DragonThrone02 The Empire of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  “You can smell the blood from here,” said Damion softly.

  Kiran Jariss raised his head as they turned down another lane. “No, that is the temple—we are near it now. The daily animal sacrifices make every temple of Valdur stink like an abattoir.”

  Soon they could see the great building—or what was left of it. The high temple was half in ruins, heavily damaged by both the Elei forces and the liberated Zimbouran peasants centuries ago. There were slaves of many races at work upon the ruined portion: Shurkas, Moharas, Kaans, and a tribe Lorelyn and Damion had never seen before, pale-skinned and very muscular with sloping foreheads, heavy jaws, and pronounced brow ridges. Even their women had well-muscled arms and shoulders. Jariss called them the Dogoda: they were a very ancient race from the barren regions of the far south, he said, their numbers now greatly dwindled. They made popular slaves because of their superior strength and their capacity to endure all manner of hardship.

  Within the broken mud-brick walls there stood an idol, lit by the flickering sacrificial fires beneath: a stone colossus that dwarfed the human figures milling below. It had wings like an angel’s, spreading to either side: the feathers at their outer edges curved and undulated like flames. Royal robes flowed about the gargantuan figure, and robes and wings were plated with gold. Atop the head was a kingly crown, with more gold leaf adorning it and a rime of glittering gems. But the face of the statue was gone, its features blackened and blasted away as if by a great fire.

  Damion stared up. “You remember Ailia’s story about the old Holy War, and the idol of Valdur?” he whispered to Lorelyn. “This must be the very same statue! Look, you can see there’s a little depression carved into the front of its crown. The Star Stone must have been set there.”

  “Some say the Stone destroyed the idol’s face with its magic power, others that the city people themselves defaced the statue after the Holy War. Khalazar intends to have the face repaired, but with his own features, of course,” said Jariss.

  “Of all the nerve!” burst out Lorelyn. “How dare he think he’s a god, the nasty, conceited, stupid little man—”

  “Will you all shut up,” hissed an exasperated Jomar. “They’ll hear you. We’re almost at the door.”

  Jariss stopped the wagon and tethered the horses to a ring in the stone wall. “Leave the spears and any other weapons you can’t carry in with you, and cover them up with these bits of sacking,” he instructed. He led them into the thronging mob at the main entrance, then quietly slipped away again. “No one will notice you’re unaccompanied now,” he whispered. “I’ll wait for you in the wagon, so we can make a quick getaway.”

  They filed into the vast inner space within the broken pillars and drew near to the colossus. There was a low square door between its great stone feet: the entrance to the inner sanctum. Here the holy sacrifices were made, and only priests could pass within: it was a dark, fearsome place with, it was said, an altar and a well-like shaft into which the carcasses of the sacrificial animals were cast after they were slain—for no mortal must ever eat of their sanctified flesh. Damion stared at the dark door, seized with horror and another emotion that was strange to him, neither fear nor fascination but some blend of both. With an effort he tore his eyes away.

  The intruders knew that in their female garb they dared not approach within a bowshot of that sacred door, or they would be beaten for their impertinence. But they had the advantage of invisibility. No man here would deign to notice their somber swathed forms waiting quietly in the shadows, so they would not call unwanted attention to themselves. They moved along the walls and stationed themselves behind pillars, moving slowly and silently.

  As they watched, the high priest emerged from the sanctum. Berengazi had been sacrificing beasts: his hands glistened red in the torchlight as he held them aloft, gloved with blood. “Bring the prisoners!” he bellowed, as more priests appeared and stood at his side.

  Damion and the others quickly separated and dispersed themselves throughout the crowd. Drums beat, approaching: the procession was drawing near. The six prisoners from the farmlands were flanked by twice as many soldiers. Half were quite old men, others mere youths. In the crowd women sobbed and men cursed; the soldiers gripped their weapons.

  “How can you do this? They are your own people!” one man in the crowd called out, anguish overcoming his fear. “The invaders you took prisoner have not been slain!”

  “Not yet. And those who die tonight have defied their own God-king,” returned the captain harshly. “Indeed they are more guilty than the enemy, for it was their sacred duty to serve Khalazar.”

