Paladin (Graven Gods 1) (11 page)

“You’ve got to be faster than that, sis!” My brother did a mocking little dance, wiggling his hips back and forth.

Which is exactly when my mother’s spell splashed against his chest. He didn’t even get a hand up in time to shield. He convulsed, collapsing into giggles.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” my mother said. “You have to keep your mind on the fight at all times.”

My father gestured. Instinctively, I snapped up a hand. Though I didn’t yet have the amplification tattoos that would make my spells stronger, I knew the principles. Dad’s spell splashed against my shield, and I crowed in triumph.

“Good one, Summer!” My father cheered, simultaneously flicking a spell at my brother, who blocked it, tongue clamped between his teeth.

With that, the game was on, spells zipping back and forth through the cool autumn air of our backyard, as fireflies orbited around us, blinking in the dusk.

Some families had snowball fights. Ours were a lot more fun, though the purpose was deadly serious. We had to know the skills of magical combat.

Too many people wanted to kill us.

* * *

September 28, 2001

“Summer…” My mother’s voice woke me, clogged with tears. My eyes opened wide in alarm, my body tensing to fight. “Get up! Get up now!”

She hauled me out of bed as if I were a toddler instead of a ten-year-old. The devastation in her eyes froze my heart in my chest. “What’s wrong? Is it Daddy?”

He and my brother had gone to meet with Richard’s potential mate, Charlotte, and her father, Daro-John. My brother was only twelve, but he’d been excited at the idea of a chaperoned date with Charlotte, though they wouldn’t actually marry until they graduated college.

My parents had been in negotiation for a mate for me, too -- a boy named Mark Andrews, Richard’s best friend. But I was ten, too young yet for even such a chaste date.

“We’ve got to go. Put on your shoes! Hurry!”

I snatched them out from under my bed and stuffed my bare feet into them. Mom grabbed my hand and hauled me after her. I raced at her heels in my Gryffindor pajamas, Calliope bounding beside me, my fear growing with every step. My mom never panicked; this was utterly unlike her. “Mom, what’s happening?”

But she was too busy arguing with the cat to answer.

“You can’t take her!” Calliope insisted, her voice spiraling dangerously close to a yowl. “It’s not safe. This may be exactly what they want, to lure you out there so he can steal her, burn her out of her own mind, and wear her body like a sock.”

My mother didn’t even slow, though she spoke in the deep tones I associated with Paladin. “She’s right, Barbara. Their trap netted them Richard and Ulf-Graham. Do you really think they’re not going to try for you and Summer?”

“Daddy?” Oh, God, it was exactly what I’d feared. I sped up, hauling at her wrist to catch her attention. “They really got Daddy and Ulf? And Richard? How bad are they hurt? Mom!”

She stopped and turned. Her face was all the answer I needed. Anguished grief lay across her features like disfiguring scars. “Your father… It was an ambush. They’re dead. They… Valak tricked us. There was no date with Charlotte and her father.” Her voice rose. “It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous!”

“But how? How did they fool us?” They’d have used magic to fake the calls, of course, but why didn’t Dad sense it?

She turned away and started running again. I sprinted after her. “I’ll tell you in the car. We’ve got to go now.”

The cat’s tail lashed in agitation as we all thundered headlong down the stairs. “You can’t take her, Paladin-Barbara!”

“She has to see them!” Mom insisted. “She has to see them one last time.”

“I know you didn’t get to see your own father when he died,” Calliope protested. “But this is a mistake…”

“Cal, I don’t have time to argue! I have to get to them before Valak recovers. Ulf-Graham hurt him, hurt him badly enough that he’ll need to retreat to his temple to heal. I can rescue their spirits if I move fast. Otherwise Valak will return and strip-mine their magic.”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t reclaim them,” Paladin told her in his deeper voice, as she skidded to a stop at the foot of the stairs. I had the impression he’d forced her to halt. “I only meant Summer doesn’t need to see this. Even aside from the danger…”

“She has to have the chance to say goodbye, Paladin, or it will haunt her for the rest of her life.” Her voice dropped. “The way my father’s death haunts me.”

“It’ll haunt you a lot more if you lose another child because of Valak,” Calliope snapped. “Sure, go get them, but don’t take Summer…”

“And what if Valak has a team watching the house, ready to swoop in the minute I’m gone?”

“I’m strong enough to protect her here, especially given the house wards.”

