by Joe Jackson
Sonja screamed. She fell to her knees beside Uldriana’s body, and her hands shook in grief and fury. “What is wrong with you?!” she shouted at the demon king, tears streaking down her cheeks.
Sekassus didn’t even bother to correct her for addressing him so casually. “It seems the prophecy was wrong yet again,” he said evenly, and his son and the others began laughing.
Kari still hadn’t moved, but the laughter died abruptly when a blue glow bathed the demon king and his son’s blood-spattered forms. Zalkar’s symbol drew itself upon Kari’s chest, shining even through her clothes and breastplate, and there it stayed, pulsing hungrily. Kari approached Sonja and put her hand to her sister-in-law’s shoulder to try to make sure none of them made a fatal error in judgment and did or said anything provocative. The various sylinth and erestram guards around the room brought their weapons to bear, and Kari wondered why they would even bother if the demon king could tear someone apart with willpower alone. Whatever the case, she knew she had to be rational about the situation. She took her other hand off of the hilt of her sword and realized that if she and her friends weren’t out of Sorelizar in six days, the same fate awaited them, if not a worse one.
Danilynn swallowed hard but then gripped Kari’s upper arm again. “Kari, we need to get out of here, now,” the priestess said. “There’s nothing we can do for her, and time is wasting.”
Kari nodded, but looking at Sonja kneeling beside the body, her promise to Uldriana’s mother rang more soundly in her ears. “Can we take her body with us, Your Majesty?” Kari said asked with an unusual amount of calm, given the situation. She straightened out and worked to keep her emotions in check; breaking down now wouldn’t do any of them any good. Uldriana had said not to mourn her, and Kari understood why. She patted Sonja’s shoulder, and her sister-in-law stood up, awaiting the demon king’s decision.
“By all means,” he said sarcastically with a sweeping gesture toward the ruined mess of the mallasti girl. “Amnastru would like nothing more than to see you leave with even more dead weight in hand. You will find that with this crippled syrinthian girl and a mallasti corpse on your hands, you have little hope of escaping my realm. By law, I must afford you Seven Days’ Grace, but today – the first day – is nearly over. When the sun sets on the seventh day, your lives are forfeit regardless of who may have sent you here.”
Kari took her cloak out of her pack and used it to wrap Uldriana’s body. “Kari, are you sure we want to take her with us?” Danilynn asked. “We’re probably not going to make it if we have to carry her.”
Kari glanced at the priestess and reminded herself that clergy was more interested in souls than bodies. Still, Kari had made a promise and wanted to try to keep it in any way she could. “We’re not leaving her here,” Kari said. “I made a promise. We’ll get home if I have to kill half of this realm and his idiot son to escape.”
Amnastru stepped forward and backhanded Kari hard across the snout, and she was thrown sideways to the floor. The prince’s strength was incredible, and the blow left a ringing in Kari’s ears for several seconds; her snout ached and blood trickled from one of her nostrils. Kari knew she’d be feeling that blow for several days. Sekassus found the exchange amusing, but Kari got back to her feet, straightened out before the cobra prince, and narrowed her eyes. “I hope you turn out to be a better challenge than your brother.”
Amnastru brought his hand back to slap Kari again, but his face contorted and he fixed his gaze on his hand as if it wouldn’t obey him. All eyes soon turned to Sonja, whose ruby eyes were glowing with unmasked power. “Keep your hands to yourself, monster,” Sonja growled. Kari moved closer and laid her hand on Sonja’s shoulder again; if the woman went too far and violated the law herself, Sekassus might be within his rights to kill her.
“She uses the power, here? How is this possible, father?” Amnastru asked the king.
“Intriguing,” was all Sekassus had to say on the matter before he turned to Kari. “Take your prize and your discarded payment, and remove yourself from my palace. If you are not out of my realm by six days from now, your Order will have to send people to try to negotiate your own release. I assure you, there is nothing on this world or yours that will secure that.”
