Trapped On Talonque: (A Sectors SF romance)

by Veronica Scott

  Lolanta slapped him, rocking him in the hold of the temple guards. “Take him away. Put him in the holding cell until sunset, and then we’ll have his heart.”

  “Do my words come too close to the truth for comfort?”

  She turned, standing so she could gaze over the flatlands far below the plateau.

  The guards dragged Nate across the smooth surface at the top of the pyramid, past more crumbling columnar statues of the god and moss-covered altar stones. His captors took him into the small temple at the far side of the sacrificial platform. The temple interior was basically a wide hallway with four small rooms opening off the passage, obviously abandoned for centuries. There were cracks in the roof, permitting shafts of waning sunlight in here and there, illuminating faded, flaking frescoes. Windblown debris and dead leaves crackled under his feet. Scurrying away, small creatures squeaked or hissed. One of the guards kicked futilely at an escaping rodent with a curse. Nate was escorted to the last room on the left and chained to the wall in a dank cell. The guards left him there in the near dark, slamming the rotting wooden door shut with a hollow thud.

  A few minutes later, the cell door reopened. Nate tensed, thinking the guards couldn’t be coming for him so soon. It was only late to midafternoon by his reckoning, and the giant sun of this planet made an unusually slow traverse of the sky.

  Lolanta entered the cell, unaccompanied. She set the small torch she was carrying into a convenient holder beside the door. Then she stood for a long moment, staring across the width of the cell at Nate, her expression unreadable.

  “What the seven hells do you want now?” Can’t she leave me alone until the appointed hour? Give a man a chance to make peace with his own deity?

  “Once in Nochen, in better times, I offered you a bargain, warrior, and you refused it. I’ve come to speak of possibilities again.”

  “I don’t know how to make it any more plain. I despise you and everything you stand for. I’d kill you where you stand right now, my word on it, if I wasn’t cuffed to the wall. You and I could never be on the same side of anything. We have no common ground. There are no possibilities where we are concerned.”

  “Don’t be so sure, or so rash.” She came closer until she stood in front of him. He tried not to pay attention to the ravaged side of her face, focusing instead on her normal eye. The intense perfume she wore washed over his senses in a cloying wave, overwhelming the stench of the mildew and mold on the surrounding stone walls.

  “I’ve considered what you said to me just now on the stairs,” she said. “Most of it was pure blasphemy, but perhaps there was some sense to a part of it. Perhaps it’s not your death Huitlani demands of me today. Perhaps your heart is meant to serve in another fashion.”

  Nate maintained a stubborn silence.

  “My husband is dead. I need a strong warrior to rule with me, to lead the armies to recapture what we’ve lost.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Even in these extreme circumstances, Nate laughed at the unthinkable suggestion. “You and I don’t fight for the same side, lady.” How many times do I have to tell her the obvious truth before she leaves me alone?

  “But we could. Don’t be so stubborn. I like strength in a man, but you carry it to the extreme.” She touched his cheek in a grotesquely intimate gesture. “We could do much together, I’m sure.”

  Nate jerked his head away from her touch, from those clawed nails. “Leave me the hell alone.”

  She stepped away from him, eye glinting with fury. Lolanta fussed with the silky hood of her cape so the damaged side of her face was shielded from view.

  Nate took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for you,” he said, looking her right in the eyes, so she couldn’t mistake his meaning. “Killing me isn’t going to do you any good.” He studied her averted face. “You’re after revenge, pure and simple. You want T’naritza and me to pay, to suffer for ending your days of bloody glory. Admit it. Don’t keep dressing it up, or trying to excuse your actions with these absurd claims about my death restoring the city of Nochen or anything else. You don’t really believe what you’re spouting, do you?”

  Lolanta studied him for a long moment. “You know nothing of Huitlani and his powers.” She tried to smile, working hard to regain her usual icy demeanor. “I might admit some of my actions are personal. But whatever I do also serves the greater purposes of Huitlani, even your death on my altar.”

  “You’re in for a lot of disappointment.”

