The cart of blood waited by Natanial’s side. His mercenaries were lined up at the flank of Monshara’s main force. They would not go in after them, but wait outside the walls to clean up any stragglers. Otolyn had grumbled about that, upset at their chances of getting any loot that way, but Natanial was firm. They had incurred enough losses when he disobeyed orders and saved Monshara’s last assault from becoming a rout.
“I’ll be beside you the whole time,” Natanial told Anavha. “We’ll stay here and keep it open. We don’t go in until it’s done.”
Monshara waved the cart driver down, and he rolled up the two barrels of blood.
“What’s this?” Anavha said, but the driver was already pushing over the barrel, spilling reeking, clotting blood all over the road.
“In case you need a little help,” Monshara said.
Anavha wrinkled his nose and raised his hands.
The air grew heavy. The hair on the back of Natanial’s arms stood on end. A slight trembling shook the ground, and rumbled across the road, making little waves in the blood.
Ahead of the great army, the air rippled.
Monshara rode her bear ahead, to get in position and ready her troops.
A snarling slash opened in the fabric of the air. From his seat, Natanial could make out a stone room. It could be any place at all, from the look of it, but he suspected it was somewhere in Daorian that Anavha knew. He had heard it was easier to open a passage where one had been.
Monshara waved a scout in, a very brave girl, no doubt, who barreled through with her bear into the stone house.
Natanial glanced at Anavha, but his face was calm. “You’ve learned much since I last saw you,” Natanial said.
“A little,” Anavha said. “I had a good teacher here. But mostly… the difference is that the power’s here.” He nodded at Oma’s blaring red eye. “I can feel it, like a heartbeat.”
The scout returned and reported to Monshara. They were too far away for Natanial to make out the words, but Monshara waved her soldiers in.
There was only enough room for them to go four abreast, and the pace was slow. The pace worried Natanial, because if there was any sizable counter force inside, they could stopper up the house, or set it on fire, and completely cut them off.
Monshara rode over to Natanial and Anavha. “Can we open another gate?” she said, clearly thinking the same thing about their vulnerability. “I want to come in at them from several places.”
“I could,” Anavha said, “but I couldn’t hold it as long. This is my sister-in-law’s house. Any other place in Daorian… I don’t know as well.”
Monshara said. “My people are vulnerable here. Isn’t there somewhere else? Near the harbor, maybe?”
“I’ll try,” Anavha said.
“We shouldn’t push him,” Natanial said.
“He’s an adult,” Monshara said. “He can tell me what he can and can’t do. Can you do it or not?”
Anavha said, “I can.” He spread his arms wide. Natanial held his breath and reflexively reached for the hilt of his ax.
Anavha pushed one arm toward the existing gate, and concentrated hard on a spot twenty paces distant. This time, the blood in the barrels began to leak from the seams between the slats, oozing thickly onto the ground. Natanial’s skin prickled. The blood rose from the ground, the droplets emerging from the barrels and coalescing into a winding spiral in the air. Monshara’s troops, entering the other gateway, paid it no mind.
Anavha bit his lip. Natanial moved to stand near him. “Hold the first one,” Natanial said. “That’s more important.”
“I have–” Anavha said, and then the world shifted.
Natanial’s stomach heaved. He lurched forward as the sky itself seemed to move around him. One moment he was standing outside Asaolina, Anavha just an arm’s length away, and the next, he was standing in a dark alley. The sky above juddered. Nausea overcame him, and he vomited into the gutter. When his stomach was empty, he drooled bile and turned and saw Anavha lying on the ground a few paces away.
Natanial crawled over to him, dragging his ax with him.
“Anavha?” Natanial patted his cheek. “Anavha?” Screaming came from the streets on either side of the narrow alley. He smelled smoke.
Anavha’s eyelids flickered.
“Anavha, where are we?” Natanial said.
Anavha opened his eyes, and Natanial helped him up. Natanial gazed into the sky; still the same lavender of home, so hopefully they had not traveled very far. The stonework indicated they were somewhere within the city of Daorian, but he wasn’t sure where.
“I…” Anavha took it all in, his expression as confused as Natanial felt. “I don’t know,” Anavha said. “I was trying to open a gate near the harbor.”
Natanial sniffed the air, but could smell nothing over the smoke. “Let’s move,” he said. “Stay near me.”
“I can take us–”
“No,” Natanial said; his stomach protested. “Seven hells, where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else can you do with these skills of yours? Because we’ll need them. Stay with me! The bulk of the force will have marched for the hold. We’ll catch up with them. I didn’t want you here, but if you’re here, we might as well make the most of it.”
Natanial drew his ax and followed the sinuous alley. He ducked under an archway and checked both ways before running across a main street. Bodies lay in the street, Tai Mora and Dorinah, most civilian. One Tai Mora was looting a body. Flames licked at the remains of a storefront. The smell of smoke wafted down the street, coming mostly from the market area. It had been a long time since he was last in Daorian. He had bided his time there getting close to the Empress’s daughter, working his way into her good graces and then her bed, before finally murdering her.
