The guard in front of the Red Kank slowly turned and searched the square. “What’s happening?”
An alarmed murmur rustled across the square, and the king’s men stopped collecting slaves to look at their fallen comrade. Suddenly golden bolts of energy shot from shop windows and alleys all around the square, striking templars and half-giants with unnerving accuracy. Several black-robed bureaucrats collapsed. Others disappeared into the crowd. Some of the half-giants took the attacks without falling. They only roared in pain and clutched at the hideous burns that marked them wherever the golden beams had struck.
The guard in front of the Red Kank stood with his back to the nobles, looking from one side of the square to the other.
“Agis, look!” Jaseela pointed at a form standing behind the counter of a nearby shop.
The figure wore a blue robe with a white veil pulled across his face. From beneath the veil protruded a small yellow tube, directed at a wounded half-giant a quarter of the way across the square. As the nobles watched, a handful of shimmering balls streaked out of the tube. When they hit the wounded guard, they erupted into sprays of brilliant flame. The half-giant dropped without making a sound.
The guard in front of the Red Kank raised his club and started toward the figure, but paused when someone in the square called, “Watch out, there’s another!”
Out of a nearby alley streamed a crackling flame, coming from the outstretched fingers of a blue-robed figure to scorch another guard’s head.
“Sorcerers!” Agis gasped. “It has to be the Veiled Alliance!”
A nearby templar scooped three stones off the ground. “In the name of Mighty Kalak, let these missiles strike dead the enemies of the king!”
The templar tossed the stones at the wizard attacking with the fire stream. As soon as he released them, all three shot through the air like arrows and struck their target square in the forehead. The sorcerer collapsed, spraying the alley walls with great gouts of effulgent flame.
The half-giant in front of the suphouse stepped toward the first sorcerer that had revealed himself. In the same instant, Jaseela pulled a steel stiletto from beneath her cloak.
“What are you doing?” Agis asked.
“Joining the fight,” Jaseela returned. “How about you?”
With that, she hopped onto the wall and dropped down onto the guard’s back. As the noblewoman landed, she threw her free arm over the half-giant’s shoulder and reached around his massive neck, burying her stiletto deep into the guard’s soft throat.
The half-giant bellowed in rage. After dropping his club, he grabbed at Jaseela’s head with one massive hand and at her stiletto with the other.
Agis watched the noblewoman’s attack with a sense of detached shock. In the flash of an eye, Jaseela had declared herself in full rebellion against Kalak. If someone later identified her as a participant in the ambush, which seemed likely given the number of people in the square, her lands would be confiscated and orders issued to kill her on sight.
Jaseela ducked the half-giant’s clumsy grasp, then slipped down his back, still clinging to her dagger. The blade opened a long gash in the guard’s throat, then suddenly came free. The noblewoman dropped the rest of the way to ground, her arm soaked with dark blood.
The half-giant spun around. He held a massive hand across the gash in his throat, but could not stop the flow. Bright red bubbles appeared between his fingers. He gurgled an unintelligible threat and lifted his free hand to strike.
Realizing that even a wounded half-giant could crush the noblewoman with just one blow, Agis took a deep breath and prepared to help her. With a little bit of luck, he could use the Way to save Jaseela and no one would ever know.
The noble focused his thoughts on his energy nexus, then made a fist and turned the knuckles toward the guard’s chest. In his mind he imagined a mystical rope of energy flowing from his nexus into his arm. Agis mentally shaped the energy he had summoned into a huge fist. He drew his arm back and punched at the guard, simultaneously releasing his psionic attack.
The invisible fist struck its target square in the chest. The half-giant rocked back on his massive heels, but did not fall. Instead, he shook his ponderous brow and peered more closely at Jaseela, then slapped her with the heel of his open hand. An astonished cry escaped the noblewoman’s lips as the blow sent her crashing into the suphouse wall. She collapsed to the ground, and the half-giant reached down to pick her up.
Agis cursed himself for being tentative and subtle when he should have been bold. He had used the Way not because it was the best method of saving Jaseela, but because he was afraid to overtly involve himself in the revolt. Jaseela had shown no such hesitations. She had seen what was right and done it in an instant.
