Blood in the Valley Read online

  “I failed you,” Illah replied. “I could not save you.”

  He grinned. “There’s still time...”

  Ilanahl Aloicil lurched awake from the nightmare with a shout. Blinking through sweat, she glanced around, heart pummeling until reality settled, became tangible around her. She lay in a tent crowded with her belongings and those of the wizard, Jayce Zerron, and his apprentice, Danelle. Vaguely, she recalled retiring here after returning with the others from fruitless days in the forests north of Graystone, harrying the routed remnants of the Skinners’ barbarian horde.

  Lonadiel’s smile glimmered behind her eyelids. She gave her head a shake and rose from her improvised bed of unrolled blanket and knapsack pillow. Fearing another foray into her dreams, she clenched her saber close and parted the tent flaps, stepped out into the night.

  A small campfire crackled before the tent. Danelle lay in a curve around one side with her head cradled in Jayce’s lap, the wizard seated cross-legged with his eyes closed and his face placid in a trance. Their campsite sat just below the low hill overlooking the battlefield, now three weeks quiet and cleared of its carnage. Other fires glittered along the ridge that had been the Expeditionary Force’s line. The night whispered with the sounds of the slumbering army, the rumble of snores, the clang of armorers and smiths at their craft, the neighing of edgy horses. Thunder shuddered to the north and lightning cast nervous flickers across the horizon. The air tasted wet with churned mud and the rains that had passed through in the last week.

  “Bad dreams?” Jayce asked, his eyes fluttering open.

  Illah sat down at the fire’s edge across from him. She shrugged. “How are you feeling?”

  Jayce grinned, clearly noting her evasion but apparently letting her have it as he replied, “Better. The shoulder still aches but my strength is renewed. I think I might be of some use to our cause now.”

  “Not much cause left,” Illah said. “We followed the barbarians ten miles north of what remains of Koen. Small bands occasionally give resistance but quickly melt into the wilderness when pressed.” She shook her head. “They’re finished. I don’t know why we’re still here.”

  “Do you think the river might be safe for travel soon?”

  Illah nodded. Jayce thought, of course, of his home to the north, a tower at the edge of one of the many villages overrun in the Skinners’ rampage. “I’m told some of the Force’s ships have already attempted the Talos. They got nearly as far as Edon Village without incident. You might be able to return soon.”

  “And you to the Watch Tower,” Jayce said.

  Illah hugged her saber close. “I don’t think so. Not yet. There may be other Yntuil scattered through the region. I assumed I was the only one, but not all were at the Tower when it fell. With the threat passed, I should try to find them, gather what remains of the Order together. We will need to contact Mauvynn and our Grand Master, warn them, and send for a relief.”

  Jayce frowned. “You’re thinking of leaving?”

  “Yes. There’s nothing here for me.”

  “Nothing?” Jayce arched his eyebrows in mock hurt.

  Illah smiled at him. “You know what I meant.”

  “I suppose I did. Where do you go first?”

  “Eredynn,” she replied. “The others, if there are any, would try to reach there and seek other survivors. They may be gathering now, lost, desperate for news.”

  “Is that what troubles your sleep?” Jayce asked.

  Illah looked away, certain she didn’t have the strength to lie to him. “Among other things.”

  “Your traitor haunts you.”

  Illah glared at him. “Are you in the habit of inserting yourself into the minds of friends, wizard?”

  “It’s no magic.” Jayce’s voice rang with a hint of real hurt, now. “It is written on your face.”

  Illah opened her mouth to snap at him again but couldn’t do it, had to wrench her eyes away from his silvery gaze. “You’re right, of course,” she said finally.

  Jayce seemed to consider his words. “It’s understandable for the pain to linger, especially after such a betrayal.” For a moment, his eyes were lost in the fire, in some other place. “I know something of such hurt.”

  “Yntuil are paired after they pass their novitiate with another, typically older member,” Illah explained. “Novice learns from elder and the two learn from each other, living together, fighting together. They are Sa’atel, which translates rather poorly into Thyrrian Standard as ‘sword-mate’. The traitor...Lonadiel was his name—” speaking it out loud stung like slivers torn from flesh “—was my Sa’atel.”

