by Holly Lisle
I had the Eyes so that I wouldn’t need intuition.
Aaran said, “The oracle has spoken. We have seen her visions become truth time after time. Therefore I say we send in the boy Eban and with him Tuua, Ethebet’s Keeper of Words, and a handful of Obsidians as guardians.”
I wanted to cringe, hearing that intuition presented as if it were Oracle’s Truth, instead of an oracle’s wild guessing about what lay within the Eyes’ blind spaces.
But Eban hugged Tuua, and the two of them shed their packs, hid their weapons, and huddled briefly out of my earshot with Aaran and the marine kor wogans. No doubt to choose their targets. Redbird, meanwhile, hugged me quickly and promised she would stay safe and keep them safe. Then she picked five Obsidians to go with her.
And then they were up and hurrying down the steep hillside into the shepherds’ valley, on their way to the gate. After which, we all would wait for morning, doing nothing more than hiding ourselves and praying for their success.
We spent a day lying flat in the tall grass, the sun beating down on us, remarkably hot even though the air had a chill to it. We could have had worse weather—it could have been raining or snowing—but by the end of the day I felt as if my face would split. My skin was hot to the touch and it stung.
I was as grateful as the rest when night came, and I was the first to mark the figures that slipped out of the gate as the shepherds moved their flocks in, that pressed themselves flat to the wall out of sight until the gates closed, then broke into a run and charged toward us.
They moved quickly to our hiding place and kept voices low, but I could hear their excitement.
Tuua said, “They have a well-developed underground, though until now it has been used for nothing but smuggling children to freedom. But with word that we plan to free them from the elites, the news has spread like wildfire; the slaves, the children, the wives, the concubines, the underclass—they will all do what they can to aid us. But we must go now. We’ll go over the walls at the three points we’d planned, and attack communications, and then the military and diplomats simultaneously. We’ll use the password kejihar at doors and the city will open for us.”
I moved close to Tuua and read him, let myself slip into the time stream, flowed with him through the path he’d carved to his future. It led us to triumph, though I could make out nothing about what happened after that. Still, he had done well.
We traveled in predetermined squads. I had insisted upon going as a warrior as much as the oracle; I could not know how my strained and much-tried health would hold out but I wanted to be there if some skill of mine might turn the tide of battle in the Tonks’ favor.
Tuua, Aaran, Redbird, and half of the marines and sailors from the Taag were in our squad, plus the Moonstone Daaryi to heal for us. Each squad had either one Moonstone or one Tonk healer, and a small contingent of Obsidians. We were well weaponed, well provisioned, and ready.
We charged forward, pouring down the hill at a steady trot, breaking into the directions that would take us to the three areas the trackers had identified as the least guarded along the wall.
My mouth was dry. I had been in fights before, but this was the moment when everything would begin to change. This was the moment for which I had given up my own eyes and taken on those of the oracle. For which I was becoming something other than human, and for which I had given up any hope of love. If we won here, it would be the vindication of my sacrifice. I would find a way to accept all that I had put aside.
If we lost … well … I would suffer a quick death. Any who tried to kill me slowly would not survive the adventure.
I ran steadily, in rhythm with the men all around me. I breathed evenly, grateful for the training in breath control I’d spent years on—for the air was thin and cold—and for the recent rest aboard the ship that had returned much of my strength to me.
I kept my focus on the knives in my sleeves, on the way my feet hit the uneven ground, on the moment, and never on the future. We were finally at the place where the Eyes had led us, at the first moment that would be a watershed for the Tonk, and I could neither dare nor bear to let myself slide into time’s river to try for a glimpse of how we might do.
Like everyone around me, in each of the many squads running in one of the three directions, I was in the moment because I could be nowhere else.
We reached our target quickly, and the marines tossed the padded grappling hooks up on the wall in an instant. Sailors and marines swarmed up the ropes, and those of us who were less agile waited for the rope webbing to roll down. When it hit the ground, we clambered up and stood atop the parapet.
The marines had already killed the guards whose route passed over our section of the wall, and the sailors and Obsidians had swung like spiders down ropes on the other side to clear any men who were on duty within the towers.
We quickly found ourselves running along roads finished to incredible smoothness. They were neither cobblestone nor brick, but rather a fine aggregate of crushed stone and binder. I had never run on anything so even. We followed Redbird, who used her Eyes and her senses to keep us to clear paths, and she ran beside the marine with the map. We hurried along broad, straight avenues, keeping single file and close to buildings, making no noise.
And reached, at last, our first target.
A servant sat upon the front stoop of a building where the Feegash housed some of their communicators. Our lead marine separated himself from our group, for we kept out of sight, and said to the servant, “Kejihar.”
The change in the man was remarkable. He went from still and slumped to quick and animated, indicating that we should follow him around to the back of the building. Our Obsidian gave us the “all’s well” signal, and we rushed to follow. With the servant leading us, we charged into the building through the back door, followed guides to the communications offices, and quickly killed those we had come to kill.