As the half-giant’s fingers closed around Jaseela’s limp body, Agis drew his dagger and climbed onto the edge of the balcony. “Up here!” be called.
The half-giant looked up, blood still seeping from between the fingers clasped about his throat. Agis dropped off the balcony. He landed on the guard’s shoulder and stabbed at his foe’s eye with all his might. The dagger sank to the hilt. The half-giant screamed and spun away, spilling Agis onto the cobblestones next to Jaseela. The huge brute plucked the dagger from his eye and stumbled away in pain and shock. A few steps later he finally dropped to the ground.
Agis turned to Jaseela. The noblewoman’s eyes were closed and her breathing shallow. He ran his hand over the back of her head and felt a huge knot forming where it had struck the wall. She was covered with blood, but he could not tell how much of it was hers and how much was from the dead guard.
Agis poked his head into the shadowy door of the Red Kank. “Caro!” he yelled. “I need you!”
Though he had no doubt the other three nobles were also inside the suphouse, he did not bother calling them. If he was disappointed in himself for letting Jaseela attack alone, he was disgusted with them for abandoning her altogether. Besides, he and Caro would have an easier time getting the noblewoman out of the Elven Market if there was more than one group of nobles for greedy pickpockets and vengeful templars to follow.
As Agis turned away from the Red Kank, he saw that the elven merchants had fallen upon the templars. He knew the elves were more interested in stealing the bureaucrats’ fat purses than resisting Kalak’s oppression, but he was glad for the diversion. The more chaotic the scene in Shadow Square, the less likely templar informers would be to take note of him and Jaseela.
Agis gently stretched the noblewoman out on the cobblestones, then kneeled at her side and checked once more for obvious wounds. As far as he could tell, all of the blood had come from the half-giant.
Caro stepped out of the suphouse. “What happened?”
“No time to explain now,” Agis said. “I’m going to need you to keep Jaseela from being jostled as we leave. Do you feel well enough for a little pushing and shoving?”
The dwarf nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
Without further comment, Agis laid his hands on the ground next to the noblewoman, then called on his psionic powers to create an invisible bed of pure force beneath her. His fingers and hands began to tingle, and Jaseela’s body rose off the ground. Agis laid a palm on her stomach to keep her stable and used his other to take her hand. He stepped toward the alley through which he had entered the square, thinking he might be strong enough to keep her levitated until they had left the Elven Market.
When Agis lifted his eyes from Jaseela’s unconscious form, he found himself facing a large man wearing a blue robe, a white scarf pulled across his face. The brown eyes peering out from beneath the white brow seemed as ancient as Caro’s, but there was a depth and power to them that Agis found both alarming and awe-inspiring. In one hand, the wizard held the noble’s bloody dagger, and in the other he carried the obsidian-pommeled cane that Agis recognized as belonging to the old man who had given him directions to Shadow Square.
The figure offered the dagger to Agis without saying a word.
>
“You?” the noble gasped.
The sorcerer ignored the question and placed the dagger in Agis’s hand, then turned to go. The senator caught him by the shoulder. “Wait. We’re part of this now. We want to help.”
Using his cane, the sorcerer knocked Agis’s hand away. “We don’t need your help.”
With that, he took a single step away from the nobleman. Before Agis’s eyes, the old man’s body grew translucent and faded from sight.
SIX
DEBT OF HONOR
RIKUS STOOD ATOP A PENINSULA PROTRUDING FROM a cliff of orange shale. A cool breeze danced over his face, and tall, wispy rods of ruby thornstem scratched his bare shoulders. At his back lay a vast plain of rusty desert mottled by delicate clumps of white brittlebush and green globes of tumbling spikeballs. Before him hung a void filled with still, ashen haze that stretched from below the cliff to the zenith of the sky.
The mul had been peering into the gray murk for a long time—he couldn’t say whether it had been minutes or hours or days—hoping for some glimpse of what lay on the other side. So far, the curtain had not parted, and he was beginning to think he was looking at the Sea of Silt.
