The Last Mortal Bond (107 page)

Gwenna followed his finger, gritted her teeth, then cursed.

“They're not searching for someone,” she said. “They're chasing them.”

They banked slightly, as though Jak were preparing for a slow, high circle. Gwenna yanked on the straps instead, a series of vicious tugs. A moment later, the bird tucked his wings in closer, and they began to drop.

“You have them?” Talal asked.

Gwenna pointed to a low stone building half a mile off. She couldn't articulate what she was seeing, the precise nature of the pattern, the convergence of dozens of factors, but that didn't mean she couldn't see it. “They're there. Kaden and the rest of them. That's where the soldiers are headed.”

“How do you want to make the grab?”

Gwenna grimaced. “We're going to have put the bird down. You get the girl. I'll take care of Kaden. Valyn can load his own ass up, while Annick shoots whoever needs shooting. We get 'em on the bird, get 'em up, and then we can figure out what the fuck's going on.”

She was signaling to Quick Jak even as she spoke. Allar'ra dipped his head, and they were descending, coasting down the air's invisible slope, then leveling off just above the tallest rooftops. It was easy to forget, when you were five thousand feet off the deck, just how fast the kettral really were. Ten feet above the rooftops, however, that speed was suddenly, gut-wrenchingly obvious. Tiles, chimneys, and shingles smeared to a blur beneath their feet. Gwenna fixed her eyes on the blocky skyline, waiting to make the turn.

She caught just a glimpse of them: Kaden and Triste running side by side, Valyn a few paces ahead, his axes naked and bloody in his hands, and then, while the bird was still forty feet up, something hard and viciously strong slammed into its side.

Gwenna's world went upside down, turned right side up, and then she was hanging in her harness, twisting as the wind tore at her. The bird was screaming, Talal was tangled in his straps, while over on the far talon, Annick was trying to drag herself back into something resembling proper position.

“Another bird,” Gwenna shouted, as she got her feet under her, craning her head in an effort to see past Allar'ra's wing. “Someone's got another fucking bird.”

It only made sense, but when she scanned the sky for a second kettral, she found only a few high clouds, smoke drifting from the chimneys, and the wide, unblemished blue. Then, even as she searched, something smashed into the bird again.

“There's no second kettral,” Talal shouted. “A kenning.” He was stabbing his finger down, not up. “It's a
kenning
.”

Gwenna took half a heartbeat to absorb the information.

“New plan,” she said. “We drop—”

Another vicious blow hammered into Allar'ra, smashing him so hard that his right wing grazed the wall of a long stone building, and then they were peeling away to the east.

“Jak, you son of a bitch,” Gwenna cursed.

“He's right,” Talal shouted, shaking his head. “We're too easy a target up here.”

“I understand that,” Gwenna spat. “Which is why I need him to put the fucking bird down. We'll do this on foot.”

She reached for the leather strap, but at some point in the violence it had torn free. Whatever plan she had, there was no way to communicate it to Jak, no way to do anything but hang in the harness and hope that Valyn could get the other two clear of the army somehow, hope that Gwenna's own bird wouldn't be slammed straight out of the air, shattered on the streets below. As she twisted in her straps, another blow hit the bird. Allar'ra opened his beak to scream, and then Quick Jak was nudging the creature lower, so low they were skimming along one of the wider city streets, windows and balconies whipping by to either side.

The moments that followed comprised the most terrifying flying of Gwenna's life. She had no idea where the attacks against Allar'ra were coming from, no idea if they could be blocked or turned aside, no idea of
anything,
really, except that some leach they couldn't even see was kicking the living shit out of them. She couldn't communicate with Jak, but that hardly mattered now. He was doing the only thing he could—getting them low enough to hide, to stay alive.

An adult kettral had a wingspan of at least seventy feet, which didn't leave much room for flying, even in Annur's largest streets. Gwenna could feel the creature straining under its own weight, trying to rise above the buildings without fully spreading its wings. And then, when they were just clear of the highest roofs, the leach hit them again, knocking the bird a few paces sideways in the air.

