I can’t go up, can’t go down, can’t go back—I’m trapped, trapped in here with that obscenity—
No. Stop it.
Peri took a deep breath, choking off her sobs. She swallowed hard and reached under her robe, clenching her hand around the comforting solidity of her sword hilt. Gradually her shaking stopped.
Panic kills more warriors than the deadliest foe. The first priority is surviving the next minute. Second is surviving the next hour. Third—
Peri pushed herself to her knees, her hand still clasping her sword.
Never mind third, she thought grimly. If I can get out of this hellhole and die in the clean open air, that’s good enough for me.
Then a hand clasped her shoulder, and Peri’s heart stopped.
“Perian,” Atheris whispered gently. “Come away from here.”
Almost numb, Peri let him help her to her feet. She followed him back down the hall, but they did not go far; almost immediately he ducked into one of the small side passages she’d seen, listening at doors until one apparently suited him. He opened it, glanced in, and then pushed Peri inside, following her and closing the door after him.
The room was obviously somebody’s quarters, judging from the pallet, chamber pot, candle, pitcher, and washbasin that were its only furnishings. A little daylight filtered in through a narrow slit in the outside wall that apparently served as ventilation as well. When Peri’s eyes adjusted, she turned back to Atheris, to find him gazing at her.
“I am sorry,” he said, very softly, “that you had to see that. You should have stayed with me.”
“Stayed with you?” she said disbelievingly. “You think that—that obscenity was any better?” Then the meaning of his words penetrated and her jaw dropped in shock. “You mean you—you knew? You knew what was going on here?” The amazing gratitude Irra and Minyat had showed, and the young girl—the old woman’s words—
Atheris dropped his eyes.
“I knew,” he said, very softly. “But, Peri, you do not understand—”
“You’re right, I don’t,” she said slowly. All the emotion, the horror, the outrage, drained out of her, leaving her oddly numb. She gazed at Atheris and, for the first time in days, saw a Sarkond, a stranger. “I don’t understand. And I don’t want to. Just get me out of this place, Atheris. Get me out right now.”
Atheris gazed at her oddly for a long moment, then nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I know the way we must go.”
Peri followed him quietly back out to the upper hall, but to her dismay he led her back down to the main hallway leading to the central chamber. When he turned back toward that gruesome place, Peri balked, pulling him over against the wall.
“Not in there,” she whispered as loudly as she dared, given the traffic of pilgrims still passing them in the hall. “I can’t go back in there.”
“No,” Atheris murmured. “We are taking a different path. This temple is laid out not unlike the one where I served.”
He led her a little farther down the hall, then pulled her into a little nook Peri had not noticed on her first passage through; it was actually concealed quite cleverly, taking advantage of an angle in the stone of the wall and the shadows between the torches. There was barely enough light for her to see an inset stone tablet which Atheris touched in three places, but she had no difficulty in seeing the stone door which swung silently open in front of him.
Atheris all but dragged her into an almost unlit corridor, so narrow that her shoulders brushed the stone on either side of her. Peri followed eagerly; if Atheris knew the layout of this temple this well, surely he’d know the safest escape route.
This corridor twisted more circuitously than the main hall, and like the upper hall, there were numerous doors and other corridors branching off from it. Bright Ones, I’m in the middle of a fire-ant nest, she thought. Winding around and around deeper and deeper and just waiting to get stung.
The silence was positively eerie—nothing but the scrape of their boots on stone, the occasional whisper of the infrequent torches, the slow drip of water—
It IS awfully damp in here. We must be getting close to the springhead. Yes, I can feel it. Bright Ones, it goes deep!
To Peri’s consternation, they, too, seemed to be going deeper, lower; surely they must be well belowground by now. But likely that was necessary to avoid the central chamber and other populated areas; Peri was surprised and relieved that so far, aside from the pilgrims in the main corridor, they’d passed no one at all, so Atheris must know what he was doing. Still, it seemed as though they’d been walking far too long; surely they should have crossed even this huge temple by now.
