by Evan Winter
“And you, Lady Gifted,” said Kellan.
“Help me with him,” Hadith told Yaw. “We go!”
Tau managed to turn his head back to Zuri. She was watching after him. She gave him a small smile before the curve in the tunnel took her from sight. Tau closed his eyes. She had told him she loved him. She had said that. He tried to orient himself on that, as the world swirled.
A few strides later they stopped. Tau kept his eyes closed but heard wood splintering. He wondered if the door on this side was also made with Osonte wood.
“We’re out,” Hadith said. “You can open your eyes.”
Tau did, dropped to his knees, and threw up. He could hear fighting.
Hadith squatted beside him. “Get yourself together. We’re here.”
Tau lifted his head, breathing in the sweet scent of fresh air, opened his eyes, and gasped. They were at the end of a corridor. The floor was tiled in a patterned mosaic; the walls were smooth adobe painted in brilliant colors and they soared up for four floors. Tau had found the dignitaries’ quarters in the Southern Isikolo to be opulent. The interior of the Guardian Keep made those rooms look little better than his hut in Kerem.
Tau struggled to his feet, his head muddy. “Zuri…”
“She goes to get us dragons,” Hadith said. “Pray it works or none of us live to see the sun.”
“The fighting is this way!” yelled Kellan, dashing down the hallway and past row after row of enormous tapestries.
“Fight?” Uduak asked Tau. Yaw was beside the big man, looking worried.
“He’d better,” said Themba. “We’re outnumbered.”
Tau nodded.
“Right.” Hadith said, hefting his sword. “Let’s go make peace.”
STATUE
The hallway opened up into the keep’s enormous anteroom. The open space was circular and had a third-floor balcony that extended around its circumference. Offering access to the balcony were two wide staircases that clung to the curved walls. Supporting the balcony were thick sculpted columns around which scattered and isolated groups of men fought for their lives.
The majority of the fighting was focused near the exit to a hallway on the far side of the anteroom. That was where Tau saw most of the armored Queen’s Guard in their distinct maroon-stained leather. Abshir Okar, the queen’s champion, was leading the defense as the guard tried to hold the hallway against several units of full-blooded Indlovu.
Abshir was incredible. He darted this way and that, his sword whistling through air, flesh, and bone, as he called out commands and slew those who stood against him. Tau found himself both impressed and worried. The champion was a brilliant fighter, but it would not be enough, not against the odds he faced. The Queen’s Guard lost two men for every one they killed.
Kellan, seeing his uncle, charged.
“After him!” ordered Hadith. “Save the queen!”
Tau didn’t see any queen, but he saw his enemy and that was enough. He shook his head, willing the fogginess of the tunnels to leave him, and, swords out, he ran with the scale.
To get to Champion Abshir Okar, Tau would have to fight his way past a group of Indlovu doing battle with scattered members of the Queen’s Guard near the fountain that centered the anteroom. Tau ran over to engage the men, unable to ignore the tall bronze statue of Tsiory that stood in the middle of the fountain.
The statue had to be Tsiory. It had to be Queen Taifa’s champion and lover. It was almost as tall as the third-floor balcony, and Tsiory wore a suit of armor depicted in remarkable detail and intricacy. The statue’s face was turned to the dome above and the sky beyond. Tsiory’s sword, held with both hands, was placed point down into the fountain’s bloodred waters.
At first, Tau thought some of the day’s dead must have fallen into the fountain, tainting the waters. As he got closer, he realized that wasn’t the case. The water had been colored the red of blood and it flowed from the hilt of Tsiory’s sword, down the length of his blade, and into the fountain’s bowl. It seemed gory, thought Tau, twisting past an Indlovu’s swing and driving a sword through the man’s lungs, to anchor Tsiory’s memory in an ever-flowing pool of red.
Up ahead, Kellan had cut a path through Odili’s men and was stampeding for the hallway that his uncle strove to defend. Scale Jayyed had chosen to fight the Indlovu by the fountain. They couldn’t all go to the champion’s aid. The Indlovu they left behind them would attack and they’d be pincered. On the other hand, if Tau let Kellan go alone, the Indlovu at the hallway’s entrance would cut him down.
