She was bound.
Jey didn’t struggle against the bonds. She rolled over instead. She blinked as the wan sunlight of the afternoon filled her eyes. She heard someone say, “Oh. Excellent. She’s come around already. Help her sit up, won’t you, Donin.”
Jey recognized the voice. It sent terror racing up and down her limbs.
Nylan. It was High Handler Nylan.
A hard hand closed around Jey’s shoulder. She was hauled into a sitting position and heaved around so her back was propped against the rough trunk of a tree. Jey blinked. Her head felt wobbly on her neck. Phril’s anger was a distracting buzz beneath her thoughts but she managed to focus her vision.
She was in the woods, not far from the shelter. And she saw two things that made her very scared. First, Nylan stood before her, leaning on a strange stone cane. Second, Lokim lay nearby, bound as she was, unconscious.
There was no sign of Phril or Bliz. Jey stared at Lokim long enough to determine his chest still rose and fell with his breath.
Jey relaxed by a small fraction. She glanced about the woods. Elle was not in evidence, a fact she hoped was a good sign.
That was about where the good news ended, though. At the edge of her peripheral vision, Jey saw two orderlies, stunrods held at the ready.
“I want to know how you did it.”
Jey turned her head at the sound of Nylan’s voice. The man stood a little distance away and he was looking at her. Something in his eyes made Jey flinch. The rage she saw there was a match for the boiling fury Phril was feeling. It was unnerving to see that emotion in the face of a human.
Nylan’s face had never been kind, but now there was a brutal twist to his features. He took a couple steps forward. Jey saw he walked with a pronounced limp. He moved closer but stopped before he was anywhere near Jey’s reach. “How did you escape? How did you get your little monsters past the magic? If you tell me without fighting, perhaps I’ll spare your lover’s life.”
Jey’s mind was still hazy. For a moment, she didn’t understand what he meant. Then, she blinked and glanced at Lokim. The young man lay unconscious, his dark hair shifting in the afternoon breeze. Nylan, she realized, must think Lokim was a normal young man, someone whom Jey had grown attached to.
Well, that was also good. The longer it took for Nylan to figure out Lokim was Tessilari, the better his chance of survival.
Jey swallowed and discreetly tested her bonds. The rope on her wrists was tight. There were bonds on her ankles, as well. She could blast them off with a spell, but the orderlies with the stunrods would whack her before she could escape. She could try to hit Nylan with an offensive spell, but then, too, the orderlies would club her senseless before she could do him any real harm. And then they’d be right back in this same spot, only Nylan would be angrier.
Nylan was watching her, his face growing more grim with every second she remained silent. “Jorin,” he said, tone hard, “why don’t you see if you can wake the young man up.”
Grinning, a man stepped up from behind Nylan, drawing a knife from his belt.
He was walking towards Lokim when Phril arrived.
At first, the red tessila was nothing more than a red glint on the air. Jey saw him with a strange twist of her heart. “No,” she whispered. He was so small. She remembered, vividly, the smashed body of Kae’s tessila, stomped into the ground and dead.
Phril shot past the tree Jey was leaning against, and looped around the trunk in one quick circle. She felt him take stock of her and reassure himself she wasn’t too badly harmed. Then she felt his focus shift onto Nylan.
From there, everything happened almost too quickly to follow. One of the orderlies shouted a warning. Nylan turned, saw the red tessila, and grinned. He pulled a stunrod from his belt.
Then, in the instant between when he flew past Jey and reached Nylan, Phril changed. His body shimmered and seemed to expand. His new, larger shape was translucent at first. Then it solidified. Only now, Jey’s tessila was the size of horse.
The suddenly massive red tessila hit Nylan like a speeding carriage. The man had time to let out a cry of surprise before a single swipe of a great forearm batted him aside with no more effort than a cat tosses a mouse into the air. Nylan was flung away to smash into a tree and slide to the ground, groaning.
There was a moment of stunned silence. Phril raised his head to the sky. He let out an ear-splitting roar, its reverberations shaking the very earth. Jey felt a strange swelling pride at the sight of him. He was magnificent. His hide glittered in the sun. His head was fine and intelligent. And he was hers.
