Soul of Kandrith (The Kandrith Series)

by Luiken, Nicole

  A redhead with wisps of hair trailing from her bun swayed down the pink marble steps to meet them. She wore a thin green-silk robe trimmed with gold braid. “Welcome to the Temple of Beauty and Desire,” she said huskily, eying the legionnaires appreciatively. “Please come in. Stay awhile.” She trailed her fingers over the older one’s shoulder.

  He looked wistful, but the younger one cleared his throat importantly. “We’re here to deliver this coeurelle to the priestess Jazor, with Nir’s compliments.”

  The redhead spared a glance for Sara before resuming her focus on the young legionnaire. “Deliver her?”

  The serious-faced legionnaire shifted. “She’s a gift.”

  Sara stilled. Nir was giving her away?

  A jolt of emotion went through Sara. Part relief, that she would be spared Nir’s attentions, part unease at such a strange turn of events.

  The redhead pursed her lips, looking dubious. “How generous, but our temple doesn’t need slaves. I shall have to speak with my priestess. Please, wait inside.”

  The older man hesitated, but the younger shook his head. “Our orders are to drop her off and then—”

  The older man cleared his throat.

  “Then take up other duties,” the younger legionnaire finished.

  A new thought occurred to Sara. “If I am a gift, where is my slave contract?”

  The legionnaires exchanged shrugs. “I don’t know,” the younger one said, impatient to be gone.

  They left through the gate in the wall.

  Sara didn’t know what to do. Part of being a slave was having no control over one’s life. She should simply accept things as they were, but her instincts insisted something was wrong. Nir was obsessed with her. He would never let her go this easily.

  “Well, come on then,” the redhead said, her tone brisker than before. “I’ll take you to Jazor.”

  Sara followed her into the main temple, then down a side hallway into a large dining room. A center table held an abundance of light food: bowls of olives; cut and peeled fruit, some shaped into pretty stars; and sugar-dusted rolls. A dozen beautiful women reclined on green couches and laughed and nibbled at the bounty. Most wore green, but few had gold braid.

  Sara’s stomach growled.

  Instead of offering her food, the redheaded acolyte headed purposefully towards a white divan upon which lounged a beautiful blonde with an elaborate hairdo adorned with jewels.

  Sara paused to take half a peach from the table—Lance had said fruits were important, but Wettar had trouble finding any on the campaign trail—before following.

  The redhead bowed her head to her high priestess, speaking in a low tone.

  Jazor wasn’t Sara’s priestess so she stood and ate. Peach juice ran down her chin.

  Jazor listened to her acolyte with a bored expression, then waved her hand. “Come closer, child.”

  Sara was an adult, not a child. She stayed where she was.

  Jazor huffed in annoyance. The redhead shoved Sara forward. “This is her.”

  “Hmmm,” Jazor said, studying her. Lavish eyepaint overshadowed her blue eyes. “It’s hard to tell with that unsightly belly, but you may be right. The hair is too short, but her head is well-shaped. The face is good, though the brand on her neck will need to be covered up. Breasts are a little large, but that may be an effect of the pregnancy. Turn around,” she ordered.

  Taking another bite of her peach, Sara performed a slow revolution.

  “Good calves and strong thighs,” Jazor noted. “The feet are hideous and would require a month’s worth of work, the hands scarcely better, but, yes, on the whole she has potential. You were right to bring her to me. I commend you, Milla.”

  The redhead smiled.

  Jazor leaned forward and whispered, “Did Wettar send you? Do you need sanctuary? Why are you here?”

  Sara just shook her head. She didn’t know.

  “We’ll speak more once the room has cleared.” Then at a more normal volume: “Please help yourself to lunch.”

  Sara filled a plate and ate methodically, thinking. It didn’t make sense. Why would Nir send her away? Had he given up on subjugating her? It seemed out of character. She reran their last conversation in her head. He’d been angry when she pointed out he’d bought her, not won her.

  By the time the other acolytes finished eating and were gently herded away, Sara’s stomach was full, but her mind was still troubled.

  “Why has Nir sent you here?” Jazor asked, once she, Milla and Sara were alone. “Does he know you’re a spy? Does he know—”

  “—that you’ve been giving Fitch information on the disposition of his legions? No,” Sara answered. “He suspects someone in Tolium is sheltering the rebels, but he doesn’t know who.”

  Jazor relaxed. “Then we’re safe. He can’t burn out the whole city.”

  Sara didn’t see why he couldn’t. Things snapped into place. Nir wanted to win back the favour of his god. She’d told him he’d lost Nir’s favour in part because of his treatment of his slaves—slaves he’d bought with money.

  He meant to seize Sara as war plunder.

  But he could only do that if...

  Sara addressed Jazor. “You must prepare for battle. Nir plans to attack Tolium and the Temple of Beauty.” He’d left her here so he would know where to find her, instead of risking her on the streets. Legionnaires wouldn’t slaughter the inhabitants of a Temple of Desire, and its stone walls wouldn’t burn.

