Tsorreh didn’t feel hungry, but when the steward and his assistants left, she uncovered the dishes. She found a bowl of an unfamiliar grain, steamed with a sauce of apricots and topped with slivered almonds. There was more flatbread and bean paste, and a pot of stewed lamb and tomatoes. It all tasted wonderful, and she ate far more than she intended. With a full belly, lulled by the sound of music from the street outside, she stretched out on the silk-covered bed and fell asleep without even taking off her sandals.
* * *
She woke suddenly, to darkness and the sound of running feet in the corridor. The room around her lay dark, the oil lamps unlit. From the street below, she heard shouting, then a high-pitched scream. She went to the balcony and looked out. Men raced along the streets, some carrying torches. She strained to make out who they were, what they were doing. She caught a glint of light off curved metal. A sword, perhaps.
To the north, close enough so she could almost feel the flames, the harbor was burning.
Zevaron, where was Zevaron? What a fool she’d been, to let down her guard even for an instant with the enemy so near! She had to find him, get him out of there. They must not be taken, should the palace fall.
Tsorreh threw the door open. The young guard was not at his post. From the direction of the stairs came more sounds of running and shouting. She started in that direction. Before she had taken more than a few steps, a woman appeared, holding an oil lamp and hurrying in the opposite direction. She saw Tsorreh and let out a shriek. Tsorreh grabbed her arm and forced her to a halt.
“What’s going on?” she asked in Isarran. “Is the palace under attack?”
“Let me go!” The woman, barely more than a girl, began babbling. “We must flee! The devils will eat us all!”
“Nonsense! The Gelon do not eat their captives!”
The girl broke into hysterical sobs.
“Where is the—” Tsorreh could not remember the word for the unmarried men’s quarters. “Where do the men sleep? My son! Where is my son? Take me there!”
The girl paused in her weeping. For an instant, the flame of the oil lamp illuminated her features, the wide uncomprehending eyes, the rounded cheeks, the flyaway, lint-pale hair. Her parted lips trembled. She was beyond speech.
With shrieks, a clatter of sandals, and a great deal of fluttering draperies, a small mob of ladies rushed down the corridor. Three or four of them carried little glassed lanterns.
“Come along!” barked a masculine voice. “Hurry! This way!” In the wavering light, Tsorreh saw several men among the ladies. They looked like soldiers to her, urging their charges along. Filling the corridor and leaving no room on either side, they bore down on Tsorreh.
She darted up to the nearest soldier. “Where is—” she began, but he grabbed her, none too gently, and shoved her toward the other women. The speechless maidservant hid herself in their midst like a frightened rock-rabbit. Between the shouted orders of the men and the women’s cries of terror, Tsorreh could not make herself heard.
Like a stampeding herd, the women carried Tsorreh along. She tried to work her way to the outside, thinking to break away. The tallest of the ladies seized her arm and drew her close. Musky perfume mingled with the smell of adrenaline-laced sweat.
“You must stay with us!” the woman said in a surprisingly self-possessed voice. By her imperious manner and the richness of her dress, she might well be the wife of the governor. “It is not safe for a decent woman to be abroad, now with the city under attack. Come, we will take you to a well-protected place. Before long our brave soldiers will repulse the invaders. We have done so many times before. Truly, there is no reason for alarm. Menelaia! Stop your sniveling this instant! Your mother would be ashamed of you, carrying on this way!”
As the lady spoke, the party continued speeding through the palace. Tsorreh lost track of the turnings and stairs. Within moments, she had no idea where she was.
“My son!” she tried again, pulling at the other woman’s arm. “I must find him—he is with the other men!”
“Then he is with them still, defending the city. Do not fret on his account, my dear. All young men seek glory in battle. It is their nature. I promise you, he will fight all the more bravely for your sake.”
“But—”
They burst through a narrow doorway, jostling one another. For an instant, Tsorreh could hardly breathe in the press of bodies. Then they were out in the cooler darkness, stumbling down shallow steps. Lanterns and grease-smoking torches turned the plaza into a cauldron of shadows. From the direction of the harbor came a brighter orange light and the stench of burning.
