“This way, Etana!” Rafen panted, jerking her forward, trampling all over the sprawling servant who had preceded them.
Doors all around the banquet hall opened, guards pouring in from all directions. Roger Ridding was shouting at the top of his lungs. Still in his dressing gown but frighteningly awake, Talmon skidded into view, his face gleaming with sweat.
Frenziedly, Rafen shoved Etana forward, zigzagging through servants, knocking over buckets, tripping over feet, slipping in bubbly water. Neighing and barking behind told him the horse and the dogs were still with them, Talmon and the guards only steps behind. When a guard in mid-run nearly grabbed Rafen’s hair, Rafen seized a bucket and jammed it on his hovering foot. Overbalanced, his pursuer toppled backwards onto another oncoming Tarhian.
“I have to stop—” Etana panted feebly.
“No!” Rafen pulled her through the black door he’d been aiming for.
They flew through the corridor, the eyes of ugly barons glowering at them from paintings. According to Phil’s descriptions of the route to freedom, the door at the end of this corridor led to the courtyard where the guards hid the illegal weed and ale they bought. Rafen hoped the pair of men Phil had been counting on moving had already departed. He had reached the end. Flinging open the door, he dragged Etana through, and slammed it. The sound echoed through the courtyard.
The morning light was thankfully pale, otherwise Rafen would have been blinded. Etana gasped for breath beside him while he glanced around the courtyard.
Flagged with mossy stones and surrounded by towering walls of green-tinged limestone bricks, it housed a large well with a rotting wooden bucket hanging from it. Velvety shadows still obscured most things.
“Do you think we’ve lost them?” Etana said breathlessly, shifting her tattered black boots. She stared down at the black stains he had left on her hand and arm.
“What?” Rafen said distractedly, his attention focused on the doors around the courtyard. “Yes, we have lost them.”
Etana nodded, grudgingly admiring. She didn’t know Rafen had lied. Talmon and his men would be, at most, two or three minutes away. He could only pray the stampeding horse had held them up.
Phil had told Rafen the only unguarded door leading out of the Tarhian palace had a serpent shaped handle. All the courtyard walls except the left one were lined with doors. Yet Rafen knew they could only escape the castle through the left wall. He lunged toward it, heart thudding while he listened for the sounds of pursuit.
“Look at the ivy,” Etana said, hurrying after him.
A thick blanket of three-pointed leaves descended from the battlements to the flagstones. The black serpent’s head protruded from the tangled, glittering green. A tall wooden post stood a little from the door.
Rafen dashed over to the handle and pulled, straining against the web of ivy. The door creaked open as far as its rusted hinges would allow – wide enough for Etana or him. Rafen imagined the path to freedom snaking through the town of Setarsia beyond the wall.
His mouth became dry. What if she didn’t want him to follow her? Worse still, what if she had no way of getting out of the country?
“Can you send a message to your father?” he asked quickly.
“I have my methods,” Etana sniffed, rending a hole in the ivy so she could crawl through.
Frantic inside, Rafen watched as she hitched up her skirts, stooped, and wriggled her shoulders through the hole. Phil had said he should follow her. She would hate him for it.
“You really should bathe you know,” she said helpfully. “Your skin is all black.”
“You do not have time to talk,” Rafen snapped.
The ivy rustled while she wormed through. Then the rustling evolved into a thrashing.
“I’m stuck!” she cried, her words muffled.
Rafen swiftly kneeled. The only visible part of Etana was now her rear end. Grimacing, he pushed her sharply. Stems within ivy snapped and Etana squealed as she tumbled through the leaves and onto the dusty path beyond the door.
“Don’t touch my – my you know what,” she spat, leaping to her feet.
“You have got to take me with you, Etana,” Rafen cut in desperately.
Etana was staring at him, and he realized what he’d said. He plunged on anyway.
“Talmon will kill me,” he said in all a rush. “He knows what I’ve done.”
He snatched her white hand in his coal-blackened one, and she tried to pull back.