“You’re strong, Calliope, but you’re not Paladin,” My mother shot her a glittering look and strode to the door, snatching it open. “I’m not arguing about this any longer. I’m her mother, and she’s going.”

Gesturing, Mom sent magic spilling out to the driveway. Her car started with a roar. She hesitated on the door’s threshold, frowning. “Do y’all sense any evil? I don’t, but… I’m not sure I trust myself right now.”

I raised my right hand and reached. Instantly, a web of magic unrolled around me, and I saw the sparks of life. The mouse in the Victorian’s walls that Calliope was too dignified to catch. A flock of birds roosting in the trees surrounding the house, a determined possum waddling toward our trashcan. On any other day, I’d shoot a spark of magic at him to startle him away. Tonight I didn’t care.

Beyond that were the homes of Morgan Heights with their sleeping, dreaming families. The only exception was a man up the street, wakeful as he worried about his sales. All of them living their lives, uncaring of the disaster in mine.

It hit me like a piston to the gut that I would never again sense my father and Richard sleeping like that. Would never practice my swordplay with my big brother again, would never decorate the Christmas tree or carve jack-o’-lanterns. Would never kiss my father’s cheek with the warm strength of his arms around me.

They were dead
.

“I’ve got nothing,” I choked, at the same time Calliope said, “It’s clear, Barbara.”

We strode out of the house and down the walk to the idling car. I picked up the cat and slid into the back seat from sheer habit. Mother threw the car into gear. She didn’t even wait for me to fasten my seatbelt before she hit the gas.

I fumbled for the belt in the dark, managed to click it closed. “What happened?” I knuckled the tears running down my face. “How did they die?”

“Valak and his men ambushed their car by dropping a tree across the road ahead of them,” my mother growled, her voice Paladin-deep. “They surrounded them before they could escape.

“What about Charlotte and her dad? Didn’t they join the fight?”

“They weren’t there,” she said bitterly. “Valak faked those messages from Daro-John to lure Ulf-Graham and Richard into an ambush.” Her voice spiraled into anguish. “But I would’ve sworn it was real! Valak sounded -- felt -- just like Daro-John in his psychic calls.”

“But why them?” I demanded. “Paladin’s Valak’s enemy, not Ulf’s and Daddy’s.”

“That is a very good question,” Paladin agreed grimly.

“I don’t think Valak intended to kill them,” Mother said. “Ulf-Graham said Valak demanded his surrender -- probably intended to take them hostage so he could force us to give ourselves up.”

Calliope growled, low and vicious. “Ulf-Graham would have known better than to fall for that. Valak has always wanted the four of you. You and Ulf-Graham are far superior to his avatars, just as the kids have infinitely more natural talent than his genetic trash.”

“Unfortunately, Valak brought ten acolytes.” Mother’s shoulders hitched, and tears clogged her voice. “Ulf-Graham and Richard fought them so hard, they seemed to take Valak and his forces by surprise. Or so Graham told me after he wounded the bastard badly enough that he could punch through Valak’s blocking spells. Unfortunately, Valak had still managed to run him through. Valak fled, but your father died even as he spoke to me.”

“What about Richard?” I was sobbing just as hard as Mom.

She swallowed hard. “Your father said he fought so hard none of them could get close enough to take him.” Even at twelve, his breeding made Richard as strong as an adult human male. “He even managed to kill two of them, but a third ran him through. It distracted your father, and Valak…” The word cut off in a hard, racking sob. The car swerved before she brought it back under control.

“It won’t do us any good to go after them if you get us killed on the way,” Paladin told her, and she slowed down a fraction.

“Your Daddy… your father said to tell you he was very proud. Proud of Richard. Proud of you. He loved you both very much.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I’m very, very proud of them.”

So I sat in the back and cried. Calliope crawled in my lap and stretched upward until she could encircle my neck with her furry forelegs and duck her head under my chin, murmuring nonsense words of comfort. I clutched at her. Cal had often been more mother to me than my mother was.

Mom’s job was to train me, to make me the best Heir possible for Paladin. Paladin, her god. I’d always thought he came first in her life, but maybe I’d been wrong. If I died, Paladin would have no host to enter. If my mother was killed, his millennia of existence would come to an end.

And then there would be no god of justice to right the wrongs committed by creatures like Valak. Paladin must, at all costs, survive. Yet she was willing to risk his immortal life to give me the chance to see my father one last time.

