Risa, page 46
The tears came at once, a great, blinding flood. She pressed her hand over her mouth to silence her own screams.
No! No! No! howled her mind. It cannot be! It cannot! They said I’d come home safe to her! They promised I’d come home safe. …
And she was safe, safe with her family, which was all she had been promised. She had been gone just long enough to ensure that she remained safe while Urien …
“They said …” Yestin’s voice broke as he said the words. “Oh, gods, Elen, they said they’d show all the West Lands the price for defying Urien.”
The world snapped into sudden, knife-edged clarity. Elen gripped both Yestin’s wrists hard. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “They must be searching. …”
Yestin’s face was grim. “I will not leave her. Urien has said he’ll take her head.”
Anger and outrage tore through Elen. To take an enemy’s head was to trap their spirit, lest they rise to take their revenge on their killer. There were arts that could make that head speak, to advise their murderer. Even if such arts were beyond Urien, even if he could not make Adara serve him in death as she had refused to serve in life, even then, he still meant the ultimate desecration and he meant for Adara to be trapped for eternity.
“Madyn and Til are drawing the sentries off,” said Yestin.
Mother. Mother dead. Dead at Urien’s hand. Dead while Elen stood in a hall of gold and dreamed of casting off her world and her family … guilt and shame burned with the rage in her blood.
Elen surged to her feet. Yestin reached for her, trying to find some comfort to give. “No, Elen, you’re—”
“No.” She slapped his hand away. “I’m going home.”
“You can’t. This is my—”
She rounded on him, her fury as reasonless as it was strong. “I was promised I would be returned safe to my land and family! I will not be safe while my mother is defiled!”
Her tears had frozen inside her and her vision was perfectly clear. She strode ahead into the woods and let her brother follow, or not, as he chose. She could hear nothing but a strange ringing in her ears. Her face felt hot, as if she stood too near a great fire, but her hands were cold as ice. She was only distantly aware of her own motion. The trees seemed to pass by of their own volition, reaching out and touching her arms and shoulders gently, uselessly.
The woods opened before her, letting the cleared lands spread out. Where there should have been green rows of grain, there was black and trampled earth. She heard shouts, but they were distant, broken by the rumble of hooves, and a clash of metal, here, there. Bracken rustled and broke. Urien’s sentries were beating the bushes for Madyn and Til and whoever else followed them. Elen barely thought of this. Instead, she began again to run. Yestin snatched at her arm, but she tore herself free and ran without looking back. She stumbled over the clods of torn earth, but she kept going. She realized some marauders would still be prowling the edges of the village, that if they knew she was not among the dead they would be looking for her as well. They would surely kill Yestin as soon as they caught him. None of these thoughts slowed her down at all. Yestin swore and she heard the rasp as he drew his sword, not his gilded gift from the High King, but the keen and seasoned sword that had belonged to their father, and he ran behind her.
Shouts, clashes. Names shouted to the wind. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered but getting home. Home. Home. Mother. Mother dead. Mother waiting for them to mutilate her body and enslave her soul. No. No. No.
Fire had taken the village. It had clawed at walls and torn away roofs. Pens that had been filled with fat animals were broken and empty, and here and there among the ruin, her unwilling eye caught sight of the fallen. Familiar faces contorted by death, familiar hands covered in blood and dirt, reaching for help that never came. She did not let herself stop. She had to get to the house. She had to find her family.
Finally, her headstrong blindness was too much. Her foot caught some unseen piece of wreckage. She sprawled full-length in the mud and ash. She picked herself up, shaking her head to clear it, and she saw yet another hand stretched out, as if to snatch at her, and she could not help but look for the man.
Beven. Beven, their harper, lay curled over his instrument like a mother over a child. The harp, too, was broken and dead, its strings draped across the musician’s bloody hands as they lay together in the bright morning light.
They’d killed the harper. They’d broken the harp. They did not care for even that. Even that. Bile rose in her throat and she stared up at her brother, mute in her fear of it. But Yestin was staring down the hill, toward the shouts and the clashes.
