The Battle Sylph Page 3

  “Away,” he said softly, his voice deep and resonant. “I don’t have the words.”

  “Oh.” She bit her lip. “Just don’t look at me, okay?” She ran a hand through her tangled hair, wincing, and looked down at her still-bound ankles. Quickly, she started working on the knot. “You, you’re the battler, aren’t you?”

  “Battler?”

  “The battle sylph.” She clawed at the knots, but they were too tight. She couldn’t feel her feet anymore, she realized. “You came through the gate?”

  “Yes. I am Heyou.”

  So she had named him. Solie shook her head at the inadvertent joke of a name and sighed. “Um, can you help me?” He looked back at her, and she gestured at her feet while trying to keep herself covered. “I can’t get them off.”

  Heyou stared at her feet and frowned. Turning completely around, he reached out with one hand, hooked a claw through the rope, and pulled. The rope shredded and Solie gasped in pain as feeling rushed back into her feet.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his eyes widening.

  “My feet. They were tied too long.” She rubbed them frantically, trying to get the pins and needles to fade and very aware that the battler was still watching her. “Can you turn around again?” He did. “Um, thank you for saving my life.”

  His back muscles tensed. “Why did they try to hurt you?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  He shook his head, his short hair shining with drops of water from the spring. She’d never liked hair that short, and he was really rather skinny, his features plain and unremarkable. For someone who could change his shape, he’d certainly picked a boring one. Then again, she’d never seen a sylph who looked so human. She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think it was legal.

  “I saw a gate,” he said. “I saw you. I came to you.”

  Bait. Solie rubbed her feet harder and tried not to cry. She’d survived, that was what was important. She felt horrible, though, and so grateful to him, she was nearly sick to her stomach. “Yeah, well, I was a lure for you. They were going to kill me and make you the slave of the prince.”

  His head swung around, his form shimmering and a look of such horror and rage on his face that she cringed.

  “What?” he screeched, his voice suddenly so highpitched that she had to giggle, her fear gone. He’d saved her life, she reminded herself. He didn’t have any reason to hurt her.

  “That’s what they always do to battlers,” she told him. She paused a moment. “Why did you save me?”

  Confused, he turned his head away from her again. “You’re my queen. You named me.”

  She frowned. “Does that mean you’re my battler?”

  “Yes.”

  She felt giddy suddenly and wanted to giggle again. He belonged to her? She had a battler? Women weren’t supposed to have battlers. Women weren’t allowed to have any kind of sylph. “Oh, wow,” she said, and he looked back over his shoulder again. “Don’t look!” He snapped his head back.

  “Why don’t you want me looking at you?” he asked plaintively.

  “Because I don’t have any clothes on.” She paused, realizing he was a sylph. He probably didn’t care that she was naked. “It’s just a rule here. You can’t look at a woman when she’s naked, not unless she says you can.” She frowned. “If you’re my battler, don’t you have to do what I say?”

  “If you make it an order,” he admitted. “Yes.”

  She thought she had. Maybe she had to be more deliberate. “I’m ordering you not to look at anything but my face when I’m naked, understand?”

  “Yes.” He turned around and sat cross-legged, staring at her face and nowhere else. His expression was calm, but his face was a little creepy, too much like the soldiers who’d kidnapped her. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with a battler,” she admitted. “You look like an ugly guy.”

  “I do?”

  “You didn’t notice you looked like a guy?” she asked dryly.

  “I didn’t notice I was ugly.”

  “Well…” She shifted. “You’re kind of skinny and your hair’s too short.”

  “Oh.” Suddenly, his hair lengthened, tumbling down his back in yellow waves.

  Solie squealed, delighted. “That’s wonderful! Can you change the color?”

  “Of course.”

  “Make it darker,” she begged, and it darkened to black. “Less dark, more brown.” He obliged, changing the hair color. “Make it straighter.”

