Page 102 of Court of Talons

Gent’s rage consumes me.

My gaze switches to the high view, where my glorious Divh glares around fiercely, trying to make sense of the heaving riot of riders and soldiers at his feet. And suddenly, it’s not my thoughts that fill my mind, but those of a mind I’ve never felt so clearly before. One that I’ve touched, but never fully known.Too many riders, too many horses! I will trample them. But there in thecenter is my beating heart, my very life. I must reach her! Must make her whole.

“No,” I gasp, but Gent can’t, won’t hear me. He surges away from the battling Divhs just as a cry screeches from on high and something rushes at him from the sky.

I gape, looking up as well. Rihad’s winged scorpion is attacking! It has entered the battle.

And there, in the distance, I see something else. A wedge of horses thundering across the plain, heading straight for the far edge of the battlefield, where I know the youngest soldiers are fighting for their lives.

But these aren’t the mighty battle horses of the warrior knights and soldiers. These are fresh horses unburdened by ceremonial saddles, with riders tall and straight, hair streaming in the wind as they hold their swords high, one of them lifting a horn and sounding a clarion call that lifts above the chaos. The Savasci have also entered the battle—and they have come tofight.

I can’t see Fortiss from where I’m clinging to Darkwing. I don’t know if he’s guiding Rihad’s creature. But I wheel Darkwing around, trying to focus. The field opens up around me, and…something is wrong here, definitely wrong.

There are too many men collapsed, broken and bloody, on the ground. Silent, unmoving.

Dead.

Not just soldiers either, but warrior knights I recognize, from the Fourth and Sixth Houses, their eyes staring wide in surprise at the sky. I knew Rihad was looking to ensure his control, but this…this is carnage. What can be gained by it?

Screams of the monsters flood my mind, and I jerk my gaze up, past my own pain to focus on the far battle. Divhs litter the ground there as well. Dead, dying, their bodies becoming ephemeral in the rising heat of the marshy field as they return totheir own plane. I stare in horror, struggling to understand. The Tournament of Gold isn’t about death and dying, it’s?—

My mind shifts back to Gent’s perspective, and I see something different. Not all the Divhs are dying, at least. Those of the Eighth House and the First are rolling strong, the Second too. And the Third. Those are the ones attacking to kill, not to maim or merely overcome. Those are the ones attacking to destroy, both on the ground and in the sky. The wolf of the Second House and the bull of the Seventh are once more a team, dragging down a set of smaller Divhs I’ve not seen before in the tournament, the Divhs of lesser warrior knights, I’m certain, collapsing under the attack of the much greater first-blooded monsters. They thrash and whirl, but surprisingly, there’s no real telling who is the aggressor and who the defense, not if you don’t know what to look for…

Not if you don’t know.

All at once, I see the beauty of Rihad’s plan. There will be no survivors of this battle except those that Rihad has carefully chosen. Those warrior knights loyal to him to the end will as one decry the savage treachery of their fellows, claiming thattheywere the ones turned upon,theywere the ones assaulted. Rihad will then pledge to restore the glory of the Protectorate by creating new bands, new Divhs—all of which he’ll ultimately control. In one horrific melee, he’ll have both destroyed his greatest opponents and swung the gratitude of the masses to him.

Another cry cuts across my thoughts, and Gent turns to take the full brunt of Rihad’s monster’s attack. The scorpion’s cruel pincer-like appendages slash through the air, its wings erupting in a wild fury as it slams fully into Gent’s body.

Exactly at that moment, a new pain erupts in my side, strong enough to lift me off my saddle. It does lift me off, in fact, the broad cleaving sword of an Eighth House soldier skeweringme and wrenching me from Darkwing, who screams and surges away to avoid being trampled by the rush of three warriors who’ve borne down on me from behind.

I land hard on the dusty ground, the world around me bathed in blood. I haul myself up, finally regaining my feet, knowing that the Eighth House soldier has dismounted as well to finish me off. I stare at him, backing away, but there’s nowhere to run. A flash of metal cuts through the air, catching the bright sunlight?—

Pain rips through me. A chasm of fire stretching wide to swallow me whole.

“Talia!” The agonized, unmistakably feminine cry is distant—but I hear it. I hear it. Pride surges through my blood.

I stagger one step, then another. The ground is suddenly too close, and I fall down to meet it. Images flash before my eyes: Merritt’s joyful leap as he surged into the sky that final time. My mother’s quiet smile as she brushed my long, unruly hair. Nazar, wise and calm, his grace and wisdom so obvious now when before, I had never seen it, never imagined its harrowing truth. Fortiss’s face, half-masked in the darkness, before he knew me for what I really was. Caleb, brave and fierce.

My heart swells, and I struggle to rise, then cower as a horse veers too close to me. The full-throated cries of the Savasci grow louder, renewed as they surge nearer and another wave of attacks bursts from the roiling crowd.

But there are so many who wish to see me dead. A gauntleted fist cracks into the side of my head, another knife slash tears through what remains of my sleeve, ripping it to shreds. My thoughts spin off in new directions and I feel the surge of panic again welling up.

Gent—Gent is trying to find me, to reach my broken body. Gent who, though scraped and bloody from Rihad’s massiveDivh, is even now battling his way through the mob to protect me.

I pray to the Light he won’t make it.

I roll forward on my face, my hand stretching out to where I know my beautiful Divh will eventually come. My worry that my father might reclaim my warrior band melts away as a new, far more horrible possibility looms. Gentcan’tdie with me. And he will. The bodies of warriors surround me, their eyes dead and their Divhs dead with them. It can’t be this way for Gent, I think, as I taste copper and salt, my lips wet now, my face streaming with tears. He cannot die.

My right hand lifts to my heart, then higher still, to where the warrior’s band is clamped around my left arm. I curl my fingers around it as my Divh thunders up from the far distance, tossing men and horses aside like toys with his immense, sweeping arms.

“Gent,” I manage, though my mouth is filled with blood. The sound of the battle dims with the pounding of my heart in my ears. My hand slips on the warrior band, but I force my fingers beneath it, tugging with all my strength, the pain merely another wave of fire blackening my bones. “Gent, you cannot die.”

The scream of my Divh fills the whole world, anguish, pain, and loss crashing around me as he drops to his knees a hundred strides distant from me, his shadow blocking out the sun. At last the warrior band comes away in my hand, pulsing with a life I can no longer share with it. Relief fills me, staving off the pain for a moment more, and I put my last crystalline burst of energy into a force as strong as any command I will ever utter.

“Gent,” I whisper through chattering teeth. “I release you.”

Chapter 43