  “Perhaps your death alone won’t suffice. You probably speak truth.” Lolanta inclined her head in graceful acknowledgment of a point to Nate. “But you forget your value as the means to a more important end—the capture and sacrifice of T’naritza. Perhaps you do love that pitiful girl. We’ll see how much she cares about you. I know your companions are nearby. Will they abandon you? At sunset, I’ll make her my offer from the temple steps—her life for yours. Care to wager what happens?” Laughing, she swept from the cell, forgetting to take the torch in her triumphant mood.

  Nate contemplated his options after she left. There was no way he was going to get free. The shackles were rusty and covered in green mold, but still stronger than he could pull open. He hoped Thom and Bithia had ridden on, per his emphatic orders. Knowing them, that was a thin hope indeed. Thom had never abandoned him in any tight situation before, nor would Nate have let his friend die on the altar, were the positions reversed, without expending every effort to save him. And Bithia, having put herself at risk before to save his life, was hardly going to stand by idly while Thom launched a rescue attempt. But how could the three of them hope to beat Lolanta, who had at least fifteen men at her command, as well as the high ground?

  Something slid across his left foot, rasping over his skin. Glancing down, he discovered a scarlet and blue tolokon coiled next to him in the gloom. Its colors were iridescent and unmistakable even in the shadows of the cell. The reptile raised its head, studying him for a long moment before uncoiling and slithering out of sight through a large crack. Nate let out the breath he’d been holding. He wasn’t a big believer in omens, but it was uncanny to see his first tolokon now after hearing about them for all these months. Getting a little space happy. He leaned his head against the clammy stone wall and closed his eyes.

  Eventually, two guards arrived to take him for the sacrifice. Before unlocking him from the tight restraints, one of the men tipped a black bowl to his lips, trying to force Nate to drink the fluid sloshing within. He spat out the few sickly sweet drops leaking past his compressed lips but knew he’d swallowed some. “What the seven hells is that?”

  The guard with the bowl clutched in one meaty paw stared at him, a sympathetic expression on his broad face. “You should drink the offering of Lolanta, warrior. A potion to take fear from a man’s heart. She does you great favor to provide this.”

  And dull my reflexes so I can’t put up a fight. “I’ve told the bitch before not to do me any favors. I’m not afraid.”

  “You will be,” the other guard said with a leer.

  There was no more discussion, and the guard didn’t offer the contents of the bowl again. The men released him from the wall shackles and held him tightly by the arms, forcing him to walk into the corridor where Lolanta waited, decked out in what remained of her full priestess regalia. The effect should have been pitiful, but instead there was an aura of demented magnificence.

  “Halt, I wish a few final words.”

  “He refused the quiloe wine, my lady.”

  “The more fool you,” Lolanta told Nate, good eye narrowed, other eye twitching as she studied him. “I warned you this won’t be an easy or quick death.”

  “Get on with what you have to do. Stop making threats.” Nate was contemptuous.

  Be ready. Bithia’s voice was clear in his head. Thom says delay her. We’re nearly there.

  The signal I’ve been waiting for. Nate wrenched his arm free from the guard on the left, grabbing the bowl and smashing it into the face of the man o
n the right. As the soldier collapsed, Nate kicked the legs out from under his first captor and attempted to grab Lolanta. More soldiers arrived from farther back in the hallway and piled on as the priestess screamed and retreated.

  Determined not to make it easy for them, trying to buy the time Thom needed, Nate resisted being dragged onto the platform with all his power. The enemy had the advantage of sheer muscle mass, but he’d nothing to lose now, no slightest compunction about killing, while they were under stringent orders from Lolanta to get him chained on the altar alive. Nate managed to get free for an instant, knocking one guard out cold with a well-placed jab to the throat and breaking another’s knee with a savage martial arts kick. More of the hulking men joined in the fray. Working together, the pack of burly guards got him onto the black stone altar on his back, but not before Nate sent a third soldier reeling, his eye socket split by a well-placed kick.

  He battled as the guards closed heavy shackles over his ankles and wrists, nearly getting free again, adrenaline lending him strength. Eventually, Nate was pinned, unable to move more than an inch in any direction.