  Forgetting her nudity at least a little, since his gaze hadn’t shifted a bit since her order, she directed him in changing his shape, making his chest and shoulders broader, his legs longer, his face more angular and symmetrical. He let her, delighting in her enjoyment as she turned him into her ideal mate. He became a stunning young man only a little taller than herself, the kind she was sure even her aunt would sneak a look at in the streets, and she moved a little closer, not afraid of him anymore, as she directed him in the details. It was expected, she told herself. Sylphs looked like what their masters wanted. If she was going to have a battler, he had to look human or everyone would know what he was. There was no reason he couldn’t be someone attractive.

  Someone very attractive. As she directed him in the specific shade of his eyes, Solie realized that she was kneeling right in front of him, her face up close to his so that she could see the details, and she was feeling much warmer than the hot springs really should have caused. She shivered, suddenly wondering if those lips she’d had him shape tasted as good as they looked.

  He inhaled deeply. “I like the way you smell.”

  Solie turned beet red, covering herself even though he wasn’t looking. “Turn around!” she screeched, and he obediently did so. “Why don’t you have clothes on anyway?”

  “You don’t have any.”

  “That’s because they cut mine off!” She looked down at herself. “I need clothes. Can you get me some?”

  “And leave you alone? No.”

  Solie frowned. “Why not?”

  “I have to protect you.”

  From what? She looked around. “Well, I can’t stay here forever, and I need clothes. I can’t go into a town without any.”

  “Why not?”

  She blew out a breath, wondering what kind of place he came from that he didn’t know about something as simple as that. “People don’t go around naked. Not unless they’re…” She blushed again.

  “Not unless they’re what?”

  “Never you mind!” she snapped. “You have to obey me, don’t you? Well, I’m ordering you to go find me clothes! Girl clothes,” she added, “that aren’t taken off some girl! And don’t hurt anyone while you do. And don’t give yourself away as a battler!” Was anyone looking for them? she wondered in terror. She hoped not. No one knew who she was, and they certainly wouldn’t recognize Heyou now.

  The battler sighed, accepting the order as he rose to his feet and shimmered, turning into black, winged smoke. He rose into the air, flying away, and Solie sat staring after him, suddenly nervous again at being alone. She’d forgotten to tell him how soon to be back.

  Heyou headed in the same general direction he’d come from, though he was careful not to return to exactly the same place. He still remembered the other male he’d seen, the other “battler,” as his queen called them, and the scent of several others. He did not want a fight. Not with them. The rest of the males he’d been able to sense in the cavern and below him when he flew were all weak things, like the ones he’d destroyed at the gate. He thought about destroying them too, but she’d told him not to hurt anyone. Besides, he could smell females around many of the males and didn’t want to risk hurting them. They weren’t part of his hive, but females were inviolate. The males could quite happily die, for all he cared.

  Heyou landed outside a small hamlet on the edge of a forest. Shifting back to his human form, he strode in, sure he wouldn’t be recognized as a battler. A girl came out of a hut and saw him, and he was simply smil
ing at her when she screamed and ran back inside. A man came out a moment later, blinking. His face showed shock, and he grabbed a pitchfork from beside the hut.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled. “Freak!”

  Heyou looked down at himself. He still looked human. Glaring at the man, he felt the loathing inside himself, the blinding hatred for any male not of his hive. It boiled inside, reaching out, and the man blanched as he felt it. A woman stepped out of the hut behind the man, and Heyou’s hate was tempered immediately with interest and his queen’s order to be discreet. This woman had children. She smelled wonderful.

  “I need clothes for my queen,” he told her.

  “You need clothes for you,” she replied.

  “Don’t talk to him!” the man hissed, and Heyou snarled. The man went white and backed up.

  From the rest of the hamlet, more people started coming, the men armed with whatever farming implements they could find, the women standing back and chuckling appreciatively. Heyou delighted in the shape he’d taken and smiled winningly at the mother.

  “Do you have clothes?” he asked.

  She shook her head in amusement, obviously trying not to laugh. “Some old and worn ones. What happened to you? Were you robbed?”

