by Grace Draven
“The empress,” he said slowly without looking away from the sunlit steppe, “enjoys pain. Sometimes of those she beds and sometimes her own. But most of all she enjoys humiliation, risk, death, blood.”
He glanced at Gilene. The burial chamber was too dim to make out subtleties in expression, but Azarion thought he spotted the brief flicker of sympathy—of knowing—in her eyes.
“Not so different from her subjects then.”
He snorted, amused by her wry remark. As a surviving Flower of Spring, she’d certainly see it that way. “No, I suppose not.”
“You must hate her.”
Somehow, that seemed too mild a word for what he felt for the empress. “I do.”
“I hate them all. Were the Krael Empire wiped off the face of the world, I wouldn’t weep.”
He didn’t blame her. As the day waned, Gilene slumped sideways, eyes closed, lips partially opened to emit a soft snore.
Azarion watched her for a moment, noting her smooth skin, the curve of her cheekbone, and the shape of her mouth. Her features, softened in sleep, lost the pinched sourness stamped there when she was awake. She was long legged and slim, with forgettable curves and memorable scars. And a will the Empire had not yet broken and likely never would.
He left her in the barrow to check the horses and survey the necropolis. So far, he’d heard nothing beyond the natural music of the steppe, but he had caught a faint whiff of smoke. It was too wet and too early in the season for a grass fire, so that meant a campfire. If the Nunari drew no closer, he’d have to decide whether they should leave the barrow at nightfall and chance being spotted or heard, or stay one more day and risk losing the distance they’d gained earlier. Neither option pleased him.
The agacin was still asleep when he returned to sentry duty at the door, and he took a moment to ease her to her side and drape one of her shawls over her back. The sun beating down on the grave’s threshold and several hours of no sleep made Azarion drowsy. He occupied himself with recollections of his home and family: horse herds stretched as far as the eye could see, and Savatar women, dressed in their long tunics and flared trousers, dancing to the music of flute and mouth harp. He was so close to the Sky Below now, he could almost taste it on his tongue.
At nightfall, the gathering vibration of hoofbeats rose up in the earth to tickle his feet through his shoes. The vibration was soon joined by the sound of those hoofbeats and the distant pitch of voices.
Gilene jerked upright when Azarion shook her shoulder. He pressed a finger to her lips. The whites of her eyes shone in the dark like sickle moons. “Shh,” he whispered. “Get up. They’re coming.”
She scrambled to her feet, snatching up her shawl to toss it against the adjacent wall where the rest of their gear was hidden from view. Azarion guided her to the opposite side and tucked her behind him. To see them, their visitors would have to enter the grave instead of crouch at the threshold.
The voices grew louder, along with the hoofbeats of horses. Azarion eased the longer knife he carried out of its sheath and waited.
While he couldn’t see the riders from his hiding place inside the barrow, he could make out the various tones of their voices and counted three different ones. There might have been more who didn’t speak, but if his questionable fortunes held, then he’d have to deal only with a trio of Nunari.
The voices changed, rising in pitch with their excitement when they discovered the two mares ground-tied between the barrows before falling ominously silent. The Nunari were on the hunt.
Azarion imagined the scene: a slow, careful dismount from their horses and silent hand signals communicating instructions and commands. Were he coordinating the hunt, he’d have at least one man outside, bow drawn and arrow nocked, in case his quarry barreled out of the grave ready to fight.
He and Gilene waited in the darkness, hardly breathing as the Nunari systematically visited each barrow, saving the one they sheltered in for last. Azarion took the time given to push Gilene a little farther away from him to allow him room to move. All his senses centered on the sounds outside—a carefully placed footfall, the nicker of a horse, the scrape of cloth on cloth as those who hunted for them stepped closer to the barrow’s entrance.
The first man to enter approached from the side that wouldn’t cast his shadow in relief on the stacked stones of the inset doorway. Azarion sensed his presence by the sudden pungent odor of sweat and wild onions that seeped into the barrow. He lingered at the threshold, close enough to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, far enough back to leap out of reach if someone or something tried to grab him and drag him inside.