People rushed by, men on foot bearing weapons, men on horses or mules, women with shrieking children, carts drawn by huge, ponderous, oxen-like beasts with but a single horn on their foreheads, lowing their distress. Dogs barked. The sounds mixed together into a roar like a mountain avalanche. Tsorreh flinched, thinking only that it would be impossible to find Zevaron in the roiling chaos. But somehow she must—
“Come on!” shouted the soldier in the fore, and they burst into a run. He managed to find an opening through the surging traffic. By now, Tsorreh was too disoriented to do anything but follow. Her sandals slapped flat stone, bare earth, sometimes gravel. She slipped and caught herself, but kept on. Her legs repeatedly tangled in the fabric of her robe. She longed for her Meklavaran vest and trousers and swore to herself that she would never be flattered into wearing such an impractical dress again.
The crowd thinned out, except for the sound of fighting in the next street over, and they raced the last distance to a squat, single-story building. Lanterns hung from either side of the narrow door, and two strong-looking men stood there, urging them on. As they filed through, Tsorreh noticed the metal straps reinforcing the wooden door, and the bars across the high-set windows. The place was either a fortress or a trap. Unless the builders of Gatacinne had dug an underground tunnel, there would be no escape.
The door slammed behind them, shutting out the noise of the street. They went through a short passage and into a large windowless chamber, furnished with couches, tables, and freestanding holders for the ubiquitous oil lamps. A number of these had already been lit, and even now, a pair of maidservants were placing more and bringing in trays of fruit and pastries, and beakers of wine. With a murmur of pleasure, the governor’s wife draped herself across the largest divan.
“What an exhausting bother this all is!” she said. “I’m simply parched! Menelaia dear, bring me some wine, and then fetch a harp from the music room. We must have a song to soothe our nerves.”
The other women arranged themselves about the room, the ladies reclining, the servants attending to them. Tsorreh lowered herself to a bench. There was no cause for alarm, she told herself, repeating what the governor had said earlier that day. Gelon had sent many forays against Gatacinne in the past, without success. She looked around her. Clearly, these people were prepared.
Even if the Gelon took the palace, they would not find her here, in this fortress. But neither would Zevaron.
Zevaron.
She might be hidden, unable to leave this place, but he was at liberty. He would learn where she had been taken, along with the other palace ladies. The governor would be anxious to see his wife, once the fighting was done.
The sweet arpeggio of the harp rippled through the air, its notes evanescent as ghosts.
Zevaron was out there, in fire and darkness and confusion. Fighting, the governor’s wife had said.
Tsorreh’s heart stuttered. She waved away a goblet of wine and murmured an excuse to the concerned-looking older lady beside her.
Her son was no child, she reminded herself. He had been trained in combat, with weapons and his bare hands, since he could walk. She thought of him battling at the meklat walls, drilling the sling-throwers, fighting mounted at his father’s side. Flirting with Shadow Fox. At that, she smiled.
He would survive. He would find her, and together they would flee Gatacin
ne. They would make for Durinthe, where she would raise an army to liberate Meklavar.
CR-R-RACK! CRASH!
The sound of snapping metal and splintering wood echoed through the room. Tsorreh, her nerves already taut, scrambled to her feet. Before any of the other ladies could react, a handful of soldiers poured into the room. There was no mistaking the Gelon—short leather kilts, helmets plumed with blue and purple, pale bare arms. Some had drawn their swords, those distinctive double-edged blades. The foremost wore a gilded helmet and carried a whip.
“Outside!” bellowed the officer.
The other soldiers shoved the women together roughly. The women whimpered in mingled terror and confusion. It was clear that not all of them understood Gelone. Tsorreh pretended to be as cowed as the others.
“Leave the servants,” the officer said. “If need be, we can round them up later, once the city’s secured. Right now, we don’t need slaves, we need hostages. One of these is the governor’s—you there!” He prodded the governor’s wife with his coiled whip. “What’s your name?”
The lady drew herself up, glared at him, and answered in accented but grammatically perfect Gelone, “I do not converse with rabble.”