Forgive me, forgive me. Elen left Beven as he lay, scrambled to her feet and ran again, only dimly aware that Yestin still followed.
At last, the great house was before her, still whole despite the ruin around it. The hinges that had once held the great door hung loose and twisted from the lintel. The remains of the door lay on the floor so Elen had to step over them to enter her broken home.
She could smell the blood here, and all the stench of death. The pitiless sun shone in through the doorway behind her, casting its bright beams into the ruined hall, lighting up the scattered ashes, the smashed and shattered benches, the torn cloth, and the bodies. There had been a last stand here, and she could count all the dead and give them their names.
She found Carys just beyond the door. Her sister-to-be huddled on the stones, eyes open and staring. Her head had been all but torn from her neck. Her blood was smeared and trampled into the floor by the boots that had run past her to get to the treasury.
The wealth of Elen’s family lay in a heap in the middle of their hall, the gold, the jewelery, the silver and the fine pottery and plate. The bright sword brought by Arthur’s messengers for Yestin stuck out of the pile, flaring like a torch in the sunlight.
Mother lay on her belly next to the plunder, her hair spreading out across her face and shoulders to trail in her own half-dried blood.
Utterly spent, Elen dropped to the ground by her mother’s corpse. She reached out and took Adara’s bloody hand. It was cold. The flesh was soft and slack. The clotted blood was rough against her palm. She did not cry, she only held her mother’s hand and stared stupidly into her dead eyes, blinking now and again.
“Elen, we need to go. Now.”
She barely heard him. Her head was too full of other sounds. It should have been quiet in this house, but it was not. She heard the echoes of the shouts, the screams, the laughter of neighbors turned marauders. They emanated from the stones. They reverberated in the scent of blood and death that was everywhere. She inhaled them with every breath. They filled mouth, throat, and lungs. She absorbed them through her skin. They would never leave her, any more than the sight of her dead would. She knew that with dreadful certainty, because they were all calling out for her.
Where were you? the dead wailed. They screamed, they pleaded, they cursed, and they cried. Where were you when we needed you?
Their voices were so loud, she barely heard the scrape of boot soles against the floor.
“There you are, Elen. I wondered when you would return to us.”
Rage burned hard in her veins. Elen laid her mother’s hand gently down, and she stood, turning slowly to see Urien standing behind her, his sword held casually in his fist.
Nor was he alone. Three of his men had come with him to see the bloodied children steal back into their ruined home. Yestin, white with his fury, watched those three, wondering, Elen knew, how many he could kill before he died himself.
“Get out, Elen!” cried Yestin, but Elen could not make herself move.
“I would have spared you this sight.” Urien spread his hands in a dreadful parody of an apology. “But your mother left me no choice. She would not say where you had gone, and your brother …” He grinned in mockery at Yestin. “Well, I would have said he was too clever to be caught, but he, too, has come back, hasn’t he?”
A trap. They’d threatened desecration as a trap, so Yestin would come back, and so, if all went well, would she. They meant to end the line of Pont Cymryd, here in the house it had built.
Elen’s mouth was dry and filled with the taste of blood and ash. Her mind was too full of red rage to think clearly. “Why?” she croaked. “Why?”
“I could not let Adara bring the invaders into our lands,” he said flatly. “I could not stand by while she betrayed her own for the outlanders and opened the way for them to take the rest of us.”
Elen felt her jaw go slack. The bridge. Her family had been destroyed for the bridge.
“Come now, girl.” Urien held out his hand.
To her dismay, Elen laughed, a high, bubbling, hysterical noise. “You think I’d go willingly with the one who murdered my mother?”
Urien shook his head. “Your mother taught you to be sensible. This place is mine now. You’re mine now and there’re uses for you alive yet.” He took a step toward her, his hand still out.
Elen drew herself up tall. She stood in the home of her ancestors, anointed with the blood of the fae and of her family. What made him think he could touch her here?
