Chapter Nine
Orias and the Gifted hadn’t ridden for very long when Orias reined up, head erect. Cherazii could hear far beyond a human’s natural range. Even with two leagues separating him from the camp, his ears still caught the sounds he had dreaded every step of the way.
Screams. Iron against iron. The occasional hollow explosion of gunfire.
It had happened after all. The Koraudians had hit the caravan. He trembled. Duty or not, how could he possibly ride on, listening to the slaughter behind him? He must do something, and, if it was to be done, he must do it now.
Behind him, Chris brought his pony to a stop. “What is it?”
Orias hauled his horse around and reached for his battle axe. “The Koraudians just attacked the caravan.”
“Where are you going?” Raz demanded from over his shoulder. “Koraudians’ll kill us if we go back there. And they’ll kill the Gifted too.”
Orias’s breath came hard. He darted a look at Chris, then stared back in the direction from which the sounds hammered his ears.
These were his people! His blood! How could he just ride away from them? The Gifted was safe here. Orias had done his duty to the Gifted. He’d delivered the Orimere. From here on out, Chris was the Searcher’s responsibility. She would find him. She would take care of him.
Battle fire blossomed in his brain, and he tamped it down long enough to look at Chris. “I have to go. They are my people, and I can’t remain here and listen. But you need to stay here.” He snapped his fingers at his lion. “Dougal!” Then he leaned over his horse’s neck and urged it into a gallop before he could change his mind.
Tree branches whipped his face and showered his saddle with leaves. He spurred his horse’s sides, and his fingers itched for the basket-hilted broadsword sheathed on his back. His blood thundered in his veins and suffused the oyster white of his skin with its inky blue. Within his mind he found the fiery core of the Cherazii’s fighting strength, and he prepared to slip into its calm center where he could access the berserking rage that made them the most feared warriors in the world.
Just in touching the edge of that fire, his vision narrowed to magnify details and his tall ears sucked in sound even beyond their normally exquisite range. The muscles in his shoulders and chest bulged beneath his sleeveless leather jerkin. His reflexes sharpened, and his thoughts refined themselves to razor intensity.
The trail that had taken the better part of an hour to cover flew past in only a few minutes. A skein of smoke wafted through the trees and bit hard in his nostrils.
He burst from the trees into the meadow, knowing what he would find.
A full battalion of troops had cut their way to the center of the camp. Every Cherazim and Riever fought. Every man, woman, and child screamed their battle cries, their blood burning blue under their skin, their minds deep within the berserking fire.
Horses ran loose, wild-eyed and snorting. Fires, started in the tents, spread through the grass. Wagons had been upended, wheels wrenched off, the glass overhangs shattered. Dozens of Cherazii bodies littered the ground. Twice as many Koraudian soldiers lay dead, their bodies hacked open with blows of vicious force.
He galloped through the corpse-strewn meadow and fed his anger. The God of all willing, he would kill as many of these cursed Koraudians as he could bring his blade to meet.
He roared. His sword tore through one Koraudian’s chest. His axe severed another’s arm. Bodies writhed about him. Horses stumbled and reared as they trod one upon the other. He hacked and shoved, fighting for the space his sword needed to deliver its full potency.
Raz dropped to the ground. His stiletto blades glared as they darted among the horses’ legs, slashing tendons. In a black blur, Dougal launched himself at a charging Koraudian and brought him to the ground, teeth clamped in his throat. The horses staggered, and the Koraudians cursed.
Orias swung his sword in abbreviated arcs, catching their blows and flinging them aside.
“Orias!” Raz shouted. “Your back!”
He whipped around to find two Koraudians closing on him, with a dozen more behind them. They shouted their victory and fell upon him, eschewing their ineffective firearms. If they wanted him alive, they would have to fight him on his own ground. With a cry, he drove his horse forward. He buried the axe in one man’s chest, and the handle yanked from his grip as the body toppled from its saddle.
Someone seized his right arm, and another Koraudian tried to batter his sword from his hand. Releasing the sword, he threw himself at the soldier who held his arm, and they both plunged to the ground. Hands buried in the man’s throat, he dug with his fingers until he could feel the windpipe collapse. Unhorsed and unarmed, he was still the most dangerous foe these cursed Koraudians were likely ever to face.
