“I don’t know,” whispered Kindren. “I don’t know at all.”
Seeing the boy she had grown so close to crumbling before her caused Aully’s dread to subside. A sort of infantile fury followed in its wake, a sensation she had never felt before. She wished she were a male, wished she were tall and mighty like Jimel Horlyne. Then she could hunt down the Quellans and pound the deceit out of them. For the first time, she began to understand a tiny bit of Kindren’s curiosity about heroism, for she felt it too.
Yet she didn’t want to do this without her future husband by her side.
“Come,” she said, tugging on Kindren’s shirt and breaking him from his despondency. “We have to leave-now. We can flee to Stonewood and never come back. We’ll be safe there, I promise.”
Kindren stood, then shook the fear from his body with a mighty shudder before turning to look at her. The face that gazed back at her was that of young Kindren Thyne again, only a queer sort of despair lurked just behind his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“No, we can’t just run away,” he said. “I need to go to my parents. They have to know what’s happening. They’re good, Aully. They would never allow anyone to be hurt, not knowingly.”
Aullienna bit her lip. “Can I stay by your side?”
Kindren grabbed her hand and together they weaved their way out of the chamber and back into the main passage, through the Crypts of Dezerea.
“Always, Aullienna,” he said. “From life until death, we will be together. This I promise you with all my heart.”
Aully clutched his hand tightly as the dreadfulness of what she’d heard in the crypt sunk in. From life until death. She believed him. Every word. She only wished she could know the length of such a life, know it would end with happiness and joy instead of the hints of war whispered about by men in crypts.
CHAPTER 16
Bardiya awoke to the sound of a strange bird cawing. He shifted on his bed of leaves, mindful of the bundles of fur nestled against his sides. One of the bundles exhaled a sleepy breath, and the stink of rotting meat hit Bardiya’s nostrils. He cringed and turned his head aside.
He opened his eyes and tilted up his head. The two wolves, a male and female who frequented the fringes of Stonewood, had arrived early that morning to slumber beside him, as they often did. They had taken a shine to him two years earlier, accompanying him when he slept beneath the canopy beside the Corinth River on the southern periphery of the Stonewood Forest. He slipped his hands beneath their bellies and lifted them as he sat up, careful not to injure them by squeezing too hard. Part of the problem with his ever-increasing size, he had found, was that his strength continued to increase proportionately. He had only tested the extent of this newfound strength on a few occasions, but the last time he had, he’d lifted a felled tree blocking his hiking trail and hurled it a good twenty feet. Such strength made tender moments a difficult proposition, for he feared that in a moment of distraction he might crush someone.
It was still somewhat dark as his fists rubbed at the sleep dust rimming his eyes. The morning was overcast, gray clouds billowing through the gradually changing leaves of the canopy above him. He stood to crack his back, causing the still dozing wolves to yelp and rise from their new resting spot. His entire body ached as if he’d been running for hours without end. I must have grown again, he thought. I wonder if it will ever stop. A touch of fright prickled his insides as he considered the ramifications of that idea. What would happen if he outgrew the world, if he became so big that he towered over not only the trees but the world itself, a solitary being with his feet anchored on solid ground while his hands touched the stars above? The imagery was terrifying.
The strange bird cawed again. It was such an odd, out-of-place sound. Bardiya prided himself on knowing every species of animal he came across, from lizards to antelope, to fish, to birds, but this particular call he’d never heard before. He moved toward the noise, hoping to catch sight of the creature, when a rush of air blew past his ear. A weak smidgeon of pain followed, biting his shoulder like an insect, and a surprised yelp sounded from behind him. Bardiya glanced at his bare shoulder, where he could plainly see a strip of glistening red. He touched the spot, gazing at his fingertips as if it were the first time he’d ever seen blood, and then he realized there was an animal bawling behind him.
Bardiya whirled around. The bawling came from the female wolf, who was nestled up against her mate. The male was on his side, tongue lolling, the shaft of an arrow protruding from his skull. It took Bardiya a moment to realize what was happening. When he finally did, anger cascaded through him, and his ears caught the barely perceptible thwump of a bowstring being pulled taut.
His body seemed to react on its own, a survival instinct he had never known he possessed coming into effect. He veered to the side, his movements lumbering but quick, as another arrow pierced the space he’d just occupied. His knees struck the ground, but his body felt weightless. His fingers wrapped around a heavy stone half buried in the soft loam of the riverbank. Yanking it free, he spun on his knees and hurled it as hard as he could at the treetops. The stone was large, as big as a man’s head, and the crashing sound it made as it ripped through the branches was like a hundred sparrows panicking and taking flight at once. The stone hit a tree trunk with a thump, and someone screamed. From above a solitary figure plummeted down, arms and legs undulating as it fell.
The figure struck the ground in front of him and bounced twice. A series of agonized groans emanated from him or her. The bow his attacker held had snapped on impact. The female wolf, seeing the one who had killed her mate, rose up on her haunches and skulked forward, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Stop,” Bardiya said. He held out his hand, ready to use the seducing whisper should his friend refuse to obey, but the wolf sat down obediently, gazing up at him with gray, impatient-looking eyes. Bardiya knelt down, caressed the wolf’s back, and kissed her on the snout. She snarled a bit in return, but he did not react. He knew her aggression was not aimed at him, but at the rolling, moaning figure that had fallen from the treetops.
He ran his finger between the wolf’s eyes, beckoning it to stay put, and approached the wounded attacker. The gloom of the overcast morning made it difficult to see, but as he grew closer, he could plainly tell it was a male elf. He had the pristine, pale skin of the Dezren, the distinctive high cheekbones and slightly upturned nose, and he wore the standard earth-toned clothing. The elf’s left leg was bent at a dreadful angle, and one of his ribs had ripped through his chest, shimmering red and deadly at the jagged breaking point. As Bardiya knelt beside him, he realized he knew his attacker, knew him well. This was the elf who had discovered him with the kobo two years ago, the elf whose accusations had started the conflict between their people, poisoning Bardiya’s relationship with his father.
Bardiya scooped his oversized hand under the elf’s head. The elf’s eyelids blinked rapidly, as if he were trying to adjust to the light, and a bubble of blood popped on his lips.
“Davishon, why did you attack me?” he asked.
The elf moaned in reply. Despite all that had just happened, Bardiya’s heart broke.
Placing Davishon’s head back on the ground, he went to work, shoving the protruding rib back beneath the flesh, forcibly straightening the shattered leg, and tearing open the elf’s tunic. Davishon screeched the whole time. When he was done, Bardiya crossed his legs and laid his hands on the elf’s chest. What followed was his healing prayer, a song that he imagined lifting into the air and floating across Dezrel, directly into the ears of his god. He felt the burning in his hands that always followed, and suddenly the inside of his eyelids was awash with light. In that instant he felt every trauma that had befallen the elf-the broken bones, the punctured lung, the ruptured kidney, the fractured skull. Those sensations began to lessen the more intensely he prayed, the healing magic flowing from his heart, pouring out his fingertips. The elf below him gasped as if waking from a dream, his body stitching itself back together, piece by piece, with a speed accelerated by Bardiya’s faith.