Shadows of Destiny

by Rachel Lee

  “And a good law it is,” Alezzi said. “It helps us to keep the streets clean. And though these are not ordinary times, still we should follow the law. I have walked many leagues in my life. It will not harm me to walk today.”

  “But what of Erkiah?” Tom said.

  Erkiah laughed. “Worry not for me, my son. These legs have borne me far. I am not so old that they cannot bear me farther.”

  Alezzi paid their stable fees and led them into the heart of the city. It was nearly a two-hour walk, for the city was larger than any his Whitewater guests had ever encountered, and many were their pauses to ask of this or that statue or monument. Erkiah knew the history better than he, and Alezzi listened to the tales that painted his city in a glory he was not sure it deserved.

  Too much of that glory had been built on the backs of Anari. Anari who would have no choice but to walk as Alezzi was walking this day, for they would not have been permitted to hire a ride, even had they money to do so. It was, he thought, good that they were walking as common men. It reminded him of why he was here.

  For to Alezzi, Bozandar was as seductive as she was beautiful. He had earned a reputation as a man who shunned the trappings of the court, trappings to which he was fully entitled by right of birth. But he knew that reputation was more a matter of necessity than moral standing. For whenever he had been in the city, whenever he had allowed himself to be drawn into discussions of politics, he had felt a pull that filled him with shame.

  Though others may not have known it, Alezzi did not hate the intrigues and schemes of the palace. Rather, he loved them too much. And he knew it.

  Now he was walking into precisely the nest of vipers that he had worked so hard to avoid, even to the point of taking distant assignments in the provinces when he was entitled to administrative postings in the city. And this time he would have no opportunity to place himself on the list for such a self-imposed exile.

  Into the viper’s nest it would be, and he hoped his fangs were up to the challenge.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sara felt the nagging, insistent presence she had sensed so strongly in Lorense. The Enemy had a hive in Bozandar. She was certain of it. If I can feel them, they can feel me, she thought.

  Yes, Tess replied. But Cilla and I are with you, sister. You are not alone.

  Was that enough? Sara wondered privately. But even while she shielded the details of her thoughts, she could not shield the feelings.

  Do not fear, Cilla whispered through the tendrils of Ilduin thought. For nothing is more crippling than fear, sister. Rather, learn what you can. Open yourself to sense all that is happening around you. We will not leave you to fight alone should it come to that.

  The words were comforting, and Sara had no doubt about the sincerity of her sister’s promise. The question was whether her sisters’ combined power would be enough to make good on that promise. She and Tess had battled a hive in Lorense, but they had done so by attacking the hive leader, Lantav Glassidor. And while Sara’s and Tess’s Ilduin blood had judged Glassidor to a horrible, fiery death, the price of victory had been the death of Sara’s own mother, whom Glassidor had abducted into his service years before.

  The memory of her mother’s last breaths still brought tears to Sara’s eyes. If they met another enslaved Ilduin, and if there were no other means by which to break that thrall, could Sara slay her? For that woman would be no more than Sara’s mother had been: someone’s wife, someone’s mother, enslaved and coerced into the dark service of an Enemy who saw the Ilduin only as weapons to be employed in his evil designs.

  The Enemy would see Ilduin. Sara would see a captive sister yearning for a freedom that might only lie in death.

  “You are troubled, my love,” Tom said.

  Sara tried to shake off the thoughts. “I will not fail you, Prophet Tom Downey.”

  “I know that,” Tom said quietly. “But still your hand trembles in mine. You walk in memories, Sara.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do not,” he replied with a gentle squeeze of her hand. “There is no surer way to defeat than to refight the last battle. Our present foe may be far different. Your sisters are right. Open yourself and learn.”

  You can hear their thoughts, too? Sara thought.

  Only when you do, he replied, and only while we touch. For then I can feel your full heart.

  Ilduin milk, Sara thought suddenly.

  Tom looked at her in surprise.

