“I’ll do it, m’lord!” Nimra, Prince Kadesh-Cor’s squire, hobbled forward on his twisted foot. Even filled with concern for the prince’s welfare, the squire’s face was cheerful.
Qhuin had seen Nimra for the first time when the boy had come with the prince to the stables at Blackthorn. He had seen him a few times during the journey—once returning from a hunt with a short bow slung across his shoulder and a quiver of feathered shafts hanging on the leather belt about his middle. The squire always seemed hopeful and optimistic.
Qhuin thought it odd that the prince had chosen a crippled boy as his squire. Prince Kadesh-Cor could have named anyone in the dominion of Blackthorn. Why pick this hobbling youth who could hardly care for himself, let alone the demands of his lordship?
Chor clearly disapproved of his father’s choice of squire. He dismissed Nimra’s offer to help with a wave of his hand. “You’ve not the skill.” He scanned the faces in search of someone he could trust with his father’s life. “Is there none of you who—”
The squire stepped forward again. “I have attended the royal physician . . . m’lord.” His voice was soft but firm, and the honorific was only added after an unusually long pause. A squire attending the royal physician? That was unusual.
Chor glowered at Nimra, and, though nodding his acknowledgment, added, “Attending is not training, and watching is not doing.”
“He gave me training,” Nimra said. Then, in a tone that revealed something dark and hidden, he added, “Personally, m’lord.” The mystery of the squire deepened.
The hum of conversation was replaced by a tense of silence. Nimra stood with a confidence Qhuin had not expected. There was a connection between the squire and the princeling that was not what most imagined.
Horsemaster Raahud turned to the squire. “Are you certain you can do what must be done to save his life?”
“And spare him the ugliness of scars,” Chor added.
Qhuin thought it odd the princeling was thinking about his father’s outward appearances when his life was in grave jeopardy.
“The prince is my responsibility,” Nimra said. “I shall do my very best.” He looked at Chor meaningfully. “You know I will, and why, m’lord.”
Chor nodded, his jaw clenched tight.
“Then may the gods guide your hand,” Raahud said.
“For his sake and yours,” Chor added as he stepped aside. His voice was as cold as the winds of Icenesses.
“Who here fosters the craving?” the squire asked, turning to the men gathered near the entrance of the tent. “Come, come. When the prince awakens, the pain will be intense.”
A bannerman came forward with a pouch of dried poppy leaves. Then a kingsrider grimaced and stepped forward. “I’ve a poke of cannabis,” he said and lifted a sticky wad of yellow resin wrapped in oilcloth from beneath his broad leather belt. The warrior glanced at Chor but handed the narcotic to the squire-turned-physician’s attendant.
When no one else was forthcoming, Chor gave a curt nod to Nimra, who entered the tent, followed by Qhuin and the others who carried the prince in their arms.
The courtesans in the tent helped settle the prince on a bed of fur robes and woven wool. One of the girls brushed against Qhuin as he helped lower the prince to his berth.
Aside from his encounter with Meesha, Qhuin had never been so close to a woman, and when their hands touched, a tingling sensation shot to the top of his head. He pulled his hand away, but not before she looked at him and smiled.
Princes called them courtesans, but the stablemen at Blackthorn called them whores, though Qhuin disliked the bitter taste of the word. He also disliked the bawdy stories the stablemen told and their rude laughter. He had never been with a woman, and his innocence made him an easy target for the ridicule of the other men.
Qhuin had never even seen a woman without clothing. Well, once, but he had only been fourteen at the time. He had happened upon a gaggle of girls from Blackthorn bathing in the pool where he took the horses for water. The girls screamed when they saw him and ran for the water in a blur of white skin.
He had turned away and stopped breathing. He could hear their girlish giggles of embarrassment. He knew he shouldn’t look back, but he could not stop himself, and when he did, one of the girls stood straight up in the waist-deep water and threw her arms above her head to squeals of scandalous delight from her friends.