As he entered the next intersection, an arrow zipped past his head. Natanial ducked back into the street he’d come from, throwing one arm in front of Anavha and pinning him to the wall. Ahead, a group of Dorinah soldiers and civilians had set up a barricade, holding the street. Two dozen dead Tai Mora were scattered on the other side of the barrier.
“Have you used your gift on anything but winks… gates?” Natanial asked.
“No,” Anavha said.
Natanial glanced back into the street and got a quick count of the defenders. The more he pushed Anavha, the more likely he was to find himself severed in half by some ill-timed gate. He swore in Tordinian. Anavha’s face darkened.
“I’m sorry,” Anavha said.
“Let me think,” Natanial said.
Anavha pointed at the storefront at the corner. It had once been a teahouse, and the roof over the outside dining area had partially collapsed, tilting at a dangerous right angle.
“We could duck down there,” Anavha said.
“They have arrows,” Natanial said.
“The barricades are too high,” Anavha said. “See that angle on the roof? They are firing down at us. The roof will be in their way.”
Natanial peered at the angle of the roof, and saw that Anavha was right. “How in Laine’s hell did you figure that?” he said.
“Angles,” Anavha said. “Giska taught me painting. You start to see angles in things, how the light hits them. So, I noticed.”
Natanial took Anavha’s hand and sprinted for the building. Those at the barricade yelled and cursed, but he and Anavha were well gone by then, pounding through the next narrow intersection.
He pulled Anavha into the relative shelter of a great wooden door. Twelve paces distant, a woman dressed in a homespun tunic was crying over the body of a dead young woman, which lay mangled in the street, bleeding into the gutter.
Just ahead, a shimmering line of Tai Mora in their chitinous red armor crawled up the road toward the towering fortress at the center of the city.
Natanial went after them, keeping his distance, because neither of them wore anything identifying which side they were on.
“Is
there any way for you to locate someone?” Natanial asked as they hurried after the army. “We need to find Monshara.”
“She was still at the house, wasn’t she?” Anavha said. “I can take you to the house. The gate is there! It should still be open.”
“How far is it from here?”
Anavha stopped and stared at the smoking buildings. A riderless dog wandered out of a teahouse. Abandoned goods littered the streets, and glassy-eyed civilians wandered aimlessly. Most residents were clearly starving. Natanial noted that some of the bodies in the alleys were emaciated, tossed from houses and piled up like bags of sticks. A few had threadbare blankets thrown over them.
“This way,” Anavha said, and now he took Natanial’s hand and pulled him through the falling city.
They wended down bloody streets, and dodged civilians throwing roof tiles. Natanial caught a big riderless dog and walked with it next to them, using the dog for cover against the persistent rain of objects heaved from rooftops. He had no interest in dying by roof tile.
Finally, they met up with a coterie of Tai Mora soldiers. Natanial held up his hands and called out the name of his company, and they went by them, each still eying the other warily. Around the next corner was a modest stone house, three stories tall. Outside, Monshara sat there atop a large bear, surveying the troops still pouring out. A little sparrow perched on her shoulder.
Monshara waved them over through the lines of soldiers. “We need him at the gates,” she said. “We’re having trouble penetrating the fortress itself, and I don’t want to waste any more time. Can he do it? Something certainly got fucked up back there.”
Natanial told Anavha what they needed. Anavha shook his head. “I could, but… I have to close these other two gates first. I’m afraid of what would happen if I didn’t. It might hurt people.”
Natanial found that strangely amusing, that Anavha cared so much about accidently cutting a soldier in half when the soldiers he had unleashed on his own city were in the process of burning it to the ground.
“Make sure everyone is in the city first,” Natanial said. “Then he can close these gates.”
“We just got the main city door open,” Monshara said, gesturing to the little bird on her shoulder. “I’ve ordered the rest to come in that way, including your mop-up crew. Mount up and follow me. Give me a moment to order the gates cleared, and you can close them.”
Monshara relayed her orders, and after a time, the march of soldiers through the building became a trickle, then ceased. Monshara lined up the force of about seventy fighters and found a second mount for Anavha.
Once ready, she gave the order to close the winks. Anavha must have done something, though Natanial didn’t feel the change. Anavha simply nodded and said, “Done.”
As the soldiers began to march, with Anavha and Natanial at the rear, Natanial heard a great groaning behind them, then a crash. The stone house collapsed under itself, blowing dust and debris out the front of what remained of the façade.
Natanial kept his ax handy as they marched.
The fight took them up through the city of Daorian and to the tall walls around the central fortress. The fortress of Daorian was not a living hold like those in Dhai and Saiduan. The Empress hated the flora and fauna of the world with such an intensity that she scoured the land as sterile as she could make it each year.
As they came to the wall, it was already under siege, with the last of the city’s jista defenders on the walls, and Monshara’s giving them a fiery onslaught.
Monshara wanted Anavha kept to the back of the company, to protect him. It was not until Natanial rode up alongside Anavha to supervise him while he created his gate that he realized Anavha was crying.
Anavha opened a great wink within the walls of the hold itself. It wavered briefly, and a shower of stones came down before the thing solidified. If it wavered while the army went through it, it was likely to kill a good many of them.
