The Lashki stared with a black gaze at the space where she had been. He had left in search of Rafen directly after torturing her in the New Isles palace. When she had awoken from her stupor, she had probably thought she had won against him, that she had gotten away with it. He rose into the air and slipped into invisibility, while Asiel watched, his long face smug.
Nazt would not condemn this move of his, as the Lashki’s first trap for Rafen was already well under way. Besides, this could only lead to yet another web in which Rafen would be caught. And like Rafen, Annette could not escape the Lashki Mirah.
*
They spent two more hours on the rocks, with Rafen sleeping and Etana watching this time. Etana woke him with a touch that both startled and – strangely – thrilled him.
“Parith is near. If we run as we did yesterday, we might reach it within two days,” Etana said hopefully.
Rafen nodded, knowing they had to outrun Sirius. As he remembered the Pirate King, he discovered how much Etana had already mellowed him. His anger had become dull and quiet, his resolve lessening already. He tried to forgive himself for it.
Dawn was in the east, and the clouds in the sky were faint furrows against deep purple. Though the stars were lost in the vividness, the moons continued to gleam palely. Etana still had some roots left, and she gave Rafen a bunch. He chewed about six before feeling sick of exercising his jaw without the reward of taste. He stowed the rest in a pocket of the old coat Harlam had loaned him. Etana managed eight roots, and they passed the water pouch between themselves. Rafen continued to feel inexplicably stupid around her, as if she were someone entirely new. There was a bubbling in his chest, a sweatiness of the palms, and a susceptibility to sudden heat waves. He had never felt particularly intimate sharing a water pouch with Sherwin, but somehow it drew him closer to Etana.
He drank luxuriantly and smiled at her.
“You seem to be recovering your spirits,” Etana observed.
“I’m feeling much better now that I’m back with you,” Rafen said. “With a friend.”
Etana looked mildly amused.
The landscape changed again. After they passed over the crags, they came to a stretch of heath, framed by swaying elms. The spring wind was hot and sultry, and Rafen had never enjoyed it more. Etana whipped through the grass in snake-like form at his side, and they were always trying to outdo each other. The squeaking of prairie dogs and the twittering of sparrows filled their ears.
After the heath, a main road came into view, which they steered away from. They kept close to clumps of straggling bushes and shrubs. An occasional large cottonwood bloomed gigantically on the land, like a huge cauliflower. Curled leaves were carried on the air. The sky above was crazily blue.
Then the wind turned cold – too cool for a spring morning. While Etana kept snapping through the grass in quick coils, Rafen felt clammy. He found himself on his hands and knees, his phoenix feather flaming against his chest. He grabbed it and glanced wildly behind him.
Nothing yet. The wheel-rutted road was clear. Yet Rafen could smell the rot.
Etana was on her feet a stone’s throw away; she rushed over to him.
“It’s not – is it?” she gasped. Her face was perfectly white, and she dropped beside Rafen, grabbing his shoulders. “Is it him?”
“He’s coming from the northwest,” Rafen said hoarsely.
“We can’t outrun him,” Etana said quickly. “We have to hide.”
“Hide?”
Etana grabbed his arm, and he leapt to his feet, still staring with paralyzed horror at the clumps of bushes to the north. Then he began running with her to one of the huge, flowering cottonwoods.
“You hide,” he panted with cold dread. “Otherwise he’ll hurt you. I will fight him.”
The naked forms of Nazt appeared in his head. Sirius wasn’t here to protect him from the copper rod now.
“Shut up!” Etana hissed.
They threw themselves behind the tree, and Rafen’s hand dropped his sword hilt, his legs quaking. He drew the blade agonizingly slowly.
Absorb his kesmal when he attacks you, he instructed himself. Burn his head… just do something.
There were no thudding footsteps this time, and Rafen had a horrible feeling the Lashki was traveling some other way. The air was now cold, heavy, and moist. Etana had torn her ring off her finger and lengthened it into the scepter. She sliced a line in the air from her forehead to her toes, and then one sideways, her face screwed tight with concentration. Rafen felt sticky against the tree trunk; he focused on his own kesmal, and his blade grew orange. Nazt felt horridly close.
