Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(73)

“It’s possible. Very possible. Just as it’s possible, with so many contained, there was already dark among the light. And that added more as well.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She closed her eyes a moment. “They had a hundred and forty-six people locked up. They had room for one-fifty. Some just died, others they sent somewhere else. But that night a hundred and forty-six. It was ten years ago. It happened ten years ago, March fourteenth, at nineteen hundred hours, twenty-seven minutes.

“We have to go back.” She tightened her grip when he shook his head. “We have to tend to the dead. All of them, and we have to purify the ground.”

“Yes, the dead should be tended, and their spirits released. A place of cruelty can be destroyed and the ground purified.”

It made him proud she would think of it, she would know the importance of it.

“But not this day,” he told her. “Tomorrow. They’ve waited this long. I’ll speak to Minh, as he will want to go. Some of the others will.”

“Tomorrow,” she agreed. “But we won’t destroy the building. It’s well built and its location’s good. We may need it one day.”

He went to make her tea because she was weaker than she understood. The next time she wouldn’t be, he thought. Already she’d shown a cooler head than he. What he’d seen and heard through her? He wanted to destroy all that stood on that spot.

But the warrior, the leader of warriors understood a war meant death. It also meant prisons.

“She’ll never be a child again,” he told himself as he added honey to the tea to mask the faint bitterness of the restorative. “Not after this day.”

The day of her birth, he thought. Often the light could be just as sly and cruel as the dark.

He heard her moving about, though he wished she’d stay down for an hour more. Then he heard the shower. It banged a bit, the pipes, but it served. And she’d earned it.

He imagined she wanted to wash away the stink of the prison, the smear of death. And realized he wanted to do exactly the same.

He went out to walk to the stream. Once they were clean again, he’d take out the spice cake he’d had baked for her. Hope it pleased her.

Balance, he thought as he stripped. Some cake and tea, a quiet evening with no tasks for her.

A small way to balance out the ugliness of the day, and the sad duty they’d face on the morrow.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Winter followed fall and brought with it brutal cold, howling winds, and relentless snow. Despite it, Mallick pushed physical training. Battles, he told Fallon, didn’t wait for balmy spring.

She learned to fight with a sword in one hand, a knife in the other. And when Mallick tripled himself in an illusion, how to fight multiple foes.

She died often, but she learned.

She rode Grace for pleasure, and Laoch for the thrill and the practice, as rider and mount must be one in battle.

Armed with a sword and a small shield she fought Mallick on horseback. Snow blew in sheets while the throaty wind whirled it, and again and again charmed steel rang against charmed steel.

The seasoned Gwydion charged, reared, pivoted with a fearlessness Fallon admired and respected. Laoch exceeded even that skill, Fallon knew, just as she knew her mount’s disadvantage was his rider.

She’d get better.

Swords clashed, their ringing muffled in the curtain of snow. All the hours she’d wielded the sword, all the buckets of water she’d lifted, carried, had given her a sinewy strength. Despite the cold, exertion warmed her muscles. And with an eye and skill she hadn’t possessed only a few months before, she slipped past Mallick’s guard, struck his heart.

He only nodded. “Again,” he said, this time conjuring the illusion of a battle raging around them. Warriors on horseback, on foot, arrows winging, fireballs blasting.

Gwydion charged, Mallick’s sword flashed. But she was ready. She blocked him with the shield, and hammered at him while Laoch drove Gwydion back.

Despite the war cries, the screams of the dying, she heard Mallick’s laboring breaths. And with her honed young strength struck blow after blow. Then swept out with her shield, striking to send him tumbling from his horse.

He landed in the trodden snow with a thud.

Grinning, she leaned forward against Laoch. “You gonna call ‘uncle’ this time? That’s the third time in an hour I’ve—”

Her grin faded as he only lay, eyes closed.

“Oh shit!”

She leaped off her horse, dived to him. As she started to glide her hands over him, he opened his eyes, waved her off.

“Only winded.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Are you sure you’re not hurt? Let me see.”

“I know if I’m hurt or not, and I’m not.” He levered up to sitting. “You unhorsed me, but with your attack so focused on only one opponent, a half dozen could have struck from your flanks.”

“No. Laoch would tell me.”

Mallick’s gaze shifted to the horse, who stood at his ease now. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. And I can sense—not everyone, not every time—but I can sense if one of your ghosts comes at me. Between us, we know. You can’t always know. And you have to take out the primary foe. You taught me that. Take out the primary, take out the next.”