A small, lit torch soon hurtled into the barrow’s center from the doorway. It rolled once before coming to a stop, its flames large enough to reveal the lower levels of the burial platforms and the arched expanse of the opposite three walls. In their hiding spot next to the door, Gilene went up on her toes in an attempt to keep her feet out of the illumination that edged the space where she stood behind Azarion.
The scout crept across the threshold, sword drawn. Torchlight bounced off the blade, giving Azarion a good view of the weapon he carried. The man was past the threshold and turning right, away from them, when Azarion snatched him by the back of his tunic, yanked him into the shadows, and cut his throat in one clean swipe.
He held the twitching body as blood bubbled up from the open gash to spill down the man’s chest. A few gurgling gasps and he slumped in Azarion’s arms.
Azarion slid him gently to the ground and eased the Nunari’s small shield off his arm. More a buckler than an aspis, the shield didn’t offer much protection from arrows but worked well in conjunction with a sword. He sheathed his knife and retrieved his victim’s sword where it had fallen in the dirt with a dull thud.
The silence remained unbroken outside until a second set of steps reached the doorway, followed by a third, then a fourth. Azarion recalculated. Either the man with the drawn bow had defied an order and joined his companion at the doorway, or there were more than three Nunari searching the barrows.
This last kill had been by ambush. These would be by combat. Three entered the barrow, one at a time, on cautious feet. They spotted the body of their fallen comrade the moment they straightened inside the barrow’s interior.
Azarion rushed out of the darkness, and chaos erupted. The scouts were adept fighters but no match for a Pit gladiator.
He dispatched one of the men with a thrust under the ribs that pierced his heart, and was in the middle of killing another when a howl rent the air. He spun, blade slick with blood, to discover the last to enter the barrow staggering toward him and clutching the gashed ruin of his face. Azarion made quick work of killing him before searching frantically for Gilene.
She no longer stood in the shadows but closer to the barrow’s center, her hand curled in a fist around something that oozed blood between her fingers. Her eyes were huge and bright with terror. They rounded even more, and she gasped out a word, pointing to something at the barrow’s far side with a shaking finger. “Wight.” Her breath steamed in front of her in the suddenly icy grave.
Azarion pivoted and confronted a visage out of a demon’s nightmare. A mottled, twisted thing scuttled down the earthen steps, scattering bones and grave goods in its path. It hurtled toward him and Gilene, fanged mouth open wide on an unearthly screech meant to freeze its prey in place from terror.
Azarion lunged for Gilene, hauling her toward the barrow’s opening at a dead run. He cleared the short flight of steps with a leap, lifting the agacin behind him off her feet as he went. He managed to raise the buckler just before an arrow struck its metal face and bounced off. Cleared of the barrow and the howling wight, he dropped Gilene’s arm and charged the lone archer frantically nocking his next arrow.
Azarion plowed into him just as the arrow loosed from the bow. The two men skidded across the grass in a tumble of limbs. A ha
rd fist smashed into the side of Azarion’s head, and he saw stars before managing to get a grip under his opponent’s chin and one behind his head. He used the leverage of his body and, with one quick yank, broke the scout’s neck. He leapt to his feet, dreading the last arrow had found its mark in Gilene’s body.
She stood, uninjured, next to where the arrow had planted itself in the ground by her foot, and watched the shrieking wight claw at them from the barrow’s entrance. Her hair haloed her head in a frazzle of strands that had come loose from her braid, and she still clutched the thing in her fist that bloodied her fingers and spilled an occasional crimson drop on the ground.
Once assured she was well and that the wight couldn’t leave the confines of the barrow, he quickly scouted the rest of the necropolis for the enemy. Only their horses stood at the perimeter, their ears laid back at the sounds coming from the grave guardian.