  Heyou thought about it. “Yes,” he decided.

  That seemed to settle it for her. “Your poor lady! She must be devastated.” Then, while her husband stared in amazement, the woman vanished back into her hovel and returned with some folded pieces of rough burlap.

  Heyou took them thankfully but stared at them, not knowing what he was supposed to do. The mother laughed and helped, showing him how to pull an itchy tunic on over his head. The cloth was so worn in places it was barely holding together, but it covered him from his neck to midthigh.

  “You must be used to far finer clothes,” she commented, and he didn’t disagree.

  “Thank you,” he told her.

  She waved the thanks away, blushing. “I’m just sorry I don’t have shoes for you.”

  “He doesn’t need them,” her husband growled.

  Now that he was decent, the women all moved in, chattering and introducing themselves. The men held back, recognizing the danger, but for the women he was too appealing to ignore. He had to fight his instinct to put his protection around them, the same as he fought his hate for the men. A little leaked out anyway, and the women all loved him, while the men were afraid.

  “You’d better go to your lady now,” the mother told him at last, and Heyou nodded.

  “Thank you.” Turning, he strode back into the woods, the women waving good-bye and a few children—all female—running after him. He let them follow, waiting until he had outwalked them all before shimmering back into smoke and returning to his queen.

  Chapter Three

  Airi watched the girl and the battler as a drift of sun motes on the wind. The battler was young, barely more than a hatchling. A seasoned battler wouldn’t have let her come so close to his master. This one had left the human girl alone, and without any spoken warning to Airi. It wasn’t as though she would hurt the girl—not even with a direct order from her own master—but battlers were extraordinarily possessive.

  She watched him go and wondered what to do. Devon hadn’t been too detailed in his instructions. Follow them. She had. Should she stop now? She wasn’t an unintelligent creature, but she was a minor sylph. Her duty was to obey, whether in her original hive or with her master here. Independent decision-making skills weren’t something strongly encouraged in her kind. That lack of independence was what the humans used to bind them, but she really didn’t mind. She had one master focused on her alone. No one back in the hive she hatched in had that kind of attention. More, Devon gave her greater freedoms than most sylphs could dream of.

  Unlike battlers, elemental sylphs in Eferem weren’t usually bound into a single shape, though they were limited in what forms they could take. That of a human being was forbidden. Like most air sylphs, Airi preferred to stay incorporeal and invisible, rarely acquiring solid form, since she could use wind to lift whatever she needed. Unlike most others, however, Devon let her speak. That was forbidden to every other sylph, but he’d given her permission, so long as no one else heard. That was a gift and she knew it, for she’d never been allowed to talk to either of the masters she’d had before him. But she spoke to Devon, chattering at him, asking questions, asking him to play his flute for her, and thanks to their bond, she didn’t need to speak aloud. She could whisper her words directly into his mind, where no one else would hear, just as she would have to other sylphs back home. Trapped in silence for fifty years after her arrival through the gate, she still reveled in speaking and knew how rare her freedom truly was.

  She saw this battler had the same freedom she did—and more. He was locked into a shape of his master’s choosing, but he certainly didn’t seem to mind, and she hadn’t ordered him not to shift back. Airi watched him soar away as a pattern of energy that was both familiar but alien. He wasn’t from her hive, but he looked to be from the same one as Mace. At least those two wouldn’t fight if they met up…unless their masters ordered it.

  The girl watched the battler go and stood, looking around and making her way to the hot springs, testing their temperatures until she found one she liked. Airi watched and wondered if she should speak. In the end, she decided against it—Devon had made it clear she wasn’t to reveal to anyone that she could talk. Besides, the battler would be back soon. He might not like Airi being too close.

  She swirled in the steam, dancing on the hot air as she decided to wait a bit longer. The human girl couldn’t stay here forever, and her battler would return. She’d wait to see where the two went, and then she’d return to Devon.

