Tracing the Shadow

by Sarah Ash

  “Interesting,” he said. “See these marks?”

  Jagu hesitated, then forced himself to take a look. This body was that of an older man, bearded, teeth showing beneath lips curled back in a slight rictus. In the morning light he could make out the pattern of a tiny intricate tattoo on the forehead.

  “Where have you seen this before, Kilian?” he asked. Even though he could still taste the bile at the back of his throat, he made himself look again to be sure. “Don’t you recognize it?”

  “The magus’s mark.”

  Kilian proceeded to check the other two corpses. Jagu hung back, knowing that one was the young man he had killed. “Look at the face of your enemy,” Kilian insisted. “Ask yourself honestly: Would you rather be lying there in his place?”

  Jagu said nothing. He was impressed by Kilian’s utter lack of squeamishness. But then, Kilian had seen action before.

  “There’s another tribe mark here, on the right hand, see? On the index finger, leading to the wrist. Delicate work, like lace.” Kilian let go of the dead hand and replaced the blanket.

  “Who were these men? And why did they attack us? What is their grudge?” Jagu burst out. “And why are they prepared to die?”

  A raw scream rasped out across the courtyard; Jagu flinched.

  “It sounds as if Commander Konan is interrogating a prisoner right now.”

  The garrison commander was a seasoned Guerrier with many desert campaigns under his belt. Broad-shouldered as a bear, with a growling voice to match, Konan had served under Ruaud de Lanvaux, although Jagu had seen little of the captain’s inspiring qualities in his successor.

  “Guerrier Guyomard and Cadet de Rustéphan reporting on the enemy dead, Commander,” said Kilian, obliged to salute with his left hand. “These raiders were not Scorpions. They all bear the same tattoo or tribe mark on their foreheads and right hand.”

  “I thought they’d all been exterminated when we took the citadel.”

  “You know who they are, Commander?” Kilian said.

  “The ‘A’ was the badge adopted by the warriors of Azilis who protected this Shrine. It was also the emblem of the magi of Ondhessar.”

  Jagu and Kilian exchanged a look.

  “You acquitted yourself well last night, young Rustéphan,” continued Konan. “You’ll be favorably mentioned in dispatches. I trust you’ve cleaned your saber blade thoroughly and checked that your pistols are in good working order?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “They’ll be back; no doubt of it.”

  “Are we going to negotiate with them over the return of the bodies?” asked Jagu.

  “Barter with the enemy?” Commander Konan let out a scornful grunt. “When you’ve been here a few months, you’ll learn that there’s no point bartering with these heathens. The sword and the musket is the only language they understand. And if you want further proof…” He beckoned them into the next room.

  An Enhirran warrior was shackled to the wall, sagging in his chains.

  “We’ve got nothing out of the prisoner so far.” Commander Konan was perspiring profusely; he peeled off his jacket, revealing a sweat-soaked shirt beneath. “Who sent you?” he demanded. “Who is your master?”

  The prisoner said nothing. The Commander picked up his horsewhip and thrust it beneath the man’s chin, forcing his drooping head up.

  “Answer me.”

  When the prisoner still said nothing, Konan pressed the whip stock against his windpipe until, from the horrible gargling that ensued, it sounded as if he was slowly choking to death.

  Jagu stared at the dirt floor, sickened. Was there no other way to gain information? No wonder the Commanderie were hated and feared.

  And then to his surprise, the prisoner began to speak, pouring out a stream of embittered, impassioned defiance.

  “One day we shall take back what is rightfully ours. And that day will come soon. You have no right to be here. This place is holy. Sacred. Your presence is sacrilege—”

  “Are you working for the magi?” Konan pressed harder. “Who are you?”

  Jagu saw sweat glistening like water on the prisoner’s agonized face. “Who are we? We are your worst nightmare, Francian. We are the death that strikes silently in the darkness.”

  Outside, Jagu drew a bucket of water from the citadel well.

  “Is it Commanderie policy to treat prisoners so brutally?”

