by Lynn Abbey
“It’s all Strangle’s fault,” Leorin whispered when he helped her to her feet again. “It was him, not the Mother. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t promised a blessing to whoever brought down the Torch. Strangle’s will isn’t Dyareela’s will. Pilfer died because he listened to Strangle, not the Mother.”
They were mad, Cauvin thought as he climbed down the rope ladder, and soon he’d be one of them … or dead. It didn’t matter much, so long as Bec was free.
“I’ll catch you,” he promised Leorin for the second time. She fell into his arms and fainted from the pain. Cauvin chafed her hands and cheeks to rouse her. “Don’t you froggin’ die on me!”
The golden-amber eyes fluttered open. “I won’t, Cauvin, I swear I won’t. Help me up.”
He did. “You’re sure you can find the way?”
“Just stay behind me. Walk where I walk, nowhere else.”
“What about torchlight?”
“What about it? They know we’re here, Cauvin. The temple belongs to Dyareela. There’s always someone watching.”
That stopped Cauvin in his tracks as he recalled his earlier visits. The Hand must not have recognized the Torch, or maybe they weren’t as vigilant as Leorin believed.
Steadying herself with her right hand against the tunnel wall, Leorin led Cauvin into a maze. Cauvin had never imagined that Sanctuary was built on a hollow hillside, but that seemed the best explanation for the wormlike passages. The torch he carried revealed shiny ribbons of stone that looked like silken draperies. He longed to run his hands over them, but Leorin, with her right hand always touching the passage wall, limped on.
Though most of the passages were bone dry, several were flooded to ankle depth. The water flowed from cracks in the passage walls or seeped up through the raw-stone floor. Living near rivers and the sea, Cauvin thought he knew all the ways in which water could kill, but he’d never imagined that a man could drown underground until they entered a cave that was little wider than the stream roaring through it. A waist-high rope had been slung across the turbulent water, leading from the natural arch where they stood to a dark keyhole carved out of the opposite wall.
“When it rains above, the water flows here,” Leorin explained. “Yesterday, we couldn’t have come this way, but it’s safe now—slippery, but not very deep.”
Leorin hitched up her skirt with a moan and grasped the rope with her free hand. Her feet had no sooner touched the rushing water than she lost her balance. A hard fall left her stunned and sliding toward the hole where the stream reburied itself in stone. Cauvin didn’t have hands enough for the torch, the guide rope, and Leorin. He let go of the rope. The stream wasn’t deep—the water didn’t cover his knees—but slippery didn’t begin to describe the stone over which it raced. He lost the torch during his struggle to grasp Leorin and keep his balance.
If the Hand was watching—Cauvin could have used some help finding the way out. He was drenched before he found first the guide rope, then the keyhole exit.
“Ice is slippery,” he complained as he helped a shaky Leorin into the pitch-black passage. “That was worse. Can you get through that?”
“Yes,” Leorin said grimly.
The carved passage was meant for crawling, not walking, and on their palms and knees. But it was no more than twenty feet in length—the longest twenty feet Cauvin had ever crawled—and ended in a cave that was lit by a pair of oil lamps hung from a ceiling too high to see by their light. They picked up an escort coming across that chamber—at least one man whose footsteps echoed in the darkness. Cauvin loosened the bronze slug from his neck, but the escort stayed out of sight.
There was another keyhole passage, this one high enough for walking, and at the end of it, a well-lit chamber. Leorin had told the froggin’ truth about one thing, at least—Cauvin had just two choices tonight: submit or sacrifice. There would be no turning around.
The Hand’s bolt-hole beneath Sanctuary was a sprawling cavern some twenty feet high and divided by a rushing stream, probably the same stream Cauvin and Leorin had crossed earlier. Lashed and floating planks bridged the stream. Judging from the length of the bridge and the high-waterline shining on the sloped floor, the stream had been a foot higher not long ago.
On the far side of the stream, at the limit of torchlight, the Hand had raised an altar to the Bloody Mother of Chaos. It was a small altar compared to the one Cauvin remembered at the palace, barely longer than a man’s spine, but it was ringed with enough chains to hold any man in place while they cut out his heart. The Bloody Mother’s face had been crudely carved into the cave wall behind the attar—Grabar could have done a better job. Unlit candles, mounted on spears, stood in ranks between the altar and the carved face. Skulls and long bones were piled at the base of each spear. And atop the altar, glimmering in firelight, the golden bowls that held the knives and collected the blood of those Mother desired or who got in the way.
