“Gilliad!” Flint-eyes shouted. “Where’s the key?” It didn’t take long to either find it or a replacement. Shan heard the cell door grate open. “Help his lordship.”
Ahead, the tunnel narrowed, but Jeren didn’t pause, as if she followed the owl’s unseen trail or scented the fresh air ahead the way Anala would.
The guards fell upon them, Maldrine at their head and Gilliad appearing from the rear. He pushed his way through the guards trying to protect him. Blood smeared across his face, running from the gash where Jeren had struck him. One look at him told Shan all he needed to know. The blow, or her betrayal, or perhaps both, had driven him far beyond insanity.
Moving without thought, Shan pushed Jeren behind him and slid his sword free. The Lord of River Holt was his now, and no one would stop him. What did honour matter? He had no honour. This man had taken it from him, just as he had taken his beloved sister and whatever future he could have had other than Shistra-Phail. To defend Jeren, to keep her from him…well, that was a reason, and one for which he would gladly die.
“He’s mine!” Gilliad snarled.
His men faltered, more afraid of their Lord than the ingrained desire to protect him could overcome. He burst from their midst, meeting Shan’s blows with a mortal blade seized from a guard. Gilliad had abandoned Felan’s sword somewhere. His loss, Shan thought grimly. Even without magical properties imbued by the Seers, a Feyna blade was vastly superior to a human one.
They lunged at each other, logic and common sense consumed by mutual hatred. Gilliad bared his teeth and fought back. They had been trained by the same swordmaster, taught to dance the Dance with the same ferocity. Mad he might be, but his skill hadn’t gone anywhere.
Shan could hear Jeren muttering prayer after prayer as she retreated back down the narrowing tunnel behind him. She prayed for a miracle and he reached out his spirit to the Goddess in sympathy. They needed a miracle.
The river itself answered. Backing away from a lunge, and caught off balance, Gilliad stepped into a pool of water and slipped. He went down, his sword skittering across the stone.
Shan raised his blade for the killing blow.
“No!” screamed Jeren.
Shan paused, but he didn’t fall back. In the tunnel beyond Gilliad, Maldrine and the guards watched helplessly. There simply wasn’t room for them all to attack at once. If they moved, Shan would kill their Lord. They all knew it. Jeren seemed to be the only one who couldn’t grasp the concept.
“Why spare him, Jeren? You said yourself he’s insane. Give me a reason!”
Laughter rattled through Gilliad’s voice. “Because if you kill me, you’ll seal her fate.”
Shan stilled his mind, brought his emotions, his rage and lust for vengeance under iron control. He thought his body would shake apart with the effort, but he remained centred, the calm in the heart of the storm.
“Explain,” he ordered, not really caring who answered.
“If you kill me,” Gilliad said, “the magic will pass to her and it will consume her. Is that what you want, Shan? Until I have a child, Jeren is my heir—and to more than just this Holt. And until she gives me a child, she’s tied here.”
Until she gave him a child? Shan almost recoiled. Only his training stopped him.
Jeren gave a violent growl and she snatched up Gilliad’s sword. She pushed her way past Shan, who was too startled to stop her.
“You will never lay a hand on me.” She pressed the sword point to her own throat. “I’ll throw myself on this blade before that happens. Understand, brother? I’ll do it gladly.”
Gilliad shuddered, and the despair on his face melted into hatred. “Very well, sister, if it be your will.” He studied her face, waiting for her to plead, to beg forgiveness perhaps. Jeren just stared back, silently. “Maldrine,” Gilliad yelled. “Kill them both.”
Shan pulled Jeren back against him, maintaining their escape route, and knocked the sword away from her throat, her threat pointless now.
“Go.” He forced her behind him again. “I can hold them here.”
But Jeren was stubborn as mountains. He should have known that.
“Not without you. It’s my fault you’re here. You are not going to pay for it.”
In that moment of indecision, Gilliad struck. A ball of magic kindled to life, encircling his clenched fist. He punched towards Shan and blue fire exploded in his chest, hurling him to the ground, dazed and breathless.
Magic. Serpent born magic. He couldn’t fight that.
Jeren cried out, moving without hesitation to stand over his body, trying to find a way to shield him. Gilliad summoned his power again but somehow she sensed it. Her whole body tensed. She swung towards her brother, shouting words which kindled light, like fireflies dancing beneath her own skin. The flames died in Gilliad’s hands. A shadow moved along the walls, fluid and swift.
Jeren’s attention was locked on her brother, not on the tunnel to either side. Shan tried to shout in warning, but his breath failed him. A crossbow bolt punched its way into her side. She staggered back with a silent gasp, clutching her side where she’d been wounded at Brightling’s Dale.
“Always look for the weak spot,” said Maldrine in a slow drawl, as he advanced, his sword shining with the ruddy light as if already stained with her blood. “That’s how you hunt an animal.”
Shan’s world turned red and black with anger and despair as she absorbed the blow. Her legs went limp and he dragged himself to his feet, shaking off Gilliad’s spell to catch her. His sword lashed out, deflecting the blade that would have killed her, slamming it back against the wall. Whoever had the crossbow was trying to reload. He could hear cursing.
And then, from behind the guards surging forwards to help their lord, beyond Gilliad’s yelling face, beyond Maldrine’s triumphant sneer, he saw something else.
Something impossible.
A wolf bounded towards them, her form composed of smoke and moonlight. Here, beneath the earth, where there could be neither.
One of the guards cried out, calling on the gods for protection, and panic engulfed them. Hardened, trained guards, sworn to their lord, yet all but two ran for their lives. But they were never the threat.
Maldrine ploughed towards them, ready to finish them both, and the wolf pounced, teeth bared as she passed him, leaping at Jeren. Anala lunged right through her skin, disappearing into her chest.
Jeren lurched free of Shan’s grasp and, slipping past the oncoming sword, she seized Maldrine. She swung her whole weight around, hurling her enemy against the tunnel wall. He fell back, momentarily dazed and she turned on him, a fierce light in her eyes, her gaze not entirely her own.
Shan called her name, but she didn’t come back to him. Not this time.
“If I had the time…” Jeren grabbed a fistful of hair and slammed Maldrine’s face into the rockface of the wall.
Shan didn’t know where the strength came from and didn’t want to think about it. What would the Seers say about a woman within whom dwelt the spirit of a dead wolf?
Maldrine’s fist caught her stomach. She went down in a heap, winded and helpless, shocked by the agony. Shan lunged towards her and, at a touch, felt her life’s energy contract within her. Anala coalesced, drawing strength from Jeren’s innate, life-giving magic before breaking free.
Silver light burst from Jeren’s body. Anala’s sleek figure bore down on Maldrine. The wolf snarled, and the sound made the tunnel tremble.
Catching Jeren’s limp figure, Shan swung her into his arms, cradling her close. Somewhere she found the strength to wrap her arms around his neck, though she whimpered as he rose to his feet. Gilliad raged, cut off from them by Maldrine and the phantom wolf, held back by his own remaining, terrified men—men more loyal than wise.