Reawakening

by Amy Rae Durreson

  It was a longer wait than he would have liked, and Tarn braced his shoulders, hoping that nobody’s nerves would break on either side. He wasn’t sure how much more Zeki could stand, and even Gard had no battle experience that Tarn knew of. He hoped Esen could get Aline back on her feet fast, but doubted she’d have the strength for a fight anytime soon. He could always save them by changing to his true form, but it would shatter the house around them, injuring them all and making it near impossible to get to the Shadow inside the narrow confines of its ruined palace.

  When the first soldier returned on the heels of an older man, Tarn assessed the senior officer as coolly as he could. He didn’t expect much from a fanatic, but he hoped a little maturity might make the man respect his own mortality. His appearance was unpromising—tall, slender, and ascetic, with pursed lips and hooded eyes, and no hint of humor in his face.

  “You are surrounded,” the officer said briskly and in trade tongue, which was a hopeful sign. “Surrender.”

  “Did they even tell you whom they wanted you to arrest?” Tarn asked, keeping his tone light and conversational as he chose the names that might strike the most fear into ignorant hearts. “I am Tarnamell, firstborn among dragons, and on the stair above me stands the Desert God of Alagard. All the armies of Tiallat combined may eventually overwhelm us, but many will die in the effort. Your people will be the first to burn, if you try to take us by force.”

  Chapter 29: Negotiating

  “AND WHAT alternative do you suggest?” the officer asked in the same cool tone. He did eye the flames uneasily, though.

  “We have come to parley with the Shadow that rules the Savattin,” Tarn said. “Escort us there without further threat, and we will do you no harm.”

  “Really?” Gard demanded silently. “We’re surrendering?”

  “We came here to confront the Shadow. It knows we’re here. What do we have to gain by fighting now?”

  “Control over the situation?” Gard suggested.

  “I think we lost that when Raif started poisoning people.”

  Below them, the officer cleared his throat and said, shaking his head once, “I do not know who you speak of. There is no shadow in Tiallat. We are God’s people.”

  Above Tarn, Zeki stirred and whispered, “The Fist of God. That’s the name they know.”

  “The Fist of God,” Tarn repeated. “We wish an audience with the Fist of God.”

  “That is beyond my power to promise,” the officer said.

  “Well, go and ask someone who can promise it,” Gard snapped.

  “Steady,” Tarn thought at him, and smiled coldly down at the officer. “We can wait for your answer.”

  It was a long wait, one that left his arms aching and his hands throbbing from being clenched around the hilt of his sword. The longer he stood, the more he wanted to let his flames free and burn away the waiting ranks of soldiers. There were too many in the city, though, and he would only destroy civilian homes and deplete himself before he ever reached the Shadow. They had come in stealth for a reason, and he had to force himself to hope that they could salvage something now.

  He could feel Aline rousing through his connection to her, although she still felt dim and faded. Cayl felt weaker, but the bond to him was newer and less reliable. Tarn wanted to go to them, but he wouldn’t turn his back on the threat at the bottom of the stairs.

  Instead, he concentrated on keeping the fires swirling around him without damaging Omay’s house.

  At last the officer returned, his cold face unreadable. He looked up at Tarn and said, “We will escort you to the Palace of the Fist. Relinquish your sword.”

  “No,” Tarn said and added mildly, “I like this sword. I forged it myself, in another age.” He locked gazes with the officer. “I can kill you without it. What difference does it make?”

  “So we aren’t completely surrendering then?” Gard remarked snidely.

  The officer nodded once. “If it is a matter of honor, you may carry it, although not beyond the doors of the court. Sheathe it, though, and know that you will be shot down if your hand strays to the hilt.”

  “You may try, if your life lacks better amusement,” Tarn said but sheathed his sword. He didn’t call the flames in yet, but instead asked, “Your personal oath that my people will not be harmed before we reach the court.”

  “Neither they nor you,” the officer said, and Tarn respected him a little more for the lack of hesitation, as he raised his fist, clenching it hard. “May God strike me down if I am proven untrue.”

