Something knotted Enk’s breast, something that pinched in counter rhythm to the ache in his lungs.
“We’ve had amicable dealings since then,” Tizkar said. “But be on your guard. Lulu was right, Suni is a snake.”
Enk watched a shadow drift down into twilight, become Tizkar then step into the light. The delicate rattle of ivory cubes filled the stone stairwell, a clatter that seemed to arise from within as much as from without. Suddenly, the signs were not so auspicious. In kriegshra, as in life, about half of the throws of the dice ended in disaster.
Chapter Twenty
Lion’s Maw
Enk watched Tizkar turn to glance back up the stairwell, cast in the most woeful of lights. He squinted, as if trying but failing to differentiate Enk’s shape from what was inanimate. And it was always thus, Enk realized, radiance always blinded as much as it illumined.
Tizkar frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Silence.
“Are you. . . ?” Tizkar began then touched his forehead. “I apologize. I should have informed you earlier of what we were up against. But it’s not too late. You can still turn back. Lulu and I can handle—”
Enk descended first one step than another, his pride—forever the goad at his back—pressing him onward where a self-preservationist’s rationale would have him hesitate.
Tizkar nodded and spun on his heels.
They strolled onto the first gallery with Tizkar leading the way and Enk following at his own pace. The pinch had receded but had not left the young scion’s lungs completely.
The chamber was large, far larger than Enk remembered it being. Above, golden light welled from glass and iron prisons, dangling from the vaulted ceiling from rusted chains. The long benches sat empty and somehow seemed desolate for the lack of the throngs they had once housed.
Voices, made garish by echos, rose from below
“She isn’t interested,” an unseen female said. “What can I do about that?”
“Your problem.” A man’s voice. “Not mine.”
Enk quickened his clip, matched Tizkar stride for stride, his reluctance fleeing before puzzlement. Something about the female’s voice tugged at him, and when he and Tizkar reached the railing, he understood why.
A field of sand glittering like sun-blasted shards.
Minna standing opposite three men—Suni, Gagan, and a third. The third leaned on a black cane with his back to the railing.
“Minna!”
The shout left Enk’s mouth without conscious thought; as was the case when passions swelled, logic had fled him. He gripped the railing. What was she doing here? Was she in some kind of danger?
Heads shifted, fixing eyes upon the first gallery. Movement stirred the crimson folds of the Black Lion’s cape. Recognition stiffened feminine features, widened painted lips into an oval. The third man—who Enk now identified as Apilsin—stumbled back, gripped Suni’s arm and whispered something unknown but urgent.
“Suni Maalouf,” Tizkar said, filling the stillness with regal ambiance, “I would have a word with you.”
“Leave us,” Suni told Merka’s twin sister.
Minna bowed, then scurried away, disappearing through a doorway, glancing over her shoulder up at Enk. Unable to wait, Enk whirled around and raced for the other staircase, the one that led to the second gallery. Minna would have to pass him on her way up.
“Oh, is that so?” Suni’s voice rifled the air behind Enk. “And what brings you back so soon after our last chat? Miss me, did you?”
A nervous laugh.
Enk descended the stairs two at a time, clawing at the wall to keep from pitching head over foot. The stone enclosure returned his panted breaths back to him with a hollow echo. Eerie, for the ghostly strings that lashed.
“Tell me what you know,” Tizkar said in a humorless voice.
“I know many things, Tizkar. You must be a little more precise.”
Enk emerged onto the second gallery, near the point of fainting. Lights dimmed and danced oddly in his periphery. He lurched forward. Oh, how he hated his accursed ailment. Just once he. . . .
His knees buckled.
Something flashed past the second gallery railing, falling toward the distant earth. A laughing man dropping from above.
Tizkar!
Enk blinked, bewildered. He jerked to his feet, took a step, collapsed once again. What mad acrobatics! Why leap? A fall from such heights would certainly injure, if not kill.
Fool. Arrogant fool!
Enk shook his head, his eyes itching. He staggered upright, stumbled past rows of wooden benches and slumped against the second gallery railing. Tizkar was already on his feet, his red wig askew, his back marred by the glitter of minute particles.