Qhuin abandoned the horses and ran half a league before he dared stop. To this day, the vision of her remained in his head as clear as the day it happened.
The prince’s courtesan was young, delicate, and pretty. She knelt beside the prince and washed the blood from his face and neck. After she finished, she smiled at Qhuin again as she exited the tent.
He flushed and bobbed his head, turning swiftly and bumping into Nimra. “Pray, forgive me, m’lord,” Qhuin said, bowing his head. The apology tumbled over his lips without thought. The words of survival. Bondsmen, slaves, and even lowborn freemen were forever begging pardon, asking forgiveness, and showing obeisance to their masters in the hope of leniency and mercy.
“I am hardly a lord.” The squire smiled. There was a sparkling light in his dark eyes. “You are A’quilum Ereon Qhuin,” he said, nodding slightly in a show of respect. “The word about camp is you are the one who saved the prince from the phantom horse.”
Qhuin was startled that the prince’s squire knew his name. He felt a flush of pride, but it was guarded. Suspicious.
Nimra’s face illuminated in a smile. He put a firm hand on Qhuin’s shoulder and squeezed. “You have a lion’s heart.”
Qhuin exhaled the breath he’d been holding. “I regret I was unable to spare him his injuries.”
“But he is alive,” Nimra said. Then, leaning close with a confiding whisper, he added, “And if it be the will of the gods, he shall stay that way.”
Something behind Qhuin snagged the squire’s attention. His eyes stretched wide, his expression changing from hope to horror. In the same instant that Qhuin turned his head, he was seized by the iron hands of kingsriders. Two of them pinned his arms and a third looped a chain around his neck, dragging him backward.
Rusted iron cuffs cut into his wrists. His hands were shackled behind a tree with his arms twisted backward. His boots had been removed in order to chain his ankles together. The iron slave collar, removed for the hunt, was clamped around his neck.
The ground he sat on sloped down, so he used his legs and feet to brace his back against the trunk, hoping to lessen the wrenching ache in his shoulders. A jagged knot of bark bit into his skin. He moved to a different position to alleviate the pain, but it only made it worse.
Qhuin jerked forward and tried to pull his hands through the iron bands. A paralyzing jolt of pain spiked up his arms. Rather than fall back, he pulled harder. The self-inflicted agony was penance for the stupidity that had put him in this awful circumstance. He’d been warned against his temper. He jerked again, this time with even greater force—and pain.
Wresting the whip from Sargon was an offense of such enormity that it merited cutting off Qhuin’s hand. Wresting the sword was an even greater offense of humiliation. The princeling’s retribution would be calamitous. Worse than death.
Qhuin shifted his position in a vain effort to find relief from the needles of pain that pierced his wrists. He recognized the warm wet creeping across the back of his hand. Blood.
Qhuin hovered in a fog of agony and exhaustion, revisiting his folly over and over in his head.
If only . . . if only . . . But what else could I have done?
He had taken the whip for the sake of the horse. He had taken the sword for the sake of his hands. Qhuin had known many slaves over the years who were submissive to the point of their own destruction. Unlike them, he refused to be a bull led to the slaughter.
Rusthammer purged Qhuin of what he call
ed “ignorant acquiescence”—“Obey to survive, but survival is greater than obedience.” The old smith’s quiet wisdom was a comfort in the grim discomfort of his circumstance.
Qhuin had seen enough in the stables of Blackthorn to know that punishment was capricious, swift, and always ghastly. Justice varied greatly from manse to manse depending on the clemency or cruelty of the ruling lord.
How will Sargon choose to punish me? Qhuin’s thoughts passed through a gauntlet of frightening possibilities. Arduous labor? Flagellation? Prison? Exile to the mines of desolation? His hand cut off? His tongue cut out? Burned at the stake? His head on a spike beside his friend’s on the King’s Road?
Would none of what happened in the valley distract the princeling from immediate vengeance? The painted mare. The mysterious stallion. Rescuing the prince from deadly hooves.
