The Lioness

It rose from ground, from stone, a beast with arms like enormous trees, legs like hewn stone. Stanach cursed and prayed. Beside him, Kerian felt as though she were falling, falling into a vortex. She had seen this in Elder’s fires! Listening to the whisper of the ancient’s magic, she had listened to the distant thoughts of Elementals. This beast she had dreamed in smoke and firelight, with a woman so old no one knew her name. It rose before her now, a misshapen thing, with a head like hills, eyes like forest fire, and hands like slabs of stone. A creature made of the elements of air and earth walking among them.

A voice like thunder’s clap roared.

The first to fall before the thing were the creatures no nature had ever envisioned, the draconians bred of sorcery and the eggs of dragons. They died under the massive feet of the beast. They died of the fire of its eyes. Their poison became as mist and vanished. Upon the forest air ran rage, a fury like fire. Before that the Knights cowered. Some fell dead of hearts burst in terror. Others fled, and those who did not died on the swords of their enemies or the swords of their battle companions, enraged by cowardice. One who did not run, one who beat his own men with the flat of his sword, who cursed them screaming, was the Knight Kerian most longed to see.

Sword in hand, she ran down the hill, into the violence of the forest and the killing. Eamutt Thagol, his back to her, felt her coming.

Roaring, Thagol turned. His eyes took and held her. In her mind, she heard him, like a wolf howling, she heard him, and she felt him as she had in nightmare, hunting her. She lifted her sword high in the killing arc As though a hand gripped her wrist, she halted. As though commanded, she stayed, and she could not take her eyes from his, could not look away. While all around her the earth rioted at the will of a shadowy beast born of Elemental magic, she stood arrested, frozen in the grip of the Skull Knight’s mind.

In her brain, she felt a roaring, like storm, like thunder. Behind her eyes, she saw the bright flash of his sword, like lightning. She felt something, a pull, a tug toward him, like a cold hand on her heart. He wanted to taste something, to taste her dying.

Blinded by the light of his sword, deafened by his voice in her mind, she cried out. She wrenched away and lost her balance. Stumbling, she fell, and he was upon her, the weight of him bearing her all the way to the ground. She thrashed beneath him, his mail biting into the flesh of her neck, his elbows pinning her at the shoulders. His breath on her face was icy, a dead man’s breath.

Kerian fought, thrashing harder. She got a knee up, got a foot on the ground. Weaponless, her sword flung far from her, she snarled and lunged at him, biting his face, his cheek. She tore flesh and pushed up hard. He lifted, and she brought up her knee to advantage. Howling, he cursed her, falling away, doubling over as she grabbed his own sword.

All the forest stood still, as though even the beast made of Elemental fury held its breath.

Kerian played the headsman’s part. Hard she lifted and hard she let fall her sword. Even then, his voice was howling in her head, like a wolfs. When he died, his head fallen from his shoulders, even then she heard him.

Though all the forest had fallen still, the howling didn’t stop in Kerian’s head. It never stopped, until she’d finished counting her dead, until she found one over whom she must howl herself.

On the killing ground, the forest floor running with blood, Kerian found her brother, Iydahar, for whom she had come out of Qualinost, a long, long time ago last year. He was dead of an axe, the blade sunk keep in his chest, the haft running with his blood.

She said, “Dar,” as though he could answer. Wind off the battleground ruffled his hair. She touched his cheek and felt sweat cooling on his lifeless skin. She traced the planes of his face, a face known to her all her life, the face of a man she had hardly known.

Again, she said, “Dar …”

Beside him knelt his wife, Ayensha, with her arms wrapped round herself. She did not keen or make any sound until she looked up and saw Kerian.

“Is he dead?” she said. “Thagol?”

“He is dead.”

Ayensha nodded, then bent low to put her cheek upon her husband’s chest. “He didn’t want to come. I begged him. Elder begged him.”

Kerian looked up, the stilling breeze cool on her cheeks. “Elder.”

“You saw her.”

“Her…”

“The shape of her magic, the shape of her rage.”

She’d spoken with Elementals, the ancient woman whose magic could make the forest a confusion for her enemies.

“Dar came,” said Ayensha, “because of Elder, because I had promised and pledged to you and your cause. You killed my rapist and saved me from worse. You tried to drive the alien Knights from an elf kingdom. We told him—I told him—you were owed that much.”