  “When you were most ill,” she whispered. “I nursed you, my love. Eisha, the Anari woman who was with us, said that while Lady Tess saved you from death, it was my milk that restored your health.”

  Tom gave her a playful wink. “I wish I remembered. For I know no milk has come from you since.”

  “Shame on you, Tom Downey!” she hissed mirthfully. “Take not a blessing of the gods into your trousers!”

  He kissed her. “Ah, love, but I do that whenever we are together.”

  It was not the Prophet who lightened her spirits. It was the husband, the boy who had once been tongue-tied in her presence. That tongue, now loosed and perhaps too much so, brought her out of the darkness of her thoughts.

  “I do love you so, Tom,” she said with a sigh.

  “And I you,” he replied.

  “And true love is beautiful indeed,” Erkiah said, “but lest the two of you slip into the poetry of songbirds, let us not forget our calling here.”

  “Not even for a little while?” Tom asked, the tone of his voice so ambiguous that not even Sara could tell if he was serious until the smile slowly crinkled the corners of his mouth.

  “No, lad,” Erkiah said, arching a brow in mock sternness. “Not even for a little while.”

  “Oh, to know young love again,” Alezzi said to Erkiah. “Would it not be a delight?”

  “My legs can bear me through the city,” Erkiah said, laughing. “I am not sure they could bear me through that.”

  “Nor mine,” Alezzi said. “Nor mine. Perhaps it is good that such things are left to the young, lest the rest of us find ourselves barely able to crawl.”

  “Enough,” Sara announced with a gentle smile. “You boys may have your fantasies at your leisure, but for now we must keep our wits about us.”

  “Yes, m’lady,” Alezzi said with a mock bow. Then, his eyes more serious, he added, “You are right. But still it is good that we find such laughter as we can in these days. There will be far too little to savor.”

  Tom turned to Alezzi. “Now who speaks as a prophet?”

  “Not a prophet,” Alezzi replied, his face sober. “Merely as a man who has spent much of his life grasping at such laughter as he could find between the tears.”

  “I meant no offense,” Tom said.

  “And I took none, my friend,” Alezzi said. “But I have spent my life avoiding this city, and now I walk into its grasp more fully than ever before. It is that, not you, which clouds my heart.”

  “But how?” Tom asked, looking around. “This city is…majestic. Even in winter these grassy expanses in the center of the avenues are green with life.”

  “They are green because the sea warms us,” Alezzi said. “And however beautiful they may be, however many mothers and children may play in these parks, their true purpose is war, my friend. The main boulevards of this city are wide so that our legions and their horses can form and move easily if the city is attacked. If you look past the green, you will see something else.”

  As if guided by his words, Sara saw the blotches of dried coppery brown. “Blood,” she whispered. “But it is not blood that you fear, Overmark.”

  Alezzi shook his head. “No, Lady Sara. Blood I have seen, and more than most. Mine has been shed and, sadly, I have shed that of others. But I would gladly bleed from a wound in battle rather than from the wounds we now face. For the blood extracted in the palace is, too often, not the blood one can wash from one’s hands. It is the blood of the soul itself.”

  “That is why you have a
voided Bozandar,” Erkiah said.

  “Yes,” Alezzi replied. “The palace is filled with men who would sell their mothers for a seat nearer the emperor. Or, even better in their minds, sell the mother of the man whose seat they wish to claim. They speak of an honor they do not practice and make promises they would not keep even if there were no need to break them. They catalog one another’s vices and whisper of one another’s failures, but of course always neglecting their own roles in nurturing those vices or ensuring those failures.”

  “You despise them,” Sara said, studying his face.

  “Yes,” Alezzi said, pain evident in his eyes.

  “Because you would beat them at their own games,” she continued. “You think you would be the best and the worst of them all.”

  He shook his head. “No, fair lady. I do not think I would be. I know I would be. I have both the skill and the taste for it. It is the stomach for it that I lack.”

