Zeb was farthest away from it but even he was knocked off his feet and thrown back into the alley. His throat burned as he gasped for breath, drawing in air hotter than any desert. He tried to get up and a hand grabbed his ankle, hauling him back into the yard and tossing him across the blackened ground. The Destroyer with the bolt sticking out of his breastplate put a boot on Zeb’s chest and raised his flaming sword to stab down, but staggered forward as Amatesu’s thrown club clanged off his helmet. The stabbing sword just missed Zeb’s head, and as the Destroyer’s chest loomed above him he grabbed the feathered end of his bolt with both hands and twisted.
The man screamed and hammered a gauntlet against Zeb’s helmet, but the Minauan was not about to let go. The Destroyer lurched, dragging Zeb across the ground, and got both iron hands around Zeb’s neck.
Zeb tried to drive the bolt in further but his vision dimmed as he was throttled. The man choking him shuddered as though under impacts, but the Destroyer was as obstinate as the man from the Rivens. Before Zeb’s world went to black the last thing he thought he saw, and that but dimly, was the impossible sight of Nesha-tari Hrilamae tottering to her feet in the blasted yard, her body smoking all over.
*
Phinneas Phoarty heard nothing over the noise of the inn’s common room until a single boom as of thunder shuddered the inn walls. Some of the noise faded away downstairs, and after a second blast sounded close by, the inn fell silent altogether.
Phin left the bunkroom and stood on the open walkway overlooking the common area. The place was still full, but silent as everyone there was looking toward the rear wall.
Then the back of the inn exploded, flames blazing in through the windows and splintered wood spraying the crowd.
Phin was almost thrown over the railing but he caught himself and stayed on the walkway. He was shaken to the floor as the whole building trembled. The bunkrooms were on the side of the inn, but black smoke poured into the common room from the back, driving out the occupants who were yelling, crying, and many bleeding. Overhead the main ceiling beam cracked as the back wall started to sag.
Phin scrambled back into the room and grabbed his pack from under his bunk. He snatched someone’s extra dagger off a table and ran halfway back to the door before turning back to the Sarge’s bunk. He yanked off the lumpy mattress and lifted the heavy leather bag hidden under it to his shoulder, the bag in which the Sarge carried the book from which he’d had Phin read.
Halfway down the stairs Phin ran into the Sarge coming up, though the man was almost unrecognizable with his face and armor covered in black ash. Phin shook the bag at him.
“You got it?” the Sarge said.
“I do.”
“Then go! Out the front!”
Three legionnaires waited anxiously in what was now an empty common room, with the front doors and windows all bashed out as the occupants had fled by every available aperture. The legionnaires all looked as bad or worse than the Sarge, with two of them glassy eyed and leaning on each other to keep their feet. The Sarge started to bark for them to go as he and Phin picked their way among fallen tables and chairs, but he was interrupted by a shout from behind.
Horayachus lurched out of the black smoke boiling from the back hall and the kitchens, carrying a limp figure in his arms.
“I will be damned,” the Sarge muttered, hardly audible over the crackle of the fire spreading up the rear walls to the second floor.
Horayachus pitched his burden into Ty’s arms, the legionnaire dropping his tower shield to catch her. Phin saw that she was a woman when her head lolled into view, for she was very pretty despite the blood pouring from a nose that looked broken. The Zant’s teeth were clenched and his breast plate was pocked with smoking rents like the steel had melted.
“You have the book?” he barked at the Sarge, who nodded. Horayachus reached under his armor and withdrew a carved Shugak baton with ten licenses to enter the Sable City jingling from it.
“If it works, take this woman alive and unharmed to Ayzantu City. To the Great Temple of Ayon there.”
“Are you out of your bald skull?” the Sarge demanded. He was seized by the collar with a burnt hand.
“Do this, and the priests will give you all the gold you can carry,” Horayachus hissed. “Fail, and the Burning Man’s wrath will find you. All of you.”
With that, he released the Sarge’s collar and staggered back to the middle of the room to face the smoke. “Go!” he barked over his shoulder.
