by R. J. Larson
As they approached the destroyers, Scythe whickered deep, plaintive vocalizations of distress. “I’m hurrying.” Kien tore off his outer garments, lashing his military gear onto the war collar, then swiftly draping himself with plain non-military attire. When he lifted Scythe’s chain-leash and fastened it to the war collar, Scythe trembled with the unspoken indication that they were about to leave the Agocii camp. Grabbing his agitated destroyer’s reins, Kien said, “Commander Thel, with your permission, I’m going to search for Ela. Off duty. Will you tell the king and the prime minister?”
“You don’t need my permission. But you’re going alone?”
“Yes. I’ll have Scythe,” Kien pointed out.
Selwin stepped up now, his face unreadable. Glancing from Kien to Jon, he asked, “Permission to speak, sir?” At Jon’s nod, the subordinate-commander addressed Kien, each syllable so sharply clipped that Kien had no trouble reading condemnation in the man’s words. “Sir, the city is not secured. Siphran orders, which might be considered reprehensible in the Tracelands, are still in effect. It is advisable for all Tracelanders to remain outside the city.”
Selwin’s warning verged on a threat. Kien stared. This man would report his actions. Before Kien could snarl a reply, Jon said, “Your point is taken, Selwin. But Judge Lantec is entering the city, off duty, to locate a friend who might be in danger.”
“Thank you, Selwin, for your concern.” Kien turned away and mounted Scythe. The destroyer quivered, a gigantic heap of monster-anxiety. Kien shoved his feet into the collar rungs. “Go—no trampling anyone!”
Scythe bolted for Parne, gusting irritated breaths of warning, as he cut around Siphrans, Tracelanders, and Istgardians too slow to flee from his path. Kien yelled, “Clear the way! Move!”
Just as Scythe neared the breach in Parne’s wall, Kien saw a horseman charge toward them. “Bryce!” Reluctantly, Kien reined in the agitated Scythe. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you, sir.” Even as Kien started to send him away, Bryce said, “I’m a free Siphran, and I believe you might need my help. Lead and I’ll follow.”
From this vantage point, Kien heard screams lifting above the breach. Smoke billowed high and thick beyond the rubble. Had the Parnians decided to set fire to their city? Kien argued, “You could die in there!”
Bryce smiled. “I could just as easily die at home, my lord. Lead on. You won’t change my mind.”
“I am not your lord!”
Bryce waited in silent disagreement.
Scythe exhaled a tormented destroyer complaint, so distressed that Kien couldn’t ignore it. Ela was surely dying. “Stay alive, Bryce!”
“You also, sir.”
Kien unsheathed his sword and turned Scythe into the rubble-strewn breach. “Go! Carefully—”
The destroyer thundered through debris. Splintering timbers. Sending stones flying. Confronting sheer mounds of rubble. Scythe scattered everything in his desperation to reach Ela. Looking behind him, Kien saw Bryce’s little horse doing its valiant best to keep up. But Bryce was forced to choose his path more carefully and eventually disappeared from sight amid the wreckage.
Kien hesitated and pulled Scythe to a walk, the decision clawing his thoughts like a live beast. He couldn’t leave Bryce behind. He’d lost servants before—friends, all—and it seemed he’d still not recovered from their deaths.
The instant Bryce rode out of the rubble, his sword readied, Kien goaded Scythe ahead. Infinite! Spare Ela, please. Protect her—
Spare no one who lifts any sort of weapon against you!
The reminder poured into Kien’s thoughts like burning oil, making him gasp. He could not afford a mistake here. Kill one innocent citizen by accident, and he’d be forever condemned in the Tracelands.
He saw the Parnians now. Wraithlike shells of mortals peering from windows and doorways, and over the edges of walls. Frail creatures with haunted dark eyes—some despairing, some furious.
To fend them off, Kien yelled down each street, “Parnians, obey your Creator! Go to the wall! Surrender and live! Put down your weapons!” Why did they stare at him so oddly? Didn’t they want to escape Parne? The streets stank of putrid flesh at every turn—so overwhelming that Kien was grateful he’d eaten nothing since dawn. Worse, some of the bodies looked . . . hacked. Had the Parnians resorted to cannibalism? Kien shuddered.
Bryce echoed his cry. “Put down your weapons! Go to the wall! Surrender and live!”
