Thanks are at the bottom :-) But generally…thank you also to all the people who commented on Huntcall and Hanging On – I have to say, I truly didn't think I'd get anyone reviewing and I'm just...speechless. Je t'aime, je t'adore! I mean, if you could see my face I have this huge smile...
Any comments would be adored and pored over, slavishly worshipped, framed, put on my wall and salaamed to daily. And I'll bet you think I'm kidding, too... Criticism is welcomed...anything you have to say would be adored!
Dedicated to the reviewers :-)
Ki
Hanging On Part Four
The Gifted were a race apart.
Everyone knew this; everyone accepted it. Some people disliked it, some passionately loathed it. But it was a truth; whether you believed it or not, it would still exist.
And on that quiet night, the explosion of magick in a small northern town rippled through the dreams of the Gifted. Most simply turned in uneasy slumber, their Gifts too insubstantial to feel the power. But those with the strongest Gifts, the ones who lay closest to the gods, jolted awake with the vision burned onto their hearts.
A girl, standing on a scaffold, with a rope about her neck and eyes blazing like the sun with fear. Not a single heart remained untouched by the mute plea in her face, the slight tremble to her mouth. And a boy, appearing like a ghost, somehow connected to the girl. The explosion of magick from the pair that drove a crowd of a hundred, two hundred, more, to their knees and that threw them from the depths of the dream.
In the palace of Tortall, Numair Salmalín arrived at the King's quarters to find King Jonathan already awake and Tkaa the basilisk seated in the outer room.
"You too?" Jonathan said grimly, keeping his voice quiet. Thayet was clearly still asleep. His sapphire eyes were sharp even as the dawn began to sluggishly edge across the sky. "A girl on gallows, that...that...explosion?"
Numair sighed and sat down, yawning. "The same. Are we the only ones who saw this?"
"I believe not," the whispery, smoky voice of Tkaa put in. "My magick allows me to see the state of a human's spirit if they are nearby. The Gifted, especially, appear as fires in my...vision, let us call it."
The mage blinked. "I didn't know about this ability."
"It is something we basilisks keep to ourselves, normally," Tkaa said, tilting his head. He held his tail in one paw, standing as gracefully as ever. "It tends to provoke accusations of spying." The last word was said with a certain distaste. "Nonetheless, this is not a normal situation. There are four Gifted mortals awake in the palace. Three of you are here. The fourth is still in her rooms."
"Her?"
The silver eyes remained focused and liquid. "A young lady I have had the experience of meeting. A Bruna of Farbrook. A most...forceful mortal."
"She has only a small Gift," the King said thoughtfully.
Tkaa shook his head. "No. She is strong – as strong as yourself certainly, verging on Mater Salmalin's powers. I thought you knew."
From both the shocked look on the King's face and the faintly angry look on the mage's, Tkaa gathered that Bruna had been hiding rather more of he Gift than she had of her body. The basilisk had always been told court ladies dressed with decorum. Bruna seemed to have taken decorum to mean 'as little as possible'. The immortal had been amused at the reactions of the human males around him.
"All such Gifts are supposed to be declared," Numair said tightly. "Though usually, the Gift declares itself. She has had no formal training from any teacher I know of...Mithros, Mynass and Shakith, what idiot let a child like that run around with an untrained Gift!"
"My father," a cool young voice said. "And I rather think that's the most accurate description I've heard in years."
All heads turned to the doorway. Bruna was stood there, clutching a dressing gown tight around her. Her usually lovely face was ashen, the sullen mouth trembling slightly. She no longer looked elegant or sultry but fragile and perhaps even vulnerable, if you ignored the flicker of steel in those scorching brown eyes.
The King looked at her in bemusement. It was unlike King Jonathan – or, Tkaa noted, Numair Salmalin – to be ruffled by anything, let alone a precocious sixteen year-old. "How did you—"
"Find you?" Bruna shrugged, regaining a little of her poise. "My Gift. I may have had no training, sire, but I can handle it. Almost." The last word was said very softly and she ducked her head, as if ashamed. This was a very different side to the confident courtier.
"Sit down," the King offered mildly.