Suni and the Black Lion watched Tizkar, unamused. Apilsin hobbled back on his walking stick, fumbling at his coat pocket for something unseen.
“Don’t play games with me,” Tizkar hissed. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Games? With you?” Suni opened his arms wide, palms out. “I wouldn’t dare, Tizkar. Your father taught me too much for me to ever make such a fatal mistake.”
Enk wheezed air in through his mouth. There was something odd about Suni’s tone, something worrying about the depths of the Black Lion’s stillness. But what was it? What was he missing? Stubbornly, the answer eluded.
“Enk,” a voice called from behind.
He turned his back to the view.
Minna spilled out of the stairwell, the hem of her dress gathered in her hands, revealing white stockings. She rushed to his side, tugged him away from the railing. He squared his feet, stumbled. He had not the strength to resist her manic persistence it seemed.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed. “This place is unsafe. You have to leave, now!”
“The theft of muskets and gunpowder earlier today,” a voice that could only have been Tizkar’s own said, “tell me what you know.”
Enk wrenched himself free of Minna’s grasp, glanced at the railing then back at her. His eyes narrowed. “I can’t leave yet,” he spat in a half gasp. “Go without me.”
“But—” she began.
“No buts.” Enk pressed his palms into her shoulders, pushed her back. “Go!”
A wry snort from below. “Did I ever tell you about your father’s most enduring lesson? The one that burnt its way into my soul?”
Enk spun away from Minna and ran toward the voices. With a heart stifling blend of awe and dread, he unsheathed his sword, tossed it over the railing and leaped after it. Awe, for the fact he could ever be so stupid. Dread, for the horror that waited.
A scream rented the chamber, whether his own or Minna’s was impossible to tell for certain.
A jarring blow rising from the sole of leather boots.
A belly flopping hard against sand.
Indigo knifing across watery eyes.
Agony. Upwelling Torment.
Enk gulped, gasped. His lungs felt suffused with tar-colored vomit.
“Are . . . are you. . . .” A fly buzz that might have been Tizkar’s voice.
For a moment longer everything was a dancing blur. Painted walls. Laughing faces. Things focused, starting with Apilsin’s visage.
Eyes wild, the man desperately sucked on the end of a wooden pipe.
Tendrils escaped from his crooked nostrils.
Blue tendrils.
No. NO!
Enk shifted onto his side, peered up at Minna’s hanging face. Her aspect struck him, as it had back in the tavern, so like Merka’s own that for an instant it was Merka. The faint differences disappeared. You, her luminous eyes seemed to whisper, above all others, I love you.
Blue. Blue smoke. Nala.
Enk groaned, his body wracked by guilt and understanding. She had to escape before it was too late. He had to keep her safe. He reached through the pain, fumbled for the opening into abstruseness. Occult ripples welled, wedded to the knife-like contours of mortal thought.
Go, Minna. Lea
ve now!
In equal parts, luminescence complied as it damned. She fled, and Enk’s head rang with unseen reverberations. Now, he had to warn Tizkar. If only he could find the air to speak. If only the inner torment would ease just for a moment.
“Your father was always teaching in that stoic way of his,” Suni was saying, eying Enk’s gasping form with an air of boredom. “Did I ever tell you about the time he invited me to dinner, only to have me tied up when I got there? Can you imagine the kind of thoughts that start running through your cranium when a man like your daddy dearest has you bound?”
Enk jerked onto his knees. “Tizkar. . . .”
Tizkar’s eyes narrowed. Gray eyes, gleaming like silver coins in moonlight. He unsheathed his sword and glanced at Enk.
“Well, first is the confusion,” Suni said. “You wonder what the fuck you could have done to get on his bad side. Then the fear. The ball squeezing kind.”
“A . . . it’s. . . .” Enk began before gathering more air.
Suni smirked slyly. “He broke eight of my toes with a hammer. Each time he asked, ‘Why are you here?’ No answer satisfied him until the last.”
