Sanctuary ee-1

by Paul B. Thompson

  A reward was considered. The Khurs were fond of elven steel, and the right price might buy more information. But the Speaker said such an offer would also raise a host of dubious opportunists. Hytanthas proclaimed his readiness to return to the city, and this Gilthas readily approved. The captain’s persona as a human desperado might yet yield additional important leads.

  “Find this benefactor, Captain Ambrodel, and bring him before me. Whether he wants to come or not.”

  Hytanthas saluted. When he departed, Planchet followed. Taking him aside, Planchet said, “Don’t risk yourself with this blackguard, Captain. If possible, bring him in alive, but if circumstances require it, don’t hesitate to kill him. Better this agitator should die than escape, or kill you.”

  Hytanthas nodded. For all his youth, he was a veteran, having fought the Knights in the woods of Qualinesti. In his very first skirmish, the Knights had surrounded a nearby village and threatened to destroy it unless the Lioness and her companions surrendered. She would not, so the Knights slaughtered everyone in the village, from elders down to babes in arms. Two hundred thirty souls. Hytanthas never forgot his brutal initiation to war as fought by the Knights of Neraka.

  Standing in the open square outside the Speaker’s great tent, valet and warrior were about to part when a commotion came to their ears. The byways of Khurinost were busy at this hour, and both elves strained fruitlessly to see beyond those thronging the paths, but it was obvious that the roar of voices was coming from the direction of Khuri-Khan.

  “Sounds like a battle!” Hytanthas exclaimed.

  “It’s trouble all right, but not warfare.”

  Planchet borrowed a halberd from a guard standing watch outside the Speaker’s tent, then bade Hytanthas accompany him. “Come, Captain. Let’s see who makes such a noise on a hot morning. Maybe your mysterious sorcerer or the fell emissary of the Dark Order.”

  To the ignorant, Hytanthas’s companion might have seemed a weak comrade to take into danger, but Planchet was no ordinary servant. He had commanded Qualinesti forces in the final battle to escape the collapsing kingdom, and his inspired leadership enabled thousands of elves to escape the net closing around Qualinost. Given a choice when confronting danger, Hytanthas would take Planchet over anyone else in the Speaker’s entourage-save the Lioness herself of course.

  The paths through camp quickly clogged up with frightened elves, clutching bundles of goods and struggling to put distance between themselves and the city. Planchet and Hytanthas made repeated attempts to ask what was happening, but no one stopped long enough to answer. At last Planchet turned his halberd sideways, blocking the footpath from tent to tent. Like water caught behind a dam, elves filled the passage, seeking other ways out.

  “What’s going on?” Planchet shouted as he struggled against the growing mob pushing against the shaft of his weapon.

  “We were attacked in the Grand Souks!” an elf woman replied.

  “They attacked everyone, or only elves?” asked Hytanthas.

  “Only elves!”

  Planchet moved out of the way, lifting the halberd. Refugees surged past. When the mob had thinned, Planchet and Hytanthas hurried on to the city.

  The gate into Khuri-Khan was unguarded. The usual oddments of gear surrounding it-cloth sunshades for the soldiers, stools, and skins of wine and water hanging from posts-all had been knocked down and trampled. The gate itself stood open. A few steps inside they found a dead man, a Khurish guard. He’d been stabbed in the back.

  The Lesser Souk had been sacked. Dozens of soukats, with their heads broken or worse, lay in the wreckage of their booths. Here and there, women and children tugged at the broken structures of cloth and lath, trying to find a lost husband or father, or to salvage the family inventory. Many of the beleaguered merchants stared with open hostility at Planchet as the two elves walked past. Hytanthas was still in his scruffy human disguise.

  Whatever had happened was over in the Fabazz. Sounds of conflict echoed down the winding streets, growing fainter and farther away. The two elves had just decided to give up their search and return to Khurinost when a troop of the Khan’s soldiers burst from a side street. Their articulated coats of plate armor and spiked helmets gave them the look of exotic insects, swarming from a hidden nest.

  One of the Khurs spoke, pointing a finger at the ostensible human and his elf companion. The rest of the foot soldiers turned as one to stare at them.

  “Not good,” Planchet muttered, edging away. “I think I hear the Speaker calling.”