Rikus did not remember crossing the desert at his back, and he had no idea how he had come to be standing on this cliff. The last thing he recalled was seeing his friends rush to his rescue as the gaj burned his mind. He feared that his lapse of memory was due to damage caused by the creature’s attack.
To the mul’s right, the gray haze finally stirred, churning itself into an oval eddy as tall as a man. Rikus stepped away and raised his fists to a fighting guard, prepared to defend himself. The eddy simply continued to whirl.
“Step through,” spoke a voice at Rikus’s back. It had a smooth, melodious timber that was neither male nor female.
The mul turned. A vaguely human shape stood beside him. The figure wore a gray burnoose with the hood pulled over its head so that neither its face nor eyes were visible. It held its arms before it, its hands neatly folded into the opposite sleeves.
“Who are you?” the mul demanded. His heart was suddenly beating hard with confusion and fear, and he did not like the feeling.
“No one,” came the reply. The figure lifted an arm and pointed toward the swirling eddy. There was no hand at the end of its sleeve. “What are you waiting for?”
“Nothing,” Rikus answered, staring at the sleeve.
“Then you have found it.”
Rikus stepped toward the figure. “What’s happening here?”
“Nothing,” came the reply.
The mul scowled and peered beneath the shadows of the hood. When he saw only empty darkness, he reached up and pulled the hood away.
The figure had no head. Even the burnoose’s collar was as empty as the sleeves and the hood.
With a start, Rikus realized why he could not remember crossing the desert. “Is that it? I’m dead?” he demanded, waving a hand at the curtain of grayness. “This is all a lifetime of pain and bondage comes to?”
“This is all everything comes to,” the figure replied, its dulcet voice sounding from the empty space above its collar. With its empty sleeve, it gestured toward the swirling eddy.
Rikus shook his head. “It’s not enough,” he said. “Not for me.” He turned toward the desert plain and started walking.
The gray figure appeared in front him. “There is nothing more,” it said, raising its empty sleeves to block his way. “You can’t escape.”
“I can try,” the mul hissed, reaching out to clutch the cloak. “Besides, what’s to stop me?” He wadded the empty robe into a bundle and tossed it over his shoulder. “Nothing.”
He walked for miles, then tens of miles. The terrain never changed, save that the gray curtain at his back grew more and more distant. Ahead of him, an endless plain of orange shale stretched to the horizon, the dreary monotony broken only by the white caps of brittlebush, the green dots of spikeballs, and the barren stalks of thornstem waving in the breeze.
Finally Rikus’s legs grew weary. He sat down to rest, then yawned and realized he could not remember the last time he had slept. The mul leaned back, ignoring the sharp edges of shale that poked him in the shoulders and ribs. There was no sun in the yellow sky, only an ethereal haze that radiated an amber glow. Rikus closed his eyes.
When he woke, he was no longer in the desert. Instead, he lay in the center of a square room. Over his head hung a ceiling of mekillot ribs, lashed together to form a grid of squares. Above the bone grid, the twin moons, Ral and Guthay, shone through a scaly roof of stretched hide, filling the room with dim, yellow light.
The walls and floor were of solid stone, save that there was a large gate of iron bars in one wall. Once unlocked, the gate could be raised into a special slot by means of a sturdy giant-hair rope-and-pulley system located outside the cell.
“What am I doing here?” Rikus asked no one in particular.
Beneath him lay a pile of dirty rags that had been serving as his bed. The cell stank of offal and sweat, and through the gate came the roars, chirps, and shrieks of a dozen kinds of beasts.
Rikus sat up and shook his head, sending waves of throbbing pain through his skull. His back, arms, and legs were stiff and sore, and his abdomen burned where the gaj’s barbed pincers had punctured his skin.
The mul groaned, taking his first good look around the pen. In one corner, Yarig and Anezka lay curled up together. At Rikus’s side, Neeva’s massive form was stretched out on the stone floor, covered only by her heavy cape.
“I’m alive,” Rikus said.
“So it would seem,” answered a familiar, sarcastic voice. “What a pity.”