  Lolanta strolled to his side once the guards stepped away. Standing beside the waist-high altar, she toyed with the cuff at his ankle and laughed. “What a pity to waste such a man, but sacrifice is your choice, warrior. Too late to change your mind now.”

  He spat in her face. “Go to hell.”

  Wiping her cheek with the corner of her cloak, she said, “Now I’ll make this ceremony as drawn-out as I can, to savor each moment of your pain, this I promise. The quiloe wine would have helped you to endure the ordeal, and I intended to be more merciful, but your actions of resistance anger me, and the gods.”

  She took a thin knife, like an old-fashioned scalpel, with poison or more drugs smeared on the blade, from a tray of instruments held out by a priestess. This handmaiden’s left arm hung limp, most of her hair missing, revealing a shiny swath of burned skin. She coughed heavily, shaking the tray she was balancing.

  Lolanta’s priestesses aren’t going to outlive me by much. They’re all in varying stages of radiation sickness.

  The queen chanted, the syllables discordant, ominous.

  He closed his eyes and sent an urgent message. Now would be good. I’m strapped down and she has a knife.

  Lolanta cut a shallow slash in his neck with the blade. Warm blood flowed immediately.

  Opening his eyes in pain, Nate watched her catch his blood in a translucent-green stone cup. She sprinkled a pale powder into the goblet and drank the hideous concoction in one long gulp.Lolanta hurled the vessel against the side of the altar near his head and uttered what sounded like curses. Jagged fragments of the broken pottery struck his chest and face, leaving small cuts here and there. Reeling unsteadily, she grabbed a heavier knife from the instrument tray and placed her other clawed hand on his breastbone. Biting her lip as she concentrated, she cut his shirt open from collar to hem, leaving his chest bare. Nate stared unflinchingly into her eyes. Her one pupil was huge, dilated, probably from the drug she’d taken with his blood. Lolanta opened her mouth to taunt him again, but an imperious command from Bithia rang across the platform.

  “Stop this hideous travesty at once. Touch him with that knife and you die.”

  “You wish to say something, T’naritza?” She lifted her deformed left hand from his skin and carefully laid the heavy, curved, black stone knife on the tray.

  Bithia’s beautiful tones carried well in the clear night air. “Let him go, Lolanta. I won’t allow you to sacrifice my man to your evil, false god.”

  “And why not?” the priestess asked, tilting her head to the side and raising her eyebrows. She pivoted to face Bithia. “He bleeds as easily as any other man. I’ve proven his vulnerability. His heart will surely be as pleasing to Huitlani as any other warrior’s. There must be an offering tonight. It’s the eve of the red moons, you know.”

  Nate realized Bithia stood on the altar platform, glancing at him quickly to reassure herself he lived before she locked eyes with Lolanta.

  “There’ll be a death as tradition demands—your life will be forfeit tonight for all your crimes,” Bithia said.

  Nate realized she wasn’t holding a weapon. How could Thom let her walk up here unarmed? Where the hell is he?

  Ambushing her guards at the perimeter of the temple. Stop distracting me.

  Totally focused on Lolanta, Bithia didn’t even glance at him.

  Two of the uninjured guards from the squad assigned to bring Nate to the altar had been circling ever closer as the women talked. Now the pair of thugs made their move, seizing Bithia, holding her tightly by the arms. Nate fought the chains holding him in place and cursed.

  Bithia seemed unconcerned by her capture, or by their rough handling. “Think carefully about what you do here. Release me, leave this place now and you can live,” she said to the men.

  “Empty threats from one worshipped with the paltry gifts of flowers and candles. Let me deal with your lover, and then you can take his place.” Lolanta glanced at the tray held by the trembling, coughing acolyte. The high priestess took her curved knife again, caressing its carved handle. “We waste too much time. Now that you’re here, as I knew you would be, foolish T’naritza, we can get on with the death of this man before the moons reach their zenith.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Nate blinked. Either he was hallucinating, or a green nimbus was slowly surrounding Bithia, glowing much like the curtain in the healing device had done. Flares of green light mixed with red sparks spurted off into the fading late afternoon sunlight. Her luxurious mane of blue and lavender hair spread out in the air like the corona of a miniature sun. The burly men who’d been so triumphant at capturing her moments ago, now dropped their hold on her as if her bare skin had scorched their hands.

