Theft Of Swords: The Riyria Revelations (70 page)

Hadrian watched as a seret sliced Fanen across his sword arm, the blade continuing down to his hand. The younger Pickering’s sword fell from his fingers. Defenseless, Fanen desperately stepped backward, retreating from his two opponents. He tripped on the wreckage and fell. They rushed him, going for the kill.

Hadrian was too many steps away.

Mauvin ignored his own defense to save his brother. He thrust out. In one move, he blocked both attacks on Fanen—but at a cost. Hadrian saw the seret standing before Mauvin thrust. The blade penetrated Mauvin’s side. Instantly the elder Pickering buckled. He fell to his knees with his eyes still on his brother. He could only watch helplessly as the next blow came down. Two swords entered Fanen’s body. Blood coated the blades.

Mauvin screamed, even as his own assailant began his killing blow, a cross slice aimed at Mauvin’s neck. Mauvin, on his knees, ignored the stroke, much to the delight of the seret. What the knight did not see was Mauvin did not need to defend. Mauvin was done defending. He thrust his sword upward, slicing through the attacker’s rib cage. He twisted the blade as he pulled it out, ripping apart the man’s organs.

The two who had killed his brother turned on Mauvin. The elder Pickering raised his sword again but his side was slick with blood, his arm weak, eyes glassy. Tears streamed
down his cheeks. He was no longer focusing. His stroke went wide. The closest knight knocked Mauvin’s sword away and the two remaining seret stepped forward and raised their swords, but that was as far as they got. Hadrian had crossed the distance and Mauvin’s would-be killers’ heads came loose, their bodies dropping into the ash.

“Magnus, get Tomas up here fast,” Hadrian shouted. “Tell him to bring the bandages.”

“He’s dead,” Theron said as he bent over Fanen.

“I know he is!” Hadrian snapped. “And Mauvin will be too if we don’t help him.”

He ripped open Mauvin’s tunic and pressed his hand to his side as the blood bubbled up between his fingers. Mauvin lay panting, sweating. His eyes rolled up in his head, revealing their whites.

“Damn you, Mauvin!” Hadrian shouted at him. “Get me a cloth. Theron, get me anything.”

Theron grabbed one of the seret who had killed Fanen and tore off his sleeve.

“Get more!” Hadrian shouted. He wiped Mauvin’s side, finding a small hole spewing bright red blood. At least it was not the dark blood, which usually meant death. He took the cloth and pressed it against the wound.

“Help me sit him up,” Hadrian said as Theron returned with another strip of cloth. Mauvin was a limp rag now. His head slumped to one side.

Tomas came running up, his arms filled with long strips of cloth that Lena had given him. They lifted Mauvin, and Tomas tightly wrapped the bandages around his torso. The blood soaked through the cloth, but the rate of bleeding had slowed.

“Keep his head up,” Hadrian ordered, and Tomas cradled him.

Hadrian looked over at where Fanen lay. He was on his back in the dirt, a dark pool of blood still growing around his
body. Hadrian gripped his swords with blood-soaked hands and stood up.

“Where’s Guy?” he shouted through clenched teeth.

“He’s gone,” Magnus answered. “During the fight, he grabbed a horse and ran.”

Hadrian stared back down at Fanen and then at Mauvin. He took a breath and it shuddered in his chest.

Tomas bowed his head and said the Prayer of the Departed:

“Unto Maribor, I beseech thee

Into the hands of god, I send thee

Grant him peace, I beg thee

Give him rest, I ask thee

May the god of men watch over your journey.”

When he was done, he looked up at the stars and in a soft voice said, “It’s dark.”

A
rista did not want to breathe. It caused her stomach to tighten and bile to rise in her throat. Above her stretched the star-filled sky, but below—the pile. The Gilarabrywn built its mound, like a nest, from collected trophies, gruesome souvenirs of attacks and kills. The top of a head with dark matted hair, a broken chair, a foot still in its shoe, a partially chewed torso, a blood-soaked dress, an arm, so pale it was blue, reaching up out of the heap as if waving.

The pile rested on what looked to be an open balcony on the side of a high stone tower, but there was no way off. Instead of a door leading inside, there was only an archway, an outline of a door. Such false hope teased Arista as she longed for it to be a real door.

She sat with her hands on her lap, not wanting to touch anything. There was something underneath her, long and thin like a tree branch. It was uncomfortable, but she did not dare move. She did not want to know what it really was. She tried not to look down. She forced herself to watch the stars and look out at the horizon. To the north, the princess could see the forest, divided by the silvery line of the river. To the south lay large expanses of water that faded into darkness. Something
out of the corner of her eye would catch her attention and she would look down. She always regretted it.