The altar and its furnishings were revealed by five great lamps hung along the cavern walls. A dark keyhole passage opened beneath each lamp, and, one by one, the survivors of Hand emerged to greet their visitors. Cauvin counted five men and three women before a tall man strode into view. His head was bald and his hands were pale, but even if Leorin hadn’t hailed him as Strangle or he hadn’t carried a coiled whip below his waist, Cauvin would have recognized the Whip. Put a wig on his head, exchange his breeches and shirt for silken robes in sunrise colors, and the Whip became the Ilsigi broker Cauvin had seen in the palace talking to Prince Naimun.
“So, your sleepwalker came home,” the Whip said to Leorin. “Good for you.” Then he turned his contempt on Cauvin. “Ah, Cauvin—full-grown at last. And why have you come to us, Cauvin? True love? A change of heart? A need for rebirth? Something simpler?”
Leorin tried to speak for him, but Cauvin’s voice was stronger. “Something simpler. I came to offer myself in exchange for my brother. I’m the one you want. I’m the Torch’s heir.”
“So we’ve heard. But, can you prove it, Cauvin? Your word isn’t nearly enough.”
That was a challenge Cauvin hadn’t expected. Froggin’ sure, other than the Torch’s word—which wouldn’t count for much with the Hand—all he had for proof was an old knife, dreamy conversations with dead men and dead gods, and a knack for reading languages he couldn’t speak. He hadn’t even kept the Torch’s damned black ring!
Before Cauvin made a sheep-shite fool of himself, Leorin got between him and Strangle.
“I’ll swear Cauvin’s not the man he was last week. He’s been transformed. He has what we need, and he’s sworn to submit to Dyareeta—in exchange for his brother, who we know isn’t the heir.”
“I’m sure you’ll swear it, Honey. You’ll swear anything to have him in your bed every night.” Once again he turned immediately to Cauvin, asking, “She is very good, isn’t she? Worth waiting for? Worth dying for?”
Watching Leorin stiffen, Cauvin believed she did hate Strangle to the core of her icy heart. It wasn’t enough to make him trust her, but there was a chance that they faced a common enemy. He felt bold enough to say: “I’m not answering any of your froggin’ questions until my brother’s out of here.”
“You’re in no position to dictate terms, Cauvin,” Strangle said. When Cauvin didn’t blink, he shouted, “Show him!”
Another six men entered the altar cave, two of them emerging from the passage behind Leorin and Cauvin. They came in pairs, one carrying a torch and the other a short spear with a barbed point. Although the men appeared to be roughly his age, Cauvin was a little surprised that he recognized none of the faces.
“Go ahead, kill me—and you’ll never know what the Torch knew and who he told. And you’ll never know where he’s stashed enough treasure to raise an army ten thousand strong.”
Cauvin sealed his doom with that empty boast, but it was worth it to watch the Whip’s greedy eyes narrow and hear him shout another order:
“Fetch him! Fetch the whelp!”
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Two women hurried into a dark passage. Cauvin clenched his fists to keep them from shaking while he waited—not long—for the women to reappear with Bec. The boy walked tall despite a rag tied over his eyes, his hands bound behind his back, and a noose tied around his neck. He was shirtless—that was to be expected—and filthy. There was a scabby cut on his forehead and two bloody welts crossing his narrow chest. Otherwise, he seemed unharmed, though surely there were bruises under all that dirt. A whip had made the welts, and Cauvin knew who’d wielded it.
Leorin had told the truth about one thing: He wasn’t the man he’d been the week before. That sheep-shite fool would have charged across the stream, attacked the Whip, and gotten himself killed before Bec was home free. The man Cauvin had become stood his ground, and said—
“Untie him.”
Not one of the boy’s captors twitched toward the knots, but Bec recognized Cauvin’s voice. “Cauvin!” he shouted. “Don’t listen to them, Cauvin! Don’t believe them! I didn’t tell them anything!”