“That’s her, all right!” The officer threw his head back and laughed. “From what I’ve heard, I don’t know if His Excellency will pay more to get her back or have us keep her!”
The wife looked ready to scratch his eyes out, but one of the soldiers grabbed her, spun her around, and tied her wrists in front of her.
“How dare you!” She spat at him but missed.
“Let’s get going!” The officer barked out a few more orders. Moving with ruthless efficiency, his men bound the rest of the ladies, Tsorreh among them, and tied them together. One of the women began sobbing.
As they were being led away, the governor’s wife shrieked, “My husband will have you beheaded for this insult!” The officer laughed again as she went on. “Beheaded, and then flayed into little strips, and then—”
Tsorreh shuffled along with the others, her head down. As she drew near, the officer came alert.
“What’s this?” He tapped her shoulder with his whip and signaled the soldier leading the string to halt. He lifted her chin for a better look. “You’re no Isarran, not with that black hair.”
Tsorreh jerked away, resolutely silent.
“You savage!” the governor’s wife shrilled. “She is a noble guest and must not be harmed!”
“Noble? A princess of the sand rats?”
Tsorreh glared at him for an instant. Then, recovering her wits, she nodded.
“Do you have a tongue? A name?”
She considered refusing to give him even a single syllable, but decided that would only fuel his curiosity. “Shadow Fox.”
She knew at once that she’d hesitated too long. The Gelon’s mouth tightened. He issued more orders, and before she could resist, she found herself half-pulled, half-dragged out into the street, along with the others.
The eastern sky, cloudless, glimmered with pale clear light. The only people Tsorreh could see were Gelonian soldiers and their bound prisoners. Bodies, both Gelon and Isarran, lay in scattered heaps, and stains marked the paving stones where others had been taken away. From several directions, Tsorreh heard shouting. She hoped wildly that it meant fighting, armed resistance.
Somewhere out there, Zevaron was alive and free. He must be.
* * *
A squadron of Gelonian soldiers bore down on them, heading in the direction of the harbor. Their officer paused to confer with Tsorreh’s captor. “Fall back! Orders are to consolidate our hold of the port area and palace,” the newcomer said.
“I’ll see this lot taken to the palace. I’ve got one for the priest. Might be nothing, but we were told to report anything strange.”
They exchanged a few further comments, too quietly for Tsorreh to overhear, then parted ways. The other women seemed happy to be returning to the palace. They offered little resistance, even the governor’s wife.
Tsorreh went along, saving her strength and trying to devise a strategy. It sounded as if she were to be interrogated, and she wanted to have a credible story ready. The best she could think of was to maintain her Sand Lands identity, hoping that the authentic name and the little she’d learned from her time at Karega Oasis would convince the Gelon.
And what then? With any luck, she’d be kept with the rest of the noble women. Governor Drassos would surely not endanger her, any more than he would his own wife. She tried to imagine how Shadow Fox would behave in such a situation.
When they arrived at the palace a short time later, the Gelonian officer untied the rope linking Tsorreh to the others. As he pulled her across the central hall, she saw none of the palace inhabitants, except for a few terrified servants. Morning light, stronger now, poured in through the open roof of the courtyard. Then they plunged back into shadow, heading this time not for the stairs to the upper stories but along an arched colonnade.
Two Gelonian soldiers, alert and grim, stood at attention to either side of an inner doorway. The officer rapped on the door and waited for a response before entering. He lifted the latch and the door swung open. Even before he tugged on Tsorreh’s bonds, she had the sudden, overwhelming feeling she did not want to go in.
The chamber within was pleasantly proportioned, its white walls trimmed with ceramic tiles glazed with a simple geometric pattern. At a glance, her eyes took in racks of scrolls, a table, chairs, and a man bending over an unrolled parchment. Sun from the window on the far side touched his shaved scalp and pale skin. He wore a white robe and a cloth strip tied around his forehead.
The officer waited for the robed man to look up. When he did, a keen intelligence lit his eyes. Beneath his almost unnatural stillness, Tsorreh sensed an iron strength.