Battle fury still coursed through him, leaving him in a momentary fog. He shook it off. He had to keep his wits about him. These Nunari were from the camp whose fires he’d spotted earlier. The five who came looking were dead, but that only meant others would search for them when they didn’t return to their clans.
He found the agacin farther away from the barrow but still eyeing the wight lingering in the doorway. The creature stared back, no longer shrieking, but snapping its jaws as if eager to gnaw on their flesh. Gilene’s frightened gaze settled on Azarion. “Will it be able to come out?”
The wight whined at the sound of her voice, as if starved. “No,” he said. “Its purpose is to guard the grave and its sanctity.”
Her expression changed, became baffled. “Its sanctity? That barrow has been looted several times, and I’m sure others besides us have slept in there for whatever reason. Surely, there’s nothing left which is sacred.”
He looked to the wight, who looked back from crimson eyes that burned with malevolence. “Different acts awaken wights. Sometimes it’s the looting, which is what makes it so dangerous. I think this time it was the spilling of blood. I desecrated the barrow when I spilled Nunari blood in there.”
Gilene stared at him for a moment before striding to the dead archer. She knelt beside him. “I spilled blood in there too,” she said. She rose and approached Azarion, opening her hand to show him what she clutched in her bloodied fist—a pottery shard. Its edge, darkened with blood, was sharp as any knife in some spots. “The last man to enter the barrow saw me.” Her fingers played over the shard’s surface and the broken lines of lost engravings etched into the clay. “For now I am a captive. I refuse to be a slave.”
Azarion stared at her with new respect. At some point during their time in the barrow, she had found the shard, recognized it as a possible weapon, and hidden it. “I’ve underestimated you, Agacin. You’re as dangerous without your fire as you are with it.”
She dropped the shard and kicked it aside with her foot before using her skirt hem to wipe her hand clean. “If you tell me again it’s a blessing, I will find a way to feed you to that wight.”
He believed her. “When will the fire return?”
She shrugged, tucking a windblown strand of hair behind her ear with a bloodied hand. “It usually takes weeks, though after my first time, it was longer.” She tilted her head to one side. “You believe me when I say I can’t use it yet?” He nodded. “Why?”
Gilene wielded her power with skill; he’d seen that with his own eyes, and if she still had any left to summon, the perfect opportunity to exploit it had just presented itself.
He coaxed her toward the spot where their own horses huddled with those belonging to the dead Nunari. “Because if your power were fully returned, you’d be on one of those horses and riding for home. The barrow is as much a trap as it is a defense. You could have burned me and the men I killed and walked out untouched.”
She halted, her expression dark. “I don’t like being so predictable. Nor am I a murderer.”
If that pottery shard in her hand, and the Nunari she had disfigured with it, were anything to judge by, she was anything but predictable. “You aren’t, but you’re driven and as intent as I am on surviving.”
The sour look was back, along with the shadow of sorrow. “This is why I hate the Empire most of all,” she said. “Because it’s twisted us into people we despise.”
The wind whipped her tattered skirts around her long legs and bent the grass to her feet in supplication. Moonlight silvered her hair, and those dark, dark eyes watched him, bleak and despairing.
CHAPTER NINE
After five more days of hard riding and sleepless hours worrying over pursuit by more Nunari, they topped a low rise whose sweeping views encompassed more of the swaying plume grass and a shimmering orange line in the distance.
Azarion pointed to it. “There. That’s what we ride toward.”
Gilene stared at him, bleary-eyed and exhausted. “Will they know you when you return?” Ten years was a long time of separation, and the boy taken had changed into a man she suspected none of his clan would recognize now.
“Maybe.” His voice was muted, thoughtful. “Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. The Sky Below is the land of my spirit. It’s where I belong.”