Cauvin kept his attention on the Whip. “I said, untie him. He’s free now.”
The Whip cocked his head to one side. “What is it about children,” he asked with gentle malice, “that makes strong men weak? They’re untempered … unfinished. They can always be replaced, and so pleasurably.”
“No answers until he’s free and out of here.”
The Whip sighed. “Unbind him.”
Bec blinked when the blindfold came off. He spotted Leorin. “Furzy feathers! Cauvin, what are you doing here with her?”
“Never mind.” Cauvin opened his arms. The boy scampered over the floating bridge. Cauvin hunched down, embracing him face-to-face. “You get out of here—now!” He spoke softly, even though he knew the froggin’ Hand could hear his thoughts if they wished. “Put your left hand on the passage wall behind me and keep it there—except when you come to a cave with water in it. Then, feel for a rope and hold on tight as you cross the stream. Got that?”
The boy frowned so deeply that the cut on his forehead began to weep. “Cauvin? Cauvin, you can’t stay here. Not with her? Cauvin, you’ve got to come with me.”
“Once you’re in the temple, run straight to the stoneyard. You hear me?”
“Cauvin—Don’t you know who these people are? You can’t stay with them! Grandfather—”
“Grandfather’s dead! They made a mistake when they took you, Bec. They want me. I’ve got to stay; you’ve got to leave.” Cauvin gave his brother a good shake and shove toward the passage. “Put your left hand on the wall and run. Don’t stop running until you’re in the stoneyard.”
“But—”
“Get going!”
Bec stood firm. Cauvin backhanded him across the face. The boy staggered and crumbled. When he stood, his mouth and nose were bleeding and tears streamed over his cheeks.
“Cauvin …”
“Frog all, Bec—run!”
Bec whimpered, then—finally—he ran.
“Grandfather, is it? How touching,” the Whip purred, when Cauvin faced him again. “And you’re the witch’s son?”
Cauvin shook his head. “No witch. The Torch made me his heir.”
“Priests don’t transform heirs, Cauvin. Only witches can do that. If the Torch made you his heir, the question is: Did he make you into a witch, too?”
A part of Cauvin wanted to shout that froggin’ sure he wasn’t a witch, except he wasn’t sure at all, so he said nothing.
The Whip laughed. “No matter, Cauvin. Witchblood is sweet on the Mother’s tongue, but the Torch’s soul is what She’s hungered for.” He turned to Leorin. “Sorry, Honey, but—you can’t have him, not as a lover or a weapon against me. Take them both.”
The spear-carrying man at Cauvin’s back surged, and though Cauvin was willing to trade his life for Bec’s, he couldn’t trade it meekly. The best knife in the world was no match for a five-footlong spear. Cauvin seized the torch from the spearman’s partner, kicking him in the gut as he did. Then he brought the flames to bear on the knuckles of the spearman to thrust at him. The Hand howled as he dropped his weapon and ran for the stream.
Cauvin had a heartbeat to savor his victory as Leorin lunged for the dropped spear, but rather than stand beside him against those who wanted to sacrifice them both to the Bloody Mother, she leveled the barbed point at Cauvin’s breast—or tried to. The beating she’d taken in the Unicorn left Leorin unable to hold even a light weapon steady. She’d have been useless as an ally and wasn’t a threat as an enemy. Cauvin easily wrenched the spear out of her hand, but by then it was too late. The two other spearmen with their torch-carrying partners on the Whip’s side of the stream had crossed the floating bridge, and the two on Cauvin’s side had recovered their nerve.
Even with a spear in one hand and a torch in the other, Cauvin was no match for six men obeying their master’s orders. Before he knew it, his weapons were gone, there was steel pressed into his throat, more hands than he could count pinning his arms behind his back.
His captors dragged Cauvin to the floating bridge, which was nowhere near wide enough, nor sturdy enough for the lot of them. Cauvin had nothing to lose by writhing in captivity, trying to trip his captors into the stream. He kept his balance long enough to break free and draw the Ilbarsi knife, then he grabbed Leorin and held her—spine against his chest—with the Ilbarsi knife at her throat.