Rafen, Rafen!
He remembered the crumbling cliff beneath his feet, and the vibrating copper rod, which was going to find him soon.
He made to shove Etana back and move out to face whatever was coming for him, but something unseen blocked him, and he found himself pressed against her instead, his sword raised before him. A cascade of silvery water had appeared two feet away. It fell in an angular line and solidified into a slimy gray figure with black dreadlocks. The Lashki’s dark eyes stared straight at Rafen. Rafen’s mouth went dry.
Then he realized he was seeing the Lashki through a cobwebby film swathed around him and Etana. He could feel her rapid breathing. Rafen couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. They were going to die like flies in a web.
The Lashki’s eyes slid from Rafen to the surrounding area. The rapier-length copper rod was jerking in his grasp. Rafen understood now that Nazt knew when he was near, even if it couldn’t direct the Lashki to him.
The Lashki pointed the copper rod at something above Rafen. An ear-splitting noise accompanied the flash of blue. A tree branch crashed to the ground in two identically sized halves at Rafen’s and Etana’s feet. Rafen held his breath.
The Lashki turned away with boredom, holding the copper rod tighter than usual. His eyes roved the countryside for something to do – something to kill, probably. Giving up, he clasped the copper rod to his chest and moved into the air, first elongated and transparent, then merely a frame, and lastly entirely invisible.
A minute later, the wind returned, and the warmth with it.
Etana let out a long breath. She whispered fiercely to the little cocoon around them, and it slowly loosened. Raising her silver scepter from her side, she sliced straight through the web, and it vanished.
“What was it?” Rafen murmured with respect.
“Kesmal,” Etana said. “I should think it was obvious.”
“But we were invisible.”
“Didn’t you remember I can do that? I simply wasn’t sure I could do it under pressure, that’s all. But I did, thank Zion, and the Lashki was left as ignorant as before. Though I’m sure he has a way of feeling when you are nearby, Rafen. Normally he moves on quite quickly, but he stayed for a while.”
She stared at the space in the grass where the Lashki had been. It gleamed with gray slime.
“I didn’t want to put you in danger,” Rafen said, clutching the sword. He realized he had been stronger than he’d thought he could be, because of her. “He was looking for me.”
“I think he will always be looking for you, Rafen.”
Chapter Eighteen
Etana’s
Stubbornness
Another day brought them to Parith. Though the Lashki did not return, Rafen couldn’t help worrying. In their short periods of rest, he and Etana exchanged a nervous watch. Etana’s eyes kept straying to the northwest horizon, beyond which the Cursed Woods lay somewhere. Rafen knew she was thinking about his dream.
Now that the city loomed large before them, Rafen breathed easier. Within its walls, they would be more hidden.
Parith was situated on a plain, with the craggy, forbidding mountains in the background. Its walls were stone within frameworks of wood, and it was shaped as a rough pentagon with a large conical tower at its forefront, from which a blue pennant flew. At the base of this tower, a double gateway stood, a rou
gh ugly square in the stone. It faced a long slope that led up into the mountains. Merchants, farmers, and several others toiled through the city portal, checked occasionally by the twenty Tarhian guards there. The far back of the city was expansive, and above the walls, other towers – doubtless belonging to Cyril Earl, the lord of the city – rose.
“I never liked those mountains,” Etana said, rousing him from his reverie.
“What do you mean?” Rafen said. He half admired their austerity, their sharp defiance in the face of the sky.
“They’re called the Haer Mountains,” Etana said. “Terrible things have happened up there. That was where the Lashki created himself an immortal body.”
“Oh,” Rafen said, chilling.
“Grandmother Adelphia lived there,” Etana said. “Except she’s away… Zion knows I wish she wasn’t.”
Still far away enough not to be seen, they moved forward hesitantly, scanning the walls. A heavy raindrop fell on Rafen’s head, followed by five more at irregular intervals. The sky was beetled over with black clouds.