  Jomar watched, hardly able to contain his anger. “Execution” in the temple—hah! It’s the return of human sacrifices, and the people know it. Today they use prisoners; tomorrow they’ll not bother with such excuses. It will be innocent victims—women, children . . . He elbowed Damion and Lorelyn in the ribs, and the three of them began to move slowly forward.

  Damion’s mouth was dry and his heart pounding. He regretted, now, his decision not to go to Melnemeron: there were plenty of good fighting men here; it was a sorcerer who was needed most. Ailia had been right after all.

  The black-robed high priest saw them approaching and scowled. “Now,” whispered Jomar. The rebels all moved to surround the prisoners. Berengazi glared at the cloaked forms in righteous indignation. “You women—get back! I told you there would be no appeals for clemency.”

  “But Your Reverence,” said Jomar in a falsetto whine, sidling up to the high priest.

  “No! How dare you address me, woman!” thundered the cleric. “Leave the temple! Where is your husband? If he cannot better control you he must go, too. Leave the holy place at once.” He turned his back, gesturing to the other clerics.

  “I will—and you can come with me!” roared Jomar in his own voice. Flinging off shawl and cloak, he drew his sword in a blur of iron and pinioned the astounded Berengazi from behind, holding the blade to his throat. “You’re coming with us now, Reverend, and the prisoners, too. Back,” he added to the soldiers, “get back, or your high priest dies!”

  The crowd surged back in confusion, and the soldiers after a moment’s stupefaction drew their weapons. But they were too late: already Damion, Lorelyn, Unguru, and the others had thrown off their concealing garments and leaped forward, swords flashing in their hands. The captain fell first, then the soldiers one by one dropped their swords and fell to the floor, clutching deadly wounds.

  Damion and Lorelyn hacked away the ropes that bound the captives together. “You can still be free!” Lorelyn shouted. “Turn away from Khalazar!” The people milled and murmured, like frightened herd animals. The hammers of the slaves were stilled.

  “All right—run!” yelled Jomar, and they fled back down the temple aisle, dragging the high priest with them.

  “Now, if only Kiran is there with the wagon—” panted Lorelyn.

  They scanned the street in anxiety, but saw no sign of the wagon or its driver. Jariss had gone.

  “I told you,” Jomar shouted wildly over the struggling priest’s head. “I told you he couldn’t be trusted! He’s betrayed us all!”

  They tore down the steps, urging the dazed prisoners along. “Get back!” Jomar shouted at the pursuing priests, his sword at Berengazi’s throat. “Back, or your master dies!” It’ll be just my luck if one of them wants his job, he thought sourly. But the clerics halted in dismay.

  “Jo—there he is!” cried Lorelyn pointing.

  Jariss was driving toward them at top speed, whipping his foaming horses, a small company of mounted watchmen in hot pursuit. He drew up so sharply that the lead rider’s horse collided with the rear of the wagon and fell to its knees. At once Unguru sprang at the rider, hauled him out of the saddle, and mounted. The horse, still neighing in fear, struggled to its feet again and Unguru gave a fierce yell of exultation, drawing his sword. The watchmen saw at once that their knives and truncheons were no match for the warriors and pulled back in
alarm.

  “Everyone into the wagon!” Damion shouted, shoving the bewildered captives toward it. “Quickly! They’ll have more soldiers here in an instant.”

  They all piled into the wagon, Jomar still gripping the high priest. “Where were you?” he demanded, looking over his shoulder at Jariss.

  “Had an argument with some of the Watch,” Jariss panted. “And they tried to search the wagon. If they’d found the weapons I would have been arrested. I took off, and I’ve been driving around and around in circles ever since, hoping you’d come out before they managed to catch me—” He shook the reins with a cry of, “Hah-hahh!” and plied the whip with vigor.

  The horses galloped forward madly. Unguru rode alongside, his eyes flashing with savage joy as he brandished his sword and howled. One watchman had seized hold of the left horse’s harness and leaped onto its back. Jariss lashed him with the whip, but the blows fell on his armor and helmet and he clung on. He had his dagger out now, and seemed to be trying to cut the traces. Again and again the desperate farmer struck him with the whip.

