Innowen stayed well to the side of the road as it ascended and tread in the soft dust, avoiding the cobbled paving, where his footsteps might have made more noise. As he went, he remembered how he had last ridden this way with Taelyn, Rascal and Veydon. They had come in triumph, then, with the cheers of the city ringing in their ears. Now, Taelyn was dead, and he returned alone, like a silent thief.
Quickly, he found himself on the walkway that led into the central courtyard. Slender, fluted columns rose on either side, just as Innowen recalled them. Between each pair of columns stood the low stone pedestals he had observed before with their bowl-shaped depressions filled with oil. A lighted wick floated in each of those depressions, shedding a faint yellow glow onto the walkway.
Wherever the light from the flames touched a column, there was a shadow. Innowen made his way swiftly from one place of concealment to the next, until he was almost to the courtyard itself. There, he paused.
A pair of sentries stood facing into the courtyard with their backs to Innowen. Expecting no danger, they leaned against the walls, lances held in the crooks of their elbows, as they passed the time in whispered conversation. Innowen listened for a few moments, hoping for a scrap of useful information, but the guards spoke only of a dice game and some woman, who was the stake.
Innowen considered his course of action, then slipped back down the walkway to the road. Crouching, he ran his hands in the dust and along the edge of the road until he found two stones. Clutching them in his fists, he crept back to his hiding place at the base of one of the columns where he could see the two sentries.
Aiming carefully, he flung one of the stones at a nearby pedestal. A loud crack sounded as it skipped on the top, hit the inside rim, and fell into the oil-filled depression with a splash. The small flame sputtered and went out. The shadows around the pedestal undulated into new configurations.
"What was that?" One of the sentries whirled, snapping his lance down into a defensive posture. He stared down the walkway. Turning, the other sentry shifted his grip on his lance, but the frown he wore conveyed only a sense of boredom and annoyance. He spied the lightless pedestal, though, and started toward it. After a moment's hesitation, his companion followed.
Innowen flattened on the ground as they passed his hiding place.
The pair stopped beside the pedestal, stared at the extinguished wick, and regarded each other. "I tell you, Artur," the nervous sentry grumbled to his more relaxed comrade, "if I'd known that Vashni was taking orders from that woman, I'd never have signed up. It's unnatural. She's unnatural. And we can't expect anything but unnatural things to start happening around here. Until we entered the city, I thought he was in charge. He always gave the orders."
The one called Artur rubbed his chin. "Not my place to question it," he answered quietly. He peered around, his frown deepening as he shook his head. "Ispor's not my land. If a woman wants to rule it, what's it to me? So long as her coin's good and the food's hot, I'll do what I'm told."
"Ispor no longer," the nameless guard muttered. "She calls it Akkadi."
With their attention diverted, Innowen might have skulked into the garden then. They seemed satisfied to begin a new conversation without exploring why the light had gone out. Still, he preferred to lure them farther away. Once inside the courtyard, it might take some time to break into the palace proper. He wouldn't want them returning before he managed it.
From his concealment, he drew back and let the second stone fly. It clattered sharply on the cobbled paving in the darkness beyond the walkway.
The guards glanced at each other once again and stared toward the sound. Wearing an expression of weary resignation, Artur sighed. The two proceeded down the walk to investigate.
Innowen wasted no time, but leaped to his feet and ran from shadow to shadow until he achieved the courtyard. Reaching the spot where the sentries had earlier stood their duty, he looked back the way he had come. There was no sign of the pair. They had gone out toward the road itself, leaving the walkway empty.
As he started forward again, his toe stubbed against something soft. Looking down, he found the guards' waterskin. He licked his lips, hesitated, then picked it up, unstoppered it, and took a hasty sip. The moment the liquid rolled into his mouth, his eyes snapped wide. He almost sputtered, but stopped himself before he made any noise.
Wine, he realized, sniffing the skin's nipple as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Of course, with the drought, the city was short of water. Still, he wondered with a smirk if their superior officers knew. He took another sip, this time prepared for the stronger taste. Now that he knew it was wine, he didn't mind at all.
With a grin, he stoppered the skin and put it back on the ground.
One basin of flame stood in each of the courtyard's four corners, not enough light at all to endanger him. Quickly and quietly, he moved deeper into the garden and crouched behind a thicket of dead rose bushes. The leaves and blooms had long since fallen away, but the tangle of branches and the gloom were sufficient to hide him from all but the most determined eyes. Even if the guards returned now, he doubted they would see him.
In the halflight, at the center of the garden, he made out the fountain where, nights before, he had sat and held the moon. He remembered with an odd sweetness how that silver orb had reflected in the water that he had cupped in his palms. It had seemed a quiet wonder to him, then, that a man could hold the moon, a moment in time that had so impressed itself on his mind that he knew he would never forget it.
To his left were the apartments where Riloosa had tried to kill Kyrin. Lamplight shone in several of the unshuttered windows. The king's megaron was part of those apartments. He had no doubt that he would find the Witch there.
Innowen twisted around and located his own apartment. The soft glow from a lamp shone there, too. No doubt some of the Witch's officers had taken residence in the palace. Most of the other windows were either black or shuttered tight.
