Fortune's Blight
Page 33
Isa turned her wrist, preparing to bash him in the head and knock him out, but she hesitated. Someone was bound to stumble across him sooner or later, and he could tell them exactly where she was going. She had made it here to Ravindal and she would not be stopped by a couple of common soldiers. She changed her grip. She knew what Lahlil would do. She knew what Frea would have done.
Then the guard flailed about and punched her in the chest, knocking her to the ground. She lost her breath for a moment but never loosened her grip on Blood’s Pride. The soldier got to his knee and reached for his sword, but Isa rammed her sword straight through his armor and into his heart before he could draw. He gave one great wheezing gasp as she yanked out her blade and she swayed backward to avoid the blood as his face smashed into the stone.
Southwest tower.
She sheathed her sword and made her way along the dim servants’ hallway, running her hand along the wall the way she remembered Daryan doing in the Shadar. The rough stone under her fingers made her feel close to him, and she could picture him running in front of her, turning back to urge her on when the numbness in her leg made her stumble, or dizziness sent her crashing into the wall.
Around the next corner was a staircase and she began to climb, passing through a landing with corridors opening out in three different directions, and then another with a door she had no intention of opening. The next landing had an iron grate at one end with nothing but blackness on the other side.
Either the stairs were getting steeper and Blood’s Pride was getting heavier, or her strength was failing. At the next landing, she sat down with her back against the corner to rest for a moment. A slit in the wall next to her let in thin gray light, and she could see her breath misting. She just needed a chance to recover, and then she would keep going.
A door in the opposite wall swung open and a man in a brown shirt with a pail dangling from his hand stopped on the threshold. Isa couldn’t move. With her shirt torn and her cloak gone, the naked stump of her arm hung from her shoulder like something obscene. The man dropped the pail, splashing the water down the stairs as the bucket spun around right to the edge of the top step. The servant backed out through the doorway from which he’d come and very quietly shut the door.
As soon as she heard the latch click into place, Isa pushed herself up and staggered up the steps. She passed no more landings, and the glimpses she had through the slits showed Ravindal dropping further and further beneath her. She had to grab hold of her trousers to pull her wounded leg up that last flight, but she soldiered on in the faith that the wooden door rattling in the wind above her would be the gateway to her salvation.
The wind pushed the door toward her the moment she lifted the bar and it banged against the opposite wall, echoing down, floor after floor. She had to put her head down to fight against the gale, and once outside the snow whipped against her exposed skin and the cold brought tears to her eyes. Triffons soared in the sky around, above and below her, but their focus remained on what was happening on the green-glass terrace down below. She wanted desperately to know if her brother was all right, but she couldn’t allow anything to divert her attention from the steady stream of black smoke, bent sideways by the wind, coming from the chimney of the small structure ahead of her.
The snow crunched under her boots as she made her way across to the building, leaving a crooked trail of blue blood behind her. She leaned her shoulder against the wall when she reached it: she could feel the shadowy presence of a Norlander on the other side: Ani’s guard? Then alarm tightened her throat as she realized she had no way through the door: there was no keyhole, which meant it had to be barred on the inside. Kicking it down was not an option, not with her leg barely able to support her weight, and hacking it open would take too long. She could have used a log from the woodpile to ram it, if only she’d had two hands to hold it.
She put her back against the wall to hide from the specter of defeat now circling toward her like a triffon’s haggard ghost. There had to be a way in. What would Lahlil do? she asked herself bitterly. Lahlil wouldn’t do anything. The door would just open because she wanted it that way.
And then the door swung open all by itself.
A thrill went up Isa’s spine.
The door wobbled when it encountered a little resistance from the snow and stopped when the gap was about a hand-span wide, but she could see someone sitting on a bed at the far side of the room with his back up against the wall. After a second, longer look, she pushed the door open and went in.
The Norlander was dressed like a guard, and completely indifferent to the world around him. His silver-blue eyes were cloudy and dull, and his presence had an unsettling indistinctness, as if he were wrapped in layers of something thick and soft, like the Shadari moths in their dust-colored cocoons. When Isa probed a little deeper, she found a hole dropping straight down into nothingness. She backed away from his mind before she slipped over the edge.
There was a second door in the opposite wall, but the cleats where the bar should have been stood empty. She limped across with Blood’s Pride still in her hand and pushed it open. Heat poured out like a furnace, and everything inside jumped and shifted in the light of a blazing fire. She listed against the doorframe, the smoke stinging her eyes.
“Ani?” she called out in her throaty rasp.
“Here.” A bundle of fur in the corner moved and a pair of bright, dark eyes looked out at her from an impossibly lined face. Then the old woman smiled, and even more wrinkles sprang up at the corners of her eyes. “Interesting. Though just as I expected.”
Isa tried to step into the room, but her right leg folded and she dived onto the floor face-first, crushing her chest and scraping her chin along the ground when she failed to catch herself. The warmed stone beneath her whirled and dipped until she thought it would fling her off into space, like those games of snap-the-reins she had always lost to Eofar and Frea when they were children.
