“But why kill her?” she said. “He has me.”
He smiled again. “To make sure everyone knows. There are things that happen when power and fear come together and this is one of those things. He'll use it just like any king. Make them believe what he wants about her and turn her into some vicious evil and everyone will praise him for rooting it out and fear him at the same time and when he raises those banners they'll fall behind him even though he sends them to their own death because they'll know that death is the only thing that awaits. Might as well find it on a field with a sword in your hand.”
They rode down then and she thought she could hear the servant girl screaming at the stake. She knew it was just the wind and that they were too far away, the trees edging up and blocking their view as they descended on the old dirt road, the dust rising in the air around them, but she could not help but think it was the girl. She closed her eyes and could see her with the flames moving up her legs and in her hair and so she opened her eyes again and looked out at the country around her.
A calm and green land, full of forests and fields and blue rivers falling noisily through stones. An open land and prosperous. Something her family had worked at for a long time, to make it a place where kings and shepherds alike could enjoy what it offered and relax in safety and never look to the roads in fear. Never hear the rumbling thunder of thousands of horses and marching men, never hear the tearing shriek of a warhorn in the air.
And now, as the servant girl screamed in the fire, she felt it was all coming to an end.
II
They did not go to the city. They came down to the outskirts and took an old farming road out west and into a small forest. A stretch of trees that had once been logged and then allowed to grow again and still here and there the immense old trees that had survived that first cutting, a hundred years older than anything around them. Perhaps two hundred. Their gnarled trunks black and towering above the rest, their huge sweeping canopies. Nothing like the deep forest she had been in, but still those old trees in all the young, green growth like stewards of some age long past.
Here the road narrowed and they went up and down two hills and out into a field of grass and moss and sand. The city far off to the east now and this a place she had never been. The trees breaking for the field and heavy still on all sides, secluding this place from the world.
In the middle of the field stood an old house. Not the size of a keep but large and made of stone. Ivy running up the sides and still thick and green for the season, though it would become thin and withered and barren in the winter, as the snow descended and swept this whole field in white. Heavy wooden shutters over the windows and a wood shake roof. A single tower rising like some brooding watchman from the far corner, the roof sharply peaked next to it, an enormous chimney on the opposite side. A black iron flagpole standing off the top of the tower, but no flag flying from it.
Before the house stood a dry fountain. The shape of a naked wood nymph with her hands raised, where water had once sprayed and fallen into the wide bowl. That bowl the same stone as the house. It was marred with age and discoloration and parched dry as it must have been for years at this abandoned place, and he was sitting on the edge of the fountain picking at his fingernails with his knife.
He did not look up as they rode across the field and stopped before him. Both climbing down, her more slowly and the mercenary with a soft grace. His hand not on his sword, she saw, but close. Trying to act casual about it and also looking at the two guards who stood near the fountain. Another by the heavy oak doors at the front of the house, standing on the second of three stone steps leading up.
“You were true to your word,” he said. “That was very fast.”
The mercenary bowed his head slightly but did not ever take his eyes from the prince. “She was not hard to find.
“And not too much trouble?”
“Not at all.”
Then he finally looked up, holding the knife poised in the air over his outstretched fingers. Looking her up and down in a way she did not care for. His hair longer now and falling down the side of his face. Something in his eyes both calculating and wild.
“Good,” he said.
“Shall I go?”
He went back to his fingers. “No, no. Stay for now. We won't be long.” He smiled slightly as he dug in with the knife. “I didn't bring your money, but I have it. We'll ride into the city.”
The mercenary did not respond.
She looked at the three guards, and they were not men she knew. She wondered how many of those were left, how many he had replaced. She knew many of the generals were gone. The leadership changed to those he knew followed him and him alone. Some of the old ones relieved of their posts and others sent into battles they could not win, killed on the field perhaps with the knowledge that they'd been sent to die and perhaps not. But dead all the same.
“Who did you talk to?” The prince spoke softly, still working with the knife.
She didn't answer.
The movement stopped, but he didn't raise his eyes. “Who did you meet with?”
“No one,” she said.
“We both know that's a lie.”
“It's not.” She looked back the way they'd come. The trail that had once been a road barely visible in this forgotten forest. “I just ran. I stayed at an inn and asked about passage over the border. No one would take me.”
“Tell them who you are?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not.”
She scowled. “Ask him. No one was with me.”
The prince looked up. Tapping the flat of the blade against the tops of his fingers. “Well?”
“That's true enough,” the mercenary said. “We watched her in the village. Two others were after her, when she was at the inn. She fought them, ran into the forest. From there it was easy to track her. Found her in a cave along the cliffs. No one with her.”
“So you don't think she's lying.”
“I never said that.”
“No.”
“All I know is she was alone when I found her. We didn't see anyone with her in the village.”
“What about the night before?”
He shook his head. “Didn't hear anything then. A runner came when she was spotted near the town and I went.”