  Hytanthas agreed. They backed away, never taking their eyes off the soldiers. The Khurish officer, recognizable by the bronze sunburst on his helmet, shouted at them to stop.

  “What language is that?” Planchet said, still sidling away.

  “Can’t understand a word he’s saying.”

  The officer cut the air with his hand. Plates jangling, his soldiers ran at the elves. They trampled the already broken stalls, drawing protesting wails from the soukats and their kin.

  “How many are there, do you reckon?” Hytanthas asked.

  “Forty, fifty.”

  “No shame running from odds like that.”

  “None at all,” Planchet said and dropped his borrowed halberd.

  The two belted back the way they’d come, the shortest route to Khurinost. It would have been easy enough for two elves to outdistance a pack of burdened humans, but when Planchet and Hytanthas reached the street above the city gate they found that the portal was no longer abandoned. Worse, the iron portcullises were down, and the timber gates shut and barred.

  The sounds of martial pursuit were growing closer. There was no time to bluff their way past the guards. Planchet, who knew Khuri-Khan best because of his frequent trips to buy supplies for the Speaker’s household, led Hytanthas away from the gate to Har-Kufti Street, the paved lane that encircled the city just inside the wall.

  “Where are we going?” asked Hytanthas.

  Planchet panted, “Temple Walk. We might find sanctuary in the Temple of Elir-Sana!”

  The captain had no better idea, so they turned off Har-Kufti onto a narrow lane that led to the center of the city.

  They might have evaded the soldiers, laboring under the twin handicaps of desert heat and bulky armor, but street urchins and doorway idlers obligingly shouted directions to the troops. Hytanthas cursed them in broken but effective Khurish.

  The street suddenly ended on a square lined with ruined houses, destruction wrought by Malystryx and still not repaired. it wasn’t the holy sanctuary, but at least it offered possibilities for concealment. Hytanthas tore the boards off an open doorway, and they squeezed inside. Flattened against the wall, they tried to calm their labored breathing. The ruined house bore no roof. All the palm wood beams had fallen in, and half the upper floor’s tiles and bricks had tumbled to ground level. The place stank of fire and the peculiarly rank odor of the Red Marauder’s breath.

  The Khurish troops entered the square at a walking pace. They must have known the street was a dead end, and their quarry was trapped. Quietly, they fanned out, checking every ruin. It was only a matter of time before they reached the one in which Planchet and Hytanthas were hiding.

  The Speaker’s valet searched the rubble and drew out a reasonably stout length of timber, a crude weapon to supplement the sword he wore. When he straightened, he realized he was alone. Hytanthas was gone. A tap on his shoulder caused him to look up. Hytanthas was climbing the pyramid of charred rafters toward the nonexistent roof. He gestured urgently for Planchet to follow him; the searching soldiers were only yards away.

  There was no way of knowing how much the beams had been weakened by fire. But they had no other options. Frowning mightily, feeling much too old for this sport, Planchet began to climb.

  He was little more than six feet off the floor when a Khurish soldier shoved his head in the empty window opening below.

  “Excellency!” he yelled. “Some of the boards are off the door here, but
I don’t see anyone!”

  From a distance came the reply: “Look twice, fool! Our orders are to bring any laddad before the Khan! I have no desire to explain your failure in that duty!”

  The Khur poked his head in again, looking left and right and cursing his commander with whispered eloquence. The two elves hardly dared breathe, so close was he. At last, he withdrew.

  “No, Excellency. No one here!”

  Planchet’s legs shook with the release of tension. His foot had been a scant six inches above the soldier’s helmet spike.

  The valet hauled himself up beside Hytanthas, at the top of the crumbling wall. A forest of rooftops and brass flues greeted their eyes, spreading uphill to the center of the city. The Khuri yl Nor was clearly visible to their right, the palace rising beyond the heights of Temple Walk. Gleaming in the morning sun like a pale blue beacon was the dome of the Temple of Elir-Sana.

  “Do you see it?” Hytanthas demanded. “We can reach the temple over the rooftops!”

  Planchet grunted. To him it looked like a very long way to go, the terrain more than a little uncertain. Still, as with the climb itself, they had no choice.