Then, the first arrow pierced Phril’s gleaming hide.
◈
The arrows hit Phril’s scaled hide with deep, hard thumps. Jey felt his pain lace through her own body. She gasped with the shock of it. Phril wheeled, glaring around the trees. But he was a large target and the archers were well hidden. More arrows found him even as he spun.
Jey heard shouts behind her and the scuff of fleeing feet. Phril, hearing the same sounds, turned on the orderlies that had been standing over Jey and were now running away. He thundered forward only to crash against a tree trunk, causing a shower of twigs and leaves to fall onto Jey’s head. She could feel his confusion at the size of his body combined with his anger at what had happened to her. But it took only a moment before he recovered from the crash with the tree and lit off after the orderlies.
Which left Jey alone with the groaning Nylan and the unconscious Lokim.
Mind racing, Jey cast a passive echo spell on herself. Then she turned her attention to her bonds. She focused, beginning to weave a spell. Before she could release it she heard running footsteps. She turned to see two young women dressed in dark leather. They ran forward, holding crossbows. One of them went to Nylan, stooping over his crumpled form. Jey heard him hiss some order. The girl straightened and spoke to her companion. “He says to get her back to the academy.”
The girls turned as one and took a step towards Jey. Jey felt a strike on her passive echo spell – a magical missile that caused pain to lance through her mind. She cursed and targeted the bonds on her feet with an active strike spell, but it glanced off the rope and hit the damp loam of the forest floor, where it sizzled. Nylan, always thorough, had used magically resistant rope.
The two students moved forward. Jey felt another strike against her shield. It was all too much. Phril’s pain and rage sang in her mind. The painful spot on her calf seemed to be growing more uncomfortable by the minute. She glanced down to see her legging was punctured, the leather around it dark with blood. Nylan must have stubbed her in the leg when she’d been unconscious.
Somehow, the sight of her own blood was the last straw. Jey lost her hold on the passive echo spell. As soon as it fell the two girls moved forward in confident unison, preparing to grab her arms, heave her off the ground, and haul her back to the academy.
“No,” Jey whispered. The word barely made it past her dry throat. In the distance she could here Phril crashing through the woods, bellowing in pain and rage. “Please,” she said, addressing the two girls. “I can help you. I can show you how to escape. I can tell you the secret. You can gain your own freedom.”
One of the two, a slim girl who looked like she couldn’t be any older than 15, back-handed Jey across the mouth. The blow was hard, calculated, and it hurt. “No talking,” the girl said. Then she stooped towards Jey’s shoulder.
There was a blur in the air, the fuzzing pull of magic being worked nearby. Jey gasped as a staff seemed to appear out of thin air. It arced down towards the girl as the man swinging it dropped his passive echo spell and became visible.
He was a man unlike any Jey had ever seen. He was not as tall as Lokim, and he was a few years older. He wore a long coat the color of mist. His staff bore traceries of elaborate runes up and down its length. His face bore a look of grim determination. His jaw was set, his grip on his staff was firm, but he didn’t look worried. He expected the slender gi
rl to be an easy mark.
If the girl who had slapped Jey was at all surprised by the man’s sudden appearance, she didn’t show it. She spun, caught the staff in her hands, and jerked it from the man’s grasp. He stumbled back, startled.
The girl reversed her grip and swung the staff back at its owner. It whistled through the air in a furious swipe, missing his head by a hair’s breath. The second girl turned away from Jey, pulling her knives from her belt in an angry hiss.
The man cursed and began to weave another passive echo spell. The two girls attacked it before he could get the weave right, blasting it out of existence before it could settle into place.
The man’s eyes widened with sudden fear. They’re going to kill him. Jey’s heart sank at the thought.
Jey felt a tug on her bonds. She looked down to see Bliz, about the size of a rabbit, gnawing busily through the rope on her legs. It took the tessila’s sharp teeth only a moment to sheer through the rough fibers. Jey gasped with relief as her ankles came loose. She held out her hands. The tessila freed those as well.
