Chapter 17

The guards at the gate fell back at the sight of the purple stripe on Anders’ white robe — the Empress’ colors. We charged through a gate, out onto a town square. I followed Anders; he turned down a broad avenue toward a tall, graceful castle. He outran me, too, even without his pony form.

I launched myself past him with kir, bounding down the street andscattering what little traffic there was. I didn’t care. A cluster of guards stood at Áering’s gate and saw me coming; they scrambled to make a wall of their shields, spears ready, shield charms knit out. The gates were still open behind them and inside I glimpsed heads turning. I landed before them, my own kir snapping down in a cloak.

“Stand down!” Anders yelled, skidding to a stop beside me.

“Elect?” The Suevi officer wavered. “But you —”

Kir arced from the distance to a spot behind him and a woman howled. “Wodenberg!”

A green blade cut through two men, dropping them. King’s Guard tackled the rest from behind, bearing several down. Teleri snatched a sword from a sheath, tossed it to Sir Garrick. He stabbed the Suevi soldier he’d pinned and lunged to block one who’d drawn steel on a fellow Guard. I lashed at one about to swing and he fell. That Guardsman grabbed the sword from his hand.

The castle gates began to swing shut; two King’s Guard turned and threw themselves against the doors. Teleri planted her feet and rammed it open with kir. I jumped the line of bleeding corpses and landed inside ahead of the knights.

Beyond, rather than a yard, the gate let directly into a great hall. Greater than any I’d seen. Skylights let in the sun. Balconies ran the length to either side, full of archers ready to loose on the floor. Huddled in the middle, made small by the space, the rest of the King’s Guard. Hardly any.

At their center, Kiefan on his knees. The woman who held his head by one hand, her long black talons pricking trickles of blood from his scalp, one claw hovering in threat over his grey eye, could only be the Empress.

Rage and fear crashed together; fear won. I froze.

“Scatter!” Teleri shouted, beside me. The remaining King’s Guard dove under the balconies.

With a snarl, Kiefan blurred from under her hand. I sketched half a shield charm, the beginnings of a kir-vine, and stringence stabbed through me. All vanished in a crackling flood of agony, behind my eyes.

Clarity washed through my right hand, Qadeem’s, and kir with it. Not merely loose kir; it was a healing charm. On my knees, I blinked when the stringence lost its grip and saw a kir-ram throw Kiefan across the room, into the stone wall. He crumpled.

I lunged, lashing out a bladed kir-vine. It impaled Seraphine at the shoulder. She turned on me, eyes blazing, and my left arm went stiff in agony, racing into my chest — and met Qadeem’s charm there. They smashed into each other over my heart.

The world tipped. Seraphine yanked me off my feet, by my kir-vine, and reeled me in. Fresh pain poured through my bond, up my arm.

/ together! /

I answered my saint with gritted teeth. The speed Blessing’s pattern flashed through my memory and my own healing charm broke the stringence. Qadeem struck, a bright line of fire stringing from my right hand to the left and shooting out to Seraphine. My mind clear, I threw myself up from the floor, rage taking me. I saw her focus break for a heartbeat when Qadeem’s attack howled up her bond. I threw a Shepherd’s knife, its crescent slinging from my hand quicker than thought.

It passed clean through her, at the thighs. Seraphine’s taloned hand landed on my right wrist and a starry blade flashed in her hand.

I screamed.

Worse than pain. She cut Qadeem’s bond in a red flash. His stream of kir stopped dead. She yanked at my core reserve and I clutched it tight with a snarl. Her talons dug into my wrist, into my meridian. Her stringence jolted in from there and met my grip on my pattern. Washed over it, like water over a stone. I felt the pain sweep by but it couldn’t touch me.

My anger knotted tighter. I clapped my hand over hers and twisted my kir, the full body-pattern flying through my memory Blessing into her —

Her dark eyes gleamed as she smiled. She let her pattern rise, in absorbing my kir, to show me. To blind me. Her body had no structure. Pattern so dense and saturated it was all but liquid. I stared into the sun, at her.

Despair stabbed me.

Shadows moved, closing around us, against the glare. She flashed out a sphere, heavy as iron, and I heard men scream. Felt kir spark against it, distantly.