Arista realized with a shiver that she had slept on the pile, but she had not fallen asleep. It had felt like drowning—terror so absolute that it had overwhelmed her. She could not recall the flight she must have taken, or most of the day, but she did remember seeing it. The beast had lain inches away, basking in the afternoon sun. She had stared at it for hours, not able to look at anything else—her own death sleeping before her had a way of demanding her complete attention. She sat, afraid to move or speak. She was expecting it to wake and kill her—to add her to the pile. Muscles tense, heart racing, she locked her eyes on the thick scaly skin that rippled with each breath, sliding over what looked like ribs. She felt as if she were treading water. She could feel the blood pounding in her head. She was exhausted from not moving. Then the drowning came over her once more and everything went mercifully black.

Now her eyes were open again, but the great beast was missing. She looked around. There was no sign of the monster.

“It’s gone,” Thrace told her. It was the first either of them had spoken since the attack. The girl was still dressed in her nightgown, the bruises forming a dark line across her face. She was on her hands and knees, moving through the pile, digging like a child in a sandbox.

“Where is it?” Arista asked.

“Flew away.”

Somewhere nearby, somewhere below, she heard a roar. It was not the beast. The sound was constant, a rumbling hum.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“On top of Avempartha,” Thrace answered without looking up from her macabre excavation. She dug down beneath a layer of broken stone and turned over an iron kettle, revealing a torn tapestry, which she began tugging.

“What is Avempartha?”

“It’s a tower.”

“Oh. What are you doing?”

“I thought there might be a weapon, something to fight with.”

Arista blinked. “Did you say ‘to fight with’?”

“Yes, maybe a dagger, or a piece of glass.”

Arista would not have believed it possible if it had not happened to her, but at that moment, as she sat helplessly, trapped on a pile of dismembered bodies, waiting to be eaten, she laughed.

“A piece of glass? A piece of glass?” Arista howled, her voice becoming shrill. “You’re going to use a dagger or a piece of glass to fight—
that thing
?”

Thrace nodded, shoving the antlered head of a buck aside.

Arista continued to stare openmouthed.

“What have we got to lose?” Thrace asked.

That was it. That summed up the situation perfectly. The one thing they had going for them was that it could not get worse. In all her days, even when Percy Braga had been building the pyre to burn her alive, even when the dwarf had closed the door on her and Royce as they dangled from a rope in a collapsing tower, it had not been worse than this. Few fates could compare to the inevitability of being eaten alive.

Arista fully shared Thrace’s belief, but something in her did not want to accept it. She wanted to believe there was still a chance.

“You don’t think it will keep its promise?” she asked.

“Promise?”

“What it told the deacon.”

“You—you could understand it?” the girl asked, pausing for the first time to look at her.

Arista nodded. “It spoke the old imperial language.”

“What did it say?”

“Something about trading us for a sword, but I might have gotten it wrong. I learned Old Speech as part of my religious studies at Sheridan and I was never very good at it, not to mention I was scared. I’m still scared.”

Arista saw Thrace thinking and envied her.

“No,” the girl said at last, “it won’t let us live. It kills people. That’s what it does. It killed my mother and brother, my sister-in-law, and my nephew. It killed my best friend, Jessie Caswell. It killed Daniel Hall. I never told anyone this before, but I thought I might marry him one day. I found him near the river trail one beautiful fall morning, mostly chewed, but his face was still fine. That’s what bothered me the most. His face was perfect, not a scratch on it. He just looked like he was sleeping under the pines, only most of his body was gone. It will kill us.”

Thrace shivered with the passing wind.

Arista slipped off her cloak. “Here,” she said. “You need this more than I do.”

Thrace looked at her with a puzzled smile.

“Just take it!” she snapped. Her emotions breached the surface, threatening to spill. “I want to do
something
, damn it!”

She held out the cloak with a wavering arm. Thrace crawled over and took it. She held it up, looking at it as if she were in the comfort of a dressing room. “It’s very beautiful, so heavy.”

Again Arista laughed, thinking how strange it was to fly from despair to laughter in a single breath. One of them was surely insane—maybe they both were. Arista wrapped it around the young girl as she clasped it on. “And here I was ready to kill Bernice—”

Arista thought of Hilfred and the maid left—no, ordered—to stay in the room. Had she killed them?

“Do you think anyone survived?”

The girl rolled aside a statue’s head and what looked like a broken marble tabletop. “My father is alive,” Thrace said simply, digging deeper.

Arista did not ask how she knew this, but believed her. At that moment, she would believe anything Thrace told her.