  “You always did ask awkward questions, Jagu.” Kilian took a gulp of well water, then passed the scoop to Jagu. “Damn it, this scratch burns like hell. God help me if the blade was poisoned.”

  “But how are we ever to establish better relations with the Enhirrans if we torture and mutilate our prisoners?” He lifted the scoop from the bucket and drank, letting the last of the cool water from deep below ground trickle over his face.

  “You’re too soft. D’you think they’d treat us any differently?”

  It began as a distant whispering, borne on the dry wind off the desert sands. At first Jagu thought he must have fallen asleep at his post and that the whispering came from the confusion of his dreams. But gazing out across the desert, he saw a smoky blur drifting across the red sand dunes, like mist. He rubbed his eyes. The whispering went on, in a tongue he could not understand, menacing, setting off strange chills in his body in spite of the heat of midday.

  “Is anyone there?” Jagu gazed all around, shading his eyes with his hand. The sun was high overhead, its merciless light beating down on the back of his neck. All his senses were warning him that something was wrong. He gazed along the ramparts to the next guard post and saw through the slow-creeping haze that the Guerrier on watch had slid down to his knees. In the courtyard below Jagu spotted another lying slumped on the ground.

  “What’s wrong with me? Is it sunstroke?” Confused, he turned toward the tower door, willing himself to walk forward, but his musket fell from his nerveless fingers. This isn’t sunstroke.

  The next moment, he dropped to his knees. He began to crawl. At the back of his mind was a single thought: Warn the others.

  The whispering was growing more insistent, more sibilant. The tower archway loomed, dark as a pit of hell. The stones inside were cold and rough out of the sun’s furnace glare, and Jagu clung to each one as he made his way slowly, painfully down, step by step. The whisper-voices echoed in the tower’s vault, tainted with hatred. Shadows clustered closer, twisting into ghoulish forms, hideously deformed.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the blinding sunlight seared his eyes like a wash of bright fire. He collapsed onto the dusty cobbles. Disoriented, he gazed around through blurred eyes. Another Guerrier lay doubled-up a few feet away.

  Must…warn the Commander… Yet the short distance across the courtyard to the Commander’s office seemed impossibly far.

  He began to crawl again, pulling himself forward on his elbows, dragging his legs, which felt as if they were weighted with lead. Dust clogged his mouth and dried his tongue as he gasped for breath.

  “Cadet! Get up!”

  Jagu stared at a pair of leather boots that had appeared in front him. Commander Konan. He tried to speak but all that came out of his mouth was an incoherent groan.

  “What in Sergius’s name is the matter with you all?” The deep, growling voice seemed to come from very far away. “Are you ill? Is it sand fever?”

  “No, Commander,” said an unfamiliar voice. “It’s poison.”

  Poison? The very word filled Jagu with a paralyzing black dread. Am I going to die? It seemed doubly unjust to have escaped death in the raid the night before, only to die ignominiously from such an underhanded trick.

  “And who the devil are you?” demanded Konan. “How did you get in?”

  “My name is Aqil; I am the Arkhan’s envoy.” He spoke the common tongue smoothly, with just the slightest foreign inflection. “And if you want to save your men’s lives, I’d advise you to lower your weapon and listen to what I have to say.”

  Jagu tried to ra
ise his head from the dusty cobbles to see his enemy’s face; he could just make out a tall figure dressed in indigo robes, standing in the shadowy archway. The folds of his burnous obscured his features, but Jagu could see the gleam of his eyes. “While our warrior brothers were keeping you distracted last night, we introduced a slow-acting poison into your well. Your men have already begun to experience the first symptoms: blurring of the vision, a creeping coldness that moves slowly from the fingers and toes through the limbs, up toward the heart.”

  Poison.

  “I feel fine!” said Konan in stubborn denial.

  “But take a look at your Guerriers. First paralysis sets in. Then the poison will reach their hearts, and they will die.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Am I? Can you afford to take the risk? In a few hours you will be the only Francian still alive in Ondhessar, surrounded by a detachment of stiffening corpses. Accede to our terms, and I will give you the antidote. But don’t hesitate for too long. Soon your men will be beyond my aid.”