“How much farther?” she murmured.
“Not much farther, I should think,” Atheris said, very quietly, and something in his voice sent a sudden chill through her blood.
She stopped in her tracks.
“What’s going on?” she asked warily, straining her eyes in the darkness, wishing she could see his expression. “What are you—”
A scraping sound behind her, stealthy, ever so faint, but to Peri’s trained ears it might as well have been an explosion. She whirled, reaching instinctively for the hilt of her sword—
No, never mind that, no room, too narrow—
—and she drew both her fighting daggers instead, her mind instinctively flitting through the dagger qivashim, eliminating some because of the darkness, some because of the close quarters, some because—
Then the attack came, blindingly fast; even with Peri’s razor-sharp reflexes she barely had time to counter. The very speed and skill of the strike which she deflected—not a blade, some kind of sap—identified her attacker as one of the Bone Hunters even before she saw the gruesome finger bone necklace around the tall masked figure’s neck. She barely registered that fact, however, and a lightning stab of fear and despair—her dagger qivashim, especially defensive, weren’t nearly as well trained as her sword—but her opponent gave her no time to ponder on these things. Apparently the darkness and narrow quarters did not disadvantage Peri’s attacker as much as they did Peri herself; despite the best she could do, one of her knives dropped from numb fingers as the sap struck her arm just below the elbow.
Hurriedly Peri danced back—hadn’t she seen an intersection of corridors just ahead? Yes! Just a little—and then she froze, her heart skipping a beat, as a second Bone Hunter stepped silently forward in the adjoining corridor. And this one was not worried about capture—he had a short sword in one hand, and as he stepped forward he drew a throwing knife with the other.
“No,” Atheris said in the darkness behind her, very quietly. “No. Not that.”
Then his hand was strong and warm on her shoulder, startling Peri so that she nearly rounded on him; but between that breath and the next, all the strength flowed out of her body like water, and she slumped quietly, limply to the damp stone—
And into darkness.
Chapter Seven
For the nineteenth time Peri paced off the dimensions of her cell—four paces long, three paces wide—and for the nineteenth time she had to sit down weakly afterward, her head spinning, on the mound of moldy-smelling straw that was apparently meant to serve as her bed. For the nineteenth time, while she rested she meticulously cataloged her cell—pile of straw, tiny iron-barred window, small iron-grated opening in the floor over a stinking waste pit, iron manacles and a door with very, very sturdy lock. Nothing more.
Oh, there was Atheris, of course, in the adjoining cell, but Peri had almost forgotten him. That was easy to do; in all the time since she’d awakened to find a strange mage chanting over her, he had only sat quietly in the corner of his cell, doing nothing, saying nothing.
Which was just fine, for there was nothing in the world that he could possibly say that Peri wanted to hear. Peri glanced at her boot, at the empty sheath where her grace-blade had fit ever since she was old enough to wear one. The hilt had stretched her boot ever so slightly there. It had always
made a rather comforting pressure against her calf, a strangely reassuring presence, reminding her that in the end, her life—or at least her death—was always her own.
But not now.
If I am captured by Sarkonds, her mind insisted, it is my duty to die. She’d assessed the possibilities; she could try to crush her skull against the stones of wall or floor, bite open the veins in her wrists. She could tear her clothes into strips, make a rope; if she could somehow climb up to the tiny barred window and tie it off, she could possibly hang herself.
And she could do none of these things.
She could consider the possibilities academically, speculate on the odds of success of each, but that was all. She’d tried biting her wrist; her jaws had refused to obey her even before her teeth pressed hard enough to cause pain. Peri had guessed, even before she’d tried, that the mage chanting over her had laid a geas on her. It didn’t matter, not really; in all practicality, she was dead already.