  The jump to the intact roof of the house next door was easy enough. Two more jumps, and they were out of the ruined district. Hytanthas would’ve discarded his thick black wig then, but Planchet cautioned against it. The captain’s human guise might come in handy.

  Wherever possible, they kept to the roof edges, creeping alongside the low parapets that rose up from the brick outer walls. Khurish roofs were made of palm fronds, plastered with mud, and wouldn’t taken much weight. Although lighter than humans, the elves didn’t want to risk breaking through.

  After traversing six houses beyond the ruined district, the fleeing pair reached the more solid roof of a four-story building. They rested in the latticework lean-to that shaded one corner. It enclosed a rooftop garden filled with kefre shrubs, cardamom plants, and foliage neither elf recognized.

  “Did you hear what the soldier said? They’re arresting all elves in the city!” Hytanthas exclaimed. “What could’ve happened?”

  “Perhaps Neraka or the minotaurs at last offered a price the Khan could not refuse.”

  “The Speaker must be told!”

  Planchet looked at his sooty, scratched hands. “If we sur vive he will be told.”

  * * * * *

  Eight streets away from the pair of elves, the priest Minok also was hiding, huddled below a darkened stairway, gulping hot, dry air. For two days the Khan’s men had been hunting him. He had escaped them originally, outside the palace, by the grace of his great god. A short distance from the Khuri yl Nor-far enough so his screams couldn’t be heard at the palace-four soldiers ran at him with swords drawn. A nomad by birth and no coward, Minok could hardly stand his ground without a weapon. Arms were forbidden to priests, and he strictly adhered to the precepts of his order. So he fled.

  Unfortunately, the wily guards split up, with two circling wide through back alleys to cut him off. Minok had no chance to gain the safety of his temple. His heart sank when he saw the glint of naked iron blades coming up on either side. He ducked down a familiar side street and ran for the front door of a large house at the rear of the square.

  Then Torghan interceded. before Minok reached the house, a powerful hand grabbed him by the back of his robe. Lifting him completely from his feet, it hauled him into a darkened outbuilding. He found himself thrust under a dusty brick staircase with nary a word spoken. He waited, sweating and shaking with fear, while soldiers tramped up and down the street outside, searching for him.

  A skylight opened. The light that streamed down revealed Minok’s hiding place to be larger than he’d realized, and it illuminated a polished table at which sat Lord Hengriff. The servant who had opened the skylight retreated to the shadows.

  “Come out,” said Hengriff. In the stillness his voice boomed like a drum, and Minok flinched.

  Minok emerged, stood stiffly, and tried to brush the dust of the streets from his priestly robe.

  “Thank you,” he said gravely. “I was sure I was done for out there.”

  “You’re not done until I’m through with you. I’ve too much invested in you to let the Khan kill you out of pique.”

  Hengriff did not ask the priest to sit down. Papers and open scrolls covered the tabletop. A fresh sheet of foolscap lay under Hengriff’s hand, with lines of black script neatly printed down half the page. Unlike most nomads, Minok could read, but Hengriff’s writing made little sense to him. It was some sort of cipher, written for his superiors, no doubt.

  “The attack today went well,” Minok opined.

  Hengriff’s black eyes narrowed. “It did not. I told you to seek out elves, not the soukats of the Fabazz. No one in Khuri-Khan will blame the elves for what happened today. They know your nomads are responsible!”

  Minok spread his hands. “My people are poor wanderers of the desert. When they saw the riches of the Lesser Souk spread before them, they lost their heads.”

  “You’ll lose yours if you bungle again!”

  Minok promised he would not fail a second time.

  “Too late for that,” Hengriff reminded him dryly. “Your assassins also failed to slay the Lioness outside the Temple of Elir-Sana.”

  Cautiously, Minok said, “Permit me to ask, Excellency, why you don’t kill these laddad yourself. Why do you need the Sons of the Crimson Vulture to shed blood for you?”

  “I’m trying to school a nation.” Minok’s look indicated he did not understand, so Hengriff added, “All your people, not just the followers of Torghan, need to learn how to deal with elves. If I kill them, it’s foreign intervention. If Khurs kill them, it’s a patriotic act.”

  Minok bowed. “You are most wise, Excellency.” A sly expression crossed his narrow face. “It also discomfits the Khan, does it not?”