Kari understood where Ressallk had gotten his bravado, but she kept such thoughts to herself. If Sekassus thought he was strong enough to fight against Zalkar himself, that was a delusion Kari was happy to let the demon king revel in. “Sonja, can you take Uldriana?” Kari asked, and her sister-in-law hefted the wrapped body of their friend without a word. Kari approached Se’sasha and touched her shoulder, and the tired, defeated golden eyes of the syrinthian priestess at last came up. “Come on, Se’sasha, we’re here to take you home.”
The girl didn’t seem to understand a word Kari said, but neither did she offer argument. She wrapped an arm around Kari’s shoulder and began the descent down the ramps to leave the palace. Danilynn brought up the rear, keeping her eyes cast over her shoulder for any trickery from the throne room. Kari led them out of the palace and gauged which way was south based on the position of the sun. She led her friends out of the city, but Sonja moved up beside her.
“I can carry her for a while, but Sekassus is right: we’ll never make it out of the realm if we have to take turns carrying her and supporting Se’sasha,” Sonja said. “I can try to carry her aloft on a conjured force, but I won’t be able to keep us masked at the same time, and I don’t know how long I can keep up with that sort of strain.”
“I don’t think you’ll need to bother with the masking spell anymore,” Kari said. “If they want to find us, they can and will. Sonja…how did you use your magic in there?”
“I don’t really know,” her sister-in-law answered with a shrug. “It’s not important right now; our speed is what we need to concentrate on.”
Sonja was burying her grief; Kari had seen enough people do it in her lifetimes. Sonja had been much closer to Uldriana than Kari or Danilynn, and it was more than just a student-and-teacher relationship. They had become friends, and Kari was almost positive that Sonja had never witnessed the death of a close friend or loved one before. Kari knew she had to be hurting, but there would be time later to mourn. At that moment, Sonja and Danilynn were both right, and Uldriana’s body was going to slow them down too much.
“We’ll burn her when we break to camp,” Kari said. “A hunter’s funeral is about the best we can do for her out here. Can you conjure up an urn or something to carry her ashes? I think…I want to bring her back home like I promised.”
“We need to reach the Overking’s realm first,” Danilynn said, coming up beside Kari. “We can head to Moskarre from there, but we need to be smart about this if that’s what you want to do. If we don’t make it out of this realm, there’s going to be five bodies to cremate.”
“No, you’re right, that’s what we’ll do,” Kari agreed. “I can’t…Gods above, I can’t even believe what just happened…but I’m honestly not sure why it surprised me.” She sighed, shook her head, and glanced at Se’sasha. “Gods, girl, I hope you were worth it.”
Se’sasha didn’t say anything; she seemed pretty out of it. The four women managed to get a couple of miles outside of the city before the sun went down, and Kari figured there was little reason to make camp far from the road. If anyone was looking for them, it wouldn’t be all that hard to find them once they began to cremate Uldriana’s remains, regardless of how far from the road they camped. They set up their camp off the side of the road. Kari and Danilynn were only able to find enough wood for a campfire, but Sonja assured them she could enhance it with her newfound arcane strength.
They set up a pyre for Uldriana, and Kari spent a minute running her hand down the side of the dead girl’s furry snout. She wondered how she kept ending up in this position, finding herself not only befriending, but mourning what she’d initially thought were enemies. “Sonja, would you like to say a few words?” Kari asked.
Sonja folded her knees u
p to her chest, put her head down between them, and started to weep. Kari looked at the ground, sorry she had asked; she could imagine how much worse the girl’s mother’s reaction would be. She turned her gaze to Danilynn, but the priestess shrugged. She must have felt the same way Kari did: at a loss for words.
Kari started the fire, stepped back from it, and sighed. “I promised your mother I’d bring you home; I’m going to keep that promise,” she said, and Zalkar’s symbol began to glow on her chest again. “And you will be avenged, one way or another, Uldriana. That’s a promise.”
The fire was sputtering, but Sonja ignited it fully with a thought, then she conjured a simple urn and put it near the fire. No further words were spoken around the funeral pyre, and the four women watched the flames consume Uldriana’s body. Kari sighed. It was going to take them some time to escape Sorelizar if they had to help Se’sasha along the whole way, but it seemed unavoidable: the girl was severely undernourished and weak. Perhaps Sonja could summon something to help the girl walk or float along, just as she’d offered for Uldriana’s body; Kari would ask tomorrow.