/ surrender / live / she told me.

/ no! /

My teeth gritted. I hissed, demanding kir from her. It gushed into me, then hesitated as she snatched it back. I dug in my heels. Pulled harder, rage burning in my every whorl. Under the blinding mass, I glimpsed her meridians. A structure. I dragged harder and they slowly clarified. The kir twisted, bucked under our grip as she fought to make a charm of it. I unraveled it quick as I saw its pattern. My memory poured out its own patterns, counter-fighting to shape my deconstruction charm. Her talons sank clean through my arm, slick with blood. The agony only sharpened my mind.

Two of her fingers blossomed, slow as roses, revealing bone.

A kir-edged sword cut through the light of her, from shoulder to waist, through the faint line of her prime meridian. The charmed blade split her heart, and nearly stopped my own with the echo of the pain. Unleashed, my charm rammed into Seraphine and she unraveled. A brilliant star leaped free, up the blade to its new master.

Her blast struck like an avalanche. Blinding, burning white. My raised hand, into the fury, parted it to either side. I brimmed with kir.

I fell to my knees, gasping for breath, blinking to clear the spots. Dust fell around me.

The sword slipped from a slack hand — brown hair, a stranger’s face, but it melted before my eyes. Returned to Anders. He toppled and I caught him with a vine. Pulled him to my bloodstained arms. He breathed, but stared unblinking.

I hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t followed me in. She’d have struck him down too if she’d known he was there.

Stone cracked and fell, pulling my head around. A portion of the archers’ balcony collapsed. A few limp bodies fell with the rock and a few live men scrambled to safety. Around me, King’s Guard lay dead, peppered with arrows. Some men were red-uniformed Suevi, with sword wounds. Blood smeared the walls, too, splattered impacts with crumpled bodies below.

Teleri surged up from under one balcony with a yell and lashed a bladed kir-vine across the opposite line of archers. Too stunned to duck, they fell dead.

“Wodenberg!” Kiefan’s roar — my heart leaped — got a reply and he charged the closed double gates at the far end of the hall. A crack of light showed through them, bowed as they were by Seraphine’s dying blast. Kir massed around him and punched the doors. Wood cracked, loud as thunder, and they wavered in their frame.

The beach and the fount were beyond. Kir roiled, out there, strong and angry. I tried to stand and agony shot through my back. My hand found an arrow. Two. A shout from the balcony, as new lines of archers notched shafts and drew. Teleri, falling back with a handful of surviving Guards, stopped behind me and spun up a broad shield. I did the same, covering the other side of the hall. The arrows struck and vibrated, feeling like needles in my hand.

“He lives?” She glanced down at Anders.

“Yes.”

Behind us, wood cracked again and gave. The archers drew fresh arrows.

“They’ll have charmed ones, to break a shield. Come.” Teleri pulled up Anders by one arm, I took his other, and we hauled him toward the beach.

/ Qadeem! /

Our bond was cut, but I still tried. The silence was too much to bear.

Anders was near too much to carry, even once I’d mended my talon-torn arm and even with Teleri’s help. Arrows thudded into our shields — Tel’s was cut by a charmed one — and the Guardsmen shut the bent, weakened gates behind us. Kiefan helped wrestle the broken halves of the heavy crossbar into the iron hooks to hold it. Teleri spun out kir-ropes to further secure it.

Barely ten King’s Guard survived. Garrick gave them orders. I didn’t see Captain Aleks. They pressed against the inside walls, looking up. Archers on the battlements twenty feet above were firing out toward the water. Past the crackling guardian sphere and the two saints in the fount, bathed in its golden light. Beyond them the castle’s arms, on either side of the sandy courtyard, reached down to the sea.

Anders found his feet, pulled himself up by my shoulders. I had to steady myself in the cool sand to help. The arrows in my back stabbed at me but I clamped off the bleeding. “Easy, easy,” I said. He wobbled, still, in my arms. His mouth hung open, trying to make words. “I’m here. Are you…?”

I dared a peek inside his head, and had to squint. He’d harvested a thousand-year-old cambifax and brimmed with it all. But he didn’t seem hurt.