Natanial waited at the back with Anavha, ensuring there were as many jistas and Dorinah soldiers killed as possible before they crossed through. When they finally did, he turned to see his own force swarming through the city, easily recognizable by their drabber clothing, their leather armor. They would eat well and be happy tonight.
When the fortress itself was well cleared, Monshara came back for him and Anavha where they waited in the great courtyard below.
“I have something for you to see,” Monshara said.
Natanial picked his way after Monshara, Anavha coming behind. They went into the hold and up and up. She led him to the shattered door of a great hall. A little woman crouched in a far corner, face over her hands. A long chatelaine dangled from her waist. Even with her face covered, her dark hair and skinny frame marked her as a dajian, a Dhai slave, and he was amazed one had survived this long.
Among the bodies of the Dorinah lying all around him, he saw a few twisted forms that he recognized from Tordin: the Empress’s strange, insect-like people. Some had survived the great fire there, the one that Zezili Hasaria ignited in an attempt to stop their rise. He wondered how many they had killed there, and if these were truly survivors from that conflagration or simply from some other nest elsewhere.
“He’s here,” Monshara said, stepping over a broken beam and through a charred, splintered doorway so massive that Natanial wondered what such a thing was doing this deep inside the hold. Did they expect dogs and carts to go through?
As he entered, he realized this was the throne room of the Dorinah queens. The great purple carpet was torn and stained. Eight dead animals, large as bears, lay in a pile at his left. It took half a moment to realize that’s what they were.
The body of the Empress herself lay awkwardly on the steps of her dais, neck broken, her legs canted at a hard left angle, fingers clenched, mouth set in a sneering rictus. Someone had disemboweled her and cut her in half, no doubt to ensure she didn’t come back. And he didn’t blame them. Her skirts were askew, and under them he could see each of her four legs. The cut across her waspish waist had sprouted various organs, which all looked fairly normal. She and her kin bled out just like any other.
Monshara pointed at the great silver throne on the dais. Natanial thought she meant to get his reaction to its artistry, and prepared an appropriate response, but as he formed the words, he noticed the man curled up against the throne, arms clinging to it. Thick black hair, curled and greasy, hung into his eyes and down his back. His beard was full, only a little gray mixed with the black. He was leaner than he should be, and as Natanial approached, he saw the man only had one hand.
While Natanial knew who this must be, his mind took some time to process it. “Saradyn?” he said.
The man raised the mop of his head. His eyes were large, dark, haunted; the same haunted look Saradyn always had, for he saw ghosts.
“You’ve come,” Saradyn said. “It was foretold that you would come. She has seen it!” This last bit he shouted at the ceiling, gaze raised to the sky as if shouting at some god.
“Saradyn,” Natanial said. “I’d hoped you were dead with Zezili.”
Saradyn fixed a dark, sunken eye on Natanial. “Traitor,” he said.
“Perhaps,” Natanial said. “But who is it you’re working for here?”
“Not for… they are mine. I command them.”
“What’s he rambling about?” Monshara said.
A clacking sound came from behind Saradyn. The walls began to move, revealing dark shapes twisted into the shadows behind the massive purple curtains.
Natanial brought up his ax. The shadows seemed to peel from the walls and moved toward them. As they came into the light, the shapes resolved into four-legged, green-eyed figures with human faces and narrow torsos.
“Didn’t you clear this room?” Natanial yelled at Monshara.
Anavha screamed. Natanial stepped closer to him to protect him. The air shuddered. Natanial’s ears popped as the pressure of the room changed.
“I did!” Monshara said.
“I don’t know where they came from!”
Great gaping holes appeared in the air all around them. One sliced clean through the tip of Natanial’s ax, swallowing it into darkness. The tears in the world yawned open like hungry mouths: opaque, like gazing into impossibly deep water.
Natanial froze. Half of Monshara’s sword disappeared into one of the black circles, cut neatly in two.
“Don’t move, Monshara!” Natanial said. Anavha, too, had quieted, though his face was twisted.
“Control it, Anavha!” Natanial said.
The shrieking figures clacked around and through the holes in the air. Some lost limbs, bits of faces, digits. Others clattered around, regardless. One lost nearly all of its head, and the body meandered on for several paces before falling at Natanial’s feet.
Anavha sweated heavily. His hands trembled. “I can’t stop it,” he said, just loud enough for Natanial to hear him over the figures.
“Fucking amateurs!” Monshara yelled. “Shut it down!”
The black holes became more focused, tight little speckles crawling across the air like demented dust motes. Natanial blinked furiously, as if he could dispel the floating blackness from his vision.
One of the creatures slipped through the maze of tears in reality, a hunk of its elbow missing, the lower arm hanging by a hank of skin. Natanial gouged it in the head with the sheared handle of his ax, running it through the eye.
“Anavha!” Natanial yelled, again, trying to keep an eye on him without bumbling into one of the tears in the world.
Saradyn heaved himself up from behind the throne and stumbled toward Anavha. “These are mine,” Saradyn said. “My women! My pets! Mine!”
He stumbled, miraculously weaving in and out of the puckered black holes. Natanial had no interest in losing his own limbs, but Saradyn’s rambling, drunken path was taking him closer to Anavha.
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