He was screaming and screaming. The cold tip wouldn’t leave his skin, and his body was convulsing on the carpet, the world around him black. His frame vibrated insanely; it was going to disintegrate.
Sudden silence. The rod had lifted again. Francisco was sobbing audibly. Sweat and tears tickled his face. His body shuddered as if the copper rod were against his skin still. Even through the muddled haze of his sight, he made out the next vibrant blue mark on his arm, glowing angrily.
The Lashki’s sticky free hand clasped Francisco’s neck tightly. Francisco’s larynx jumped nervously away from the wrapping fingers.
An intensifying of the unintelligible voices of Nazt told Francisco the copper rod had moved closer somehow. His blurry eyes slid from his arm to the dripping face so close above. He almost turned his head, but froze. The blue speck was above his right eye.
Francisco gave an anguished moan that sounded like a hiccup. A yellow-toothed smile appeared on the Lashki’s face. He laughed softly, then said, “Francisco, where is your brother?”
The answer was on Francisco’s tongue. His brother was the only intelligent concept in his head, yet he would never speak. His heart thundered as the copper rod moved toward his eye.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Annette’s Prayer
A black shadow flew from behind into the Lashki’s front. The copper rod was knocked out of sight and the Lashki released Francisco’s neck. Francisco’s breath came in gasps. The binding force over his limbs was gone. Someone else was on his legs now, and Francisco thought his bones were going to snap. Black crept into his vision.
“You fool,” the Lashki said. He rose to his towering height, tossing his attacker against the left wall. The man rushed to the door, managing to open it before the Lashki swept toward him, pinning him against the wall with his copper rod. A strangled cry… Francisco recognized the voice from a past life.
“Run, Francisco! Now!” Talmon shrieked.
The Lashki was laughing. A slithering noise against the wall and a choking sound – he had Talmon’s throat.
“He can’t run, you idiot,” the Lashki spat.
Francisco had rolled onto his side. Every muscle in his body was screeching, telling him he was insane. He couldn’t rise, but he could crawl. Through the door, a silver rectangle of light from the corridor was a portal to freedom. Francisco shot through it on all fours, his left arm searing unbearably. He careened into the corridor wall, whimpering. The sounds of struggle continued in the room behind.
Though every movement was agony, he kept going. Nothing felt real. He was at the end of the corridor. To his right, sunlight fell in shafts through a glass window, blinding his already watering eyes. A guard’s boots clattered on the stone floor behind him.
“Please!” Francisco cried. “I need to get out! Please, will you help me?”
The guard was walking faster.
“No,” Francisco gasped. “PLEASE!”
The corridor had turned sickly cold, and the rapid, moist tattoo of the Lashki’s footsteps approached. Shaking his head and swallowing, the man raced down the corridor away from Francisco and the footsteps.
Veering right, Francisco struggled forward. His limbs were shaking so badly he could barely go further. He was going to black out any moment, and he would never wake again if he did.
The footsteps had stopped. “Francisco, where is Rafen?”
Panting, Francisco turned his head. The Lashki was behind him, his face contorted, his yellow teeth bared, the copper rod glowing. He swept forward, his free hand making for Francisco’s throat, the fingers working in squeezing movements. Francisco gave another cracked scream; he found himself on his feet. The hand closed on his shirt collar as he threw himself through the window with a tremendous shattering of glass. The collar tore, and his skin stung in a dozen places. A flash of blue colored the air above. Spring wind rushed past him, and his blood throbbed in his ears. His back slammed into the ground. A story above, the Lashki’s face leered in the jagged window frame, the copper rod in his hand still fatal blue. Black fell over Francisco’s vision.
*
Annette stood in the center of the throne room, her legs quivering. It was the first time she had risen fully since the Lashki’s attack. She looked disgustedly at the palace gardens out of the thin windows across from her. The trees and bushes were overgrown, boughs stuck out over the little white pathways, and shrubs sprawled over every available walking space. The flowerbeds, which should have been starting to flourish in the spring weather, were trampled. They were not the gardens she remembered.