  Hengriff made a fist. “There are lessons he must learn too.”

  He rang a small brass bell, summoning the servant who waited just outside the shaft of sunlight. A few words to the servant and the fellow scurried away, returning moments later with two large men. Hengriff gave orders that the men, two of his personal bodyguards, escort Minok back to the Temple of Torghan. He warned the priest not to show his face for a while, to give Sahim-Khan time to forget he’d sought Minok’s death.

  Minok did not thank him, only turned, head high, and started out. He and his protectors had gone only a few steps, when be staggered suddenly and clapped his hands over his ears.

  “That ringing!” he cried. “Mercy, do you hear a great bell?”

  The only bell in sight was the small brass instrument on Hengriff’s table. But it sat silent. Neither Hengriff nor his bodyguards heard anything, as they stared in surprise at the priest of Torghan. Minok was in obvious pain.

  “Something is being summoned! Something great and terrible!”

  Minok’s eyes rolled back in his head, his knees folded, and he dropped to the floor, unconscious. A thin stream of blood trickled from each ear.

  Hengriff gestured at his men. The priest was not dead, but could not be revived. They covered him with a cloth to conceal him, and departed, carrying him back to his temple.

  The Knight stared after them with a frown on his face.

  Although he’d heard and felt nothing, he could not dismiss the sensations of an initiated priest. He made careful note of what Minok said, and when he said it, appending this to his next dispatch to the Order.

  The report would soon be on its way to Jelek. Before the War of Souls, the Order’s leader, Morham Targonne, had moved the knighthood’s headquarters from Neraka to Jelek, some thirty miles northwest. Hengriff, himself from Neraka, had thought the move a singularly stupid one. Jelek was nothing more than a squalid little backwater, and the only reason Targonne had chosen it was because it carried the dubious (to Hengriff’s mind) distinction of having birthed him.

  Lord of the Night Targonne had been dead five years now, and the Ord
er had been weakened by the events of the War of Souls: a great defeat at the Battle of Sanction and the disappearance of Targonne’s successor, Mina, the self-proclaimed prophet of the One God. The Order’s current leader, Lord Baltasar Rennold, was determined to restore its honor and sense of holy purpose. Rennold was nothing like Targonne, who had been a distinctly dishonorable man with the soul of a bookkeeper, yet Hengriff was uncertain what Rennold would make of this latest news. Rennold did not much care for him, holding against Hengriff the excesses and failures of his superiors, Lord Liveskill and Vytrad Redlance.

  The Lord of the Night had set Hengriff three goals-the annexation of Khur, the final destruction of elven power, and the seizure of any remaining elven treasure. If he wanted these goals accomplished, he’d best heed every word in Hengriff’s report.

  * * * * *

  The flat desert below the Pillars of Heaven rang with the clashing of swords and the pounding of many hooves. Dust swirled around maneuvering companies of riders. Over all, the sun shone down from a perfectly cloudless sky.

  The enemy had fallen upon the elves just after dawn, before all the Lioness’s warriors were in the saddle. A hundred nomads appeared out of the south, shouting tribal war cries and brandishing swords. The elves who were mounted rode straight at the oncoming horde, holding them off while their comrades readied themselves for battle. The Lioness led that first small force against fearful odds.

  The nomads certainly were brave and bloodthirsty, but they had no formal training in arms. Once their initial surprise rush was spent, they found themselves at a severe disadvantage. They lacked any protective armor and most bore only a single weapon, a straight sword without a crossguard. Nomad archers used a short bow of cow horn and wicker laminated together. Deadly at short range, its effectiveness fell off sharply with distance. At two hundred yards-where elf bows were commonly used-nomad arrows merely bounced off elven armor. The iron-headed Silvanesti arrows went right through a nomad’s chest at that range.

  The Lioness organized her band into three sections: two hundred, two hundred, and one hundred riders. One of the companies of two hundred, armed with swords, held off fierce rushes by the nomads while the group of one hundred emptied Khurish saddles with precisely aimed arrows. The remaining two hundred riders circled northward, trying to surround the enemy, but the nomads would not be caught. They regrouped and charged at any vulnerable point that they saw. The desert around the tribesmen was littered with the fallen. Many were elves, but mixed in with them were the bodies of desert dwellers and their ponies.