  “The Dark God witnesses it,” Zeki said suddenly, his voice sharp and fierce. “And the Bright Lord watches.”

  The officer averted his eyes at that, but Tarn had little time to pick apart the nuances of this society. “Does a surgeon attend your men?”

  “One of the best.”

  “Then show your goodwill and bring him here.”

  The surgeon, when he arrived, was a stocky little man with a heavy tread who brushed past the captain without much more than a glance at the flames wreathing the ceiling.

  “Tell the men above to stand down, and I’ll take him to his patients,” Gard said, adding for Tarn’s benefit, “You need to stay here and be intimidating.”

  “Hurt him,” the officer said, the first hint of something more than cold disdain in his voice, “and my oath has no power.”

  “My armies never shot chirurgeons,” Tarn told him and let the flames slide into the empty lanterns that hung along the stairway as a show of goodwill. There was still light enough to see by, but it suddenly felt dangerously civilized, for all they were all braced for an attack. “Who is he to you?”

  “My wife’s brother,” the officer said curtly and said no more.

  They waited in tense silence until the surgeon stomped back out.

  “Overdose of poppy juice,” he said sharply. “Both coming out of it naturally, but I’ve applied the standard tincture to speed their recovery. They won’t be able to ride for an hour or two, Akel.”

  The officer nodded shortly and snapped an order out of the door. “They will be transported in whatever comfort we can manage.” A hint of irony curled up the corners of his mouth. “Word from the palace suggests these are honored guests of the Fist.”

  The surgeon snorted and continued down the stairs. At the foot, he paused and said, so softly that Tarn could barely hear him and Zeki would not, “My brother, the Nightingale of Taila no longer sings alone in heaven. Her own poet rests now at her feet.”

  Tarn saw the grief blossom in the officer’s eyes and wondered at it. There had been no poetry in Eyr. Just how strong was the Shadow’s hold on Tiallat?

  Tarn, Gard and Zeki were allowed to ride, although they were hemmed in by rows of cavalry, and their horses’ hooves were echoed by the stamp of marching feet along the rooftops above. Tarn glimpsed a few archers silhouetted against the moon along the long road to the heart of the city. The houses on each side were quiet, though a few shutters slammed hurriedly shut ahead of them. The sky above was clear, with the stars flaring brightly, and the air was still.

  “Tarn,” Zeki whispered, riding closer. “Raif and my father?”

  “The chirurgeon stayed to care for them,” Tarn said carefully. The boy deserved the truth, but grief took even grown men in strange and wild ways, and he did not want to see the boy cut down because his heart broke too loudly. Let it wait until a quieter time.

  Aline had roused up enough to sit up in the cart, and she was leaning over the edge to talk to Gard, her face grim. Cayl was sitting up beside her, but he still looked too gray to talk, his hands curling awkwardly.

  At the palace gates, they dismounted, and Zeki went quickly to support Cayl, his hand under the older man’s elbow. Aline shrugged off Gard’s help and set her shoulders, looking up at the blackened windows.

  “In the shah’s day,” she said clearly, “when I was an honored guest here, every window looked upon the world. And there was music. I liked the music.”
She turned to scowl at the gathered soldiers, as if holding them personally responsible. “I don’t trust any god who despises music.”

  “I adore music,” Gard said, and winked at her. “Well then, good captain. Lead us to our doom.”

  Tarn fell into step beside them and murmured quietly, “Must we antagonize the locals?”

  “These locals?” Cayl said, wheezing. “Yes.”

  The halls of the palace were wide and battered. In places, the plaster had chipped away from the yellow bricks below. In other spots, the marks of hammers showed clearly, with little scraps of color still hinting at the friezes that had been destroyed. Tarn saw the tip of a gilded wing, and the head of a rearing horse, and wondered if his battles had been shown here once. Why would anyone in Tiallat paint dragons on their walls?

