Sworn To Ascension: Courtlight #6
Page 25
“That is no man’s land. We get through there, we get to Kifar,” Terris said in satisfaction.
Ciardis gulped. “You really like threading the eye of the needle, don’t you?”
Terris looked up at her with grim eyes. “I wish we had a choice.”
A small smile grew on Ciardis’s face. It was a sad smile as she reached over and took her best friend’s hand. “So do I. So do I.”
Terris nodded and Ciardis turned to see Sebastian approaching.
She let a wider smile grace her face as she tried to be friendly. Sebastian returned the same. It felt highly awkward seeing the strained look on her face mirrored on his own. She dropped her smile and stood.
“Ready to move out?” Ciardis asked.
Sebastian blinked and looked down at Terris still sitting in the sand. Terris shook her head and said to Sebastian, “I haven’t told her about that part yet.”
“What part?” Ciardis asked nervously.
“We can’t just waltz between those two camps in broad daylight,” he said patiently, “There will be hundreds of them alert and walking about. They’ll see us before we step foot between them, even if we can’t see them.”
Ciardis looked back and forth between Terris and Sebastian. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Terris said as she stood and wiped sand off her bum. “We’ll be threading the eye of the needle in six hours ... when darkness falls.”
That was when Ciardis felt the bottom fall out of her stomach.
Weakly she said, “Never a dull day with you two.”
Terris smiled and patted her on the shoulder as she turned to leave. “I’m going to go take a nap. See you in a few hours?”
Ciardis chuckled. “I guess so.”
That left Ciardis staring at Sebastian. He looked like he wanted to say something. His face was almost pained. But in the end, he turned to go without uttering another word.
Ciardis reached out feebly to hold him back. To explain. About Thanar. About the surprise they’d found on the kasten ship. About everything. About nothing. She wasn’t really sure.
But in the end, she also was too confused to do more than let her hand fall by her side as she watched him walk away across the ruins.
Later that night she and the others sat around a mage-shielded fire as they gathered their wits and bundled up against the desert cold. Just as she prepared to stand, Ciardis flashed back on a memory of the man who had forced them all on this journey in the first place. By his will and his decree. The man who centered in every plot and seemed to be two steps ahead of her at every turn. Ciardis Weathervane turned her mind to the Emperor of Algardis. She flashed back to the dance the memory of the emperor leaning over her to whisper in her ear. He had said, “Here is why many of my subjects would prefer death over this assignment: the two objects I will send you are the only ones that I have not sent to my own mages. My dear sister kept them close to her. They may be the keys to her secrets. But others want them as well. Others who have stripped mages’ souls for the knowledge contained within them. I hope you don’t become one of those unfortunate few.”
She had to wonder as she sat around a large fire in the desert and dug her hands in the cold sand, was she the only one who wanted the final key to the princess heir’s plans and if someone in her party was going to be the one to take it.
No, not someone, Ciardis thought to herself wearily as she looked across the fire at the daemoni prince, Him and her and everyone else on this damned trip.
She wasn’t sure who to trust this time, but she knew that she had to start somewhere.
“Shilling for your thoughts?” Sebastian said while moving to sit down beside Ciardis.
Ciardis knew that Sebastian was expecting her to deflect the conversation into light banter.
But this time she proved him wrong when she turned to him and said. “Just wondering why Thanar’s really here?”
Sebastian raised an eyebrow and looked over the fire at the silent daemoni prince. “I’ve had to wonder the same thing.”
The Muareg stood suddenly and said, “Its time.”
They all stood. Sebastian and Ciardis last of all.
The Muareg said in a heavier voice. “I must warn you though. Before you walk between death’s eyes to get to a city that has already fallen ... you may not find what you seek or what you seek is more than what you want to find.”
“What do you mean?” Terris said. Ciardis looked over to see the firelight shining in her eyes. She sounded more wary than interested.
The Muareg turned his gaze to Sebastian. “To stop the halt of the Aerdivus, five decades ago the people walled themselves away in the hopes of eventual salvation.”
“Yes, and part of why we’ve come is in the hopes of re-integrating the city of Kifar into the empire of Algardis as a whole,” Sebastian said diplomatically, “These are our empire’s own people. They were never forgotten.”
“Just abandoned,” the Muareg leader said.
Sebastian started to protest, Ciardis could feel it, but he held back his tongue.
Instead he said, “Yes. Yes, they were abandoned to their own fates.”
The sorrow and weariness in his tone made Ciardis want to hug the prince heir.
“But I’m here now to rectify that,” Sebastian said firmly.
The Muareg said, “Yes, Prince Heir Sebastian, I know this. But what you may not yet know ... is that the city of Kifar has long ago since died. We Muareg are here to protect the world of the living from the dead that walk the hallowed halls of those city streets.”
If Ciardis had thought the Muareg was going to say something, it was anything but that.
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