Rhune Shadow

by Vaughn Heppner

  Painfully, Himilco crawled across the floor to the Prophetess. If they had fought anywhere but here, she would have already killed him. Bel Ruk’s proximity must have weakened her spells.

  The Lord of Dragons! Himilco looked around. The ghostly image had vanished. The beam no longer shined from the cube, and the whining noise had stopped.

  What happens now?

  The blood bird should have slain the Prophetess. The crone had a cut, a bite from the beak. Her chest still rose and fell. Himilco groaned as he sat up. If the Prophetess lived, he was dead. If she died, he was dead, too. The nomads might boil him alive in oil. There had to be a middle way.

  -7-

  From the top of the Great Temple, Elissa looked on in horror. As night fell, parts of the city burned. Great flickering flames licked up into the darkness, illuminating the few mercenaries still in the streets. With their greater numbers and fanatical courage, the nomads had driven most of Karchedon’s soldiery back into their towers and gate fortresses. Already, blood-drunk nomads had peeled away from the fighting to smash into merchant palaces and begin looting.

  Elissa took a deep breath, stifling a cough as smoke tickled her throat. She hurried to her skay, bent down and attempted to lift it into position. Ideally, she should have two or three helpers for this. Yet for all its ungainly size, the skay was light.

  A gust of hot air, heated perhaps by the fires, barreled up the Temple Mount and blew against the side of the temple. It caught the tip of the skay, a triangle of bamboo struts and parchment skin. The rushing hot air lifted the single triangular wing.

  Elissa clutched the bottom handle, a length of bamboo. Dangling behind her was a place to rest her feet. It would also make her horizontal with the wing. But that was for later. Without the dangling footrest, she hung from the lowest strut like a sack of beets.

  The hot air blew up. Elissa pushed into it, took two sudden steps and leaped upward as hard as she could. Her stomach lurched as the hot air levitated her wing. She seemed to hover, but she needed to move, to get out of Karchedon while the Nasamons worried about other things. Therefore, she threw her weight forward. It tipped the nose of the skay downward. The wing sank into the wind and Elissa plunged off the temple roof. She bit back a scream and clutched the guiding strut with manic strength. A silk harness kept her from falling and thus saved her strength for maneuvering. Steering a skay amounted to a judicious shifting of weight. It took months of intense training, practice and aptitude. Elissa had only the latter.

  The skay plunged toward the street. She was going to crash if she didn’t do something soon. She would hit the side of her father’s palace before she hit the pavement.

  The fires below had multiplied in the hours since the Nasamon breakthrough. The many towering flames illuminated the night. The heat rose, and so did smoke. The smoke hovered above the city and acted like a dull mirror. The flames made the underbelly of the vast smoke-cloud a fiery red color.

  A nomad on his horse, on the street shouted in alarm. He pointed up at the falling skay. Others took up his cry. One alert fellow quicker than his brothers lifted a javelin. He urged his frightened stallion into battle. The nimble beast galloped toward the skay. The warrior’s eyes shone with the glory that would surely be his for destroying this magical monstrosity.

  Elissa kicked her weight forward and strained mightily with her forearms and hands to twist the skay’s nose upward. Rhunes were noted for their wiry strength that allowed them to scale just about anything, much like lizards. Elissa had also faced harrowing ordeals throughout the day. And all day, she’d faced them like a Rhune, with silent endurance. Now all her suppressed emotions piled onto her. She was about to crash, be captured and probably die a hideous death. Her Karchedonian half broke free of the Rhune training and fortitude. Elissa screamed, hysterically wrestling with the steering strut.

  Whether the scream unlocked hidden strength or a stronger gust of fire-heated air blew just right, the tip of the skay lifted. Hot air billowed under the wing. Parchment strained and creaked and finally, the skay drifted upward.

  Elissa’s scream turned into a shout of joy. Then she remembered that she was Rhune. Well, she was half-Rhune. But half-Rhune was better than being non-Rhune. And, by the dark pool of her mother’s garden, she would act like a Rhune.