She turned away. She envied her captor and his obvious love for his land. Gilene had been born and raised in Beroe. It was the village she lived in, yet she felt no connection to it beyond the guilt-ridden obligation, ingrained in the history of its existence, to protect its denizens and most of all her family. The gift of her magic came with a terrible price. She could grieve for the women who died in the Pit each year, endure a night with a gladiator who might not live through the next afternoon, and persevere through the pain of the magical backlash created by wielding so much power at once. But the crushing guilt of knowing Beroe expected her to pass on her knowledge and her burden to another girl cursed with fire magic ate at her.
She envied Azarion because he’d broken free of the shackles the Empire had put upon him. Though she had been one of the Empire’s many victims, Gilene had never been one of its slaves. She belonged to Beroe instead, and those chains would hold her until she died.
“I may curse your name for dragging me here,” she whispered, “but I shall never forget this place. I shall never forget you.”
She turned back to meet his gaze, admiring the way the rising sun gilded him in the colors of morning: bronze and gold, hints of fiery red, and the last fading lavender of night. His eyes glittered with a thousand untold secrets. “Then you will have made me immortal, Agacin.” The corners of his mouth lifted a fraction. “At least for a little while.”
They continued to stare at one another while her stomach did somersaults under her ribs. She shook off the feeling and clucked to set her horse in motion toward the glowing horizon. “Let’s get to it then. It looks another day’s ride, and I’m sick beyond words of being in this saddle.”
The landscape changed as they rode, rising subtly. The plumes of the tall grasses lightened from pale linen to snow white and grew in haphazard clumps now, dotting the steppe amid the fringed sage that had deepened from a silvery green to an ash blue.
The orange thread of light they rode to widened and brightened the closer they got, and soon Gilene gasped, stunned at the sight before her. Azarion wheeled his horse in front of hers, and they slowed to a stop before a colossal wall of flames.
The wall stretched high above them, far too high for a horse to jump clear to the other side. The flames didn’t crackle; they roared, pulsing upward as if the land itself had captured a slice of the sun and tethered it to earth, where it strained and stretched to break free and return to its origin.
“The Fire Veil.” Gilene had grown up hearing tales of the Veil. Never in her life did she think she might see it for herself. If she managed to return to Beroe, she’d have quite the story to tell her family.
Raised by nomadic spellworkers generations earlier
to shield the Stara Dragana from invasion by the Krael Empire from the west, the Fire Veil worked in tandem with the distant Gamir Mountains in the east to protect the Savatar clans that claimed this part of the Stara Dragana as theirs.
Azarion stared at the endless length of fire that stretched to either side of them as far as the eye could see. “On the other side is the land of the Savatar, the Sky Below. For all its power, the Empire still hasn’t found a way to tear down the Veil and take it from us.” The reverence in his voice matched hers.
Gilene’s stomach fluttered at the yearning in his features, the near disbelief in finally returning to something he’d lost long ago. Were she here as a friend and not a captive, she’d congratulate him. Instead, she turned her gaze back to the majestic Veil.
“Is this why your fire witches are of such importance? They built and hold the Veil?”
Azarion’s faint smile was wry. “It’s one reason. An important one. Agna is the goddess of fire, of birth and death, of horses. We call her the Mother of All, the Great Mare. She gifted fire to men so that we would keep warm during the winter of the world.” His gaze raked her, as if he expected her to scoff at him. She didn’t, and after a moment he continued. “Agacins are holy to the Savatar. You’re one of Agna’s handmaidens, even if you don’t worship her.”
“And to claim such a handmaiden lends you power.” He had made no secret of needing her to reclaim his place in his clan. Obviously, these agacins lent status to those with whom they were aligned. “They won’t care that you took me captive?”
His horse paced in front of hers, uneasy before the Veil, even at this distance. Azarion shook his head, and his mouth quirked a little more. “My people will see it as a rescue. I freed us both from the Empire’s grip.”
Gilene frowned. “Convenient. No wonder you’ve sworn not to hurt me.” She knew nothing of the Savatar but was grateful for their beliefs and the value they placed on their witches. Azarion refused to free her but so far hadn’t physically harmed her. She touched her cheek. Not intentionally anyway.