  Unguru saw. Urging his horse forward until it was neck-and-neck with the cart-horse, he swung at the watchman with his sword. The man ducked and jabbed at the horse’s dappled flanks with his knife. The big animal screamed and reared, bringing the wagon to a halt.

  Unguru vaulted from his own mount’s saddle. Then he drew his sword and the man fell, his arm slashed open from shoulder to elbow.

  “Get in the wagon!” Jomar bawled at Unguru. The Mohara warrior looked around for his stolen horse, but it had fled the scene in terror. He raced for the wagon and sprang over the side even as it lurched forward again.

  The watchman rolled, arms raised, as his pursuing colleagues trampled him beneath their own horses’ hooves.

  Berengazi had taken advantage of the momentary distraction to struggle out of Jomar’s grasp. Damion and Lorelyn tackled him together, pulled him down, and sat on him.

  “Faster—faster!” yelled Jomar.

  “They’re going as fast as they can,” Jariss shouted back. “The gray’s hurt.”

  They tore on through the marketplace, scattering bewildered vendors together with their stalls. Everywhere were piles of vegetables, flapping fowl, and startled faces. Pieces of rotting wood flew off the wagon’s sides as they thundered on through the main streets. The horses were foaming at their mouths.

  Lorelyn flung the last of her concealing rags off and fitted an arrow to her bow, trying vainly to nock it as the disintegrating wagon careened from side to side. Some of the pursuers, seeing an archer aiming at them, began to drop behind. But there were soldiers at the city gate ahead, and these had spears and arrows.

  Lorelyn fired, missed, and turned to Jomar. “Now what?” she yelled.

  He hauled Berengazi up into a kneeling position and held the man in front of him with his sword at his throat. “Everyone in the back lie down! They won’t risk killing their high priest.” I hope. “Keep driving, farmer. Don’t stop now!”

  Jariss, ashen-faced, obeyed. As the armed men, seeing that this speeding wagon had no intention of stopping, leveled their spears and bows, Jomar thrust Berengazi in front of him as a living shield. Their eyes bulged as they recognized him and their weapons wavered.

  “Tell them to let us pass,” hissed Jomar into Berengazi’s ear. “Tell them or I’ll run you through right now.”

  “Then they will kill you,” gasped the priest.

  “Probably. But you won’t get to see it.” Jomar pressed the point of his sword into the man’s plump side and he squealed like a terrified pig.

  “Let us pass! Let us pass!” he implored the soldiers.

  In Zimboura all fighting men were conditioned to obedience. The soldiers at the gate stepped back immediately.

  “On—on!” Jomar yelled.

  An arrow struck the wagon’s side as it rumbled through the gate, but the soldiers dared not follow. To cause the high priest’s death would surely mean their own.

  “We’ve done it,” Lorelyn whooped, throwing down her bow. “Oh, we’ve done it!” Jomar shook his head in disbelief.

  They drove on in a cloud of dust, toward their waiting mounts.

  14

  The Jungle and the City

  AILIA SPENT THE NIGHT in the broad boughs of a giant banyanlike tree. She had been forced to leave the beach for the jungle, afraid that the enemy might catch sight of her on its wide white expanse of sand: she had glimpsed firedrakes in the distance, flying high through the clouds, and realized that the dense tree canopy would give her better shelter. Once beneath its green concealment she breathed more easily. But still she dared not summon help through the Ether.

  It was not comfortable in the tree, but she felt far safer there than on the ground. A Nemerei in sleep is as vulnerable as any other being, and this alien jungle seemed a hostile place. Sorcery might reveal the living aura of one of its denizens, but she would not be able to tell whether the creature it belonged to was harmful in any way. She dozed fitfully, huddled in a narrow niche between two branches, waking several times before the dawn lightened the sky. Each waking moment was filled with fear.