The ground reverberated with oncoming hoofbeats.
“No!” Raz said.
The horse smashed into Orias. Galaxies flared behind his eyelids, and he rolled away. He shoved to his hands and knees and blinked hard. His lungs refused to expand.
The horse hit him again, legs churning over his body. This time, the pain penetrated his berserking fire and exploded in his left shoulder and along his ribs.
“This is how the mighty Cherazii fight?” A man’s voice mocked him. “Where is this legendary skill we’ve all heard tell about? I didn’t think you’d win, but I did have it in my mind you’d put up more of a fight.”
The hoofbeats stopped a few strides off and turned for another go. At least twenty Koraudians had formed a loose perimeter around him, boxing him in like a wounded animal to be baited. The battle had waned. His people were either dead or overcome, and now he was to be sport for the victors.
If that was what they wanted, then so be it. He lifted himself to one knee and tried to shake the fuzz from his brain. Someone hit him in the back of the head with a rifle stock. He staggered but didn’t fall.
The horse bore down on him again, a shadow looming in the smoke of his vision. His ears caught the sound of the rifle descending for another blow, and he braced. He spun around, hands rising to meet the rifle stock. “Dougal!”
The lion leapt through the ring of horses and clamped his fangs in the forearm of the oncoming rider.
Orias clawed the rifle free of the Koraudian’s grasp and fired a blast through his attacker’s shoulder.
“Call off the lion!” The voice no longer mocked. “If you want to save your people, call off the lion and surrender!”
Pain thundered through his head. His vision wobbled in and out of focus. He concentrated on the berserking fire and plunged his mind in deeper yet, blocking out the pain and pulling his senses back into clarity. Whatever this man had in mind, it had to be a ploy, a ruse. In these troubled days, any Cherazim would be worse than a fool to trust a Koraudian soldier. His breath gusted, and he turned.
The commander’s horse walked forward. He frowned, and his wooly red whiskers clotted around his mouth. He was a greasy gypsy of a man, average in height, with ape arms and an angular face.
A chill melted through the heat of Orias’s blood. He knew this man. Every Cherazim knew this man. Glelarn Rotoss, one-time lieutenant of the feared Faolan Mactalde, had famously subscribed to the heresy that Mactalde would one day return from across the worlds to lead his country to final victory against Lael. In the aftermath of the war, Rotoss had seized every opportunity to persecute the Cherazii for the part they had played in Mactalde’s and Harrison’s executions.
Orias shifted his grip on the empty rifle. This man deserved to die.
Rotoss looked at the baldric buckle that proclaimed Orias a Tarn and a Keeper of the Orimere. “Well.” He grinned, and the vein-like scars on his cheeks contorted. “Just the blue I was looking for. Looks like your wretched mother should have taught you to be more considerate of your health.”
“Leave his mother out of it, goat-face!” Raz yelled.
A Koraudian grabbed him by one arm and dangled him above the ground like a rooster rea
dy for the axe.
Dizziness threatened at the edge of Orias’s berserking fire, and he kept his body still to maintain his mental grip. Rotoss could only be hunting down a Tarn for one reason. If he were going to bring back Mactalde, he needed the Orimere and he needed the Gifted. Could he be aware the Gifted was only a few leagues from here?
“You know—” Rotoss sat back in his saddle, “—you Cherazii hold a vast lot in common with my lord Mactalde.”
Orias snarled. “We hated him, and he hated us. That’s commonality enough.”
“Yes, and he’s dead—for the time being—and you’re dying.” He grinned. “Pity you didn’t have the vision to change with the times. If you’d had sense enough to let the last Gifted live even after his so-called ‘sin,’ you might have ruled us all instead of baring your chests for the sword.” His hand fell to his hilt.
Orias’s blood rose, and strength flowed through his muscles. He spat on the ground, the Cherazii tradition signifying an oath. “Before I die, I will kill you.”
Rotoss didn’t move. No one moved. “Oh, now, I’m sure you’d like that. But have you thought about this? How much better—how much more honorable—it would be to spare me and save the Cherazii?”
Orias took another step. He would have one chance to reach Rotoss before the rest of the Koraudians swarmed him.