  “And therein lies your honor, Overmark,” she said, recalling the trials she and her companions had faced in the past months. “It is not what we could do that damns us, nor even what we would do. It is what we do, or too often what we fail to do, that the gods judge. If I have learned nothing else in this war, I have learned that.”

  “Then you have learned truth,” Erkiah said, nodding. “And grave indeed will be their judgment if we fail in the task we now face.”

  “I pray that the price of victory is not too high to bear,” Alezzi said. “I have too many memories I would like to forget. I seek no more.”

  And then, as if by magick, they were at the outer palace gate, a huge structure of metal that looked as deadly to overcome as it was beautiful. Two guards in full dress scarlet and brass stood there, and stiffened watchfully.

  “Who approaches the emperor’s gate?” one demanded.

  “Alezzi Forzzia, cousin and member of his royal house, Overmark of the Legion of the Black Lion.”

  “State your purpose, Overmark.”

  “I have brought two prophets and an Ilduin who seek to give my cousin the emperor their foretellings and warnings so that he may continue to protect his empire from all threats.”

  One of the guards bowed stiffly and called to someone inside. Another guard approached the gate and received the message. At once he turned and trotted into the depths of the palace compound.

  “That was easy,” Tom remarked quietly.

  Alezzi shook his head. “Trust me, the word will pass through many other ears and mouths before it reaches my cousin. We will not find it easy to gain audience.”

  “But he’s your cousin.”

  “He has more than a few cousins, Tom. More than a few. And many are within those walls already.”

  Sara suddenly reached out and grabbed Tom’s forearm. “The hive,” she whispered, her face pale. “There is a hive very near.”

  Tom nodded and looked at Alezzi and Erkiah. “We may face grave danger.”

  Before the men could acknowledge the remarks, Sara swayed a little. “Inside. They are already inside.”

  At once Alezzi’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword. “Then this may become far more difficult than I imagined.”

  Mihabi sat close to his mother on the hillside, near the Anari army, not far from the Bozandari who also marched under the banner of the White Wolf. The combination amazed him, and he experienced an increasing sense of guilt over what had happened during the uprising. He had killed. He had seen his brother Ezinha, a Bozandari, killed. The senselessness of war had never been more apparent to him.

  Yet armies had gathered, speaking of a greater Enemy than Bozandar, and of another war to come. If it was that important, he would take up a sword and join them, but for now he could only hope that another fight wouldn’t be necessary.

  Beside him, his mother still occasionally wept for Ezinha. Mihabi felt responsible for that, even though he was not responsible for the decisions his nursing brother had taken. As for his blood brother…neither he nor his mother Ialla had any idea where Kelano had gone. Probably to linger among the Anari soldiers.

  Anari soldiers. That idea still amazed him. His people had always been so proud of their peacefulness. Now they had taken up arms, not only in a slave revolt, but now against a greater Enemy. He wished he knew what this greater Enemy was. Perhaps that was why Kelano had disappeared, to learn what he could about this strange alliance.

  His mother began to sob again, and Mihabi reached out to put an arm around her shoulders and offer silent comfort, though he knew there was nothing that would fill the hole in her heart.

  It was then that he noted a stirring among the nearby armies. A murmur arose, and with it the soldiers of the White Wolf.

  Looking down the hillside, Mihabi stared in shock, then, too, rose to his feet, feeling for the blade he had used during the rebellion, little use though it would be.

  From the shining city below emerged a legion under a flag bearing a large red symbol. He could not immediately identify the sign, but he would have wagered that it was the red panther of Owazzi’s legion. He had heard they were marching toward Bozandar in the days immediately preceding the full revolt. They had apparently arrived, though too late to prevent the slaves from escaping. Now, perhaps, they were coming to take the slaves back.

  Mihabi turned and looked at the hillside. Since he had arrived, very little of the armies around him had been visible. Now, as one, as if they had received silent orders, they formed up, making their numbers clear to the legion in the valley below.

