by Jon Sprunk
He glanced in the direction of the queen's suite but then ran in the other direction, toward the south wing. To Alyra's room.
The floor shook again, and he almost ran over Mezim before a flash of light illuminated the secretary running in the opposite direction.
“Mezim!”
“My lord!”
“This way!”
They ran to Alyra's room. The door was closed. Praying she was inside, Horace shoved it open with his shoulder. Though the oil lamps were unlit, the window shutters were open, allowing stilettos of moonlight to stab inside. He approached the bed, where a long lump lay under the sheets.
“Al—,” he started to call to her when a silvery streak flashed toward him from the shadows behind the door.
Horace flinched away, almost tripping on the loose rug, as the point of a narrow blade hovered in front of his face.
“Horace?” Alyra lowered the knife.
He let out a deep breath and tried to still his thumping heart. Then he saw a slender woman standing behind Alyra. It was the handmaiden he had seen earlier.
Alyra gestured to the slave woman. “This is Sefkahet. We were just talking. What's happening?”
Horace held out a hand. “It's an attack. We need to get out of here.”
“Just a moment.”
He waited anxiously as Alyra knelt down and reached under the small bed. She retrieved a leather satchel and slung it over her shoulder. Then she nodded to him as she stood up. “Where are we going?”
“To find the queen.”
Horace led the women out to the hallway where Mezim waited, glancing anxiously all around. Distant lights through the windows cast flickering shadows across the walls. Horace started down the hallway in the direction of the royal apartment, but Alyra jerked him to a halt by grabbing his arm. “Wait! Stop!”
All at once, Horace felt the overwhelming urge to shake her. Here he was, risking his life to save her, and she couldn't help herself from questioning him. “What?”
“What's the plan?”
“We find the queen and get her away from here. Hopefully, to someplace safe.”
“And where is that?”
“I don't have a damned clue! All right? Let's just try to get of this alive.”
She released his arm. “All right.”
He spun around and hurried down the hall, trusting the others to keep up. Some of the floorboards had sprung loose, making for treacherous footing. As they got to the main body of the villa, the sound of quick footsteps made Horace stop short. He peered around a corner as Ubar appeared, hustling toward them.
Horace stepped out into the open. “Lord Ubar, it's me.”
“Lord Horace!” The zoanii slowed his gait. “I was coming to find you. Please hurry. We must get to Her Majesty.”
“That's where we were heading,” Alyra said, coming to stand behind Horace. “Are you all right?”
“Quite fine,” Ubar replied, pausing to take in Mezim and the handmaiden. “But we must hurry. The energies surrounding the house are growing in magnitude.”
Horace could feel it, too. A gathering sense of dread from outside the villa's walls, like a great wave about to break over the gunwales.
They found the first body at the mouth of the corridor leading to the queen's private suite. A member of the Queen's Guard. Three more lay behind him. The stench of blood and shit filled the hallway. Ubar held a sleeve to his mouth as he stepped past the soldiers. Horace forced himself to look down at them. They were my responsibility. And I failed them.
Horace thought to look for signs of sorcery on the bodies—burns or bizarre fractures—but instead he saw blood from long slashes, the lethal strikes delivered to their throats and across their torsos. He saw a shadow move in his peripheral vision a heartbeat before he thought to call out a warning.
A figure cloaked in black from head to foot emerged from the darkness of the hallway. His garb looked like leather, but it fit his body like a second skin. A knife, its blade blackened as well, leapt out at Lord Ubar. Horace tried to focus his zoana to strike the assassin, but the power refused to answer his call.
“No!” he shouted.
The point of the knife stopped six inches from Ubar's turned back as if it had run into a stone wall. The attacker struggled as a faint shimmer of frost rimed his blade. Then the ice flowed up his hand and arm. He pulled back as if for another thrust, but Ubar raised a hand. The assassin stumbled backward, his blade dropped, clutching at his chest. He sank to his knees and then fell over, unmoving. A stream of clear water dribbled from his open mouth.
