The Lioness

Fists clenching, Kerian looked around at the half dozen fighters, three of them bleeding, two of those unable to stand, and two dead. Flies buzzed over the wounds. The coppery stench of blood hung in the dusty summer air.

One of the dead was Briar, a woman Kerian had first met in the sheltered basin behind Lightning Falls. Autumn had come and gone twice since then, and winter and spring, and now summer grew old around her. Yet it seemed she had known Briar for a score of years, certainly for a score of battles. Briar had become notorious among the Knights for her fierceness. Into every battle the tall elf woman had worn the mail shirt that might, a long time ago, have been made for a prince. Even princely mail couldn’t protect her against stupid mistakes.

Kerian looked at the overturned wagon, two wheels still spinning. Two outlaws dead, three wounded, and one Knight bleeding away the last of his life. The other Knight of the two-man escort had abandoned his companion and the driver of the wagon and fled through the forest to the Qualinost Road. Already, Elder was sinking into that eerie trance of hers to call up the confusion of senses. In moments, the Knight would find himself helpless on a road he’d traveled so often.

A thin line of pain etched between Kerian’s eyes, as if a thumb were pressing hard on the bridge of her nose. Head up, she listened to her body, tracking the source of the pain until the tightened muscles of her jaws assured her that the headache was nothing more than the result of teeth clenched in anger. It could have had a more dangerous source.

In spring the Skull Knight Thagol had returned from the east of the kingdom, drawn by news of the Night People. Since then Kerian suffered headaches, and since then she understood that some headaches were the result of hunger, weariness, or injury, and others had no natural explanation. The touch of the mind of a Skull Knight caused these.

Thagol sought the leader of the Night People. Down the avenues of the night, he hunted her in dreams. The strange headaches had started after the first successful raid Kerian mounted against one of the border outposts. These were ugly structures of stone and wood built between the forest and the gorges that scored the earth between the elven kingdom and the Stonelands. Five Knights had died in the first raid, and four more perished when they arrived to relieve the watch. The four who died last imagined the three black-armored warriors they saw on duty were their knightly brethren and didn’t discover until too late that they were five of the Night People in Knights’ clothing. Kerian had ordered the dead stripped of anything useful then left the corpses to rot. This time that tactic, used for gaining weapons and depriving the enemy of steel, did not serve her well.

Soon after, on a dark-moon night, Kerian woke from a dream and sat up shaking, cold sweat running on her.

Shivering with her blankets wrapped around her, she looked up at the sky ablaze with stars too bright to long behold. Across the stony basin, in the night where embers of the outlaws’ fires breathed faintly, she saw the old woman, Elder, whose voice was like prophecy. As though beckoned, she rose and went to the ancient. She sat down beside her. White hair like starlight, shining, Elder leaned close.

“He hunts,” she whispered, her voice low. “He hunts you, Kerian of Qualinesti, on the roads of your dreams. If he catches you, he catches all, even your king.”

“How does he do this? Can you help me?”

Elder didn’t know, but she could help Kerian and did. She knew a way of magic to prevent her dreaming. She knew how to enchant and what spells would serve to protect.

Protected, Kerian also knew loss. She had met the king twice more since that first time in winter, met him in the forest in spring when he called her to warn that Thagol had returned, again at Wide Spreading in early summer. She didn’t dream of him any more, for she carried a bloodstone from Elder, draining her of dreams and shielding her from Thagol’s magic Even so, the Lord Knight didn’t give up his hunt, and though he could not stalk by night, he did well by day, catching psychic scent of her when one of his Knights died by her hand. Somehow he tracked her by the deaths of his warriors. Waking, she had no warning of his approach, his stalking, his nearness, only headache.

Flies buzzed on wounds; sun glared from a hard blue sky. Kerian again looked around her at her warriors. She pointed to one, a lanky Kagonesti youth who wore the tattoos proudly on neck and shoulders. The boy was named Patch, for the streak of shining white in his dark hair. It had grown there on the dire night he learned the news that the Eagle Flight tribe had been slaughtered. He was one of the handful to survive that killing.

“Patch,” she said, “take Rale and go find and kill that Knight.”

His eyes lighted like green fire, and he leaped to do as she bid.