Rikus lifted his eyes to the gate. Boaz stood in the corridor beyond. The half-elf wore a cape of blue silk and carried an open carafe of milkwine. His eyes were blurry, and he stood awkwardly braced on stiff legs, as if he would pitch forward at any moment. At his waist hung a ring of keys and a steel dirk.
“No guards?” asked Rikus. In his mind, the saw the trainer standing atop the practice pit wall, wanting to know which of the mul’s friends should be flogged in punishment for his disrespect. The memory filled the gladiator’s heart with bitter anger. “That’s careless of you, Boaz.”
“I’m safe enough with that between us,” the half-elf replied, gesturing at the iron gate. His words were slurred. “Besides, my guards have all passed out. Not enough to do in this tedious compound, so they drink too much.”
“If there’s nothing to do here, why aren’t you all in Tyr?” Rikus asked, stepping to the gate.
Boaz lifted the carafe to his lips, then spat a mouthful of milkwine over Rikus’s face. “Because of you—you and Sadira,” the trainer said, taking the precaution of moving out of arm’s reach. Behind him, something stirred in the pen opposite Rikus’s. “I’ll see to it that you’re punished in the morning.”
“For what?” Rikus demanded, wiping the white froth off his face. Even if he could have reached Boaz, he doubted that he would have killed the half-elf at that moment. Doing so would have meant giving up the chance to win his freedom, and he wasn’t prepared to do that over a mouthful of wine.
Boaz lifted the carafe to his lips again. Rikus stepped away from the gate, but this time the only wine that left the half-elf’s mouth was what dribbled down his chin. In a rambling speech, the trainer told Rikus how Sadira had saved him from the gaj with her magic, then killed two guards to escape the Break. “Lord Tithian was furious with me and my fellows,” Boaz finished. “He confined us all to the pits.”
“You’re lying,” Rikus said. “Sadira would never—”
“He’s not lying,” Neeva interrupted. She stepped to Rikus’s side and leaned against the gate, wrapped in the same cape she had been using as a blanket. “What part don’t you believe—that Sadira’s a sorceress or that she left you behind?”
“That I was saved by a scullery wench,” Rikus answered.
“She’s no ordinary slave girl,” Neeva
replied, giving the mul a sarcastic smile. “It’s surprising that I’m the one who has to tell you that.”
Boaz snorted at Neeva’s jealousy.
Rikus ignored the trainer. “What happened to her?” he asked. “Where is she now?”
“What does it matter?” Neeva demanded, narrowing her emerald eyes. “You weren’t in love with her, were you?”
“Of course not,” Rikus looked away and noticed that both Yarig and Anezka had also awakened. The dwarf and his halfling partner were doing their best to not involve themselves in the conversation. “I owe her a debt of honor.
That’s all.”
“There have been other slave girls and you haven’t lied to me yet,” Neeva said, thumping Rikus in the chest. “Why start now?”
Rikus found that he could not look his fighting partner in the eye. Instead, he cast a meaningful glance at Boaz and asked, “Do we have to talk about this here?”
“Yes,” Boaz chuckled. “It’s best to air these things immediately. Hidden resentments have ruined many a matched pair.”
“Well?” Neeva asked. “Is Sadira so different from the others?”
Rikus forced himself to meet his partner’s gaze. In his own mind, the mul did not know whether what he felt for Sadira was gratitude or something deeper, and the uncertainty made him uncomfortable. “Sadira risked her life to save mine. I guess that makes her different.”
Neeva turned away, tears welling in her eyes.
Rikus grabbed her shoulders. “My feelings for Sadira—whatever they are—have nothing to do with us. I just need to know what happened to her.”
Neeva pulled away and stepped into a dark corner of the pen.
“I wish I could help you two lovers,” Boaz sneered. “Unfortunately, nobody knows what happened to her. My guess is that someday I’ll run into her in the Elven Market. In a brothel, no doubt.”
Rikus thrust an arm through the iron bars, clutching at the half-elf. Boaz watched the gladiator’s fingers close a few inches shy of their target, then clucked at the mul. “Anezka will pay dearly for that.”
The Verdant Passage Page 11
