The Kinshield Legacy (50 page)

With a growl of effort, Gavin pushed himself up and looked around. Daia lay unable to move on the stairs. In front of him, Risan yanked Gavin’s knife from his leg and started pulling himself up the stairs. Domach crawled down the hall like a wounded fish, his bloody left arm clutched to his body, his right leg flopping against the floor. Blood streamed from his ears and from a gash in his forehead. He clutched his sword in his right hand.

Behind a corner, Edan stood beside the wall, his right arm hanging limply. His teeth were clenched tight and with a hard twist from the waist, he slammed his shoulder against the wall, muting a scream.

Gavin looked up at Brodas. He was glaring at Daia. Doing something to her. Her eyes were clenched shut. Some war was raging between them.

Gavin realized then that he and his companions were losing the battle. Once again, he’d underestimated Brodas Ravenkind, and people would die because of it. His friends would die. Brodas used the gems in Gavin’s own sword to attack them and defend himself against their efforts. If only Gavin could get-- Wait, he thought. Hadn’t he felt his knife meet his hand before it should have?

The moonstone. Maybe he could use this new magic to get the sword away from Brodas.

He pulled the blue moonstone from his pocket. Focusing on the blue gem in his palm, he lifted his left hand toward the sword in Brodas’s hand, reaching for it. Wanting it, intending to take it as though it were close enough to grasp. He reached as hard as he could, commanded it to come to him.

The sword wiggled, but Brodas held it tightly. The intensity of Brodas’s glare grew, and he gritted his teeth.

“Daia, help me,” Gavin yelled. He wasn’t sure she could, with whatever Brodas was doing to her, but if she could hear him, if she could reach for him... He pulled harder. Harder.

Domach drew his knife. He let loose a throw and struck his target in the shoulder.

Brodas screamed. He turned his blazing eyes to Domach.

A warm presence reached for Gavin, taking hold of his entire inner being. Suddenly he felt a renewed strength.
Daia!
He pulled at the sword in Brodas’s hand.

The sword wrenched itself free of Brodas’s grasp just as another wave of force shot down the stairs. Domach caught the brunt of the spell squarely in the chest and tumbled backward, but still Gavin slammed into the wall behind him and fell. The moonstone flew from his hand. His new sword skidded across the marble floor.

Gavin crawled to the sword. His hand closed around the hilt.

Al...as...ar.

Brodas felt the sword tear itself from his grasp. How in the seven realms…? Kinshield. There he’d stood, his hand outstretched. Just as Brodas had let loose the last blast, the sword went to him. It went to him.

Without the gems in the sword, Brodas would have to make physical contact with his enemies to harm them by magic. And that meant he was vulnerable.

Risan was closest, crawling up the stairs toward him. Brodas stepped down beside Daia and bent, reaching toward the Farthan’s head to scramble his mind. Risan shot out a hand, grabbed his wrist and pulled. Brodas pitched forward.

He tumbled down the stairs. He felt his right wrist break, but his healing magic started working like an instinct, mending it before he hit the landing. When he tumbled to a stop face down on the floor, an amazing sight greeted him; a perfect blue moonstone lay just inches from his nose.

Ald...as...ar.

Gavin watched Brodas fall headlong down the stairs, and his hope was rekindled. Risan struggled to stand. Domach crawled toward Gavin’s old sword.

Ald...as Gar.

To Gavin’s horror, the moonstone was right in front of Brodas. Domach was closest. “The gem. Domach, get the gem,” Gavin yelled. He focused on the gems in the hilt of his sword to pull the moonstone.

From the middle of the staircase, Risan leapt at Brodas, his sword outstretched.

Aldras Gar.

Risan’s blade came down on Brodas’s outstretched hand, severing the last two fingers and cutting deeply into the third. Blood sprayed forth. Brodas screamed. Before Gavin’s eyes, the stumps where Brodas’s fingers had been healed instantly. Just as the moonstone started to slide across the floor toward Gavin, along with Brodas’s two severed fingers, Brodas snatched up the blue gem with his three-fingered hand.

Risan rolled to the side. “Gavin, say it,” he shouted.

Gavin shot to his feet.
What? Say what...?
 

“Get down,” someone yelled.

Gavin turned just as Brodas released a blue ball of tiny lightning bolts. Something flew at Gavin from the left, knocking him out of the path of the blue light. Gavin landed hard on the floor with Domach on top of him.

Thoop! Thoop! Thoop!
Arrowhead fragments, feathers and splinters of wood flew through the air.

Aldras Gar.

Gavin pushed Domach’s limp form off of him and rolled up onto his feet again. What was that annoying whispering? Was it...?

Aldras Gar!

...the sword. Whispering to him.

ALDRAS GAR!

“Say sword’s name,” Risan called.

Gavin gripped the hilt with both hands. “Aldras Gar!”

A wave of power shuddered down the length of the weapon from tip to pommel. A hum vibrated it gently in his hands. Gavin felt he had a tenuous grip on it, as though it would leap from his hands at any moment.

A flame burst forth from Brodas’s outstretched hand. Gavin had no time to react but to squeeze his eyes shut. Mild heat stroked his face. He opened his eyes. Brodas’s clothes were ablaze and his blackened face was contorted in fear and shock, his hair singed, eyebrows seared completely off. Gavin swung Aldras Gar. Brodas jumped back. The tip of the blade barely sliced across his chest. Sparks flew from the blade as it drew his blood. Sparks!

