“Safe,” Etana assured him. “They are well ahead.”
“What are you doing?” Jacob’s voice hissed before them.
He appeared in the pale circle of Rafen’s light, the two peasants having moved further on.
“They might break through,” he said. “Perhaps there is a philosopher with them. Get away from the trapdoor.”
He grabbed Rafen’s shoulders and shoved him forward, giving Etana a rough push too.
“Go, go,” he said in a tense whisper.
Rafen reeled forward, his head still feeling like it was going to explode. He kept seeing two of everything.
“What happened to your hand?” Etana asked abruptly, the color draining even from her lips.
“Nothing,” Rafen lied.
Jacob hurried behind them with quick, crisp steps. His face was set, and through the grime, he wore an expression of resigned courage that Rafen lacked.
“What on the Pilamùr made you want to do this, Rafen?” Jacob said after fifteen minutes’ walking.
They were within sight of a group of six peasants.
“There was nothing else to do,” Rafen said. “All the lords were within the city. They and their fighting men are our only chance. You were within the city.”
“You did not know that,” Jacob said sharply. “But, yes, I was in the city. I am grateful that someone came and warned me on your orders. I was in hiding, in disguise, in fact; but I think that is something the Lashki expects. That is why he swept the area around New Isles for King Robert’s old supporters.”
“We thought you were dead,” Rafen said.
“The Lashki has killed most of the old officers of the Sianian army, along with many of King Robert’s previous advisors and even a few of his lords,” Jacob said bitterly. “One of his first acts was to command his philosophers to kill me. I escaped narrowly and have been forced to keep a low profile. Over the past year, I’ve tried gathering support for King Robert, and I’ve been thwarted in every attempt. Tarhians massacred a group of men training with me in the south, and I had to flee to the far north. Another time, rumors of my presence forced me to disband one hundred men for their own safety. And those are only two examples, Rafen.”
“Alexander has had similar troubles,” Rafen told him wearily.
“We couldn’t have done without your help,” Etana said with some of her old grace.
Jacob laughed, a trace of scorn in his tone. “My help? What did I do, Your Highness? Little indeed. I helped warn some people, but as Rafen found, the flames and the enemies became too thick. Luckily I found him before a Naztwai ate him.”
“Good Zion,” Etana said, staring wide-eyed at Rafen’s left hand. She had her arm through Rafen’s right one, but her free fingers itched at her side as pity contracted her eyebrows.
“Give us another twenty minutes, Etana,” Jacob said. “If we are still safe, you may bind his hand. But I think the dried blood is already helping somewhat.”
With detached curiosity, Rafen stared at his hand, which was sticky and slowly becoming caked with browning blood. He wondered if the loss of a joint would affect his sword-fighting much. Though the pain throbbed on, his mind was so far away he scarcely felt it.
“It was not enough,” Rafen whispered.
“It was something,” Jacob said. “Truly, Rafen, it was. The Lashki will not like it, and that is always worth something.”
Rafen’s blood ran cold. The Lashki knew exactly where Fritz’s Hideout was now. The question was, really, if he would notice many people were missing. If Jacob was right, the Lashki probably had had some philosophers watching the city, even using kesmal to spy. It was all too likely Rafen’s and the others’ activity had not gone unnoticed.
But there was nowhere else to shelter the people. The only solution was some kind of distraction, and what could possibly be big enough to distract the Lashki from some of the missing lords of Siana?
The light in Rafen’s blade flickered as he thought. He tried telling himself they had saved so few that the Lashki would probably leave it alone. It was a lie. The Lashki wanted total dominance, and the aim of this exercise had not been merely destroying the lords of Siana. It had been to kill –
He drove it from his mind.
Twenty minutes dragged by, and Rafen slumped down against an earthen wall while Etana held her scepter over his finger and closed her eyes in concentration. Little forceful waves worked their way into Rafen’s hand; she was trying to staunch the bleeding. At last, a clean but scarred stump was left at the middle of his fifth finger, with a little stubborn blood still oozing from it. Etana tore a strip from Jacob’s shirt and wrapped Rafen’s digit in it so tightly that Rafen feared he would lose the rest of it.