“Musaad,” he managed, voice thick. He waved an arm toward the saints in the fount.

Across the sand, the fount was a cloudy column of quartz. Green glow suffused up from the earth. The kir-rich water tumbled over its sides, twinkling, into a low pool around the base. A driftwood throne stood in the center, but there was plenty of room on either side for the two saints who lobbed balls of kir-fire out to sea. Flames dotted the water, out beyond the breakers. A twisted salt pine stood just outside the guardian sphere, a house built into its branches.

The guardian sphere saw me. It had four eye-spots, one for each of us.

“Is he hurt?” Kiefan swung past me, kir-covered sword at a high guard against arrows. But the archers above paid us no mind, yet.

“He harvested Seraphine,” I said.

Kiefan threw a heartbeat’s stare. “Not you?”

I shook my head.

Arrows hissed down from straight overhead. “Shields!” Kiefan yelled, spinning one for himself.

Anders lurched in my arms, meaning to do it too. Kir spun out on his left arm. “Up,” I said, helping raise his arm.

“Got him.” Garrick ducked under his other arm. He had an arrow in his thigh. “Get your shield up, knight!”

The order reached some corner of his mind; Anders straightened, eyes clearing a bit, and his arm shot up. The kir-shield was a match to his own. I let him go. Garrick half-dragged him to defend the remaining Guard. Something thudded against the barred gates and they rocked on their wounded hinges. The men threw their shoulders against it.

And kir came ashore. Kiefan, Teleri and I turned in unison, toward it.

The sea reared up and crashed against the tower that anchored one of Áering Castle’s arms to the beach, washing men from its roof and pouring out the archery slits all the way to the sand. Green stars swirled with the water, spiraling down to a woman standing at the tower’s base. Alit on her raised hand. From her side, three elect sprinted across the beach, their own cloaks unfurling in shields.

Beside me, Teleri’s head rose another inch. Knowing them, perhaps; they wore long Caer mail tunics, plate greaves, spiky helms. Bright swords. The saint — Conbarre, dark-haired like her sister Sabh, with a broad stripe of white — held a golden sun in her hand. A tendril of the sea looped up, in a vine, to spin around it and shoot toward the guardian sphere.

One of the saints in the fount pointed. The sand erupted, glassy daggers spraying the three elect. Tearing through their shields. Kir lashed, met the seawater, and all burst into stars and salty rain.

“Kate, the sphere!”

Kiefan’s shout knocked my wits loose. This was our chance. I took two steps across the sand and the arrows in my back stabbed again. With a snarl, I grabbed the shafts and thrust the steel heads out with my kir. I pinched off the bleeding and —

A heavy arm of the sea roared, braiding to a star-bright point as it swung around Saint Conbarre and struck the guardian sphere. Its webbed kir-lines flashed, fractured, and it sent back a white-hot bolt of kir-fire. Like thunder, the blast of steam threw me to the sand. I glimpsed Conbarre, hair a flying nimbus of fire, in the cloud. And saw her fall to her knees.

From the fount, one of the saints launched from the cylinder’s edge, through the sphere, for the killing blow. A star-edged kir-sword sprouted from his fist.

Teleri flew past me with a howl. The three Caer elect braked hard, fell into a scramble backward from the unshattered sphere’s edge. One was cut down in passing by the war-saint, her kir flashing out unnoticed. He arrowed for Conbarre.

He never saw Teleri coming. Her kir-vine rammed through his spine, then her sword fell on his neck.

She never saw the four kir-edged glass claws that burst from the sand and ripped clean through her — the motion echoing the sweep of the remaining saint’s hand. Her pieces burst loose across the sand.

I put up my arm against the double blast of unleashed kir. Grabbed what I could of the loose stuff as I gained my feet again. I had to reach the sphere. Shepherd, give Tel a place of honor; I hardly had time to ask it, but I did.

The sphere crackled, the knot of kir it offered me whirling with power. It held my eyes, called me. Touch it. Grounding charm first. The line spun out from my palm, coiled over my forearm, dropped from my elbow, trailed across on the sand. My memory brought Qadeem’s advice to me in his calm, steady voice. It had to contend with my racing heart, though, and the massive, deadly knot hanging before me. I’d seen the power of it through touching Qadeem. I knew what it could do to me.

