XXXV. Precipice

THE HORSES WERE NOW TOO EXHAUSTIVELY SPENT TO FALL PREY TO CHANCE MISADVENTURE. ANJA LEFT STORMFRONT’S FALLEN REINS trailing. Too winded to stray, the gelding could be trusted to recover at will in the company of his teammate. As Kasminna, and finally Covette, straggled in, sorely limping, the princess shoved aside pity for their battered plight. Consumed by necessity, she groped on hands and knees in the darkness, seeking her scattered arrows. She located three, ripped the bow from her shoulder, then pushed her bruised body back upright and rushed downslope after Mykkael.

Alone, he could scarcely defend the cleft’s entrance with no more at hand than his sword.

She reached him, wrung breathless, and slid to a stop in a scatter of gravel. He held his blade raised. Eyes searching the darkness, he dug into his scrip, while, outside, the sorcerer’s minion gave chase across the rock verge. It caught their scent with scarcely a pause, and veered into the brush at the mouth of the cavern. As before, the captain acknowledged Anja’s presence without breaking his active focus. Never turning his head, he fished out the twist of leather holding his flint and dry tinder.

‘Pluck a spray of cedar and light the green needles,’ he ordered, then offered the packet. His voice did not shake, or his hand, though the burgeoning wail of the sword signified urgent peril.

Awkward and fumbling, Anja juggled to free her burdened hands. ‘The bow,’ she gasped hoarsely.

‘At my feet! Drop it!’ Mykkael plucked the arrows from her clutched fist with the speed of a striking adder. ‘The fire comes first!’

Anja shed the weapon with a clatter and shouldered the task he demanded. Limned against the swirling pool of the basin, the fell minion that hunted charged in. Its glimpsed form was black-scaled, and sinuously fleet under the thin gleam of starlight. Anja wrenched off an evergreen bough and doggedly wielded the flint. Cold and near panic had dulled her dexterity. She could scarcely command her dazed fingers.

Mykkael sensed her difficulty. While the sorcerer’s sending hurtled up-slope, the captain pinned the wasp hum of his blade flat to his side with his elbow. He snatched flint and striker out of her hands, and thrust a raked spark to the cedar. The frond caught. Flame blossomed, fanning a billow of smoke. Mykkael snapped another branch from a sapling, touched that alight also. Then he hurled the spill into the path of the oncoming monster.

Smoke spun on the wind. The creature bellowed and yanked back as though grazed by flung poison. Its sinuous form lost definition, then dissolved into whirling mist. Yet this time, the change brought no moment of respite. Warned by the relentless buzz of the shaman’s mark, Mykkael secured his drawn sword and snatched up the bow. Fast as he moved, the shape-changer’s tactic outmatched him. With diabolical speed, the minion recondensed and shifted into the known form of a man.

He stepped out of the night empty-handed and helpless, with no stitch of state finery upon him.

‘Anja, beloved,’ called the High Prince of Devall. Exquisitely handsome, clean-limbed as fine marble, he extended his opened arms in appeal, entreating the princess to spare him.

The bowstring twanged in release. Mykkael’s aimed shaft slapped through defenceless flesh, simultaneous with Anja’s choked outcry. Though reason insisted the fell creature was tainted, the wrenching sight of such beauty, cut down, stunned the heart with unparalleled savagery.

As the princess crumpled, hands pressed to her face, Mykkael left her side. He accomplished his butcher’s work with the sword with what seemed an undaunted efficiency. While the princess wept for grief, mourning the suitor she once might have honoured in matrimony, the desert-bred captain who guarded her life disallowed any pause for condolence. Relentlessly silent, he destroyed the gristly remains there and then with a blaze set from dead wood and cedar.

The pyre burned bright, overseen by the ice-chip gleam of the stars. The roil of the chasm’s black waters thundered on the stilled air, with no sanctuary rites to honour the dead, or sing the eulogy to grace passing royalty. Anja observed, shuddering in the windy cold, alone and distressed and uncomforted.

Mykkael prowled the brush at the mouth of the cavern. Though the whine of his blade had subsided to a whisper, he remained too cranked with tension to settle. He paused more than once to crouch in the shadows, forehead braced on crossed wrists at his sword hilt. The restless gesture seemed natural, until Anja realized the posture masked an ungovernable onset of dry heaves.