  Never again would she think of Night and Day as two equal but opposite things, like the two sides of a coin. She knew now that what she had called “Day” was merely a phenomenon peculiar to planets with atmospheres: a sun’s light diffused through an envelope of air. Beyond sun and atmosphere lay the Great Night with its unfading stars and its fathomless dark, an abyss deep and vast beyond imagining. Nor was this the tranquil and harmonious forest of Arainia. Here continuous war was waged, as the creatures slew and devoured one another down to the minutest insect; here even the trees and vines fought each other for the light, entwining and strangling each other with limb and tendril as they thrust up toward the sky, shutting out the suns from those below: and the mold and fungoid growths of the jungle’s dank floor fed on the resulting rot. She listened as the shadowed groves filled with the roars, screeches, bellows, and growls of their night-dwelling denizens, and she shuddered. It was the howl of Chaos itself she heard through these primeval voices: brutish, mindless, pitiless. She envisioned a time before her own race began, when the original world was home only to beasts: a world without philosophy, without religion or science, without consciousness; a world whose only law was the grim and savage struggle for life. She huddled in her tree, trying hard not to imagine the beasts that were making those sounds.

  At long last the sunrise came. It was spectacular, unlike any she had ever yet seen. The rising limb of the yellow sun climbing above the banks of jungle mist turned them and the whole of the eastern sky to lambent gold, and then as it climbed she saw the second sun rise behind it, and its own fierce, blue light blended with that of the first to tint the whole sky jade-green. A whole chorus of cries, low, shrill, harsh, sonorous, greeted that double sunrise. What had been a tenebrous gloom slowly became a jungle, shaping itself out of the shadows: gaunt threatening forms turned into trees with mossy writhing limbs while the darkness drained away from the understory beneath.

  She began to make her way carefully down the trunk, clutching at the vines that wound about it. As she passed the lower limbs of the tree something flew past her head, uttering piercing cries. At first she thought it was a bat, then a bird. It swooped down upon her again, then perched on a branch above her and scolded. It was a strange creature, more reptile than bird: it had a beak and a fleshy crest rather like a cockerel’s, but its wings were naked and leathery and it had a long, scaly tail. Of course—it was a cockatrice. Bendulus had written about these creatures in his bestiary.

  The cockatrice screeched and darted down at her again.

  “Shoo—shoo!” she cried, ducking and waving her free hand. “I don’t want your eggs!” For she now saw the thick clump of twigs on the branch above. She tried to empathize with the creature, reaching out to its mind, but the dull reptile brain was slow to respond, and she was finally forced to hasten on down the vine to the tree
’s roots and break into a run.

  When at last she had left the flapping fury behind she slowed to a walk. With the dense upper layers of foliage screening out much of the suns’ light the jungle was a dim, dusky place. Nor did the leaf barrier above relieve the relentless heat. The air around her was stiflingly humid—she half-expected it to steam, like a boiling kettle. After an hour’s walk she was bathed in perspiration, her breath coming in short gasps. Even the chiton seemed unbearably hot, clinging to her damp skin: she was forced to strip to her undergarment and carry the dress rolled under one arm. And still the humidity pressed down upon her. Very soon her situation would become desperate, she knew. She needed food, clean water, shelter, and then a way off this world. Somehow, with little hope of any of these, she managed to force herself onward. So unbearable was the climate that even the slight chance of escaping it enabled her to toil on.

  The trees seemed to go on forever, but surely there must be a stream or pool somewhere. She listened longingly for the sound of water, but there was nothing—only the calls of more wild creatures.

  Then as she approached a little clearing in the jungle—clear yet sunless still, due to the gloomy vaults formed by the interweaving boughs of the trees surrounding it—a high-pitched cry of fear arose from somewhere near at hand, and something came fleeing out of the jungle.

  Knowing herself to be in an alien world, Ailia had tried to prepare herself for things outside her experience, things that were strange beyond imagining. But her eyes could make no sense of what she saw. This thing looked like a hubless and spokeless wheel—a round gray hoop-shape, rolling rapidly along apparently of its own volition. She could only gape foolishly at it as it bowled through the clearing. What on this foreign earth could it be?

  The gray hoop vanished into the bushes to her left. Their leaves stirred and rustled, and then a head looked out. It was about the size of a cat’s, hairless and scaly, and it was attached to a very long, flexible neck, also covered in scales. Then a second head appeared, just in front of the first. This one was a little larger, about the size of a dog’s, with a longer muzzle. Yet the two heads were similar, with the same round dark eyes and pointed ears. She surmised that the first animal was the offspring of the second.