Urho lunged. Eshu spun about on his hind legs and dashed around Urho, circling him faster and faster until he was no more than a blur and Urho’s body was nearly invisible behind a net of golden light.
Go, the god’s voice said in Tahvo’s mind. The scrolls lie outside the door. Go!
Tahvo pushed herself to her feet and staggered up the steps toward the doors at the end of the room. The heavy doors gave under her weight, and she burst out into late-afternoon sunlight. The sack of scrolls lay where Eshu had indicated, but the priests Dakka had promised to provide were nowhere to be seen.
Tahvo looped the strap of the sack around her neck and shoulder, searching for some sign of where she should go. The street below was quiet, but she knew its peace was an illusion. Stone buildings quivered in the heat as if they anticipated what was to come. Portents of violence hung in the air, like smoke from an unseen fire.
Eshu trotted up beside her, tongue lolling. “The city falls,” he said. “I will take you to your companions. Come.”
He started down the outer steps. Tahvo hesitated. “Urho?”
Eshu looked over his shoulder with a twitch of his ears. “He is very tired,” the god said. “Let him rest.”
Tahvo remembered Rhenna’s warning and her own misgivings about Eshu’s motives.
“Why have you helped us?” she asked.
But Eshu had already set off, and Tahvo had no choice but to follow.
Chapter Twenty-Five
T he city had gone mad.
Rhenna raced through the streets with her stolen spear in hand, retracing the path from the hidden temple door back to the palace. The alleys and wide avenues that had seemed so quiet mere hours ago were now filled with men and women darting from one building to another, gathering in small, frantic clusters, only to burst apart again at the sight of some real or imagined threat. Grim-faced warriors converged on the palace compound, and priests came to blows in the shadows of their gods’ temples.
The turmoil worked to Rhenna’s advantage. Beneath her cloak and head cloth she was only one more distraught citizen among the rest. The soldiers ignored her until she reached the palace gates. There warriors milled about in confusion, stabbing at empty air with their spears and swords, as if battling invisible enemies.
Rhenna retreated behind a ram-headed statue and watched the bizarre display. Magic was at work here, and it did not belong to the priests. Sutekh was the Meroite god of chaos. Cian had come this way.
She called upon her own gift, hoping that the lesser devas of Air were free of the king’s control. Dust swirled around her feet. She swept the loose dirt and sand from the nooks and corners of every nearby building and fashioned a spinning, opaque wall. It revolved around her as she ran for the palace gate. A few of the warriors ceased their fighting as the wind scoured their skin and blew grit in their eyes, but Rhenna was up and over the wall before they could confront the new threat.
The palace was strangely deserted, bereft of soldiers, courtiers or servants. Rhenna followed the broad central gallery to the king’s hall. The doors were flung open to a vacant room. She paused to listen, letting the very silence be her guide. A shout echoed at the far end of the hall. She crossed the room and found a small door behind the dais. Beyond lay a courtyard and a dozen smaller doorways. A kilted servant saw Rhenna and fled through one of the doors.
Rhenna pursued the man, finding the door unbarred. It led into a sleeping chamber furnished for one of high rank. The sounds of raised voices drew her from the room and into a narrow corridor past many chambers furnished much like the first.
A single warrior guarded the final door, holding a spear in one hand and a sword in the other. He saw Rhenna and cast the spear with wild inaccuracy. She dodged it and rushed him, swinging her own spear at his legs. His sword sliced the air a finger’s-breadth from her shoulder. She spun, caught the blade with her spear butt and wrenched it from his hands. The warrior dove for the sword, but she was there before him.
She left him sprawled across the threshold and plunged into a scene of utter turmoil. Cian crouched a few paces in front of her, facing a score of warriors and several priests. Behind the barrier of bristling spears stood Nyx. Smashed furniture and fragments of carved stone and wood lay scattered about the cracked tile floor, and a dozen dead or badly injured soldiers stood testament to the violence of Cian’s arrival. There was no sign of the king.
“Rhenna!” Nyx cried.
Cian half turned, his eyes fevered slits in a black-and-red mottled face. His disdainful glance reduced Rhenna to a crawling insect, unworthy of his attention.
