59. Ayres
Ayres didn’t look back as he sprinted through the forest. The second he was clear of the shield, he’d transferred himself and the little girl back to Karduru, gently shoved her into the nearest person’s arms, and transferred back to the edge of the shield. He vomited into the grass, the transfer knocking the wind out of him, but as soon as he could collect himself, he started to run.
Rorax was going to get herself killed.
Rorax was talented, she trained from sunup to sundown almost every single day to be as good as she was. But even she had her limits, and they were about to find out if a castle full of highly trained guards was it.
Ayres ran through puddles of rainwater and long stretches of mud, weaving in and out of tall pine trees and underbrush, until he broke through the clearing of the castle. There was Rorax, sprinting like hell towards him. In her arms, clutched to her chest, was one of Sumavari’s books.
There were at least fifty soldiers behind her, running after her.
“Run you fucking bastard, run!” she screamed, shoving the book into his arms as she passed.
Kill them, his magick whispered into his mind. The bridge on his back throbbed with power, recognizing the book in his arms as its own. His power begged to be unleashed, to kill the men running at him, but he wouldn’t.
He didn’t trust Rorax enough with the information, and he didn’t want Kiniera or the new King and Queen of Ice to know that he had such an immense amount of power at his fingertips. He also didn’t know if he could stop it; if he could not kill her when he unleashed it.
So, Ayres turned and sprinted after Rorax. She was ten paces ahead of him. They ran from the clearing and into the trees, weaving and dodging through the forest as arrows flew at them.
Kill them. The men were nipping at his heels. If they didn’t move faster, he wouldn’t have a choice.
Then the worst thing imaginable happened. Rorax slipped in the mud and fell to her hands and knees.
She scrambled to stand, and just as Ayres was about to pick her up with his free arm, she looked over her shoulder, swore, and shoved him to the side with a grunt.
Her blood sprayed over his face as an arrow pierced through her shoulder, and then another through her side. She fell into him, her body jerking as three more arrows struck.
He picked her up with one arm around her waist, the other under her knees, and started to run. They were only a few minutes from the border of this gods damned magick force field; once they were across, he could transfer them both to safety.
“Ayres,” she coughed. It was nothing but a wet, broken whisper and his heart lurched.
Kill them, kill them, kill them, his power demanded.
He chanced a glance down at Rorax’s face. Her usually golden tan skin was deathly pale, and blood was trickling out of her nose.
Another arrow narrowly missed them and thumped into the soil.
Kill them, kill them, kill them, kill them. The soldiers chasing them were close. They would both die if he didn’t do something soon.
Ayres bent and set Rorax and the book down in a patch of long grass against the trunk of a pine tree.
“Hold on, Little Crow,” he murmured in her ear. Then he turned to face the men and released the ironclad hold on the gate to his power.
Ayres was not simply Gifted. He had been blessed and cursed with the ultimate power of Death by Marras herself.
He was the Death Harbinger. The magick passed down from his ancestors to him, tasking him with guarding the afterlife and keeping the magick of the bridge between this life and the next life intact. He carried it everywhere he went, as a set of inked lines down his spine, and with it he carried more power in his soul than anyone he’d ever met besides the Guardians. It was hard to control and even harder to stop, and it was indiscriminate with its victims.
The Death Harbinger was a supposed myth, something that had turned into legend that the Sumavari family had kept hidden since Sumavari’s War. It was a secret that could prove to be deadly to him if anyone found out what he carried. Heir of Death. That’s what he was.
One soldier had stopped a few feet back, his bow and arrow pulled taut as he aimed at Ayres. Ayres’s mouth tipped up in cold amusement as the soldier let the arrow fly.
The shot was true, and aimed straight for his chest, but right before it hit him, Ayres detonated like a bomb, releasing the latch on his magick.
A sonic wave of red death rushed towards the men, incinerating the arrow, and turning the men chasing them into nothing but bloody mist where they stood.
As the red mist floated to the earth, their souls trickled down Ayres’s spine—down the bridge and to the afterlife—making him shiver in pleasure. Once the souls passed, he mentally focused in on the castle, and plucked out the souls of the Gifted remaining there. Ayres noticed the weight on his own magick lift as the one who had placed the magickal barrier around Helfast passed on.
He felt around, but there were no remaining human souls to take so instead he shredded through the life of the trees and the grass, felling the mice, bugs, and a small herd of deer . . .
“Ayres?” a choked, slightly gurgled voice came from behind him, and his power stilled.
He had forgotten about the woman. He could pull the life from plants and animals all he wanted, but there wasn’t the same satisfaction in it as ripping out a human life. He had wanted to take her life for a long, long time. Rorax’s soul was different than the others though, stronger. It would require focus to pluck her roots away, as if her soul had burrowed in and attached to an anchor he’d need to unravel to release.
Ayres turned to look at her, and his power hesitated. On second thought, maybe it wouldn’t be that hard to pluck away her life. She looked minutes away from death. It wouldn’t take any effort at all to make her tumble down the bridge now; she had minutes left.