“Etana, I’ll follow you,” he said through clenched teeth. “Wherever you go, I will—”
“I never meant to leave you behind,” Etana protested. “My father will take us both to Siana.”
Footsteps clattered behind one of the many doors around the courtyard, punctuated by the furious barking of a dog. Rafen dived into the hole in the ivy, his hand still in Etana’s. Etana strained to pull him free. Vines firmly bound Rafen’s other arm, and he fought wildly. A door to the courtyard flew open. Rafen wormed his shoulders and torso clear and felt dusty ground beneath him. He thrust himself forward still, while Etana squealed at him and pulled, her tiny form obscured in a haze of sunlight.
A hand closed around the branded number on Rafen’s right ankle. Shrieking, Rafen struggled to extricate his legs. Talmon cursed loudly and a violent tug from the courtyard end brought Etana headlong into the ivy. Her hand slipped out of Rafen’s. Green leaves filled Rafen’s vision, scratching his face while he battled the force dragging him back. Etana turned away and ran down the sloping path.
“Etana!” Rafen screamed.
Sorrow in her eyes, she glanced over her shoulder one last time, outlined against an expansive, overcast sky, her dirty robes billowing. Then she was gone.
Chapter Ten
The
Door Closed
Then he was writhing on the cold flags of the courtyard, straining toward the ivy. Talmon released his ankle and wrenched him to his feet by his hair. Rafen yelled in pain as the king forced him to face him.
His scalp burning, Rafen kicked and bit like an animal. With his free hand, Talmon whipped a pistol from his belt and thrust it to Rafen’s temple. The king’s brown eyes flashed like a madman’s in his white face, and the pit bull at his heels snapped and barked.
“You deceived me!” he shouted in Tongue, tightening his hold on Rafen’s hair. The top of Rafen’s head was going numb, even though Rafen had ceased struggling. “I thought you could not speak Tongue; I thought you were like my other slaves. Who has been teaching you this language? Who told you which way to run in this palace? I said who!”
He pulled sharply on Rafen’s hair. Tears starting to his eyes, Rafen glanced frantically around the courtyard for escape. Roger stood by one of the open doors on the wall across from Rafen, his lips curled in smug disapproval as he motioned to the dog. The pit bull trotted over to him, and Roger ushered it through the door.
“Him!” Rafen roared in Tongue. “He taught me!”
Talmon glanced over his shoulder at Roger, who had paled.
“This man?” The words were deadly quiet.
“No, Your Grace,” Roger whispered in remarkably clear Tongue. “You know it wasn’t me; I wouldn’t have done it. I—”
“Silence!” Talmon screeched. He turned to Rafen again. “This man told you how to set her free and how to escape? Answer me!”
He pulled Rafen’s hair sharply again.
“Yes!” Rafen bellowed. “He told me everything, prepared everything – the horses, everything!”
Talmon’s head swiveled to face Roger again, nostrils flaring. “You, Roger? You did this thing?”
“No, Your Grace, I didn’t, I wouldn’t—”
“Silence!” Talmon turned back to Rafen. “You said five years ago that this man told you your name, and I believed him when he said he did not.”
Rafen struggled to remember the incident. He supposed Talmon had been listening in when his Master had interviewed Rafen at seven.
“Did this man
tell you your name, Rafen? Did he tell you this name we use instead of a number, this name which gave you the impudence to walk out of your cell when he unlocked it, and to take the princess and set her free? Did he?”
“Yes.” Rafen aimed the word like a bullet at Roger.
“No, Your Grace!” Roger shouted. “Why would he say all this if I had helped him? Why would he betray me?”
Before Talmon could reply to this, Rafen screamed almost inarticulately, “BECAUSE YOU BETRAYED ME!”
Roger flinched as if someone had waved a rapier in his face.
“A valid reason, is it not, Roger?” Talmon said. “It looked so innocent, making two-three-seven free the princess rather than you doing it yourself. Perhaps when you saw Rafen could never succeed, you decided to back out of your little plan. How much did the Sianians offer you for your help, Roger?”
Roger opened his mouth. No sound was coming out.
