Two Fellna dragged Leithen towards the door, the bull of a man struggling valiantly but in vain. Shan sprinted towards him, his own body the only weapon he had. He leaped, his feet hammering into the side of the Fellna nearest. It dropped beneath him and he launched himself off it, slamming its face into the stone floor. At the same moment, Leithen shook himself free of the other and Shan crashed into it, rolling across the slick stone as he grappled with it. Teeth and claws tore into his skin but he wrapped his fingers around its throat and began to squeeze. As it weakened, he smashed its head back against the stone with a sickening crack and, finally, it fell still.
Doria seized him, pulling him up. Leithen brandished a length of wood ripped from the enclosing wooden pens, and the remaining Fellna chattered and withdrew, turning to wisps of smoke and shadows. The others were gone, with them the Holters. Two more souls, helpless and damned.
“Are you all right?” Doria blurted out, her hands rubbing his shoulders and arms as if in an effort to assure herself he was indeed still real. “Did they hurt you? Are you injured?”
He was bleeding, and he felt ragged, a torn and shredded spirit in a torn and shredded body, but it didn’t matter. He was alive. They were alive and one of their enemy was dead. Just one. And the other Holters were gone. The moment of elation wavered and failed, crashing down around him.
“We have to get out of here,” she said. “Get after them. We have to save them.” She tugged on his arms, but they hung like lead, no longer under his control.
“Let him go, lass,” said Leithen. “He did what he could.”
“But the others…”
Leithen shook his head, silencing her with that movement alone. “Let him be. There’s nothing we can do for them now. Be thankful they didn’t take us too as intended.”
“No!” she shouted. “No! I won’t just give up like that, Leithen!” And then she did, sinking to the floor in a puddle of skirts and misery where she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
Shan closed his eyes and forced his breath to be calm. Despair was an enemy too, and in some ways far more damaging than the Fellna. It could steal even the will to fight, and that was all they had left to them now.
“Don’t,” he told her, pulling her hands away from her face, smoothing his thumbs over the palms of her hands. “Don’t, please. We will find a way out. And if I can, I will help them, before it’s too late. Don’t give up now. Not you. You have the heart of a wolf, the spirit that will not bow. Please. You of all people must not give up.”
And then they heard another voice, small and desperate but insistent.
“Shan? Shanith Al-Fallion, is that you?”
It came from a crack in the wall.
Leaving the stunned Doria and Leithen, Shan approached the gap and peered into it. The crack led to a tunnel so narrow only a child could crawl through it.
A face gazed back, eyes impossibly bright in the darkness, and a grin dangerous in its recklessness. “Shan? Are they all right? Are my family there?”
Before he could answer, Doria shrieked and threw herself towards the gap. “Devyn? What are you doing here? We told you to run, to get away!”
Chapter Eight
It was still dark when Lara shook Jeren awake.
“She’s here,” her friend said in reverent tones. “She came early. The Seers too.”
Jeren pushed her hair out of her face and struggled to grasp what Lara was saying. “Who came?”
But Lara just glared at her. “Ariah, of course. We have to hurry. She and Indarin have been talking for an hour already. She wants to see you.”
“I…oh…” A hundred things flocked to the fore of her mind all at once—things she needed to say, what she should wear, how she should present herself. But she only asked one question—the first and the last, the all-important one. “Is Shan back?”
“No. And Ylandra’s absence has not gone down well. The Seers are most annoyed, I think, as they supported her election as Sect Mother and this could be taken as a grave insult.”
At one time, Jeren might have felt a small thrill of triumph, but the thought of Shan not having yet returned with Ylandra quelled that. Without him, this just seemed all the more difficult. But he would want her to do it, wouldn’t he? He was her mate. She felt it with all her heart and soul. If there was the slightest chance that Ariah could release him, return him to her, she had to seize it with both hands.
“I need to change,” Jeren said, her mind already reeling through all the diplomatic scenarios that might help her plan her strategy.
“As simple as possible is best with Ariah. Be as you are, and speak plainly. The truth, Jeren. That is the key.”
Jeren pulled on the silvery-grey tunic and trousers of suede-like material that the Shistra-Phail favoured and wrapped the wolf skin trimmed in River Holt blue around her shoulders in defence against the chilly predawn. The necklace which she had used to decorate it she left behind, hidden beneath her bedroll. It had no place on her today.
From the edge of the encampment she could see the Holters emerging from their own tents, alerted by the simmering excitement of the Shistra-Phail camp. Vertigern stood watching her, Elayne his constant shadow, but it was Torvin who jogged after her, concern turning his features stark. Jeren didn’t pause or slow her gait but he still fell into step beside her.
“Who arrived with that party, Jeren? What’s going on?” He sounded like a child, overeager, excited.
She didn’t have time for this. “Go back to the others, Torvin. We can talk later.”
“But my place is with you. I’m a Roh, a sworn Body Servant to your line.”
Another claw from the past to pull at her, to draw her down an unwanted path. To accept the service of a Roh would be as good as admitting she saw herself as Lady of River Holt. There were only two ways to do that—at Gilliad’s side or over his dead body. She might as well take up the sword and call for all-out war.
“Go back, Torvin,” she growled, fixing her gaze ahead. Lara fidgeted nervously beside her as if wishing for a weapon. “This is not a Holt matter.”
“If it involves you, Jeren,” he protested, but then corrected himself, “Lady Jeren, please—look, I…I brought something for you.”
Something in his voice gave her pause and sent chills down her spine. “Now is not the time.”
“Later then. Please, meet me later.”
Jeren rolled her eyes. No getting out of this, it seemed. No escape. “All right then, later. Now go back to the Grey Holt camp before one of the Shistra-Phail decides you’re planning to attack Ariah.”
He started and blood drained from his face.
Jeren muttered a curse to herself. She hadn’t meant to mention Ariah at all. Now it would be all over the Holters’ camp as soon as he got back there. But what else could she do. “Go!”
At long last he obeyed her. Jeren gritted her teeth and watched him go. Every time she turned around, someone wanted something from her. Shan alone had never made such demands. Thinking of him brought other memories—his touch, his kiss—and tears stung her eyes.
I will do this, she promised herself. I will make Ariah understand. No matter what she had to do, promise or even if she had to beg.
No matter what.
As Jeren approached the central fire, four robed figures appeared from the edges where the shadows still clung.