She perched on the edge of a low table, where she could keep an uneasy eye on all three of them. Something, Tkaa decided, had scarred this child. There was something a little pitiful to all the pithy remarks he had seen her throw at various boys and men around the palace; something pathetic about the way she had to seize attention with every word.
"Why didn't your father hire a teacher?" Numair demanded. The mage looking more puzzled than angry now, the sleepiness fading from his sloe-black eyes.
"He hates the Gifted." That husky voice not alluring, but tired. "All he wanted was for me to be as far away from him as soon as possible. I went to the Mithran convent. The sisters there looked after me."
There was more to it than that; the dart of her eyes, the sudden clenching of one hand said that. But now Tkaa could see an act slipping into place. The confidence returned, be it real or created, the old sensuality slipping into the tiny smile she gave them. "It was probably for the best."
"For the best?" the mage said in outrage. "An untrained Gift...gods above, don't you know what you could have done? We would have been lucky if you had merely killed someone."
"But we were lucky," the King interjected smoothly, staring at Numair. "There's no need to frighten the girl." The sapphire eyes became slightly sterner. "But you must be trained now, young lady. And it will have to be done on the march."
"On the march?" Bruna said, frowning. "I do not...march."
King Jonathan flashed his undeniably charming smile and Bruna, true to mortal woman the length and breadth of the country, flushed and couldn't resist smiling back. "Unless you want me to send your father a long letter detailing every court exploit that I pretend I do not know about, you will learn very quickly."
Bruna swallowed hard, her face abruptly losing its flush. Yes, she was terrified of her father. Tkaa wondered why; he had been walking the mortal realms for over half a decade now and he still came nowhere close to understanding these turbulent, ephemeral creatures. "Sire."
"What are you planning, Jon?" Numair asked, looking intrigued though the way his mouth quirked told Tkaa the mage was trying not to laugh.
The King arched a coal-black eyebrow and smiled.
* * * *
Ryan opened his eyes and became aware at once that he wasn't in the warmth and comfort of Hana Dharaz's small house. He sat up fast, his heart pounding hard in his chest.
Fro what he could see, he was shrouded in a soft grey mist that kissed his skin with tiny, cool nips. It sparkled curiously, like a handful of magick had be thrown into it and he could swear that faintly, voices were singing strange, eerie songs he couldn't understand.
"Be calm, my child." The voice was like a primal firestorm, fierce and utterly untameable.
"I ain't your child," Ryan had said before he looked up and his entire body froze in shock.
The woman had black hair that tumbled crazily around her pale face like hordes of frozen waves and her skin was a perfect camellia blossom colour with only the faintest dustings of pink across her cheekbones and the vibrant scarlet of her mouth. Ryan thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful, not even Hana, but the moment he looked into her eyes, he was lost.
The only thing he could think of compare them to were the lights he had once seen in the sky on a winter's morning, a startling shade of luminous green that moved and writhed and danced.
The Goddess.
"Um..." How did you talk to a goddess? Ryan hadn't exactly had much experience. "Sorry."
Was it his imagination or was the Goddess smiling at him? But she shouldn't smile. She was a Goddess, they were meant to be terrifying and...and he had an idea there was lightning involved somewhere. Ryan was starting to wish he had been a little more religiously dutiful.
"It is always a pleasure to meet one of my chosen." She inclined her head to look down at him, her piercing stare seeming to see to his very soul. "I have kept watch over you."
"Your chosen?" he said, confused. "But I ain't done anythin' to be chosen for."
The Goddess *did* smile then, and it was like sunlight falling into a dark pit. "No, that is true. You have wasted your life and your Gift, Ryan Talver. The gods have granted you immortal powers, and you are nothing but a thief."
"I've had to be," Ryan said staunchly. "Life on the streets ain't soft."
"How true." An element of ice in that voice. "And yet...can you truly say that you are everything you could be? You have powers that can sear the skies, that can heal a thousand wounds...and all you can do is steal from mortals too foolish to outwit you."
He flushed angrily. "You ain't got no right to judge me!" he said fiercely, forgetting who he was talking to as memories flashed into his head. Spending days starving when winter came, begging and scraping to earn enough to find a healer for Hana when she fell sick with fever. Crawling home when he got beaten for money he didn't have. Fighting, holding onto life by a cobweb, thieving, learning, growing, living.
