Glyphbinder (28 page)

Trell shoved her as hard as he could. “Get away from me! All of you! I want no part of this!”

“Give her time, Trell,” another voice said. “She grows on you.”

Trell looked for the voice and found it. He took two steps back. What walked toward him was a living, blistered corpse.

“You don’t recognize me?” The corpse bared blackened teeth, its eyes lumps of seared flesh. “Oh, right. The skin thing.”

“Aryn?” Trell couldn’t understand any of this.

“That’s right,” Aryn said. “And I didn’t come back to give up. I’m going to roast Cantrall and stop him from destroying our world. If you want Kara back, it’s time to stop gawking and help me.”

Trell didn’t know what to say to that. So he didn’t say anything at all.

BEFORE ARYN COULD do anything else to reassure Trell, he saw Sera. Here. Alive. He stared and found all words dying in his throat. He was a monster now. Would she even recognize him?

Then she was running. Then she threw her arms around him, so hard it nearly knocked him over. Aryn caught her, held her. He had never imagined holding her in his arms would feel this good.

“You’re alive,” she whispered.

“There’s a story behind that. Sera, I—”

“Stop.” She pushed back, changed orange eyes wet. “Don’t talk. Don’t say anything. Just walk with me, now.”

She took his hand and pulled. She didn’t care that he was a charred, walking corpse, but why had he been worried she would? Sera had never cared what he looked like. All she cared about was who he was. Then he remembered Byn. Where was Byn?

“Wait.” Melyssa stepped in their way. “Where are you going?”

“I have to handle this.” Sera narrowed her eyes at Melyssa. “Handle things here.”

Melyssa looked at Sera, looked at Aryn, and then bowed her head. “Hurry back. Time is precious now.”

What were they talking about? Clouds swept across the moon as Sera led him away from the camp. Once they were clear of the smell of halved revenants, she sat on a rock. She let his hands go.

“Sit down. Don’t talk. I need you to listen to me.”

Aryn sat across from her. Sera was just as beautiful as he remembered, even with dirt smudged on her face. There was a thick white streak in her hair now, and he didn’t know why. What had happened to her after he died?

“I don’t have any words for what you did for me,” Sera said. “Thank you doesn’t even start. You did the bravest thing I’ve ever seen, and it’s haunted me since you died.”

He looked down. “I didn’t—”

“Please.” She raised her hand. “I’m not finished. Just let me get this out.” Both her hands made fists. “You must never do anything like that ever again. Understand?
Never.
”

Aryn flinched like she had hit him.

“I never asked you to die for me. I never asked anyone.”

“You didn’t have to. I didn’t do it to—“

“Do you know what it did to me? Knowing demons had you? Knowing I was the reason they were ripping you apart?”

Aryn didn’t understand how she could be so cross with him. So hurt. He had sacrificed himself for her!

“I can’t imagine what you suffered in the Underside,” Sera said. “It’s written all over your skin. Nothing that could ever happen to me will make up for what happened to you.”

“Dammit, Sera, It’s not a trade.” Aryn stood, grabbed her hands and pulled her close. “All I want—”

“Don’t say it.”

“I love you.”

She pushed away and stepped back. “I know.” She shuddered and hugged herself. “Five take me, I know.”

“Then why can’t we try it? Being together?”

“Because we never will be.”

Aryn felt the world shifting beneath his feet. The hug, her hand, the way she had looked at him—

“I care about you.” Sera bit her lip and stared. “I would do anything for you, but I can’t give you what you want.”

“You don’t mean that!”

“It’s as clear as I can be about it. I do love you, as my friend, but nothing more. We will never be together.”

“We’re more than friends. Don’t you see? I know you think you have something with Byn, but trust me, it’s not—”

“Byn’s dead.”

Aryn shut his mouth. Byn hadn’t been in the camp. He had assumed Byn had just escaped, or Cantrall’s revenants had him somewhere else. He had never thought Byn could simply ... die.

“How?” Aryn whispered.

“One of Jyllith’s davengers tore him apart.”

“I’m sorry.” He pulled Sera into his arms. “I’m so sorry.”

She let him hug her. She trembled and one sob escaped her lips. Aryn knew now just how selfish he had been. Sera had just lost the man she loved.

“After Byn died, I realized we weren’t going to find Jyllith.” Sera’s words were muffled against his chest. “She and her demons would murder us one by one. She would feed Kara to the Mavoureen. I couldn’t let her, so I made a davenger of my own.”

