of battlefield dust as they stopped shy of the Thorn Guard, swords at the ready.
Behind the Thorn Guard and the carriage they protected, just across the moat, Triune’s main gate and keep loomed like the valley’s last sentinel. The Stone Brothers and other fighters spaced along its battlements moved only to knock away flaming arrows or hurled rocks and spears.
Dari reached out with her graal, slamming the entire force of her mind against the carriage before her, but she sensed nothing. Felt nothing.
“Kate!” she screamed, as if her sister could hear her above the unbelievable din of the battle unfolding around them.
The carriage door opened—but it wasn’t Kate who came forth.
Stormbreaker and the remaining Stone Brothers reached them on talon-back, forming two lines of protection on either side of Dari and her grandfather. They were joined by the few surviving Ross Guardsmen as Dari stared through the ranks of Thorn Brothers.
At toddlers and very young children.
Three, then five, then ten, now fifteen or more—spilled out of the carriage. They wore red robes like fully vested members of the Thorn Guild, and each bore a thorny spiral tattoo on their right cheek—no matter how small that cheek might be. It seemed like a bad joke or some dark travesty, like these children were nothing but dolls dressed to be guild members.
“Some of them are barely out of diapers,” Lord Ross rumbled, and Dari heard and shared his distress.
No wonder the Thorn Brothers weren’t moving.
Who could swing those awful, spiked swords so close to a group of unarmed children?
Dari couldn’t imagine cutting her way toward them. What if the children moved, or got in the way? Cutting down grown men trying to kill her was one thing—but this?
“How could Thorn carry a load of tiny children into a battle?” she asked, but even as she spoke, she tried to use her mind-talents to better understand these little ones, or see what she could do to protect them.
Once more, she found nothing, sensed nothing—not even the life essence of these children. Yet they were very much alive. None were crying. None had thumbs in their mouths, or bottles, or soothers. None had the soft, innocent look children of that age should possess.
“They’re completely shielded,” Lord Ross said. “Someone’s blocking our ability to touch their thoughts more thoroughly than I’ve ever sensed before.”
Dari’s more powerful graal told her something much, much worse.
She couldn’t stop staring into the bright eyes, blue and green and even golden. She might not be able to see the colors and strengths of their legacies, but their eyes spoke loudly enough.
“I think the children are the source of the shield,” she told her grandfather, a sense of dread beginning to descend upon her like a Great Roc dropping from the sky. “I think the children are shielding themselves.”
Her grandfather’s horrified expression summed up Dari’s feelings and multiplied them—but before her grandfather could respond, loud shouts filled the air.
Dari’s attention shifted toward the sound.
The Guard charging toward their protectors seemed to swell in numbers. One group in the front contained Brailing’s standard-bearers, and a thin soldier led them. He wore a bright silver helm studded with sapphires, and great eagle’s wings jutted out from either side. The sword he carried flashed in the bright light of day, and Dari saw more jewels on the blade’s massive hilt. A pale cloud of blue clung to the soldier. Graal energy. Weak, yet deadly against those who had no defenses.
A few Stone Brothers gave startled cries and toppled off Triune’s massive battlements as the man’s killing burst billowed outward. They fell into the moat, and the water churned and darkened with blood as the mocker-fish made short work of them.
Dari’s heart gave a stutter, then sank as she understood what was happening.
This fresh wave of Brailing Guard hadn’t been on the battlefield when they began their charge. Led by the thin, bejeweled man with the meager but effective Brailing mind-talent, these soldiers were pouring from the woods ringing the valley.
The villain was here. Already at Triune.
Lord Brailing was coming for them, leading his army behind him.
Dari staggered as new graal energy slammed into her with the force of a battering ram.
She tried to push back, but the energy assaulting her had no real form or color or definition. Nothing she could understand or grasp to defend herself. It felt like wind howling into her face, pressing her backward, away from her grandfather, and then away from Stormbreaker and the other protectors still trying to