The Seven-Petaled Shield

by Deborah J. Ross

  People are watching. People are remembering.

  “That’s the new Temple of Justice,” Danar said, pointing. “It was built in my grandfather’s time.” He indicated a broad white stone building decorated with friezes depicting historical events, or so Zevaron assumed. Even ignorant of the niceties of Gelonian art, he recognized the artist’s skill.

  “Inside, it’s even more impressive,” Danar said. “The central atrium is three stories tall, most of it taken up by a gilded statue of Ir-Pilant, under whose auspices all legal proceedings take place. My old tutor used to take me through these buildings and lecture me on their architecture. I’ll show you another time, if we have a chance.”

  “We’re not going there now?”

  Danar shook his head. “There are no dungeons there, so they use the cells beneath the Old Temple. My grandfather believed that if Ir-Pilant—his own personal god, by the way—were pleased with the temple, there would be such perfect justice, there would be no need for prisons.”

  The stone of the Old Temple might originally have been a deep orange, but over time had weathered and darkened in streaks. The walls looked to Zevaron as if the skies themselves had bled over them. The entrance was lightly guarded, but as they passed into the dim, slightly dank interior, they were closely watched. Zevaron tried to look stern and stupid as Danar went through a series of brief meetings with one official or another. He could not follow the convoluted legal justification for the visit and was grateful it did not seem to daunt Danar.

  In the wake of a senior official, they passed along a windowless corridor, gated at both ends. Zevaron’s task was to hold the torch that was their sole light. He grimaced as the barred iron door clanged shut behind them. As they descended the rough cut stone stairs, the temperature fell. The air turned clammy.

  “My tutor said these passages were originally mining tunnels,” Danar said to the official. “They provided the stone for the foundation of Aidon.”

  “Yes, indeed,” the official replied, “for I once saw an old map that showed the system extending to the edge of the city in the time of our fathers’ fathers. Only a small area, here beneath the temple, is presently used.”

  They came to a landing and another barred gate. From there, the stairs descended into a well of blackness and stagnant air. Zevaron did not want to think what it was like to be locked away in the bowels of the earth, away from sun and air, with the dense oppressive silence and the soul-gnawing fear of being forgotten, penned in the dark for eternity. Danar had said these warrens were not meant for long-term incarceration, but who would know? How many enemies of the Ar-King had simply disappeared into these depths?

  The official unlocked the door, and it swung open with a creak. Beyond lay a hallway, wide enough to accommodate a small table and two chairs. In the light of a torch set into a wall sconce, a single guard sat playing with a set of carved bones amid the remains of a meal, a heavy pottery mug and plate with several dry, curled bread crusts. The other wall bore two doors, age darkened wood pierced by an open grate at eye level. Zevaron felt an unexpected ripple of relief, that Tsorreh had at least a little light and the sounds of another human being.

  The guard scooped the bones into a pouch and bowed to the official. They exchanged a few words, then the guard unlocked one of the wooden doors and stepped aside for Danar to enter the cell. A faint whispering sound, cloth over stone or straw, came from within.

  “Your servant must remain outside,” the official said, and by his tone he clearly felt that Zevaron should not have been admitted to the temple in the first place.

  Danar paused on the threshold, turning back with a frankly imperious air. “You don’t seriously suggest, my dear sir, that I approach this accursed sorceress without protection? What if she should cast a spell, and he were not here to take it upon his own body? The information I must obtain from her is crucial to my father’s investigation, but not at the risk of such an attack. I shall depart immediately to inform him of your failure to provide suitable security for this interview.”

  “No, no,” the official said. “Please, it is not a problem. Your bodyguard may enter. I understand completely.”

  “Then you also understand that whatever is said here must remain confidential.”

  “You have my oath upon it!”

  “And his?” Danar said, staring pointedly at the guard.

  The official sputtered protestations for a moment, then quickly decided that since Danar had such confidence in his own bodyguard, the most prudent course would be to leave Danar and Zevaron alone with the prisoner.

  “That will be sufficient,” Danar said, but he watched until the outer door clicked shut behind the official.