“A Blood Knife,” Ubar said. “Assassin from Scavia. Legendary in their prowess.”
Horace shook his head. “I'm sorry. I tried to—”
A second shadow in the same black skin-suit detached from the opposite side of the corridor, coming up behind Ubar on silent steps. Ubar started to turn, and Horace lunged forward, hoping to grab the knife before it struck. The assassin stopped suddenly and turned, reaching back, but crumpled before he could complete the action.
Alyra knelt behind him. She withdrew a slim knife from his back and wiped the blade on the dead assassin's clothes before she stood up. Horace noticed her hands were shaking ever so slightly. He wanted to say something supportive, but instead he just nodded.
Lord Ubar's face had turned a pale shade of bronze, his eyes slightly glassy. Horace took him by the elbow. “You all right?”
Ubar nodded twice, his lips pressed tight together. “We should continue.”
The door to the queen's apartments was closed. Ubar reached for the latch, but Horace stopped him. Motioning the young lord aside, Horace opened an inner pathway to the Mordab dominion. At least he tried to. His qa remained closed. He actually felt embarrassed as the seconds passed and he was still fumbling to access his power. Why is this happening now?
“Hurry,” Alyra whispered behind them.
Horace finally gave up and motioned to Ubar. “Freeze the door frame.”
Ubar nodded and stared at the doorway. Frost formed along the wooden frame. Horace could sense the presence of the zoana, could feel the tiny pockets of moisture hidden inside the wood begin to freeze and swell, making the wood crackle. When Ubar was done, Horace backed up a step and kicked the door.
The latch handle mechanism flew apart, and the door swung inward to reveal a battlefield. A massive hole loomed in the northern wall, opening out into night. The edges of the hole were singed black like the inside of a kiln. Two more dead guardsmen lay on the floor. One was frozen stiff, and the other had been bent backward until his spine snapped. One armored man remained standing, the big lieutenant of the Queen's Guard. Horace couldn't recall his name, but there was no sign of Captain Dyvim.
The queen stood in front of the bedchamber in a gauzy nightdress. Fiery eruptions outside the villa highlighted her features—her wide eyes, her lips pulled back in a snarl, nostrils flared. Streams of semisolid air projected from her hands, one after another, too fast for Horace to follow, and the windstorm surrounding the manor shrieked with every release. Lord Xantu stood beside her, hurling jets of raging fire at their foes. While they battled, attacks from the outside continued to rain upon the villa.
Now that he was here, Horace didn't know what to do. But Ubar didn't hesitate. He ran over to join the queen's defense, and Horace saw a translucent barrier of what looked like water vapor form around Byleth. Before he could decide how to handle the situation, Xantu glanced over. “Man the east windows! They'll try there again any moment!”
Horace turned to obey, but Alyra pulled him to a stop. He looked at her and saw the anxiety in her eyes. “We need to leave, Horace.”
The fires outside reflected in Byleth's eyes as she turned her head. Blood dripped in a steady stream from a cut along her left cheek. “No! We stand against these traitors who would dare attack their queen!”
With a long look to Alyra to show the tight spot he was in, and a quick glance at the handmaiden, Horace entrusted them to
Mezim and crossed to the other side of the room. He stepped over a mess of cushions, pillows, and clothing strewn over the floor. The windows had been busted out. Their shutters had broken loose, and glass fragments were scattered everywhere. Horace peered out but couldn't see anything more than the darkness. He considered conjuring a ball of light but decided against it. For one thing, there no sense drawing attention to himself. Also, his recent failures to connect with the zoana weighed on his mind. He felt out of control. Lord Mulcibar had warned him that he might someday become a danger to himself and those around him. It seemed that day had come.
A shout from behind made him turn. Alyra stood just inside the doorway with the slave woman by her side. The way they stood together, so close, made him wonder. Almost as if they were sisters. He mentally flogged himself. Of course she still has close friends in the queen's service. She spent so long in the palace. I should have made the effort to free them as well.