‘Mykkael?’ She arose, crossed the hard, stony soil, but no careful approach could disarm his flinching recoil.

On his feet, his weapon hilt cradled tight to his breast, he gasped, ‘No. Princess, I beg you, go back and stand with your horses.’

‘They don’t need me.’ Steadfast, Anja continued to offer her hand. ‘Come away, Mykkael.’

He shook through a horrible, wracking tremor. ‘You do understand, that minion was no man.’ Fear seized his voice, or an undisguised pain, from a source that could not be fathomed as he turned his face from her and finished, ‘Nothing remained of the person you knew. Only an abomination.’

Anja realized she had seen more clearly than he. Through the gift that her sire described as a cold start, she had discerned the false apparition was not sourced in a human awareness. ‘Captain, leave be,’ she admonished. ‘I already saw the distinction.’

But revolted nerves could not always be reconciled through logic. Mykkael coughed behind his raised wrist, the ripped shreds of his sleeve dark with blood. ‘One doesn’t grow hardened. If you can find comfort, the cedar is proof. Your suitor won’t rise from these ashes tonight.’

Anja grasped his tensed fingers. ‘Come away, Mykkael. The fire can accomplish its purpose without us.’ Her tears came then, fast and hot in release as he permitted her touch, and allowed her to draw him aside.

The kerrie descended just as they turned to re-enter the mouth of the cleft. It swooped down in a rushing tumult of air from the cliff face above their heads. Mykkael hurled back into barqui’ino mind. His shove tumbled Anja ahead into shelter. The move marked the start of a seamless pivot as he spun to engage a defence. His effort appeared foredoomed at the outset, with the sword his sole weapon at hand.

Against fire and talon, one man with a blade would have to be sorely outmatched.

Choked silent by horror, Anja embarked on a hands-and-knees search to reclaim the dropped bow. Too late, she recalled she held no more arrows. Crushed to despair, she could only pause, numb, while the kerrie snap-folded spread wings in descent.

Its powerful, deadly strike seemed inevitable. Her valiant protector would be cut down before her anguished, stunned eyes. If Mykkael had regrets, his thoughts did not show. He did not cry out, or turn craven. Sword lightly raised, his stance set in readiness, he maintained his trained form. His battle-hard nerve engaged no wasted motion. Against the backdrop of plummeting predator and starred sky, his poised state of preparedness defied fate.

Mykkael held to life against all threat of ending, without rage, without recoil, without fear.

Had the kerrie been fixed upon human prey, that windy escarpment might have become the tragic site for a final stand. As events unfolded, the warrior’s quiet acceptance itself framed his grace of salvation. Mykkael awaited his moment, unmoving; while the marauding creature ripped out of its plunge, aimed for its intended, first target. It struck the whirlpool in the basin with a splash that cast up an explosion of spray.

Massive pinions deployed, and fanned up a stinging barrage of forced air. Through back-bent brush and gust-flattened evergreens, Anja saw the predator arise from the depths with Vashni’s corpse seized in mailed talons.

The dead gelding, not Mykkael, would be taken to sate its ravenous hatchlings. The kerrie soared upwards, bugling triumph. It carved a steep circle and dipped over the ledge, streaming flame and roiled sparks in its gliding wake as it soared down the night-dark canyon.

The severity of subsequent barqui’ino reaction left Mykkael unfit for close company. Every move, every breath made him flinch with hazed nerves. He countered the affliction the best way he could, and immersed himself in the frenetic activity of setting arcane defences. If Anja feared his efforts with fire and cedar ash might not be sufficient to repel the demonic forces that sought her destruction, she knew not to speak. The warrior drew steel at her least untoward movement. He could not be approached, far less withstand human contact or touch. His given promise to attend to his wounds must wait until the throes of raw backlash subsided.

Anja herself had small will to face her own toll of aches and bruises. To stave off the crushing despair of defeat, and escape morbid thoughts of the precipice that surely crushed every option but death, she bent her scraped knees and climbed back to her feet. Then she hobbled in aching, uneven steps to look after her exhausted horses.