  Rapid clops from below alerted her. A galloping white horse, a nimble desert steed, foamed at the mouth and had wild eyes. Elissa’s night vision was better than a regular person’s. The Nasamon leaned back on his leopard-skin saddle. With a grunt audible to Elissa, he heaved his slender javelin up at her.

  A shriek bubbled up to Elissa’s chest, but she controlled it this time. She was high enough to escape the approaching palace. She was probably high enough to avoid most javelins. But she wasn’t high enough to escape this javelin. It was a distance javelin, thrown from a galloping horse and, although this fact was unknown to her, cast by the champion javelin-thrower of the Red Scorpions.

  She clutched the steering strut and pushed hard, shifting her body leftward. The speeding javelin grazed her hip, but not enough to tear her garment. The brush with her might have been enough to steal a little of the javelin’s momentum. For all its speed and expert aiming, the javelin had been losing momentum its entire upward journey. The fire-hardened tip crunched into a bamboo strut, and the javelin stuck there.

  Elissa’s stomach sank. So did the skay.

  The champion of the Red Scorpions gave a weird cry, pumping his fist in the air. More horsemen turned his way, seeing Elissa. More shouts filled the night air.

  Elissa rapidly lost height and landed hard on the roof of her father’s palace. The landing shocked her knees, and she’d forgotten to keep her mouth closed. It jarred her teeth together in a painful click. She didn’t have time to ponder the pain or realize how close she’d come to biting off her tongue. She ran as fast as she could across the roof, desperately trying to keep the skay buoyant. Her jarring foot strikes shook the skay enough to dislodge the javelin. It clattered beside her, rebounded and tangled between her feet. The edge of the building approached as Elissa tripped. She banged her shins against the built-up edge of the roof. She scraped her feet against the edge and almost tore off one of her cat-soft boots. The pain in her shin blotted out her perceptions, but she made no sound. She ground her aching teeth together, stifling her moans.

  She looked around and almost whooped with delight. She was floating off the Temple Mount. Angry shouts followed her, but she ignored them. She peered down two hundred feet below. Horsemen roamed the streets as hot air from the fires beat against her sewn parchments. She was doing it. She was flying.

  An ominous creak and the sound of bamboo ripping flicked her gaze up to the left. The strut where the javelin had hit… The hollow bamboo tube held for now; she noticed the bamboo splinters and knew the strut would not take any heavy winds.

  That sobered her. She peered down again and then stared east across the bay. She chewed her lower lip. Some desert nomads had seen her. She doubted they would send word to the Tyrant until morning. She had tonight to kill him and free Karchedon of his galleys. Then she could worry about the Prophetess and Himilco, worry about the nomads.

  Elissa eased herself to the right and turned her skay. She needed to build height while over Karchedon and its hot updrafts. She would try to spiral higher. She had to give herself the best chance possible of reaching the exposed camp on the beach across the Bay of Sails.

  PART II

  ALEXON

  -1-

  Three quarters of an hour earlier

  When Himilco Nara creaked open the cedar door that led out of the inner sanctum, he was as pale as a wraith. With frozen features, the priest walked toward a gray-robed wrinkle-faced crone whose name was Mab. The robe matched the color of her gray hair.

  The Nasamons around Mab regarded him with hostility. There were the Prophetess’s attendants in pure white robes. Two of them were lovely things worth bedding. The rest had the stink of the desert
. Himilco felt certain the attendants carried knives and knew how to use them. He had always thought the Nasamons were fools to train their women so. The white-clad attendants might be the most hotheaded, the most given to hysteria. There were also several crones, all suspicious hags. Mab was the worst of the lot, the chief of the Prophetess’s advisors. They would no doubt assume every word he spoke was a lie.

  Fortunately, they would not think that because he was Himilco Nara, but because he was a man and a Karchedonian. If he were going to walk out of the temple alive and free, he would need to use their bigotry against them. The last group in the temple was the angry-faced warriors. Each of those held a javelin. Slyly, Himilco studied the warriors. The longer the Prophetess failed to appear, the whiter their fingers became as they clutched their javelins.

  “Prophetess,” Mab called through the open door into the inner sanctum.

  Himilco strove for a look of disbelief, but quickly discarded it. That wouldn’t work with the crones. Instead, he turned his gait stiff-legged and forced himself to blink rapidly as if shocked.