None of the legionnaires moved.
“She is coming,” Horayachus added, raising his arms and beginning to chant.
The Sarge snatched up the extra tower shield and was first out the front door. The others were right behind him, with Phin in the rear.
Outside, hobgoblins had forced back the buzzing crowd and were keeping them away from the front of the inn with raised morning stars and pole arms, though many in the crowd were now shouting for their possessions left behind. Bullywugs had formed a line for a bucket brigade but as of yet they had no buckets.
The Sarge stopped in the empty area before the tall willow tree, green eyes looking all around.
“Which way Sarge?” Ty asked, now with the motionless woman slung over his shoulder like a dead thing.
The Sarge pointed south but there was a ruckus on the far side of the crowd as a man burst through the ring between two hobgoblins. He wore cracked leather armor and had dark hair and a beard, both short but unkempt. A legionnaire short sword was in his hands. The hobgoblins turned and growled at him, but he did not approach the inn. He strode straight for the legionnaires, who stared wide-eyed.
“Now,” said the Sarge. “Now I have seen everything.”
The man stopped only yards from the Sarge, glaring at him.
“Sergeant Dugan,” the stranger said.
The Sarge smiled.
“Centurion Deskata.”
For a moment Phin thought they were going to shake hands, but Deskata made a lunge and the Sarge swung Ty’s tower shield. The Sarge fended off a series of ringing blows while drawing his own sword, then thrust it around the shield. Deskata danced away.
“Don’t just stand there, boys!” the Sarge shouted. “Say hello to your commanding officer!”
Ty dumped the woman off his shoulders and she hit the ground so hard Phin went to her side. The three legionnaires drew swords but Deskata barked, “Stand down, soldiers!” with such authority that Ty and Rickard actually hesitated. Gery blundered forward. Deskata sidestepped him easily and cut his throat as he stumbled by, sending a crimson jet into the air and getting a roar from the surrounding crowd.
Sergeant Dugan and the two others moved to surround him.
*
Nesha-tari had no defensive spell raised when Horayachus’s flame strike crashed all around her, and she dropped to the ground as her clothes burst into flames. She lay quaking for a moment before opening her eyes. Her innate magical resistance had saved her, but it had also pushed her fully through the Change.
Nesha-tari arose, the last ashy bits of clothing falling off her tawny fur, leaving it smoldering but unburned. She smelled the spoor trail lingering in the air where Horayachus had gone, and bounded after him on all fours. Others were still fighting in the yard, but they did not matter.
Her claws tore gouges in the plank floor of a smoke-filled hall as Nesha-tari ran. She emerged hacking into a large inn room full of overturned furniture. Horayachus stood across the room with lips moving and grimacing face turned aloft, tattooed arms spread wide. Nesha-tari sprang forward but a sheet of flame erupted from the floor in front of her. She skidded to a halt, claws digging in.
She paced along the flames that stood as a burning wall, blue eyes locked on Horayachus’s through them.
“Why does Blue Akroya send you against me, woman?” Ayon’s priest shouted over the crackling flames. The fire was climbing all the walls now, spreading smoke through the air and vapor along the floor.
“I did not ask
,” Nesha-tari growled, though she doubted the man could understand her voice as it was the roar of a lioness.
Horayachus resumed a low chanting and raised his arms. Nesha-tari crouched to run for she had no means at present of casting a spell of her own to interrupt or counter the Fire Priest’s. A beam fell from the ceiling athwart the wall of fire and she sprang quick as thought through the momentary gap.
The High Priest of Ayon screamed and threw his arms forward. Nesha-tari swiped them away with enough force to shred the tattooed flesh to the bone and yank both out of their sockets. She turned her massive head and her jaws closed on Horayachus’s throat. The taste of the only thing that assuaged the Hunger filled her mouth.
Nesha-tari Hrilamae, daughter of the Lamia, drank deeply.
*
Tilda thought she might have kept up with Dugan over open ground, but the man’s build was far better suited than was hers to plowing through a crowd. She fell behind as they ran the five blocks to the Dead Possum, stumbling when jostled and having to fight her way through the crush.