However, something about the female’s feeble strength snapped him out of the magick’s control, just enough that Ayres could shove his gift back into its cage.
Rorax’s hooded snow-white eyes watched him. Her skin was deathly pale, and blood trickled down her front.
“Neat trick,” she gurgled, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. Rorax sucked in a haggard, wet, rattling breath and closed her eyes.
He fell to his knees next to her and cupped her face. “Rorax, open your eyes.”
She didn’t. “The girl . . . is she safe?”
“Yes.”
Relief seeped into her face, and she cracked her eyes open. “Thank you, Ayres. Find . . . all the books. Find my brother.”
Rorax reached up and touched the edges of his jaw with her cold, blood-soaked fingertips. “I’m . . . sorry . . . Surmalinn . . . the Wolf . . . I’m sorry, Ayres.”
Her fingers fell away from his face, and she closed her eyes, her breaths shallow and slow, and the presence of her soul lingering at his neck made itself known. She was getting ready to pass on.
Fuck.
Ayres scooped her and the book up off the ground and transferred them back to Karduru, the magical barrier no longer holding them in place. There were healers in Karduru, it was a supply outpost for travelers.
He collapsed to his knees, dumped the book to the side, and laid Rorax on the ground. Rorax’s chest had stilled, and her soul was now positioning itself to barrel down into the afterlife.
Two lifeless, snow-white eyes stared up at him, sparkling now even in death.
“RORAX,” Ayres bellowed, grasping both sides of Rorax’s pale face. “RORAX.” He barely even noticed that his hands were covered in blood. He couldn’t remember if it was his blood, hers, or the men from the castle.
He shook her roughly, but her head just flopped lifelessly in his hands.
At the top of his spine, Ayres felt the familiar sensation again, the push of her soul wanting to pass to the next life.
His stomach rolled and Ayres reached back to clamp his fingers to the back of his neck, refusing to let her travel down the bridge.
No. No. Absolutely not.
Ayres looked up desperately and saw the familiar buildings, and civilians who were either staring at him or were popping their heads out of their houses to see who was yelling.
“Healer! Healer! She needs a healer!” he roared.
Someone started running towards him, but the man saw her body, all the blood, he froze.
“H-her wounds . . . I don’t think I’ll be able to . . .”
“Try,” Ayres snarled. It was such a feral, lethal sound the healer flinched away. “I will kill everyone in this useless village in less than thirty seconds if you don’t.”
The healer looked up into Ayres’s glowing red eyes and gulped loudly before he knelt next to Ayres and started to work. Rorax’s wounds slowly started to close, her body was still warm in his arms, but that presence at the top of his neck only got stronger.
His teeth gritted together harder as his anxiety grew. His tattoos glowed, warning him that she was close to the edge. But he kept one hand clamped around his neck and the other gripped the back of her head, pushing whatever power he had left into her to keep her on this side of the veil.
“Come on, Rorax. Stay with me.” She would slip down the bridge even without Ayres’s permission if she didn’t come back within seconds.
Through his focus he felt someone slide in the gravel next to him. He glanced up and almost wept in relief as he saw the House of Life colors with the fluorescent green lunar month embroidered on the woman next to him.
Her hands started to glow as she pressed them into Rorax’s chest. He could barely breathe as he watched and prayed.
Please come back, please come back, Rorax.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he felt the trickle in his neck disappear.
There was a flash of blinding white light and with a yelp, the House of Life healer fell back onto her behind.
A hoarse gasp ripped out of Rorax’s mouth, and he jerked his gaze down to see two, perfect lips vibrating with breath.
Unbelieving, he looked up into the healer”s face, desperately searching for confirmation. When she offered him a small, tired smile, relief made his throat unbearably tight, and he let the hand at the back of his neck fall to cup Rorax’s face instead.
The Life worker’s skin was pale and covered in sweat, and her hand trembled as she reached up and brushed a piece of hair out of her eyes. “She hadn’t crossed over just yet.” She gave Ayres a small knowing smile. “It was like death was refusing her. Holding her on this side of the veil.”
Another healer had come to kneel next to the first and was working on areas in Rorax”s body that Ayres didn’t even know needed attention. A wound from where the arrow that had hit the artery in her thigh was closing. She had another wound in her thigh, but that one wasn’t bleeding nearly as much. One arrow was still lodged in her stomach.
The second Water healer looked up when he felt Ayres’s heavy gaze on him and jerked his head down in a nod. “We obviously need to take that out, but she’s almost stable. When she is, we need to move her into the infirmary, and look at your wounds, sir.”
Ayres snorted as he eyed the second healer, watching as he pulled the arrow from her stomach and focused his energy on the gaping wound. Ayres’s wounds were nothing more than shallow cuts and scratches compared to hers.
He couldn’t feel them anyway, his relief was too strong as he watched Rorax take another breath. Ayres sent up a silent prayer to Marras and her ice god, K??n, in blessed thanks. Thanks, and relief that his savior and his friend had survived.