“You knew I was coming?” she asked, pushing herself up until she was no longer sprawling on the floor. Ani rose from her stool and came toward her, but Isa still couldn’t see much of the old Shadari except for the wrinkled face and long white hair. She didn’t understand how anyone could wear so much fur in a room this hot.
“The elixir,” said Ani, standing over her. She spoke slowly, and her low voice had a strangely sibilant quality, like the sound of the desert sands shifting in the wind. “You know about that, yes?”
“That’s why I came—that, but mostly to bring you back to the Shadar.” A movement from the bed in the opposite corner of the room caught Isa’s eye, but she saw nothing there except more fur blankets. “Are you ready? Can you come? I think they’re following me—”
The moment Isa tried to stand, all of her hopes toppled back down again like a tower of blocks. She managed to stifle her scream, but she couldn’t stop herself from falling to the floor. Pain gripped her leg like a fiery ring, answered by a throbbing spasm from her missing arm.
“I have to close this cut,” she told Ani, pulling herself over to the fire on her knuckles so she could bring Blood’s Pride with her. The old woman watched her without comment or any indication of anxiety; Isa thought perhaps she didn’t understand how much danger they were in.
She heated the blade, and the smell of hot metal helped clear the mist from her head.
She forced herself to wait until the blade changed color, and when the metal began to glow white-hot, she drew it out and pressed it down hard against the bloody cut. The moment the blade touched her flesh, the memory of her brother Eofar slicing through her arm that horrible day in the temple grabbed her in its steel talons and squeezed the breath out of her. She dropped Blood’s Pride onto the hearth and rolled onto her side to get one of her pills out of her pouch.
“Is this what you want?” asked Ani, kneeling beside her with the deliberate care of the elderly and untying the pouch for her with small, nimble hands. Isa reached out as Ani pulled out one of the few remaining green balls, but instead of handing it over to her, she brought the pill close to her own face and inhaled its scent. “Interesting,” she said, again drawing out the sibilance. “It’s bitter, yes? It makes your tongue and the inside of your mouth a little numb? Where did you get it?”
“From the Nomas. Can I—?”
Just as she stretched out her hand to take it, Ani crushed the pill between her thumb and forefinger and caught the crumbs in the palm of her opposite hand.
“No!” cried Isa, sliding forward. “Don’t, please! I don’t have many left.”
“Calm yourself.” Ani poked at the bits in her hand, smearing a few against her papery palm. “They’ve tricked you. This is mostly marly grass. Worthless.”
“No. That can’t be,” said Isa, shaking uncontrollably now. “I’ve been taking them for months. They help with the pain.”
“Only because you think they do.”
“They wouldn’t trick me.” Isa wrapped her arm around her chest and held on to her stump. “Mairi wouldn’t do something like that. She must have made a mistake.”
“You have a lot to learn about the Nomas. I’ll correct that.” Ani scattered the crumbs on the floor, then stood up with a lurch and a soft groan. She picked up a little stoppered glass bottle from the table and set it down on the floor next to Isa. “This will be of much more help.”
“What is it?” Isa looked at the bottle, noticing how similar it was to the one that had contained Lahlil’s elixir.
“Something you’ll need, if you’re going to be useful to me,” said Ani. When Isa still hesitated, she added, “You said they’re coming for you, yes? Then take a sip.”
Isa picked up the bottle and took out the stopper with her teeth. The stuff inside smelled sweet and a little too pungent, like spoiled fruit. She was just about to drink the liquid when she saw movement from the bed again, and this time she was quick enough to see a head and a pair of small hands whisk back under the blankets.
“Dramash? Is that you?”
He poked his head out again and she expected one of his chirrupy greetings, but he said nothing. Even the firelight couldn’t disguise his pallor, and the way he looked out at her from under his hooded brow worried her. If Dramash was imprisoned here and her brother was fighting the emperor, then where was Rho?
“Isa,” said Ani, drawing her name out like the wind through a field of dry grass.
She turned her attention back to the bottle in her hand. The taste of the few drops she poured on her tongue reminded her of the sticky candied fruits her brother had sometimes bought for her when she was small. She bowed her head and waited for something to happen.
“That’s my girl,” Ani said, as everything within Isa’s sight grew smaller and faded to black before she slumped peacefully to the floor. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Chapter 35
This time Lahlil could see when the stride was about to end. Just as the light began to return, the world gave a shuddering heave and tilted like a boat about to go over a waterfall. She pitched onto her knees onto a few inches of kicked-up snow and looked up into at the same sky she had been watching from the deck of the Argent just a moment ago. Eotan Castle thrust up through the snow on her left; on her right, the headland with its flaming beacon wrapped around the cliff until it met the city walls. Closer to the ground, a press of heavily armed soldiers blocked her view, but no one had noticed her abrupt arrival except for one saddled and very nervous triffon, who reared and ripped its bridle out of the hand of the soldier who’d been holding it, attracting the attention of the others.
