Lady of Mercy (The Sundered, Book 3) (10 page)

They came, companions to her trek, whiter, somehow clearer, than they had been the last time she’d seen them. Belfas, no longer brother, Kandor, Teya, Rein, and Carla. They were ghosts, and like ghosts in children’s stories, they were pinned and trapped by some evil fortune to a dark and ugly place.

By some evil choice.

“I’m sorry,” she said, aware that the words were inadequate, but unable to offer anything else. “Belfas, I can’t change the choice I made. I can’t change the fact of your deaths, but I can change”—and here she gestured widely—“your prison. Please, give me just a little more time.” She thought of Stef—of him. Her own pain grew, becoming an anchor against his.

“What is the First to you now?” Kandor asked, a curious edge to his voice.

“Enemy.” The word was so cold and so final that no hint of warmth, or a past without that ice, existed in it.

“You feel his call.”

“Don’t you?” she countered, angry. Guilt made her voice harsh and rough.

“Yes,” he answered softly, and turned to gaze into the blackness. “But I feel yours as well, Sarillorn. And his is easily the stronger of the two.”

She sucked in her breath, as if at a sudden blow; his words were sharp and pointed, and she had no defense against them. “Good,” she said abruptly. “He—he deserves to suffer.”

Belfas reached out with a hand of mist; his fingers pressed into her shoulders, falling beneath the outline of her flesh. At once, he flared with her warmth and her power. “Do you hate him?”

There were no tears. “Yes.”

“You always thought you knew everything, Erin.” He shook his head, but his lips were curled into a hard smile. “We feel his pain, but we’ve got nothing to offer it. We four weren’t healers, and Kandor—can’t help.”

She wanted to tell them all, then.
The Lady knew
,
Belfas; she knew
—
she condemned you to this.
But the words froze on her lips. It was truth, yes—but would it help them to know it? No matter what, it had still been Erin’s choice that had doomed them.

But the Lady had known. She struggled a few minutes more. “I went to the Woodhall today,” she whispered at last, turning away from them all. “And I discovered that the Lady of Elliath knew what I would do to you all. She knew it, Belfas. She
saw.
She could have stopped you. She didn‘t.”

The silence was eerie and horrible.

“She could have told me,” Erin continued, her voice uneven
and rough. “Could have warned me. I would never have made that choice. Never.”

“But you did.”

She wheeled to face Belfas, hands outstretched, palms up. “But I believed him!” Silence again, then. Silence and an aura of waiting.

“Sarillorn,” Kandor said, and his voice was very heavy. “Did you find aught else?”

“I found Gallin’s sword.” She let the Lady go for the moment. “I have one country to liberate, if I can. I have one Enemy to fight.” She wheeled suddenly and lurched forward, hands reaching in reflex for pain to heal. No. Gritting her teeth, she continued.

“Fight, then, and with our blessing,” Kandor said quietly. “But, child, perhaps the First Servant loved you as much as his nature allowed.”

She laughed darkly. “Loved me? He was able to kill the Lady, the lines, and God alone knows how many innocent people—because of
my
choice. Because I believed that he loved me. Maybe”—she bowed her head briefly—“I believed it because I wanted so badly for it to be true. But I—I valued it above my vows to the line and my responsibilities. Now, I’m the last of my line, Darin’s the last of his-and the Gifting of God is in the Enemy’s land. He is my enemy now and will be until either the lands are free again or I am dead.”

Her head shot up suddenly, to view the darkness ahead of her with a bitter fury. “Do you hear me?” she shouted.

Kandor tried to interrupt her, but she shook him off.

“I pledge blood-vow! I shall destroy all that you have built!”

“Sarillorn, do not—blood-vow is binding in life. Do not lightly—”

“
Lightly?
” She gave him a wild, angry laugh, and he looked long and hard at her face before turning away.