We left with the servants behind us clinging to each other and praying for our success.
I could only hope that we would be so fortunate in our next encounters.
The night smells in this place were alien to me. The cold had its own scent, sharp and green, but faint. Wood smoke I recognized, and nearby open water. But the air seemed almost empty. Barren. I caught no perfume of flowers, no earthy tang of horses and goats and other beasts, no rich aromas of cooking foods, no sewage, no scent of sweat or incense. The barrenness was the smell. A city crowded with people that offered nothing to the nose, and nothing to the ears. Our boots on the smooth roads and walkways made a soft, muffled thudding, barely audible. Yet the fact that we heard it at all attested to the silence of this place. No music played, no people walked the streets arm-in-arm, or laughed their way from yard to bed. No groups gathered in the courtyards to dance or sing late into the night. No young lovers leaned against doorways murmuring endearments; no old married couples shouted so loudly the sounds echoed out their windows. I would have been reminded of my years in the Citadel, but even there, once darkness fell we had the singing at the hours, and the voices of seru as they went about their tasks, and the occasional talk of the slaves and penitents as they carried out assigned night duties.
I did not like Ba’afeegash.
I felt no fear or dread as we ran again, this time toward the mansion where Aaran’s sister was kept. I felt nothing, in truth, but the urge to keep my breathing steady so that I could avoid any sharp pains in my side. I knew we were heading into the worst possible target.
The master of the city held Aashka captive, and he lived in a grand, well-guarded fortress of a mansion. Tuua assured us that he and Eban had ascertained that the servants’ underground ran into this master Feegash’s quarters, but I wondered what it would take for those so eager to help us to be frightened away from doing so. Or what price would buy their betrayal. Gold? Freedom? The oracles had a saying: There is a coin for every man. By this they meant that if the bribe was right, anyone could be bought.
I wondered now if the
oracles had been cynical in their assessment, or merely correct.
But it did not matter to us. We were on our mission. We were the squad that would rescue Aashka and slaughter those who had stolen her away and enslaved her and hurt her so long and so horribly. Aaran had insisted that he and his handpicked marines go on this mission. He did not want to entrust either her safety or the deaths of her captors to anyone else.
I could not hear any alarms being raised. I could not, in fact, hear anything out of the ordinary at all.
One slip by any of our squads and that would change.
Redbird took us along the wall, stopping us twice as guards moved above us. We froze, barely even breathing, and they made their pass along our section of wall. We would not be going over this time. And I thought it likely that we would have to fight our way out—but we hoped to just walk in.
A servant loitered at the back of the wall near a narrow, massively reinforced door, drinking something from a bottle. He hummed to himself, and I thought he must be drunk—I had seen sailors with too much ale in them behave in the same fashion.
Again, though, our lead marine whispered the password, and the man transformed into a paragon of silence and energy. He indicated we should follow him and led us through the door in the wall and into the grounds beyond.
Sterile grounds. I made out the mazy shapes of hedges, and the dense lines of paved paths through what had clearly been designed as a formal garden. But the garden had no more life to it than the city. It held no riotous banks of flowers, no rustling leaves from weeping trees, nothing but spare, clipped, shaped hedges, and hard paths, and in the center, a single tiny fountain that we in the Citadel would have mocked for its stinginess.
The man who owned this place was very fond of hard, straight lines.
The servant led us along one side of the maze, then he and Eban exchanged a few quick words.
“He’ll let us in the side servants’ entrance,” Eban said. “And from there, we’ll follow other servants to the master’s suite.”
We had our lives in the hands of men who had little enough reason to trust anyone, who might benefit greatly from turning us in to their masters. All across this city, we were scattered into these groups, twenty fighting men and a few ancillary people to each, and in each, we were going into unknown territory with the foreknowledge of strangers.
If I’d been wrong in encouraging this approach, in saying I believed it was the right one, I would be the death of the Tonk. Aaran and I would die, Tuua would die, Eban would die. The men with whom I’d fought, the men with whom I’d sailed, and far away, their lovers and friends and families, all would be crushed by the world’s armies and its rage.
I wanted the reassurance of the white-clad Tonk woman. I wanted a promise that we would triumph.
I got only the same darkness. The same silence. The masses of moving men before me, and behind me.
Men, women, and children sleeping in rooms to our right.
Weapon stores in rooms to our left.
Ahead, corridors that went from low and plain to high and vaulted, with soaring stone arches intricately carved, and glass windows with complicated leading, and passageways leading off to the left and the right.
We were walking now, weapons drawn. We made no noise, and even so, I felt eyes watching us. The silence of the place bore down on me. I could not escape the sensation that we were fooling no one. Walking into a trap.
I could see nothing that would indicate a trap. No soldiers armored and armed and hidden along side passages.