  Jayce’s lips formed a silent oh. His fingers brushed Danelle’s hair, gave the girl a start which set her to momentary moaning before sliding back under. “So...this Lonadiel was your Novitiate?”

  “No,” Illah said, staring into the flames rather than have her agony naked to him, “I was his.”

  Jayce’s mouth compressed to a thin line. “I see.”

  “There is a bond between all Yntuil. We can feel one another, the same way you feel the wind on your skin.”

  “Having such a trust betrayed must have been the worst kind of violation.”

  “It’s more than that, though.” Illah shook her head. “Lonadiel is dead; there should be only emptiness. Yet I still feel him somehow.” She looked into Jayce’s eyes, a sudden dread knotting in her midsection. “I must know; during the fighting at Graystone Glade, when you destroyed that wizard and...and Lonadiel, what precisely happened?”

  “The Staff of Saeyed was the key,” Jayce replied. “Ango Morug, as that two-bit fraud called himself, was using it to elevate his rather meager powers. But its energies were being used-up and it began to consume him to avoid complete drain. When I struck him down, it fed on itself until it was consumed. The ensuing blast was the result.”

  “But what happened to Lonadiel?”

  Jayce shrugged. “Annihilated, like Morug.” He scratched his chin. “I suppose it’s possible, since he was not in direct contact, that he was merely skipped out of the material plane, a kind of involuntary dimensional shift.” Obviously seeing Illah’s sudden tension, he hurried to add, “If what remains of his essence is trapped in the void between the planes, I assure you, it is in a state of almost unimaginable torment.”

  Illah nodded.

  “Perhaps that is what you sense.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “When do you leave for Eredynn?”

  Illah glanced uphill, to the cluster of tents that formed the Expeditionary Force’s command post. “I will take my formal leave tomorrow.”

  “Then Danelle and I will accompany you.”

  Illah waved the suggestion away. “No, I go alone. I will be for Mauvynn shortly thereafter, I suspect.”

  “Then we will keep you company until then.”

  Illah blew out her breath in exasperation she didn’t really feel. “I suppose I can’t make you not go.”

  Jayce grinned. “Wizards have a bad habit of turning up where you don’t want them.”

  VOHL RHENN ROTATED his head to work a kink from his neck gotten from too many nights sleeping under a soiled blanket in the rain. Last night, at least, returned from the endless combing of the northern woods, they had had a respite from the murk, he and Muddle throwing themselves down in Dodso’s tent over the gnome’s protests. He rubbed grit from his eyes and tried to stay awake as he stood with Muddle at Dodso’s back, listening to the militia commanders bicker in the command tent.

  “The uprising is finished,” Raynes, commander of the Andenburgh militia contingent, proclaimed, slapping a hand to the maps unrolled on the emptied barrel serving as table at the center of the gathering. Growls of agreement rumbled amongst some of the lesser commanders. “Those Skinners we come across run for it when we deploy. We find only discarded plunder and their dead.” He gestured at Taul Rising-Gale, comically massive as he knelt on his forelegs halfway into the tent with dawn shining over his shoulder.
“The centaur knows of what I speak.”

  Rising-Gale nodded. “While scouting ahead of this last sweep, my people came across a tribe reduced to teenaged boys and women. Though I know not how much faith to put in the ramblings of bitter crones, the story we gleaned was that the wives had conspired together and murdered the tribe’s remaining elders for leading them so far astray. The old women intended to lead the survivors back to their older religions.” He shrugged. “What it is worth, I would say the Skinners’ spirits are quite broken.”

  “You see!” Raynes said with a triumphant smile. The expression hardened as he met Dodso’s gaze. “Why are we still here? While we fumble about in the forest, crops go unplanted and businesses suffer.”

  Vohl eyed Dodso. The gnome—through the misfire of his political schemings, made Commander of the expeditionary force that’d smashed the barbarians—fingered the head of his baton of office. A thumb played about the nub where one of the pewter wings had snapped off in the fighting, weeks ago. He took a deep breath. “I’ve put it to Strategos Vennitius again. But, as before, there’s been no response.”

  “What does that mean?” Raynes asked with a derisively curved upper lip.