“Thank you,” she whispered, surging to her feet. Her weapons belt had been removed when she’d been tied, but she didn’t hesitate. She ran forward to join the fight, limping on her wounded leg.
Jey didn’t need weapons to be deadly.
◈
The girl with the knives turned as Jey approached. Her eyes narrowed as she took in Jey’s battered appearance – her limp, her empty hands. As the man who’d lost his staff held one student at bay through magical jabs and blocks, Jey wove a passive shield around herself and dropped it into place. She steeled her mind against the pain in her leg, putting it aside to deal with later. Then she lunged forward.
The girl with the knives didn’t hesitate. She swung one knife towards Jey’s side, bringing it in low and quick. Jey wove an active strike spell and targeted her opponent’s wrist. There was a shock on the air, a gasp from the girl. The knife fell free. Jey tumbled to the side to scoop it up the moment it hit the earth and came back to her feet in a roll.
She now had a knife. But behind her opponent the man in the coat was losing ground. His face bore a bewildered expression and he stumbled backwards in a continuous retreat. He’d produced a small hunting knife which he held at ready, but it wasn’t much use against the whirling, snapping staff.
Jey’s opponent was cautious now. She held her one knife to the side and stalked Jey like a hunting cat. In the distance Jey could hear distant shouts, the excited barking of dogs, and the long, high whistle of the master of the hunt. She didn’t have much time.
She parried a quick, vicious swipe of her opponent’s knife and realized with sudden surprise Phril was no longer in pain. The only discomfort in her mind was her own. Her tessila, in fact, was feeling quite satisfied with himself. He was basking in some emotion – some feeling she couldn’t quite identify.
Jey had no time to figure it out. She darted in to deliver an attack. The student blocked her strike, but Jey’s blade slid off her opponent’s hilt and sliced through the leather on her forearm. Blood flowed and the girl jumped back with a gasp. So young. So inexperienced. The thought made Jey sad.
She heard a shout from the man in the coat. She turned in time to see a ring of bright light erupt around him. It blasted out in a brilliant circle, knocking his attacker back a few paces. But it wasn’t enough. The student recovered a moment later to stalk forward again.
Jey pressed her advantage, taking her opponent’s momentary imbalance as the cue to move in. She blocked a knife swipe and felt her passive shield spell reverberate as it deflected a magical strike. Jey closed with the girl and dropped her own knife to catch the girl’s wrist in both of her hands. She twisted. There was a pop and a cry, and the knife came free. Jey caught the knife, turned it, and brought it in with a vicious strike to the side of the girl’s head.
The girl crumpled, collapsing into a heap on the forest floor. Jey turned and began to hobble towards the man in the long coat.
But even as she watched, she saw she would be too late. The man had gambled on the spell that had produced the light. He was tired now, his retreat slow and clumsy. The student pressed him with an unhurried deliberation that made Jey’s blood run cold. The man stumbled on a rock, lurched to the side, and his back ran into a tree. The girl whirled the staff, preparing to bring it down across the man’s face. Jey felt a sick horror rise to choke her throat. Whoever this man was, he had tried to help her. Would it cost him his life?
As Jey watched, too far away to help, the staff began to fall. The man saw it coming and raised one arm in a feeble block.
But just before the blow landed, Elle appeared, dropping a passive echo spell to erupt in the middle of the fight. Armed with her knives, she deflected the swing of the staff and delivered a quick cut to the student’s shoulder before the girl could dance back.
Jey gave a short sigh of relief. She glanced around. Lokim was sitting up now, rubbing at his wrists and staring at Elle with a look of such unguarded admiration Jey had to look away. Bliz was perched on his shoulder, returned to her usual size.
She looked for Nylan, but the handler was gone.
A shout sounded from Jey’s right. Three orderlies rushed her, charging out from behind a large bush, stunrods raised. Jey barely had time to look at their faces before they were upon her, swinging, cursing, trying to bring her down. She didn’t recognize any of them. Which made it easier.