Aryn went tense. He pushed Sera back, still holding her arms.

“I couldn’t let her kill Kara,” Sera said. “Not like she killed Byn, killed you. Someone had to make it stop.”

Aryn remembered knives tearing at his flesh, flames searing his skin. Balazel’s chilling laughter. He remembered all that and trembled as he stared at Sera.

“You can’t let the Mavoureen take you,” Aryn whispered.

“I won’t.”

“Then you’re going to…”

“Yes. After this is over. After Kara is safe.”

Aryn let her go. He sat down. Pebbles dug into his hands as he acknowledged the truth. Sera would kill herself to save her soul.

“Have you told the others?”

“No. But they’ll probably figure it out.”

“I wanted you to live. That’s why I did it.”

“I know you did, and I know what I did was horrible and wrong. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter now.”

Aryn stared at the gray earth. “How do we ... how do we do anything, now?”

“We get up. We save Kara.”

“Is that all we have left?”

“Make it enough.” Sera gripped his hand and pulled him up. “Kara needs us.”

Her voice was stronger now. Harder. It wasn’t just Sera speaking to him now, and something inside him instinctively responded. Heat. Heat was listening to his ruler. His king.

“Ruin is inside you,” Aryn said. “You’re his champion.”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe we have a chance.”

Sera managed one small, sad smile. “Maybe we do.” She pulled him close, kissed his forehead, and then moved past him and stalked back toward their camp.

It was some time before Aryn followed her.

BYN MERIS WOKE TIRED, hungry, and cramped in all his muscles. The sun was rising. When he shifted on the rock, every muscle in his body clenched with pain. He could not stand, so he crawled instead. He would crawl all the way to Sera.

“Up so early, boy?”

Byn tried to snap his head around. He failed. The big muscles of his back clenched like someone had stabbed them. He grunted, slamming down on his chest. When he finally rolled onto his back Xander watched him, smirking.

“This is funny,” Byn said. “Isn’t it?”

Xander’s smirk faded. “No, boy.” He sighed and lowered a hand. “This is not funny at all.”

Byn grabbed that hand. Xander grunted as he wrapped his other hand around Byn’s wrist and set both feet. He grunted and pulled. Byn tried to help, but none of his muscles worked like he remembered.

“Drown me, boy, you’re going to put my back out!”

Finally they stood. Byn fell against Xander, as shaky on his legs as a fresh sailor from a landlocked town. Xander balanced him.

“Stand,” Xander said. “Walk, unless you want us both crawling in the dirt.” He pulled one of Byn’s arms over his shoulders.

Grimacing against the pain and cramped muscles, Byn did as ordered. He moved one leg, then the other. Each step drove needles through his knees and hips. Without Xander supporting him, he would have tripped a dozen times already.

Xander chuckled as they moved, together, at a thoroughly pathetic pace. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

Byn just grunted in response.

“Well, boy, now you know what it feels like to be old.”

“I’m not old.” Byn forced another step. “And I’m not a boy.”

Xander grunted back, huffing hard as they walked. They walked for a time until Byn stopped cold. Xander snorted.

“Problem?”

“Where are we going?”

“And spoil the surprise?”

“Please.” Byn’s thighs felt like they were going to split open. “Tell me where we’re going, unless you want to drag me there.”

“No spirit for adventure.” Xander ribbed him with hard knuckles. “I found myself a torasel company while you were cuddling with your rock. They were quite ready to leave these mountains and be done with me, but a few coins changed their minds. They’re bound for Tarna, and you’ll ride with them.”

“Torasels?” That was too much of a coincidence.

“I do hope you like the smell of soiled hay.”

Byn started them walking. “You said you went looking for davengers yesterday night, for demon glyphs. Did you find any?”

Xander scowled and looked ahead. His free hand clenched. For a moment, Byn felt certain the man would strike him.

“Nothing useful.” Xander unclenched his fist. “I found one davenger broken in half. I found another burning like a torasel campfire and a dozen slaughtered gnarls. But no humans. Just blood. A fair amount of blood.”

Byn gasped. “We have to go back!”

“Why so eager? We’ve found you traveling companions. That’s the end of your fun here.”

“Wait.” Byn pulled free and the effort dropped him to his knees. “I can’t leave. I ... I already have traveling companions.”

Xander snorted and rolled his eyes. “I thought that little nugget would take half the day.”

