by Sasha White
Surely that couldn’t be a coincidence?
“Does it matter?” she asked slowly, puzzling it out aloud. At Kord’s raised eyebrow, she continued. “Murdis wrote it himself—‘whatever path.’ Does it matter if it’s more or less circuitous, as long as it ends up in the right place?”
“But what is the right place?”
Kord’s question brought the answer into sudden, sharp focus for her, and she smiled brightly as the realization of what Murdis must have meant hit her. She pointed at the words on the page.
“Where we began.”
Kord looked at her askance.
“Our mother’s wombs?”
She chuckled.
“No, silly. All of the clues have led to books, and this one does, too.” She could tell from his expression that he wasn’t quite there yet, so she added, “Where does a book begin?”
“The first page? Where the story actually starts?”
Elin shook her head. “For the reader, yes. For the writer—for Murdis—it begins before that.” She picked up the stack of papers Kord had left face down on the desk and flipped it over, so that the title sheet was on top. Then she carefully peeled it off and set it aside to reveal what was underneath.
“With the dedication.”
###
Kord looked down at the page, wondering if she could be right. He had to admit, it was just the sort of twisted solution that would have amused Murdis back in Kord’s youth; the old man had always been trying to get him to think outside the usual patterns and approach problems from less obvious directions.
But when he read the short inscription, he couldn’t hold back a rush of disappointment. It was nothing but five lines of unpronounceable gibberish.
“That’s new,” Elin said, sounding surprised. “There was a dedication before, but it was written in Kichic, just like the rest of the manuscript—I’m sure of it. I can’t even read this. What language is it?”
“It isn’t a language. It’s nonsense. Just like this whole foolish endeavor.”
“No.” Elin shook her head, a look of determination on her face. “I don’t believe that. Every single clue has tied back to your past with Murdis somehow, almost as if he’s been taking you on a tour of your lives together. This must relate to you, too. We just have to figure out how.”
Kord sighed. She’d been right about everything else so far. He had to trust that she was right this time, as well.
What other alternative was there?
Kord examined the words more closely, trying to sound them out in his head, but they made no sense. It was like they were syllables not meant to be fashioned by human tongues…
His grin came fast and hard and held more than a touch of grudging respect.
Murdis always had been a cunning bastard, but this time he’d outdone himself.
“You’ve figured it out?”
“It’s the chant he used to extract the shards from me. Well,” he amended quickly at her look of disbelief, “not exactly the same, I don’t think. But it’s the same language. I’m sure of it.”
“So it’s a spell of some sort,” she said, her dark eyes thoughtful. Kord nodded. “But what does it do?”
He shrugged.
“Only one way to find out.” And before she could caution him against it, he lifted the dedication page and began reciting.
“Ahj-chah-quay sic-eej koy-oh-pah kee-ahb…” Even as he sounded out each syllable, Kord somehow knew they’d been phonetically rendered, and the letters he saw on the page bore no resemblance to how the words—if words they were—were actually spelled.
And as each alien sound passed his lips, one building on the other, he somehow knew, too, what the words meant:
“The Master summons the Hand of his Soul
From the Darkness behind the Earth.
Let it shine forth in Power;
A Scepter for him who has Wisdom to wield it,
A Noose for him who has not.”
As he uttered the final word, Kord’s right hand rose of its own accord, palm upward, fingers outstretched. There was a bright flash from out of nowhere that momentarily blinded him even as an intense heat seared across his upraised palm. Kord blinked furiously, trying to restore his vision as the fire in his hand dissipated, replaced by something cool and hard and pulsing with life.
The sight that greeted him when he could finally see again filled him with wonder.
A five-pronged crystal rested in his hand, each iridescent finger refracting the light from the study’s lone candle into a thousand vibrant rainbows. But even that dazzling display paled next to the fleeting radiance that shone from with the Hand itself, as though a guidestar had been plucked from the night sky, shrunk down, and encased in the most flawless of diamonds.
