She heard a noise above the wind and rain that sounded something like a boot scraping over stone, and she instinctively rolled to her left. A sword blade whistled by her shoulder, burying its tip in the ground.
Another voice shouted angrily out of the black storm. Linsha could not understand the words and yet the voice sounded vaguely familiar in its tone and depth. She struggled to her feet, tilted her head against the lashing rain, and drew her dagger. It felt small in her hand, but it was better than nothing.
She could not see the dark figure-in fact, without the lightning she could not see more than two feet in any direction.
Movement caught her eye. A swift shape flitted through her vision and out again, hidden by the torrents of rain. She twisted toward it, her hand clenched around her dagger. Lightning exploded in ropes of fire over the Missing City, and in the sudden incandescence, Linsha saw her enemy not more than four feet away from her, its sword tip lowered. She grimaced in the painful light and tried to wipe the rain out of her eyes. It seemed to her the figure raised its sword and came at her. With her lips pulled back in a silent grimace of fury, she lunged forward, her dagger raised to attack. Her body swerved past the man’s guard and her blade sank into his chest. She heard a grunt of pain and felt him sag beneath her.
Too late she saw on the edge of her vision a second shape, blacker than night, spring at her. Pain exploded in her head and face. Her legs lost all control, and she staggered sideways. She tripped over something bulky and collapsed in a heap on the cold, unyielding ground. Rain pounded on her body. Her thoughts reeled in a jumble of images and disjointed thoughts.
In the last fleeting moments of consciousness, she heard voices again, this time speaking directly above her head. They seemed to be arguing in some language Linsha had never heard. They would kill her; the small thought emerged through the fog of pain in her brain.
But they did not. One speaker stamped away, his feet squashing the rain-soaked earth. The second speaker paused a moment, then reached over her and pulled Linsha’s dagger out of her nerveless fingers. She tried to move, to speak, to indicate in some way that she resented this intrusion but could not. A heavy lassitude settled over her. Her muscles could not even tense as she waited for the pain of the dagger to slice into her flesh.
Instead, the figure raised her arm and dropped it gently over her face as if to shield her features from the pounding rain. Through the haze of pain that crept through her head, she felt a hand brush her skin. The fingers felt cold and hard as if encased in steel. She felt a pressure on her temple, then a color she had never seen before exploded in her head like a lightning blast, and she was gone, out of it all.
The storm closed down around her.
Midsummer’s Day
8
She woke to more voices. Several spoke from above and around her-strong, disembodied voices that spoke Common and seemed terribly upset about something.
“There they are! Over here!”
“Oh, bloody Chaos, all of them?”
“Iyesta will have our guts for bow strings.”
“We couldn’t help that storm last night. The whole city is in a shambles.”
“It wasn’t a storm that killed them.”
Killed them? Linsha wondered. Killed who? But curiosity wasn’t enough to pull her fully awake.
“What do we do, Caphiathus?”
“Do not touch them. Leave them here for now. Azurale, gallop to the Citadel to tell their commander to bring litters. He will want to see this. You, Leonidas, stay here to guard the bodies until the Solamnics come.”
“What are you going to do?”
There was a heavy intake of breath. “Tell Iyesta.”
Like a frog in a pond that has risen for a quick look, Linsha’s consciousness slid slowly back under the depths. The voices went on around her unheeded.
Some time later a louder, more persistent noise finally penetrated the heavy gloom in Linsha’s mind. Hooves, most of them shod with iron, clattered up the road in a rapid staccato that cut through the bonds of her unconscious sleep. She woke slowly, one layer of thought at a time, while the sounds around her increased and became more demanding.
Horses pounded around her and wagon wheels groaned to a stop somewhere close by. Voices intruded into her awareness.
“They’re over here, sir,” she heard someone call.
Leonidas. The name swam out of the depths. She knew him. She tried to open her eyes, but a weight pressed down on her face.
“Holy gods,” said a voice close by in a cool tone that belied the emotion of the words.
Another name surfaced from the muddy waters of her mind-Remmik.
“Are they all here? What happened? What evidence have you found?” The questions shot out like arrows, fast and pointed.
Linsha felt irritation hit her like a bucket of cold water. The unfeeling bastard. There were dead around somewhere. How dare he use that tone. The curiosity that failed to rise inside her before came welling up, bringing her mind awake and filling her muscles like a tonic. She realized the weight on her face was her own arm. It felt as unwieldy as a log, but she managed to pull it off her eyes.
“She moved!” Leonidas yelled. “Sir Remmik, she’s still alive!”
Hooves clopped on the ground by her head and gentle hands lifted her arm off her face. She stirred and tried to open both eyes. Only one would open, and it was too much. Bright morning sun bore into her vision; pain hammered into her head. The ground rocked underneath her, and nausea spread through her belly. She curled into a ball and moaned.
“Is she injured? Is she bleeding?” she heard Sir Remmik demand to know in a tone that was more irritated than solicitous.
Is she dead? Is she rotting? Linsha’s thoughts added perversely. Never had she hated that man so much.
“She has a head injury,” Leonidas replied. “I can’t tell if she’s wounded anywhere else.”
“Then get her away from Sir Morrec’s body. And leave that dagger. I want it for evidence.”
Through her misery, the words penetrated her mind like a knife. Sir Morrec’s body? Was he dead? And what dagger? She tried to remember what happened before her head exploded, but it was so hazy all she could recall was rain and darkness and thunder.
Several people put their hands under her head, shoulders, and knees and carried her to a patch of shade at the side of a tumbled wall. A cloak was laid down for her, and she was left to recover her senses while the new arrivals set to work. Like an appointed guardian, Leonidas brought her water and placed himself beside her.
Linsha lay still and mustered her strength. Slowly she turned her mind away from the light and the noise and concentrated on the keening throb in her head. She did not have enough strength or mystic talent to heal the damage to her skull completely, but she could use the magic power within her to ease the pain and settle the sickening queasiness and the lightheaded dizziness of shock.
The pain gradually receded, and as it loosened its iron grip on her mind, a few memories slowly filtered into place. She now knew who she was and where she was. Only the details of the night in the storm remained maddeningly vague.
Linsha slowly sat up, grunting with pain. She could not yet open one eye, hut now her questing fingers found a gash and a massive swelling above her right eye. Blood caked over her eyelid and the side of her face. She sighed and slumped on the cloak, too weak to try to clean her face. Her clothes were wet and clammy. Her auburn curls lay flat, plastered down by blood and mud. An odd acrid taste lingered in her mouth.