Jacob kept watch, facing the direction from which they had come, his sword drawn and his eyes narrowed. While he wasn’t looking, Etana leaned forward and brushed Rafen’s forehead with her lips.
He looked up and gave her a strained smile.
The journey through the darkness seemed to take an age. It took them six hours to catch up to Sherwin and Francisco, who were amid a crowd of peasants that stretched away into the gloom. It reminded Rafen horribly of mining in Tarhia.
Sherwin’s relief softened the lines in his face when he caught sight of Rafen. He doubled back through the throng, pushing past women and children with deplorable carelessness. Francisco rushed along in his wake.
“Raf!” Sherwin exclaimed. Then he froze. “What ’appened to yer hand? Nothin’ serious, I ’ope.”
“No,” Rafen said.
Francisco turned to Etana with a promptness that demonstrated how well he knew Rafen.
“He has lost part of his finger, yes?” he asked in his thick Tarhian
accent.
Jacob was glancing rapidly from Francisco to Rafen, his forehead furrowed.
“Yes,” Etana said. “I suppose you felt it, Francisco?”
“I always feel my brother’s pains,” Francisco said with grim honesty.
“’alf a finger?” Sherwin said, horrified. “Blimey, and yer smell like a Naztwai too.”
“He can’t help it,” Jacob said. “I killed a Naztwai on his back. Who is this duplication?” The general was staring at Francisco.
“My twin,” Rafen said. “Francisco.”
“Well met,” Jacob said, proffering his hand.
Francisco grasped it and bowed stiffly, never tearing his worried eyes from Rafen.
“I’m Sherwin,” Sherwin offered. “Nice to meet yer.”
Jacob inclined his head and extended his hand. Sherwin gave it a vigorous shake. They all continued down the tunnel, Jacob and Sherwin falling in behind, and Rafen, Etana, and Francisco moving ahead.
“So ’ow many do yer think we got?” Sherwin said, looking at Rafen.
“I don’t know,” Rafen said, with a sinking feeling. “I thought you knew.”
“I’m surprised we got any at all,” Sherwin said morbidly. “When I started warnin’ people, not many wanted to listen.”
“A lot of them thought the massacre the day I tried stealing back Erasmus’ corpse was my fault.” Rafen couldn’t meet Sherwin’s eyes.
“Yeah,” Sherwin said. “There was this lord from an alley yer warned, and he was sayin’ to everyone they could batter down the gates. ’E lead a whole bunch of people astray and got them killed. Luckily there was this well-known noblewoman – Lady Ainsworth, I think – who said they should at least try what yer said. When she saw the passage, she went back and grabbed loads more people to come down.”
His spirits marginally buoyed up, Rafen’s mind returned to what they would do on reaching the Hideout. Then he saw his mother, looking at him and holding her hands out appealingly, as she had when Roger had first told Rafen the truth about his past and parenthood. Would Elizabeth’s corpse still be in the Hideout, unharmed? Or would it be desecrated? His heart thudded nervously. And what about the others? Roger – what had become of him? Perhaps he had fled. It would have been
very like him. Rafen couldn’t help remembering Roger rushing out to fight Talmon after he thought the Tarhian king had shot his son. He had loved Roger as a father then. He had believed he cared. But after months in the Hideout with him, Rafen’s affection had been worn away until nothing but a dull ache, a vague desire for the man Roger should have been, burned in the back of his mind and heart.
He was more terrified for the Selsons.
Etana slipped her hand into his and squeezed it. Rafen thought of her presence and inexplicably remembered the Phoenix. It had been enough after the massacre at New Isles and the meeting with Nazt. The Phoenix was still with him, had never left him. And Etana – a manifestation of his presence, Rafen thought – was with him too. He gripped her hand tighter.
His weariness seemed insurmountable when at last they reached the Hideout. By this time, Jacob had increased their pace so that they had caught up with and overtaken a number of peasants. Sherwin was counting as they went, and by the time they reached the front of the waiting group at the Hideout’s dark double panels, he had numbered five hundred and sixty.
“Or sixty-four,” he said. “I keep losin’ count.”