Kari looked back north in the direction of the city of Sorelizar, half-expecting that Amnastru would come for them without delay. She set up watches with Sonja and Danilynn, and the priestess came up beside her near the pyre. “Are we going to head straight south and hope nobody stops us?” she asked.
Kari shook her head. “Just far enough to make them think that’s our plan. Then I want to swing around west and then northwest, and we’re going to try to get into Si’Dorra. Arku’s realm is mostly pine forest, and we may be able to lose any pursuit when we get there, and sneak our way through it. I don’t imagine Sekassus is going to tell his friend Arku that he lost track of a handful of mortals.”
“No, I suppose he won’t, at that,” Danilynn said. “Sounds like a good plan. Do you want me to take first watch?”
“No. Get some rest, I’ll wake one of you in a while. I have a lot of thinking to do.”
Danilynn helped get Se’sasha bedded down, and then she and Sonja tried to get some sleep and allow Se’sasha to rest through the night. Kari stared back at the city and the silhouette of the black pyramid against the twilight sky. Her snout ached, she was still sore everywhere due to the pregnancy, and she had a headache that she imagined was probably a hair shy of a full-on concussion, but she felt strangely focused. They had only six days to escape Sorelizar, they were nearly that distance from any of its borders, and they were sure to encounter pursuit or trickery on the way.
The road ahead was going to be a long one.
Chapter XVI – Run Like Hell
Danilynn had taken the pre-dawn watch, and she used the time to gather up the ashes of their slain friend in the urn Sonja had conjured. Kari woke up well before dawn, and she began rousing Sonja and Se’sasha. She had little doubt that they’d be followed the minute the sun came up, so her plan was to leave the campfire burning and hasten their journey west before the day began. Se’sasha was groggy and weak, but Sonja concentrated on her masking spell and hefted the lithe syrinthian across her shoulders. The women left the road. There was forest to the west of them, not terribly deep or dark, but good enough to help mask their egress.
They had put a couple of miles behind them by the time the sun fully crested the horizon, and Sonja let Se’sasha down to do some walking. The syrinthian girl didn’t speak a word of the Citarian common tongue, elvish, rir, infernal, or even czarikk, so there was no way for Kari and her companions to speak with her. Se’sasha walked as long as she could before she found a shady spot and sat down to rest. She gestured for food and drink, and Danilynn decided that what she could summon might suffice better than the rations and water the friends had. Se’sasha bowed her head thankfully and began to eat and drink exactly like Kari expected from someone who’d been in a dungeon for years.
Kari stared at the syrinthian priestess while she ate, and with the filthy rags the girl was wearing, it wasn’t hard to see just how badly malnourished she was. Just as with Triela when Kari rescued her on Tsalbrin, Se’sasha’s ribs were showing, and though her belly wasn’t swollen with starvation, instead it was incredibly thin, more so than looked proper even for the lithe snake-folk. Kari glanced at Danilynn and saw her concerns reflected.
“Sonja can’t carry Se’sasha all day,” Kari commented, and Danilynn nodded. “And she’s too weak to walk for more than an hour or so. We’re going to need to find a horse or some other kind of mount to carry Se’sasha, or it’s going to take us far too long to escape.”
“Agreed, but stopping in a town may just advertise where we are, and make it easier for them to capture us,” the priestess returned. “Maybe we can find someone outside the cities and towns who’ll lend us a horse? This is supposed to be their high priestess.”
“These people are all terrified of King Sekassus, though,” Sonja said, staring off into the distance. “They may want to help us, but they’re probably going to be afraid to.”
“Yea, the ones we have back on the campus said that their families would be killed if they betrayed Sekassus,” Kari agreed. “Anyone who helped us wouldn’t just be risking their own life.”