  They passed along a long peristyle that ran beside a sunken garden. All the flowerbeds were full of dry, thorny stalks.

  “Have the roses not flowered yet?” Aline asked.

  “Not for years,” one of the escorting soldiers blurted out and then went quiet as his officer scowled at him.

  Zeki took a breath and then said, his voice clear and defiant, “My father says that roses will not flower where tyranny rules.”

  Tarn could almost feel Gard biting back sarcasm at that. All Gard said, though, was “There will be roses here again. I have met many travelers who have seen the flowering valleys of Eyr. The ruin the Shadow brings never lasts.”

  “Really?” Tarn asked. The field of Astalor had been a bloodied and smoking ruin when he turned his back on it.

  “I have been there,” Cayl said hoarsely. “Doves nest in the ruins of the towers of the demon kings.”

  Their escort looked confused, but Tarn felt a little more righteousness lift his shoulders. Eyr had been a foul and seeping wasteland for two millennia before his final confrontation with the Shadow. If that forsaken land had grown beautiful, it was a greater triumph than he could ever have expected.

  And now, at last, the time felt right again. He had brought down the Shadow once, and he was ready to do it again. He would burn it out of whatever mortal shell it possessed, hard and hot enough that it would go skulking back into the shadowy places of the world to lick its wounds for centuries before it dared possess his friends and enslave his lover again.

  His stride lengthened enough that their escort had to hurry to keep up with him, and Gard laughed a little, breathlessly. When Tarn glanced at him, he grinned sharply and murmured, “Let the storm rise.”

  And there, right there, was the mistake the Shadow always made. It could not understand how it felt to ride into battle with friends at your back, and so it would always underestimate its enemies.

  The corridor ended at an arching pair of doors. Even the red paint that defaced them couldn’t hide the beauty of the workmanship. Each door showed a man’s profile, simple to the point of abstraction, their eyes fixed on each other and their hair flowing down to form the edges of the door. It looked like something Tarn could have seen his own craftsmen make, in another age.

  The court beyond would be full, he knew. The Shadow liked a spectacle, and would have roused its supporters from their beds to see this confrontation. So be it. Any that were this close to it would have given their loyalty freely. He would make no extra effort to save them when he called the flames down on their master.

  “You must leave your sword here.”

  The officer’s voice startled him out of his focus, but Tarn shrugged Ulc-Sarnir off his shoulder and slapped it into the man’s hand. “It has an ancient name,” he said.

  “I will watch over it,” the officer said and inclined his head slightly. “Yours too, Desert Storm.”

  “That one doesn’t have an ancient name,” Cayl muttered, as Gard handed it over, “but it was a gift from a friend, and I like it.”

  “I’d like a sword at all,” Aline muttered, “and not for sentimental reasons.”

  Tarn shrugged. “There are other ways to fight.”

  “True,” she agreed. “I could kick some flunky in the balls and steal his while he’s screaming.”

  Esen giggled, a little nervously, and reached out to seize Zeki’s hand. Gard narrowed his eyes at Zeki but then moved forward to stand beside Tarn. He looked up at the doors, drawing a breath, and said softly, “I never knew him well, the Dual God. I wonder if I could have helped him.”

  “The Shadow would simply have come for you sooner,” Tarn said. “Before I was awake to save you.”

  “Is there anyone in the world you trust to look after himself?” Gard asked, but his shoulder brushed Tarn’s.

  Tarn considered it. “No one waking.” He turned to the officer. “Let this be done. Open the doors.”

  The hall beyond was not what he had expected. The Shadow’s courts of old had been great cavernous shells of gleaming black marble and ice-slicked floors, lit by towering and twisted metal torches.

  This court was broken. There were no tiers of stone seats reaching toward the roof. The room was empty of all save a dais and a throne at the far end. The windows were high and blacked out, but the roof was shattered. The moon shone in, casting the shadows of the burnt and twisted rafters down onto the pale tiles of the floor like a mass of serpents.

  The throne was empty.