With a nice hole dug into the heart of the debris, Thrace had yet to find a weapon beyond a leg bone, which she set aside with grisly indifference, to use in case she found nothing better, Arista guessed. The princess watched the excavation with a mix of admiration and disbelief.

Thrace uncovered a beautiful mirror that was shattered, and struggled to free a jagged piece, when Arista saw a glint of gold and pointed, saying, “There’s something under the mirror.”

Thrace pushed the glass aside and, reaching down, grabbed hold and drew forth the hilt half of a broken sword. Elaborately decorated in silver and gold encrusted with fine sparkling gems, the pommel caught the starlight and sparkled.

Thrace took the sword by the grip and held it up. “It’s light,” she said.

“It’s broken,” Arista replied, “but I suppose it’s better than a piece of glass.”

Thrace stowed the hilt in the lining pocket of the cloak and went on digging. She came across the head of an axe and a fork, both of which she discarded. Then, pulling back a bit of cloth, she stopped suddenly.

Arista hated to look but once more felt compelled.

It was a woman’s face—eyes closed, mouth open.

Thrace placed the cloth back over the hole she had made. She retreated to the far edge and sat down, squeezing her knees while resting her head. Arista could see her shaking and Thrace did not dig anymore after that. The two sat in silence.

Thrump. Thrump.

Arista heard the sound and her heart raced. Every muscle in her body tightened and she dared not look. A great gust of air struck from above as she closed her eyes. She heard it land and waited to die. Arista could hear it breathing and still she waited.

“
Soon
,” she heard it say.

Arista opened her eyes.

The beast rested on the pile, panting from the effort of its flight. It shook its head, spraying the platform with loose saliva from its lips, which failed to hide the forest of jagged teeth. Its eyes were larger than Arista’s hand, with tall narrow pupils on a marbled orange and brown lens that reflected her own image.

“Soon?”
She didn’t know where she found the courage to speak.

The massive eye blinked and the pupil dilated as it focused on her. It would kill her now, but at least it would be over.

“Thou know’st my speech?”
The voice was large and so deep she felt it vibrating her chest.

She both nodded and said, “
Yes.
”

Across from her, the princess could see Thrace with her head up off her knees, staring.

The beast looked at Arista.
“Thou art regal.”

“I am a princess.”

“
The best bait
,” the Gilarabrywn said, but Arista was not sure she heard that right. It might also have said, “The greatest gift.” The phrase was difficult to translate.

She asked, “
Wilt thou honor thy trade or kill us?
”

“The bait stays alive until I catch the thief.”

“Thief?”

“The taker of the sword. It comes. I crossed the moon to deceive it that the way ’twas clear, and have returned flying low. The thief comes now.”

“What’s it saying?” Thrace asked.

“It said we are bait to catch a thief that stole a sword.”

“Royce,” Thrace said.

Arista stared at her. “What did you say?”

“I hired two men to steal a sword from this tower.”

“You hired Royce Melborn and Hadrian Blackwater?” Arista asked, stunned.

“Yes.”

“How did you—” She gave that thought up. “It knows Royce is coming,” Arista told her. “It pretended to fly away, letting him see it leave.”

The Gilarabrywn’s ears perked up, suddenly tilting forward toward the false door. Abruptly, but quietly, it stood and, with a gentle flap of its wings, lifted off. Catching the thermals, the beast soared upward above the tower. Thrace and Arista heard movement somewhere below, footsteps on stone.

A figure appeared in a black cloak. It stepped forward, passing through the solid stone of the false door, like a man surfacing from below a still pond.

“It’s a trap, Royce!” Arista and Thrace shouted together.

The figure did not move.

Arista heard the whispered sound of air rushing across leathery wings. Then a brilliant light abruptly burst forth from the figure. Without a sound or movement, it was as if a star appeared in place of the man, the light so bright it blinded everyone. Arista closed her eyes in pain and heard the Gilarabrywn screech overhead. She felt frantic puffs of air beat down on her as the beast flapped its wings, breaking its dive.

The light was short-lived. It faded abruptly though not entirely and soon they could all see the man in the shimmering robe before them.

“
YOU!
” The beast cursed at him, shaking the tower with its voice. It hovered above them, its great wings flapping.

“
Escaped thy cage beast of Erivan, hunter of Nareion!
” Esrahaddon shouted in Old Speech.
“I shall cage thee again!”

The wizard raised his arms, but before he made another move, the Gilarabrywn screeched and fluttered back in horror. It beat its great wings and rose, but in that last second, it reached down with one talon, snatching Thrace off the tower. It dove over the side, vanishing from sight. Arista raced to the railing, looking down in horror. The beast and Thrace were gone.