Unsure what to do, Tau crossed blades with a snarling full-blood. The Indlovu was good. The man’s shield had a supernatural sense of where to be and his sword moved more like a twisting chain than a blade of solid bronze. The full-blood came on hard, with no fear of a Lesser in Ihashe grays.
Tau dodged the man’s first two strikes, then struck out, stabbing him but hitting one of his bronze plates. He thought to finish the Noble but had to dart away before the man’s follow-up swing could connect. The Indlovu was fast, as well.
“Tau, go with Kellan!” Hadith shouted, settling Tau’s debate with himself.
Tau increased the pace of the fight, putting the Indlovu on the back foot and ready to finish him, when a roaring Jabari leapt into the fray. The full-blood slashed at Jabari’s blade, knocking it from his hands, and seeing his chance to kill the Petty Noble, the full-blood lunged.
Tau threw himself forward, off-balance but on target. His weak-side sword caught the thrust and turned it up and away from Jabari’s heart, as the blade of his strong-side weapon went into the full-blood’s neck, bursting through the opposite side in a shower of gore. Jabari stumbled back, wide-eyed and aware of how close to death he’d come.
“Get your blade!” Tau told him, turning and running to help Kellan. He heard footsteps behind him and readied to defend himself. It was Jabari, sword to hand. Tau growled in his throat. He wasn’t sure if Jabari’s presence helped or hindered, but there was no time for discussion either way. He’d arrived and immediately had to block a sword aimed for Kellan’s spine.
He caught the murderous cut on the edge of his blade at the same time as Kellan’s shield.
“About time!” said Kellan.
“Fool!” cursed Tau. “Chasing after this fight.”
“My uncle,” Kellan answered, gutting the Indlovu who had tried to kill him.
Tau glanced back to the rest of the scale. The fighting around the fountain had intensified, and they wouldn’t be coming to help anytime soon.
“Down, Jabari!” yelled Kellan, bringing his shield around to stop a blow that would have brained the Petty Noble.
Jabari was blowing air like a caught fish. “There’s too many.”
“Stay close,” said Tau, putting his sword through a man’s eye and dropping a level to spear another in the groin. Both men fell away, creating enough space for three more to take their place.
“Uncle!” called Kellan.
“To your left. Break their line,” Abshir shouted to Kellan. “To the right,” he ordered his own men.
Kellan moved left. There were only a few men between the Queen’s Guard and him on that side, and at Abshir’s order, more Queen’s Guard had moved to help. Tau followed, fighting off three Indlovu and trying to keep Jabari alive, though it seemed his onetime friend was determined to skewer himself on every blade that came close.
“Stay near!” Tau told him again.
“I… am… near!”
“Quick, now!” Abshir said. “Let them through.”
And, like that, they had joined up with the Queen’s Guard. Tau looked past the press of bodies, shields, and blades. Beyond Tau’s position, Hadith and the scale had been pushed back from the fountain. More of Odili’s men were in the anteroom. They were coming in from the other hallways. The odds for Scale Jayyed and the men loyal to the queen had grown longer.
“Where’s the queen?” Kellan asked his uncle.
“Behind us, but there are other ways
in. Kellan, hold here. I must go to her.”
Kellan nodded, his uncle stepped back, Odili’s full-bloods flooded into the space he’d made, and several blades thrust for Abshir’s face and body. He knocked a couple aside and Kellan stepped up, holding the line. An Indlovu dove in, his eyes bright as he swung for Abshir. Kellan split the man’s skull, and Abshir shouted and fell.
Seeing the champion drop encouraged Odili’s Indlovu. They pressed their full weight against the Queen’s Guard, bowing the defensive line back and into the hallway. The guard were too few and had held because the mouth of the hallway meant they could stand united. The press of Indlovu threatened to snap the guard’s advantage. Tau jabbed his blades everywhere he thought could do damage, but this wasn’t his type of fight. It was like battling a wall of shields.
“Get him back,” Kellan shouted to Tau.
Tau disengaged, calling for Jabari’s help. They grabbed the champion and pulled him away from the defensive line. Abshir had been cut just below the armpit and the wound was deep.