“What happened to Ulf?” Calliope asked suddenly.

“I may yet save the god if we reach them in time, but it will be close,” my mother said. “Since Richard died before Graham did, Ulf had no Heir to jump to -- or none within range. Ulf did his best to save your father, but the wound was too severe -- Valak’s blow hacked into the aorta, lungs and heart. Ulf couldn’t heal Graham before he bled out. But he clings to your father’s body still. Eris can save him, if we’re in time. Along with Graham’s and Richard’s spirits.”

She might find comfort in that, but there was precious little for me. “Shhhhh,” Calliope crooned in my ear as I sobbed.

Finally Mother stopped the car on the side of the road behind my father’s silver Toyota. Just ahead of the Camry, a tree lay across the road. Reaching out with my magic, I sensed bodies sprawled on the pavement, but I couldn’t tell which ones were Daddy and Richard, and which Valak’s thugs.

I was suddenly, violently glad that Richard had killed two of them.

“Do you sense anything, Calliope?” my mother asked, staring out the windshield. “Because I don’t.”

All I felt was death, cold and inert, accompanied by psychic reek of evil, like the smell of rotting hamburger meat. “Evil,” I said. “I sense evil. Valak’s evil.”

“But he’s gone now. He ran with his surviving thugs. Richard and Graham killed the rest.” She got out of the car.

I reached for the door handle, but Calliope murmured, “No child. Not just yet. Let your mother and Eris… clean up.”

Mom drew the goddess sword as she walked around in front of the two cars, pausing on the other side of the trees. Magic flowed from the rapier, glowing like some kind of
Harry Potter
special effect as it swirled over the corpse.

“What’s she doing?” I asked dully, not sure I really cared.

“Using Eris to dispose of the body and cleanse the magic she draws from it,” Calliope explained. “Otherwise its evil could infect your mother. In theory, she’d eventually go mad from drinking in so much wickedness.”

I stirred at that, frowning. The corpse had disappeared, but more than that, I felt the evil hanging over everything fade a bit. “But why absorb the magic at all?”

“Because otherwise it will linger until Valak returns to claim it.”

I nodded, understanding. “And we don’t want to let Valak reabsorb the magic because it would strengthen him.” I’d been raised on strategy and tactics the way other kids learned how to add and subtract.

“Exactly.”

As we watched, Mother worked her way over the battlefield, pausing with her blade over each body, cleansing and absorbing the magic before disintegrating the remains.

At last only two still forms were left on the pavement. She bent over the smallest of them and picked him up. Her shoulders bent as if Richard weighed far more than I knew he did, especially given how strong she was.

She laid him down beside my father and sank to her knees. For long moments, she sat there, rocking back and forth slowly. Crying, just as I was. Calliope nuzzled me as I curled my arms around her, shaking.

My mother got to her feet, moving like an old, old woman. She gestured for us to come to her. I hesitated, suddenly afraid. I had never seen death before. Especially not the bodies of those I loved.

But my parents had not raised a coward. I straightened my shoulders and opened the car door. Picking Calliope up, I trudged over to join Mom.

She had stopped crying at last. Her face was now distant with a kind of terrible self-control. “Say goodbye to them, Summer.”

There was no blood, not after my mother’s magic had done its work. There was no sign of whatever injuries they’d suffered. They lay stretched out on their backs as though asleep, their faces peaceful.

I knew their appearance was deceptive. And I found the knowledge that they’d made their enemies pay was no comfort whatsoever.

I put down the cat and knelt to kiss them both goodbye. Richard’s skin was cold, his face still, as if some magic had replaced the brother I’d loved with a clammy clay replica. My father was warmer, and I realized he hadn’t been gone long.

Could we have gotten here in time to save them if I hadn’t delayed with my crying and my questions? But I didn’t have the guts to ask.

Instead I pressed a kiss to his cheek with its fading warmth, and rose to stand beside my mother.

Her sword rang as she drew it. I watched dully as she spoke to our fallen. “Graham, my dearest love…” Her voice broke, then her shoulders drew back. “The years you gave me are the foundation of my soul. You made my life bright with your humor, your intelligence, your kindness and your courage. I loved you from the first moment I saw you at the ball when Paladin introduced us.” Her voice dropped and vibrated with the power of her vow. “I will never love again.”