“You knew?” Byn stared at him and felt a hot flush on his cheeks. “I guess it doesn’t really matter now, does it?” He pushed up, wobbling on uneven legs. “I have to go back for them. I have to know they’re still alive.”

“So your friends hunt gnarls, then? Davengers? The whole lot of beasties right out of the Underside?”

“Actually,” Byn said, “they were hunting us. But you seem like you can handle that. I need to see this battlefield.”

“And just what do you plan to do if your friends are still alive? If they survived the thrice-cursed slaughter I saw yesterday night, they’d be long gone from here.”

“They’re not. They’re still here.” Byn felt his friends in the pass, like he’d felt them on the dyn disc, and though this was a different feeling, he trusted it. “I can find them. But I need your help.”

Xander rolled his eyes and pulled Byn’s arm once more over his shoulders. “Only until nightfall, boy, and no longer. Any longer than that and I’ll be wasting my coin.”

Byn focused on moving. The rightness inside him grew stronger. When they reached the spot where he had slept, he turned his head south. “There. Over that rise and beyond.”

“Now that’s just creepy. That’s the same path I walked yesterday night. Beastruler sense?”

“Something like that. Come on.”

“Right.” Xander grumbled to himself as they moved on.

That brought a smile to Byn’s face. This old mage was so much like his father that it was hard not to grin. Byn was alive, and the people he cared about were too. Things were going to be all right.

Their trek was tiring but not brutal. The sun had risen high when they came to the battlefield Xander had described. Almost before they were upon it, Byn had its scent.

He pushed himself off Xander and dropped to his knees. This time, however, it wasn’t weakness that brought him down. He crawled forward, sniffing at the dirt with Rannos’ keen nose. There was too much dried blood to make sense of anything.

Then Byn scented something familiar. He gasped, heart pounding. He pressed his nose to the earth.

“Are you all right?” Xander said.

“This blood.” Byn looked up at Xander. “Some of it is Sera’s.”

It took but a moment to scribe Rannos’s glyph on his chest. He was not sure what it would do to his body, what it would do to his ruined muscles, but that didn’t matter now. He and Rannos ran.

“Where are you going?” Xander shouted. “Byn!”

Rannos had him. The great wolf snarled as they fought through pain to move, the constant, nagging pains of a very old wolf, but they still had all their teeth. They were going to go down biting.

The battlefield passed into memory as Rannos drove Byn on, scenting the ground to track Sera. He followed a long and torturous route and Byn went down many times, scraping his hands and knees. Scraping everything. Loose slides of gravel and sharp rocks dogged his steps, but he dared not slow. What if Sera was bleeding somewhere ahead? What if she was dying?

Byn lurched to a stop when a horrible smell overwhelmed his nostrils. It smelled like fish rotting in the sun, only ten times as strong. He carefully picked his way through pieces of armored soldiers and rotting flesh. Black blood stained the rock like dried oil.

He passed nine more corpses before the slaughter ended, gagging and choking at the smell of their black blood. There was a rise ahead, and Rannos scented Sera’s passage. How much further?

Byn stumbled up the rise, slipping backward several times. When he crested it, the sun nearly blinded him. He blocked its light with a raised hand and took in the four people looking away from him, staring off the edge. He only had eyes for one.

“Sera.” He stumbled forward, bloodied and exhausted. “Sera!”

Her body went stiff. She turned to face him, eyes wide and mouth open. Blood stained her once pristine Solyr shirt. She made one tiny sound, something between a huff and a shriek.

Byn bounded forward and pulled her into his arms.

“Thank the Five,” Byn whispered in her ear. He was weeping — Rannos hated that — but Byn didn’t care. “You’re safe!”

Sera hung limp in his arms. She didn’t hug him back. Byn stared at her and realized something was wrong. His knees buckled.

“What is it?” He squeezed her arms. “It’s Byn. Your Byn.”

She trembled so fiercely he was worried someone had afflicted her with a glyph of Osis.

“Don’t you recognize me?” Byn demanded. “Talk to me!”

Sera threw herself against his chest and sobbed, trembling still. Like he was dying. Like he was dead. Byn held her, stroked her hair, until she finally sank against him. Spent and soft and warm.

“Byn,” she whispered. “My Byn. You’re dead. Jyllith killed you.”

“She tried.”

“You don’t understand.” Sera pulled away, and Byn only then noticed that gray streaked her once dark hair. “I thought you were dead. I had no reason to live. I did awful things.”

“I don’t care. We’re alive. We’re together.”