'Ra screamed his rage and frustration. Gwenna had no way of knowing how badly the bird was hurt. That they were still in the air at all seemed like a 'Kent-kissing miracle, one that only an idiot would trust any longer than necessary. Jak seemed to agree. He gave the bird its head, letting it climb for seven or eight powerful wingbeats, and then they fell into another steep glide, 'Ra's wings tucked halfway back against his sides, the city's streets rushing up at them all over again. It was desperate flying, getting high enough to keep air speed, then dropping down to hide below the rooflines, soaring through streets so tight than any error meant all of them were going to end up as stains against the side of some tenement or temple. It was madness and genius all at the same time, and it kept them alive.

When they finally burst out of the final street into the wide-open space of Annur's lower harbor, nothing hit them. Quick Jak guided the bird cautiously higher, then higher still. Nothing.

Gwenna glanced over at Talal. “We safe here?”

The leach spread his hands helplessly. “No idea. I couldn't do something like that even if the whole world turned to steel.”

Great,
Gwenna thought as Jak banked the bird north and west, back toward their improvised command center.
An unknown leach of incalculable power who is not on our side.

*   *   *

Adare felt like a condemned woman climbing to her death as she mounted the stone stairs of the tower. There was no gibbet at the top, of course—just the bare stone with a clear view out to the north, but that view, in its way, was worse than any hangman's noose. A noose might mean death for a single woman, but the Urghul army that waited—that might spell the doom of all Annur. And that was forgetting all about the disaster she'd left behind, the two brothers she'd abandoned in Kegellen's tunnels.

She was still winded from the sprint through the city, a mad rush in which she'd barely managed to stay on her feet. The gamble had worked, at least for her. Whatever method il Tornja's soldiers were using to track her through the underground labyrinth, it stopped working as soon as she split off from the rest of the party. Kegellen had dispatched a dozen men alongside Adare, but there had been nothing for them to do besides run and look menacing. She would have found more relief in the escape if the implications hadn't been so obvious: the army wasn't searching for her. As Kaden had suggested, the men were looking for him and Triste.

As she climbed the stairs, Adare stared south, where the huge, golden-winged kettral had disappeared. Gwenna and the three soldiers with her had proven themselves more than competent. If anyone had a chance to snatch Kaden and Triste out of the clutches of il Tornja's army, it was a Kettral Wing with a bird. The plan was working, they had made the
right
call, and yet something inside Adare felt sick, soiled, cowardly. She'd run as fast as she could as long as she could in an effort to get to the Kettral quickly, to save the people she'd left behind, but that didn't change the basic fact: she had run.

And there's nothing you can do about it now,
she told herself viciously. Whatever triumph or tragedy was playing out to the south, a contest compared to which the war with the Urghul was some pedant's marginalia, she could do nothing to affect it. Either Gwenna would get to Kaden and Triste in time, would carry them to the Spear in time to perform the
obviate,
or she would not. Adare's job now was making sure that if the others succeeded, if il Tornja didn't manage to annihilate the very gods, that those humans who remained might inherit something other than the Urghul's savage kingdom of agony and ash.

As she reached the tower's top, Nira's voice jerked her from her thoughts.

“If ya were pickin' times to fuck off and disappear,” the old woman said, “this was a pretty shit pick.”

The old woman stood alone at the tower's top, wind tearing at her tangled gray hair. Even as she turned to face Adare, she leaned heavily on her cane, as though the weight of her hundreds of years had settled down on her all at once. Her eyes were still bright, but sunken deep in their sockets. When her gaze settled on Adare, it felt like the gaze of someone in a portrait, someone once strong, determined, resilient, but long since dead.

“What's going on?” Adare asked.

“Aside from an army a' Urghul gettin' ready to turn your nice shiny city into a stable?”

Adare took the final stairs two at a time, then stopped, staring north over the devastation she had visited on her city to the Urghul army beyond. For the better part of the year she'd been near the front, just a few dozen miles from the most brutal fighting, but not since Andt-Kyl had she actually
seen
more than a few of the horsemen at a time. The sight filled her with both dread and fascination. They poured over the low hills, more and more and more, until it seemed they would fill all the fields north of the burned barricade she had created.