Footsteps in the outer corridor startled her. She turned, her heart pounding. A guard spoke beyond the double doors and she sighed in relief.
The Lashki would return soon. She smoothed out her dress, as if she were going to a party. Inwardly she was thinking about how she wanted her corpse to look. Francisco wouldn’t last long.
Running from the Lashki wasn’t worth it. It simply meant a more painful death in the end. Annette walked over to the arched windows. She trembled at the thought of praying to Nazt, because unlike Zion, it would answer, and it would be hungry.
She would promise it Rafen if she knew where he was. Her thoughts turned to the Wolf. If a mediocre philosopher could avoid them for so long, she would never find Rafen. However, Rafen, if he were indeed alive, would only be fourteen now. She remembered Francisco’s terrified face. Despite his name, Rafen was probably no more powerful than the Wolf.
Annette stiffened. Unconsciously, she had been stroking her bruised, sticky neck. She dropped her hand, thinking intently.
Rafen – the Wolf?
Rafen was a boy. Asiel had mentioned a boy attacking him in the marketplace. Francisco also served the Wolf. A boy served by boys… How had the Wolf gotten Francisco’s attention? Francisco had never been able to leave the palace, so perhaps the Wolf had come to him. That would have been eerily easy for Rafen, before this day. He could have pretended to be the prince.
Though it made sense, there was no way of knowing unless Francisco talked in his last moments. Annette wouldn’t risk waiting.
The Fledgling: a wolf. It sounded ridiculous, but Annette would pretend it was true. She would promise Nazt “Rafen, the Wolf”. Nazt would make the whole thing scarily possible. It might even transport her from the palace. Nazt almost completely controlled the Lashki, and he could do… well, she didn’t like to think of it.
She lowered herself onto quaking knees, surrendering herself to the side that saw all the spirits, heard the spirits, and even did what they said. They flocked into her vision, sensing her vulnerability. They made the world the white and silver of clouds. So many spirits, some like corpses, others strange and beautiful and many-limbed. Some had four arms, others had wings, some had no legs and yet many long-fingered wispy hands. Their faces stared into her soul, their voices fuzzy and incomplete without the extra layer of Nazt.
She closed her eyes, deciding against voicing her prayer. Nazt would hear just as well, perhaps even better, if the whole thing were mental. She did not consciously direct her thoughts. They would get there anyway. She bared her soul completely, allowing the defenses of beliefs and virtues to fall away, until all of her was beckoning with uninhibited vices to anyone who liked what was inside her.
First she thought of her request. She remembered the recent, racking pain, the icy explosion in her body at the touch of the Lashki’s kesmal. Then she remembered the Lashki lifting her bodily from the ground, her feet swinging in the air. He could have wrung her muscles inside out or snapped her neck if he had wanted to. She thought about her instinct to live. She thought about eating and about drinking wine. She thought about the bite of champagne as it went down. She felt the wind on her skin, heard the sound of running water. She savored the taste of air and paid attention to her heartbeat, slowing it down and speeding it up at random.
Nazt, I want to live.
Nazt had always been within reach. It stirred at the edges of her bra
in. Thousands of fallen spirits, bound together, leaned in to listen. And now she thought of her promise.
She searched for memories of Rafen. She saw Rafen the ex-slave with suspicion in his eyes, exactly as she had met him that day in the hall when she had demanded his name. Then, of their own accord, the pictures rushed through her mind. She had a disturbing feeling Nazt was helping the process. She saw Rafen at the table in the banquet hall, twiddling a sprig of parsley within his fingers, a faint red in his cheeks as he wondered what to do with it. She saw him learning fencing with Jacob, remembered all the afternoons she had given up to spy on the worthless boy for the Lashki. Although the boy had started slow, his sword had flashed faster and faster. Another day in the armory, he argued with Richard, easily besting him in a duel of honor. Then he lay against the wall of her father’s bedchamber, his face white before death. The tip of the copper rod lifted his chin, and Annette discovered that it was in her hands, she was controlling it. Without hesitation, she drew it across his throat, and the gushing blood was beautiful. His eyelids lifted, his eyes imploring as the light went from them, freezing them in fear forever.