“Rhenna,” Nyx repeated. “You must stop him. He will destroy the city.”
“You would have killed him,” Rhenna said, working her way around Cian to the side of the room. “Your city has turned against him. Why should I help you?”
“Sutekh cares nothing for the prophecies. He will end any hope of defeating the Stone.” Nyx strained to look over the shoulders of her guards, and Rhenna saw that she still held the Hammer close to her chest. “If any part of Cian remains—”
“You said that Cian is no more.” Rhenna stopped halfway between the king’s warriors and Cian, concealing her own desperation. “Where is your king, Nyx? Where is the power of your priests? Can they no longer bind their enemies with the magic of their gods?”
One of the priests gripped his staff and raised a trembling hand, tracing a figure in the air. Nothing happened.
“Your devas have deserted you,” Rhenna said. “They have seen the truth.” She licked her lips. “Give the Hammer to me.”
“It burned you once,” Nyx said. “It will do so again, and this time you may not walk away.”
“Give it to her, woman,” Cian said, baring his teeth. “I will take it from her lifeless hands.”
Rhenna edged closer to the warriors, who shifted weapons and glanced at each other in confusion and alarm. They were afraid…afraid of Sutekh and of forces they could not control or understand. Just as Rhenna was afraid.
“Call off your men,” Rhenna said. “Their lives will be sacrificed without purpose—”
She had barely finished speaking when the warrior closest to her gave a harsh cry and turned on his nearest neighbor, slashing at naked flesh with his sword. His victim fell back, and other warriors burst into furious motion, attacking each other with violent abandon.
Cian laughed. Rhenna closed her ears to his brutality and watched for a break in the surging mass of bodies. Nyx fought her way free, dodging blades and spear-tips. She hesitated for an instant, staring into Rhenna’s eyes with sorrow and regret. Then she threw the Hammer.
Rhenna tossed her spear aside and caught the weapon. Its power blasted her like a bolt of lightning, driving her to her knees. The wrappings on her hands sizzled and blackened. The clash of battle faded, and all she could hear was the whisper of Cian’s tread on the broken tiles.
He took it from her hand as easily as he would steal a toy from an infant. Rhenna opened her eyes to the jeering triumph on his alien face. The warriors froze, dropping their weapons. The world held its breath.
Cian struck the floor with the Hammer. Shards of tile spun through the air, piercing skin and cloth. The ground rolled outward from the Hammer in great waves, tossing wounded and dying men like flotsam on the sea. The walls began to crack. Powdered stone rose in choking clouds. A jagged black crevice split the earth from the point of the Hammer’s impact, racing toward the South.
Those warriors still on their feet crowded through the door. A few turned back to aid the injured. Nyx struggled to help them. Holding her seared hands out before her, Rhenna stood amidst the ruin of her hopes and prepared to face Cian with the only weapon she had left.
Slender fingers seized her arm. “The palace is collapsing!” Nyx cried in her ear. “Cian is gone, Rhenna. We must get out!”
The dust cleared just long enough for Rhenna to see that Nyx spoke the truth. Cian had escaped, contemptuous of the feeble enemies he left be
hind. She followed Nyx to the door. Walls crumbled behind her, crashing in on themselves with a roar.
The survivors huddled in a small courtyard, hedged by devastation on every side. The palace of King Aryesbokhe had fallen. Nothing but rubble remained of its towering columns and painted walls, and Rhenna could see more distant buildings beginning to shake with the fury of the earth’s convulsions.
“The crack in the ground points toward the city gates,” Nyx said, hoarse with shock. “If it breaches the walls, the city will be defenseless.”
“Your enemies are already within your city,” Rhenna said harshly, peeling scraps of burnt cloth from her palms. “Cian goes to find your king.”
“Why? He has the Hammer.”
“Not all of it. Aryesbokhe keeps a piece of it in an amulet. Without that piece, the Hammer isn’t complete.”
Nyx closed her eyes. “If the Hammer can do this when it is not yet complete…”
Rhenna forgot her pain and grabbed Nyx’s arms. “Why did you betray us, Nyx?”