Another guard dashed into the courtyard through the door behind Roger.
“You are no longer general, Roger,” Talmon said.
Panic registered in Roger’s pale blue eyes. If he had taken his moment then, he could have drawn his sword. But Talmon had a pistol out and at the ready. It would have been over in seconds. Rafen liked imagining them killing each other.
“You,” Talmon said to the guard, “get a companion and take this man to a cell in one of the prisoner’s corridors – not Eighth Corridor – and lock him up. He may share a cell with the sickliest inhabitants of my palace. Understood? While you are gone, tell Mainte he is now general and must take some men and look for the Sianian princess. He will find her within the hour; she is too small to have gone far.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The guard bowed low. “Your Grace’s dogs are now safe in your chambers.” He backed out of the courtyard.
Roger collapsed to his knees. “Please, Your Grace, the boy lies, that’s all he does!” he wailed. “Why would you believe a twelve-year-old boy instead of me?”
“Perhaps it has something to do with his lineage,” Talmon sneered. “But you are a foreigner, Roger, my mistake. I should never have trusted you.”
“Your Grace—”
“Do I need to justify demoting you, Roger?” Talmon snarled. “How is it there was an unguarded door in this palace? A door this boy knew about? A door the men under your charge probably bring their women through? You will never be given a high position again.”
He turned to Rafen and wrenched his head around to look at the post near the door to freedom. The tendons in Rafen’s neck burned. “What do you see?” Talmon said in Rafen’s ear.
“An unguarded door,” Rafen said through teeth gritted against pain.
Talmon slapped him then. “You see a post. You will be tied to that post tomorrow morning, when I lash you twenty times. Then you will work in the mine without your wounds attended to. In a week, you will be tied to that post again when I shoot you.”
Rafen’s legs were dissolving. The courtyard was closing in on him, the walls curving upward to form a gray cupola blocking out the dazzling sky and sunlight.
“My Master once told me to end your miserable life if you rebelled.” Talmon’s lips brushed Rafen’s ear. “You escaped me in the mine, and I thought no matter. Now you will be humiliated as I have been. And then you will die.”
Talmon gave further instructions to the two guards who hauled a shrieking, sobbing Roger away. Everything sounded like it was at the other end of a tunnel.
Another guard entered the courtyard. He clapped his hands on Rafen’s shoulders and dragged him away from Talmon, who was transfixed on the stone flags, his slender figure poised. Before him, the door to freedom was still ajar, and Rafen wondered why Talmon didn’t draw his sword, cut through the ivy, and walk away down that dusty path. How could anyone resist such a door?
The darkness of the corridor that Rafen and Etana had journeyed through only ten minutes before fell around him thickly, like a sack over his head.
“Move.” The guard hit Rafen.
Rafen’s eyes were still fixed on the palely lit courtyard. The dream-like atmosphere was broken with a sharp bang as Talmon kicked the door shut.
Chapter Eleven
Talmon’s Whip
Etana’s feet plodded heavily on the ground, steadily distancing her from King Talmon. She glanced over her shoulder at his ugly gray fortress on the slight incline against the cloudy sky. It was smaller than before, further away now, though she didn’t dare stop to rest.
On the beach not far from the Tarhian palace, Etana had avoided detection for most of the day by hiding in a cave too cramped for anyone except her. Though she’d planned to travel at night, she’d been forced to leave the cave early so she wouldn’t fall asleep.
She was now on a broad heath with little cover. It unnerved her. Yet it was either that or the steaming marshes winding their way northward from the city of Setarsia. Etana’s only hope now was keeping one step ahead of Talmon, whatever direction she traveled in. Her father was not on the coast to pick her up, and she had nowhere to stay.
I have my methods.
Etana remembered smugly delivering that lie to Rafen in the courtyard. The only way she could contact her father was by kesmal, and she did precious little of that, even when she had her ring. It had been so simple to lie right then. Rafen had been beside her.
On the day she’d received her phoenix heartstring at four years old, she had dreamed about him. He had been running across a rocky landscape, and she had called to him, though he hadn’t heard. If only he’d turned and looked her fully in the face!