“Trap,” Enk finished, slumping face first into the sand. “It’s a trap!”
Distant thunder grew above.
Enk did not need to glance back to know what he would see; the clamor of dozens of booted feet rushing down stone stairs was too unique to be anything but what it was.
“‘I’m here because I’m a fool,’ was the response he excepted,” Suni said in a voice that echoed. “It was a valuable lesson, though I didn’t understand its true import until much later. Never enter a room without having at least three ways to destroy everyone in it.”
The low rumble built into a crescendo, and twenty narcotic addled fiends, armed with muskets, ringed the first gallery, their weapons trained on Tizkar. Cobalt plumes leaked from the sides of their mouths, where they sucked on wooden pipes.
Tizkar peered up at them and laughed. “You think these fools a match for me? I expected better. I am—”
Enk was struck more breathless by the sudden realization that Tizkar did not know! He did not know about the effect that nala had on their power. But how could he not? He had had this gift longer?
Tizkar stumbled drunkly as his eyes went unfocused. He dropped to a knee, clenched his teeth. Aghast, he held a hand to his head and stared up at the threads of spiraling blue.
Laughter, manic for the depths of its glee.
Chapter Twenty-One
A Helping Hand
Enk inhaled sharply, his gaze fixed on Apilsin’s giggling aspect. As a volcanic vent might inflate a sheepskin balloon nailed about its opening, the nala had flooded the man’s contours, distorting his dimensions into a mockery of its former anatomy. The same mad buoyancy inflicted the features of those that hung above with their hands clutching unsteady weaponry. Their eyes gave an impression of flitting from thing to thing, all of which remained unseen.
He rose onto his elbow, blinked against the lamplight. Isolated variables combined into a mosaic of glittering doom. There had to be a way out—there had to be! Yet for the moment the answer remained incalculable.
Enk bit his lip. His sword shimmered on the sand just within reach, if he but had the strength to reach for it. His back itched; the inkling of a solution, perhaps.
“How. . . .” Tizkar dropped his hand from his head, studying Suni with a look hooked by equal parts wonder and horror. Though even now the surprise did not quite reach his eyes; they remained inviolable, gray pools untouched by all those things that moved.
Enk swallowed and said, “A trap—all of it. Don’t you see, Tizkar, the theft of the muskets was just a lure. He wanted you here. He needs you for something.”
The Black Lion shifted his gaze onto Enk, his dark eyelids furling slightly. Enk stilled. He felt as if something immense lay below the man’s surface, something that despised him in a way it did not Tizkar.
“Is this true?” Tizkar asked softly.
“We got you now you uppity mother fucker!” Apilsin chortled, leaning heavily on his walking stick. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about your little gift,” he added, pointing at Enk. “I haven’t, and it will be repaid. Trust.”
Suni gave Apilsin a slant-eyed glance, his manner one of repressed vexation. Apilsin stammered then fell silent, his expression as sullen as that of an over-privileged child deprived of a want.
“You’re too powerful to remain unbridled,” Suni told Tizkar. “Consider this your recruitment into my services.”
Tizkar snarled. “You think to bind me? Me?”
“Always so petulant.” Suni sighed. “Yes, you. Think a moment on what we could accomplish with this strange ability of yours. Together we could—”
Tizkar chuckled loudly.
Another sigh. “And what amuses you so?” Suni asked.
“Your plan is a little flawed.”
“Oh?”
“Look!” Tizkar gestured above.
And Enk did just that, tracing the arc of Tizkar’s finger to the curling tendrils of blue rising from the mouths of the men with the muskets. Half of them already seemed oblivious to the goings-on of the world, laughing and muttering to themselves.
“Those fools are more likely to hit you than me,” Tizkar continued, his tone biting. “The daemon weed has them by the stones.”
“Tizkar!” a small voice screamed.
Tizkar spun about, rising to his feet. “Cat. Lulu. No.” The last word was spoken in a whisper that tugged at Enk’s pith, so filled with sorrow and hurt was it.
“I’m sorry, Tizkar.” Lulu’s voice descended from overhead. “They took us by surprise. I should of. . . . I’m sorry.”