Savion’s bare feet were no match for the snow-covered rock and he slipped and fell on his back, hard. Then he looked up and saw himself surrounded by Norlander soldiers. Lahlil didn’t need any elixir to tell her what was going to happen next.
“No,” said Savion, sounding just like Fellix as he scrambled away from them before he realized they were surrounded. “No, don’t let them take me!”
Lahlil jumped to her feet and headed toward him, but he stood up and spun in a circle under the astounded stares of all those helmeted heads. She couldn’t stop him now; he’d only take her with him if she grabbed him, and she couldn’t go back, not without Trey. Savion’s eyes rolled back in his head and he disappeared.
Now she would have to find another way back after she found Trey, and dusk was already on its way. The fear that she might fail dug one sharp talon into the back of her neck.
Recognition started with someone’s finger pointing at her, then someone else’s hand reached to grasp the arm of the person next to him, and soon it was spreading through the crowd like a wave, moving from the front to the back and then spilling back toward her: a wave of hatred and desire all churning together. She only had a moment before their shock gave way to action.
No one would answer her, but she had expected that: she was watching for the involuntary movements of their eyes. Even with their helmets and hoods on, she saw enough of them look at the piles of fur and wool lying on the ground nearby to tell her what she wanted to know. One belonged to Trey, and the other to her sister. The size of the patch of blood in the snow did not indicate a life-threatening wound, and it marked out a clear trail toward the castle.
Then three soldiers came for her, all at once: two from in front of her and one from behind, not coordinated, just the ones who were quickest. But the Mongrel was ready for them, just as she had been outside Cyrrin’s surgery, and the sweet relief of handing control over to her was so great that Lahlil had to clutch the sun medallion under her shirt to remind her of Jachad and why she was here before raising her sword to face off against them.
She drew her knife with her left hand and faked a move forward, then threw her weight backward into the soldier coming at her from behind her, crashing into his shield before spinning to her left and thrusting an elbow into the side of her adversary’s head. While the man shook his head, momentarily off-balance, her left hand darted out and she stabbed deep into his shoulder; as his arm spasmed involuntarily, she wrenched his shield from him and slipped it over her own wrist, turning in time to deflect the blows of the two soldiers coming at her.
While she kept the soldier on her left at bay with her shield, she engaged the other one, but he was so frantic with battle-lust that his imperial sword twitched awkwardly and it took only one pass to get under his guard long enough to cut through his boot and into his calf: not her most decisive victory, but it brought him down.
As he fell, clutching at his companion’s tabard, Lahlil grabbed the triffon’s reins. More soldiers had shaken off their shock and broke after her, but she used sword and shield to keep them off as she leaped up onto the triffon’s back and grabbed the pommel. The fastest of the guards tried to hack at her ankle; he only managed to nick the triffon in its thick hide and the creature roared in pain and launched itself into the air, giving her no time to strap herself in. She looped her arm through the vacant harness and grabbed the pommel again, then let the shield drop from her arm onto the heads of the mob reaching out for her from below.
But there were dozens of triffons already in the air; they’d be after her before she’d even turned toward the castle. At least she had their sheer numbers to her advantage: they’d be in danger of hurting each other if they all rushed her at once, a
nd they could not shoot at her without fear of hitting their comrades. She had nothing but the stirrups and her one-armed hold on the harness to keep her from being flung out of the saddle, but she didn’t have time to worry about that. She needed to get inside the castle, but rows of iron spikes protected the tops of the towers, and all the roofs were steeply peaked to stop the snow from settling.
Her gaze fell on the wide green-glass terrace stuck on to the castle to the west of the main gates: it would have made a perfect landing spot if not for the gigantic statues blocking her access. She banked as gradually as she could to avoid a triffon coming at her and went down for a closer look. Two swordsmen were circling each other in what looked like a duel, and a line of Eotan guards were keeping back an eddying crowd of spectators. As she got closer she recognized Gannon; she’d seen him on the battlefield and over a besieged castle wall. And she realized she knew the face of his opponent even better, but the sight of her brother came as such a shock that she had to blink several times before she could believe what she was seeing. She had to admit that Eofar was fighting better than she would have thought. He was keeping his attacks sharp and fast, making the best use of his imperial sword and not foolishly trading speed for the power of a killing thrust. But Gannon would still finish him soon if she didn’t intervene.
As her triffon banked lower, she could feel her name repeated on all sides like a chant, and the commotion sparked by her arrival spread to the crowd gathered on the terrace. She felt Gannon’s attention latch on to her like the fangs of a snake, his elation dripping into her blood like venom.
Eofar had enough sense not to waste the distraction and went straight for Gannon at a run. He managed to catch the emperor a little off-balance, not enough to land the thrust but at least to cut Gannon’s forearm in the exchange that followed, earning a surprised exclamation from the onlookers.
Then, Eofar’s back foot slipped on something—the green-glass itself, maybe, or a rock hidden beneath the snow—and as he lurched backward Gannon’s heavy thrust caught him in the left shoulder. Only the fact that he was already falling backward kept the blade from passing straight through. Eofar staggered, his hand pressed to the wound and blood leaking out between his fingers.