  “It means you all are still bound by Imperial Decree,” Legion Captain Ulomo stated from Dodso’s right, still leaning heavily on his leg, injured in the same fight. “It means the Strategos doesn’t consider the job done yet.”

  “I didn’t ask you, hireling,” Raynes snapped at the Legionnaire.

  Ulomo’s face mottled and his hand drifted slightly closer to the grip of his sword. For a moment, Vohl wondered if there would be a fight, felt Muddle tensing for just that contingency at his side. But Dodso’s raised voice cut off further dispute. “Captain Ulomo is correct, Master Raynes.”

  “So, what are we supposed to do?”

  “I would think that’s obvious,” Dodso replied. “We continue to clear the region.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of whatever we come across. And if we find nothing, we double-check.” Dodso gestured his baton at the maps. “Now, we have rumors of a Skinner party to the northwest of the mouth of the Talos. The Eredynn contingent has this rotation—” Dodso glanced up at Raynes “—unless Andenburgh wants the honor?”

  Raynes paled and clenched his jaw shut. “No. The last sweep took much out of our men.”

  “Very well.” Dodso looked around, daring any of the venomous-looking commanders to challenge him further. “Does someone have something else to add?” Silence answered him and some of the tension left his tightened shoulders. “Good. I promise you all, I will continue my exhortations to Eredynn for relief. But until that word arrives, you will all carry out the duties you volunteered for.”

  “For what that’s worth,” Raynes grumbled and left, followed by several others who had to shoulder past Rising-Gale’s massive frame. Those that remained watched them withdraw, glancing back and forth between the dissidents and Dodso uncertainly.

  “Well,” the gnome said with an ironic smirk, “it appears we are done here. Good day, everyone.”

  He watched the rest of the gathering dissolve with troubled eyes.

  “You handled that about as well as could be expected,” Vohl said, clapping a hand on Dodso’s shoulder.

  “I worry,” Ulomo said, lingering in the tent to observe the retreating leaders. “I can have them watched, if you like, Master Dodso?”

  “To what point?” the gnome asked bitterly. “They’re right, you know.”

  Ulomo didn’t have an answer for that other than to excuse himself.

  Vohl waited until he was certain the Legionnaire was out of earshot before saying, “He might be trouble, Dodso.”

  “He’s a good little soldier-boy,” Dodso said with a dismissive wave. “And, anyway, he’s just as right in what he says as the others are.” He leaned over the maps and shook his head. “Why does Vennitius not recall us?”

  Vohl shrugged. “That you’re a hero now no doubt troubles him.”

  “Some hero.” Dodso cast his baton onto the tabletop.

  “Nevertheless, you’re perceived as such by many.” He nudged the gnome playfully. “You’ve come a long way from the Valley’s resident trouble-maker.”

  That was putting it mildly. Dodso ‘the Likeable’ folk called the gnome, Speaker of Kobolon, poltical firebrand, big-mouth, troublemaker. Now, he’d led the peoples of the Remordan Valley through the darkest hours any of them likely remembered. And though he’d had the help of many, and his own part the defense rather more meagre than most knew, he’d stood atop the hill with rest and held when the Skinners broke on their swords and shields.

  A far cry from the drunk who’d haunted Vohl’s tavern far past closing time too many nights to recall.

  “Heroes are uncomfortable things for politicians,” Muddle rumbled, trimmed a particularly sharp fingernail on the edge of his axe.

  Vohl nodded in agreement, smiling at his partner’s habit of speaking wisdom after not speaking at all for so long. Like Dodso, the massive half-hobgoblin was an unlikely friend. But he’d covered Vohl’s flank in more fights than he wanted to remember and had worked and scrimped and saved to build a future alongside him in the Valley. They co-owned the Loving Imp tavern where Dodso drank himself into stemwinders and it was as warm a home as the half-blood had ever likely known in a life of violence.

  “I’m sure Vennitius wants the furor to cool before he admits the State’s new champion into his palace,” Vohl said.

  “And meanwhile, these men come to hate me and plot mutiny.”

  That that might be part of Vennitius’ schemes, too, had occurred to Vohl, but he preferred not to voice it and agitate his friend further.