She saw the top of the willow tree over an even thicker crowd as she approached the intersection, and people gathered around a burning inn on a corner. Tilda had no doubt this was the place she was looking for and she wormed into the press, elbowing her way and crawling when she stumbled to the ground. People roared like they were watching a sporting match, and steel clanged on steel over their cries.
Tilda slithered into the open between the spread legs of a large hobgoblin. Dugan almost stomped on her head as he spun past, driven by a legionnaire leading with a tower shield and throwing wild stabs over the top.
“Dugan!” she shouted, scrambling up, and to her right someone yelled, “What?” Tilda looked that way and saw what had to be John Deskata, for his eyes blazed like twin emeralds though apart from them his bearded face was plain, and presently marred by an angry sneer. He was balding. Another legionnaire was struggling to rise but the green-eyed man snatched away the injured one’s sword so that he held one in either hand. The fire consuming the inn glinted in the massive green ring on his finger. He yelled and ran at Dugan.
Tilda shouted the name of the head of her House, but he did not slow. She scrambled up and ran after him. Before he had closed the distance Dugan let the legionnaire with the tower shield back him against the tree, then launched his shoulder so hard into the shield that it banged back into the man’s face and sent him down. The crowd cheered.
Dugan saw the man with two swords charging, watched him come, and at the last moment put a toe under the tower shield at his feet and flipped it upright. Dugan slipped to the side as the charging man plowed into the chest-high shield, and crashed into the tree trunk with a double bang. Dugan raised a sword as Tilda’s quarry slid to the ground. Tilda tackled him.
Hitting the stout renegade in his heavy leather armor, which she had given him as a gift come to think of it, felt little different than tackling the tree would have. Dugan woofed and stumbled but Tilda’s shoulder rebounded off his flank and she went sliding on her back over rough tree roots.
Tilda kick-jumped to her feet and freed her buksu club from her hip, turned toward Dugan and threw out a hand. She shouted for him to stop but he yelled “Duck!” and Tilda did so automatically, as the word was in Miilarkian. She had no time to wonder where Dugan had picked it up for John Deskata had just tried to cut her head off from behind, burying a short sword in the tree trunk. Dugan rushed him and the two twirled away exchanging snarls and avoiding stabs. Tilda yelled at them both, in Codian and Miilarkian, shouting the names Dugan and Deskata, but they ignored her. She raised her club and tried to get into position behind Dugan, hoping that if she knocked him cold John Deskata might realize she was on his side, which she supposed she had to be. The two men were turning too fast, Tilda got too close, and Deskata lashed out at her. She had to parry his sword off the side of her club before she took it in the throat, and Dugan took advantage to swipe at his enemy’s weapon hand. The man howled and his sword flipped away in the air, along with two fingers. One still wore the great emerald ring of the House of Deskata.
“Tilda!” Dugan shouted in her face, and she clubbed him across the temple. His brown eyes fluttered and he fell to a knee. Tilda cracked him over the back of the head.
Dugan went face down and lay still. The other man was on his back, cursing the gods and clutching his ruined hand to his chest while blood spattered his legionnaire breast plate. Tilda took a step toward him, turning pale herself, and swooned.
Not the blood, she thought, I am not so delicate as that. But her club fell from her hand and she stumbled to the side, blinking slowly as her eyelids felt heavier than her head.
She was on one knee, looking across the clearing where in front of the crowd lay the Duchess of Chengdea, flat on the ground like a dead thing. A tall man stood over her, premature streaks of gray in his brown moustache and chin beard. His eyes were locked on Tilda’s and a bit of powder or dust was falling from the fingers of his outstretched hand. The world went soft and dark, and Tilda toppled to the ground as if it were the feather bed she had shared with her sisters growing up, in the attic room of her father's house on Chrysanthemum Quay.
The Dead Possum inn gave up the ghost. The roof crashed in and flames climbed high into the night sky. A blast of fire and heat shook the willow tree and forced the crowd further back, but it did not interrupt their cheers.