  “Danar?” Tsorreh stood in the doorway of her cell, a slender shape in the wavering light. The Arandel token glinted in her hair. “Danar—and oh, Zevaron!”

  Zevaron caught her, lifting her off the ground for an instant. He felt sick that she had endured even an hour in this hideous place. He heard the sob in her breath, but once she was back on her feet and able to talk, her voice was steady.

  “Danar,” she began, “I have not words enough to thank you for bringing Zevaron to me. Your soul shines with your goodness.”

  Danar looked embarrassed. “Father says he will not rest until he obtains your release.”

  “He must not make himself ill again on my account. Who would nurse him back to health?” She touched Danar’s cheek with one hand. “Let us not deceive one another with hope. Cinath must have someone to blame for Thessar’s death. With Jaxar exonerated—and not beyond suspicion, do not believe that for a moment—the entire blame must therefore fall upon me.”

  “Mother, no!” Zevaron broke in, appalled. “Do not say that, not when those who love you are ready to fight!”

  “There is still much we can do,” Danar protested.

  “Do not give in to despair,” Zevaron said. “I almost did, after Gatacinne. But you are still alive, and I have found you. We have survived too much to give up now.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Tsorreh said, with the hint of a smile. “Let us not waste this precious time in argument. Danar, I must speak privately with my son.”

  Danar left them and closed the cell door almost to the point of latching. A moment later, Zevaron heard Danar speaking with the guard, and the muffled sounds of the outer door opening and closing. What Danar said to the guard, Zevaron could not guess, nor did he spare the time to wonder.

  “Quickly now!” Tsorreh cried, her breath as fast as if she had just run across the city. She lowered herself to a patch of filthy straw and held out one hand to him. “We may have only a few moments.”

  “Mother, are you ill?”

  She took his face between her hands, peering into his eyes. “I feared I would never see you again.”

  “But I am here,” he said, covering her hands with his own. She was trembling. “I am here, and soon we will get you out of here.”

  Tsorreh shook her head. “I cannot take the risk. This may be the last time. I must take the chance that is given to me.”

  As if exhausted, she leaned back against the wall, holding on to Zevaron, grasping his hand as tightly as a drowning man thrown a rope. She placed the other hand on her chest, then slipped it between the folds of her gown. The torchlight shifted, so that for an instant, Zevaron saw a gleam like gold shining through her skin.

  “Ah!” A cry burst from her lips. Her face contorted.

  “What is it?” She was ill, he was sure of it. His mind filled with the thousand things that could have happened since her arrest. She could have been beaten, tortured, contracted a terrible disease—

  Her fingers clenched around his. He made no attempt to pull away. Instead, he tried to hold her, praying the spasm would pass and she would be able to tell him in what manner she was hurt. He did not know what he could do, but he had a sailor’s knowledge of tending cuts and bruises, broken bones, and once a gangrenous leg that had to be cut off.

&nbs
p; She was speaking now, words so low and urgent, he could not make them out, only their rhythm, as familiar as the beating of his heart. Verses from the te-Ketav, perhaps prayers, supplications, ancient phrases of hope and comfort.

  No, not just comfort…purpose.

  “My son, forgive me.” Her whispered words shot through his heart. “I never meant to lay this burden on you in this way, I never meant—it is our only hope, believe me, please—forgive me.”

  Her grasp on him tightened, harder now than steel or the inexorable grip of the sea. She clung to him, pulling him closer.

  “It’s all right,” he stammered. “I’m here, I’m here!”

  “The stone must not be lost!”

  Then she slapped something against his chest. His breastbone flexed and his body shuddered as if he had been struck by a piece of rigging torn loose in a storm. Air burst from his lungs. The muscles of his chest clamped down, adamantine, unyielding. His vision blurred around the edges. In panic, he struggled against her hold. He fought to force breath through his constricted throat.

  Darkness lapped at him. Something sang in his ears, high and sweet and terrible, deadlier by far than the sea.