Byleth still stood before the hole in the wall. Lord Xantu had fallen to his knees, bloodied hands pressed to his face. Ubar stepped to take the lord's place beside the queen, but a hail of tiny stones ripped through his watery barrier. Horace hissed as a small flat stone tore through his thin tunic and sliced into his side. He pulled the ripped fabric away with a grimace. A quick look assured him that it wasn't bleeding much, though he couldn't see whether the stone had exited the wound or was still lodged inside.
However, Ubar had collapsed in a heap beside Xantu. Byleth held her ground alone, her sheer dress ripped to bloody shreds. Horace was about to go to her when he felt something outside the villa. Building up, like the explosion at his suite, but this was far more powerful. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape what was coming.
He rushed across the room, pausing only to grab Alyra by the wrist and haul her over toward the hole, trusting the handmaiden and Mezim to come along. Horace let go when they reached Ubar. As Alyra knelt down beside the youth, Horace grabbed the queen around her waist. He dropped to his knees, dragging them both down to the floor. The villa shuddered.
Horace pointed at Xantu, unconscious on the floor. “Get him over here!”
The tall guard lieutenant seized Lord Xantu by an ankle and pulled him over to the group. Meanwhile, Horace was bracing himself. This was his best idea, and he had no way of knowing if it would work. The force gathering outside the villa continued to grow. It felt like a mountain teetering over their heads. The queen's face was ashen, her lips pressed into a tight frown.
He reached for his qa. He felt the energy pulsing behind it, but the fear that it would elude his grasp almost overwhelmed him. Then he felt a firm grip on his arm. Alyra was looking at him intently. She nodded.
I can do this.
Taking a deep breath, he delved into the pathway to his power. The pain in his chest returned at once, an icy heat suffusing his lungs and making him gasp, but all physical sensations were pushed to the back of his mind as the zoana came to life within him. It filled him up, allowing him to feel every muscle and sinew, every bone and organ. He wanted to shout, but he clamped down on his exuberance and channeled the Shinar dominion into the strongest, widest barrier he was able. His nerves burned as the power expanded into an invisible sphere around them. Just as it solidified, a sound like thunder filled the room, and a titanic force slammed against the shield. Horace was crushed down on top of Byleth. She yelped as they were both pressed against the bare floorboards. Wood splintered as the weight increased on top of them. Horace felt the power fueling the shield starting to slip from his mental grasp. The ache in his chest was getting too painful to ignore. He started to think of contingency plans, but nothing came to mind.
And then the floor gave way beneath them.
His stomach dropped in a sickening rush as he fell. He glimpsed a stark light as they plunged to the floor below. Then he landed on his knees on the ground floor between two forms he thought might be Byleth and Alyra, hard enough to send shivers up through to his hips. His startled lungs sucked in a mouthful of dusty air as he collapsed on his stomach. He lay still, concentrating on just breathing. His heart was racing. The blood thrummed in his ears. Yet, he was alive. He peered over at Alyra, and saw her blinking in the gloom. Blood welled from a cut on her chin, but otherwise she appeared all right. He started to turn toward the queen when he heard a groan from above. He looked up, and his heart almost stopped as a shower of plaster and wooden beams rained down on them.
Horace struggled to reinforce his Shinar barrier before the villa's roof crashed down on them. Someone shrieked as all light was extinguished from view. Pressure built up inside Horace as he fought to hold up the massive load. He imagined he could feel his internal organs mashing flat, imagined his blood trying to escape through his eyes and eardrums. He held onto his zoana with every ounce of control he could summon, but it was unraveling fast. Not now. Not now. Focus!
He redoubled his effort to hold onto the power keeping them alive. Just as he thought he had it under control, the floor underneath opened up, and he was falling again. Falling into darkness.
Horace shifted away from the stone digging into his side, but there was precious little space, and so he was reduced to wriggling back and forth until the nuisance got pushed aside. His foot touched someone's leg.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“Don't speak,” Byleth said in a tired voice. “You're using up the air.”