Chapter Twenty-Six
At the moment of dawn in the valley of Blackstone the rays of the rising sun crept over the eastern edge of the valley wall and touched the top of the moving mist enveloping the city. The whiter fog at the top seemed to tremble, and its color ran down into the darker clouds until the whole was a paler shade of pearly grey. The whorls and eddies in the whole mass slowed and stopped, and though they were still obscured by shadow the streets and buildings of ancient Vod’Adia, the Sable City of the vanished Ettaceans, stood out in the cool morning air as though they were present in a way they had not been a minute before.
A great wall of house-sized blocks of black basalt was now visible around the city, and from a gatehouse big as a castle came a loud ratcheting and the grinding of gears. The iron door rumbled down to bridge a chasm still unseen in the mist, on a straight line with the road running across the green field from Camp Town. It struck the ground with a gong that shook the whole valley, echoing off the stone walls and cliffs for what seemed like minutes.
Even before the echoes died out, the Shugak had opened their own palisade gate, and the first party of ten adventurers was moving down the road. For the first time in ninety-nine years, Vod’Adia was Open.
*
Tilda dreamed of Miilark, specifically of a white sand beach a few miles up the coast from the capital. The surf played gently at the edge of the land for offshore breakers and standing rocks broke the fury of the Interminable Ocean. Sharp green hills rose behind the strip of sand, mantled by tall palms and date trees full of colorful birds. The birds called to each other with whistles and trills as complex as language, making them sound like they were talking about pleasant things, of no great importance.
Tilda stood alone in the edge of the water, calves lapped by caressing waves and sand squishing delectably between her toes. She shaded her eyes from the gentle sun and watched the long line of Deskata House ships move out from the harbor mouth to the south under full sails, with long, emerald-green pennons snapping smartly from atop the masts.
The Wind changed, and the sky turned. The water began to rise and grow cold. Thunder rumbled to the north, from whence in this season the storms came. Tilda tried to move but the sand was now up to her knees. The sea frothed with chop and far from shore the Deskata ships were thrown against each other. Snapping masts and spars sounded like cannon fire. Tilda tried to shout but the water was rising faster than the sand. Saltwater poured into her open mouth as she was shaken by the angry sea. She turned her face up to the sky and with just her eyes above the water, she saw the last g
reen pennons sinking below the waves.
Someone said her name and Tilda woke with a start. There was a hand on her shoulder and she grabbed the arm as though to save herself from drowning. She gasped in a deep breath and opened her eyes to see Dugan right in front of her, his face more grim than concerned.
“Easy,” he said. “It was a dream.”
Tilda had a moment of hope that he meant everything that had happened last night had been a dream. She was lying sideways on a hard wooden bench and for an instant thought maybe she had dozed under the pavilion in the Jobian compound. But no. She was indoors, in the ramshackle common room of an inn judging by the tables and stools scattered about. The sharp sunlight of early morning was shining in the open door and windows. It had all been real, the legionnaires and the severed fingers, one with a green ring still on it, flipping through the air. The wizard, and the Duchess of Chengdea sprawled on the ground.
“Where is Claudja?” Tilda asked, letting go of Dugan’s arm and turning sideways on the hard bench. She pushed herself up to a seat and her back was flat against the wall. She could not remember what had happened to her bow or her pack.
“She is fine,” Dugan said. “The Jobians took her back to their temple.”
Tilda had shaken off her pack before she and Dugan ran out of the compound, she remembered that now. She looked around and saw her bow, a full quiver of arrows, and her buksu lying on the nearest table.
“She was hurt,” Tilda said, for she had seen blood on the Duchess’s pale face.
“They can patch her up. That’s what clerics do. Tilda, you and I need to talk.”
Tilda pushed herself to her feet and Dugan moved back a step to give her room, hesitating to offer a hand. He had a purple bruise over his left eye where Tilda had clubbed him. The large room was empty with most of the stools upside-down on the tables and the plank bar, though the filthy floor had not been swept. Voices were speaking outside, some human and others with the guttural growls of hobgoblins. None of them sounded happy.
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