“You’ll be fine,” Tau told him. He stood, meaning to go back to the fight, when Abshir clamped onto his wrist and pulled him down.
“Ihashe, the queen must be protected!” he told Tau. “The far end of this hall opens into the room known as the Goddess’s Choice. Tell Kellan to take the gold door. He must find her before Odili. Tell Kellan!”
“Odili?”
“Go!”
Tau stood.
“I’m coming,” Jabari said.
Tau wasn’t listening. “Kellan,” he said to the fighting man’s back. “Your uncle is injured, but I know where the queen is.”
“You go!” Kellan shouted over his shoulder. “I’ll hold them back.”
“The champion asked for you.”
“Because he thinks I’m the best fighter,” Kellan grunted between thrusts, shield blocks, and counterstrikes, “because he thinks I can be her champion in his place. But he’s wrong. You’re better. Save the queen!”
Tau shouldn’t go. He knew he shouldn’t. He wasn’t thinking about the queen. He was thinking about Abasi Odili. He wasn’t the right person for this.
“Let’s go!” said Jabari, putting a hand on Tau’s shoulder. “We can’t let Odili get away with this.”
Tau turned from Kellan and the fighting, looking down the long hallway. “He won’t get away,” he said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ENRAGED
Tau and Jabari sprinted down the hallway. They ran past paintings of the Omehi queens who had ruled in Osonte and then in Xidda. They ran past the portrait of Queen Taifa, the Dragon Queen. They ran past the one of her daughter, Queen Tsiora I, and then past the portraits of queens Tau could not name. They ran into the room called the Goddess’s Choice.
“Where now?” Jabari asked, turning in a circle.
They were in an octagonal room; each corner held a door, and each door was painted a different color.
“The gold,” said Tau.
The gold door led to another hallway that opened onto a small courtyard with reclining chairs, tables, plants, and flowers. It was an oasis, a refuge from the city, the heat, the world.
Tau heard the sound of wood being chopped. He heard voices, but the thing that held his attention was the ground in front of him. It had been molded to mimic the peninsula. An artist had re-created their valley. The map showed everything from the Roar to the Wrist and all that was between. The peninsula’s largest cities were there, each differentiated by depictions of their most iconic buildings. Tau saw Kigambe, Jirza, Palm, and Citadel City.
“Tau,” Jabari hissed.
Tau knew why he was looking at the map. He knew he was stretching out the moment when he laid his eyes on them.
“Tau, what are you doing?”
Tau lifted his eyes and saw Odili, Dejen, the KaEid, and two full-blooded Indlovu.
“They’re cutting through that door,” Jabari said. “The queen must be inside.”
“Yes,” said Tau, walking forward.
“There’s four of them and the KaEid. Tau…”
Tau was no longer listening. He was closing in on his prey like an inyoka slithering through tall grasses. He would go unseen until it was time to strike, time to kill. They wouldn’t even know he was there until it was too late.
“Abasi Odili!” Tau yelled from twenty strides away. They turned to face him. “You murdered my father and destroyed my life. I am here to balance the scales.”
Abasi Odili looked nonplussed. Then, regaining some sense of himself, he spoke. “Common, I have killed many fathers and destroyed many lives. You’ll have to be more specific.”
With a wave of his hand Odili sent one of the full-bloods at Tau. Dejen looked away, unconcerned, as he and the other full-blood continued to cut through the door.
The Indlovu came, and Jabari moved to stand beside Tau. The Indlovu had his sword up. “I am Abiodan Onyakachi of—”
Tau lunged, Abiodan jerked his sword to block, and Tau dropped, cutting through the man’s calf with his blade. The Indlovu began to fall, and as he did, Tau drove his strong-side sword through his skull. The dead man collapsed onto the tiled floor. Tau jiggled his blade free and kept going. Jabari was no longer beside him. Jabari was staring at the dead Noble.
“Abasi Odili!” Tau called.
“Enough of this!” said the KaEid. “Abasi, have them killed and let’s be done with Tsiora.”
Dejen was first to react. He gave the thick and splintered wooden door a kick that came close to caving it in, before leveling his sword at Tau.
“Tau…,” said Jabari.