“Erin.” Belfas, and only Belfas, could have brought her back. “We’ve been here a long time, but now that you’ve come—now that we almost understand, we’ll wait. The Lady called you Lernan’s Hope.”

“God’s hope?” Erin gave a dark laugh. “Do any of you know what it was? Perhaps the Lady did, but she left me no word.” She laughed again, and the five standing before her looked around uneasily. “Will you tell me what it is that I must do?”

Kandor spoke. “You are to end the reign of the Enemy. How, I do not know. But I know that the Lady believed, with God, that your path was the only one that would lead to peace for your world. She saw correctly, I believe. The First of the Enemy—”

“Don’t speak to me of him. I won’t listen.”

“Erin.”

She met Belfas’ gentle word with a rawness that caused him to flinch.

“He betrayed you. I betrayed you. The Lady—” She swallowed convulsively. “Where’s your anger now that I’ve found mine? Where is it now?” She laughed again, and then brought her hands to her face.

Memory colored the pale light of the hair that fell into his ghostly eyes; she could see it through the bars of her fingers. “I—Erin, if she had told us, we’d never have believed it; we’d have gone anyway. It wouldn’t have hurt less.” He looked young. “But it helps to know that we didn’t die for nothing. She knew it—and our deaths, they must serve the line.”

“I can’t accept that we were given no choice.”

“Sarillorn,” Kandor interrupted, in a soft voice that was not at all gentle, “you were given a choice.”

“Yes,” she answered starkly, but she barely seemed to hear him. “Belf—my mother—she could have saved my mother ...”

Belfas touched her; her power ebbed again.

She stared at him for a moment before pulling away.

The landscape was screaming. Pain, heavy and seductive, crawled through the air, a call to her blood. She felt, at that moment, that she would never answer the call of this blood again; it had been, after all, the Lady’s blood passed down through a generation. And then she forgot that; forgot all but the source of it: Stefanos.

With stark determination, she fought her way into the light of the dawn, and lay exhausted and trembling beneath the folds of her bedroll. Only then did her fury recede enough to allow her the grace of self-contempt. She knew that her vow was binding—and made it again, to confirm in reality the determination of dream. She knew what the First Servant had done and understood some of his methods in the doing of it. She knew that thousands, hundreds of thousands, had been lost—either immediately or through the debilitation of slavery—at his dictate. She knew who he served and knew what the Enemy demanded.
And she knew that she would keep, unswerving, to the course she had set for herself.

But knowing it didn’t ease the ache that threatened to immobilize her.

A part of her missed him.

And she loathed it freely.

She only prayed that now that she had made the only right choice, she would sleep a mercifully dreamless sleep, with no hint of light or dark to trouble her. She wasn’t surprised when the prayer went unanswered.

 

“Master.”

“The fortress of the Enemy has been destroyed.”

The landscape slithered, all fluid, colorless darkness. It stilled slowly.
Are you certain?

“As certain as I can be where the workings of the Enemy are concerned. What we sensed and sought for these hundred human years we can no longer feel.”

“Yes, master.” Sargoth paused.

The Heart of the Darkness waited, and time passed, moving so far beneath him that it did not even merit his notice.

“I do not wish to question your decision, Lord.”

Silence then, dark and intangible. It was the only silence that Sargoth hated; he could pry no answers from it to satisfy his endless curiosity, and stood waiting, just another victim of ignorance.

“If she is the one that I and the others of your Servants have watched for, perhaps she is not one with whom we wish to toy. The First of the Enemy was of greater power than I, and if she saw a danger to us in this half blood, then there is a danger present.”

The landscape rumbled with the thoughts of the Dark Heart and the accursed, incomprehensible silence. It pained Sargoth; he understood more than any single being, immortal or otherwise, yet he still could not pierce the wall that either of the Twin Hearts stood behind to comprehend them clearly.

How much more,
he thought bitterly to himself,
must I learn
before
I
truly know
all?
It was his one desire, and he was certain Malthan knew it.