The tactic worked. Scythe rushed through the city as if he knew each turn within the twisting paved streets and courtyards. His wall-shaking hoofbeats caused the Parnians to retreat in panic. “Obey your Creator! Go to the wall! Surrender and live! Put down your weapons!” The Parnians who dared to remain seemed transfixed by Kien’s words.
Why?
By now, Scythe was thundering toward the highest point of the city—a magnificent building that could only be Parne’s temple. Kien glimpsed echoes of East Guard’s fallen temple in those glorious columns. Had East Guard’s temple looked like this—gilded and shining in the sunlight on Temple Hill? Drawing all eyes to itself?
Scythe charged through the open gate, scattering the few souls within the temple’s court. Kien yelled, “Obey the Infinite! Put down your weapons and go to the wall! Surrender and live!”
They gaped at him, but Scythe was already turning, charging along a stone street that led beyond the temple toward a maze of whitewashed homes, larger than most, built against Parne’s wall. Hooves thudding against pavings, the monster warhorse entered a stone courtyard, which was framed by ravaged gardens and decorative stone alcoves. But the destroyer paid no heed to the gardens’ remains. He circled a stone-rimmed well in the center of the courtyard and whickered in distress. Kien was about to turn and look for Bryce. Until he realized that Scythe had reached their goal.
She’s in the well? Oh, Infinite . . . no . . . not a well!
Sickened, Kien tugged Scythe’s mane. “Are you sure? She cannot be down there.”
The destroyer tightened his circle, then halted. Bending his huge dark head, Scythe nosed at the well’s wooden cover, shoved it partially aside, then leaned into the well and released a destroyer-cry. Just as he’d summoned Ela to the wall the last time they’d seen her.
“She’s in the well. . . .” Merely looking into that confining darkness brought Kien’s memories back in a nauseating rush. Swallowed alive. Trapped in darkness.
He descended the war-collar rungs, almost screaming at Parne’s citizens, “Why a well? Why not a prison? Why not a barred hole in the wall?”
Swallowing hard, Kien leaned over the encircling stone rim and yelled down into the musty blackness, “Ela?”
Did he hear a faint sound? A cry? Scythe bumped him, clearly distraught. Kien straightened and sucked in a deep, hopefully calming breath.
He was going down into a black, probably slimy pit. Let it be dry. It had to be dry. No need to panic. “Fine!” Fine. If he repeated the word often enough, perhaps it would be fine. Kien sheathed his sword, dragged the wooden cover completely away from the well, and reached for the ropes built into the windlass above. Were they strong enough to support him? And long enough to pull up Ela? Where was Bryce? He should have been here by now.
A scuffling on the nearby stones raised every hair on Kien’s head. As he whipped out his sword again and turned, Scythe verified the threat by rumbling a furious warning.
Kien watched a man approach—gaunt but not quite as scrawny as the wraiths in Parne’s lower streets. “Are you the owner of this well?”
“Leave!” the Parnian commanded, his voice resonant—the tone of authority. “You have no business here!”
“Indeed I do!” Kien snapped. “Parne’s prophet, Ela Roeh, is in that well, and I—”
To his horror, the man unsheathed a sword and charged him.
Scythe swung about, bent his big head in an arc, grabbed Kien’s assailant, and flung him away. Screaming but still alive.
; Spare no one who lifts any sort of weapon against you!
The words cut through Kien again, a warning this time. Kien called to Scythe, “Stop!”
The destroyer groaned, but halted. Azurnite blade glittering deep blue in the afternoon sunlight, Kien approached the Parnian. “Who are you? Why should it matter if I free your prophet?”
“She’s no prophet!” the man cried. “She’s a traitor, cursed by the Infinite!”
Cursed by the— Seething, Kien left the thought unfinished. He shifted the Azurnite sword and beckoned his enemy. “Stand. You’ll have to stop me from saving her.”
“My lord!” Bryce yelled from the courtyard’s edge.
His eyes still fixed on the hostile Parnian, Kien called, “I’m here, Bryce! Stay back.”
In Kien’s thoughts, Fightmaster Lorteus snarled from a past lesson, “Any foe, however weak, however wounded, can kill!”
Thank you, Lorteus. I haven’t forgotten.
Deliberately, Kien taunted his opponent with the truth. “I’m going to save her. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to kill me.”