  “Prophetess, are you well?” Mab called.

  Clearly, their fear of the inner sanctum kept them from rushing near the door. The tenets of their cult would cause them to expect the Lord of Dragons to have acted harshly.

  Some watched the door. A few glanced at Himilco. More began to look at him, and their eyes hardened with suspicion.

  “Prophetess!” one of the two pretty attendants shrieked. Her name was Thirmida. She ran toward the door, her grief overcoming her fear.

  “No!” Himilco shouted.

  The Nasamons would expect a shocked Karchedonian to do something outrageous. He needed to give them reasons to believe his tale. Therefore, Himilco grabbed Thirmida and embraced her as if to save her.

  “Let me go!” she shrieked, her small fists striking his back.

  Himilco held tighter, and he whispered in her ear. “Bel Ruk has chosen the Prophetess. She is to become his bride.”

  The struggling ceased. Thirmida drew back from him, so Himilco let her go. She stared into his face, searching it.

  “Great One,” Himilco whispered. Then he collapsed onto the floor as if overcome by the glory of what he’d seen.

  Mab started toward the door.

  To stop her, Himilco shrieked, “Great One!” as if the god possessed him.

  It worked. Mab halted. With a frown, she glanced back at him.

  Himilco raised himself off the floor. Like a madman, he let drool dribble from his lips. He recalled that the Nasamons treated the mad as ones touched by the gods. He peered at each of them in turn, lingering on Mab and Thirmida.

  “The god appeared,” Himilco whispered. By speaking softly, he forced them to bend nearer to hear his words. “The god chose his bride.”

  “Bel Ruk took our Prophetess?” Mab asked.

  “No,” Himilco said, as he stared into space. “Bel Ruk touched the Prophetess’s hand—” That’s where the blood bird had bit her, pumping its magical poison into her. As if overcome, Himilco bit his lower lip hard, breaking the skin.

  “The Karchedonian bleeds,” Thirmida whispered in awe.

  “He bleeds,” other young attendants whispered in confirmation.

  “No mortal can withstand the god’s touch,” Himilco said as if in agony.

  Several attendants and crones glanced at each other. Thirmida and Mab both shrieked, “Prophetess!” Both rushed toward the door.

  “It is the inner sanctum!” Himilco cried.

  That kept the others who had begun to move in a mob toward the open door. They stopped, afraid again.

  “What happened next?” the other beauty asked him, the one who had remained in the outer chamber.

  Himilco couldn’t keep the anxiety off his face, nor could he keep from glancing at the door. The next few seconds meant everything. If Mab shouted, “Kill him!” he might have time for a single spell.

  Mab stumbled out of the inner sanctum then. It startled Himilco. He thought she would have inspected the Prophetess longer.

  “She’s dying,” Mab said.

  “Why does she die?” asked one of the warriors.

  “There is a strange bite,” Mab said. “It could be a snake bite.”

  Snake? Himilco thought to himself. What kind of desert nomad was Mab? Couldn’t she tell the difference between a bird’s slashing bite and a snake’s fanged bite?

  A warrior pointed his javelin at Himilco. “He said it was the god’s touch.”

  “Bel Ruk is the god of eagles as well as dragons,” Himilco said, shaking his head. “The god appeared in his eagle guise. It terrified me, but it did not terrify the Prophetess. Her courage bolstered both of us.”

  The warrior eyed him suspiciously. Mab scratched her nest of hair. She began to shake her head. The warrior’s features twisted into an angry mask. He turned to the other warriors.

  Himilco took a step back and raised his hand for spell casting. He would take as many of these desert dogs as he could with him. Why couldn’t the Prophetess have been reasonable? To have come so far and to die now because of these ignorant savages…it galled Himilco.

  Thirmida appeared woodenly at the door. She turned toward Himilco blank-faced.

  At her appearance, he dropped his spell-casting stance. There was something about this one…he could use her. Like a hungry predator, he could feel it.

  “Tell me what happened,” Thirmida said in a dull voice.

