Chapter 6 #2
“Exactly what I said.” Bron tipped his chin toward the pavestone.
“We’re sure the Hierarch’s lair is on the other side of that path, but the first Daggerman we caught cut his own throat before we could catch and interrogate the secret to the key spell from him.
” It had been another fortnight of surveilling the temple and the area around the stone before the Hierarch sent another messenger.
“When the second messenger came through, he discovered our ambush and damaged the stone beyond repair before we could stop him. Like the previous Daggerman, he took his own life.” He shook his head.
“I sometimes wonder if they’re still human or merely demons.
They don’t value any life, not even their own. ”
Disaris clasped his wrists and pulled his hands down from her face.
Her short laugh was the harsh croak of a raven.
“You’ve described the essence of what it is to be a Daggerman.
There is only the mission and the purpose.
All else is expendable, even themselves.
” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
“What am I going to do now?” she whispered.
“What are you trying to do?” He’d stand here for the next month if he had to in order to coax the answer out of her. “What’s on the other side of the gate that you’re so desperate to reach?”
“Luda,” she finally admitted, her voice breaking. “Luda is on the other side.”
Bron’s stomach couldn’t have plummeted any farther or faster if Disaris had suddenly shoved him off the edge of a high cliff. “What?”
She clasped her hands in front of her, clenching her fingers so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
“Luda is being held captive by the Hierarch. In exchange for my cooperation in translating Kocyte’s grimoire, they’ll keep her alive until I’m finished.
If I refuse or if I die before the translation is done, then she’s of no use to the Daggermen, and her life is forfeit.
” Her breath caught, making her voice tremble.
“Even if I remain loyal to them, she’s still in danger.
Ceybold hated me as much as I hated him, and he felt betrayed by the Hierarch for consigning him to the wilds of Baelok instead of raising him to higher status among the Daggermen.
” Her strained smile never touched her eyes.
“He’s always considered himself destined for a far greater title than that of a rich yeoman’s son. ”
Knowing what he did about Ceybold from adolescence, Bron believed her. “To the Hierarch, you were more valuable.”
Disaris nodded. “Ceybold resented that too.”
The ever-present current of anger running through Bron every time he thought of Ceybold over the past six years flared hotter.
His erstwhile friend hadn’t changed except to become more bitter, more resentful, more hateful.
Only the people he wished vengeance upon had changed—first Bron and now Disaris.
She began to pace in front of him. “If he’s still alive, he isn’t hunting for me. He’s on a journey to find Luda and kill her. Unlike me, he knows where the Hierarch is hiding.”
“Killing her will satisfy two desires.” Bron ran a hand through his hair, trying not to panic at Disaris’s revelations.
“Ruin or delay the Hierarch’s plans for bringing about the goddess and revenge against you for…
” He paused, unsure what had happened during their marriage to birth such virulent animosity between them.
“For loving you,” she said in a voice ardent despite its quietness. “For always knowing you were and are a man of superior character and strength. Ceybold knew it too and hated you for it.”
Bron’s thoughts raced while his heartbeat accelerated to the quick pace of a war drum’s summons to combat.
His whole world had shifted beneath his feet in less than a day.
His simple life of fighting and obedience to the Daesin army had just become unfathomably complicated, tangled in a snarl of conflicting loyalties and emotions that left him reeling.
“Bron,” Disa said, interrupting his internal war.
“Can you not just turn away and pretend? I have to find Luda before Ceybold does. Without the gate, it will take me thrice as long, but I have to try. I’m not asking you to come with me.
Just give me a horse and let me go. Use magic to compel me to return later and serve as Golius’s itzuli if you wish.
I’ll do so happily, willingly, but please let me try to save my sister first.”
He recoiled when she fell to her knees in front of him and bowed so that her forehead touched the walkway.
Bron hauled her to her feet. “Don’t,” he said.
She didn’t argue, but the desperation in her gaze was louder than any weeping entreaty.