The Parnian charged, sword lifted, clumsy and undisciplined as any civilian would be.
Kien braced himself and swung the Azurnite blade flat against the man’s sword to deflect it without breaking the blade.
Then, as ordered, he put the man to death, stabbing the Azurnite through his heart. The Parnian gasped and dropped like a stone.
Kien paused to be sure his opponent was truly dead. Military judge or not, the necessity sickened him. Yet there’d been no doubt this man was an enemy. Infinite, bless You for removing all uncertainty! Kien swiped his sword on the dead man’s robe, then turned away.
Bryce met him and muttered, “Parne’s priests are a savage lot. I had to kill two, sir. We’d best be alert for more.”
Priests? Kien stared back at the dead man’s bloodied elaborate blue and white robes. Had Parne’s priests turned against Ela? He hurried to the well. “She’s in there,” Kien told Bryce. “Scythe is sure of it, and I thought I heard her. But she might be unable to help us pull her out. I’m going down after her.”
Even as Kien spoke, Bryce hurried to his horse, planning aloud. “We’ll tie a cradle, sir, then I’ll keep watch while you go down.”
“A cradle?”
Bryce unfastened a leather-wrapped roll from his doughty little horse. “With Aeyrievale’s cliffs and chasms, all officials carry and use rope cradles.”
“My thanks to Aeyrievale,” Kien murmured. Blessing the Infinite for Bryce, he helped unroll mesh and ropes, following Bryce’s lead in tying knots.
Bryce tested the ropes and wound an end around the windlass, then hesitated, eyeing the mournful Scythe. “I presume your destroyer will cooperate? He’d speed matters.”
“He will gladly speed matters.” Kien seized the end of the rope and tied it to Scythe’s collar with quick, fierce knots. “Don’t eat this!”
Scythe made a pathetic noise of complaint and bumped Kien as if to hurry him all the more. At least the destroyer wasn’t prostrate with grief, signifying Ela’s death. Kien rushed Scythe to the edge of the courtyard, unfurling the rope and tightening it along the way. “Stop.”
As Scythe groaned, Kien ran back to the well. “How do I use the cradle?”
“Sit in it as a deep chair, my lord. We’ll lower you in. Tell us when your feet hit bottom.”
No water. Please. Kien sat on the well’s edge, wrapped within the mesh. “Scythe, walk!”
The mesh tightened about Kien and he was lifted off the stones with a sickening sway. “Stop!” Gripping the ropes, dangling in the cradle, Kien stared down into the well’s center. He could do this. He must. Shutting his eyes, he yelled, “Scythe, back—slow!”
Scythe’s “slow” pace dropped Kien with a rush. “Easy!” The descent eased. Kien opened his eyes in darkness and immediately needed to talk to himself. “This is not a monster. It’s a well. A dried well.” The cradle’s mesh wasn’t a sea-beast’s gullet, and he would not heave. . . .
At last, his booted feet hit soil at the well’s edge. “Stop!” Kien’s breath nearly halted with the word. The well’s decaying stench seemed to clot in his nostrils and lungs. “Ugh!”
“Sir?” Bryce called from above, “Are you injured?”
“No!” But he would be if he had to breathe again. Where was Ela? Cautious, trying to avoid shifting from the mesh cradle, Kien reached into the darkness, touching damp soil. Then fabric. Finally, matted hair. He followed the knotted strand’s length and touched a face. “Ela?”
Her skin was cold. Did he feel her breath against his hand? He couldn’t be sure. Kien scooped Ela into his arms and rocked backward into the mesh. She felt so frail. Impossibly light, though her mantle and robes were clumped with dirt. And . . . she stank. Horribly. “Infinite!”
Shuddering, Kien settled Ela’s limp body in his lap and held her close. A small sound escaped her. Not a word, nor even a cry. More like an exhalation. He mustn’t think that it was her last breath. “Scythe! Walk!”
Above him, the ropes tensed, then creaked. The mesh closed around him. Sea beast-like. And throughout the tortuous ascent, Ela remained lifeless in his arms. Kien prayed all the way up to the well’s mouth. At last, the early evening sun made him squint. Bryce grabbed the cradle. “Steady, sir. Swing your legs over here.”