  “I will not give in to blackmail.”

  “Are you, perhaps, the only one not to have drunk from the well, Commander? My spies tell me that you prefer ale or wine.”

  In spite of the blazing sun overhead, Jagu felt as if liquid ice had begun to flow through his veins. Poison…such an ignominious death for a soldier. Through the whispering of his chilling blood, he caught the faint strains of a familiar melody. He struggled to cling to each elusive note, as if it were a lifeline.

  I’m not ready to die.

  “Your terms, Envoy.” Konan spoke gruffly, as though barely controlling his feelings.

  “You will return to us the bodies of our dead warriors. And you will surrender the fort. This land is rightfully ours. It belongs to Enhirre.”

  “Surrender?” repeated Konan. “Surrender the Shrine?”

  The melody took words to itself, and the clear remembered timbre of a familiar voice. “Spring moon sheds its silver light…”

  “Celestine,” Jagu whispered.

  Blue eyes, pure as a spring morning sky…She had chided him for playing without feeling and he had angrily rejected her criticism. But in his heart he had known that she had been right. Until the Maistre brought them together, he had been playing solely from his intellect, ignoring the sensual, expressive qualities that such a song demanded. And she had awoken all those feelings within him, bringing new color and life to his playing.

  And what had he done? He had run away, never daring to tell her how he felt. And now he lay here dying, with such regret and longing welling up within him that he had been such a coward. “Celestine…” Jagu was drowning in the icy waves of a shadow-black sea. A single pearl of light gleamed far above him. Spring moon. He tried to reach for it, his fingers straining against the current. Liquid flowed into his mouth, acrid and foul-tasting; he coughed, heaving and flailing as he tried to expel the seawater from his lungs. He blinked the darkness from his eyes and found himself gazing up into the face of a stranger.

  “Who—are you?” he gasped.

  The stranger, who had been supporting his head, slowly withdrew his hand and reached for Jagu’s right hand to check his pulse.

  Jagu felt a sudden searing sensation as the stranger’s fingers encircled his wrist. At the same moment, the stranger looked down. He murmured something under his breath and drew his hand swiftly away, as if he had burned his fingers. Jagu examined his wrist. The magus’s mark glowed, raw as a brand, against his pale skin. When he raised his head, the Enhirran was walking swiftly away. Was the envoy a magus too? Jagu strove to speak, to call out after him, but no words would come, only a protracted groan.

  “By Mhir’s blood, I have such a headache. My skull is going to split apart.”

  Jagu saw Kilian sitting on a straw pallet close by, clasping his forehead in his hands.

  “K—Kilian?” Jagu managed to pronounce his name, although his tongue felt swollen and slow. Kilian rose to his feet and staggered toward him, wobbling like a newborn foal.

  “So what dreams did their accursed poison give you?” Kilian slumped down beside him. “And who is she?”

  “She?” Jagu felt the first ominous pounding in his temples. “What do you mean?”

  “Celestine. You called her name as the antidote was working on you. Thought you were gone for good…and then you muttered that name. God, this is like the worst hangover ever. And without the fun of getting blind drunk before.”

  If Jagu had not felt so weak, he would have cursed aloud. Kilian would hound him mercilessly until he told him all about Celestine.

  “Now I come to think of it, wasn’t there that pretty blonde waving to you from the quay when we left Lutèce? I know you haven’t got a sister, Jagu. What in hell made you sign a vow of celibacy with such a beautiful girl waiting for you back in Francia?”

  Jagu closed his eyes. He didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want to think about it. Thinking hurt too much. The headache raged at full blast through his skull, black and violent orange, like a desert thunderstorm.

  He caught snatches of the negotiations between Commander Konan and the Arkhan’s envoy.

  “Your men will feel debilitated for several days, as if they are recovering from a fever. But they are out of danger.”

  “I have a garrison of invalids and you expect me to march them out into the desert?” blustered Konan.

  “Are you in any position to object? We made a deal, Commander.”

