Kim whipped her head around. A cry escaped her. Brock moaned, his hands moved slightly. Heedless of risk, she crawled over to help him. “I need clean cloths and hot water!” she shouted. “Quickly!”
No one moved. Ceriog laughed. “It seems,” he said, “that you haven’t understood me. I am pleased to see him alive, because I intend to kill him with great care.”
She did understand and, understanding, could no longer hate—it seemed that clear, uncomplicated wishes of the heart were not allowed for her. Which wasn’t all that surprising, given who she was and what she carried.
She could no longer hate, nor could she hold back her pity for one whose people were being so completely destroyed. But neither could she allow him to proceed. He had come nearer, had drawn a blade. She heard a soft, almost delicate rustle of anticipation among the watching outlaws, most of whom were from Eridu. No mercy to be expected there.
She twisted the ring back outward on her finger and thrust her hand high in the air.
“Harm him not!” she cried, as sternly as she could. “I am the Seer of Brennin. I carry the Baelrath on my hand and a magegift vellin stone about my wrist!”
She was also hellishly weak, with a brutal pain in her side, and no idea whatsoever of how she could hold them off.
Ceriog seemed to have an intuition about that, or else was so goaded by the presence of the dwarf that he was beyond deterrence. He smiled thinly, through his tattoos and his dark beard.
“I like that,” he said, gazing at the Baelrath. “It will be a pretty toy to carry for the hours we have left before the rains come west and we all turn black and die. First, though,” he murmured, “I am going to kill the Dwarf very slowly, while you watch.”
She wasn’t going to be able to stop him. She was a Seer, a summoner. A storm crow on the winds of war. She could wake power, and gather it, and sometimes to do so she could flame red and fly between places, between worlds. She had two souls within her, and she carried the burden of the Baelrath on her finger and in her heart. But she could not stop a man with a blade, let alone fifty of them, driven mad by grief and fury and awareness of coming death.
Brock moaned. Kim felt his life’s blood soaking through her clothing as she held his head in her lap. She glared up at Ceriog. Tried one last time.
“Listen to me—” she began.
“While you watch,” he repeated, ignoring her.
“I think not,” said Dalreidan. “Leave them alone, Ceriog.”
The Eridun wheeled. A twisted light of pleasure shone in his dark face. “You will stop me, old man?”
“I shouldn’t have to,” Dalreidan said calmly. “You are no fool. You heard what she said: the Seer of Brennin. With whom else and how else will we stop what is coming?”
The other man seemed scarcely to have heard. “For a Dwarf?” he snarled. “You would intercede, now, for a Dwarf?” His voice skirled upward with growing incredulity. “Dalreidan, this has been coming between us for a long time.”
“It need not come. Only hear reason. I seek no leadership, Ceriog. Only to—”
“Only to tell the leader what he may or may not do!” said Ceriog viciously. There was a frozen half second of stillness, then Ceriog’s arm whipped forward and his dagger flew—
—over the shoulder of Dalreidan, who had dived and rolled and was up again in a move the Plain had seen rehearsed from horseback for past a thousand years. No one had seen his own blade drawn, nor had they seen it thrown.
They did see it, all of them, buried in Ceriog’s heart. And an instant later, after the shock had passed, they saw also that the dead Eridun was smiling as might one who has found release from overmastering pain.
Kim was suddenly aware of the silence. Of the sun overhead, the finger of the breeze, the weight of Brock’s head in her lap—details of time and place made unnaturally vivid by the explosion of violence.