She scowled. Wondering who had seen her, who had called it in to him. How long he'd been watching her while she wasted her time with the others and then stumbled headlong into the wilderness, with no plan and no direction. All that work climbing out and digging those steps and just days later she was back where she had begun as if nothing had changed.
He looked back at her. “You see? I have eyes everywhere. We will find out who you talked to.”
“There's nothing to find out.”
“Then who killed the guards at the Trappers' Gate?”
A piece turning. The stones of some mosaic that devoured the world. Now comprising the world itself and all of them bent to its will. These unknowing pieces. She felt that it all must have danced on her face and she closed her eyes and when she opened them again there was a darkness at the corners.
He stood slowly, put the knife back on his belt. The soft sound of the metal whispering against the leather. Then he walked over to her, turned his head away. So close she could smell him, could hear his breathing. He motioned to the guard near the door, beckoning him over, then turned his head with his hair hanging in his face, his twisted lips almost against her cheek.
“Don't lie to me,” he said. “You aren't any good at it.”
III
The guards took her into the house, the old wooden doors groaning as they pushed them open. Inside everything cast in shadow and dust. White cloths hanging over the abandoned furniture. A long dining room with a table and chairs, all covered, leading out to a sitting room with a massive stone fireplace on her right. The stone chimney she'd seen outside rising up and through the roof. On the far wall the doors into the kitchen. Shelves
along that wall with cups and plates covered in cobwebs, a candelabra standing with the wax candles half melted and drooping.
He led the way and they went left, through a door into a smaller sitting room. All around on the walls a stained painting on paper, a scene of a knight fighting a red dragon. Standing with the dragon towering over him, a lance in its side, the knight's horse lying behind him and only a sword in his hand. Behind him the city was on fire and people fled, but he alone stayed. She looked to see the crest on his shield to find out which legend it was, but could not make it out in the shadows before they were through the room and another door.
A dark and twisting staircase beyond. His footsteps hollow in the shadows. The wooden stairs against cold stone walls, circling around her. Going slowly up the tower on the western side of the house, with light falling in from the old slot windows. The kind designed for archers, though she was sure this house had never been held against a siege. The torch sconces on the wall, also covered in spiderwebs and unused for a long time.
The stairs went around twice and then opened into the room at the top of the tower. Perhaps ten feet in every direction, perfectly circular. The ceiling overhead of wood with exposed beams running up to the peak. The windows here much larger but the shutters closed and light just filtering in through the cracks.
There was nothing else in the room. More of the neglected torch sconces, the dirt and grime of the years, but nothing more. No chairs, beds, dressers. She thought at one time there must have been, for this felt like a lord's home and this was not a defensive tower. Just another bedroom, perhaps a status symbol. But it was empty now and she did not know if the people who had lived here were dead or had simply left, but no one had slept in the room for years, perhaps generations.
He opened his arms, spun in a slow circle. Smiling but not kindly. Then he walked over to a window and slammed one of the shutters open, striking it hard with the flat of his hand. It cracked loudly against the stone outside and the light fell into the room. She felt a clutching in her stomach as she saw that there were bars on the windows. He pulled his hand back in through them, grabbed one and turned to her, putting a show into tugging on it.
“Stronger here,” he said. “Don't think I didn't check.”
“Please,” she said.
“What? You don't like it? This was a beautiful house once.” Then he laughed and let go of the bar, walking toward her and stopping with his arms folded over his chest. “But don't worry, you won't be here long. They're coming to pick you up. I just need to make sure they know where you are. Can't have you running around the forest again.”
The feeling in her chest tightened even more. Every time she blinked she could see her husband's bones, molding in the damp next to her where she sat chained to the wall. Her eyes burning.
“Just one thing,” he said. Stepping closer. Something in his look that was real, that was not just a game. She hated that she could read that in him, but she could.
“Please,” she said again.
“What did you use to do it? When you got out?”
It was so dry in the room. That heavy smell of disuse. The wind ripped through the tops of the trees outside and she thought she felt the tower sway with them. She stumbled, but he didn't.
“Tell me,” he said.
She thought of the man in the dark. On the other side of the pit, emerging from that darkness to smile and help her climb. Have you heard, he said.
“A spoon,” she said. “I used a spoon.”
He looked at her a long moment. Not even blinking.
The mountains fall, he said. They always fall.
“A spoon.”
“Yes.”
They always fall.
He stepped back quietly, walked over to the shutter he'd opened. Reached carefully through the bars and pulled it closed again. A slight tapping as it met the stone.
“It was just me,” she said. “It was all just me.”
“You and a spoon.”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “It doesn't matter if you lie anymore. You're here now and that's the end of it. You can tell me what happened or you can lie and you're going to the same end either way.” He walked to the door, the guard stepping out before him. Turned back with his hand on the frame to look at her.