They numbered three, of the six exceptional creatures she had sequestered in Farmer Gurley’s back meadow. As hard-run survivors, how sorrowfully they had changed, standing with lowered heads, sides heaving, with their proud tails hanging limp and snarled and mud-stained. Anja ran her stinging, scraped fingers over the crusted salt matting their coats. She accounted the sad tally: of staring ribs, and sunken flanks, and the heartbreaking list of more hurtful damages. Never before had Kasminna been too dispirited to head butt and nip. Her hind fetlocks were puffy, and her near shoulder skinned bloody from a crash on the sticks of a deadfall. Covette had a bashed knee, hot and sore with tight swelling. Her bare hoof had split to the quick. She stood three-legged, unwilling to put weight on the crack. Stormfront, proud creature, had claw wounds in his neck. If Mykkael’s superb horsemanship had spared his legs, the gelding was wretchedly muscle-sore.

Anja laid her cheek on the black’s steaming side, too drawn and weary to weep. She had no liniments, no bran mash, no flannel leg wraps or restoratives. For her horses’ suffering, she had no balm to bring them relief. Their sacrifice found her worse than empty-handed. Her fingers were too raw and clumsy with cold to manage girth buckles or knots.

‘I can help.’ Mykkael’s clasp, still unsteady, closed over her shoulder and edged her gently aside. He assisted with the crusted ties binding his bundles of rope and rolled leather, removed Covette’s saddle and bridle, then drew Anja away with the same uncompromised firmness he used to quell Kasminna’s surliness. ‘If you’ll help tend the fire, your Grace, I can arrange the warm water you need to make you and your animals more comfortable.’

Anja stared at him, numb.

‘Warm water.’ The smile he offered was woundingly civilized. ‘I can deliver my promise.’

He accomplished the feat by heating stones in the coals, then dropping them into a filled catch pocket in the stone ledge. Anja huddled to one side, stoking the blaze with the wood he had dragged from the deadfalls washed in and stranded at the high-water mark. Whatever harrowing end lay ahead, the princess would not lack for warmth. The supply of dry fuel proved blessedly plentiful. In the course of his rock shifting, Mykkael discovered the fact that kerrie wing leather resisted an unshielded flame. Delighted by that unsuspected advantage, he set to with a cut length of sinew, and a buckle tang ground sharp for use as an awl. Within a short time, he had fashioned a hide bucket. A sweet-smelling herb he kept in his scrip created a healing infusion. The balm would ease Covette’s injured hoof, and rinse the crust from Stormfront’s deep gashes.

‘I can make more,’ Mykkael reassured her, met by consternation as his bloodstained clothes reminded her that the horses were not alone in their need for a remedy. ‘You ought to rest, Princess.’

Anja refused. Her own respite would be deferred until after her animals were tended. She would have each hurt doctored, each damp coat rubbed dry, and each mane and tail free of tangles. ‘Once that’s done, you made me a promise, Mykkael. I won’t sleep until I see your injuries given the basic care you’ve neglected.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘In that case, we’re going to require clean linen.’ He blotted damp hands, looking mildly hopeful. ‘Your Grace wouldn’t balk at boiling laundry?’

She stared back, nonplussed. ‘Your surcoat and shirt? Not at all.’

Mykkael bowed to her. He could do no less. Shown a difficult challenge, King Isendon’s daughter would take down her chosen target. ‘Then by your wish, Princess, the horses come first.’

Mykkael limped and sat at the last, his game leg propped straight on a boulder. The poker-stiff set to his back disclosed the debilitating cramps that had probably gnawed him for hours. Despite the impassable setback posed by the gulf at the precipice, he had not stinted his care of the horses. The vantage he chose when he finally rested afforded a clear view of the cavern’s entry, perhaps to allow him to stand wary watch. Or else he employed the evasive excuse to hold his fixed interest elsewhere. Head turned away, he tugged off his torn surcoat.

Anja accepted the soiled cloth from his hand. She rinsed off the ill-smelling muck in cold water before she shoved its bulk into the steaming bucket and stirred it about with a stick. ‘You don’t believe in futility, do you?’

‘Your Grace?’ He still did not face her. ‘I don’t intend to allow you to die here.’

Low spirits pressed Anja to sharpness. ‘We have a choice?’

Mykkael surveyed her then. His dark eyes stayed shadowed. ‘I promised you, Princess, and your sire before you. Why should you cast away hope?’ Gaze on her, he unfastened his sword harness, then secured the sheathed blade, hilt laid ready to hand across his braced leg.

Anja swallowed. ‘I don’t see any way to escape.’

He raised his marked fingers, tugged loose the grimed lacings at cuff and collar. ‘What meets the eye is the limited world. Our five senses don’t fathom the greater part of existence.’