“I will find him,” Annette found herself saying. She wanted the demise of the Runi and Secrai, and the final release of Nazt. She was surprised to come to herself, on her knees, staring at the tapestried wall behind the throne. “I will find him and kill him. He will be my first, my only priority.”
She waited five minutes before deciding it had been fruitless. While Nazt bellowed its approval in her brain, it was powerless to act. It was in the East, and she was in the West. It was nothing more than the so-called night beyond Tarhia.
She struggled to her feet, gritting her teeth against pain. If she could escape the palace, she would live. However, the palace was too well guarded, and Asiel would be waiting for her around a corner, hungering to drag her to the Lashki.
She was going to die after all.
*
Etana’s brothers were running back to her carrying someone, their faces both identical shades of green. A jet of blue struck the ground near them, and cracks ran through the earth. Behind them, a gray shape dropped from a smashed window in the outer wall, landing gracefully beside the feathery larches her brothers had been hiding in moments before. Robert and Kasper had broken cover to pick up a boy who had fallen two stories. The Lashki straightened now and shot with unearthly speed toward them.
Etana threw herself out of the beautyberry bushes on the slope, ripped her silver ring off, stretched it into a scepter, and flew toward her brothers. The Lashki was three steps from them, his copper rod pointed at Robert. Robert bore the brunt of the boy’s weight, and he was going too slowly. He howled hoarsely as he had when the Lashki had killed his younger sister. A blue beam shot toward his heart. Etana’s curving yellow line knifed through the air and collided sideways with the Lashki’s kesmal, a hairsbreadth from her brother’s torso. The sickly green blast threw Robert and Kasper toward Etana. They sprawled on top of their burden; legs, arms, and hands were mixed in the dust and lush grass.
The Lashki cleared the smoke and confused kesmal with a flick of his rod, and lunged at breakneck speed after his prey. Robert and Kasper scrambled up, grabbing the body. When Etana dashed forward to help them, Robert shrieked something unintelligible at her, gesturing at the Lashki. Holding her silver scepter with both hands, she pointed it at the Lashki again, the savage anger she had felt at her sister’s death possessing her once more. The kesmal rushed down her arms and burst in a clean, yellow shield on the air. Etana dragged her scepter in a straight line and the shield expanded, fanning into a crescent-shaped mass half the length of the palace’s outer wall. Etana stared at it in vague shock; she had never done that before. Behind it, the Lashki halted, perfectly erect despite the speed at which he had been running. Etana wheeled around and flew after her brothers down the slope, her feet pounding. Glancing back, she saw the Lashki right up against the shield, one gray hand planted on the smooth, vibrating gold. Pressing the glowing copper rod against the wall, he smiled as a network of cracks appeared.
“I can’t hold him!” Etana cried to her brothers.
They were right ahead of her at the foot of the slope. As they dashed into the swelling basswoods and laurel oaks leading to the Cursed Woods, Kasper looked over his shoulder, his eyes dilated. Etana supposed he was regretting his suggestion to spy on the palace. “Hurry, Etana!” Robert shouted.
Through Kasper’s and Robert’s arms, Etana glimpsed a tangle of curly black hair and her heart jumped wildly.
Rafen?
Behind her, the shield shattered with a bell-like, glassy tinkling and the Lashki lunged headlong down the slope. Etana gripped her silver scepter with sweaty fingers, a frigid ball of despair within her. The warmth of kesmal had left her, and her arms were cold. She shook the scepter desperately. The Lashki was five steps away, his black eyes fixed on her and a demented smile on his face. Her father’s gold circlet shone palely on his head.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The
Lady of Nazt
The roar of spirits climaxed in Annette’s head as she passed through the double doorframe of the throne room and their flurry
before her eyes became more agitated. Rafen, Rafen… Nazt desired him more than anything, even Etana, the sixth Secra. Weak and vulnerable, Etana would fall into Nazt’s hands any time. Annette knew where she would be hiding. However, Rafen was crafty. Zion had concealed him for a long time.