A sudden recollection occurred to him. “Three years ago I asked you where Luda was, and you said she was safe with friends of your mother.” The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach grew. “Were you lying to me about that?”
Disaris’s eyelashes remained still when she said “No.” She raised her hands in supplication.
“She was with friends. I sent her there before we came to Baelok. I didn’t know until after you and I parted that the Hierarch had sent his disciples to take her and bring her to him.
” More tears shimmered in her eyes. “I swear, Bron, if I’d known that’s what they planned, I would have asked for your help. ”
Luda. Ten years younger than her sister and far more temperate, she as much a beloved sibling to him as she was to Disaris.
He’d been the second person to hold her after she’d been born.
He wondered if Ceybold’s intention to kill her wasn’t just motivated by retaliation against the Hierarch and Disaris, but also against him.
For a moment, he went lightheaded at the awful possibility.
Disaris clutched his arm. “Bron, please let me go.”
He didn’t answer, only shackled her wrist in one hand and pulled her along with him toward the pathway’s entrance.
She resisted, planting her feet and bending her knees so that he dragged her a few steps before turning and flipping her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
His stride didn’t slow as he made his way into the nave, Disaris beating her fists on his back and calling him names vulgar enough to make even the saltiest sailor blush.
Their escort met him on the temple stairs. Their shocked expressions might have made him laugh if circumstances weren’t so desperate and time so grimly short. “Gather the horses,” he commanded in a voice raised to overcome Disaris’s loud protests. “We return to camp.”
“I’ll gallop away the moment you drop me in the saddle, Bron,” she threatened. “You know I will.”
“I do,” he replied, then whistled for his mount. “Which is why you’ll share the saddle with me on the ride back.”
The obedient horse, a big bay gelding who’d carried Bron into a dozen battles, trotted towards him, snorting its disapproval at the contorting, shouting thing draped over its master’s shoulder.
Bron turned so that his back was to their watching escort.
He heaved Disaris off him, holding her shoulders as she staggered for a moment.
Her face was flushed, expression furious.
She opened her mouth for another round of lambasting him.
He covered her mouth with one hand. “Shh,” he said, braced for the pain of her teeth sinking into his palm, relieved when she didn’t bite. “Do you trust me, Disa?”
Only a domination spell had the kind of effect that instantly overcame Disaris, and Bron didn’t know how to wield that particular magic. She went still, the pace of her breath gusting across his knuckles slowing. The rosy tint of fury faded from her cheeks, and the color of her eyes deepened.
“Do you trust me?” he repeated.
A slow nod and no fluttering of her eyelashes. “Yes,” she said softly once he lowered his hand.
He smiled and ran a finger down the bridge of her nose. “Good. Then I want you to get on my horse and ride with me back to the encampment without protest. When we arrive, I’ll take you to my quarters. You’ll stay there until I say otherwise.”
It was a lot to ask of her, especially when he gave no other details and certainly no agreement to free her from captivity.
She nodded her agreement and meekly allowed him to lift her into the saddle before he mounted behind her and gathered the reins.
His men gawked at him in silent bewilderment.
He almost heard the question they wanted to ask: what had he said to quiet the screeching harpy disguised as a human woman? Bron winked and mouthed “Magic.”
It truly was magic, just not the kind they assumed. His powers weren’t nearly as all-encompassing as they thought, but he’d allow them to believe it was so. They’d wonder less about what he might have told Disaris to turn her from feral cat to placid lamb so quickly.
Like the trip to the temple, they alternated between a canter and a walk to so as not to exhaust their horses.
Bron wished otherwise, anxious to reach the encampment as soon as possible, but anything seen as out of the ordinary in his behavior and Golius would know about it.
The general was already waiting to question him when they returned, and Cimejen had expressed his doubts about Bron’s resistance to Disaris’s influence.
“How long have you been in the Daesin army?” he’d asked just before Bron had set off for the temple. The battle mage stared at Disaris who waited nearby, his eyes narrowed.