“No.” Sera pushed him away so hard he fell. “We’re not.”

She walked away from him and strode to the sheer edge of a shale-covered cliff. It looked out over the whole of the Martial Steppes. Sera looked out over verdant green hills traced with smatterings of thin cloud. She turned her back on him.

Someone gripped Byn’s shoulder and thumped his arm. “It’s good to see you alive.” His long black hair was split and bloody.

“Trell?” Byn was having trouble focusing on names. “What happened here?”

“We killed revenants.” Trell’s eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep. “We’ve been waiting here for you since. Melyssa told us someone was coming. Land’s Champion.”

That made no sense, so Byn ignored it. “Where’s Kara?”

The way Trell’s face fell twisted the inside of Byn’s gut.

“No.” Byn shook Trell, and Trell let him do it. “Where is she? Where did they take her?”

“They took my daughter to Terras,” a calm voice told him, hauntingly familiar. “You’re going to help us rescue her.”

“Mrs. Tanner?” Byn stared at her with wide eyes. Blood stained Ona's simple wool dress, and more bandages than he could count wrapped her leg. “What are you
doing
here?”

“Saving my daughter’s life.” Ona knelt and pulled him into a hug. “I’m so glad you’re safe. Kara will be too, when we get her back.” She stood up and stepped back. “This is Melyssa Honuron. She’s going to explain everything, so you better listen to her.”

Byn looked past Ona as a woman even older than Landra walked close. She had long white hair with thick curls that dangled to her shoulders. Like hanging ivy. Byn’s mouth opened and didn’t close.

Meeting Melyssa Honuron was like meeting one of the Five.

“We’ll talk as we move,” Melyssa said. “It’s time to go.”

“Byn!” A loud voice echoed through the pass. “Where are you, boy? Where did you run off to?”

Trell, Melyssa, and Sera all straightened at once. Trell drew his sword with a ring of steel. Byn stood and pushed down Trell’s blade. “It’s fine. He’s a friend.”

Trell frowned. “Are you certain of that?”

“We’re up here!” Byn called, as loud as he could. He focused on those around him. “His name is Xander. He saved my life. He’s a powerful mage and I think he can help us.”

“Xander?” Melyssa’s hand went to her lips. “Oh dear.”

Xander clambered up the rise just as Melyssa said his name, hurrying on once he reached the top. When he saw the people arrayed before him, his steps faltered, then slowed. He stopped.

The tableau held like that until Trell brought up his sword and started forward. “Don’t move.”

Xander didn’t move at all. He just stared at Ona as she stared back. Ona covered her mouth, unable to take her eyes off him.

“Tell me who you are,” Trell ordered. “If you’ve come here at his bidding—”

“Ona.” Xander took a step forward. “Where’s our daughter?” His eyes moved on, found Melyssa, and then his jaw clenched. “You.”

Melyssa hurried over to him, white skirts swishing. “Xander, you need to listen and not simply react. I tried to stop them, but the Mavoureen have taken Kara. I need you to—”

Xander punched her hard enough to send a crack echoing through the pass. The impact of his fist tossed Melyssa to the ground like a sack of wheat. Byn couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe anyone would just punch an old woman.

Trell charged, sword raised. Xander painted a glyph in the air in less time than it took to breathe. Trell froze in midstep, muscles twitching. Teeth bared. Xander walked to where Ona stood, staring at him, and threw his arms around her. He hugged her tight.

“Who are you?” Ona trembled in his arms.

“Your husband.” Xander’s voice broke.

Sera rushed over to Melyssa even as the old woman stood. Melyssa pressed two bloody fingers to her broken nose and closed her eyes. When she removed her hand, her nose was whole again.

“How could you do that? Why?” Ona pushed and fought in Xander’s arms. “You just punched Melyssa Honuron in the face!”

“She stole our daughter. Our lives.”

“Xander!” Trell shouted. “Release me!”

“Easy, Trell.” Melyssa placed a hand on Trell’s shoulder. “He’s not our enemy.” She painted another glyph and then Trell stumbled forward. Melyssa waved him off.

“My husband.” Ona stared. “How can you be my husband?”

“Because I love you more than my own life.”

“That’s not an answer. That’s not even close!”

“Then listen. The marriage, the courtship you remember is a lie. Melyssa deceived you and Rance Tanner, placed false memories inside your heads.” Xander jabbed a finger at Melyssa. “She tore us apart, married you to that fisherman and tricked you both!”