She caught the first one with a side swipe of her blade across the neck, dropping him. She rose up to meet the second, plunging upwards to bring her knife into his stomach and leave it there. The third balked as his comrades fell. She slashed his wrist, so the stunrod fell from his grip. Then she clubbed him with her pommel like she’d dropped the student.
Then Jey stopped. She was aware she was breathing hard, her blood singing in her veins. Abruptly, she understood the emotion she’d caught from Phril earlier.
It was the joy of the kill.
◈
Jey turned her back on the fallen orderlies, trying to ignore their groans. She tried to hurry forward, but the wound in her calf had grown harder to ignore. It throbbed with a bright, searing pain, sending spots to bloom over her vision and blot out the forest. Jey blinked, drew in a few deep breaths, and tried to focus.
Elle now faced the student alone. The man in the coat had disappeared. Elle was on the defensive, which was her preferred way to fight. She blocked and parried and took small steps backwards, waiting for a moment when she could dart in and deliver her own attack. Her knives clashed and rasped on the staff as it spun and whirled on the air.
There was a tug of magic. The strange man appeared beside Jey, kneeling. Jey jerked back from him in surprise as he extended a hand towards her leg, just stopping the reflex that told her to bring her hands down hard across the back of his skull.
The man glanced up at her. His face was drawn with fatigue, but he looked at her without fear. “You can’t fight like this, and I am beaten.” He gestured towards the oozing blood on her leg. His voice was smooth and low. His eyes were a rich, honeyed brown that seemed bright even in the dim forest.
Without further explanation, the man clamped his hands around Jey’s wounded calf. The touch was firm – just shy of hard. Jey gasped as pain lanced through her, so intense now she barely remained on her feet.
Nearby she heard the whack and whirl of the staff and Elle’s small grunts of effort as she held the attacking student at bay. Further off, she heard the shuffle and tramp of moving feet. There would be more orderlies with stunrods, maybe more archers, probably hounds. They had to move.
The man bowed his head over his hands. “My name is Treyam.” His tone seemed to suggest they had met in polite society rather than next to the bodies of three men Jey had just disabled. She noticed his tessila for the first time. She was peeping out of one of the wide sleeves of the coat. Her scales were a pale blue, her eyes glittering black.
Jey found herself answer
ing in kind. “Treyam. Thank you. I’m Jey.”
Then her leg was full of a different kind of heat. A fierce but somehow soft sensation bloomed from Treyam’s hands, penetrating deep into the meat of her damaged calf. The warmth stayed and the pain ebbed.
A moment later, Treyam stood. He looked at her with eyes that were deeply weary. “Now,” he said. “Go help your friend.”
◈
As Jey moved towards Elle and the student, she felt another surge of intense emotion from Phril. Simultaneously, there was a crash off in the woods, followed by a roar and a number of screams. Then she felt more pain from him, but also more of that hot, violent satisfaction. Phril, she thought. Come back.
He didn’t seem to be aware of her desire for him to return. He was wild with anger, high on his new ability to change size. What about the arrows? But there wasn’t time to worry about it. Elle needed help.
Jey jogged past Lokim, who’d tried to get to his feet several times only to fall back to the earth. Now he sat with a hand pressed to his forehead, looking bewildered.
There wasn’t time to worry about that either. Jey continued forward, watching the fight as she approached. She saw what was taking so long. Elle was fighting – yes, defending herself against a younger, less skilled opponent. But Elle’s conservative attacks showed she wanted to disarm the student, to disable her, but not do her harm. Too soft-hearted.
Watching them, Jey was filled with sudden anger. The girl from the academy was fighting with no such restraint. Elle had lost one knife and held her empty hand curled into a fist, the fingers purple in a rapidly spreading bruise.
Behind her, Jey heard low voices – Treyam speaking with Lokim. Jey moved quickly but smoothly, changing her trajectory each time the fight shifted, trying to approach without being seen.
Jey was a few steps away from engaging the student when a dog burst out of the woods, running at top speed. It was a sighthound – tall and lean, lips pulled back from its long teeth in a snarl. Jey could make out the shape of a man behind it, pointing at Elle.