His persistent calm chafed against her despair. ‘You don’t have any plan.’

‘Not yet.’ Mykkael peeled off his shirt. ‘When the time comes to act, there will be one. Until we are dead, we must trust in the future. There has been blood and striving to have come this far. Would you give Vashni, Fouzette and Bryajne the dismissal of your retreat?’

A great deal of the blood had been unequivocally his, Anja saw in silenced dismay. Through the stained ruin of Jussoud’s pine-gum dressings, she mapped the bared sword cut across chest and shoulder, then the undressed gashes the shape-changer had clawed across an older slice on his left forearm.

‘Princess?’ Mykkael prompted.

She started, raised her glance from his hurts, and accepted his offered garment. ‘Who tried to kill you?’

‘In this case?’ His desert-bred features turned taut and grim. ‘A foreign enemy who wanted me dead. There have been a number of those in my history.’ He worried the lifted edge of the dressing, then hissed through shut teeth for the unpleasant fact that the gum was not going to pull free without force.

‘You’ll need a hot cloth,’ Anja said. ‘Here, let me.’

He glanced up, his eyes snapped to live fire. ‘Not yet, your Grace. Those rags have to boil, first. Leave me my due, for experience.’

His protest was scarcely enough to forestall her. In a strategic attempt to deflect conversation, he shifted his sword and arose. On his feet, his sore posture became all too evident as he yanked off his belt, still bearing the packet of the first shape-changer’s salt-stunned remains. He tossed strap and bundle down at his feet. Then he stripped in one move to his smallclothes. The flurried, forced catch as he tossed Anja his shed breeches evinced his nettled distaste.

Yet like the fine sword brought out for inspection, he stilled in leashed tolerance for her review. Anja withstood the blazing intensity of his self-contained presence. Her survey brushed over the odd scrap of embroidered silk he wore wrapped at his waist, then moved on and tallied the score of his more intimate injuries: the opened weal on his thigh; the scraped bruise on his hip; and last of all the bandaged puncture she had watched him repoultice in the darkened hour before dawn.

Yet no present cut or bloodied abrasion could compare with the bared testament of his healed scars.

‘Those weren’t caused by sword cuts,’ Anja gasped outright.

He did not need her glance to guess which past foray had raised her horrified comment. Amid the clean weals acquired in battle, the knotted, red burns left by a heated spear point were no pretty sight, though they had been branded in cruel, precise rows across the lean flesh of his flank.

Mykkael shrugged. ‘A man wanted information I didn’t have. He earned little else but my screams for his efforts.’ Soft brown, his eyes remained on her as he finished in piercing rebuke. ‘Truly, Princess, there are better distractions.’

Anja blinked, looked away, her left arm tightly clasped about her raised knees. She addressed his abstruse change of subject head on as she stirred the soiled breeches into the steaming water. ‘Is this whole ordeal not the mask for a farce?’

Why clean a sword slash, or bind up a bruise in hot compresses? Why trouble to minister to any raw wound that would be given no grace to mend as the legacy left to a corpse?

Mykkael resettled himself across the fire, his marked hands clamped with gouging force on the muscles that seized his lamed knee. When he answered, his words bespoke razor-edged care. ‘The last princess I guarded escaped death by sorcery, though her sire’s wide realm was laid waste.’

Anja dropped the stick as though scalded. ‘She survived?’

The captain bent his dark head. He nodded. ‘She lives yet in safety. Why should you do less?’

The oddly hackled force of his statement raised Anja’s intuitive instincts. She stared at him, read the unquiet tension coiled through his naked shoulders. The insight unfolded too deep an awareness. ‘She’s alive. Pray tell, at what terrible cost?’

That thoughtless comment stung him too sharply. Caught without any ready defence, he recoiled and presented his back.

Anja’s breath stopped.

The mistake snapped him short. Now compelled to confront a disgrace hurled beyond tactful phrasing to salvage, Mykkael answered her stunned shock, his tone pared curt. ‘Taskin’s earned justice, administered with fairness. Your Grace’s safety required a breach of discipline on my part. Since the facts were exposed, the crown commander was duty-bound. He had no choice but to handle the matter according to form.’

‘Three stripes?’ Anja whispered. That surface dismissal seared away her last vestige of mannered restraint. ‘Blinding glory, Mykkael!’

