A Dark Sacrifice Read online

  It is not at all as we thought, he told her. They are Eisenlonders, but not roving bands. They are felling trees in a little woodland to the south. Elsewhere, they are digging ditches, hammering together stockades and pens for their horses; the next step, it would seem, will be building houses and planting crops.

  Her eyes widened as she absorbed the news. This was not information she was eager to relay to Kivik and Skerry, but it had to be done.

  “There are the beginnings of farms and villages up ahead,” she told them. “It appears that some of the Eisenlonders have made up their minds to stay.”

  “It is good land here, despite their depredations,” said Kivik, his fingers curling into fists. “And maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that having come so far, having murdered or run off the rightful inhabitants, they mean to live on that land themselves.”

  “But how could they have settled in so quickly?” asked Skerry. “Those creatures out of Phaôrax are hardly more than a day ahead of us, and even if they have been spreading the word that Ouriána is severing her ties with Eisenlonde, that’s no time for the barbarians to put aside their murdering ways and take up farming!”

  Prince Ruan was the first to guess. “It might be that they heard the news earlier, as the Furiádhin rode north. Or perhaps they simply grew impatient of wanton destruction and decided to take something of value for themselves.” His brows came together and his extravagantly colored eyes glittered in the firelight. “In the end, what does it matter? There they are, and there it would seem they intend to stay.”

  In the days that followed, Prince Kivik’s riders were often obliged to turn aside from their chosen road as more and more of the new settlements sprang up ahead of them. So much for any last lingering notion that the war might be over, Sindérian thought unhappily. In all likelihood Skyrrans and Eisenlonders would be disputing this territory for the next hundred years.

  Summer was wasting away toward autumn; the nights were getting longer and the days had lost much of their heat. These reminders of the passage of time, along with the detours and delays, only increased the crushing sense of dread that pressed on her. Day after day, and mile after mile, a thousand fears took shape in her mind: Camhóinhann would sacrifice Winloki as soon as he came to the shores of the sea. Or he would do it out on the water, where Ouriána’s influence was most potent. Or he and his cohorts had only been waiting for an auspicious hour or phase of the moon, which had finally arrived; the knives were already being sharpened.

  But they can’t have harmed her yet. I would know if she were dead, Sindérian told herself over and over.

  Faolein said the same, though with more assurance. Such a momentous event would never pass unnoticed. Too many webs of cause and effect, probability and circumstance, would unravel with the Princess’s death—and the downfall of the prophecy would be the very least of it.

  Sindérian knew that he spoke the truth. Such was Winloki’s latent power that her violent passing must send shock after shock along the ley lines.

  Yet none of that served to diminish her fears until Faolein began to give her thoughts a new direction by teaching her some of the lessons in magic she had missed by leaving the Scholia so early. War called you away too soon, he told her. We both know that you would be capable of more, much more, if you had stayed to study longer.

  Other healers made that same sacrifice, she protested. How could I have stayed behind, when so many went out before me?

  But few, very few, with natural gifts to match your own. Oh, the need for healers is great, I cannot deny it, said Faolein. But there may come a time of greater need when more will be required of you.

  And so the lessons began, most often during the quiet hours of the night when only the men assigned to guard the camp were awake: first those things she already knew, but always in such a way that even the most basic principles of magic led on to a deeper understanding of greater mysteries. Thus he led her, step by step, through the Wizard’s Runes—so different from the runes of ordinary writing—then on to the various spells of white magic: the lledrion, béanath, and shibeath. The last two were already old friends, for these were the charms of blessing, protection, and healing. Now he taught her other applications, equally benign.

  Of the darker spells, the waethas, and the curses, aneiras and aniffath, she learned only enough to understand their dangers. Of all spells, said Faolein, curses are the most difficult to undo. Only Master Wizards may attempt it, and rarely with any success.

  The lledrion had its basis in knowledge of the eight elements. Each element carries within it some basic intention, the thing which distinguishes it from primal matter: in mist, mutability; in light, illumination; in wind, movement; and so forth. All things have intention, but only animals and the speaking races have will. It is through the power of will that the magician imposes his or her intentions on the material world.

  There came a time when it became necessary to put some of these lessons into practice. Then Sindérian insisted on taking her turn alone for the late-night vigils, that she might work in peace and not startle the men with displays of magic. “Not truly alone,” she told Prince Kivik. “My father watches with me. And it is only fair that we take our turn.” Her other reasons she kept to herself. Faolein’s keen senses would be always alert and the camp would be safe—that was all that the others needed to know.

  Those spells are easiest which encourage things to do what is already in their nature, he told her on the first of these nights. To make a breeze into a great wind is not so difficult, for even the faintest breeze already carries within it the intention of movement. To call up a wind in a dead calm, that is a greater mastery. The air is still, it intends to remain so. In convincing it to do otherwise you must change its very nature. As for fire, because it is already fluid it is easily shaped, but to make it cool enough to handle you must perform the elemental spell, the lledrion. You speak the spell, and if your will is strong enough, the fire answers in the way that you wish.

