Dawnsinger (24 page)

Dusk fell with breathtaking suddenness. Standing alone at nightfall beside a mass grave of slaughtered innocents held almost as much terror as following her companions. She hurried after them with fear behind and before her.

The entrance chamber tilted, then righted. The lanthorn slipped from her grasp and crashed on the marble floor, extinguishing. Dorann’s knife fell, too. She had no time to search for it. Already the others left her behind. She forced air into her lungs. She would not faint now. She had to know what had happened to Kai.
It could not be too late.
There must be a way to save them all.

“Lof Yuel
,
help me!”

Flashes of light swirled from the dagger in her hand to encompass her like a multi-hued shield.
Leisht
cuts enchantment.
The truth made her giddy. Here lay deliverance, if she could but find its path.

Dorann and Aerlic moved as one across the dim entrance chamber and through an archway to climb a marble stair that circled upward into a corner tower.

Something calls them.

She left the broken lanthorn where it fell and followed. Light sparkled from Leisht’s hilt and swirled before her. She heard the others ahead, their feet trudging onward and upward. She followed, but resisted the urge to call out to try and wake them from this nightmare. Reason would not work against magics. Perhaps if she bathed them in the light from her dagger also, it would free them.

They halted at what must be the top of the stair. She waited on the steps below. The marble stair remained largely intact, but the tower’s floor timbers had burned or fallen. She looked down and wished she hadn’t. The dimness did not conceal the long drop to the floor below.

A shriek rent the air. Dark creatures skittered over the tower, claws at the ready, long antennae twitching.
Waevens.

How could this be? Such monsters lived only in stories kept for the dark of night. Those tales told of spider-like waevens weaving webs of enchantment to entrap their prey. They injected a numbing poison which stole the souls of their victims but left their bodies intact. The waevens would return at leisure to suck a victim’s lifeblood.

The picture of such a fate for Kai and her other companions girded Shae. When Dorann and Aerlic stepped onto a wide stone landing leading to the battlements at the top of the tower, she followed. She was not prepared for the sight that Leisht’s many-hued light revealed.

Kai stood on the landing near three waevens
perched atop merlons on the battlement wall. One of the many-legged creatures dangled Guaron in the embrace of its jointed legs, purring as its fangs punctured the skin of his forearm to drink his blood. Another reached its antennae toward Kai. Why didn’t he pull away?

Shae did not pause. As she stepped around Dorann and Aerlic and advanced toward the waevens, Leisht’s light swirled more brightly around her. Panic babbled in her mind, but she silenced it. She must prevail.

The third waeven’s foul breath rolled over her. Its atennae clutched her almost caressingly around the waist.

White-hot light flared from Leisht
.

The creature’s shriek filled her mind….
No!
She gripped the dagger in both hands and waited.

The waeven emitted a low hum. She sensed it meant to strike.

Reacting without thought, she thrust her dagger into the creature’s soft middle.

Its scream rent the air. The atennae gripping her slackened. She pulled Leisht free with a sob. Black liquid spurted from a gash in its chest and dripped from the blade. With no more than a faint hiss, the waeven fell from the wall to thud in the bailey below.

The remaining two waevens shrilled. They released their captives and emitted a low hum as they skittered sideways across the merlins—toward Shae. Kai stood quiet. Guaron slid to the stone walkway, still as death.

With terrifying swiftness, both waevens lunged toward her. Before Shae could react, multi-colored light lashed at them.

They hesitated.

Shae’s hands trembled and the light wavered. Her knees shook, her head reeled, and she could barely think. She steadied herself and renewed her focus on the light. She rasped in a breath and offered herself into the embrace of the nearest waeven.

As her blade struck its neck, its hum turned into a shriek. Black blood ran down her arm to stain her sleeve. The waeven
fell away.

She barely had time to gather her strength before the last waeven’s antennae caught her ankle.

A wave of nausea washed over her. Somehow this touch unsettled her more than the others she had endured. Sucking in her breath, she just stopped herself from swatting at the antenna
.
She would lose such a battle. She must defeat the whole creature.

“Shae!”