“What’s your name, Noble?” Odili asked Jabari, pulling his own sword free of its scabbard. “And what are you doing with this Common? What treachery against your kind is this?” Odili stepped away from Dejen, pulling the remaining Indlovu with him, putting the monstrous Ingonyama between them and Tau.
The KaEid raised her arms and her pupils shrank to the size of pins.
“Tau…,” said Jabari.
Tau was ready. He would wade through her enervation, destroy Dejen, and kill her, then the Indlovu, leaving Odili for last. He would carve the flesh from his bones, pluck his eyes from his head, cut away his tongue, and force the point of his blade up the slit of the man’s penis.
But KaEid Oro did not fire enervation at Tau. Perhaps something about him told her it would not have the desired effect. Perhaps she wanted to stretch out their suffering, see hopelessness on their faces. Tau did not know, would never know, but it did surprise him when Oro used her gift to enrage Dejen, transforming one of the Omehi’s most feared fighters into a force of death.
Dejen roared as his muscles warped, stretched, and folded, thickening, multiplying. His loose-fitting armor-plated black leathers tightened, exposing the bloodred leather that the uniform’s woven folds kept hidden until an Ingonyama was enraged. Dejen was not an attractive man, and with the KaEid’s gift flowing through him, he was ugly, cruel-looking, an ogre.
In two breaths, Dejen the monster stood before them. He snorted air out of a nose as broad as Tau’s palm, lifted his shield from beside the wooden door and smashed its edge against the door three times. The Ingonyama’s speed caught Tau off guard. Almost as soon as Tau registered that Dejen was hitting the door, it had collapsed, kindling under his supernaturally powered barrage. From inside the room a woman screamed.
Dejen snorted again and turned to Tau, who had been rooted to the spot since the Greater Noble’s transformation had begun.
“Some scales are too one-sided to ever be balanced, little gray,” Odili said, stepping over the ruined door and into the room where the queen was hiding.
Tau let Odili’s words pull his attention, a mistake that came close to costing him his life. Dejen dashed forward, his sword arcing. Jabari yelled, and Tau felt more than saw the attack. He dove to the side, heard the Ingonyama’s bronze whistle past, and could smell its oiled metal as the blade ripped the air, a fingerspan from cutting Tau’s
face from his skull.
He crashed into the ground, rolled, and came back to his feet. “The queen—” was all he could say to Jabari, before Dejen’s blade threatened him again.
Tau danced away from that swing and the next and the next. He shot a look in Jabari’s direction. Jabari had his sword held high and was picking his way over the smashed door and into the room beyond.
Tau gave the Enraged Ingonyama his full attention. “Do you remember the Indlovu testing in the South?” Tau said. “Do you remember the man you killed there?”
Dejen grunted and swung. Tau backpedaled, using the courtyard as he would terrain in a battleground. He picked up a small side table with an empty rabba pot on it and tossed the whole thing at Dejen, who chopped it out of the air.
“Do you remember the man you killed there? You should, because he’s the reason this night is your last.”
Dejen charged and swung, his footfalls ringing out on the tiled floor. Tau dodged but didn’t expect the Ingonyama to use his shield. Dejen turned it horizontal and swung it at Tau with a vicious backhand. Tau couldn’t dodge that and had to block with his weak-side sword. He caught the blow, felt the hit reverberate through his body, and was lifted off his feet and thrown across the courtyard, banging his shoulder in the fall.
No time to waste, Tau sprang to his feet and threw himself out of the way of a lancing thrust from Dejen. He recentered, swayed around Dejen’s follow-up, moved in, and stabbed up as hard as he could. He hit the Ingonyama’s bronze plates and had to drop and roll to avoid being clubbed by the man’s shield. He came up, flung himself at Dejen, and sliced for his belly. He felt his sharp bronze scrape across plate, leather, and skin. The attack would have cut a normal man in two, but the KaEid’s power had hardened Dejen’s flesh to stone. Tau sprang away and out of reach.
The Enraged Ingonyama looked down. The leathers around his stomach were torn to tatters and a thin trickle of blood leaked from one of the scratches.
“Kill him!” shrieked the KaEid, the strain from maintaining the enraging thick in her voice.