Shadows Return - Lynn Flewelling [155]
“Alec!” Thero’s voice broke but the spell held. “Please, let me hear you!”
Alec faded almost out of sight, but his voice returned. Help him! Save Seregil and the child.
“Child? Where are they? Can you show me?”
Show you! Alec reached out and clutched Thero’s spirit by the hand in a crushing grip and suddenly they were flying, the sea and sky a blur around them, then the land under them. Not Riga. No, someplace miles to the east and south.
I was looking in the wrong place all along!…hurry!
Thero could see the coastline from here and far below, a few tiny specks of riders hemming something in.
No, someone.
He could see Alec on the ground now, pitifully splayed in death, with arrows in his body. He saw Seregil running, sword in hand, at more men than he could hope to bring down alone. And someone else, a blur of white, so indistinct, yet the sight of it sent a shudder through Thero’s very soul.
What is that? Even from here I can feel it!
Alec’s shade looked at him with such sad eyes, then he was falling, falling—
“Thero, look at me!”
Thero opened his eyes to find himself sprawled on the cabin floor with blood running down the back of his throat from the nosebleed. Micum was crouched over him.
“Alec!” There was no sign of the shade now. The deathly chill was gone and sunlight was streaming in through the window.
“You saw him, too?” Micum was looking panicked now, something Thero had never seen before.
“I know where they are!” Thero told him, and burst into tears.
“You fool!” Yhakobin shouted, not at Seregil but at the slave takers. “Kill him! Kill him now, but don’t touch the rhekaro or I’ll have your skins!”
Seregil felt the arrows that struck his thigh and shoulder with no more concern than if they’d been gnat bites. His throat hurt, too, and perhaps he was screaming. Some part of his mind was aware of other shafts hissing around him, and the shouts of the men dismounting to stop him, but his vision had narrowed to one long dark tunnel and at the end of it all he could see was Yhakobin, sitting his horse with one hand raised as if to fend off the certain death bearing down on him.
Two swordsmen dismounted to block his headlong rush. Seregil sliced the head off the first one with a single swing and plunged his poniard into the chest of the other. Not caring if he was dead or not, Seregil trampled him underfoot and kept on running.
The alchemist tried to rein his mount aside, but Seregil sprang at him, dragging him from his horse. Throwing Yhakobin to the ground, Seregil hacked off one upraised hand, then plunged the point of his sword into the man’s belly and yanked it hard, spilling his guts on the ground in his fury. He could see the man’s mouth open, and guessed that he was screaming, but all he could hear now was a single clear, ringing note, too pure and piercing to come from a living throat.
He turned slowly, still caught in a nightmare. The rhekaro was standing over Alec’s body, his mouth stretched in a perfect O. The sound was coming from him, and mingling with it were the screams of the slave takers and the cries of the horses as they reared and bucked.
As Seregil watched, the remaining riders fell from their saddles, screaming and bleeding from their eyes and ears and noses. One by one they went still and silent, and only when the last one was dead did the rhekaro’s deadly song die away.
When it was done, Sebrahn collapsed across Alec’s chest, and that pale grey little tongue flickered out, lapping at the blood on Alec’s throat.
“Get away from him!” Seregil screamed. He staggered back to them, wrenching the arrows from his flesh as he went. “Can’t you just leave him alone? Go suck the blood from your maker, you monster!”
Sebrahn looked up at him and Seregil saw that there were tears streaming down the rhekaro’s cheeks. Seregil pushed him