“What do you know of my mother’s teaching?” she asked coldly. “Her curse is on you as her blood is on my hands!” Elen lifted her hands, spreading her fingers, letting him see what he had done, what he called down. “Thunder and lightning take you, Urien! Earth open where you stand! Night itself hunt you down and swallow you whole!”
She felt each word she spoke resonate in her bones and echo down into the earth. The air grew thick and heavy with her words. The smoke grew dense and pulled close, blocking the sun, bringing down the night to cloak the daytime sky. Before her, Urien grew pale. The hand that held his short sword that had drunk so deeply of her family’s blood trembled. His men backed uneasily away. Elen felt her power swell, felt her words become stone, become truth. She felt eyes on her, watching, measuring, judging. What did they see, those eyes? The thought was gone almost as it formed. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Urien before her now and the truth of the curse she leveled. The dark drew closer, grew thicker, thick as blood, thick as hate.
Then Urien threw back his head and laughed, and the power of Elen’s words crumbled away.
“Very good, little Elen. Very brave. But I, too, have my friends and protectors. You may not touch me by such means.”
Elen’s chest heaved with the force of her breath. The unspent curse surged through her blood, causing her hands and knees to tremble with its force. How could he have turned her words here and now? What protection did he have? What friend had he who could do so much?
“Now, come here, girl, before I grow angry.”
Yestin stepped between them both. “You will not have her.”
Urien sighed. “It’s time you remembered you were a man, Yestin.” He jerked his chin to the man on his left. That man was broad-faced and broad-shouldered and carried a knife and a club, and grinned as he came forward.
Yestin did not wait for him. He screamed and he charged, the sheer fury of him knocking the man’s defence aside to plunge his sword up to its hilts in the other’s breast. But the dead man’s companions seized Yestin by the shoulders, cursing, wrestling him off, even as he spun to face them, blade dripping gore.
Elen ran, too. She ran for the treasure heap. Urien’s foot shot out and caught her ankle, sending her sprawling across the floor, skidding obscenely in the fresh blood. He lunged for her, but she rolled and she kicked, and he missed her, and she threw herself forward again. He lunged once more, but she wrapped her hands around the hilt of the gift sword. She could barely lift it, her hands were so weakened by hunger and failure, but she raised its tip to Urien’s belly.
Urien threw back his head and laughed at the sight of her, trembling and pitiful with the sword in her shaking hands.
He should not have. Elen dove, almost fell, but the long sword was sharp enough to do the work. Its weight drove the blade into his side, through his leather jerkin, and planted into his gut.
Urien screamed, his back arched like a bow and he fell, blood oozing from the wound. Before Elen could raise the sword again, Yestin grabbed her by the wrist, causing her to drop the sword.
“Get her out of here!” he screamed.
The wider world came back in a rush of sound—shouts, screams, clashing metal—men and women rushed to fill the hall, some of them allies, others Urien’s men, riding straight in on their foaming, snorting ponies. Elen collided with Madyn—big, grizzled, a wound on his bald scalp pouring blood down his face. He grabbed her arm and hauled her away from the surge and storm of the battle.
She wanted to pull away, to scream at him that she would have Urien’s head. She would parade it before his men and hang it from what was left of the walls of her home. But at least one of Urien’s men ran behind them, and she saw more of them charging up the hill, two on horse and at least four more afoot, knives and axes out. They came to their chieftain’s cries, coming to cut her and Yestin, and all their own down.
And Elen found she was not so ready to die as she thought.
Madyn was running, heading for the rear of the hall and the ovens. Elen followed at his heels, every muscle straining, her lungs gulping down air. Madyn was shouting, but she could not make out the words. The hoofbeats were getting closer, mingling with the pounding of her heart. They would have to turn, have to face them or be ridden down. She would make sure they let out their blood as the price for hers. She would strike that much of a blow. …
Another crowd of men surged forward, and women, too, coming from behind the ovens and the ruined store houses. They screamed as they ran, holding up picks and hammers and improvised pikes as well as knives and clubs. Elen knew them, every one. They ran past her, and the two horsemen were at once surrounded. They flailed out, but the defenders of Pont Cymryd were too many for them, and they were toppled from their saddles. It came to Elen that Yestin had planned this. Her little brother had thought Urien might be waiting for them. Yestin had allowed for the chance of escape.