  An oval shape, a woman’s face, blotted the fading light. “I am so sorry. Remember, Gelon is not the enemy. Qr is only the shadow of the greater. The stone will teach you…Forgive me…”

  Pain seared him, dying away into darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “ZEV? I’m sorry to interrupt—Zev?”

  Zevaron blinked, and the moment of strangeness passed. Once more, he knew who he was and where he was. Rousing, he tasted the dank air and felt the hardness of the stones beneath his knees, the slime under his fingers.

  “I’m all right, Danar. Just a moment.”

  He could not remember how he had gotten here, half-kneeling in front of Tsorreh. Her hands lay across her outstretched legs, limp, palms upward. From the way she was sprawled and the angle of her head, he feared she had fainted. Before he could reach out to her, she stirred. Her eyes opened and a smile of inexpressible sweetness passed over her face.

  “Go,” she said in a voice that was thick and slow. “Take my blessings and the hope of our people with you.”

  He gathered her in his arms. Her body felt all bones, as fragile as a bird’s. “I will come back,” he whispered against her ear. “By all that is holy, I swear it. I will save you.”

  “You have already saved what is most dear to me, my Zevaron.”

  Danar stood at the door, arguing with the official, insisting loudly that Tsorreh be given food, water, and a clean cell. The man lifted his hands and protested that he had no authority to do such things.

  “Then you will do it on my authority, do you understand? Or I will take every moment of her suffering out of your worthless hide!”

  “No, no! You must leave! I have already exceeded my orders! This is all the time granted to you! Away, away with you now! Guard, lock the cell.”

  Zevaron clambered to his feet. His body felt unexpectedly heavy, as if he had labored hard all day. Behind his breastbone, in the center of his chest, he felt a crushing pain, as if his heart were weeping. He steadied himself against the door frame.

  Danar touched his arm. “Let’s go, my friend, that we may soon return, and this time with your mother’s freedom.”

  * * *

  The rest of the day passed in a blur. Zevaron had no memory of returning to Jaxar’s compound, only a vague impression of color, of light, of tall white buildings and people sweeping past him. He might have eaten, but what and when he had no memory. Lycian’s voice rang distantly through the garden atrium. Someone spoke to him, steward or servant or perhaps even Jaxar himself.

  The air turned cold. Behind his closed eyelids, tatters of images, vivid and incomprehensible, fluttered like dead leaves. Here and there, he recognized the shape of a woman on horseback against an ocean of silver-green grass, banners in the wind, an army of lifted swords, mountains of ice, caverns vast and lightless, far deeper than those through which he and Tsorreh had fled. Invisible currents swirled them all away.

  He awoke, slowly coming back to himself. He lay on his sleeping pallet in Jaxar’s laboratory. A faint tang of metal and chemicals hung in the air. His knee joints popped as he got to his feet. One end of the table had been cleared of equipment and now bore a bowl and pitcher of water and a plate of cold boiled onions, flatbread, olives, and a small piece of salty white cheese. The smell of the food roused a ravenous hunger within him. He ate it all, washed his face and hands, and went downstairs.

  Jaxar was sitting in the garden, shaded by one of the willowy trees, his legs propped on a bench heaped with pillows. He glanced up at Zevaron’s approach and set aside his pile of letters.

  “My boy, you are looking considerably better than when Danar brought you back here after visiting Tsorreh two days ago. You have eaten, I trust? Is there anything else you require?”

  “Only to know—two days? Surely, I cannot…No, I see.” That would explain why, although he had just eaten enough for two normal breakfasts, his body still craved food.

  Jaxar dismissed the servant at his elbow and indicated the seat beside him. “Do not think harshly of yourself. Even the mightiest man must rest. Our bodies are flesh, after all, not iron. I know something of how they can fail even the most determined spirit.”

  Zevaron sat, struck by the older man’s kindness. In that moment, he saw Jaxar not as a fat old cripple, but a person with a keen mind trapped in a mound of decaying flesh.

  “I cannot rest, not truly, until she is free and safe.” And we are well away from this place.

  “How will it help her if you are too exhausted to even get out of bed?”