“I…I came to believe that my father was wrong. I saw that Sutekh had completely overcome the Watcher, that Cian was not strong enough…” She opened her eyes again. “I wished only to serve the prophecies.”
“And now? Are you convinced that the king’s supporters are mistaken in their beliefs?”
“The Hammer burned my uncle. He cannot be the true Bearer.” She held Rhenna’s stare. “Aryesbokhe is not evil, only misled. He was raised from infancy on stories that one of the royal family was fated to find and carry the Hammer.” She swallowed and glanced at the dazed warriors. “There is fighting between the king’s faction and the disciples of Talakhamani. If the city is dying, all the folk of New Meroe will need leaders, and I am of royal blood. There may yet be survivors in the palace. Let me do what I can to organize a search and find allies.”
“You’ll find allies in the temple of the Archives,” Rhenna said. “Where has Aryesbokhe gone?”
“To a secret refuge among the cliffs behind the city. You intend to follow Cian?”
Rhenna touched the figurine still tucked in her belt. “I was given to understand that only I can stop Sutekh from eating Cian’s soul.”
Nyx didn’t question her further. She spoke to one of the soldiers, who bent his head in acknowledgment. “Shorkaror will lead you to the king’s refuge.” She clasped Rhenna’s wrist. “We have only our faith to guide us now. You must save him, Rhenna. You must save us all.”
Yseul watched the city gates fall, reveling in the wanton destruction of all the Stone-cursed mortals held dear. She heard the screams of fear and pain, smelled freshly spilled blood as frantic humans fled their toppling structures and poured from the gaps in the crumbling walls.
She knew who had worked this sorcery of ruin. She had seen him enter the city, a creature she no longer recognized. She felt his ravening advance in the soles of her feet, vibrating through the earth like the tread of a mythic giant. His purpose had become a mystery; had she not known better, she would have sworn that he had turned to the Stone.
It made no difference. Cian possessed the Hammer, and he had grown mighty beyond her imagining. But she, too, was greater than she had ever been. The life essence of nine Children of the Stone beat in her blood. No jealous, squabbling males restrained her; Urho and Farkas had never returned from their attempts to enter the city. And even if they still lived, they had no power to take the Hammer from its wielder.
Yseul did.
She assumed panther shape and ran straight into the confusion of weeping, wailing humans and panicky livestock. Terror blinded them to her passage. She scrambled over the rubble, leaped the great crack in the earth and put her nose to the ground, tracing Cian’s implacable course across the city. Everywhere lay columns snapped like twigs, and statues shorn from their pedestals; the dead were abandoned by the living, and women searched the wreckage, crying out for lost children.
Yseul felt no pity. She loped between the severed heads of crouching ram-gods and through a garden of withered vines and felled trees. In a fifth of an hour she reached the far side of the city, where it butted against the sheer mountain wall.
Here all sign of Cian ended. Yseul paused, sniffing the hazy air. A troop of men had come this way, their bodies trailing the scent of fear, but her quarry was not among them. Even as she turned back toward the city, she heard the drum of running feet.
She melted into the shadow of a broken pillar and waited for the man to pass. He never had the chance to raise his sword. She leaped and knocked him down with a swipe of her paw. He lifted his bloodied head and froze.
Yseul straddled him and changed. The man’s eyes went blank with shock. She slapped his face with an open palm.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” she asked in Hellenish, caressing his cheek with the tips of her nails.
“Watcher,” he whispered. “But you are not…”
She wrapped her fingers around his throat. “I will kill you unless you speak swiftly and truthfully. Where is the man called Cian?”
Rattling breath hissed from his mouth. “Sutekh,” he said. “He has come in the shape of the Watcher.”
“What is this Sutekh?”
“The god,” he said. “The god who would destroy the king. He hunts Aryesbokhe….”
“Why?”
“I…do not know.”
“And where is the king?”
The man tried to resist, but a slight increase of pressure on certain parts of his body convinced him to speak. “The refuge,” he gasped. “In the mountain behind the city.”
“Take me there.”