  So Sindérian spent all the rest of that night, until it came time to wake the Prince’s men for the dawn watch, learning to hold fire in the palm of her hand without being scorched by it. In the beginning it was difficult, and more than once she was burned. But if you are wise you will leave one small scar, said Faolein as she worked a healing spell, to remind yourself never to take your power over fire for granted. Like all of the animate elements, its intention—in this case heat—is very strong. As you have seen, if you let your will or your attention flag for a single instant, it will have its way.

  That lesson learned, she spent the next night shaping fire into one form after another: flowers, birds, wheels, sunbursts, shields, towers. On the third night she wove it into long, shining ropes. Implicit in all this, but never spoken, was the knowledge that fire might also be used as a weapon.

  They passed from open country into a region of scattered woods and meandering watercourses. Riding past a stand of low oaks and dense brush, late one afternoon when the shadows were long and the shade of the trees lay full across their road, Sindérian felt a sudden tingling at the base of her skull, a prickling across the skin. She had only time enough to shout a warning to the other riders, at the same instant that Faolein rose screaming into the air, before chaos came hurtling at them out of the woods.

  A dozen Eisenlonders, ahorse and afoot, had them half-surrounded in seconds. Knives flashed as the barbarians closed in, going for the vulnerable legs and bellies of the horses. Two horses were hamstrung immediately, throwing their riders to the ground, where the Eisenlonders quickly finished them off. By then the Skyrrans had whipped out their swords and rallied their defenses, and the battle began in earnest. One barbarian fell, ridden down by Lord Skerry. Another was impaled by Kivik’s sword. Prince Ruan cut to left and right in a blur of motion, killing one man after another.

  But an arc of riders appeared out of nowhere, sweeping in from the other side. Horses went down screaming. One man was decapitated, and another cut almost
in half as blood spattered everywhere. The hawk entered the fray, swooping down again and again with slashing beak and talons. Sindérian had been so jostled and pushed aside that she was outside the circle. So she could only watch helplessly, knowing herself useless in a fight, until one of the barbarians spotted her, broke away from the melee, and whipping up his rawboned grey bore down on her. She tried to turn her horse and make for the woods, but the mare was fighting the bit and would not budge, dig in her heels and pull on the reins as Sindérian might.

  She could see Prince Ruan, silver-blond hair and red cape flying, as he spurred his horse and rode into a wall of swords and spears, trying to reach her. One spearman fell; Ruan slashed at another, reined back, and whirled on a third who was threatening his flank. He broke free, scattering the barbarians before him, and was out of the circle.

  By then, the Eisenlonder was already on her. The mare had finally consented to move, but she was far too slow compared to the grey coming in at full gallop. Sindérian ducked and just avoided a whirling axe. She fumbled for the knife at her belt, knowing all the time that it offered no defense against an armed man twice her size.

  But as the blade slid out from the sheath, an unexpected instinct took over. The knife seemed to move of its own volition, and her mouth formed the words before she even thought them: “Cyllig tinar domha! Tinarach llathan!”

  With the strength of Sindérian’s spell behind it, the backhanded thrust took the Eisenlonder in the gut—and kept right on going, up through the stomach and into the heart, coming to a grating stop only when it hit a rib. Her fist on the hilt followed after the blade, shearing through flesh, muscle, and the organs beneath. She managed to jerk the knife loose just as he toppled from the saddle, and her hand came out covered in blood and trailing viscera.

  The skirmish was over. The wounded and the dying were scattered on the ground in all directions. Sliding down from the saddle, Sindérian managed to make it as far as the bushes before she dropped to her knees and heaved out the contents of her stomach. It seemed she would never be done gagging and retching, even after there was nothing left but burning bile.

  She had known why it was that healers never carried arms into battle, but the reality was infinitely worse than anything she could have imagined: to be slayer and slain at the same time; to feel the shock along the nerves as the knife went in, the last convulsion of the heart; to hear the shriek that leaped from his mind to hers as the soul was ripped from the body in a white blaze and hurled out into eternity. As for the incredible butchery of how she had done it…She began to shake so hard she could not catch her breath.

  Through the grey haze, the shuddering and heaving, she had only a confused impression of the sounds and movements around her.

  “Is the Lady injured?”

  “Not, I think, in any way the rest of us could possibly understand,” said Prince Ruan’s voice very close to her ear. She realized, with vague surprise, that his was the strong arm supporting her, his the hand that held back her hair as she vomited again and again.

  After a time the tremors became less, the screaming inside her head subsided, and she found she could breathe again. Her vision cleared and she became aware of her surroundings. Aell was kneeling in the leaf mold beside her, offering a flask of water to wash out her mouth, but after only a tiny sip nausea clawed at her stomach.

  “I’m sorry” was the first thing Sindérian could think of to say.

  The man-at-arms shrugged. “I’ve seen men taken worse after a first kill—and with less reason than you, maybe.”

  Embarrassed by her own weakness, she struggled to her feet. “There must be men who were hurt, men who need healing,” she whispered hoarsely.

  Prince Ruan did not withdraw his support—which was fortunate, for when she caught a glimpse of her hand and arm, bloody to the elbow, the world turned as transparent as water for a moment, and she could neither see nor stand. “It doesn’t look as if any of the injured men are in immediate peril of dying,” he said, helping her to sit again. “Let their comrades look after them until you are feeling more like yourself.”