Enk did not shift to look back at her, instead he slowly moved his hand toward the pommel of his sword. Snake eyes. The dices had landed on snake eyes, yet sometimes it was not fortune turns that saw the day but one’s ability to plum the avenues misfortune opened.
“Pretty girls, both of them.” Apilsin hobbled toward Tizkar, sucking on his pipe. “I see why you fancy them so dearly.”
“Let them go.” Sword hanging limply in his hand, Tizkar shuddered. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“No. They stay here,” Suni said. “A lever to insure your continued good behavior.”
A whimper from above, harrowing for its childlike resonance.
“Yes-yes. Pretty indeed,” Apilsin said, staring at the first gallery with a queer smile. “The little one hasn’t flowered yet obviously, but some of our noble clientele prefer them that way.” A wry snort. “Then again, you’ve experience first hand the deprave appetites of our betters, haven’t—”
“Enough, Apilsin!” Suni snapped.
Tizkar whirled about, howling and roaring through gnashed teeth, and like something too far made suddenly too near, a dark radiance welled from Tizkar’s center. Existence rippled with these emanations—emanations that carried heartache and hate as well as the stench of sulfur and brimstone.
Enk stiffened, his lips parting. This is. . . ?
A blade, nigh incandescent, kissed Apilsin’s throat. Blood gushed, and, for an instant, it hung ribbon-like, crimson streams reaching for forbidden heights, before spewing to and fro.
The air wailed under a fierce succession of gunshots, and plumes of sand twirled skyward where musket balls struck the earth. The Black Lion barreled Suni to the ground, protecting him with his much larger form.
“Hold!” Suni shouted, his voice muffled, his face pressed into the sand. “Hold, you fucking idiots!”
Enk’s fingers closed around the pommel of his sword. Tizkar looked about, his eyes wide, as though taken aback by another’s artistry. He jerked back, slid to his knees, clutching at his sword arm.
“Tizkar!” two feminine voice shrieked at once.
The roar stalled, and, half-clouded by gunpowder smoke, some fiends gazed at their piss poor showing. Over a dozen shots fired, yet only one musket ball had found
its mark.
“How bad,” Enk asked, scrambling to his feet.
Tizkar dropped his hand and inspected the wound. “Not bad. Grazed only,” he said eerily, as if in a state of disbelief.
“Get off of me, you oaf!” Suni yelled at the Black Lion.
Tizkar met Enk’s eyes and narrowed his own, communicating more in that instant than he could have in a hundred words. Enk nodded, his eyes shifting to Suni and the Black Lion. Enk and Tizkar rushed the downed pair.
“Yes, come!” the Black Lion shouted, rolling to his feet.
“No! Stop this!” Suni cried, backing away on all fours. “I have your women. Don’t make me—”
The Black Lion swept a boot across the ground.
A cloud of sand and dust plumed into the air, meant to decelerate their advance, Enk realized, by the man’s grinning manner.
“Plan?” Enk asked, halting at the edge of the streaming particles.
“Kill,” Tizkar replied, charging in. “Kill them all.”
Between ragged breaths, Enk studied the subtle interplay of gleaming muscles in the Black Lion’s bare chested form. He welcomed Tizkar’s slash with nothing but a knife in hand, leaning out of the sword’s arc with a dancer’s grace as his boot rose and smashed into Tizkar’s face. The older boy tumbled.
“Tizkar!” another conjoined shriek from the first gallery.
Enk sprang into the fray, elbows bent, as though holding a giant brush, and painted abstract geometries, his mind reaching for the manifolding shape that would wed sword edge to enemy tendon. The Black Lion evaded, whirled this way and that, twisted left and right, his crimson cape tracing the winding paths Enk’s blade would have to take.
Just this once. . . .
Enk gasped within a dozen steps, struggled to match his body to the mathematic complexities mentally grasped. And it was always thus, it seemed. He pushed himself faster and faster, and the Clansman strained to remain at the antipodal point of the empty spheres through which they waltzed.
Mindripper Page 16
