The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (3 page)

Ishavriel-kevar nodded, impatient to be gone. They would share the girl and leave the boy to him. It made sense.

Still, Algratz began his approach through the tall grass and the low shrubbery more cautiously than his companion. “Think, Kevar,” he said, granting the demon the use of free name. “The Lord has forbidden all hunting of humans until the gathering and the Summoning is complete.”

“And
our
lord has given us permission.”

“If our lord angers
the
Lord, who do you think our lord will offer as compensation for the crime?”

But Ishavriel-kevar was beyond caring, and as the shadow circle their feet traced brought them closer and closer to the small, rough tent, Algratz well understood why:
she
was there. Her pain was lessening, which was unfortunate. But the pain that she felt now would be nothing compared to what the kin might inflict. To what
he
might, were she trembling in his hands.

It had been such a long time.

Such a long time, to be forbidden the hunting and the reaving. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Lord Ishavriel waited, impassive, where they had left him; he intended to witness the event. To intervene, Algratz thought, if his servants failed him.

As he stepped forward, the crickets fell silent; the night animals—and there were not a few—froze or fled. A careful human, in lands as dense with the old earth’s life as the forested stretch between the small mortal demesnes, could trace the path of his approach by the silence it engendered—for such silences as these were loud and unnatural.

But the girl’s pain was guttering, and the boy was involved with it, almost as much as they were; there would be no detection.

No escape.

He was wary, but as he approached, as the sound of the girl’s breath grew as loud to his ear as her ebbing pain, he saw Ishavriel-kevar dart forward, off the path, black hands outstretched, claws ready to cut a swath through the tent’s side.

He knew that Lord Ishavriel planned something; knew further that the risk he took—the breaking of
the
Lord’s law—was a risk only if there were witnesses, coconspirators, and that witnesses were often disposed of when the work was done. He could not think of a single reason why Ishavriel needed either Algratz or Ishavriel-kevar; a simple girl and a simple boy could have easily been disposed of by one of the
Kialli
with no one the wiser.

Nature intervened: Algratz, of the two, was the more powerful demon, and he
could not
let Ishavriel-kevar take first what was his by right of power.

Faster, sleeker, and more complete in his arc, he landed a foot ahead of the slightly slower demon—and when he cut through the rough, oiled cloth of the tent, the fabric provided so little resistance the tent barely shivered when half its side fell away.

“Welcome,” he said, in a voice made guttural by anticipation and desire, “to Hell.”

There was a moment of terrified silence; he savored it, stretching it out for as long as he could. She broke it, and her scream was gratifying, an echo of the Abyss. He would have savored the scream just as deeply as the silence, but Ishavriel-kevar intervened, stepping into the breached wall and grabbing the boy.

The boy kicked and twisted in his grasp—just as a soul might writhe, with just as much success. “Devlin a’Smith,” Ishavriel-kevar said, and the boy slumped in a sick shock that even souls did not display. With his free hand, Ishavriel-kevar tore the tent from its moorings, uprooting and scattering its pegs in a single motion.

She disappeared a moment in its folds—but only a moment; Algratz spoke a word and the tent unfurled, exposing her. She was white, white as starlight and the face of the dark moon.

He caught her in his hands at once; marveled at the feel of her flesh, at the fact of it, that something this weak and thin and yielding had managed to survive so long.

Almost casually, he rid her of her clothing, slicing it clear from throat-hem to skirt’s edge, as if it were alive in its own right, and he an executioner. He heard her lovely whimper; she had lost her voice in fear, but her fear itself carried everything that he needed to hear.

At his side, he heard the unmistakable sound of flesh being split, a small tear, a slow one. It had a cadence and rhythm of its own, and when the boy screamed in terror, and in agony, and in anticipation, the two sounds blended, melody and harmony.

She did not hear it, he thought; she was concerned with her own fate, her own plight. When she opened her bruised lips, a single word escaped them. “DEVLIN!” All the sweet fear in the name was her own, it was of her, for her. He could almost taste it; could taste it. It had been so
long
.

She kicked at him, abrading her heels against his skin; he bore her down into the tall grass, all the while the boy’s name filling his ears and her lungs. And then he laughed, louder than she screamed, a deep, rich sound that hinted at the eternity of the Abyss for a mortal whose soul was, pitiably, far from making the Choice. Ah, well. He did not have an eternity.

He had her life, for as long as it lasted, and then, beyond that, three days in which to bind her soul and hold it.

But first, Lord Ishavriel’s command.

“
Ishavriel-kevar
!” The pitch of his voice was unnaturally loud. “Will you waste your time with the boy when we have what we came for?”

“
Devlin
!” He silenced her a moment with his lips, and when he drew back, hers were reddened with blood; she choked as he touched her gently. As gently as he knew how. Her voice was gone again, gone to silence and the stillness of breath held by a person who has—almost—forgotten that she needs to breathe to survive.

Algratz caressed her with the sharp edge of claws that did not quite draw blood. Footsteps accompanied the movement of his hands against the stillness of her flesh. He recognized them at once: The heavy, stalking tread of Ishavriel-kevar, and the fleet-footed, grass-tearing scramble of a terrified, half-crazed mortal. But she did not, he thought; she did not know who was coming.

He lowered himself over her, and then, as the tall grass parted and the shadow of Ishavriel-kevar was lent substance by the moon, he smiled. A moment, he waited, until he saw the widening of her eyes, and then he whispered four guttural words.

Run for your life
.

The sound of the fleeing boy’s ragged breath and uneven steps was taken by the lake and the air and the wind and made louder, made final.