From start to finish, it had been a blind, desperate move, and its success gained Cauvin nothing. There were still six men coming after him, and Leorin was not a willing hostage. She clawed at Cauvin’s forearm and stomped on his foot. If the Hand hadn’t beaten her earlier, she would have gotten loose.
“I’ll give you everything the Torch has given me—” Cauvin shouted to the Whip, who was, at that moment, crossing the stream.
A spearman feinted; Cauvin used Leorin as a shield. She bit down hard on his arm.
“Or what?” the Whip asked patiently. “Cauvin, Cauvin—no cleverer now than you were ten years ago. You have nothing to bargain with. The Mother has decided: She hungers for you, Cauvin. She hungers now.”
The Whip gestured toward the altar. Cauvin dared a glance. Women were lighting the ranks of candles. The Bloody Mother’s carved-rock eyes had begun to glow.
“I’ll kill her. I’ll kill Leorin—Honey.” He tightened his grip while she kicked his knees and elbowed his gut.
“You can’t; you love her.” The Whip walked between the spearmen. He came within easy reach of Leorin and the Ilbarsi knife. “Even if you didn’t, even if you could—we all go to the Mother sooner or later. Don’t we?” He caressed Leorin’s chin. “You made a mistake, and you tried to correct it. Sacrifice will complete your redemption, Honey.”
Leorin reacted to that by holding tight to Cauvin’s arm and ramming both heels into the Whip’s groin. The stunned man folded his arms over his injury and struggled to stay on up his feet. Leorin’s heels caught him a second time on the chin.
Before he could take advantage of his wife’s swift vengeance— Before the Hand could react to their master’s collapse—a steeltipped arrow erupted outward between the Whip’s eyes. Dead on his feet, the bald Hand dropped like stone into the stream. Rushing water swirled away the blood trickling from the wound.
Leorin screamed and went limp in Cauvin’s arms as panic spread among the Hand. A spearman tried to pull the Whip’s body out of the water. As he did a gout of fire sizzled out of nowhere and struck him in the chest. The flames engulfed the man with unnatural speed and continued to burn even when he flung himself into the water. Another gout from another quarter of the cave struck a second spearman, while a third hit one of the unarmed Hand on the altar side of the stream and a fourth enveloped one of the candle-lighting women.
All natural flames winked out. The only light came from the Bloody Mother’s glowing eyes and the four living, wailing torches. Cauvin heard footfalls stumbling over themselves. He relaxed his grip on Leorin; returned the Ilbarsi knife to its
sheath.
“We’re saved,” Cauvin said to Leorin. “We can get away.” He offered his hand to his wife.
She grasped it left-handed and let him pull her upright. “It could have been perfect, but you destroyed it. You ruin everything! Even as a boy, you ruined everything. You killed your own mother with your blundering, but you’ll never kill me!”
Leorin slashed across Cauvin’s body with a right hand that had suddenly sprouted steel. He dodged, taking the steel along his forearm before knocking Leorin to the ground, but failed to shake free and she slashed again.
“Damn you!” she sobbed, the light of burning men aglow on her face. “Damn you! Take him, Sweet Mother! Take him now!”
Cauvin didn’t wait to see if the Bloody Mother would heed Leorin’s prayer. He lunged for the temple passage, set his left hand on the wall, and began to run. He hadn’t gone three strides before all the light was behind him. The darkness of the passage was absolute, deeper than midnight on a moonless, overcast night. Cauvin’s vision didn’t end at his elbows or his knees, it simply didn’t exist.
He’d slowed to a fast walk and was growing fearful that he’d missed the passage to the water-filled chamber when a hand closed over his right sleeve. Cauvin struck fast with the Ilbarsi knife.
“Easy! I’m on your side.”
Cauvin recognized Soldt’s voice, but his panic was such that moments passed before he could stop struggling and even then, he couldn’t speak.
“This way.”
Soldt tugged, and Cauvin’s left hand lost contact with the stone around them.
“Left hand,” Cauvin protested, barely coherent. “Left-hand passage.”
“Takes too long. Come on.”
Cauvin resisted. “Bec? Did you see Bec? Did he come this way?”
“Don’t worry about Bec. Vex is with him. The dog won’t let him get lost … or hurt. Now, come!”
