The Song of Andiene - By Elisa Blaisdell Page 0,82
his dimming eyes. A child? That was the last madness. No, the flutter of her white robe caught his eye again as she ran toward them. The red hounds turned, and one lunged at her. A flash of flame in mid-air, and the hound fell in a crumbled heap.
Then fire was all around them, leaping and crackling orange-red flames feeding joyously on air and nothingness.
The stranger stepped back into the circle of safety and sheathed his sword. He knelt beside his comrade, and urged him to his feet. Though he staggered under the other man’s weight, he managed to support him, to keep him walking. “If you cannot walk, then crawl,” he said to Lenane and Syresh. “I cannot carry you all.”
Lenane caught at his arm, and dragged herself to her feet. Syresh shook his head and crawled, one leg trailing uselessly.
Outside the circle of fire, the red ones set up their sobbing again. The short dozen paces seemed an infinity with that cursed sound ringing in Syresh’s ears.
The steps were agony, but he pulled himself onto them. His body was aflame with red pain. All that he saw was fire. Then the fires dimmed to darkness.
Chapter 17
Blood laced the safehold floor, tracing knotted patterns like some wayfarer’s map. Kallan worked the other side of the warrior’s trade, to try to mend and save.
And he waited. Andiene’s quiet voice came almost as a relief. “I swore to kill you once. You and all your kind.”
Kallan did not turn to look at her. “Wait till I have finished binding up my friend’s wounds. You should know him, Lady Andiene, if you can look and remember.”
She stepped to his side and looked down on the wounded man. Her voice was slow and wondering. “The fisherman, Ilbran.” She watched as Kallan bandaged the long torn wounds on arms and legs and chest. “Will he live?”
Kallan did not waste breath on an answer. She was the one to read the future, not he.
“What is he doing in your company?”
“We have traveled many roads together, my lady. All this year, through the winter and spring.”
The bandages were tight now, no blood staining the outer layer of felted lanara. He tested them, all good, all firm. He had no excuse now not to stand and look at her, her hands and clothing stained with blood like the safehold floor. She had helped him drag the others up into safety. She had attended to her companions, had bandaged their lesser wounds. From the moment the wall of fire died to cold nothingness, and he first saw her face, he had known her. He feared to meet her eyes.
“You do not ask why I have called feud on you?”
“No need to ask,” he said simply. “I have not seen so many child-witches that I would easily forget one.” Indeed, she had not changed, for all that she had grown taller, for all that her pale hair was cropped like a man’s, for all that she wore rough and awkward seaman’s clothes. He saw the look of royalty about her, a bright and fierce beauty.
“I swore a vow to kill you,” she repeated, grown impatient, perhaps, with his lack of response.
Kallan laid his hand on his dagger. “You might find it harder than you think, my lady.” Though she was no child now, he was warned as he and his men had not been, on that other day of death. He had been in greater danger. Such things were traps for the unwary.
Then he saw the arrogance and anger in her gray eyes. “You think that your weapons could save you? I will make you slay yourself with your own dagger.”
He did not believe her. For a moment he did not believe her. Then, for all his determination, he felt his fingers close around the dagger hilt. His arm raised itself, obeying her will, not his own, bringing the dagger out of its sheath, up to heart level. The point slid neatly between the iron rings of his shirt to find the softer leather between.
He fought against her grip. Cold sweat drenched him. His hand moved as though he were in a paralyzing nightmare. The dagger cut through the leather, through his flesh, but not far, not too far.
A shameful thing, to grow sallow, ready to faint with fear. This was what Nahil had felt. This was the madness that drove him all these years. Though her eyes told him nothing, still he feared to look away.