What were those few weals, but a pittance before the scars of a flogging that had savaged his flesh long before.

‘Your Grace, I’m no felon!’ Mykkael cracked back, irritable. For pride’s sake, he held, not hiding the sight of the damage exposed in the firelight. With his face turned to shadow, he could not discern that her spilled tears held pity, and not the censure of speechless revilement.

The swift explanation ripped from him in fury, an unwanted reprise of a history he deeply preferred to expunge from the public record. ‘I was fighting the Sushagos. Our position was desperate. We needed a man to pose as a deserter to gain trust in the enemy camp. Too long an entrenchment had soured our attackers with boredom. Their vindictiveness went beyond vicious. Since they were deeply suspicious of spies, the person we sent had to be more than convincing. My own second officer laid on those stripes. He protested the command, long and bitterly. At the end, he did as I asked because I was the only man standing who had the strength left to volunteer.’

Anja fell back on the steel of state discipline. Through distress, she forced her voice steady. ‘You stood in defence at the siege of Evissa?’

Mykkael spun around, still too riled to face her. ‘Your Grace, I broke the engagement by means of that foray. The garrison there stayed intact to win victory.’ Self-absorbed in his rage, he sat once again. Sword recovered in hand, he glowered towards the egress that led to a precipice that surely was foredoomed to break him. ‘Princess, you will not speak again of defeat. Cliff wall or castle, I will get you away. No sorcerer’s demon will claim you.’

The rags, she decided, had boiled enough. Anja fished the torn shirt from the bucket. The instant the fabric cooled enough to be grasped, she shredded a strip off the hem. Aware Mykkael’s senses would track every move, she gave him the courtesy of spoken warning before she approached.

‘Captain, how could you cleanse any wound on your back? If you can truthfully tell me you would have freely asked for my help, then I will apologize with due humility.’

Tension fled all at once. He rested his forehead against his marked knuckles, shaken to sudden, wry laughter. ‘Words,’ he said finally, his diction half muffled. ‘How often they can cut deeper than steel.’ Erect once again, he matched her frank glance. ‘Let me mend my ill manners. I ask your Grace for that kindness, here and now. Be still, Princess. You need not apologize. For you, as a ruler, there can be no worse nuisance than a man who won’t redress his own errors of judgement.’

‘Oh, there are worse plagues.’ Anja grinned through the relief that threatened to unstring the feelings flooding her near bursting heart. ‘Trust me, I’ve suffered far worse. You haven’t seen Lady Bertarra trying to teach my ungrateful court maidens to dance.’

‘Mehigrannia show mercy, your Grace.’ Mykkael smothered a smile. ‘I have been spared. Count me profoundly grateful.’

He did not appear to resent her light touch as she set to with the rag. For all her neat care, he still sucked a sharp breath as she worked the neglected gum dressings away from his clinging scabs. Informed by her frozen pause, he turned his head and regarded her with reproach. ‘You think I am stone? That I can’t feel pain?’

Anja blotted the persistent tears that striped through the grime on her cheeks. She shook her head, wordless, tossed the used rag back into the pot to drive off its insipid chill. Mykkael did not press. His patience bridged the drawn interval while she fought to recover composure.

‘You don’t seem to feel fear,’ Anja managed at length. ‘At least, you didn’t move, or shrink back when you faced down a kerrie that seemed bound to kill you.’

Mykkael reached out and clasped his hand over her shaking fingers. As soon as she steadied under the contact, he let go and faced forward again. ‘I don’t fear death. That is but one thing within the wide world, fraught with all sorts of uncertainties.’

Rag recovered, Anja wrung out the excess hot water. She dabbed the dirt from abused flesh and raw skin, her tender work veiled beneath drifts of steam. ‘What do you fear, Mykkael?’

‘Failure.’ The admission came bald-faced. He would not elaborate. The rock-hard muscles under her hands evinced his adamant silence.

Somewhere, Anja realized, he had failed someone. Yet even the brazen nerve born to royalty balked at setting the unkind question. She chose not to force his unwilling disclosure. Mykkael might serve, but the crown did not own him. She would leave the seal on whatever sorrow had plundered the depth of his peace. Nor could she degrade his dignity further. She would handle only those injuries beyond his reach, and leave his competent store of experience to attend to the rest on his own.