The world was cracking, she thought. Seeing the servant girl screaming in the flames. It consumed her, that white dress blowing in the wind and smoke. For all she thought she was doing to save them, to stop the madness and the looming war, maybe she was just killing them. Just as surely, but doing it one at a time. Killing them all and not getting any closer to saving this land her father had built.
“He didn't know,” she choked out at last. The tower swaying with every gust now. She felt she was going to fall and sat down on the stone floor. It was cold and hard and she could still feel it moving but at least she wouldn't fall as far. That dress billowing in the fire. “Just tell me you won't hurt him. Do whatever you want with me, but tell me you won't hurt him.”
He cocked his head to the side just slightly. “Who?”
“I don't know his name,” she said.
“The person you met with?”
They always fall.
“No,” she said. “In my cell. The old man in my cell. He didn't know.” The flames roaring up the stake as she closed her eyes, the girl no more than a blackened skeleton bound in chain, her arms thin and withered and her hair gone, her head wreathed in flame but still screaming. Somehow still screaming.
He looked at her in some way she had never before seen and in his eyes moving the lights of confusion and humor and a terrible and scorching hate, a boiling beneath the skin, something in him that could not be quelled. Opening his mouth and then closing it again and shaking his head.
“The man in your cell?” he said. That twisted scowl of a grin coming back to his lips one last time. “What man? There was no one in your cell. You'd been alone in there for two years.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I
She was on fire. He ran to her and the ends of her hair were burning as she lay in the smoke and dust and he threw himself on top of her. Smothering it with his body. The pain in his ribs. Even with the dead dragon and the destroyed city, still smelling that burning hair. Then pulling himself off and rolling her over.
Her eyes wide open. He thought for that one moment that she was dead, this last of his children. She could have been killed a thousand ways in that fall and he thought she was dead and pale and a horrible fury broke in his chest and then she blinked. Once, then again. Opened her mouth with blood on her lips and closed it again and just the faintest sound of her breathing.
He picked her up and carried her, stepping past the severed head of the beast. Its great body lying still and crumpled next to it and those eye sockets like ripped holes in the air leading to the darkest night in some other lost world, everything torn away now and the fire inside dead and even the black blood slowing. A dead thing as he'd seen it before and now dead again.
Juoth stood with the dust and smoke swirling around him in the field. He hadn't stayed where Brack told him but he also wasn't a hunter and he hadn't reached them before it died. The girl behind him in the shroud of smoke. They appeared out of that air like some beings of the dusk with the city behind. He walked past them with Kayhi in his arms and they said not a word and fell in and followed.
He could feel her breathing now, but it was shallow, shuddering. He reached down as he walked and brushed her dark hair back out of her face and the blood from her lips, but the hair fell back and the blood returned. And he knew that something deep within her was broken.
This city not yet dead. He went in wordlessly through the main gate where it hung open. People prying themselves from the battered world within. Stepping out of rubble, climbing out of holes. Falling back from him, peasants and soldiers and lords alike. Most staggering past with a stunned, exhausted gait, covered head to toe in dust and ash, walking past without see
ing him toward that still beast in the field. To see this thing that had fallen on them from the wild, in the blackness a screaming nightmare, a bloodsoaked horror. Now a slaughtered husk of a being, the flesh still warm.
The furnace still smoking in its chest.
No one came within ten feet of them, the crowd moving as he walked through. Not looking at any of them. Down the wide gray brick road that ran through the heart of this place. On all sides the switchback steps rising to the top of the wall where archers and spearmen had made their stand and died. Ahead the temples and towers and these great buildings rising out of a sea of stone. Everything here made of brick and stone and very old, built in the days when men knew dragons were in the air and knew also how timber burned below them.
He walked toward the temple, for it was the only hope. He didn't know what god it was meant for but he had been in a hundred cities and more and he knew there was nothing else. If no one there could save her then she was already dead and there was nothing to be done for it but going back to the dragon and tearing it into so many pieces no one would ever find them all.
Reaching down again to wipe away the blood. Watching it bubble slightly between her lips. Wiping it again.
The doors of the temple were closed as he walked up, heavy black iron doors with stars and serpents forged into them. Twenty feet tall and not nearing the top of the temple itself, where it rose into a flat plateau and then four spires, all identical. Two women coming up from the side, around the corner, and stopping when they saw him. Falling back and into this desolate crowd. Looking over their shoulders as they went.
He did not say a word, but the door began to swing open with the faint sound of chains. Each door ten feet across and opening into the temple, a sliver of pure darkness appearing between them. Then, dancing on the iron itself, the flicker of torchlight.
A man stepped into the gap when it was two feet wide, and the doors stopped. The man was old, his hair stark white, but he had no beard. His face like wrinkled leather left in the sun and his eyes so dark in contrast to all else about him. Wearing a simple white robe and holding in his hand a small silver dagger.
The Ringed City Chronicles: The Dragon Hunt Page 24