  A lithe figure eclipsed the sunlight streaming through the tent entrance. Vohl couldn’t help the smile that quirked his lips, nor the fumble of his pulse tripping over itself as Illah stepped into the gloom with an uneasy smile.

  The half-elf’s obvious discomfort did nothing to dim her beauty, anymore than the injuries and hardship of the last few weeks. Hers was the newest addition to the strange little circle of friends that had accreted around Vohl and Muddle. And it was more than the jade stare that quickened his blood, or the auburn hair, or the features seemingly crafted from an artist’s imagination. She crackled with the power of confidence and competence. She inspired.

  Darkness hounds her, though, Vohl thought, nodding in greetings to her. No damsel in distress here...but distress to be certain.

  Jayce followed her in. The wizard’s weird silvery eyes flicked towards Vohl once, and he bowed by way of greeting. It’d been an errand, ferrying cargo up the Talos River on their barge, the River Imp, that’d placed Vohl and Muddle at Jayce’s doorstop where their fates—and the barbarian invasion—had come rushing together. Vohl had been hoping for a little trade—some of it not altogether legal—and a little news from his old friend. Maybe they would’ve acquired one of the wizard’s enscorelled trinkets.

  Instead, they’d found hell.

  But friendships renewed, too.

  “And where were you?” Dodso growled half-hearted. “You missed the militia preparing to string me up.”

  “I’m leaving,” Illah said without preamble.

  Shock jolted through Vohl. He threw Jayce a look and noticed the wizard avoiding his gaze.

  “What’s this?” Dodso paled. “Why?”

  “I plan to leave for Eredynn tonight,” Illah replied. “After that, I will begin the journey back to my people’s realm. The Grand Master of my Order will not yet know of all that has transpired.”

  She’s leaving! Vohl met Muddle’s eyes for an instant before asking, “How do you plan on getting back?”

  “I’ve booked passage aboard one of the light galleys ferrying supplies to the Expeditionary Force across the lake,” she said. She offered Vohl an apologetic shrug. “It’s nothing personal; I figured the River Imp would still be tied to its Imperial obligations.”

  “As are you!” Dodso h
uffed. “You can’t go. I...I forbid it!”

  Illah gave a sad smile. “I’m flattered you think so highly of me; but I’m not bound to obey your Imperial Decree. The Yntuil are allies, not subjects.”

  “Danelle and I are going with her,” Jayce added.

  “What?” Vohl stepped towards the other man. “What are you playing at, Jayce? What about your home?”

  “You are bound by the Imperial Decree, wizard,” Dodso put in.

  Illah shook her head. “No. I have made Master Zerron my Aez’atta’toa; a kind of blood bond in your terms.”

  “You made that up!”

  Illah’s features tightened at the accusation. “For his services to me and the Fey Nations of Mauvynn, he is now bound to me.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet he is,” Vohl grumbled with a surge of jealousy he hadn’t quite appreciated before.

  Jayce’s eyes shot up to meet Vohl’s at that, anger and hurt warring each other in their silver depths. “I’ll only go as far the Wizen Mountains and Whisper Pass. Once I’m certain she’s through to Vas Aelle, I will return.”

  “Well don’t hurry back,” Vohl spat.

  Jayce started to retort but Illah cut him off, saying, “We had hoped for your blessings and good will.” She looked around and her jade stare shivered. “You have all been...” she hesitated “...friends when I thought I had nothing.”

  “Friends...” Vohl started. The word tasted like poison on his palate. It pricked like a knife’s point between the ribs. “Well, if you’re meaning that, you’ll stay. The work here’s not hardly done.”

  “Remind me to play cards against you, Vohl Rhen,” Illah said with a snort. “Because you’re a terrible liar.”

  “I’m not—” Vohl cut himself off, seeing the look in her eyes. “All right, perhaps it is. But he’s stuck here!” Vohl pointed at Dodso. “So, we’re stuck here. Till those fops in Eredynn get their thumbs out of their backsides and make a decision!”

  “At which point we can all meet up again,” Jayce put in. He tried a smile. “A grand reunion at the Loving Imp! We’ll drink till they call out the guard!”