  The doors fell shut behind them with an echoing clang.

  Tarn gestured the others still. There was a gallery above them, and he listened carefully, trying to sense if there was any human life up there.

  It too was empty.

  “No one,” he said and moved forward carefully, picking his way across the floor, alert for any shift of the ground or air that might warn of a trap. The Shadow could be petty, and it would not hesitate to sacrifice his hoard simply to plague him. This great silent space felt wrong to him, and he wished now he’d been able to leave them all with Raif, even if it was under Savattin guard.

  Aline’s steps were just as soft and cautious, but she spoke as she shuffled forward, her voice fading to a thin and fragile thread under the pressing silence. “I’ve been here too. It was the Hall of Judgment, and the Dual God sat on the throne there.”

  “He’s gone now,” Gard pointed out. It hadn’t needed saying, but a voice helped a little, and Tarn hoped they would keep talking.

  They fell silent, though, and nothing sounded but their feet as they moved forward through the hall, fanning out carefully. Tarn kept his eyes on the throne, wondering if the Shadow was planning a surprise appearance or whether this was all some bizarre diversion.

  “Is there space for me to transform?” he asked, squinting around to judge the width of the room. “If this is a trap….”

  “That could be the trigger,” Cayl said. “Keep your maneuverability, as long as it’s safe.”

  Tarn stopped in the center of the hall anyway. His temper was rising. He had been ready for this battle.

  “Hoy, Shadow!” he bellowed, making everyone jump. “Are you still afraid to face me? Show yourself!”

  Everyone froze, waiting, but only his words echoed around the empty hall.

  “Well, isn’t this an anticlimax?” Gard remarked, folding his arms and scowling. “If we’re done here, I suggest we leave. Perhaps we could track down the Dual God and let him know he’s free to come home.”

  “Nothing’s supposed to be this easy,” Cayl muttered, hunching his shoulders.

  “Can we get out?” Aline asked thoughtfully. “Is this just a very large cell?”

  Gard snorted. “Tarn has wings. They’d have to be pretty stupid to put him in a cell without a roof.”

  “They are fanatics,” Aline said. “They’re not known for their intellects.”

  Esen was still wandering forward, drifting toward the dais, meandering around heaps of fallen masonry.

  Gard noticed her and called, “Behind us, Esen. It’s not safe.”

  She did not respond, and he repeated his words in Selar, stepping after her.

  A thread of cold ran down Tar
n’s spine, and he suddenly realized he could see his breath steaming in the air. He called for fire, sending it arching up from his open palm to light up the whole room, as both Cayl and Aline tensed beside him.

  “Esen!” Gard called, more sharply. “Here!”

  She had reached the foot of the dais and was looking up at the throne, a slim frail figure under its vast shadow, her dark hair streaming down her back. Then, step by step, she mounted the dais. At the top, she reached out and brushed her fingers lightly across the arm of the throne.

  Then she turned and seated herself, leaning back and crossing her legs before she smiled.

  And the shadows came running out of her eyes, streaming down her cheeks and arms like torrents of black blood.

  “Oh, Lord of Tarn Amel,” she said, her voice echoing with ancient mockery. “Did you really think it was Raif who had betrayed you?”

  Chapter 30: Losing

  BESIDE HIM, Gard drew in a harsh breath, but Tarn didn’t look at him. Instead, he said to the frail figure on the throne, “How long have you been riding the girl?”

  She giggled, the same lightly mocking sound he had heard from Esen as they traveled. “Oh, not long. Only since her father died.”

  “You know what she is to Alagard,” Tarn said, a thousand tiny clues falling neatly into place. “You could not reach him directly, not once he was under my protection, but you could take the girl, knowing he would come for her. Was that why the Savattin marched into Istel?”

  “Oh, well done,” she said, clapping lightly. “I was beginning to think you had turned stupid in your sleep. You never once suspected poor broken little Esen, even when she was fighting so hard to break out of my grasp.”

  “The tower,” Tarn said flatly.