His diligence on that score resulted in a rigorous round of cleaning, then an unpleasant soak under bracing, hot compresses for the bruised hip, the claw cuts, and the puncture. Mykkael left the older wounds open to let the new scabs harden and dry. ‘We don’t have the right unguents,’ he explained as he wrung out and hung his cleaned clothes. At the last, he recovered the rag to scour the stains from his harness. ‘Without a salve, a closed wrap would make the wounds fester.’

Long before morning, his concern of infection would surely become a moot point. Yet Anja was too weary to argue the issue with a male creature engrossed in blind stubbornness.

Exhausted at length, she drowsed by the fire. Mykkael woke her just once, to loan his cleaned shirt. ‘So your own can be washed, if you wish it.’ She accepted his offer, used the rag for a sponge bath behind the hung cloth of his surcoat. While the captain changed out the used water and boiled her clothes in his bucket, she found she could not make her eyelids stay open. She slipped into sleep, and in time, the dreamless blackness of total immersion spiralled her down into nightmare…

Through coiling mist, Bryajne came on, his black tail and mane streaming to the thrust of his powerful canter. Astride him, the rider who bore down was naked. Even armless and headless, she knew him as the brother fallen to usage by demons. Her tears launched the arrow from Mykkael’s bent bow, and the shaft flew with vengeful accuracy. Heart-shot, Kailen tumbled beneath milling hooves, and blood ran like a cry through the darkness.

‘Sweet Anja, my princess, Devall’s future queen.’ Her lost suitor’s whisper arose with entreaty. ‘What can your desert-bred warrior win for you? Why choose oblivion and an obscure death? You need not betray us. We can still return. You can marry in state and be adorned with my bride gift of rubies. Devall and Sessalie can still be joined in beneficial alliance

Anja’s scream brought Mykkael to her side at a run. His strong hands braced her up as she wakened.

‘What did you see?’ His gaze was trained on her as her eyes fluttered open. The bow he had just cast aside clattered downwards and hooked over his upright, bent knee.

Anja swallowed, helplessly unable to stop shaking. She still wore his shirt. His dried surcoat, cast over her, kept off the cold. Though he had not slung his harness over the exposed scab on his chest, she did not fail to notice the ominous sign. The bared sword he had hastily thrust through his belt rang yet with diminished vibrations.

Her whisper came ragged. ‘What did you just shoot?’

The word he uttered was no language she knew, yet his tone bespoke pity and sorrow. He folded his good leg, drew her shivering form close. The firm grip he tucked over her forehead pressed her ear against the raced beat of his heart. ‘You heard voices?’ he asked. His knife-edged wariness could never be masked, no matter how carefully he framed the pretence of gentleness.

Anja shook through an unwonted chill. Anguished, she repeated, ‘Captain, tell me the truth. What unspeakable thing did your arrow take down?’

‘Need you ask, Princess?’ He brushed aside a loose wisp of her hair, and smoothed the slipped surcoat back over her shoulders. His considered silence suggested concern, an unbearable burden that wore him half desperate to contemplate. At due length, he addressed her stifled emotion. ‘If you listen, beware. The whispers you heard only speak for the sorcerer. They will come again. If you let them drive you to conflict, they’ll tempt you.’

‘Kailen was my brother!’ Anja shuddered as the captain’s crossed arms surrounded her horror and drew her more tightly against him. She appealed to him, desolate. ‘Is his fallen spirit truly not dead?’

‘Princess, I’m sorry’ Mykkael tucked her head underneath his raised chin, the better to maintain his unrelaxed guard against the night’s gathered darkness. ‘Sessalie’s crown prince is no longer human. He has spoken in dreams, yes? Then stay wary, I beg you. His words are false and his promises will never be what they seem.’

Lulled by the warmth of his intimate contact, Anja allowed her jangled nerves to be soothed. ‘What harm could Kailen’s poor ghost bring to me?’

‘Your Grace, there lies a danger past reach of my weapons.’ Mykkael shifted position to ease his scarred knee. Yet something more than a physical discomfort weighted his warning to grimness. ‘If the wardings I bear give me certain protection, you have birth ties to kin that can’t be revoked. The will of a demon now plays that connection to secure his claim to make conquest.’

He feared to explain the extent of her endangerment: that her survival made Sessalie’s ground doubly vulnerable. For as long as her kingdom was threatened, and she remained untainted and free, her mind would be stalked and hunted. Any demon’s bound sorcerer could make use of her blood lineage to strike through and suborn the minion that had been Kailen; then that seized foothold would be worked in turn to launch covert attack on a rival.