“The Hand of Uxlabal,” Elin breathed in awe beside him, reaching her own hand out as if to touch it, but pulling back at the last moment. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Seeing the dying light from the Hand playing off her eyes and hair, Kord was about to disagree, when suddenly a brash horn sounded from somewhere outside the scriptorium—three short blasts, followed by silence, and then repeated again.
Elin’s wide eyes met his over the now-quiescent Hand and Kord swore.
The scriptorium was under attack, and there was only one person who could be leading the assault.
Antrem.
###
Kord pinched out the candle and took Elin’s hand in the same instant. “My chamber,” he said. “Quickly.”
Her only response was a brief squeeze of his hand. Until this moment, he hadn’t been sure he could still navigate the building in absolute darkness, but now he knew he had not lost that ability. He took seven steps, reached out, and felt the cool stone of the doorway arch with the knuckles of the hand holding Murdis’s prize. In the hall, he turned right, away from the main entrance.
Sounds of battle filtered in and Kord increased his pace, moving with the same assuredness that he would have in full light. With Elin padding along beside him, he made one more turn, left this time, brushing the corner with his free hand to confirm what he already knew. Nine more paces brought them to his door. He worked the handle and pushed Elin in ahead of him. A lantern glowed from a table near his sleeping mat.
“Why are we here?” she asked.
“To hide the thing. And my sword is here.”
“Just one?”
“One usually suffices.”
“Hide it well, then.” Elin spun on her heel and left the room. Kord wondered if he had said something wrong. He had no time to fret about it, though; the Hand needed to be concealed, and the sounds of combat grew ever closer.
He studied the chamber. The room contained his sleeping mat, a low table with a pillow beside it and the lantern on top, and a basin and pitcher of water for bathing. His clothing was folded in a neat pile, next to his sword and dagger. High on the wall opposite the doorway was a barred window. He could set the Hand back on the ledge, between the bars—but he would have to put it there by feel, reaching well above his head, and the slightest miscalculation could mean dropping it outside the building.
Finally, he dropped it into the pitcher of water, instead. Light from the lantern barely penetrated the bottom half, and the crystal object nearly disappeared inside.
It would have to do. Kord strapped on his belt and drew his sword from its scabbard. The grip had been fashioned to resemble intertwined serpents, and although long use had smoothed their scales somewhat, they remained prominent enough to make his grasp all the surer. The serpents’ heads formed the pommel, their mouths open and touching as if biting each other. A leather thong was looped around the guard and grip, and Kord wrapped it twice around his right wrist, to ensure that the sword would never be out of reach. Then he extinguished the lantern and stepped into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him.
As he headed toward the scriptorium’s entrance, he wondered where Elin had gone to hide, and when he m
ight see her again.
Kord had just passed the door to Murdis’s suite—here, lanterns blazed in their wall sconces—when the guard named Beril stumbled around the corner toward him. Beril ran a hand along the wall to steady himself, and left a bloody trail there. He saw Kord ahead of him, looked up with frightened eyes, and opened his mouth to speak. Blood, not words, was all he could spit out, and when he pitched forward onto his round belly, Kord saw two arrows in his back, both snapped off but buried deep.
If Antrem’s soldiers were already inside, it would be a hard fight in narrow spaces. Holding the entrance was the only guarantee of victory. The thick stone walls and small, high, barred windows were virtually impenetrable, at least without a lengthy siege. And siege engines were something Antrem didn’t possess, and couldn’t have brought through the swamps even if he did.
Kord sidestepped around the fallen guard and was about to round the last corner before the entrance when he heard Elin’s voice. “That’s all? A sword and a belt?”
He stopped. She had emerged from a door behind him, next to Murdis’s. Though he shouldn’t have been, Kord was momentarily surprised to see that she had donned a heavy leather tunic with iron rings worked through it, and leather bands encircled her forearms and upper arms, thighs, and ankles. A round shield with a pantheress’s head painted on it was strapped to her left arm, and that fist held a short spear. In her right was a sword, fully as long as Kord’s, though with a narrower blade. It shone in the lantern-light, but nicks along its length proved that it was not new, only well cared for.