Emerging from the bushes, he made his way around the perimeter of the garden, pausing wherever a shadow or a dark niche offered itself. Once, voices at the far end of the courtyard made him stop and listen. It was only the two sentries returning to their posts. Innowen glanced from them up toward the stars, which now seemed to be the objects of their conversation. The stars stared back, like small, cold eyes burning in the blackness. Innowen turned away and hurried to the embrace of the next shadow.
In the wall at the northeast corner of the garden, he found a door just where he remembered it. Squeezing its latch, he leaned his shoulder gently against it and pushed. It opened without a sound, easily, and Innowen slipped inside. The merest breath of wind whispered in behind him before he closed it again.
His heart began to hammer.
How long had he thought about this moment? How long had this one goal guided his life? All the dreams that had ever haunted his sleep rushed suddenly upon him again as he stood in that narrow hall staring toward a dim amber glow, listening, listening....
But there was only the beating of his heart to hear.
Innowen crept toward the glow and emerged into a huge storage chamber. He knew it; he had been here before. Yet in the faint illumination from a pair of flickering, smoky torches, the immense pithoi jars with their narrow bottoms and fat round middles seemed ominous and threatening. Their shadows made strange distortions on the walls and floor, and the gloom that clung to them seemed blacker than any night he had ever known. The air, which should have carried the pleasant scent of olive oil or wine, smelled, instead, of mold.
He looked again at the torches. They suggested that someone had passed this way on an errand, possibly an inspection, or perhaps to fetch something. Lamps would have been used if this chamber were kept lit through the night. Since the torches were still here and burning, that someone might also return. It was best to keep moving.
She would be above him, this time of night, in the king's bedchambers. She would have made them her own, he had no doubt of
that. Wraithlike, he moved in the shadows of the pithoi jars and darted between the pair of torches into another corridor where their light didn't follow.
It led him to the antechamber of Parendur's great stateroom. A single oil lamp, suspended on a chain, burned above the massive carved door. Two mighty wooden pillars rose in semirelief on either side of the door, painted, Innowen remembered, bright red. In the absence of daylight, though, they loomed black as old blood, except for. small spots of fresher color near the tops where the fireglow touched them.
He looked away from the door and the pillars to the far side of the antechamber. Just where he remembered it, a grand staircase rose into the upper levels.
He crossed the marble floor. Halfway up the stairs, he paused. The yellow glow of more lamps filtered down from above. There were no shadows to hide him on the stairs; he dared not linger. Anyone might suddenly appear above or below him, and he would be discovered.
On an impulse, he pressed his ear to the wall and listened. It should breathe, this palace, these walls, with the sound of the Witch's breathing. The stones should echo with her heartbeat. He set his palm against the wall, expecting a pulse, a vibration, a warmth.
But there was nothing, and he didn't understand it. Perhaps it even disappointed him. He bit his lip and continued up the stairs.
The palace at Taruisa in Osirit, where Razkili's father ruled, would not have allowed him such easy entrance, he reflected as he reached the upper level and slid through the blackened entrance of an empty room. Pressing against the inner wall, he paused to catch his breath as he remembered his time in that distant capitol.
In Taruisa, guards stood at every palace entrance, and day or night, hallways were always well-lit. King and queen were protected like national treasures and regarded by some as gods. Innowen laughed suddenly to himself as he remembered. In fact, he had stolen something from that palace—Razkili's heart.
Innowen leaned his head back against the wall, secure in the darkness, and thought of Rascal. Would his lover forgive him for leaving Whisperstone so secretively, without a word?
Lover. He had never used that word before. It felt odd to him.
The soft slap of footsteps in the hall drew his attention. He held his breath and waited until they passed before he eased to the entrance and peered out.
A dark-haired slave, clad in a saffron chiton and leather sandals, carrying a shallow, bowl-shaped reed basket before him in both hands, moved halfway down the corridor and turned a darkened corner.
A whiff of some unusual, sweet odor brushed Innowen's nose, somehow familiar, yet unnamable. Curious, he hurried after the slave, hugging the walls as he moved, though few shadows offered themselves now.
The slave entered an anteroom where a small oil lamp shone on the gleaming threads of a fine gauze curtain. Moments later, Innowen followed, hugging his black cloak as if it were a shield to ward off the light.
The slave continued on, leading Innowen through a small maze of rooms, through the King's megaron itself, where a great stone chair loomed against the west wall, between the statues of Ispor's two most benevolent gods, Vashua, the Sea Father and Skrayt, the Sky Father. The uplifted palms of both deities glowed with the fires of small lamps, whose light cast shadows that fell across Innowen's path like dire warnings.
Staring at those gods and their shadows, Innowen was almost discovered. A second slave, an old man, emerged from the room where the first slave had vanished. Barely in time, Innowen leaped out of the light that spilled through the doorway. With no other place to hide, he flung himself upon the throne, placed his arms upon the great rests, and assumed a most regal pose.
The slave never glanced his way. But from deep within his hood, as he held his breath, Innowen studied this servant. The old man's face was a mask of fear, and those gnarly hands trembled as they wrung around each other.