  “I can’t believe that we’ve surrendered.” Kilian and Jagu were loading a cart with munitions. Beside them, other Guerriers were packing provisions. Every man moved slowly, with the dragging gait of the convalescent. Jagu wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand; in spite of the furnace heat of the dazzling sun, he was still shivering with fever chills. Glancing around, he saw that the others were suffering too; every man had a gaunt look, with grey-brown bruising under their eyes and flaking, dried lips. “This is shameful. Humiliating.”

  “Is there nothing we can do?” Jagu stopped for breath; even the simple task of lifting a crate of muskets had depleted his strength.

  “Captain de Lanvaux fought so hard to take Ondhessar. So many Guerriers gave their lives for the cause here.” Jagu had not seen Kilian so grim-faced since Paol’s death.

  “You’re saying we should stay and fight?”

  “Damn it all, Jagu, even I know when the odds are against us.”

  Commander Konan’s detachment began to wend its slow way across the sand dunes up into the foothills of Djihan-Djihar: some on horseback, others driving the wagons. Kilian had been deputed to bring up the rear, while Konan and his lieutenants led the column; Jagu found himself riding alongside another recent recruit, Viaud, a city boy from Lutèce who kept glancing around nervously.

  “The Commander said they might attack at any time.”

  Jagu looked back; the red-stone fort loomed starkly against the sands, black in the sun’s shadow.

  “They promised us safe passage.”

  “And you believe them?” Viaud gave him a wry look. “They poisoned our water! Now we’re so weak, they could easily pick us off, one at a time.”

  “And they could have withheld the antidote. Maybe they didn’t want the bother of disposing of so many corpses.” Jagu could be wry, too.

  “Out here, the vultures will make swift work of us—” Viaud stopped. “What’s that? Is it thunder?”

  Jagu shaded his eyes, surveying the clear air rippling over the far horizon. “Not a sandstorm, surely.”

  “Your ears are keener than mine, musician.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s drawing nearer.”

  A contingent of mounted men came riding over the foothills, following a standard rider bearing a banner.

  “What did I tell you?” muttered Viaud. “We’re dead meat.”

  “Stand firm!” bellowed Commander Konan. Jagu’s right hand crept to his holster, feeling for his pistol; with his left, he kept a tight ho
ld of the reins. His horse, sensing his master’s apprehension, pawed the rocky path with one hoof. All about him, the Guerriers drew weapons, tensely waiting for their commander’s next order. Jagu bit his lip. Was this the final confrontation? Was this where they would make their last stand against the Enhirrans? If only he could make out the colors on the banner, he would know for sure…

  The standard-bearer came nearer. The emblem on the banner, fluttering in the hot wind, became visible.

  “The Rosecoeurs!” Konan yelled. “Reinforcements!”

  Jagu looked blankly at Viaud. The sound of hooves had increased from a low rumble to a clatter on the rock-strewn track.

  “If it’s the sign of the Rosecoeur, it must be the Allegondans,” said Viaud, in puzzled tones. “But what are they doing out here, so far south?”

  “Did the Commander send a message through to them?” Jagu pulled up his scarf to protect nostrils and mouth from the rising dust cloud scuffed up by the newcomers’ horses.

  The standard-bearer slowed his pace and the officer at the front of the column raised his hand to bring the cavalrymen to a stop. The banner was stitched with the crimson emblem of a heart pierced with a twisted branch; a single drop of blood hung from the last thorn. Jagu knew of the Allegondan Commanderie but had never encountered any of their number before. The Allegondans did not venerate Saint Sergius; they revered Mhir, who had died a martyr’s death in their capital city of Bel’Esstar.

  “Who the hell are you?” demanded Konan, riding up to the officer.

  “Captain nel Ghislain,” announced the officer, saluting Commander Konan smartly. “With reinforcements.”

  “You’re too damned late. The Enhirrans have taken Ondhessar. They poisoned the wells. My men are too weak to fight.”

  Jagu saw Captain nel Ghislain cast a swift, scornful look over the ailing Francian detachment. “No matter!” He gave Konan a confident smile. “My men are in fine form. We’ll take the citadel back in the name of the Commanderie.”

  CHAPTER 26