My hand trembled as I reached. Beyond the knot, the saint in the fount swung around, his eyes blazing green. His skin was as brown as my saint’s, his short hair midnight black, and I matched name to face; Musaad of Rasila, as Qadeem was.

I met his burning gaze and put my hand to the sphere.

White-hot fire flowed over my skin, spiraling along the grounding charm, burning it. I let my kir flow to maintain the line. Beside me, the ground trembled and the corner of my eye caught a glassy flash — and a steel one as Kiefan defended me. Focus. I had kir and the grounding charm was a little thing. My Blessing kept pace, pouring out the pattern over and over. More kir than I’d ever dreamed of streamed over my arm, the heat dragging its teeth across my skin. Kir lashed, loose sand sprayed over me, and Kiefan snarled something I couldn’t hear over my own focus.

I was Qadeem’s disciple and held to a higher standard.

Reowan’s massive fount drained.

Through the sphere, I felt shivers. Blows. It truly was a sphere, despite that I only saw the part above ground. It guarded the fount from below as well. And saints beat against it, there at the junction of three ley lines.

I could feel them, a tiny part of my mind realized. That must wait, though.

My skin turned red, under the blazing kir-fire. Somewhere beyond, Saint Musaad thrust his arm at me and Kiefan’s charmed sword broke my line of sight. I shut my eyes as sparks erupted.

Trusted him to protect me.

Spinning, spinning, and even a small charm nibbled its way through my store of kir. The sphere dimmed in a patch under my hand as the one at Temitte had, but —

Through the sphere, an echo of a thought reached my hand and shot up my meridian to my heart. I knew Qadeem’s pride, even so faint. Then, an urgent request.

/ pull kir /

I set my teeth and pulled. Kir surged across the guardian’s surface to my hand. The fire surged over my arm, cutting a black line, and I clung to my focus, to my charm. A scream took some of my pain with it. There’d be more, I knew. I was nearly out of kir and then the fire would take me.

The sphere’s spiderweb of kir flickered, fading. Weak. I gritted my teeth against the hot agony eating into my arm and held my pattern firm. Qadeem was here with me, as he’d promised.

Something massive punched through, below, and shot up through the fount. My last scrap of kir spun into a grounding line and I yanked my hand from the sphere. My skin caught fire to the elbow. Kiefan’s hand clapped down on mine, snuffing the flames. A second pair of hands caught me as my knees wobbled. I fell against Anders’ chest.

We all saw the fount erupt in stars below Saint Musaad. A green blade rammed up, in his waist and out his back between the shoulders. A thick hand thrust from the water, catching the kir-star that broke free. Musaad’s shockwave struck the dissolving sphere from the inside, lit its fractured web in a blaze.

I put my hand up to catch some and barely recognized my own flesh. Raw meat showed in a jagged, spiral stripe, and blisters dotted the rest. Kiefan pulled my hand down before I touched the sphere. Kir rose to his palm. I took it and steadied. Stood free of Anders, though the pain still gnawed at me.

Saint Woden stepped onto the rim of the quartz cylinder, wrapped in kir. The fount thrust a heavy coil into his chest; he called, and other bonds shimmered to light, leading off to all the saints it fed. Woden spun out a sword and sliced them off.

The sphere flickered and dropped at his command. I felt a moment’s echo of fighting, still, below, and worried. Kiefan crossed the last few yards of sand at a run, hand raised. Woden dropped down to the shallow pool and clasped his hand, thumped his shoulder, grinning in victory.

“Your arm —” Anders shifted to see my wounds, putting out his hand. “I have a little left —”

“Rogue! And traitor!”

My eyes snapped up. Woden’s snarl vanished behind a green cloud of kir, knotting into a fist as it shot toward us. Anders’ sword swooped up, slicing through the charm. I stumbled, pushed aside as he spun up a shield and raised it.

Lightning struck it, tore through into his arm. Threw Anders across the sand. I flung myself between them, right hand up, and the second bolt struck me, raced down my grounding charm along the burned spiral and fell to the earth.

No. He wouldn’t hurt Anders.