Rusthammer’s voice whispered courage. “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will come again.” The thought gave Qhuin hope. Even in bondage, he clung to a curious sense of freedom. He refused to believe his destiny would forever be defined by Blackthorn, Prince Kadesh-Cor, or the pathetic princeling Sargon.
Qhuin exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. He remembered seeing the prince standing on the high ridge. The memory came with a surge of hope. The prince had been watching!
Surely he knew the truth of what had happened. Surely he would not allow his callow son to mete out punishment so undeserved.
He pulled against the chains, looking around the tree. He was in a copse of gumwood trees and undergrowth that kept him out of sight of the camp. In a clearing beyond, silhouettes of men and horses moved past a fire blazing as high as a man. Three men stopped at the edge of the light. They were faceless black shapes against the flame. One of them pointed. He was short and slight and wore no armor. The other two nodded and looked in Qhuin’s direction.
Prince Kadesh-Cor might know the truth, but he was unconscious, and Qhuin’s fate was in the hands of his son.
CHAPTER 57
Ashar floated in a dream. He had no sense of falling except for the rush of wind on his face. Even though the river did not appear to be getting closer, he was filled with dread and fought to keep fear away. Fear and faith cannot abide. He closed his eyes and cried out to Oum’ilah, the God of gods. “If the kingdom of light is to come again, and if I must do what must be done, thou canst not let me die!” The words rushed from his mind, whirled away in the buffeting winds.
He gripped the satchel and wrapped his fist around the lumpy leather covering the stones. They quivered in his hand. Or was it the wind? The power over body, mind, and spirit. The elements of the earth, the boundaries of time, and the limits of space.
A warbling shrill rose up in the whistling of the wind. It grew louder and came closer. Ashar turned his head and his body rolled. The wind fluttered against his back, his face free of the rushing air. He opened his eyes and stared up in surprise and wonder.
A colossal bird dove through the mist of clouds, its wings folded back like a falcon diving for its prey. Ashar had loved to watch the falcons that nested in the temple cliffs, but the winged creature was not a falcon. It was as pure white as the clouds and as big as the dragon that lived in his imagination.
Before Ashar could recover from his bewilderment, the giant bird reached for him with its talons. He tensed against the power of the claws, certain it was his moment of death.
The crushing never came. The talons did not pierce his body or crush his bones. They embraced him like gentle hands with long, curved fingers of whitened bone. The great white bird unfolded its wings, caught the wind, and swooped from a dive into a gentle soaring. The warbling began again.
Ashar wrapped his arms around the talons and found purchase with his feet. It was like flying inside a great cage. The winged spirit of God is not a spirit at all.
The Mountain of God was more wondrous than he had imagined.
The bird soared down the north face of the monolith of stone and flew into the sunlight on the east side. It continued downward until they were flying lower than the ridge of the temple. Tendrils of smoke from smoldering fires snaked skyward. Ashar was too low to see from where smoke was coming, but the sight of it rekindled the horrors of the siege.
What if Drakkor finds the stones before I do? He tightened his grip on his satchel of stones. What if he discovers the hidden location of the Immortal Crown? Ashar knew where it was, or believed he did. He had seen it in his mind when the Oracle revealed the most perilous secret of all.
The mountain of stone and the buildings of the temple looked different from the air. They were magnificent beyond anything he had imaged. He no longer wondered what this creature was, or by what means he had been spared, or how any of what had happened could be explained. It simply was. The mysteries of the God of gods were not for him to know.
The great winged creature turned toward the mountain. Its feathery wingtips fluttered in the air as it rose on a draft of wind, then soared across a broad shelf jutting from the cliff. The talons opened, and Ashar toppled out.
The landing was a painful tumble on a padding of thick moss. He rolled to a stop and scrambled to his feet. He looked up, but the great bird was gone, leaving behind nothing but a swirl of mist.
It took Ashar a moment to sort out where he was. The great bird or winged spirit or power of the stones had brought him to a place not far from the Tears of God.
