boyish look of pleasure on his face—how could I chide him? And why would I, when neither of us might survive the next day?

I had a lot to think about after he left me.

I had an army, even if our numbers decreased each day. But if the Selorm lords reached us in time, enough of the army might yet remain to save Dahru. And now we had the use of a navy.

How I wished that Batumar was with me.

Yet he was not. Nor would he ever be again. The thought echoed painfully around in my empty chest.

Someday in the future, I might face a choice: whether to live on my mother’s beach with Orz, or as the princess of the Forbidden Islands with Graho.

Thank the spirits, I did not yet have to make that choice. First we had to repel the siege, then free Dahru from the enemy.

* * *

The days that followed turned out to be more difficult than I had feared. I tried as best as I could to help the children hold up the walls, but exhaustion weakened their strength and mine.

I rarely stopped to rest. When the siege machines were not attacking, and I was not needed to help to hold up the walls, I healed the injured.

Then the enemy thought of setting the wooden gate on fire. And even as it burned, they aimed their siege machines at it.

The children could not go into the flames.

So I tried. I thought somehow they could send their spirit to me as I had sent mine to them. I lay my hand on that gate and held it there until my palms blistered from the burning gate, until the smoke overcame my lungs.

But nothing worked. Not even when the Guardian showed up to help. The fire consumed the wood. We could not hold ashes together.

Orz and Graho dragged me away and absolutely forbade me to try again. As they stood over my bed, looking down at me, Graho’s eyes clouded with worry. Orz’s shoulders were stiff with it. They did not appear to be afraid of my great sorcery.

And, truth be told, I could barely speak to beg them to stop their badgering. My voice sounded as ruined as Orz’s. Not that it ever slowed him down. He could badger me aplenty to stay in bed and rest without saying a word.

In the end, the spirits saved us, for they sent a night of heavy rain that put out the fires and soaked the remaining wood through so it could not be set afire again.

I was back out by the wall the next morning.

My help was not enough. Somehow the enemy had guessed our power and sought to overcome it by relentlessly attacking the very spot where the children stood. After the third missile in a row, I was shaking. By the fourth, I was doubled over with pain. The fifth missile had me fainting. The sixth missile demolished the wall, and the rocks buried us.

Orz was next to me in the rubble, protecting me with his body, while Marga roared and dug madly above us. The enemy soldiers pouring in the gap must have given her wide berth, for instead of fighting them, she kept digging. I could hear her claws scraping on stone as she roared for me furiously.

All I could think of were the children.

The sounds of more commotion reached us from a distance. Loud shouts from the direction of the harbor, I thought.

Orz pushed against the rocks with superhuman strength. I tried too, but my strength was thoroughly sapped. Still, between Orz and Marga, they broke me free. And I gave a sigh of relief when I saw the children safe.

Graho tossed a rock aside. He had been helping Marga, I realized.

“The children held up the section directly above them,” he said, “but you were standing farther away.”

A horn sounded far away, and Graho turned toward it, shouted something I didn’t catch. But then he turned back, a ferocious smile on his face. “The Landrian navy is in the harbor.”

Orz carried me, Marga clearing the way to the nearest tower that had but a small door and might yet be defendable. Graho and the children came with us. Help was here. We had only to hold out a little longer.

And the spirits smiled on us once more. Even as the navy attacked the enemy from the harbor side on the south, Lord Karnagh and his army arrived on barges from the north.

Later, I would remember little of that day. All I knew was that we had held out long enough for help to reach us, and that was sufficient.

Once the enemy was pushed back, out of the city, I did nothing but heal the wounded. And the next day, and the next day, and the next.

Graho came by often, sometimes with the children. His visits were a blur. Tomron reported our losses. Orz remained at my side always.

Then the worst of it was done, or enough so that the herb women could handle the rest. I slept for three days.

When I woke, the most beautiful purple dress waited for me at the end of the bed, a high-sheen satin that glistened like the waves. And a message from Graho that he would visit with me that day over the evening meal.

Orz stood over the bed, his shoulders stiff as the servant passed on the message.

“I am well,” I assured him and slid out of bed. “I would like a bath,” I told the servant woman.

I wrapped a blanket around myself and went to stand on the balcony while my bath was prepared.

“Are you sure you are not hurt?” I asked Orz, who stood next to me with a sullen tilt of his shoulders. He had not let me examine him, let alone heal him. As many men as he had cut down, I was certain that some of the swords had reached him.

Marga’s tail twitched as she paced the balcony behind us, restless. The port city was no place for the tiger. And she would hate a ship even more. Yet I knew that I could not leave her behind, nor would she abandon me. Our fates were forever connected.

“I am going to ask Prince Graho to have his ships transport us as soon as possible,” I told Orz and looked at his hooded face. I had to give him a choice, even if I held my breath as I did. “You are a man of Ishaf. Do you wish to return there?”

His response was to step closer to me.

I did not know why that should make me feel so much better.

The servant called. I went inside for my bath. Orz remained on the balcony with the tiger, turned toward the city.

He stayed that way until I was bathed and dressed. He came in just as the servant looped the prince’s gold chain with the royal seal over my head. Graho had insisted that I keep it while I considered his proposal.