Crown of Renewal(194)

He shook his head. “They’re already back there with weapons, lookin’ to cut anyone down who comes out. I put yeomen there, but I don’t know how long they can hold out.”

“Then I must pray for Gird’s aid and face whatever comes if it is not his will to grant it,” Arianya said. She felt heavy and cold even though the day was, like all the days for too long, hot and bright. This might well be—probably was—the day she would die, and she could not argue that she deserved better. It was her leadership that had failed, as she had failed Haran in not noticing how the woman slid into arrogance and hatred. Her prayers as she and Pelis stood there were for the mages and the mage-hunters both, that they would come to find peace with one another. No more hating, she prayed. No more killing. Peace washed over her, and a fragrance of roses. Alyanya, at least, accepted that prayer.

At the door, High Marshal Donag tried to talk her out of going back outside. “You could let me talk to them—what if they kill you?”

“Gird died to prevent the killing of one innocent child,” Arianya said. “Should I flinch from dying to prevent the massacre of a dozen?”

“It’s not necessary—”

“It is very necessary. Not just that I’m the Marshal-General but that I’m the Marshal-General they’ve decided to hate. I must be the one in front.”

“In armor, then.”

“I’m crazy, perhaps,” Arianya said. “But not stupid.”

She moved toward the door; the others moved away, letting her through this time. She felt very unlike the way she had expected to feel … not heroic, not scared, not much of anything but determined. The children were innocent: that much she knew for sure.

Jeers from the crowd as she came into view. “You will not kill those children,” she said. She spotted Haran wearing a Marshal’s tabard, to which she was no longer entitled. Haran’s expression mingled contempt and anger.

“They’re mages! They’re evil!” came from several sides.”

“They’re children. Gird wouldn’t let you kill one child … I won’t let you kill these!”

“Then we’ll kill you.” That was Haran’s voice; others chanted their support. “Kill her! Kill her!”

“You can certainly try,” Arianya said. “But you won’t get to them until I’m dead. And I am not going down without a fight.” She drew her sword.

Those in front of the mob, armed with hauks and ordinary sticks, stopped their advance at the sight of drawn swords. Five—she and four of Knights of Gird—were outside—enough to block the door. The children and the rest of the loyal Girdish were inside the grange.

The first arrow bounced off her chest plate, not even scratching it. A homemade bow, she judged, and not a good one. Or a good archer.

“Gird would not kill these children,” she said, keeping her voice calm.

Growls and mutters from the crowd. Someone in the back began another chant: “Kill … kill … kill the demons.” Voices joined until it made one roar, bouncing from wall to wall: “KILL! … KILL! … KILL! …” Another arrow struck, bounced away. One hit her helmet, hard enough to feel. Other arrows followed, aimed at the Girdish knights, but none penetrated. The first stone flew past, missing her head by a handwidth. Then one hit her helmet. Her vision blurred and darkened for an instant.

The very air thickened with malice, and she remembered the account one of the magelords in Kolobia had written of Gird’s death—the thickened air, the way Gird had spoken words that seemed to condense all that anger and hatred into a darkness—a cloud?—that he then took in and swallowed and fell dead.

She needed those words, and she did not know them. The writer had not written them down. Possibly no one could write them down. She glanced up in time to see another shower of stones and beyond them, above the buildings, just such a darkness. Boiling, churning darkness like the most dangerous of summer storms, but silent … and under it a pallid sickly light that no one else seemed to notice felt completely and utterly wrong.

Words—I need the words—She sent the prayer as strongly as she could even as two stones hit her, shoulder and thigh, and one of the men beside her staggered and almost fell.

Nothing happens the same way twice. She did not recognize that voice.

The mage-hunters screamed at the crowd, the crowd roared, surged forward … and with a resonant thrum as if the heartstring of the world had been plucked, a blaze of light stabbed down, followed by a CRACK and then boom of thunder so loud Arianya was sure her ears were broken. She had an instant to see a line of black, blasted bodies between her and the rest of the crowd, with others fallen just behind them, when the water came.