“Give me the Orimere.” Rotoss extended his arm. “Put the dreamstone in my hand, and I’ll let today’s survivors walk, yourself among them.”
“You came all this way to save my people?” The rifle hung heavy in his hands, and the buzz of the hydraulic power system in its stock tingled his skin. “Your magnanimity stuns me.”
“It should.” Rotoss looked up, and his smile fled.
Footsteps whispered behind Orias, the heavy clank of plate armor jostling with each step. He wasn’t going to get another chance.
He lunged at Rotoss and twisted the empty rifle in his hands so he held its barrel. The Koraudians behind him cursed and broke into a run. Rotoss’s horse tossed its head, whites gleaming in its eyes.
But Rotoss held his ground. He reached to his belt for a pistol and leveled it at Orias’s chest. “Stop!”
Orias might be destined to die here, but he would not go down empty-handed. He pivoted his upper body, the rifle a club in his hands. A battle cry swelled his lungs.
Rotoss twitched the pistol up. He fired, and the rifle stock splintered.
Orias hadn’t even time to compensate his balance before three Koraudians tackled him from behind. His head hammered into the ground, and his vision flickered.
“Bind him.” Rotoss’s voice swam in the back of his consciousness.
“You don’t just look like a goat, you fight like a pig!” Raz shouted.
The Koraudians lashed his hands behind his back and dragged him to his feet. Not until they slammed his battered shoulder against a tree did the pain blast him out of paralysis. They bound him to the trunk with a thick rope.
Rotoss dismounted and handed his reins to a soldier. He approached Orias’s tree as he used his pistol’s reloading rod to cram another round down the barrel. “You stupid blues. You never learn.” He threaded the reloading rod into the groove on the underside of the pistol barrel and, with a flourish, holstered the gun at his side.
Orias darted a glance to where a Koraudian was stuffing Raz into his saddlebags. Raz bit the man’s finger and earned himself another blow to the head. He looked back at Rotoss. “What do you want?”
Rotoss drew his sword and squatted. “I’m here for one thing only.” He clanked the tip of the sword against Orias’s baldric crest. “And if you’re the Tarn this says you are, I’ve found it.” The tip of his blade slipped down from the buckle and bit through Orias’s jerkin. With a flick of his wrist, Rotoss sliced the leather open.
Only this morning, that slash would have uncovered the Orimere. But now the inner pocket was empty.
“Where’s the Orimere?” Rotoss demanded.
“It’s no good to you,” Orias said. “Only the Gifted can use of it.”
Rotoss leaned back on his heels. “That’s not your worry. Mactalde is about to return from the dead. And, depending on the choice you make, your people will either die or survive.”
Orias stared into Rotoss’s smile, and his guts twisted. Even after twenty years of silence, even from beyond the grave, Mactalde controlled the fate of the Cherazii.
He shook his head. “I don’t have it.”
Rotoss stroked his tangled beard. “Well, now, matey, that’s an interesting thing for you to say. Because if you haven’t got it, that makes me start conjecturing about who has.”
Orias met his gaze and held it. “I’m not the only Keeper.”
Rotoss grinned. The scars once again warped his face. “You’re the only Keeper in Lael. The only Keeper hell-bent for Ori Réon. That means you had the Orimere. And if you don’t have it anymore, that means you’ve given it away.” His grin widened. “Ain’t that so?”
Orias gave his head the slightest of shakes and immediately regretted it. He and Rotoss both knew the truth. Denial, right now, could only be taken as a sign of weakness.
“All right, then,” Rotoss said, “where’s the Gifted? If you gave him the Orimere, that means you know where he is. The Searcher couldn’t have found him yet. Our informers in Réon Couteau relayed word she left there only this morning.” He idly flicked the point of his blade up to the soft flesh beneath Orias’s chin. “Let’s ponder on this. If she’s only just left that great black castle of hers, that means the Gifted’s only just crossed. And if the Gifted’s only just crossed and you’ve already given him the Orimere, he must be close by. You going to tell me about it?”
Orias’s throat tightened. He shouldn’t have come back. He should have taken the Gifted and ridden on to find the Searcher. He had known that in the core of his bones. He knew it now, and yet, even still, he deserved to rot for riding away from his people when he had known trouble was coming. Rot him first—and then the Gifted for coming at all and bringing this upon them. He forced himself to shake his head.