Captured by Sarkonds. Nothing to a Bregond was dreaded more, not starvation or pestilence or one of the horrible grass fires that occasionally swept the plains. Death in all its forms was, to Bregonds, an unloved but at least familiar predator. It killed, painlessly or not, swiftly or not, predictably or randomly, but it didn’t steal away the honor of those it took.
But a Bregond captured by her enemies could expect no honor. She could be raped, tortured, bespelled, forced by pain or humiliation or magic to betray her people, her country. And even if—when—death finally granted her release, those who loved her would continue to be tortured by imagination, by dread, by waiting and wondering. No. Better to be spared all that, to spare her loved ones that pain. Thus a quick, clean death before capture became every Bregond’s right, and every Bregond’s duty.
Peri had carried her grace-blade since she was five years old; the first blade work she’d ever been taught was how to use it—on herself, on a fallen companion who could not be saved—the places where edge or point might be applied to bring the quickest, most merciful ending. She’d practiced with blunted blades again and again and again until the moves were swift, unerring, instinctive. She knew that if the time came, she was prepared to give grace, either to herself or another in need.
But there was no one to give her grace and no way to give it to herself. She was captive, dishonored, at the mercy of her enemies.
And, no matter what happened, forever dead to every Bregond.
Against her will, a little despairing sound, not quite a sob, forced its way past her lips. She felt tears on her cheeks and dashed them away disgustedly. All the tears in the world couldn’t help her now.
“Perian?”
Involuntarily Peri looked up. Atheris had moved at last; he was standing at the bars looking at her.
“After all that has happened,” he said, very softly, “I thought nothing could make you weep.”
Peri clenched her teeth.
“Enjoy it,” she said shortly. “You’ll never see it again.” Then a thought occurred to her. “What are you doing locked up here, anyway? I figured selling me to them bought you your life at least.”
Atheris was silent for a long moment.
“I did not sell you to them,” he said at last, very slowly. “And I would not, not for my life, nor even my soul.”
Peri gave a short bark of bitter laughter. “If you think you can say anything to make me believe you didn’t betray me, you’re deluded,” she said, shaking her head. “The only amazing thing about it is that I was actually surprised. Surprised that a Sarkond turned on me! Mahdha scour me with grit, it wasn’t stupid enough to go saving a Sarkond’s life or sleep with him; I had to go and trust one.”
“I did betray you,” Atheris said quietly. “I do not deny it. But not to anyone in this temple or this land, Perian, nor any human being. Only to—to your destiny, if you will.”
“Destiny!” Peri said sarcastically. “You can take your destiny, Atheris, and you can—”
“He’s right, you know.”
Peri started violently at the voice. She squinted into the shadows and saw nothing, but at last a hooded, cloaked figure flanked by two guards walked down the aisle between the rows of cells, pausing in front of hers. Slender hands raised to push back the hood, and Peri swallowed hard.
Without her gold paint, the Whore of Eregis might have been any Bregondish woman who had spent too much time indoors, so that her skin had faded to a pale tan. Her long black hair hung loose, not confined in a Bregondish woman’s thirty-nine braids of adulthood, giving her, to Peri, an oddly childlike appearance despite a sense of worldliness and age that hung about her, felt rather than seen. Her wide brown-black eyes, too, held a strange sort of innocence. Peri remembered the woman bathing so ecstatically in the blood of the sacrifices, and shuddered.
Not innocence, she realized. Madness.
“Bring me a chair,” the woman murmured to one of the guards. “Then leave us.”
The guards obeyed silently. Peri stayed where she was, keeping any expression of interest off her face. Lunatics could sometimes be manipulated. Even if she couldn’t manage to trick the woman into letting her out of her cell, perhaps Peri could learn something useful from her.
“He’s right,” the woman repeated, this time in Bregondish. “He didn’t sell you to us—not in any direct sense, at least. It was destiny alone that delivered you to us, Perian, daughter of High Lord Randon and High Lady Kayli of Agrond, Heir-to-be of Bregond.”