“Yes, Lord. I shall not speak of it again.”

Good. Fingers of darkness wreathed the ethereal shadow of the Second of Malthan. How do you proceed?

“As can be expected.”

Sargoth smiled coldly. “Yes, Lord.” He did not explain the source of his mirth further, and the Dark Heart did not press him; it was not the amusement of the Second of his Servants that carried his interest now.

“The human visited the fortress of the Enemy’s First. We do not know what she did there”—his voice fell a moment in irritation—“but we believe she received some message of succor from her dead ancestor. The binding that held the fortress was released; it is gone. We will never know the manner of its creation.”

“No, Lord. Even as we speak, one of your followers is making ready to receive her.”

Erliss of Mordechai had been left with three Swords and two
slaves—hardly a fitting party for a lord of his station. At any other time, justifiable anger would have consumed his attention—but he did not have the leisure for it now. Later, in the comparative safety of Malakar, with a host of house guards as a wall between his person and any physical threat, he would plan his revenge.

Now, his retreat firmly under way, he planned his meeting with his elder cousin. Lord Vellen of Damion was every inch a Karnar; any whiff of failure, no matter how reasonable the excuse, was usually cause for someone’s death. Erliss had always taken great care, when operating under Lord Vellen’s directives, not to merit that death. Until now.

Because of one woman and one useless slave.

At least now, outside the boundaries of Mordantari, he was free to requisition the use of proper manors and inns. He could not completely take advantage of it at the moment—the speed of travel did not allow it—but at least he always had a large bed, a warm fire, and real food. Travel in the provinces was usually the best way to feel one’s power at an early age, and Erliss, as had most of the young nobles, had done so often.

He did not enjoy it now.

He had even been forced, by circumstance and a hazy understanding of all that was at stake, to speak with the provincial priests and warn them of the possible coming of two runaway slaves: one woman, dressed outlandishly as some sort of soldier, and one boy on the threshold of adulthood. He made them sound almost harmless, which fooled none of his listeners, but he made
absolutely certain that they had no understanding of the issues and complexities of her presence. Because that, of course, was proprietary information for which, if spread, Vellen would certainly, and justifiably, kill.

The capital was a ten-day away, and he had already ridden three different horses to ground. That would come out of Church coffers. If he survived his meeting with the head of the Greater Cabal.

 

Darin had rarely traveled outside of the city before, but the one long trek he had made across the Empire made the strangeness of the forest quite serene. Sleep had come slowly and been fitful at best, and even before the sun had peaked the treetops, he was up and dressed. Sara was quietly about the business of breakfast, and he did what he could to help her.

“Are the others awake?” she asked, as she poked at the fire. Orange light limned her arms and face, highlighting the shadows beneath her eyes. Something about her looked very, very different—and only after minutes of staring at her as she worked did Darin realize what it was. Her auburn hair, long and straight, had been pulled and plaited in the warrior’s braid. Not that the warrior’s braid had been common in Line Culverne at the time of its fall, but Darin had seen the statues and tapestries of a bygone age, and he knew the look well. She wore her armor, and her sword—her strange, runed sword, with its trail of light that burned the eye—hung at her side.

He could no longer imagine her as the Lady of castle Darclan, with her long, simple dresses and her love of gardens and sunlight and outdoor lunches. Gone was any hint of the doctor in the infirmary who had tended to the complaints of slaves, minor or serious.

And gone was any hint of the softness about her eyes when she looked up at her Lord.

She had called herself Erin. He thought he understood why her name had suddenly changed. He opened his mouth to call her, and shut it again.

Waking their new companions would be less strange.

Trethar of the Brotherhood, as he had named himself, was awake before Darin reached his tent. Early mom was obviously no stranger to the man, and without the shadows and eerie hint of dying firelight echoing from his face, he seemed normal,
older, and less mysterious. His brown robes blended in perfectly with the morning greens and golds.