  Himilco licked his lips. It was not an endearing gesture, as it made him seem even more like a cunning jackal. He calculated his chances of bluffing his way into keeping his life and how best to achieve success. Making a swift decision, he let his shoulders slump and his head droop.

  “I’ll try,” he said. “It was such a holy experience. I was not worthy to witness it. The divine elevation for the Prophetess…it was her great reward for her relentless obedience to her visions.”

  “What happened?” Mab said. “Tell us quickly. We don’t want to hear any cunning lies.”

  Himilco nodded. “This is a terrible blow for all of us. It is hard to understand why Bel Ruk would do this now when so much needs doing. He foresaw much pain for the Prophetess. But it was more…”

  “You must tell us everything,” Thirmida said.

  Himilco heard the sympathy in her voice. He turned to Mab. She actually nodded as if in encouragement.

  “Bel Ruk appeared,” he said, “with an eagle-like head as a Carazian god might.”

  “Do you mean he wore a mask?” Thirmida asked. “Like the Prophetess wears the ancient skull?”

  “No,” Himilco said. “It was a holy melding of beast and human form. The god was radiant in his glory. I knelt before him and averted my eyes. Bel Ruk was too bright to look at. He approached the Prophetess and spoke to her. I could not hear all he said. I thought my heart would burst. It pounded in fear that I should see something so divine.”

  Himilco looked around, his eyes wide as he strove to imitate devotion. “Bel Ruk removed the Prophetess’s ancient skull-mask. I believe he wished to gaze at her purity.”

  “The Prophetess wears the skull-mask now,” Mab said.

  Himilco realized his mistake. “Yes. Bel Ruk took it off and then gently replaced it. Not even the Prophetess could stand to be so near the radiant form for long. It wilted her. The skull-mask helped her in a way I do not understand.”

  “He is a Karchedonian,” Thirmida told the others, as if explaining his ignorance.

  Many nodded.

  “It was then that Bel Ruk kissed her hand,” Himilco said. “As his lips burned her flesh, the Prophetess cried out.”

  “Kissed or bit?” Mab asked.

  Himilco gave the old crone a sad smile. “Grandmother, in the brightness of Bel Ruk’s radiance, I had bowed my head. At the Prophetess’s cry, I looked up. Bel Ruk had laid her on the floor. He gazed at the Prophetess with such…intensity. It frightened me.”

  “It would have frightened any of us,” Thi
rmida said.

  “Then Bel Ruk spoke to me,” Himilco said, with sweat trickling down his back.

  “Yes…?” Thirmida asked.

  “His words for me were rough compared to the tone he’d used with the Prophetess.” Himilco wished he were on a galley, far away from Karchedon, far away from these Nasamons. He took a breath. “Bel Ruk told me he’d chosen the Prophetess as his bride. I was to take her to the Great Altar—”

  “The what?” Mab asked.

  Himilco hesitated. He didn’t like her tone.

  “Speak!” Mab said.

  Warriors tensed around her.

  “I dare not say,” Himilco whispered.

  Thirmida moved out of the doorway. A strange serenity filled her, made her even more beautiful than before.

  “You must tell us,” she said. “Bel Ruk gave you his instructions.”

  “I am a mere Karchedonian,” Himilco protested.

  “Bel Ruk chooses who he wills,” Thirmida said.

  “It is so,” the other girls said in unison.

  Himilco bowed his head as if assenting to their united will. “The Great Altar,” he said in Mab’s direction, “has long stood unused in Karchedon. You passed it on the way to the temple. It was the step-pyramid of marble, with stairs leading up to another obsidian block, an altar where sacrifices to Bel Ruk have been made throughout the centuries.” Himilco used a sleeve to wipe sweat from his forehead. “Bel Ruk told me the Prophetess must lie there. And—”

  “And…?” Thirmida asked.

  Himilco faced her. “On the Great Altar you must sacrifice the Prophetess and forever bind her as the god’s bride.”

  “You’re a liar!” Mab cried.

  Himilco flinched. In his desire to kill the Prophetess, he may have gone too far. In his fear, he clasped Thirmida’s hand, grinding the small bones together. She seemed not to notice. A darting glance showed Himilco a faraway stare in her eyes.