"When have you ever done anythin' but sit here an' look down at us?" he demanded, glaring up at her with eyes that were no longer grey but swamped with a dawnfire blue. "You ain't never *had* to survive, all you got to do is snap your fingers an' the world's lyin' at your feet. When have you ever had to spend half an hour crackin' the ice on the river just so you can get a drink? How many times have you had to run away wi' half your lifeblood flowin' away 'cause you tried to rob the wrong person just to get enough coppers to live one more night? If I'm one of your chosen, why ain't you looked after me?"
Silence as he stood there, too furious to be afraid, with the heartbreakingly powerful emerald gaze simply watching him.
Then the Goddess laughed gently and with a wave of her hand, she was neither imposing nor haughty, but a slender woman of his own height, almost human except for the too-perfect beauty that graced her face.
"You will do," she said and putting two fingers beneath his chin, lifted his head to look hard at him. "Yes, you will do well indeed. You ask why I have not looked after you, Ryan Talver, but answer me this – when have you needed looking after?"
"I ain't, maybe," Ryan said, absently raking his hands through his tousled dark hair, "but it could a' been easier."
An elegant lift of her eyebrows. "Those the gods hold close to them will never know the easy road. And you are as close to me as Andrea is to Mithros."
"Who's Andrea?" The question tumbled out before he realise he knew the answer. "She's that girl, ain't she? The one I...she...we...what was that?"
"You have many questions," she told him, the hunt howling in her voice. She was so beautiful, Ryan felt as though he should fall at her feet and stay there forever, but at the same time, there was something undeniably eerie about her. Something almost terrifying. "I can only give you some answers."
He scowled. "Well, that's nice, ain't it?" He paused briefly, then decided that if the Goddess didn't want him to be honesty, she would have said. Or more likely blasted him into shards. "I didn't ask to be one of your chosen an' I didn't ask for that...girl to be...bound to me, like. An' now you just decide you want to talk to me? You might be a goddess, but you ain't got no manners."
A booming laugh startled him and Ryan turned round quickly, instinctively dropping into a fighting stance.
"A little lion!" the formidable man in front of him said. "A shame you chose him first."
Ryan heard the Goddess's voice behind him. "The Gifted are mine; the warriors yours. You took the girl; I the boy. They are both Gifted, both warriors."
"So it would seem." The sun lord stood before him, blazing brightly in golden armour that shone impossibly. His black hair was like liquid night, his eyes as unbelievably luminescent as the Goddesses. But somehow, despite the weapons, the war-filled voice that held the clash of steel and shrieks of pain, he was less frightening.
"Are you goin' to stop makin' small talk an' tell me what's goin' on?" Ryan demanded, glaring at them.
"Answers, you want is it?" Mithros said, leaning close. Ryan fought the urge to back away, but he wouldn't be scared by some god who'd never done anything for him. "Very well, mortal. Neither you nor Andrea know your parents...find your mother and her father and you will have your answer."
"Nice to know you gods ain't as cryptic as they say," Ryan muttered. "My Ma's long dead. An' I ain't goin' to find my Da again, not after he beat me like he did." A little flash of pain perhaps in his face, but he hid it well. He'd had a lot of practise.
Mithros's stare turned into chips of ice and Ryan realised the Sun-lord *was* every bit as terrifying. "It is not for mortals to find fault with the gods. We have Gifted you, we have given you a bond-mate...what more do you want?"
"What's a bond-mate?" Ryan said suspiciously. "I don't want no one messin' with my life."
Thunder rolled and a shaft of lightning seared between the fog the crisp the ground between Ryan's feet. He leapt back, suddenly realising that he was walking the knife edge with these gods, for they were not human, they were not normal; they held powers to tear the world in two.
"What you want is irrelevant!" the god barked. "And for your insolence, I will take that which you hold most dear."
"No." The Goddess said one word in her flat rich voice and it stilled the Sun-lord immediately. "You will not. He is my chosen and I will punish him as I see fit." She put a hand on Ryan's shoulder and spun him to face her. "But this incivility cannot continue. I will not take what you hold most dear...but it is time you learned a lesson, Ryan Talver. Argue not with gods; what we do not like, we tend to destroy."