  Perhaps it did. Who knows what this unexpected power of Bithia’s can do?

  Screaming in pain and fear, the guards shook their hands, now blackening and withering, and retreated, stumbling and falling across each other as whatever power Bithia wielded took lethal effect. Nate heard panicky yelling as the remaining participants attempted to flee before Bithia attacked them.

  Clutching the knife in her fist, Lolanta whirled, raising her arm to deliver the stroke that would kill Nate.

  Bithia snapped out her left arm, the one ringed by her gilintrae, fingers open, palm up. A sizzling bolt of the green and red light flew from her fingertips to engulf Lolanta before she could complete the motion.

  Nate focused on the queen’s distorted face. She dropped the knife onto the altar beside Nate, striking him a glancing blow in the side. Reeling, Lolanta staggered under the assault of whatever weapon Bithia had launched at her. She fell to her knees, yelling curses, writhing in the grip of the unearthly flames. A small explosion scattered sparks in the twilight, and the fire died sluggishly, leaving an oily black residue on the altar platform and no other sign that Lolanta ever existed.

  Bithia rushed to the altar, taking a moment to reassure herself Nate was unharmed for the most part, before trying to locate the release mechanism for the shackles.

  Thom came rushing across the platform as the shackles fell open with a snap. Nate struggled to rise with their assistance.

  “Report?” he said as he gained his feet.

  “The other priestesses fled. I let them go—they appear to be dying,” Thom said. “Took me so long to get here because I was picking off Lolanta’s guards stationed at the base of the temple, the ones lying in wait to ambush us again. Got a bit complicated, but we’re good.”

  “You’re in no condition to ride, and it’s getting dark fast,” Bithia said to Nate. “We’ll have to shelter here tonight.”

  “Not here. I want to leave this damned place.”

  “There ain’t exactly any good choices,” Thom said. “We don’t know this territory, and she’s right—you can’t sit a kemat tonight. Seven hells, give yourself a night to recover.”

  “We�
��ll be gone at first light—be sensible,” Bithia said as they made their way toward the temple entrance.

  “Hold up, let me do a recon.” Weapon in hand, Thom moved ahead to ensure no one was left hiding in the structure.

  “There was something on the knife blade, some kind of drug. Making me lightheaded.” Nate leaned on Bithia, unable to keep walking without Thom’s strength to support him. “No more argument from me.” He accepted the plain fact that he had no strength for descending the temple stairs, much less staying in the saddle while in search of a more congenial campsite for the night.

  “Not a pleasant place, but empty,” Thom reported, positioning Nate’s arm on his shoulder so they could continue into the temple.

  Together, Bithia and Thom got Nate to the open space inside the entrance, retrieving the torch from what had been his cell. After helping him recline on Thom’s cloak, Bithia cleaned the neck wound as best she could with water from a well at the rear of the building, binding it and the slash in his side with strips from her skirt. “I’ve done as much as I can for now.” Bithia sat with Nate’s head in her lap, gently running her hand through his hair.

  “Didn’t I tell you to ride on and leave me?”

  Not at all abashed, she smiled, shaking her head. “And you believed your best friend and I would of course do this foolish thing? Abandon you to Lolanta’s knives merely because you ordered us?”

  “The worst moment of my life was when I realized you were standing there on the platform and I couldn’t do anything—not one damn thing—to help you.”

  “I know. I had several of the worst moments of my life tonight too. But now we’re past it, and she’ll never trouble us again.”

  “How did you work that? With the gilintrae? I thought it wasn’t a weapon.”

  “You must be recovering fast if you’re thinking about the technology again,” she said. “You and Thom, so interested in everything my people developed and used.” Relenting a bit, she added, “I enabled a last-resort, self-defense capability, draining nearly all the remaining power to inflict the burns on the men holding me and cast the bolt at her.” She raised her wrist, and Nate realized the gemstones along the rim of the massive bracelet were barely flickering.