Kai’s cry broke her concentration. Her gaze locked on the terrible humming monster. Its antenna jerked her off her feet, and she slid toward its cricking claws. A scream tore from her and she swung her dagger toward the fell creature’s soft underbelly. The second antenna lashed around her wrist.

Leisht clattered away, its light fading.

20

Waevens

Kai watched himself, as if from a distance, go into the evil embrace of the
waeven
that held him captive. But as the waeven hissed and died, Kai’s confusion loosened along with the creature’s grasp of him. He no longer held Whyst. Casting back, he recalled the flash as the great sword fell from his hand. He’d turned from its light, already befuddled, and entered a darkness of the soul. He’d drifted, lost in shadows, until his captor hissed and died. Shae’s scream had dispelled the last of his confusion.

Leisht glowed with fading light against the marble floor near the head of the stair. He dove for the dagger, rolled, and regained his feet.

The waeven released Shae, and she backed away. The foul creature faced Kai, humming. He could not let himself look at Shae, although concern for her tore at him. There would be time enough to make sure of her safety if he defeated—
when
he defeated—the waeven. He must not fail.

To press the advantage of surprise, he struck at once. Leisht’s light flared forth and the waeven shrieked. Multi-colored light swirled backward to touch Kai. Heat reached deep within him but brought no pain, and the last lingering traces of enchantment burned away.

Guaron moaned, but Kai did not turn his head. Fully restored, he stood square against the waeven. But the creature recoiled from the light and hummed louder. Kai followed, advancing step by step.

The creature turned on him with fangs bared, despite its obvious aversion to the light. Its thrumming vibrated through the air, threatening to overwhelm Kai’s senses.

Teeth gritted, he drove the dagger into the monster’s black heart. Keeping hold of Leisht’s hilt, he stepped away as the waeven fell. Black blood ran from the blade as the creature roiled and died. The light from Leisht faded and extinguished. Darkness pressed him.

Kai sucked air into his lungs. Shae’s embrace replaced the waeven’s, and he pulled her closer. Her arms clasped his neck, and for a time he knew only the sensation of holding her.

She gasped on a sob. “I thought I’d lost you—again.”

“I thought the same of you.” He couldn’t stop touching her—her face, her hair, her arms. He wished he could see her, but they stood in darkness. “Are you unharmed?”

“I am well. The waeven had no time to…to hurt me before you saved me.”

“
I
saved
you?
Had you not slain the waeven that held me I would still remain under its spell.”

“We saved one another then, by Lof Yuel’s grace.”

“Kai? Shae?” Aerlic’s voice carried to them.

“We’re well.” Kai put Shae from him with reluctance but didn’t release her hand.

“Wait,” Dorann said. Amid the sound of scuffling, a small light flared. “I thought my cup light might come in handy.”

“It’s well you brought it, my friend.” Aerlic’s voice held the sound of a smile.

Kai sighed. “It will do, but I must find Whyst. Have you and Dorann recovered enough to carry Guaron? He’s suffered harm.”

Dorann held the cup light aloft. Guaron lay where he’d fallen.

Kai touched Guaron’s sleeve and found sticky moisture. By the odor, it could only be blood. He felt for a pulse. “Guaron, do you live? Answer if you can.”

Guaron moaned and muttered. “Who will care for the wingabeasts now?”

“You must recover.” Kai’s tone brooked no compromise. “The wingabeasts need their keeper.”

****

“Where are they?” Shae halted at the top of the long ramp. The outer bailey’s waving grasses and cobblestone paths lay in moonlit relief below—devoid of life. Beyond the outer wall, blued light mantled the rounded shapes of Syllid Mueric’s canopy. Nothing stirred. “The wingabeasts
are gone!”

A hand touched her shoulder.“Steady, Shae.” Kai murmured near her ear. “The wingabeasts are trained to endure. Something warned them away, perhaps the waeven’s cries. They will have scattered and hidden from danger.” When they reached the base of the ramp, he gave a soft whistle, but the wingabeasts
did not respond.

They waited out the night beneath the spreading strongwood. Guaron, tended by Dorann and Kai, rested in fits and starts. Aerlic kept watch. Only Shae had opportunity to sleep, but found she could not. Of its own volition, her mind replayed her encounter with the waevens over and over. She tossed and turned, then dropped into light slumber, only to wake at a moan from Guaron.