He was shaking now, that sudden burst of Mithros's anger throwing him back to his fahter's voice shouting and then pain, endless, stinging pain.
"Hush," the woman said gently, and touched a chill hand to his forehead. At once, a wonderful, serene calm flowed over him and he could look into those shifting green eyes without flinching. "Your bond-mate is part of you, Ryan Talver. You are bound by your Gift, by your ancestry, and by your gods. You have saved her once; only your bond allowed you to. If she dies, you will too. We have bound you together for strength, for you will need it in the coming years. Look after her; look after yourself."
He had no words for the steely goddess whose incredible voice cut like winter hail.
"You have a long journey ahead of you," she said. "It will be long and difficult and you may not see the end of it. But you have become a favourite of mine; know always that your Goddess watches." She smiled fleetingly and lifted her arms. Lightning seared as the air screamed...
The world was plunged into darkness.
* * * *
They were closing on her.
Andrea tore through the woods in careless, painful steps. Branches slapped her face and raked across her arms, ripping scraps from her clothes as she desperately tried to escape her pursuers. Running was near impossible, her light boots no match for the rocky ground and thorny bushes that lay all around.
"There she is!"
The frantic howl came from her left and she swerved right, trying not to cry out as a splintering tree trunk slashed a shallow cut in her skin.
Must-get-out, must-not-die, must-get-out, must-not-die...
She understand what it meant to be hunted now, understood that her gentle, healing Gift could help her not at all without the strange ghostly boy there. Her breaths fell in ragged gasps, tears and fears caught on each.
On and on and on she ran, stumbling ever further from the only home she had ever known, that heartless village, hearing the ghosts of voice in every whisper the wind brought to her ears and flickers in the corners of her eyes. On and on and on she ran, barely heeding the pain as her feet were cut to pieces, the bruises and scrapes that her flight brought.
On and on and on she ran, not knowing that as the sun rolled beneath the hills, she had left them far behind and that she was walking into the shadowlands. Not caring that she had nowhere to go, no one to help her. Tears tracks ran like silver through the grime and dirt on her face as she fell down finally, too exhausted to carry on or to do anything but fall into a restless sleep, while around her, wolves howled.
And around her, the shadows slunk closer.
And...closer.
And closer.
And these shadows had a magic of their own.
* * * *
Okay, I have a lot of people to thank, so this might take a while :-) Bear with me, please! (Or b) scroll down.) Firstly, thank you to all the people who replied to Huntcall – I am completely, totally, utterly bowled over! Thank you so much! Thanks to: Twiz*ler (thanks! That's what I was thinking about when I wrote it), Angel of Death (no, you're not daft, it's just a case of interpret how you like), LunarBard (of course you can post it on your website, I'm truly honoured.), FireLily (Thank you so much J Your comments always make me smile!), Dara (short but sweet – thanks!), Dreamer (I like looking at the dark side of TP.), Sparrow (I'm in Britain and we have something similar – around 75/80 % is an A*.), Millennia (::hugs:: Hi! It's so great to see you on here too!) and Elinar (Hi! Thanks for reviewing :-) I'm thrilled you liked Hanging too...it's fun to write!)
For Hanging On:
Thank you to: Kibee (I hear and obey!), Fireflily (Thank you for the encouragement J ), Depressed Muse (Sure you can use that line :-) Please just say where you got it from!), Sparrow (Well, you *are* wonderful – you took time out to review (this goes for everyone too!) and you are so positive! And who knows...maybe Kel will get to slap her.), MerlayneQ (Thank you, thank you, thank you! With such great comments, I will keep writing.), Mage Melery (one bigger font coming up!), star* (I like cliffhangers…it gives me something to look forward to writing!), Dara (I could say the same to you, please!), Daine (Thanks!), Millennia (::hugs:: Hi! I hope your parents give in soon :-) And thanks!) and last but never least, Twiz*ler (Thank you, thank you so much!). Thank you all – you *rock*.
Hugs n' honey,
Kiana