“How many are there?” she asked.

“Enough,” Nira grunted, as though there were nothing more to say about the matter. “Was it him?”

Adare shook her head in confusion. “Him?”

“Il Tornja,” Nira replied. “Was he the one that grabbed ya?”

She was staring south rather than north, not at the Urghul, but over the innumerable walls and rooftops of Annur. Adare's stomach went cold inside her.

“We thought he might have returned. Is it true?”

Nira nodded slowly, wearily. “And my brother with him.”

“How do you know?”

“I can feel him, for one thing,” Nira replied quietly. “Oshi. I never told ya this, but he's my well. I can feel him moving through the city, somewhere to the south.”

Adare followed the older woman's gaze. “If Oshi is here, then so is il Tornja.”

“Ya don't need me ta tell you that,” Nira said, rummaging in the folds of her dress for a moment, then extending a gnarled hand. “He sent ya a love letter.”

Adare stared at the folded parchment. The letters she had received of late had brimmed with disaster. “You opened it,” she said.

Nira nodded. “'Course I opened it. Thought ya might be dead.”

“And what does it say?”

Even as she asked the question, Adare could feel the dread coiling around her heart, squeezing tighter and tighter, until her own pulse hammered in her ears, drowning out the awful noise of the horsemen to the north. War and worse than war had come to Annur, and yet that single sheet of parchment terrified her more than all the Urghul nation, more than whatever fight was unfolding in the streets below.

“What does it say?” she asked again, the words dry as sand inside her mouth.

Nira grimaced. “It says he has your son.”

It felt as though someone had closed a fist around her lungs. For a moment all she could do was gape, staring at Nira like some dumb fish hauled up from the depths to flop itself to death atop the tower. Finally, she managed one more word. “And?”

“Focus on the Urghul,” Nira said. “Leave what's happening inside the city alone, and your boy'll be fine.”

Adare exhaled slowly, the breath rattling out of her.

Just focus on the Urghul.
That was what she'd climbed the tower to do, and yet, she'd already sent Gwenna south. Il Tornja couldn't miss that golden bird knifing through the air. Would he see Adare's hand behind it? Was it already too late?

Trembling, she placed her hands on the stone ramparts, trying to find some strength in the ancient masonry. Down the wall to the west, she could see Lehav readying the Sons of Flame. She suddenly wished Fulton were there, the longing for his stern, steady presence an ache so vicious that it momentarily stole her speech.

“So,” Nira said, the syllable simple and unforgiving as an anvil.

“So,” Adare replied, trying to keep the scream inside her from ripping free.

“What are you going to do?”

“What I came here to do. Hold back the Urghul while the Kettral finish what needs doing in the city.”

Nira narrowed her eyes. “And what is it, exactly, that needs doing? What is it everyone's so worked up about that the whole 'Kent-kissing army seems ta have not noticed the arrival of the entire Urghul nation?”

Adare shook her head, unsure how to tell the story, unsure what words would suffice. “Trying to save us,” she said finally.

After studying her a moment, Nira nodded. “And if it comes ta your brothers or your son, who'll ya choose?”

“It's not going to come to that.”

“Sayin' a thing don't make it so.…”

“It's not…” The words died in Adare's mouth.

She stared north. While she'd been standing on the tower's top, the Urghul had divided into two groups, separated by a wide lane. She hadn't been paying any attention to the maneuver—they were still days from being able to attack. Or so she'd thought.

Without shifting her gaze from the Urghul, she groped at her side, found the long lens, and raised it to her eye. A figure leapt into view, riding down the center of that lane, a man she'd heard discussed a thousand times, but never actually seen. He was decked out in the Urghul style, all leather and fur, though his skin and hair were far too dark for any Urghul. Despair's gray, sickly flower unfolded in Adare's mind. Through the long lens, she could see the grim smile on the man's face, the leashes trailing from his saddle, and collared at the end of those leashes, naked, terrified, and bleeding from some recent lash, a dozen prisoners, men and women, all Annurian.