The expansive cavern was dimly lit by the glow of Rafen’s kesmal and that of other philosophers and noblemen in their midst. Rafen moved to the front of the ragged crowd, his sword aloft before him. Hundreds of eyes were glued to him, and whispers in the clipped, refined accent of the noblemen rippled round the front row of the people. A few gasped at the sight of Rafen.
“I told you the Wolf was a child,” someone muttered.
“That explains his failure on the day of Talmon’s Massacre,” another answered.
Rafen’s face burned. He supposed the few here had only listened to him at all because the necessity had been great.
The two stone panels leading into the Hideout bore twin phoenixes, beak to beak, tail to tail, and amethyst eye to amethyst eye.
Rafen paused, having only vague recollections of Etana bringing him down here the night he had escaped Annette, Nazt, and the Lashki Mirah.
“What is the password?” he mouthed to her.
At his side, Etana smiled faintly. It was incredible she could smile at all; her face was wan, and beads of sweat had appeared on her ivory forehead.
“Have you never heard it?” she said from between gritted teeth.
The murmurings of the noblemen behind grew louder. Rafen glanced back to see a man in a velvet crimson gown watching him with raised eyebrows. Grinding his teeth, Rafen raised his sword and closed his eyes.
The words slipped out of his mouth, unbidden but unstoppable, the thread of a song his body and soul still knew:
“Mirah, sè mirah, sè mirah ki lai. Sè rien ki rienai; sè mirah ki mirai: na Feni.”
With a grating, the panels slid back. Behind, Francisco chewed his lip so hard blood bubbled on it. Sherwin had his arms folded tightly against his chest.
The darkness beyond the retracted stone panels was thick and tangible. Rafen felt it rush out at him and press against his skin. The first scent that met his nostrils was that of blood.
He moved slowly forward, his sword still high. A uniform shuffling of feet sounded behind him. Rafen whirled around so swiftly that Etana started next to him.
“The Sianian Wolf will enter alone first,” he said.
A muttering greeted his pronouncement. Jacob made a restraining move. Rafen shook his head at him.
At the left of the crowd, a Sianian philosopher in robes that looked like old floral curtains bowed low and said, “Of course, My Lord. Your wishes.”
Rafen turned around again, trying to look confident.
Etana grasped his arm. “You will not go alone,” she whispered.
“I will,” Rafen said, gently drawing his arm from her hand. “Please stay with the people, Etana. I don’t know what’s in there, but you as the heir to the throne should not go first. Please listen.”
Etana stepped back slowly, tears brimming in her eyes. Feeling overwhelmingly alone, Rafen strode through the doorway with the orange light of his sword sending a thin path ahead. Rafen was thankful the light was too faint to illuminate anything near the doorway for those behind him. A slight scuffle sounded from where he had just been.
Sherwin’s low voice said distinctly, “Nah, I’m the Wolf’s tail. All right?” He sprinted through the doorway and froze at Rafen’s side in the warm darkness.
“What are you doing?” Rafen said tensely, his sword still frozen in one position, his eyes resting on the clear line of earth floor his kesmal revealed.
Sherwin stepped forward. Rafen too moved slightly ahead, sweeping his sword in a semicircle before him. Rubble lay in piles on the floor, and the walls were now pockmarked and cracked after a kesmalic attack. A dark splash of brown marked the left floor, but nothing else was there apart from debris. His arm tensed abruptly, and he swung it back to illuminate a spot near the right wall. From beneath some wreckage, three fingers were distended.
Chapter Thirty-One
Elizabeth
Asleep
He drew closer, quivering. The pile of dirt and cracked rock was too small to cover a body. He lowered the tip of his sword and moved some dirt aside, revealing more of a white, bloodless forearm, the veins in it an unnatural aqua. He couldn’t uncover the entire thing. His gorge rose in his throat as he looked at it; he reeled around, his breathing rough.
“Oh, Lor’,” Sherwin whispered. His face had turned green and his mouth was stretched, as if he were fighting back tears.