  Sindérian nodded wordlessly. It did not appear she had any choice in the matter, as wave after wave of dizziness passed over her.

  Over by the horses, she could hear Orri and one of the other scouts reproaching themselves. “It shouldn’t have happened that way. We should have noticed the woods were too quiet. We should have seen something—”

  “No,” she said from her place on the ground. “There was a spell on the wood—they had someone with them, a warlock or a hedge-wizard, but I sensed him too late.”

  Footsteps crunched on dry leaves as Prince Kivik came up beside her. “One of their barbarian shamans? But that isn’t one of their usual tricks. They call down curses and other mischief; they don’t bother with illusions.”

  “We’ve all been changed by the war and its aftermath—the Eisenlonders no less than ourselves,” said Skerry. There was a bloody cloth wrapped around his hand where someone had inexpertly bandaged it. “The world we knew doesn’t exist anymore.”

  They buried their dead and continued on the next morning, more warily than before, some of the men riding double to support injured comrades. Within a few more days they left the Haestfilke and came into marshy lowlands: a vast wilderness of reeds, cattails, and queer spiky grasses, stretching as far as the eye could see.

  It was a wild, unfriendly, and nearly uninhabited region where the war had never come. And even though it fell within the boundaries of King Ristil’s realm, it was unknown country. It did, however, give promise of abundant game—duck and heron and blackbird and otter—a welcome prospect to empty bellies, since the provisions they brought with them from the mountains were now so low that meals were few and meager. Some of the riders carried bows with them, and Orri in particular had never been known to miss his shot, so everyone began to look forward to meat for supper.

  While two men dismounted and went stalking game, Kivik, Skerry, Ruan, and Sindérian held a brief consultation. The two Skyrran princes searched through their memories, hoping to dredge up vague recollections of maps they had seen.

  “The rivers Nisse and Sark converge somewhere to the east of here,” Skerry remembered, “so the land in that direction will only get lower and wetter. Going around would take many days. But men do live here, so there must be a road or trails to take us through. I suggest that we look for one.”

  This seemed sensible, and after the hunters came back (with their bag of four fat ducks and an unidentified waterfowl), the company turned their faces west. After a few hours riding along the outskirts of the marsh, they came upon a trail, or something very like one, which seemed to promise a way through the fens.

  It had now been so long since they parted with the King—and they had no way of knowing how close he and his army followed behind, or whether his scouts had been able to track their course so far—there was a strong possibility that once they entered the fens he would never be able to find and catch up with them at all. The only remedy seemed to be to send Faolein winging along their backtrail until he met the King—after which it ought to be easy, from his aerial viewpoint, to locate the Prince’s company again and bring both parties together.

  The wizard consented to this plan—rather more readily than Sindérian, though why she should feel such a pang of misgiving she did not know. She watched him so long as he remained in sight, then gathered up the reins and followed the rest of the company as they headed deeper into the marsh.

  For several hours, the trail took them through acres of sedge, willow, and osiers, and if it never quite failed them, neither did it entirely win their confidence. For just when they thought they had lost it in a mire, it reappeared on the other side. And as soon as they began to feel sure of it, it ended on the banks of a muddy stream. One of the scouts waded gingerly across, expecting at every step to be swallowed by quicksand or drowned by bog monsters, but on reaching the other side he motioned to the others that it was
safe to follow him. They splashed through the water, and there on the opposite bank, hidden by a clump of cattails, was their wayward little trail again.

  Sometimes, as the day wore on, they saw puffs of smoke rising in the distance, which Sindérian took to be evidence of hearth fires and the haunts of men, though the track never brought them within sight of any houses, and the marshlanders continued to be purely conjectural.

  Toward evening, the path wandered into a maze of watercourses and murky-looking pools. The ground became unstable; in places, to their horror, the riders could feel it moving under them. Mud sucked greedily at the horses’ hooves, and one of the extra mounts managed to stumble into quicksand. It took four of the men more than an hour to pull the poor, panicky beast out again.

  Sunset had turned all the dark pools into melted gold and deepened the shadows within the reeds and sedges when Sindérian chanced to catch a flash of bright color, so far distant and so swiftly gone she could not even be certain what she had seen. She twisted around in the saddle to ask if Prince Ruan had spotted it, too.

  He nodded his head, urged his sorrel stallion to a faster walk until he came abreast of her leggy bay gelding. “There are riders up ahead: men in black and men in scarlet. But the way that this trail meanders back and forth, we are probably hours and miles behind them.”

  It took a moment for Sindérian to truly take it in—that Winloki and her captors could actually, finally, be so near. Her heart gave a great leap, battering against her ribs, then resumed its ordinary rhythm. “And do you think they have seen us?”

  “Our own colors are not so showy, and the light is fading. Even if they’re keeping an eye on their backtrail, I doubt they have spotted us.” He leaned a little closer. “If we should overtake them, what will you do? Delay them, that is what you said before, until King Ristil and his army could finally catch up to us. But how do you mean to accomplish anything of the sort—and without Faolein?”