Innowen waited until the old man passed into the hallway. Alone once more, he rose and melted into the thickest shadow the room offered, where he slowly let out his breath.
He could feel her now. He knew she was close.
He ducked into the next room. Two lamps burned on delicate tables at opposite sides of yet another doorway. Quickly, he looked around for some place of concealment, but the only darkness lay beyond the balcony. This room opened to the outside.
The slave with the strange-smelling basket had not gone outside, though, Innowen was sure. With broad strides, he swept toward the doorway, paused beside one of the tables, then crossed to the other, risking a look into the next room as he did so.
"Set it down here, by the bed, and leave me."
Innowen nearly froze in midstep as he heard her voice. He made it to the other side of the second table with its lamp and, heedless of its amber glow, pressed himself against the wall.
Now, he could feel her heartbeat in the stones, her breathing in his ears. He sank down into a ball on the far side of that table and hid himself under the folds of his cloak, trembling, barely aware when the slave passed by without seeing him.
With one quivering hand, he slid the hood back from his head and listened. Strange stirrings came suddenly from the room beyond. His heart lurched, but he feared to move. She might emerge to take a breath of the night air and discover him beneath the table. Some other slave might appear to answer her call, or to bring her something she had ordered, and give warning.
With an effort, he mastered his fear and forced it away.
Abruptly, the stirrings ceased. The room grew silent. After a while, Innowen crawled from under the table and rose.
He thought of the balcony. There was a good chance it passed outside her room. From there, the darkness of the night might shelter him while he dared to peek inside. To see her, that was what he had come for.
That, and more.
Yet a dreadful cowardice filled him again. In his mind, he saw the shadows of the Sea Father and the Sky Father spilling across his path in the megaron, their arms extended as if to warn him away. He squeezed his eyes shut, and in the darkness behind his lids, he imagined he saw another god, a black idol squatting in the mud, laughing at him, laughing, laughing....
Innowen clenched his fists until the knuckles threatened to crack. Whoever you are, he swore silently, whatever hell you reign in, I will not be laughed at.
He slipped back into the previous room and out into the warm embrace of darkness. The wind kissed his face and throat and slithered down inside his cloak before he drew it close again. He wiped at a free trickle of sweat as it rolled down his left temple to his cheek.
It was hot. Gods, it was so hot. Even at night, the unending drought tortured his poor country. He stared at all the darkened windows of the palace and wondered how anyone could sleep in such heat.
Again, the sound of footsteps drew his attention. These were not the footfalls of a slave, though. These rang with authority on the marble tiles of the room within.
Innowen moved swiftly now, without thinking, following the balcony as it bent suddenly around a corner. Light spilled through an open doorway from the room just ahead. He took a moment while darkness still surrounded him to peer over the balcony's edge into the courtyard below. Then, gathering his courage, he stole up to the doorway.
At first, he thought he'd found the wrong room. It was brightly lit with many candles and lamps, and richly furnished. The largest bed he had ever seen in any of his travels dominated the chamber. It was canopied and draped with expensive sheer fabrics that stirred ever so delicately in the slight draft and shimmered in the firelight.
But there was no sign of the Witch.
He leaned cautiously inside. Seeing no one, he stepped with sudden boldness into the shadow of a huge wardrobe. From there, he had full view of what had once been the King's bedroom.
Still he saw no one. To whom had those footsteps belonged? Just as he decided to move onto the balcony again, a sound warned him back into his shadow. He pressed against the wardrobe and the wall. An instant later, Vashni strode into the
room.
The huge warrior looked around in puzzlement. Even so late at night, he still wore his armor. The glow of the candles and lamps danced on the exaggerated musculature of his black lacquered breastplate and on the gold inlaid patterns that decorated his greaves. On the great bulges of his bare arms and along his strong jawline, there was a fine sheen of summer sweat.
After a moment, a frown creased Vashni's lips. He stared toward the bed, then toward the balcony, and began to walk in that direction.
Innowen bit his lip and gripped the hilt of his sword. Vashni might miss him as he went out to the balcony. But if he turned to reenter...
Then, before Vashni moved two steps, her voice sounded from a darkened antechamber beyond the bed. At first, Innowen thought it was a high, sweet song, but it ended too quickly. Not a song at all. Only two strange foreign words spoken with a musical quality.
The Witch of Shanalane emerged out of the darkness of that room.
A powerful trembling seized Innowen. With a sudden horrible insight, he realized that what he once had thought was love for this woman had somehow, at some time, turned into a powerful, overwhelming fear. For five years he had pursued her. Now, she was but the width of a room away, and he could not—dared not—make a move.
Her hair, which in the darkness and lightning of a storm had once looked blond to him, was, in fact, black as the night, black as any shadow. It swept around her face and over her shoulders in a crazy tangle that he still found oddly beautiful. Her lips were just as he remembered, red as roses. And her eyes...! His first impression was that they glittered like stars. Now, he saw them filled with a peculiar glaze.
In her hand was the reason. She carried the reed basket he had seen earlier in the possession of a slave. From it, she lifted white flower petals and stuffed them into her mouth.
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