She let him up, and he stumbled toward the cliffs. Yseul took panther shape and followed. The ground rose steeply away from the city streets. Loose rock skidded under the man’s feet and bounced over Yseul’s paws. She climbed with claws extended, calling upon the Children’s strength to feed her own. When the man faltered, she encouraged him with snarls and nips at his heels.
The cleft in the rock was well concealed, only one among many cavities in the dark stone. The man leaned heavily against the boulders planted at the entrance, trembling with exhaustion.
Yseul jumped to the top of the boulder and changed. “Well?” she asked, teasing the man’s hair with her fingers.
“Here,” he panted. “At the end of the tunnel…lies a chamber cut from the rock. It will be well guarded….”
“Should I fear the king’s minions?” She chuckled softly and cupped his face between her hands. “You have served me well, mortal. But your usefulness has ended.”
He must have understood, for he made a clumsy attempt to flee. She caught him within two strides, transfigured the stone beneath his feet and watched it gather him into its hungry embrace. When he was fully absorbed, she stretched out across the saturated earth and let his essence seep into her flesh—his youth, his strength, even some part of that thing mortals called a soul.
The fading remnants of his memory confirmed what he had told her. She squeezed between the boulders and crept along the rough floor of the tunnel. Her nostrils flared with the scent of many human bodies in a small space. A great slab of rock obstructed the way. She used the fresh flush of her victim’s vitality to shatter the stone.
Men waited on the other side. Fearful eyes glittered in the light of a dozen torches. Swords hissed from their sheaths. Yseul laughed.
“So,” she said. “At last I am granted an audience with the great king of the holy city.”
A hairless man draped in a spotted pelt took a hesitant step forward. “What are you?”
“Do you not recognize a goddess when you see one, mortal?”
The man withdrew and whispered to someone hidden in the shadows. Another baldpate joined him.
“You are no goddess,” the second man said. “You…” He gripped the amulet hung from a cord around his neck. “You are of the Stone.”
The warriors behind him groaned like men robbed of their last hope. They did not lay down their w
eapons. Doubtless they would die to the last man in defense of their king.
“I was of the Stone,” Yseul said. “It no longer rules me.” She arched her back. “Come out, O king, or I shall have to fetch you.”
“What do you want?” Baldpate asked, his teeth chattering as he spoke.
“I want the Hammer.”
“It is not here.” A man dressed in long robes trimmed with gold pushed his way through the warriors, though they tried to hold him back. “I am Aryesbokhe,” he said. “You see the work of the Hammer in the ruins of my city. Seek there for the one who bears it.”
Yseul studied him with mild interest. “And why has he destroyed your city, oh king?”
“Because he is evil,” Baldpate said.
“Cian?” She shook her head. “No. He is only weak.” She smiled at Aryesbokhe. “One of your gods has possessed him, and now he hunts you. He will find you, and when he does—” She stopped, struck by a sudden awareness. All the fine hairs on her skin stood erect.
“You lie,” she said. “Part of the Hammer is in this chamber. Give it to me.”
The king held his ground. “I have nothing.”
Yseul leaped, changing shape in midair. Her claws raked Aryesbokhe from forehead to groin, stripping him of his jeweled collar and shredding the royal robes. He staggered and fell. Baldpate rushed to his side while the warriors charged Yseul with bared blades.
She dispatched them one by one, twisting her agile body to evade every thrust, ripping out entrails and snapping bones between her teeth. The chamber floor grew slippery with blood. The few who survived the first skirmish stood fast around their crippled master.
Weary of the game, Yseul risked a few minor wounds and killed the remaining warriors. She disemboweled Baldpate, tearing the slick pink organs from his belly. Then she seized the king’s arm in her jaws and dragged him from the chamber and through the tunnel, into the light and heat of the waning day.
On a woven leather cord that had lain hidden beneath his collar hung a painted clay amulet in the shape of a hammer. Yseul severed the cord with a swipe of a claw. Aryesbokhe made a weak sound of protest and lifted a hand to push her away. She bit through the tendons and vessels in his neck and left him to choke out his life while she crushed the amulet and exposed the sliver of stone inside it.
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