“How are we going to get in?” Etana asked. “Sherwin told me you found a way to get into New Isles without being seen.”
“We can get in the back of some merchant’s wagon.”
“They check them,” Etana said.
“Not always.”
She looked at him incredulously. “Have you never thought of a disguise?”
Rafen threw back his head and laughed. “No. Once they’ve seen your face, disguise or not, you’ll be in deeper trouble when they see it again. Besides, I think most Tarhians have descriptions of me.”
“I suppose it’s a wagon then,” Etana said.
They were chewing roots again, and the spring rain now fell heavily. Etana looked preoccupied as they drew nearer.
The only trouble was that there weren’t many covered wagons. Most were already in the city, because it was halfway through the day. Rafen didn’t want to spend the night on the plain either, because that gave Sirius – and the Lashki – a chance to find them.
“I don’t think your plan is going to work,” Etana said, halting.
They were now ten minutes from the city.
“It will work,” Rafen said with conviction he didn’t feel.
“Liar,” Etana said. “A disguise will have to do.”
“We have nothing else to wear,” Rafen said.
“You just do what I say,” Etana said, “and then we’ll get along much better.”
She started pulling up her dress. Rafen jumped in alarm and looked away.
“Oh, it’s all right,” Etana said, “I’ve got some of Sherwin’s infernal boy’s clothes under this. He only packed boy’s clothes, don’t you know.”
Rafen turned slowly to see her attired in a filthy brown homespun shirt, with buttons running down the front. Her pants looked like they had once belonged to a cabin boy, and she wore mud-spattered boots that could never pass for a girl’s.
“There,” Etana said, digging in one of her pockets and removing a well-worn hair tie. She pulled her hair back and stuffed it into her collar, which she buttoned up so that her amethyst necklace wouldn’t show. “Do I look the part?”
Rafen stepped back to admire her. He found he liked her in pants. “Actually, you do. Clear your throat.”
Etana did so.
“Again.”
Etana harrumphed impressively.
“Now you have to talk lower than you do, from the back of your throat,” Rafen said. “You might pass as a young farmhand.”
“Oh, was that the point of that?” Etana said, still much too high.
“Lower,” Rafen told her.
“Oh, was that the point of that?” Etana said, sounding like she had a sock in her throat.
Rafen’s heart sank.
“Is that the best you can do?”
“You’ll see,” Etana said, in a perfect imitation of a young boy. “I’m not as stupid as I look. Now for you.”
They rummaged through Harlam’s coat pockets for anything useful. A battered, floppy-rimmed hat was the best they could find. Etana unfolded it and slammed it on Rafen’s head, telling him to hunch his shoulders. She buttoned his coat up all the way to his neck, pulled some hair over his face, and then told him to hold hands with her, which he did all too willingly. By this time, the silvery sheets of rain descended much more forcefully, and they were soaked.
“You’re blind,” Etana said, still in the young boy’s easy peasant accent. “I’m leading you. Have your head down and your shoulders forward. That’s it. They’ll find it harder to look into your face and recognize you, particularly now I’ve tucked most of your hair into your hat. And stumble now and then. Perfect. Let’s go.”
They walked another five minutes and fell in behind two farmhands leading a staggering horse. The farmhands passed through the gate a moment later, leaving the two of them to face the twenty Tarhian guards. Rafen kept his eyes on the ground, trying not to move them.
“Papers,” a Tarhian official said. “And after that, we must check your ankles – orders from the top. All the right ankles of males under sixteen must be inspected at every city gate in Siana.”
Oh, Rafen thought with mild panic. This was the Lashki’s work. Talmon had told him Rafen had the slave number 237 branded on his right ankle. However, Rafen and Etana weren’t intending to show papers or ankles. She had said to leave everything to her. He gritted his teeth and tried to be more trusting.
“You got the papers, Curtis?” Etana said to him.
He muttered something incomprehensible without looking up.
Etana rummaged through his pockets, giving a great show of frustration. The Tarhians were beginning to stir restlessly. A queue was building up: two merchants had arrived with a small uncovered wagon led by a donkey; and one farmer had appeared with a wheelbarrow.