  The redhead slid into the water with a sigh, unaware of Airi’s presence, and the air sylph floated back into the steam, well clear of her but close enough that she could do anything required.

  Screaming invectives, King Alcor of Eferem hauled off and struck Thrall across the face as hard as he could with his mail-clad fist. The battler’s head snapped to one side and then returned to its original position, looking at him. The eyes were unmoved as always, the hate as familiar and even as ever. Thrall loathed him, the king knew that. The creature would kill him if he could, but he was bound to obey. It was the extremes of that obedience Alcor protested at times.

  “Why didn’t you kill that thing?” he thundered, even though he knew Thrall was ordered not to speak. A battler giving voice to its hatred could drive a man insane. “My son is dead because of you!”

  Thrall didn’t react, his face not changing at all, but Alcor could almost hear the laughter. The battler had been his slave for decades; he knew when the monster was amused. Cursing, he hit Thrall again. It did no good. He could hit him all night, and he was the only one who would suffer for it.

  “You’ll pay,” he growled at the battler instead. “I’ll make you pay.”

  Thrall had done nothing, nothing at all. He’d let that battler kill his son and he’d let him escape. He hadn’t disobeyed, though. If Alcor had ordered him to fight instead of protect, he would have. But he hadn’t needed to do any protecting. Instead, he’d just stood there and let the battler escape, leaving his king looking like a coward.

  “Your Majesty?”

  Alcor turned, gasping for breath and far too hot in his ermine cape. His son was dead, turned to ash by a battler he should have controlled. He would have killed those priests if they weren’t already dead. How had that slip of a peasant girl got free? How had she been armed? Now she had the battler. He just hoped the thing killed her.

  Jasar Doliard stood behind him, dressed resplendently in a black suit with white lace at the collar and wrists. The dandy had actually found time to change in the face of all this. Alcor felt rage, but Jasar was a major controlling force on the council. The other council members stood behind him, waiting nervously for his favor. In the corner, Leon Petrule stood quietly, his arms crossed.

&
nbsp; The battlers of the two men waited outside. Only Thrall was allowed in these inner chambers, just as only Thrall was permitted to look human. Alcor stomped to his chair and sat down, leaving the others standing. Leon seemed as though he could wait all day, but Jasar looked irritated—and felt such irritation was safe, Alcor realized angrily. Jasar thought his battler would be able to protect him. He had no idea how fast Thrall could move, though. If the king wanted, Jasar would be dead before Mace even got into the room.

  Somewhat mollified, the king gestured at the other chairs around the table, none of them as ornate as his own. Thrall took a place at his shoulder, staring at the assembled men without blinking. All of them sat, except for Leon, who remained in the corner.

  “You know what happened,” the king growled, leaning on the wood. “The crown prince is dead and a battler is loose.” He was still furious. He hadn’t loved his son. The boy was too weak for that, but he was the only son he’d been able to get. His daughters couldn’t wear the crown when he died, and he wasn’t as young as he used to be. He’d never admit it to these fools, but he hadn’t been able to get it up for years. He’d have to find someone suitable to wed his eldest daughter, and from the smirk on Jasar’s face, it was clear who he thought the best candidate was.

  The remaining men weren’t quite so obvious in their ambitions. “We grieve for your loss, Your Majesty,” the oldest said, bowing his head, as did the others. Even Leon did, his face showing a regret Alcor thought might actually be genuine. Born without any land or titles, he wasn’t a member of the council and didn’t owe his authority to politics, but instead to a ruthlessness Alcor had recognized in him years before. It had tempered over the years into a calm efficiency that the king still appreciated whenever he needed to get things done.

  “Save it,” he snapped. “There’ll be time for that later. The succession is in doubt. I want to make it clear”—he paused to stab a finger on the table—“that I will decide who is to succeed me. I don’t want any suggestions. If anyone makes one, I will give him to Thrall.” This was a blatant threat. The men of the council stared uncertainly at the battler, even Jasar, and Alcor leaned back, pleased. “For now, I just want to know what happened.”