Bryce lifted Ela from Kien’s arms and placed her on the ground. Kien freed himself from the mesh, knelt beside Ela, and stared, horrified, at the gashes on her scalp, the dried blood streaking her hollowed lifeless face. And her arms . . . He wouldn’t have dared to hold her if he’d seen them. Her hands and wrists were swollen and dark, while huge open wounds gaped over her upper arms, the flesh eaten away, exposing bare muscles. “Oh, Ela . . .” How could she live?
Bryce gulped audibly. And when he looked at Kien, his eyes reflected pity. Sympathy.
Scythe approached them now, groaning. Kneeling. Mourning.
Kien stood, fury lending him strength. Allowing him denial. “No!” He’d neither give nor receive futile condolences. Not when there was the least hope she’d survive. He cut the rope from Scythe, then untied his military cloak from the destroyer’s back. “Stop your groaning! We’re taking Ela to her parents. Now.”
36
How many tears had he swallowed on their journey back to camp? They hardly merited counting. Kien fought to harden himself against the grief. Against Scythe’s despairing moans. Against the concerned voices of comrades calling his name.
Nonetheless he must admit the truth. He’d lost everything.
Ela, wrapped in his black military cloak, never moved in his arms. If she breathed at all, he couldn’t feel it. Moreover, he’d found no pulse at her throat, and he was afraid to test her darkened, swollen wrists and hands. She’d known Parne would take her life. She’d warned him.
In my vision, I was entombed. Surrounded by the stench of death.
A silver-haired prophet has failed.
Biting his lip, blinking against fresh tears, Kien smoothed Ela’s dark tangled hair, then dared another look at her face. So serene. Beautiful beneath the dried trails of blood. What had she suffered? Brave little prophet. He whispered, “I love you!” Always.
He hoped he’d killed the Parnian who did this to her.
The Siphran encampment hushed as he approached on Scythe. Kien refused to look at anyone. Instead, he rode straight to his tent and commanded the destroyer quietly, “Kneel.”
Scythe, Ela’s cherished Pet, sank to the ground and heaved another groan. Balancing Ela in his arms, Kien cautiously slid off the destroyer’s big back and braced himself as Ela’s parents rushed to meet him.
Kalme Roeh was already crying. And Dan Roeh halted an arm’s length away, staring, as if too stunned by the sight of his daughter’s bloodied, lacerated scalp to take Ela from Kien.
Kneeling, Kien placed Ela on the ground with a tenderness she’d never feel. And he studied her, trying to memorize her face bef
ore the Roehs finally carried her away. They knelt with him.
Dan touched Ela’s throat now, obviously testing for a pulse. When he spoke, his voice sounded raw with pain. “What did they do to her?” He reached for the edges of the cloak. Kien moved to stop him, but Roeh was too quick—his expression fierce as he opened the cloak, despite the tears in his eyes.
Kalme screamed at the wounds, “Oh, Ela! Oh, my baby . . .”
Weeping, Dan Roeh released the cloak and held his wife, preventing her from clutching Ela. Inside the tent, Ela’s infant brother began to howl.
By now, Jon, Bryce, and Selwin were hovering next to Kien. Akabe knelt with him and grasped Kien’s shoulder, clearly speechless as he stared at Ela’s flayed arms and the dried rivulets of blood marking her face and throat. And other Parnians drew near, staring, aghast.
Unable to look at Ela’s injuries any longer, Kien reached for the edges of his cloak to fold them over her.
A blue-white flash appeared in Ela’s swollen right hand, taking the shape of a thin, iridescent, weathered vinewood staff. Ela’s insignia, the branch.
Ela’s fingers twitched, healing the instant she clasped the vinewood. Kien saw her gasp for air. The gaping wounds closed within that breath. And her eyelids flickered. He leaned forward. “Ela?”
Behind Kien, Scythe scrambled to stand, huffing.
She drew a breath. Alive. Why? Infinite, no! Hadn’t she suffered enough? Wasn’t her work finished? Tears seeped beneath her eyelids—real tears. And light glimmered through the edges of her lashes. Unfair! Her pain had ended. She didn’t want to endure more.
“Ela?”
Kien? Before she could turn—to see nothing but another hallucination, she was sure—a tickling, nuzzling warmth grazed softly over her face. A breathing, tickling, nuzzling warmth, with hints of slobber. Alarmed, Ela lifted a defensive hand. “Pet! No . . .”