Woden cleared the pool and dropped to a crouch, on the sand, slung out his arm — Kiefan’s kir-vine snared his wrist, jerked, ruined the aim of his Shepherd’s knife. It flew awry, up through the castle. Woden snapped around in a blur and stars burst out once, twice, from breaking charms. Kiefan dropped to the sand with a ragged cry. He thrashed, from the waist up, in the grip of stringence.

Rage surged in my blood. Blessing-quick, Woden launched across the sand at me, at Anders behind me. I had a little buckler spun up, in my hand. His thick kir-vine looped out to swat me aside.

No. Every fiber of me hated, in that heartbeat.

My Blessing spun out the patterns strong and hard, unraveling his kir-vine before it struck, the fist behind it, every muscle and tendon of his arm — and he fought it, yes, he had an iron grip his pattern. My charm burrowed into his shoulder, though, and just brushed the heavy coil of the fount’s binding.

Its structure flashed in answer to my pull. The binding spun loose, the coil ripped from Woden’s chest and shot to my hand.

Like a bolt of lightning, one that turned under my hand and slammed back into Woden. Chewed through his chest, blossomed out every spindle of muscle, unwound the ligaments from his bones. His ribcage burst open, scattering organs.

And I saw grim pride in his smile, a thin moment before his face peeled away.

My harvest flew to my wounded hand, crackled up my arm to spiral around the inner curve of my skull. My Blessing soaked it up, letting no scrap escape. The shockwave flashed past me, a moment’s thunder.

I clenched my fingers and the scattered pieces of Woden stilled in the air. Even the blood, in its millions of droplets. It wanted to turn to dust, I could feel the pressure of it on my mind. His pattern was evaporating with the unleashed kir and even my will could not stop it.

But I took one last look at Saint Woden.

And I let him go.

The fount’s snake of kir sidled up my arm, like some pet, and I gave it a nod. It struck, a hot iron through my chest, but kir flushed into me and the pain vanished. All my pains vanished. In an eyeblink, I knew why the fledgling Saint Wolfgang had turned on Woden.

My life to that moment had been a dream. I was awake now. I’d rather die than fall asleep again.

The entirety of the Reowan fount snapped clear in my mind: the column, the node below, the sphere, the fighting at the ley-crossroads. Two beings, evenly matched.

/ protect / us /

The sphere crackled back to life at my command, kir shooting through its web. I’d drained the fount but it was regaining its strength quickly.

I heard screaming. Kiefan clawed at the sand, his voice trailing off ragged. He gasped for breath. He’d felt Woden’s death through his bond; that was a pang through my heart. Kiefan pulled himself up on his hands and retched. Trembled from the effort of it.

I pulled kir and reached for him. My vine coiled around him, lifted him — gave him a moment’s panic, but he saw it was me. With my other hand, I scooped up Anders. After the lightning strike and harvesting Seraphine, he was too wobbly to stand. A mown-grass scent and a whiff of smoke clung to him.

One to each side of me. My fount arced to me and I combed through Kiefan’s pattern. Mended the severed meridian low in his back; he crawled up to his knees, clinging to my thigh. Tangled whorls tumbled free, easing his pain. Through my other hand, I soothed Anders’ jangled pattern as much as I could. Seraphine still roiled in him, much for an elect to bear. He twitched, regaining some of his focus, and looked up from leaning against my hip.

Still elect. Both of them. And kir was gathering again, out in the sea.

“Kate.” Kiefan raised his arm, cutting his meridian open with a kir-blade in his right hand. He looked up at me, longing.

My elect. I took my hands off them to open both my meridians. Kiefan took my left without hesitation. I offered the other to Anders, my mouth pressing into a line. He considered my right arm — it bore a red, spiral scar, frond-armed like the lightning that had cut it — took a slow breath, looked up at me as well. Did I dare ask? The rightness of what Qadeem had said struck me hard in that moment.

“I won’t force the bond,” I whispered. It must be made in trust.

Anders sliced a blade along his arm and gripped mine. The joining shuddered through both my arms under their strong hands. Their sleek muscle under my palms, pulses throbbing. But kir grew stronger, in the sea; no time to savor this.

“Caercoed’s coming,” I said.