“We found this one among the noble ladies in their hideaway,” the officer said in a deferential voice. “She claims to be a sand rat, and I thought so at first, for she’s clearly not Isarran. I’ve brought her to you, as ordered.”
“We are pleased.” The voice, too, was strong and yet chill.
Tsorreh made out the emblem on his head cloth, some kind of animal, a stylized scorpion, she thought. She could not understand why it disturbed her. The Gelon worshipped many gods, so why not a scorpion? The Meklavaran varieties were small and gray, dangerous only to cats and other small creatures. She’d read that those of the Sand Lands were far more venomous. Something in that many-legged shape, pincers and stinger-tail upraised, now sent a shiver through her.
“You may leave us,” the scorpion priest said. “Do not be concerned. She cannot harm us.”
The departing officer seemed all too eager to remove himself. Tsorreh trembled as the priest glided toward her.
“Do not be afraid,” he murmured. His voice was steel over snow. “All we wish is a little information, such a small thing to give, at no cost, no pain. So easy. Do you see? That’s right, just open your thoughts to us.”
As he spoke, the priest extended one hand toward Tsorreh’s forehead. She tried to jerk away, but found she could not move, as if the mere proximity had paralyzed her with the scorpion’s venom. She could blink and swallow, and turn her head a little, but her feet had been fastened to the floor, her muscles frozen. What had he done to her?
The voice rolled on, syllables rising and falling in waves. Truly, there was nothing to fear.
She felt herself softening like ice in an early thaw, melting, giving way. Her eyelids fluttered. Drowsiness lapped at her. She had only to let go a little, to sink into it. The voice kept on, so reasonable, so reassuring. Hands of misty gray reached out for her, fingers long and thin like ribbons or the strands of fisher’s netting. They wrapped around her. Like the slender noses of serpents, the tips prodded, seeking a way through her, into her.
“Tell us…yes, that’s right. Nothing to fear, just tell us.”
Within Tsorreh, something pulsed gold and white, a second heartbeat.
The half-fainting, half-dizzy sensation receded. Through the mist that covered her eyes, she made out the face of the priest, bending toward her. The scorpion emblem on his brow shimmered. Jointed limbs flexed. She sensed what it wanted: her name, her true name, the core and heart of who she was, everything she had ever wanted, and her darkest fears.
The voice no longer soothed and enticed, it commanded. The ribbon tendrils tightened, and the prodding turned sharp, insistent. “Why do you resist? You know you do not truly wish to. In the end, you will tell us. Yes, you will.”
Pain shot through her. She staggered with it. Her vision turned white. Again came the demanding voice.
“Tell us!”
What was it she feared? No, whispered the voice, what did she desire? What did she cherish? Who would she give anything to see again?
Her mother, Maharrad, Shorrenon. Loss and anguish rose up in her. Tenereth, grandfather. She must not even think their names, lest the scorpion hear her thoughts, hear and learn—
Zevaron. The scorpion wanted Zevaron.
O Holy One, help me!
The pressure mounted. Her resistance was failing, brittle as eggshell. She could not breathe. Any moment now, she would give way, collapsing, shattering, and everything she knew—all she had experienced, her hopes and dreams and nightmares—would come spilling out.
The fall of Meklavar, saving the library, holding the te-Ketav in her hands, the light streaming through the stained glass Shield of Khored. Zevaron. The te-alvar blossoming over her heart.
In that instant, as if summoned by her thought, the gem flared into brilliance, not of sight but of spirit. Its living power surged through her. Recognition stirred, and she saw, with vision far deeper than her own, how the scorpion image wavered and grew thin. Behind it lay shadows of chilling cold, of infernal flame, a dim and distant awareness. It had slept long, but now it roused. Carefully it gathered strength, although it still remained hidden. In another instant, it would see her and recognize what she carried.
But she would die before she allowed the te-alvar to fall into the hands of such an enemy. And with her death, the Shield would be broken forever. Meklavar would perish, and Zevaron with it.
The Seven-Petaled Shield Page 11