Atheris started, his eyes wide, and the Whore laughed.
“Poor sheltered young heretic. You never knew? But how could our Harbinger, born of two worlds and destined to shake the very pillars of a third, be any other than Kayli’s spawn?”
Peri frowned, as much at the Whore’s words as at Atheris’s reaction. Was it her imagination, or did the Whore’s voice falter ever so slightly when speaking her mother’s name?
“You knew my mother?” she asked slowly.
“For a time.” The Whore’s eyes narrowed slightly. “It’s not a time I remember with joy.”
Peri rose from her rough seat, walked as close to the Whore as the bars would permit.
“What did my mother ever do to harm you?” she said slowly.
“Why, nothing, nothing at all, young Harbinger,” the Whore purred, raising one delicately arched eyebrow. “Quite the contrary. The proud Lady Kayli is the only Bregond I remember with kindness—nay, sympathy. Perhaps none but she could ever understand the horror of finding you have betrayed all you held dear—not by treason, but by loyalty. Ah, you frown, my innocent young Perian. Your mother never took you into her confidence, then. I’m not surprised. No matter. You needn’t understand. You have already played your part to perfection. And—”
“Golden One.” A guard stood in the shadows. “The Bonemarch summon you.”
The Whore sighed. “The Bonemarch, always the Bonemarch. Very well.” She turned back to Peri, and Peri shivered again under the gaze of those terrible, innocent eyes. “I will come back soon, young Perian. We have much to discuss, you and I, and I fear our time together is short.”
She turned away, but before she could go, Atheris dashed to the door to his cell, gripping the bars tightly.
“Wait!” he cried out. “Tell me one thing, only one thing. My cousin Amis—her fate—”
The Whore turned, smiling.
“Ah, your fellow heretic, the young healer. Yes, the Bone Hunters brought her here. I had no dealing with her myself.” She shrugged. “It’s my understanding she didn’t last long under questioning. Be comforted. Her execution would have been far less pleasant. And much slower, of course. Congratulations, my handsome young heretic. Now you’ve led two women to their doom—and neither at any profit to yourself.”
Then she was gone, and Peri stood where she was, gripping the bars of her prison. She had the odd and discomfiting feeling that she should have understood what had just happened, the same sort of just-missed-it feeling of catching the last two sentences of
a crucially important conversation.
A hollow groan from Atheris drew her attention. The Sarkond had retreated to the farthest corner of his cell and sat there, knees folded up, his hands over his face. Peri took a deep breath, cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry about Amis,” she said shortly.
After a moment Atheris raised his head.
“Why?” he asked, his voice leaden. “Why did you not tell me who you were?”
Peri laughed bitterly.
“What, you think I wanted it known that the daughter of the High Lord and Lady of Agrond was stranded and all but helpless in Sarkond? The best protection I had was that nobody did know. Anyway,” she added a little self-consciously, “it didn’t make any practical difference. I’m not the Heir to Agrond or, no matter what your priestess said, to Bregond either yet. I’m just a misfit second daughter, good enough to marry off to a horse-clan lord until the gods cursed me with the wrong kind of magic at the wrong time.”
“It does matter,” Atheris said, very softly. “You have no idea how it matters.”
“I don’t see how,” Peri said, shrugging.
“No, you do not.” Atheris sighed. “But I do. Peri, if I had known—”
“If you’d known, then what?” she said sourly. “You’d have brought me to them that much sooner, or just killed me yourself?”
“No! I would—would not—” Atheris groaned again, lowering his face back into his hands. “Eregis forgive me, I do not know what I could have done.”
Something in his tone caught Peri’s attention, and she walked back to the bars dividing their cells.
“What?” she said. “What difference does it make? Why should I be any more use alive than dead? Surely nobody thinks they can get a ransom for me. Everybody knows Bregonds better than that. Even my father and mother in Agrond wouldn’t—”
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