Etana’s and Curtis’ escape plan had been turning ugly when Rafen had come along. Etana’s legs had been aching even before she’d started running. However, at the sight of Rafen’s face, her spirits had leapt.
Did he know how significant his name was? It was in the Phoenix Tongue.
Etana!
His face appeared in her mind’s eye again, coal stained, twisted with desperation.
“I mustn’t torture myself about it,” she said under her breath. After all, if he had known she was a Secra and future queen, perhaps he wouldn’t have taken it so hard. Etana’s freedom was more important than his. She took heart when she remembered her precious, preexistent soul. Then Talmon’s face appeared in her mind. He would not forgive Rafen this. He would kill him. Etana suddenly had trouble breathing.
The night was falling quickly. The sun sank in a bleeding ball beneath the horizon, and a brisk wind stirred the low growing shrubs on the heath. Etana shivered, hunger and weariness weighing her down.
Head drooping, she plowed on, dreaming of her double canopy bed at home in Siana. She could smell the foods they ate at banquets: compotes, stuffed pig, dressed chickens, freshly chopped Sianian vegetation, roots and purple tubers and thick green leaves, all sweet, pleasing the tongue with tingling juices.
Hoof beats rumbled through the ground beneath her and Etana’s head snapped upright. She looked wildly about the heath. Twenty dark horses cantered behind her, crushing plants in their path.
Etana broke into a mad run. Tarhian voices exploded in the air. The horses were gaining on her, and a whinny sounded close behind. At every moment she expected a horse hoof to smash her skull.
Whimpering, she increased her speed, her lungs burning. Her eyes were already blurred with fatigue, and the growing darkness meant that rocks and gnarled trees kept appearing before her on the uneven ground at the last moment.
A hand swiped the air behind her, narrowly missing her shoulder. Shrieking, Etana stumbled on a stone and fell headlong, too tired to throw her hands out before her. Her face landed in a mesh of thorns. Sobbing and half blinded, she struggled to rise. Nearby, a horse drew up and someone dismounted with a thump. Etana scrambled to her feet and staggered sideways, away from the approaching footsteps. Scornful laughter rang out behind her. The long-limbed Tarhian came on at a leisurely pace, certain of his catch. His companions reined in nearby and began dismounting as wel
l.
The shrubs before Etana churned. Momentarily, she imagined someone crouched there, waiting to pounce, but a thick snake slipped through the shadowed growth at her feet. She stifled a scream. With a twinge, strange realization dawned on her. She remembered the freedom of movement she’d had long before birth. Much closer now, the Tarhian laughed again, stretching out his hands to grab her. Etana found herself falling into a lithe, flexible ‘s’ shape and propelling herself through shrubs, which now looked like the trees of a forest around her small and slippery body. Behind her, the laughter turned to a yelped curse.
I’m doing kesmal, she understood. I’m moving like the snake, and I didn’t even have to use my scepter.
A tickling around her face told her she still had hair. It stuck to her now weirdly elongated neck. Her arms were fastened to her sides, and her legs were melded together. She had shrunk to a third of her normal size and now moved fluidly as water. Though leaves and briars scratched her smooth body, they didn’t bother her any longer.
Behind her, the shouts of the Tarhians gradually faded into the enchanting silence only night can bring.
*
“Get up, scum.”
It was four o’clock in the morning. A blow to Rafen’s chin slammed his jaw shut.
Rafen sat up hastily. A flickering lantern hovered in the ponderous black above him. From his left, something heavy and black sailed toward him.
Rafen scampered away from the guard’s foot and scrambled to his feet. The guard’s long form loomed over him. Rafen imagined the sneer spreading over the obscured face.
“Looking forward to the Claw?” he taunted.
Rafen’s blood ran cold at the words.
Whipping was a favorite activity of the guards. Sometimes when they were excited, they’d flog a child until he died of exhaustion and blood loss.
Rafen (The Fledgling Account Book 1) Page 6