“I was in a hurry,” Kord said, leaving out the fact that he had no armor of any kind. He’d left it back at Antrem’s camp, explaining to Antrem’s men that he wanted to be able to move freely underwater when the ambush was sprung. Others had followed his lead, no doubt to the delight of the alligators.
“As was I,” Elin said. “But not to reach the nine hells.”
The interruption likely saved Kord’s life. Instead of running headlong around the corner, he approached cautiously and peered toward the entranceway. Four of Murdis’s guards fought there still, but two were down—and Beril, so that made three. A woman named Aranth, who’d been introduced to Kord as one of the resident scholars, fought alongside them. As Kord watched from the corner, a long dart struck her in the throat. Her knife fell from her hand and she took two steps back before crumpling to the floor.
The guards went next, as spears and arrows and an axe struck them down. Kord held an arm out, trying to block Elin from moving around the corner. She pushed against it enough to see the guards fall. “Back!” he whispered. “We have to protect Murdis. The building’s breached.”
“He’s dead anyway,” she countered. “Or will be, soon enough. The Hand’s the thing. He’d want us to save it, save ourselves. So let’s take it and go.”
“There’s no other way out, but into Antrem’s waiting arms.”
She eyed Kord, surprise written on her visage. “Are you sure you lived here as a boy? I’d have thought any boy would have found the other exit.”
“There’s another exit?”
With her hands full, Elin couldn’t take his, though she clearly wanted to. Instead, she nudged him with the spear. “The Hand,” she said.
He went with her, back down the hall toward his chamber. “It’s hidden.”
“Murdis’s guards are done. There’s no one left inside but us, a few ancient servants, and scholars who’re doubtless cowering under their beds and praying to gods they’re too sophisticated to believe in. Unless you think you and I can stop all of Antrem’s soldiers—”
“There might not be many left, after the alligators fed.”
“I wasn’t serious! We get the Hand and get out, or we die here and Antrem takes it, after all.”
When Kord’s hand touched the door handle again, he heard the rush of soldiers through the entryway. They shouted in triumph, and challenge, as if the battle were already done and they the victors.
If Elin was right—and he’d no reason to think otherwise—they were, or nearly so.
He pushed inside, crossed to the pitcher, and plunged his hand in.
It was gone.
Kord pawed at the water, panic rising in him, but then he felt it, small and solid, and breathed a sigh of relief.
“You have it?”
He closed his fist over it. “Aye.”
“Have you a pouch to carry it safely? If not, I do.”
You’d like that, he thought. For me to hand it over for “safekeeping.” But he had a coin-purse, dangling from his belt. Empty, since he’d deserted Antrem’s squad before being paid. “I have one,” he said. He pushed a finger inside to widen the opening and dropped in the Hand, wiggling it to make it fit, then drawing the purse closed again. “There. Where’s this other exit?”
“In the main library,” Elin said. “One of the bookcases swivels out. It conceals the opening to a passageway that runs the width of the building. On the outside, the door looks just like four stones, at the corner. You’d have to know it’s there to see it, and even then it’s not obvious.”
“So if Antrem hasn’t surrounded the building, we might yet escape.”
“If we hurry.”
He gave the purse a last tug, to satisfy himself that the Hand was secure. “Lead the way.”
Loud voices and the heavy footfalls of armed soldiers echoed through the corridors. The scriptorium was a warren, with several paths leading to almost any destination. Elin and Kord tried the most direct route, but spotted Antrem’s men hurrying through an intersection ahead. They took cover in the recess of a darkened doorway until the soldiers were gone, and tried a more circuitous path. Kord almost laughed out loud when he made the mental connection to Murdis’s book, but he bit it back.