“All right.” Rotoss sat back on his heels. “How about I make you a little present then?” He looked back at his men. “Bring a dozen or so of the prisoners. Women, children, and oldings.”
A growl built in Orias’s throat. He struggled against the rope that bound his hands behind the tree. Blood trickled from his raw wrists, but the ropes held fast.
Rotoss chuckled. “My present to you, loyal Cherazim of the Koraudian Kingdom, is the lives of your people. Provided, of course, you’re willing to do a little bartering.”
The men who guarded the Cherazii brought them to a halt in front of Orias: four women, six children, and two rickety old men.
They had been defeated, wounded, bereaved. Deep purple bruises formed on several of the women’s faces and a child’s bare white arms. But they stared at Rotoss, unbroken, watching him like caged lions watch for their chance to devour their whipmaster. They would go to their graves unbowed.
Rotoss gestured to a guard. “We’ll start with the children.”
“No!” The women started yowling.
A Koraudian dragged over a girl child, her blue-back hair plaited in a Y down her back. Her mother tried to scramble after her, and her strength required two guards to hold her back.
Every muscle in Orias’s body stiffened. “Don’t do this.”
“I’m not doing this. You are.” The movement of Rotoss’s head tracked the girl as the guards dragged her, kicking and biting, to stand in front of Orias. Then he nodded. “All right.”
The guard put a pistol to her head, and, without even waiting to see Orias’s response, pulled the trigger.
The clearing erupted in screams and oaths. Orias’s blood surged, the berserking fury so strong he could barely see. He fought his bindings. The blood now trickled freely into his hands.
“Shall we try that again?” Rotoss asked. “Before your chattel decrease further?” He g
estured to his men. “A little boy this time, I think.”
Orias panted. He couldn’t do this thing. He was a Tarn, a Keeper of the Orimere. He was sworn to uphold the Gifted. To protect them, even to guide them should the Searcher request his assistance. What Rotoss was asking, it was treason. It was perfidy of the worst kind. He would be betraying the Gifted, the Searcher, the tenets he had lived by all his life, even his people themselves.
The bereaved mother’s wails, primal and piercing, clawed his ears. If he let this thing happen, wasn’t he betraying them just the same?
Rotoss leaned in nearer. “I’m not just giving you the lives of these people here. I’m promising you the lives of all the Cherazii. You can be the savior of your people, and all you have to do is help me bring one man, one lone man, back to his home. What’s the harm in that? Who knows, maybe Mactalde won’t even want to come back. Maybe he likes this other world so much, he’ll call the whole thing off. Really, you’ve nothing to lose, Master Tarn.”
He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t. And yet—mustn’t he? Some force beyond his control dragged the air from his lungs.
A lad so young his ears had yet to grow to a height greater than his head staggered to a stop next to the fallen body of his playmate. The corners of his mouth pinched, but he didn’t cry. He stood with the impassivity of a grown Cherazim, his tiny white fists clenched at his sides.
Rotoss nodded to the guard. The pistol pointed at the boy’s head.
“Wait!” The word ripped through Orias.
Rotoss laughed. “Ah-ha, you see? I knew you were going to make the right choice.”
A groan rent his body. What choice did he have? For twenty years, his people had suffered because they had chosen to do the “right” thing, because they had chosen to take the blood of the last Gifted upon their own hands to prevent the forbidden desecration of a living being crossing the worlds by means of the Orimere.
And what had they bought the world with their adherence to duty? A better future? Peace? Prosperity?
Nay, none of that. They had followed the traditions. They had upheld their honor. They had succeeded where others failed. But they had been saddled with a nine-year-old girl for a Searcher. They had been betrayed by a king and a Garowai who failed to give her the guidance she needed. They had followed the path of traditions and honor—and it had blessed no one, least of all themselves.
So what had they to gain by continuing it? What had he to gain? Right here, right now, his people died at the feet of their enemies. And he could bear it no more. If he did this thing—if he turned the Gifted over into the hands of Mactalde’s chief lackey—he would damn his soul. Perhaps he would even wreak new havocs on the world. But he would save his people.
He closed his eyes. “I’ll do it.”