Too aware of the range of hideous consequence he had once spared the Efandi princess, Mykkael gave Anja his straightforward warning. ‘If you succumb to this sorcerer’s blandishments while asleep, I can do almost nothing to save you. Awake, aware, rely on this much. If I win through with the salt-trapped remains of the shape-changer’s minion in hand, there will be a chance to enact a full banishment. That is your brother’s sole hope of release, and your lasting promise of safety. Without trained assistance, Kailen’s spirit can never be freed from demonic enslavement. If Tuinvardia has no skilled vizier to achieve this, there are others among the wise who would help in my name.’ Mykkael’s resolve rang through like sheared steel as he committed his heartfelt will. ‘Princess Anja, if I ask, and I will, take my oath at this moment: all that can will be done to redeem your lost brother from darkness.’

Awareness touched through, of a grief locked inside him, a pain raw and deep as an unhealed canker kept wrapped and hidden from view. ‘Whom did you lose?’ Anja whispered.

He turned his face, sharply. She held, expecting the burn of his tears to spill through her pillowing hair. Yet no moisture came, no release. His voice remained dry as the desert that birthed him, a lonely phrase fashioned of wind. ‘No one you know of.’

Yet the impact of that prior loss branded in him the imperative need not to fail. He would not yield a life he had sworn to defend, though the brute trial of Hell’s Chasm made his task a hopeless mockery.

Anja turned in his arms. She tilted her head, kissed the hollow of his throat with all of her passion unleashed. ‘Let there be an hour of joy before death. Mykkael, I beg, let me give this for both of us.’

His hands caught her shoulders, cupped her form as though precious. Then, speechlessly shaken, he slipped his fingers upwards and cradled her face. He stared down at her, stripped by a turbulent distress that cut through to his well-guarded heart. ‘On my sword, Princess, you are not going to die. Nor am I free to accept such a terrible gift.’

Anja gripped him. ‘For all I know, Sessalie has already fallen to sorcery!’

Mykkael shut his eyes, shook his head. Not untouched, nor inhuman, he was trembling also. ‘No, Princess. Anja, please, no. End this folly. You know by the voices you heard in your dream that Isendon’s rule is not broken. Witch thought shows me Taskin, on guard at the king’s side. Your sire’s charge of protection still binds me to your defence.’

The brave words were sincere. Yet the wrenched conflict in the captain’s expression firmed Anja’s resolve by the honest force of its agony. ‘You are more than the warrior, Mykkael! Just as I am human, and not immune to love behind the state mask of the princess.’

His hands tightened. ‘If that’s true, Anja, then you will wait! Survive Hell’s Chasm. If we win through, if I bring you into Tuinvardia unscathed and living, only then can I set down my sword. Give your heart as you wish, and to whom you wish, then. But until you have reached a vizier’s safe haven, I remain bound to your service.’

The gist of his earlier words by the marsh resurged with uncompromised clarity: that the honour of kings stood or fell by the hand of the warrior entrusted to bear arms on the field.

Mykkael’s strength was unimpeachable and his gentleness beyond protest, as he eased himself clear of her offered embrace. There, he paused. Her trembling hands remained clasped in his own. He sustained her filled eyes without flinching. ‘Your Grace, you are beautiful. I have seen no woman whose generosity can match your magnificence. But my pledge has been sworn. I can accept nothing of personal ease until my crown oath to your sire sees closure.’

She smiled through the spilled blur of her tears. ‘No princess has ever been served with so bright and cruel an integrity. Nor, if you die here, has any crown in the nations ever commanded as steadfast a champion. You are not surpassed. That becomes your last epitaph. Should you starve for a line that is destined to pass out of living memory with me?’

‘A sorrowful blessing,’ Mykkael acknowledged, no less gruff as he released her at last to resume the dropped charge of his weapons. ‘Forgive my ingratitude. Tonight must stay desolate. I do know your worth. If I fail to deliver the free gift of tomorrow, or if I win through, there can be no reprieve from this quandary. Better by far, Anja, to have witnessed your political marriage as Sessalie’s princess. My name has no meaning, apart from my sword. I should have beheld nothing more than the dream painted into your portrait. Best, if your Grace had never known the nature of my close company’