“Push through their rear opposite the Realm Guard,” he told Marven, finding he had to keep hold of the pommel to stop from falling. “Hera Drakil,” he addressed the Seordah, “I should like you to meet a friend of mine in the city.”
He tugged Marven’s horse around and set off at the gallop. He saw something near the causeway that made him pause for a moment. The captive Free Sword, lying dead with his throat cut, a bloody knife in his hand, his face frozen in the same mad rictus born of the song.
◆ ◆ ◆
He knew from Harlick’s reports that this causeway was almost exactly three hundred yards long, so it was strange to find it seemed to have grown by several miles. His breath was laboured now, he could feel the blood seeping through his shirt under the light mail as it flowed from his nose, mouth and eyes. He spat it out every few yards and forced Marven’s mount to a faster pace.
He was obliged to jump the horse over the remnants of the gate, clattering through the cobbled streets beyond, finding bodies and destruction everywhere. Blood ran in rivers along the rain-soaked gutters, streaming in red streaks from the corpses he found at every turn. Some Volarians were stumbling about but offering no threat, madness plain on their faces. The defenders had constructed walls within the city, forcing him to find the breaches made by the Volarians before proceeding further, the delay making him seethe in frustration as the song rose ever higher.
He was compelled to dismount a short distance from the cathedral, the streets so choked with bodies even Marven’s veteran warhorse shied from going further. He moved on, his vision clouding as he tripped over bodies, stumbling to his knees beside a young man with a short sword buried in his back and an axe resting under his pale hand. Little more than a boy.
He forced himself upright and staggered on, the sounds of battle reaching his ears. He emerged into an avenue of flattened buildings, finding five thousand or more Volarians assailing another wall. They had managed to batter a breach through it, bodies piling up as a furious fight raged just within the wall. Another shout from the song confirmed it, she was there, in the thick of it. Where else would she be?
“We do this,” Hera Drakil said, appearing at his side, his many many warriors running from the surrounding streets.
“I should appreciate it very much,” Vaelin replied.
The Volarian host made a curious sound as the Seordah charge struck home, a great sighing groan of absolute despair. Days of torment suffered within these walls only to earn a swift death at the hands of warriors they had no hope of matching.
He closed his eyes as the sounds of battle faded. Stop now, he told the song, but he was so weary and so very cold.
“You don’t need to kneel for me.”
She stood over him, looking down with a warm smile, a sword of Renfaelin design resting on her shoulder, the blade bloody from end to end.
“Is that it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I never found it.”
His vision dimmed, blackness descending for a moment. When it faded he found he was on his back, her face only inches away, tears falling onto his bloody face. “I always knew you would come.”
He managed to raise a hand and trace his fingers through her hair. Kept it long I see. “What sort of brother would I be if I hadn’t?” He coughed, a plume of blood erupting from his mouth, staining her face.
“DON’T!” she screamed as his vision dimmed again. “DON’T! Please don’t . . .”
◆ ◆ ◆
Cold. Absolute, inescapable cold. Cutting through skin and bone to clutch at his heart. Yet there was no tremble to his limbs, no mist to his breath. He blinked as his vision cleared, seeing a wall. He turned and his boots raised an echo, very loud and very long. No echo was ever so long.
The room was a simple cube of roughly worked stone, a single window in the wall to his right. In the centre stood a plain table fashioned from some dark wood, the surface gleaming even though he could see no lamp or light from the window. A woman sat on the opposite side of the table, regarding him with an expression that was equal parts fury and scrutiny. An empty chair waited before him.
“I know who you are,” the woman said, her voice birthing another echo of unnatural length.
Vaelin moved towards the chair, pausing as a faint sound came to him, a soft plaintive call. Did someone call my name?
“Was it Tokrev, I wonder?” The woman angled her head, eyes narrowing. “No, I don’t think so.”
She was dark-haired, young and beautiful, her eyes bright with intelligence and a greater depth of malice than he had seen before. It reminded him of the thing that had lived in Barkus, but he saw now that had been a spiteful child compared to her.