  The Red Panther was outnumbered by the Snow Wolf and the Black Lion. But a distinct uneasiness filled the air, and men looked at one another, as if they were not certain they could trust their allies.

  It was then a woman garbed in snow-white stepped onto a ledge slightly below them. The murmuring among the soldiers changed at the sight of her.

  “Be strong,” she said, in a voice that seemed to carry over the entire hill and the mountains beyond. “Stand fast. They will not attack.”

  How could she know this? Mihabi wondered. How could anyone know this?

  But then a man clad completely in black stepped out beside her, and with them a Bozandari and two Anari. Ranged together they seemed to be a wall, a wall with its back toward the threat below.

  It was as if the five scorned the Red Panther. As if they knew the legion below was no true threat.

  Slowly Mihabi sat and stared at the five. Beneath him, for the first time in his life, he felt the rocks come alive. He gasped and turned to his mother. In her teary eyes there was a smile.

  “The mountains are with us, my son,” Ialla said. “And now you know your true heritage.”

  It was as Alezzi had predicted. They passed the outer gates, but then the layers of people who surrounded the emperor began their own interrogations. Everyone wanted to know what this was about. Everyone wanted to find a reason to prevent Alezzi from seeing his cousin, for their positions might be at risk.

  But Alezzi knew the ways of the court. He refused to describe the threat except that it was bigger than any Bozandar had ever faced. He suggested, and sometimes said outright, that anyone who hindered him would later pay for it when the emperor learned that important information had been kept from him.

  Still, Sara remarked, “Water runs faster uphill.”

  Tom smiled and squeezed her hand, but felt that her impatience arose more from nerves than time. “Do you still feel it?”

  “It is here,” she said again. “So far none we have seen are part of it, but it lies within these walls somewhere.”

  “Then it is a direct threat to my cousin,” Alezzi said. “You must let me know the instant we face one of them, Lady Sara.”

  “Trust me, I shall probably deal with him or her before you can.”

  Tom looked at Sara, feeling a sudden, deep concern for her. The things she had sometimes been required to do as an Ilduin gave her nightmares, yet the set of her features said she was prepared to do those things again. And more, if necessary.<
br />
  Tom felt a shiver of apprehension and looked at Erkiah. The old prophet shook his head. “An angry Ilduin is beyond description, my boy. Those who oppose her had best tread lightly.”

  The last man who had questioned them, then gone off to speak with someone else, now returned with two guards.

  “Alezzi Forzzia,” he said, “I arrest you in the name of the emperor.”

  “For what?” Alezzi asked pleasantly.

  “Your legion opposes the Legion of the Red Panther just beyond the city.”

  “My legion has opposed no one, nor has a sword been lifted. We have come in peace to alert the emperor. Do you stand in my way?”

  “You are guilty of treason.”

  “I am guilty of nothing except dealing with idiots like yourself who don’t care enough about the empire to pass me through to my cousin.”

  The man waved a hand at the guards. “Arrest him!”

  At that Sara lifted a hand. “Touch him not.”

  The official sneered. “Who do you think you are?”

  “Uh-oh,” said Erkiah. “You had best watch your step.”

  But it was too late. Blue fire sprung from the tips of Sara’s fingers, and the guards dropped their weapons with cries, as if they had become molten hot. The official gaped.

  “Now,” said Sara, “you have wasted enough of our time. I suggest you take us to the emperor before I decide this entire building is in my way!”

  “We have Ilduin, too,” the official squawked.

  “And if they will oppose me, they threaten the empire. And if they threaten your empire, my blood will judge them, Ilduin or not. Now take us!”

  As they followed the official down a winding hallway, Erkiah winked at Tom and whispered, “Got yourself a bit of a firebrand there, boy.”

  Tom merely smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Standing with his back to a Bozandari legion made Ratha’s neck prickle, but he refused to obey the urge to look over his shoulder. Watching the armies above, noting their restlessness as they looked down on the legion below, especially among Alezzi’s Black Lions, he wondered if their cobbled-together army would hold.