Pale shadows spiraled out of the lightening sky—the wingabeasts returning. Eased by their presence, she settled to sleep at last, but at Kai’s call awoke with an aching head.

She kept to herself and tried not to snap at anyone, but Kai sought her out.

“Come, Shae. Let us leave this place of death. We’ll ride the wingabeasts as far as Graelinn Hold, where we can rest before going on by foot.”

“We’ll leave the wingabeasts at Graelinn Hold?”

Kai nodded. “It’s unthinkable to take them where welkes hunt. We could only fly at night and, even if we found cover enough to hide by day and the wingabeasts didn’t panic and flee, the welkes
would soon scent them and find us all.“

“Will they not scent us?”

“Their senses are not so tuned to us as to the wingabeasts, but no, we have no assurance they won’t find us, too.”

Shae said nothing. Neither welkes nor the thought of crossing the lost plain of Laesh Ebain terrified her as much as the shifting, nameless thing of her nightmares—the evil she had discovered in Freaer. In the watches of the night, it still reached for her.

She squinted into the uncertain light of a gray morn. Brael Shadd glowed above swirling mists on the horizon. The DayStar had sunk lower since she’d last marked its position. “What of Guaron? Can he travel?”

“He must. We cannot linger, especially since we’ll travel by land now to avoid detection by the welkes as they fly out by day from Maeg Waer. For my part, I’m glad to leave this tomb.”

Shae gazed at Braeth Hold, stark against the cheerless sky. She had thought to learn more of her ancestors here, but this ruined husk could not summon them. She turned away. Time carried on, and nothing could stay its hand.

Kai placed an arm around her shoulders, and she turned to meet his silvered gaze. Something unspoken bound her to him, but also drove her from his side. She pulled away to prepare for their journey.

They gathered astride the wingabeasts, all save Guaron, who rode before Dorann on Sharten
.
Guaron’s Blue, Raegnen
,
needed no instruction, but followed close behind his stricken rider. Traveling with grim faces a half-erased track through rampant underbrush, they spoke little and rested less. Draetenns laced slender branches overhead, providing cover to all who passed into their green, scented shadow.

Once or twice, Shae caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, but spied only leaves twisting in a breeze. Small
flitlings
followed as she passed, jumping from tree to tree. No other wildlife appeared but she could not escape the feeling of being watched.

She sighed in relief when, about midday, they paused to rest at the edge of a stream. She bent to sip the cool water from her cupped palm and wished for something to eat. But they’d taken their last waybread with greenings Dorann had gathered the day before.

“We dare not delay!” Kai urged them, and indeed Guaron looked more drawn than ever in the patch of sunlight where they had laid him. For his sake, they could not reach Graelinn Hold soon enough.

Once mounted again, they passed without pause a motionless stag which watched them with liquid eyes from a wildflower dell. Shae’s heart ached at the creature’s grace. They hurried on. Not even the prospect of fresh venison could tempt them to linger.

The soft light of late afternoon slanted across the grassland by the time they slipped from Syllid Mueric onto the plain that edged Weithein Faen’s marshes to the south and stretched eastward to the first of three stone rises. Northward, beyond vast reaches of desert, the broken peak of Maeg Streihcan stood sentinel. At sight of Graelinn Hold rising from the plain in the distance, Shae could have wept.

Flecht lifted into flight. Ruescht followed. Kai chose the safest course, for here on the plain, they had nowhere to hide. Better to reach the hold in swiftness without secrecy. The warm wind blowing off the desert flowed over her, and she abandoned herself to the fleeting joy of this last flight on Ruescht.

Part Three: Gateway

21

Graelinn Hold

Although she greeted them with impeccable manners, Katera’s tone held a certain distance. Shae couldn’t blame her. She and Kai had, after all, missed her wedding, however important the reason. And now they stood unannounced in Graelinn Hold’s circular entrance chamber in the company of a tough-looking tracker and a flame-haired archer. Guaron already rested under the care of Graelinn’s praectal.