“You know who I am,” he said. “Who are you?”
She gave a mirthless smile. “I’m a songbird in a cage. And now so are you.”
He tried to summon the blood-song, searching for some guiding note but finding nothing.
“No songs here, my lord,” the woman told him. “No gifts. Only those he brings and they are rarely welcome.”
“He?”
A spasm of fury passed over her face and her hand slammed onto the table. “Don’t play with me! Do not act the fool! You know very well where you are and who holds you here.”
“As he holds you.”
The woman reclined, relaxing with a soft laugh. “His punishments are cruel but unimaginative, for the most part. This room, the cold, no other distraction save memory, and I have many of those.” Her hand moved to her chest, massaging the flesh between her breasts, eyes growing distant. “Did you ever love anyone, my lord?”
The sound came again, louder this time and he was certain it was a voice speaking his name, distant but familiar.
He ignored her question and went to the window, looking out on a shifting landscape, the sky a rapidly swirling canvas of cloud above tall mountains. He watched as they slowly descended, the slopes become less steep, richer in grass until he looked upon a land of gently rolling hills.
“It changes by the hour,” the woman told him. “Mountains, oceans, jungles. Places he knew once I suspect.”
“Why did he put you here?” Vaelin asked. “What was your crime?”
Her hand stopped moving on her chest and she returned it to the table. “Loving and not being loved in return. That was my crime.”
“I’ve met your kind before. There’s no love in you.”
“Trust me, my lord. You have never met my kind.” She nodded at the table.
The flute hadn’t been there before but now it sat on the gleaming wooden surface. It was a simple instrument, fashioned from bone, the surface stained with age and use, but somehow he knew if he picked it up and put it to his lips the tune it birthed would be very strong.
“VAELIN!”
There was no mistaking it now, a voice beyond this room was calling his name with enough power to shake the stones.
“He’ll give it back to you,” the woman said, inclining her head at the flute. “It’s a hard thing for those like us to live without a song.”
The room shuddered, the bricks beginning to break apart as something assailed them from outside, mortar and stone fragmenting and warm white light breaking through the cracks.
“Just pick it up,” the woman said. “We’ll sing together when he sends us back. And what a song we’ll make.”
He looked at the flute, hating himself for how much he wanted it. “Do you have a name?” he asked the woman.
“A hundred or more, probably. But my favourite was the one I earned before I accepted the Ally’s kind bargain. At my father’s behest I once laid waste to a land in the south where the local savages were proving troublesome. A superstitious folk, they thought me a witch. Elverah, they called me.”
“Elverah.” He looked again at the flute as the wall behind him gave a loud crack of shattered stone. He met her gaze and gave a smile before turning his back on her and the flute. “I’ll remember.”
He heard her shouting as the wall exploded, light flooding the room and banishing the cold. “Tell your brother!” she cried. “He could kill me a thousand times and it would change nothing!”
The light came for him, embracing him with its blessed warmth, drawing him from the room. It seemed to seep into him as he was pulled away, bringing visions of a face he knew. “You shine brightly too,” Dahrena told him. “So easy to find.”
Light filled his gaze, the last vestiges of cold banishing . . . but then a final shiver as another voice reached him. Not the woman this time, something far older, the voice free of all expression save certainty. “We will make an ending, you and I.”
◆ ◆ ◆
He woke with a shout, convulsing and shivering, as cold and weary as it was possible to be and still live. He felt a weight on his chest, finding his hands tangled in long silken tresses. Dahrena groaned and raised her head, her face pale and eyes dim with exhaustion. “So easy to find,” she said softly.
“Vaelin!” Reva was kneeling at his side, smiling and weeping. Behind her he could see Hera Drakil standing with his warriors, a deep disquiet on his hawk face.
“I thought it was Darkblade,” he replied.
She laughed and pressed a kiss to his forehead, tears flowing freely. “There is no Darkblade. It’s a story for children.”