The Cost of Betrayal (65 page)

B
efore Qurrah could draw any bones from his bag, Harruq slashed it open, spilling a chalky white pile to the dirt. Nonplussed, Qurrah enchanted all of them into a giant barrage of ribs, teeth, and fingers. Harruq crossed his arms and endured. The bones could bruise, even draw blood, but they could not do serious damage unless they found his eyes, mouth, or throat. The half-orc took a blind step forward, then another. He felt his brother’s hand latch onto his wrist, and again a thieving, draining sensation flooded him. He gave it no time to feed. Both swords whipped around, slashing away the wrist. Harruq looked down, fascinated by what he saw.

“Your armor is gone,” Harruq said, lifting Condemnation so that Qurrah could see a single, scarlet drop of blood fall from the keen edge. Qurrah glanced to his arm, where a thin cut marred his pale skin. For once, fear rounded the edges of the necromancer’s eyes.

“You will not dare strike,” Qurrah said, firing off a spell. A bolt of shadow leapt from his fingers, thudding into Harruq’s chest like a hammer. Ribs snapped. Before he could move, a second followed, striking his shoulder. For an agonizing moment, he thought the bones there would crack and break, the pain was so intense. They did not, and his anger grew with each new source of pain. Not desiring a third blow, he leapt forward, his head leading. The top of his skull rammed into Qurrah’s chest, knocking the air out of another spell.

Harruq tried an awkward cut as they both fell. The blade sliced just below the knee. No pain or darkness flooded into his hand. No solid stone greeted his blade. Just soft, bleeding flesh. Qurrah rolled back and pushed away, needing distance from those cursed swords. He put his weight on the cut leg, which buckled from its wound. He hobbled on the other. Harruq hefted his bulk from the dirt, glaring death. A bolt of lightning flashed over his head, from which of the three casters, he did not know. The glare hurt his eyes and disorientated his vision. In a haze of black, Qurrah turned to face his brother.

“You are a killer,” Qurrah said, reaching a hand into a hidden pocket of his robe. “You prove me right with every cut.”

“Just one last time,” Harruq said.

He charged. Qurrah’s hand streaked victoriously from the pocket, scattering a great white mist of bones he had laboriously prepared. A single word by the necromancer and they grew rigid in the air. Harruq tried to slam through. The hovering bits tore into the flesh of his face and hands. When his chest hit the bulk of it, he gasped in pain. Blood poured down, coloring the powder red. His strength sapped, he fell back, landing hard on one elbow. He heard another pop, his collarbone.

“Yes, brother,” Qurrah mocked, dark energy covering his hands. “Just one last time.”

Y
ou wanted to see her again, didn’t you?” Aurelia asked.

“You kept her from me,” Tessanna seethed. The elf shook her head, as if things suddenly made sense to her.

“It was your idea, wasn’t it? You wanted to make Aullienna’s mind like yours?”

“She was mine to love,” the girl said, her hands shaking. “Mine.”

“You know it, don’t you,” Aurelia said. Tears wanted to run down her face, but she was too exhausted to cry. “It was you that killed her. You killed what you loved…but you’ve always done that, haven’t you?”

Tessanna’s face froze. Her anger and confusion spun out of control. She could think of no action that seemed right. She wanted to kneel and cry. She wanted to tear the elf into shreds. She wanted to flee. She wanted to beg for forgiveness. She wanted to die.

So she did nothing.

H
arruq tried to move, tried to lift his swords, but his arms refused. Another spell would come, and he would be helpless before it. Although he had dealt death so often, he felt overwhelmingly unprepared. He closed his eyes, terror in every fiber. Dimly, he felt regret knowing he would never feel the soft silk of Aurelia’s hair through his fingers again.

He thought of Aullienna smiling up at him as she bounced on his knee.

No, he thought. No.

He rammed his heel against Qurrah’s cut knee. The necromancer screamed. Blood ran down his leg. He staggered back, struggling to regain his balance on his one good leg. Harruq clutched his swords with renewed strength. His anger fought against the curse. He would not fail. He would not betray Aullienna.

He closed the distance between them, slashing with both blades. Qurrah more fell than dove away, but it was enough. Salvation tore through the robes and across his chest, the wound too shallow to do more than spray blood across the glowing blade. His good leg pushed him back to his feet. He ran, knowing his brother followed with legs that pumped with life and vigor Qurrah had not known since birth. Suddenly a great force pressed into his back, and then he was flying. A tree stopped him.

The collision blacked out his vision. He lay slumped, his arms out as if he were embracing the trunk. His breath wheezed in a most pitiful way. He clutched the bark with his fingers and pushed himself around, refusing to die with a blade in his back like a coward.

“Will you kill me,” Qurrah asked, a strange leer spreading across his face.