Etana gave an impressive growl in her throat and cuffed Rafen’s ear. Rafen nearly laughed. With effort, he controlled himself, keeping his fixed, blank expression at the expense of his abdominals.
“He’s gone and lost it,” Etana said in her peasant burr. “A murrain on a blind man! Sorry, sirs.”
“You had it,” Rafen mumbled.
“I had it!” Etana said. “Oh, maybe I did. Wait a moment.”
She started slapping each of her various pockets in turn, whistling tunelessly.
The Tarhians cursed among themselves in their own tongue.
“Go back and look for your papers,” the foremost one said. “Get out of the line.”
“Naw, but I gave ’em to you,” Etana said.
“You did not,” the Tarhian said vehemently.
“It’s in your hand,” Etana jeered.
The guards all shifted to see the papers in the foremost Tarhian’s hand.
“Go,” a voice hissed from behind Rafen and Etana. “Get in.”
Someone shoved Rafen, and he staggered forward. Etana grabbed his arm and raced through the gates just as the merchant who had pushed them both started screeching, “Stop thief! That little peasant boy snatched my purse and ran back down the queue!”
A confused rattling of weapons and yelling ensued. Rafen and Etana were now in the thick of the crowd within the city. A group of two-story shopfronts formed the triangular marketplace’s back wall. Between them, a narrow passageway led to the main road of the city.
A Sianian market was always well established by midday. About three-quarters of the merchants were selling fruits. Beggars cringed at the foot of walls to the left and right; and on the ramparts, Tarhians paced up and down, occasionally meeting a robed philosopher.
Rafen and Etana found themselves in the middle of a group of farmers haggling over pigs.
“I swear he’s worth more than two crescens, by king’s blood!” one peasant roared, shaking a fist in another’s face.
Rafen and Etana ducked out of the argument and pressed through the dense crowd toward the wall of shopfronts. Before one shop, a philosopher was hurriedly
gathering up books from a lopsided table in an effort to get them out of the rain. Near the mullioned front of a store selling china and porcelain dishes, four Tarhians surrounded a twelve-year-old boy – likely a shop assistant. They were counting the contents of his purse.
“Leave it alone!” the boy said in a high voice. “It’s my master’s, and you can’t have it!”
When Rafen moved restlessly at Etana’s side, she grabbed his collar and jerked him sideways. “We have worse grievances than that to deal with,” she hissed.
She hurried him through the narrow road between the shops. Behind, the boy’s complaints became higher and higher. Anger churned within Rafen, but Etana was clinging to his arm again.
“I know the way to Lord Cyril Earl’s,” she said above the pouring rain. “It is getting admitted that might be the problem.”
*
It was extraordinary Parith could contain Lord Cyril Earl’s huge fortress. He inhabited a large rectangular keep with towers at each corner, and his land and gardens were even more expansive. They were caged in wrought iron fences with arrow-headed tops. A long, wide, white path led to the portal of the keep, and on either side of it, manicured bushes grew, so laden with azaleas that they looked like large red globes. The grass was a perfect green.
Rafen and Etana stood uncertainly a little from the wrought iron fences. Two Sianian guards were posted either side of the gates, holding long polearms from which blue Tarhian flags fluttered, bearing the crossed hammer and sickle.
“It’s a pity we can’t get past them the same way we got past the guards at the city gate,” Etana said softly.
Rafen kept his head low beneath the floppy-rimmed hat. It had been stressful trying to hide his face from soldiers all through the city, particularly when some of them were desperate for the reward on his head. The rain was light now. Rafen’s and Etana’s clothes still stuck to them, determined to outline their skinny frames in the most explicit way possible.
“There must be a back entrance,” Rafen said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Etana snapped. “I know what to do. Cyril Earl may have kept on the good side of the Tarhians, but he’ll know where his loyalties lie. You said as much earlier. I think we should tell the guards who we are.”
Servant of the King (The Fledgling Account Book 3) Page 16