Holy mother of Yrys!
What the hell kind of enchantment was this?

Brodas bolted down the hall, patting furiously at the flames clinging to his clothing.

“Edan, with me,” Gavin shouted. He raced down the hall and through the kitchen after Brodas. Gone. Gavin rushed outside. Edan appeared beside him on the back stoop, an arrow nocked.

“Where?” Edan yelled.

Gavin ran across the courtyard, then stopped and turned around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fleeing wizard. A horse, saddled but unmanned, emerged from the stable. Edan fired an arrow. It flew through the air and suddenly halted its forward course, hovering over the horse as it galloped through the trees.

Chapter 59

Edan came to Daia and sat on a step beside her. He brushed the hair from her face, then gently turned her onto her back and pulled her to a sitting position between his thighs. He held her to him with his arms around her, her back against him. Her chin lay against her chest. “I’ve got you,” he whispered.

Never in her life had Daia felt so helpless. She’d watched from the corner of her eye as her friends battled Brodas while she lay immobile. Useless. Gavin had taken a hard beating; Risan and Edan were both injured. On the blood-smeared white marble floor below her, Domach lay unmoving. Risan knelt beside him and pressed his ear against Domach’s chest. Daia held her breath.

Gavin came back down the hall. “Is he alive?”

“No,” Risan said.

Gavin squatted beside him. “Sorry about the knife,” he said.

Risan smiled dimly. “It would hit mark if Ravenkind did not knock it away.”

Gavin put a hand on Risan’s thigh. “Don’t worry, I ain’t getting amorous,” he said with a crooked grin. He shut his eyes for a moment, and Daia watched Risan’s grimace change into a gape.

“You can heal,” Risan said when Gavin pulled his hand away. “That is amazing. Did you see that?” Risan asked Daia and Edan. “He healed my leg with just touching.”

Gavin put a hand on Domach’s chest. A vein bulged on his temple, and his arm quivered. After a long moment, he relaxed and sat with his head in his hands.

“Where is Ravenkind? Dead?” Risan asked.

“He fled,” Gavin said, “but Edan got an arrow into him. Likely he’s still alive. I got to go tell Brawna about Demonshredder.” He looked up at Daia. “You awright?”

In answer, Daia rolled her eyes. If she were all right, she wouldn’t be sprawled on the stairs, limp as a corpse.

He grinned. “One blink for yes, two for no.”

She blinked twice. No.

“Are you injured?”

No.

“He used that spell on me when... It’ll fade in a few hours, but maybe I can speed it along. Want to try?”

Yes.

He climbed the stairs. Edan started to stand, but Gavin motioned him to stay there. He hooked his hands under Daia’s thighs and lifted, bending her knees so that the soles of her boots lay flat on a step. Then he pushed her knees apart and knelt on the step between them. With a lecherous smile and wagging eyebrows, he said, “And you told me I’d never get between your legs.”

“Gavin,” Edan said in a disapproving tone.

If Daia could have smiled, she would have. She didn’t doubt Gavin Kinshield would make a crude joke with his final breath.

He took her head in his hands and closed his eyes. His hands, so huge and rough, were surprisingly gentle. She did not know how to ask him if she should help with this at all, but decided that if he wanted help, he would say so. Almost immediately, she felt numbness in her fingers and toes and found she could wiggle them. The tingling sensation traveled up her arms and legs little by little and soon reached her torso, neck and face. Daia moved her hands and feet. It was working.

He opened his eyes. Those deep brown orbs were mesmerizing in their intensity. A feathery touch grazed her mind: the feeling of someone reaching for a connection. Not the blind groping of someone in trouble, but an intentional brush, soft and warm like a lover’s gentle caress. She took hold of it and felt the surge of earth energy flowing through her and into Gavin.

A porthole opened in the inky depths of his eyes. She glimpsed what lay beyond his rough facade, his pain, his life. No, more than that: his lives – as a husband, a father, a battler, a friend. Curious, she looked still deeper.

The connection intensified. She felt drawn in as though a gale sucked at her. In her mind, she saw an image of Gavin as king standing tall and strong, achieving all the greatness for which he had potential. She saw him as the embodiment of vigilance, equity, self-mastery and strength. In this image, she saw hope for the future of Thendylath.

Then the image began to tear apart. A seam ripped open and widened to reveal blackness so profound that it touched all the senses. She saw Gavin entombed by a vast hunger where he lay like a battered animal washed ashore after a storm. His voice echoed in her mind as he called to her one last time before the light in his eyes dimmed and blinked out.

no, no, No, No, NO, NO! NO!
A shudder convulsed her entire being. The connection weakened as he pushed her away. She was not supposed to have seen that last image. It must have been his fear of claiming the throne, of not measuring up, of being unable to meet the needs of a country two hundred years without a king. Perhaps he feared he would lose a part of himself by living among the nobility, like dying alone in an alien world. But he wouldn’t be alone. Surely he knew that. She would be there, beside him. Edan would be there. Risan. Brawna.
You have friends, Gavin
, she thought.
Friends who trust you. Friends who believe in you.
I
believe in you.
She bore her gaze more deeply into his as she thought this last, willing him to hear her thoughts, to take comfort in her friendship and her loyalty.