Elen heard the crunch of breaking bones and in the pit of her heart she both wanted to cheer and be violently sick.
Madyn grabbed her wrist again, pulling her into a run behind him. Her feet stumbled. Her body had been too long without food. Her heart had been torn in two. Her strength was all but gone. She could not see clearly. A fog descended over her mind as thick as the one she had been driven through, how long ago? An hour? A lifetime? She didn’t know.
They headed up the hills into the deep woods. Bracken dragged at her hems and branches slapped her face and shoulders. Madyn labored to hoist her up the rough slopes. She tried to help him, she truly did, but she had no help left. It was momentum alone that kept her upright. If they stopped, she would fall. She knew that, but she no longer had the strength to care.
At last, they did stop. She heard the trickle of water, saw the play of light and shadow before her that told her they were in the old heart of the wood. The ground sloped away from her feet, and as she had known would happen, her knees buckled and she fell onto the sweet-smelling loam. Hands touched her, rolling her over, checking to see if she had taken any hurt to her body. A cloak was laid across her, and Elen closed her eyes and slept.
She was surprised when she woke. Her dreams had all been of death and darkness. Her sleeping soul had not believed there could be an end to them, let alone one that brought the slanting yellow sun of afternoon and the scents of earth and herbs. She found she could sit up, and while her limbs were weak, they were under her control. Her throat burned with thirst. Her hunger was a dull, persistent ache below her heart.
A bowl of broth was put into her hands. She looked up to see Corsen, Cate’s daughter. Corsen was disheveled and dirty, but she gave Elen a smile as she straightened up. The steam rising from the broth smelled of meat and sorrel. Elen drank down the broth, although it was hot enough to scald her throat, and ate the shreds of quail and wood pigeon with her fingers, barely remembering to be careful of the bones.
Corsen took the bowl and refilled it from the iron kettle that hung over the small fire that was more embers than flame, and handed it to Aeddan so the blacksmith could eat his share. For a moment, Elen felt ashamed. She should have made sure everyone else had eaten before she took her portion. That was what Mother would have done. She pushed that thought aside. She needed food. She needed strength. She needed to be able to see and understand so she could think what to do. She was alive and she must stay that way, for her people, for her revenge.
There were about a dozen survivors huddled around that fire, each one dirty and weary, their torn and mud-spattered clothes hanging limply from their bodies. Saffi gave her baby suck. Little Tev leaned against his father’s bruised knee. Col and Tori sat so close together it looked as if they hoped to meld into one being. Shadows between the tree trunks told Elen there were more of their people standing watch against what the pursuit might come. She looked more closely at those shadows, and she saw, to her joy, one of them was Yestin.
Yestin. Yestin, with a gash on his head, and another down the length of his arm, was standing on the far side of the fire, whispering with Madyn. He looked up and saw her watching him. He put his hand on Madyn’s shoulder. Madyn vanished into the trees, and Yestin came around the fire to sit beside her.
“You are well, Elen?” he asked, and there was fear in his voice.
Elen nodded, hoping that would be enough to reassure him. She did not trust herself to speak just yet.
“You did us great service, Elen,” he said, a grim smile on his face. “With a sword cut to the belly, Urien won’t last long. If we can hold for a few days, we’ll be able to …”
Slowly, regretfully, Elen shook her head. “He’s not dead.”
That pronouncement startled Yestin. “He will be,” her brother said carefully. “I saw it. That was no small hurt he took.”
“Nonetheless, he lives and he’ll stay alive. I know it.” She did know. The fact of Urien’s life itched beneath her skin. Yestin peered closely at her. He cursed softly, but he did not deny her word. She realized he was treating her pronouncement as he would have one of their mother’s, and that new truth settled heavily on her.