“Yes,” Harruq said. He stabbed Salvation to the ground. Both hands closed around the hilt of Condemnation. He looked upon his brother, beaten and bloodied. A great welt swelled across his forehead. Blood surrounded his irises. The sound of his breath, labored and weak, brought him back to the days when Qurrah was a scrawny child unable to defend himself. A child that had looked to him for protection.

And now he looked to him with eyes begging for death.

In her frozen chaos, Tessanna turned, yearning for her lover. She saw him there, propped against the tree. Harruq towered over him. The others followed her gaze. Every soul there watched. Every soul waited.

“I was right,” Qurrah said. “Kill me. Let me die knowing that one truth.”

“I’m sorry,” Harruq said. His sword hesitated. His arms shook. His lips trembled. From his gut bellowed a roar, filled with anguish, hate, pain, and love. He slammed his blade deep into the trunk of the tree. It drew no blood. It took no life.

Condemnation missed.

“I’m sorry,” Harruq said, gasping out the words. “But I can’t.”

“You fool,” Tarlak said, his heart sinking.

Tessanna shrieked, a cry Harruq knew well. It was the same sound he had made upon finding his daughter. A thick bolt of lightning struck the side of his chest, plowing him away from the beaten Qurrah. He did not resist, every muscle in his body slack. The goddess ran to her lover, her ethereal wings fading away like smoke. Qurrah rose, took a weak step forward, and collapsed into her arms. Tessanna’s dark robe faded away. Naked and wounded, she struggled to hold what little weight the half-orc had. She saw his bruises. She felt the wet blood spilling on her. He tried to speak, but it was an inane hiss to her ears.

“Aullienna loved you!” Aurelia shouted. Her magical strength was gone. It was the only attack she could make. Tessanna shrieked back at her, the sound like the cry an alley cat. She turned, waved her arms, and then a black portal ripped into the air. She carried her lover inside, desperate to flee the damning words of the elf. With a hiss of air, the portal closed, one final crack signifying its disappearance.

The brief silence that came after was shocking. Aurelia rushed to her husband, crying out his name. She knelt down at his side, his bruised body covered with blood.

“I’m so sorry,” he grunted before passing out.

“Oh, Harruq,” she said, brushing a hand across his face. She laid her head on his chest and listened to the beat of his heart.

Tarlak went to his sister. She was sobbing over Haern, pouring healing spell after healing spell into his beaten body. The wizard took her hands and pulled her to a stand so he could embrace her.

“He’ll be fine,” he whispered into her ear. “Give him time. He’ll be fine.”

“I have to help him,” Delysia sobbed. “I can’t let him, not like Brug, not like…”

Tarlak shushed her. She buried her head in his shoulder and cried silently. He closed his eyes and rocked side-to-side, thinking a thousand deaths he would not mind befalling Qurrah Tun.

They turned to look at Brug’s still body. Tarlak left her to go to him. He knelt down and closed the eyelids. When the vacant eye refused to stay shut, he tilted the helmet to cover it, but only after he kissed the man’s forehead.

“Keep a drink ready for me,” he said, standing. His eyes turned to the half-orc, still in his wife’s arms.

“You idiot,” the wizard said, unable to convey the weight of everything, but that was close. Close enough to matter. “You damn, fucking idiot.”

33

T
hey made another pyre using the leftover wood cut the day before. The mood was no less somber. Their hearts torn, the four watched the body consumed by fire.

“Will we chase them?” Haern asked. He looked healthier, Delysia’s healing spells doing much to cure the many bruises the shadow bolts had left. Before he answered, Tarlak looked over at the half-orc, who stood with his wife’s arms around him. His arm was in a sling and his face and neck a burnt mess.

“No,” he said at last. “We’ve lost too many. Let them come to us. I will not send any more to die.”

“Will he leave us be?”

Tarlak cast a ring Brug had made for him onto the fire. “Only Ashhur knows,” he said. “But I pray that he does.”

Harruq watched the body burn, the comfort of his wife meager compared to the guilt he now carried. Two lives had come to repay the debt of the countless he had massacred. Two lives he could have spared. Worse, Qurrah remained free with his demon girl at his side.

The fire swayed to one side, dancing in the wind. He wondered if his brother felt guilt for his actions. Just the previous night, he had sworn death, and yet he could not see it through. What did that mean? He had spared his brother’s life and done what his conscience had demanded in that brutal second where he almost plunged the blade into flesh. Try as he might, he could not convince himself he had done the right thing. He had been a coward. Or a fool. Or a failure.

“Was I wrong?” he whispered.

“What was that?” Aurelia asked, glancing up at him. He only shook his head.

“Nothing.”

He stayed out later than the rest, watching until the fire died deep in the night. At its last flicker, he wished to whatever god that might exist, that might listen, to have that day back over again.