There was some shifting as the others adjusted their positions inside this, their rocky prison. Horace settled back in the dark. His head was pounding, but that pain was nothing compared to the agony cutting through his chest, as if a sharp knife were trying to split open his breastbone from the inside. Somehow he had remained conscious when they landed in one of the villa's many sub-cellars. That had been an hour ago, or maybe two, and the strain of maintaining his protective shield for so long was taking its toll. But it was the only thing standing between them and the mountain of debris threatening to crush them. This is how I die? After surviving the desert and slavery, a duel to the death in the Grand Arena, and the enmity of an entire priesthood, I'm going to die trapped under a house like a roach.
He could almost hear his mother's voice. But he had so much potential!
Potential. Aye, that and a copper bit will buy you a bowl of gruel in any dockside slophouse in Avice.
“Get your elbow out of my back, Sefkahet!”
Someone moved hastily at the queen's outburst. Horace couldn't help from smiling.
“Oh,” Byleth muttered. “Enough of this sitting in the dark!”
A globe of pale blue light appeared above them near the top of his shield. The seven of them—himself, Byleth, Xantu, the tall lieutenant, Mezim, Alyra's friend, and Alyra—lay around a concave bowl of impacted debris. At least I'll die in good company. A queen, a lord, a soldier, my secretary, a slave, and….
He didn't know how to describe Alyra, and that was part of their problem. He didn't know where the spy ended and the woman began, and every time they spoke he went immediately on the defensive, so afraid that she—the person who knew him best—couldn't stand what she saw when she looked at him. Is that guilt speaking? Or am I protecting myself from getting hurt again? I almost didn't recover when Sari died. I don't know if I could survive another abandonment.
“I thought I saw you in my chambers before our precipitous fall,” Byleth said to Alyra. “It's curious, my dear, how often you turn up after having left my service and gained your liberty.”
Alyra lowered her eyes. “If my presence offends, Majesty, I will remove myself.”
Byleth waved her hand. “Well, it seems we are all stuck here together for the time being. So I suppose we shall have to put aside propriety for the time being, eh?”
Stones clattered as Lord Ubar sat up. “Majesty, did you know the identity of the attackers? I believe I saw six of them, in all.”
“Eight.” Horace coughed into his hand to clear away the dust. “I counted eight people outside my chamber window. They w
ore masks.”
No one said anything, though Horace could hear them breathing. He had his own ideas about those robed figures. He'd been expecting some form of retribution from the Sun Cult. It wouldn't have surprised him to discover those dark robes were blood-red, the distinguishing hue of the Order of the Crimson Flame. Killing him and the queen had to be high on their list of priorities. And they might still succeed if we don't find a way out of here.
He didn't have many ideas about that, unfortunately. All his power was dedicated to keeping the shield intact, and it was flagging.
“Perhaps—”
Ubar started to say something, but Mezim cut him off. “What was that?”
“What?” Horace asked.
“I heard something.”
“I did, too,” Alyra said.
Then Horace heard it. A crunching noise from somewhere above them, like metal biting into loose earth. Rescue? Or is it our killers come to finish the job?
No one spoke. Even the sounds of breathing abated as the digging got closer. It seemed to take forever, and every second Horace's head felt ready to burst. The flows of zoana inside him fluctuated until he clamped down on them again. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and his tongue felt swollen.
Finally, a shaft of pale sunlight pierced the earthen shell above them. Horace blinked and shaded his eyes. Alyra lay beside him, looking mostly unharmed. The cut on her chin had stopped bleeding. Everyone in the pit was covered in dust. The queen and her bodyguards sported some minor wounds, but Ubar's appearance shocked him. The youth's face was a mask of dried blood. He moved slowly as the others gathered around the opening. Horace crawled over to him.
“Take it easy,” he said, and put a hand on the young lord's shoulder. “We're not even sure what's up there.”
“I don't sense any zoanii above.”
Horace took a moment to extend his own senses up through the debris. He didn't feel anyone accessing the zoana above either, but it was difficult to be sure because the queen and both her bodyguards had called upon their power. Their auras were almost blinding to his inner senses. “Just to be on the safe side, stay put.”