He strained his ears for the rattling of armor or footfalls of iron on the trail to the courts of the temple. He heard none, but found little solace. The roar of the waterfall inside the grotto would surely drown out the sound of men approaching.
Ashar found a place to hide in the fall of rock that had sloughed off from the outcrop above. He needed time to think. He was about to take the first step of a journey predestined by the council of the God of gods before the world was. No, my second step. He smiled to himself. His first had been into thin air from atop the Mountain of God.
The sound of water made him thirsty. He followed the hand-hewn steps across the slick rock to the Tears of God. He suddenly stopped. The fountain was the only source of water for the temple settlement. It was possible one or more of Drakkor’s men was already here.
Trust in the God of gods, and you will be endowed with a force and faculty you cannot comprehend. The Oracle’s voice seemed to whisper from the darkness of the grotto.
Ashar took a deep breath and sloshed into the pool. He ducked under the overhanging arch of rock and entered the grotto cave. The ceiling rose into darkness above him, and the falling water echoed like thunder. An army could approach the grotto cave and not be heard. He scooped up water with cupped hands and took a long cool drink. A rock splashed into the water behind him. He was not alone! He pushed himself along the edge. The deep water rose to his waist. He stopped to let his eyes adjust to the darkness and glanced over his shoulder.
A rock slammed into his head. The dull cracking sound was swallowed by a rush of black. Ten thousand tiny prickles of light danced behind his eyes. He crumpled sideways into the pond. The icy water jolted him to consciousness, and he pushed to the surface for a gasp of air. A biting pain erupted on the side of his head.
Celestine huddled in a crevice above the waterline with a rock still in her hand. Her face was smudged and her hair tangled. Her temple gown was ripped, but it glowed white in the light coming through the grotto’s entrance. She stepped forward. “Oh! It’s you, humble brother!”
Celestine’s eyes were wide. She dropped the rock and covered her mouth with both hands.
Ashar could barely hear her over the roar of the waterfall. He pressed his hand to the pain on the side of his head. It came back red. He smiled through the fog of pain. He was so happy to see her. Two strokes put his feet on solid ground near the entrance. Celestine slipped into the water and swam to him.
“Pray, forgive me,” she said as she climbed from
the pool.
“No need.” Ashar smiled. “I am grateful you’re alive.” He kept his hand pressed to his head to staunch the bleeding.
“How did you know to come here? What happened to—” She stared at the blood seeping between Ashar’s fingers. “Are you alright?”
Ashar nodded. “We’ve much to talk about, but first we must find a way off the mountain.”
Celestine followed Ashar from the grotto to where the stairs of mortared stone climbed the terraces of the vineyard. They paused to rest and listened for the sounds of soldiers. Ashar kept his hand to his head.
“I am so very sorry I injured you,” Celestine said in a sudden rush of tears.
Ashar nodded. He knew the burst of sorrow was not for him. It was a rush of emotion from being alive. The solace of being rescued. A reprieve from the horror taking place. He hoped that after enduring so much loss and sadness, the tears were for the terror that had gripped the whole of her inner being.
“We’ll make it off the mountain,” Ashar assured her without the slightest notion of how he could fulfill such a promise or what would come next. His stomach fluttered in her presence in spite of their grim circumstance. “You’ll be all right.” His words recalled the memory of the first time they had met in this very place so many seasons ago. He had said those words to her when he had lifted her after she had fallen. He remembered the touch of her hand and the feeling it gave him. Did she remember it as well?
“Let me look at it,” Celestine said, nodding to the wound on his head. She inhaled deeply and swallowed the last of her sobs. She pulled his hand away from the cut on his head without waiting for permission. She ripped a strip of fabric from her gown and wiped the blood where it had run past his ear. She ripped another and wrapped it around his head. Her gown was thin and soaked through, but she seemed unaware of it. Ashar tried to respect her modesty by only looking at her face.
When she finished wrapping his wound, she asked, “What are we going to do?”
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