It grew impossible to tell where Antrem’s soldiers were and were not, given the echoes and the shouting, the crashing of furniture being upended and the shrill screams of scholars torn from their rooms. From the sound of it, interrogations were swift and brutal and ended, often as not, with a body hitting the floor.
As Kord and Elin made for the library, a pair of soldiers, apparently having finished searching a guest’s room, emerged from a doorway just ahead of them. Blood glistened on their tunics and ran from the blade of the first man’s sword.
Seeing Kord and Elin running toward them, that man planted his feet wide, blocking much of the corridor, and braced for battle. The other followed him out the door and took up a position a couple of steps behind. Elin, a pace ahead of Kord, threw herself to the floor at the last moment, sliding feet-first into the man in front. She crashed into his left ankle as he tried to swing his weapon down toward her, but the impact threw off his aim and the blow slid harmlessly off her shield. He fell as his ankle was knocked out from beneath him, and Elin drove her blade up into his sternum. She skidded past him as he tumbled over her.
Kord barely dodged the falling man by bouncing off the wall. He maintained his speed, and when the second soldier thrust a spear at him, trying to shout an alarm at the same instant, Kord sidestepped it and caught the man’s wrist. He planted his feet then, yanking the soldier forward and onto the point of his blade. The sword cut through the soldier’s padded vest and sank deep. By the time Kord withdrew it, splashing blood onto the hallway’s smooth stone floor, the soldier’s mouth was open and his eyes rolled back in his head. Kord cuffed him for good measure, and the man fell in the pool of blood he’d already spilled.
A glance at Elin confirmed that she was unhurt. She gave a brisk nod and they continued to the library. Before they entered, they could hear the sound of books being dashed to the floor, handfuls at a time.
The noise broke Kord’s heart and enraged him at the same time.
Inside, one man held a torch high while two others tore books from the shelves, checked them quickly for hidden compartments, and tossed them into a growing pile. One of the men was Bragga.
Bragga paused with a book in his hands and gave
Kord a cruel, gap-toothed grin. “I was hoping I would be the one to kill you,” he said. He let the covers of the book dangle, holding it only by some of the pages, and gave a ferocious jerk. Pages ripped from the spine as the rest of the volume fell onto the pile, and Bragga let the pages drift down atop it.
“I could say the same,” Kord replied. “About you.”
The man with the torch held an axe in his other hand. Bragga and his companion both whisked swords from their scabbards. A reading table, some straight-backed wooden chairs, and the mound of books separated the combatants. “You can have both the others if you want, Elin,” Kord said. “But Bragga’s mine.”
“You’re too kind.”
“You’ve earned it.” He let his shoulder glance against hers, simply for the pleasure of the touch, then started toward the far side of the table. Bragga moved that way as well, though it meant crossing in front of his fellow soldier. Elin went left. When Bragga’s gaze shifted toward her for an instant, as his bulk blocked the other swordsman, Kord swept up one of the chairs with his left hand and hurled it at Antrem’s Second. Bragga raised an arm to deflect it, sending it crashing into the other man.
Kord and Elin both attacked at that moment, Panther and Pantheress moving as one.
Kord sprang onto the table and off it again, soaring over the discarded books. Bragga tried to bring his sword up, but he had not anticipated the sudden change of direction, and as he swiveled to meet the charge, his foot landed on some of the pages he’d just dropped. The papers slid beneath him. When he threw his left arm out for balance, it struck the other swordsman. Kord, airborne, slammed into Bragga, driving him against the other man, and both of them into the bookshelves.
As he was falling atop Bragga, he glimpsed Elin slipping around the table the other way. The soldier with the torch had raised his axe to ward her off, but clumsily, with one hand. He seemed unsure of what to do with his torch. Elin took advantage of his confusion and feinted toward his right side. He swung the axe that way, to parry her blade, but she corrected and thrust at the center of his chest. He brought both arms in, with torch and axe, but too late to block her attack. The point bit deep. She drew it out again and followed it with a second thrust, lower in the man’s gut, to make doubly sure.