Her heart smoldering, Annette reached ahead of herself with one grasping hand, imagining it closing on Rafen’s throat and crushing him like a moth.
She froze. Her fingers were wrapped around vibrating cold metal. Her sight cleared of spirits. She stood in the corridor beyond the throne room, one arm extended, her hand clutching the copper rod itself. Her own gleaming black kesmal had replaced the blue pinprick at the tip.
A thrill of horror tingled through her. This was not what she had
expected. And yet, as her thoughts mingled with the bellowing of Nazt, she wondered, Why not? Why shouldn’t she be the Lady of Nazt? She stared at the rod in her quaking right hand and smiled.
Again Rafen appeared in her mind’s eye. He stood against a backdrop of darkness, a flaming sword in his hand. It came to her once more that he was only a boy. His head was bowed, and the light in his gaze had gone out. The darkness behind swept up to engulf him. A flash, and he lay glassy-eyed on the ground, his bones broken, his limbs twisted, and his face blotched black.
The copper rod jerked in her hand. She walked purposefully down the corridor, the pain in her body distant, unimportant. They would trap the Wolf and obliterate the little spark of his life forever. She did not know if the Wolf was Rafen, but she was going to do this anyway. And if he wasn’t, she would not rest, she would not eat or drink, until she found the boy. The roaring of Nazt would keep her strong. Even the spirits in her sight quailed before her, transient forms aware that something higher was in their midst. Nazt moved her legs as she thought, sending her striding quickly down various corridors. Her voice, with a darker timbre and a commanding ring, called to two soldiers.
“Nazt has a task for you,” she said. “You must come with me. Bring a woman, any woman you would like to have and hurt.”
The men trailed behind her, discussing the captive they wanted.
Annette was in another corridor with a distant ceiling. Light fell to the floor in shafts from narrow, glassless windows high on the walls. Asiel walked toward her from the opposite direction, caution checking his normally fast steps. He halted near her, his pale eyes bright and fixed on the rod.
“It has come to me,” Annette said. She was giddily excited, because she was no longer afraid of Asiel. “I have a task, and I leave now. How many philosophers can you bring me?”
Asiel stared at her. He bowed his head, saying greasily, “I have some Ashurite associates. I am sure Frankston would be pleased to come too. We will be eight all together.”
; “And a thousand with Nazt,” Annette said, drunk with delight. “It has asked me to kill Rafen. And I know how to find him.”
*
The copper rod flicked up to point at her, and Etana screamed, still running.
“Etana!” Kasper cried, five steps ahead of her with Robert.
And then the Lashki had stopped, returned to that erect standstill, and he was staring at his empty gray hands. The copper rod was gone. Etana even paused, trying to figure out if she had blinked. The world was going to start roaring praises to Zion. It was a miracle; it was impossible!
The Lashki’s gaze slid from his hands to Etana, as if this were her
fault. Etana remembered he was still very fast and could do kesmal
without the rod. She broke into a wild run, swinging her scepter out behind her to point in his general direction. A firework-like explosion sounded on the air: her kesmal was back. An answering flash of blue told her the Lashki had defended himself. The basswoods ahead had thickened. Before disappearing into their tangled branches, Etana looked behind.
The Lashki wasn’t even pursuing her. Genuine fear had made his face expressive. She saw the shell of the man he had once been. He screamed a curse at the sky, as if he had lost his mother.
Etana was now swallowed in the spade-shaped leaves, and she couldn’t stop running. Sparrows scattered before her. Kasper had dropped back to grab her hand. Rafen still thrown over his shoulder, Robert jogged ahead, his muscles straining visibly beneath his dirty white shirt, which was sodden with sweat.
*
Francisco stirred. He lay on soft earth, water bubbling and frothing nearby. His head spun, and his muscles felt as though someone had wrung them out. His left arm was now numb from the shoulder down, and he couldn’t move it. He was shivering uncontrollably.
In a flash, he saw the copper rod heading for his eye; Talmon incredibly, unbelievably, attacking the Lashki; and the Lashki leering down at him from a shattered window.
The Sianian Wolf Page 28