  Zevaron opened his mouth to protest further, then closed it. Had he fainted in Tsorreh’s cell? He must have lost consciousness; one moment they had been talking and, within the blinking of an eye, he’d found himself on his hands and knees. In his years with Chalil, he had known two men subject to falling fits. Their limbs would flail about, hurling their bodies to the deck, and when they came to themselves, they had no knowledge of what had happened. Chalil said that for one of them, the fits began after a head injury, but the other had suffered in this way all his life.

  It must have been the air, Zevaron thought, the close dank air of the cell, added to the intensity of his feelings at seeing his mother again. He shuddered inwardly at the thought of her remaining in that terrible place for even one more hour.

  “What news of my mother?” he asked.

  Jaxar’s heavy, drooping features turned somber. He told Zevaron there had been no response to his entreaties, nor had Danar been able to visit Tsorreh again. Zevaron heard a new harmonic in the old man’s words. He sensed that without sources of information, without connections and relationships, Jaxar was disarmed. Helpless. Blind. Frightened. Anything he said would only sap Jaxar’s one remaining weapon, his confidence. The Gelon were creatures of settled lands, of cities and laws. Of traditional family alliances and networks of influence. It was time to make his own plans.

  * * *

  He needed help, that much was sure. Once he had eaten and drunk and bathed, Zevaron’s strength returned. When he manufactured a pretext to leave the compound alone, Jaxar made no objection.

  In the river-harbor district, it did not take long to determine which of the men drinking at open-air stalls, the layabouts and casual laborers, had ties to Denariya or the sea wolves of the Mearas. A gesture here, a phrase there, established him as one of them. Here he could find men, men without qualms about breaking any number of Gelonian laws. Perhaps men who were eager to do so.

  Finding a way into the prison would not be easy, but leaving it would be even harder. He needed men who were resourceful and cunning, ruthless in a fight. And he needed a boat to take them downriver, with a pilot accustomed to slipping past the Ar-King’s tax officers. Such men would not come cheap, even those who had no reason to love Gelon. Zevaron identified three
sound men, all of them pirates, he would swear, plus two more he was less certain of.

  On his way back to Jaxar’s compound, Zevaron planned his next step. He would need money for the men and for passage downriver, and then for a fast ship to Durinthe. In his pack beside the pallet in the laboratory, he still had the better part of his fee from the merchant, Ranath. He could negotiate more from Jaxar as his reward. If only Jaxar had let them go when Zevaron had first pleaded for Tsorreh’s freedom! Then they would already be free of this place.

  There was no point wasting his energy in useless anger at Jaxar when there was work to be done. Zevaron searched his memory for every detail of the old justice temple and the warren beneath it. The guards and gates were designed not to keep people out but to keep them in. Locked gates had posed little problem to Chalil, and these were simple devices. Zevaron was certain that they could be disabled to allow easy exit. But even at night, he doubted that Tsorreh could simply walk out of the temple. Perhaps there was another way.

  The official who had taken him and Danar down to Tsorreh’s cell had mentioned a map showing the system of old mining tunnels. How much could he ask of Danar without revealing his plan? Which was the greater, Danar’s love for Tsorreh or his loyalty as a Gelon?

  Perhaps he could find someone, one of the wharf rats he had bought ale for, who had once been imprisoned under the temple. He could bring a disguise for Tsorreh and create a distraction to get her past the guards, perhaps at night when the shadows would be their allies.

  Zevaron returned to the compound at dusk, filled with ideas. It would take a day or two to arrange everything. Even if he refused to help, Zevaron did not think Danar would betray him. It would be better, however, to keep Jaxar himself ignorant and therefore, unimplicated.

  * * *

  He knew from the moment the compound gate opened that something was wrong. The outside bell was answered not by the usual steward, but by one of the kitchen maids. The slanting light could not hide her puffy, reddened eyes. When he asked her what was the matter, she sniffed and shook her head. A wordless shiver, cold like the ringing of steel on stone, passed through him. Jaxar had looked so ill that morning. If he had gotten worse, had collapsed or, Most Holy One forbid, had died—