Nothing I could point to and say, That should not be.
And yet the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and my heart raced, and my mouth went dry.
I had not been afraid before.
But suddenly I was terrified.
The servants had been passing us off, one man or woman to the next. We came at last to a huge chamber. In it, I made out the scattered shapes of simple furniture clustered between wide spaces, a central hearth of an odd, open design, and beyond, three doorways.
The servant said, “Beyond, none but the master’s body-servants and guards may pass. And they are not with us in this.” He patted the kor wogan on the arm. “Our prayers and hopes go with you.”
Eban translated, the kor wogan thanked him, and then we moved on, finally relying simply on ourselves.
I studied the three doors. Down the first lay another hallway, with rooms and cross hallways to either side. Behind the second I could make out the hazy shapes of two chambers, one directly behind the other and both connected by a single metal door. The walls in the second were so dense I could only make out the presence of space. I could not begin to guess the details of what waited within.
Aaran dropped back to my side as I was studying the third doorway.
“You have any suggestions here?” he asked.
I was terrified, my mouth so dry I had to try twice just to get out the words. “Something is wrong in this place.”
“They know we’re here?”
“I don’t know. I would not think so, for the time to have taken us would have been as we were traversing the small, narrow passages behind. Here we have room to fight.”
“Then what is it?”
I tried to let the future roll around me, but we were in a dry place again. Where we stood, we were digging our own channel, and the waters that flowed to either side of us had nothing to do with us.
We were digging our own channel. We stood in Ethebet’s moments, when we made the future—we and those who stood against us. When the actions of the few determined the futures of the many, and when nothing at all had been decided.
We danced, I thought, on the point of a sword, and at any instant we could fall off.
Was that my fear?
No.
“It isn’t where we are,” I told him. “Not some wrongness in our direction. It is this place. One I know—one who stands in my destiny, waits for me here. Danger has already marked us.”
Aaran turned his face toward me, still for a moment. “That’s not good,” he finally said.
“No.”
“You think there are hidden traps? Pits, crushing walls, things of that nature? I’ve seen devices of that sort before.”
“No. Nothing of that sort.”
“We can’t just stand here,” he said.
“The central door is the most interesting,” I told him. “It is also where I can see the least. It’s an outer chamber with a well-reinforced inner chamber behind it. The left and right doors open into hallways.”
The Obsidian and the kor wogan joined us. “I get security forces patrolling in the right corridor,” Redbird said.
I hadn’t looked that deeply yet. I kept being drawn to the central rooms. The source of my fear—my third dark shadow—almost certainly waited within. I could not turn back. I could not go forward alone.
And I could not begin to guess the nature of the trial that I—that we all—would face.
46
Aaran
Aaran tracked Aashka. He couldn’t place her location—something blocked him. He knew she was in the house, but not where. He thought she might be in the room that Hawkspar couldn’t see into. If something had been done to the room that blocked the magic of the Hagedwar, it would explain why he had never been able to find her until Hawkspar used the Eyes to track her through time.
Once he knew where she was, he could sense her.
If he saved her at all, he would owe her life to Hawkspar.
Hawkspar brushed against him as they worked their way around the perimeter of the room, staying soundless, to set up barricades against the left and right doors. They would deal with those later, but didn’t want to be surprised by attackers coming in behind them.
The weight of her and the curve of her flank against his thigh distracted his as he changed position—he could still feel her lips on his, her soft body wrapped around him, him moving in her.
They could die here. The last time could
be … the last time. For either of them. For both of them.
The three doors into the corridors were designed to open inward—possibly to prevent exactly the tactic the Tonk were at that moment using. The marines bound and wedged them closed using the tiny gaps between the doors and door frames underneath to slide in iron spring angles. The spring angles had been the clever invention of one Tonk sergeant tired of being surprised by doors that spilled out unexpected enemies. They slid under all but the closest-fitted doors, and the hinged angle popped up as soon as it was free. On the other side, a vise allowed the marine to use whatever wide, solid, handy object might be handy to form a cross-brace. The marines with Aaran were using those plain, massive couches. And with the doors being iron-bound and, Hawkspar assured him, of the solidest make, no one was likely to be bursting out of either to disturb the Tonk invaders anytime soon.
He ought to feel confident about entering the central rooms. But he didn’t.
Like Hawkspar, something had him spooked.
The marine at the central door told the kor wogan, “The lock is a good one. For the sake of time, we’re going to have to make some noise.”
The kor wogan glanced around the room. The back corridor stood open, and none of the men would forget the presence of the servants behind them. For the time, they’d shown themselves to be friendly, but everyone knew that could change.
The marines were therefore in a split formation. Fourteen ready behind the entry man to burst through as soon as he cleared the door and fell back. Four behind, facing backward with swords in off hands and light crossbows with bolts drawn and cocked to clear anything that might attack from the rear.