Feeling his way with his toes, Rafen moved further down the main hall. Where was the rest of the queen then? The arm was fixed in his mind; he had seen the ring on it, an easily recognizable silver one with a large ruby in the center. It was odd that there had been no blood.
The walls further on were also damaged and splattered with old blood in places. However, there were no bodies. Rafen wanted to scream out for the Selsons, but the lump in his throat was impossible to get past.
He halted again, his sword up as the finger of light crossed a still figure two feet ahead of him. Elizabeth lay curled up, her dress spread flat and unruffled on the ground beneath her, as if she had been blasted there. One arm was at a strange angle beneath her back, and the other was flung out limply to her left, her curly black hair partially covering her face. Her eyes were still open, though with no light or depth beyond them. In blackened blood, the Lashki’s large rune was painted across the torso of her dress and marked on her smooth, stiff forehead. One leg, which was curled beneath her body, had left a dark puddle under her dress, staining some of the material.
It was so unnatural, so impossible, that it must have been a dream. She looked like a picture, like a sculpture frozen in time. The only thing that told Rafen it was undeniably real was the smell of decay.
He dropped his sword, and it fell diagonally before the body as he collapsed to his knees. Of its own accord, his left hand reached out for her face, trembling uncontrollably. It made contact with the cold skin, and everything in him reviled. It was too smooth, too eel-like. He pressed forward until he was touching her forehead with his entire palm, and everything briefly blurred. The blood on her forehead was rough now, like a scab. He could have flaked it off with his fingernail if he’d wanted to. He was stupidly afraid it would be painful to her. He shuffled forward on his knees, wrapping his right arm around her shoulders and pulling her toward him. Her head flopped sideways, her eyes still glazed, staring without expression at something unseen. With an animal sob, he buried his face in her chest, allowing the smell of death to fill his senses as he wept. The fingers of his right hand dug into her back.
It was so still and so silent. He realized that after he stopped. He could have been in a grave now. There was certainly no need for burial here. He could wait with her forever, until he too rotted. He was surprised the rats hadn’t gotten her. Yet he would wait here until the end of the world, fending any rodents away.
He raised his head and
said to Sherwin, whom he could feel standing silently behind him, “We have to take her to a side room. Nobody else must see her.”
“Okay,” Sherwin said hoarsely.
Rafen removed his other hand from her brow and slipped it under her, shifting to a squatting position. Sherwin stooped next to him, hands outstretched.
“No!” Rafen shouted. “I will carry her. Alone.”
“But yer said…” Sherwin began, in tears. Rafen strained and raised her from the ground slowly. “Oh, I see then.”
Her head was lolling impossibly; he could feel where the upper spine had snapped. He shifted his left arm hurriedly so it supported the head.
He staggered forward, his sword still lying on the ground and gleaming with kesmal. Sherwin retrieved it, and the light blinked blue for a minute. Rafen froze, but when it assumed the usual orange, he moved forward cautiously.
“’ere,” Sherwin whispered.
He had stepped sideways and was motioning toward a black doorway to their left. Rafen staggered through it into the darkness of the little round room beyond. Sherwin entered behind him, swinging around the lit blade so they could see everything. The room was empty except for a broken pottery bowl and a low-slung bed against the wall, one King Robert had occasionally used. Rafen lowered Elizabeth onto it, trying to cause as little disturbance to her limbs as possible. One arm slipped over the edge of the bed, the hand partially open. He straightened her legs, feeling numbly the cracked blood on the upper right thigh. Gently, he crossed her arms over the Lashki’s rune on her torso; and he turned her head so that she stared at the unseen ceiling – or at Zion, as Rafen imagined. But no, it couldn’t be Zion; her eyes were as blank as those of a dead rabbit’s. He smoothed her hair around her face, and some over her forehead, hiding the blood mark there. With an open hand, he placed his fifth finger and thumb on either eyelid and closed them gently. A shudder ran down his back. Lastly, he moved his hands over her dress, erasing the wrinkles. She was well preserved for someone who had been dead over two weeks, because of the kesmal that constantly hung in the air of the Hideout. Or perhaps some lingering remnant of herself remained…
Servant of the King (The Fledgling Account Book 3) Page 27