Once she finished eating, Se’sasha curled up and started to drift off to sleep. Kari was going to rouse her or ask Sonja to carry her, but Danilynn drew one of her axes and handed the other to Kari. The demonhunter nodded silently, understanding the priestess’ intentions. They went out together and found suitable branches on nearby trees to make the frame of a litter. When they returned to camp, Kari and Sonja started tying the frame together while Danilynn shredded one of their tents to craft a bed. Kari smiled at Danilynn while they worked, though the priestess didn’t see; Kari was so thankful to have someone who was adept at so many small but important tasks with her. And that was to say nothing of Danilynn’s divine magic or combat prowess, which had yet to really be called upon.
Once the litter was complete, they set off through the forest again. The woods opened up after a couple of hours onto open farmland, and Kari cursed their luck. The last thing she wanted to do was move among the syrinthian people, many of whom might turn them in just to try to buy the favor of their king. A road wound through the farmland from south to north, and Kari figured they might be best served shadowing the road but avoiding it, depending on Sonja’s masking spell to keep them hidden while they towed Se’sasha on the litter.
Kari’s heart nearly stopped when a figure emerged from the woods just yards away from them, and stopped close enough to Kari to touch. All three of the rir women froze, staring at the half-syrinthian, half-succubus woman – Danilynn and Sonja for the first time. Kari had no doubts anymore: it was Turillia, right down to the hair, the armor, the weapons, and the cloak. She had no idea how the half-succubus had survived or been reborn, and she only wondered why Turillia hadn’t attacked her in Rulaj; had she been afraid of the consequences of assaulting someone in Emanitar’s city?
Turillia looked around briefly, then she sniffed the air a few times with those thin, slitted nostrils. Kari hoped the woman didn’t come closer and notice the tracks from the litter. Almost as if she’d read Kari’s mind, Turillia turned and stared right at her, but it was as though the half-succubus was looking through Kari; Sonja’s masking spell seemed to be holding. After a brief pause, the half-succubus sniffed again before she turned and moved off toward the south. Kari let out the breath she’d been holding in a nearly-silent hiss. With luck, Turillia’s decision to head south meant that even if people were pursuing them, the assumption would be that Kari was trying to head toward Anthraxis, and not north.
Once Turillia was well away from them, Kari motioned northward and they began to follow the edge of the woods. They were able to cover a good amount of ground over the next couple of hours, but they ran out of woods to follow long before then. They began traveling through the fields, but once they were hedged in on all sides by farmland, Kari decided they would need to risk walking the road. It would require a
lot of vigilance to make sure they didn’t drag the litter past other travelers, but Kari could see no other choice besides dragging Se’sasha right through crops and past farm hands. Danilynn and Sonja agreed with her logic, and they made their way along a fence toward the road.
There had been no other sightings of Turillia, for which Kari was glad. She hoped that Sekassus and Amnastru would aim their efforts mostly to the south and east, leaving Kari’s planned escape route relatively unguarded. Walking into Arku’s realm would be a risk, but a more calculated one than trying to slip past Amnastru and whatever else Sekassus tried to put in their way. If they could skirt the border between Si’Dorra and Sorelizar, and use the pine forest to their advantage, they might be able to reach Tess’Vorg or Pataria without trouble. And while it was possible either Emanitar or Morduri would take exception to their return, Kari was sure it would still be far preferable to being captured by Sekassus or Arku.
Traffic along the road was very light, and when another party passed, the companions had only to get off the road to avoid notice. Occasionally, the tracks of the litter got the attention of another traveler, but only for a few moments while they continued on their way. No one left the road to look for Kari and her friends, and there was no sign of Turillia or any other pursuit from King Sekassus. Thankfully, Se’sasha was very light, and by taking turns dragging the litter, the three women were able to transport their syrinthian guest a good distance before twilight and fatigue arrived together.
“We need to be careful about choosing a campsite,” Sonja said when Kari decided to stop for the night. “I can’t maintain my masking spell when I’m asleep, and I need to make sure I get a good amount of sleep so I don’t lose my grip on the power.”
“Danilynn and I will take care of it in shifts, then,” Kari said. “You get as much rest as you need. Let’s see if we can find some trees to hide among while we’re going to be exposed. I guess a campfire is out of the question. We’d better give Se’sasha some extra blankets to make sure she stays warm.”