“
Devlin! DEVLIN!
”

His name echoed, unanswered. Lake water lapped at it, eating away at its edges until even the name was gone.

She was alone. With them.

He entered her then, as the realization did, because this was the first of her fears, and he intended to visit them all.

Devlin
.

They hurt her. The one, and then the other, great, terrible shadows that shone with the harsh light of new silver, of silver that has never known time. What she had kept from the miller’s brutal son, what she had offered shyly at first, and then insistently, to Devlin, they took, and in the taking, made her realize that she had never had anything to fear from the miller’s son.

Devlin
.

They hurt her, and then they left her a moment, like garbage, in an unclean, bleeding heap. She lifted her head and saw the tent, like her dress, spread and torn across the goldenrod and tall grass, white in the poor light, a revenant. She tried to stand, bunching her knees beneath her limp body and pushing her weight up; throwing her hands out to stop her body in motion from returning groundward too heavily.

The tears were on her cheeks, and they were water, and they
burned
.

Why?
Why?

“Devlin.”

It angered Algratz; angered and confounded him. He was not
Kialli
, but he was a free creature, inasmuch as any of the kin could be, who served the Lord of the Hells. He understood pain; no one of the kin did not. Even the imps—even the lesser, squeaking gnats of the outer regions—had it bred into their brittle, tiny bones.

But the pain he inflicted here did not touch the girl as deeply or as viscerally as the pain that the boy caused by his flight.

Is this what you hoped to gain?
he thought, as the silver curves of his claws sliced his own palm in reflexive anger. It would be Lord Ishavriel’s game—to give and to take with the same gesture.
Is this why you ordered us to let the boy flee?

She had not, he noticed, even made the attempt to flee. No, wait; she rose. He had so hoped to make her last for hours, for days; he surrendered that hope now. He had no doubt that he could make her surrender everything, but all of the lovely subtlety, all of the pain that might be caused without lethal damage—that was lost to him.

Angry, and hungry, he stalked forward as she lurched to her feet. If there was no subtlety, there was still victor and a victim, and that at least was something. A scrap. From Ishavriel’s dominion.

She heard him and she turned at once, lurching, overbalanced.

She stumbled out of his way, evading his grip, and shredded the skin of her hand on the hand of his companion; the shock was bracing in its clarity, its unexpectedness.

She seemed almost confused, and stepped back, bleeding, naked, her whole hand clutching her wounded one, as if she would be allowed, in the end, to keep either.

“What—what do you want?”

They, neither of them, chose to answer, sensing that their silence was worse; in the silence, she might fashion the words she most dreaded, and say them, over and over.

She drew back, and her eyes were white and wide; almost gratifying. Almost enough.

But when Algratz finally touched her, scudding along the underside of her skin with the very tip of his fingers, when she finally screamed, the pain was still distinct.

“
Devlin!
”

She heard the footsteps with a wild hope, a crazed and terrified hope; the words on her lips were a rush of giddiness, of forgiveness, of anger—that he could
leave
her, but it might be all right somehow if he could just save her now and tell her
why
—

But even in the moon’s terrible light, so white and harsh and brilliant, her vision could not contort the moving blur into Devlin’s shape; it was too tall and too fast.

And it carried, of all things, a sword.

The creature peeling the skin from her arm froze stiffly as the sword passed through its body, starting from the crook of its ebony neck and ending at the joint of its hip. She thought it unharmed, for it seemed to turn—

But that was night illusion; the shadows gave lie to the movement and the body fell, at once, into distinct pieces. The grass burned where it landed; the air burned.

The other creature turned, jumped, leaped into the air; he cried out in anger, his voice harsh and metallic. But the man with the sword—and he was a man—only laughed as the, creature turned and fled.

Fled.

She stood alone by the lakeside, the insects waking to the warmth of her body and the promise of her blood. He bowed, his bow so perfect he reminded her, in the single motion, of the silver-haired mage. The mage who was the end of her world.

She couldn’t see for tears. “And w–what do you want, then?”

He sheathed his sword and bowed again, turning his glance to the blackened patch of earth that would not support life for decades. It was all that remained of the demon’s corpse. With great care, he unfastened the golden clips of the chain that held his cloak’s collar together. He raised it, slowly, gently, and then, folding it carefully, placed it upon the ground at his feet.

As if she were a hungry, wild animal, he backed away, every movement slow and deliberate. She knew it, of course; she’d seen Devlin do it a hundred times. She had even done it herself.

Devlin.

Her knees collapsed when she took a step forward. She rose; the man had not moved. Scrambling, dirt in the cuts and the scrapes of her hand, she reached for his cloak and wrapped it as tightly around her body as she ever had a blanket after a terrible nightmare.

“Anya,” her unknown companion said, speaking for the first time.

She looked up at the sound of her name.

“Come, child. This is not the place for you. I have killed one of the kin, but the other will return.”

She shook her head, mute in the face of his words.

“Child,” he said again, his voice not unkind. “There is no safety in anything but strength.” His gaze was as much a measure of her as Emily a’Martin had ever made when dressing her for church.

Devlin
.

“You should not have trusted a boy,” he said, as if he could hear her thoughts. She would learn, later, that he could do exactly that.

“And why should I trust you?” she demanded, with the thick layer of his soft, heavy cloak as her armor and her shield. The grass grew tall as her hips this time of year, and the goldenrod and milkweed taller still.

His smile was cold as moonlight, as cold as silver; as cold, she thought, as the claws of the creature he had killed. “Because, Anya, I
have
power. What do you desire? If you wish to return to your home, I will take you there.”