  “What are you talking about? Did he tell you this?” Jazor demanded.

  Sara didn’t think she’d done anything to earn the other woman’s anger. “No, but it’s what Nir would do.”

  “I don’t believe you. He can’t attack Tolium. We’ve done nothing—” she broke off, apparently recognizing the lie. “He can’t punish the entire city for the act of a few of its citizens,” Jazor said, but this time she sounded uncertain.

  “He is Nir, high priest of the God of War,” Sara told her. “He can. And will.”

  The colour drained from the high priestess’s cheeks.

  In the next moment she began giving orders. “Milla. Send a message to Fitch. At once! Then call the temple guardsmen. I need to speak to them.”

  As the room began to boil with servants and guardsmen, Sara slipped away. Jazor didn’t have her slave papers, so Sara didn’t consider herself under Jazor’s orders.

  The temple offered no safety. If she stayed here, she would become plunder. Her slave contract would become null and void. She and the babe would be without protection.

  Her only chance lay in going back to the Legion camp unnoticed on her own. Since Nir still held her papers, she could claim to be a faithful slave obediently returning to her rightful master.

  * * *

  Having calculated two-to-one odds that her escorts would be on the other side of the small temple gate, guarding it, Sara sought to exit the city’s main gates instead. Though not bronzed like Temborium’s, Tolium’s city gates were nonetheless fifteen feet tall, flanked by sentry towers, and built thick enough to withstand a battering ram.

  Unfortunately, they hung open.

  The city guards, distinguishable from legionnaires only by their gray cloaks, stood alert and at attention as Nir rode through on his magnificent stallion, the stiff horsehair plume of his helmet making him even taller.

  Sara had a sudden, futile urge to shout at the guard to shut the gate. Only ten legionnaires had marched inside so far. The numbers were equal. It wasn’t too late.

  Except the guard would never listen to a branded slave girl. Probably wouldn’t even listen to the priestess of Jazor. Not in time.

  Another squad of eight men passed through the gate. And now it truly was too late.

  Sara turned away to conceal her face, determ
ined to find another way out of the city. The bridge out of town was the obvious choice, but if Nir wanted to burn the city to the ground, not just frighten the inhabitants, he would have sent legionnaires ahead to block it, too. In any case, it would leave her on the wrong side of the river.

  She should return to the Temple of Beauty. Two legionnaires were the best odds she was likely to get.

  The bell in the sentry tower tolled, but only twice, not the continuous tolling of an attack. The flagged road Sara walked down opened into a market square and was already filling with merchants and citizens by the time she reached it.

  The clop of hooves warned her that Nir was riding closer, and she quickly veered off to the left, head carefully averted. Her heart pounded faster than normal.

  The people streaming in impeded her efforts to travel in the opposite direction, and she was still on the north edge of the great square when Nir rode into the center of the mosaic and addressed the crowd with a raised sword. Behind him a full century stood in gleaming ranks.

  “Citizens of Tolium! You’ve harbored rebels and sent your sons to join their ranks. No more! It’s time for you to remember that you’re a subject of Temboria. For the past fifty years we’ve had a light hand on the reins. You’ve forgotten your lessons, but I’m here to remind you of them—even if I have to burn Tolium to the ground to do it.”

  “Burn us?” the woman beside Sara gasped.

  “He’s just trying to frighten us.” The dumpy, mustached man put an arm around his wife.

  Sara stifled the urge to disagree. She must not draw attention to herself if she was to escape the milling crowd.

  “We’re no rebels!” a Gotian shopkeeper yelled. The crowd pumped their fists and yelled agreement.

  “No?” Nir said. “I bring proof of your perfidy!” At a gesture from him, two legionnaires dragged forth a battered young man wearing plaids. “Is this man not one of you?”

  The left legionnaire grabbed a handful of the prisoner’s hair and jerked his head back. One eye was swollen and his lip was split, but a cry of recognition went up.

  The crowd collectively surged forward, trapping Sara in place.

  “Breslin!” An older man with a bloodstained apron pushed forward. Sara recognized him as Breslin’s father, the butcher, from the day she and Lance had sought out Fitch at the Temple of Wine.

  “Father,” Breslin said. The word sounded mushy, as if he’d lost some teeth.

  “So you do claim him,” Nir sneered. “A rebel.”

  “He’s just a boy, a foolish boy,” the butcher babbled, kneeling on the coloured mosaic tiles. “Please, he’s learned his lesson. He—”

  Nir touched the tip of his sword to Breslin’s throat. If his horse shied, the blade would cut. “He’s a traitor. Are you a traitor?”

  “No!”

  “Then you may prove your loyalty to the Republic by executing him.” Nir offered him the sword.

  The butcher recoiled. “No!”

  “As you wish.” Although Nir’s expression remained hard and impassive, Sara sensed his pleasure as he sliced open Breslin’s throat. A river of blood drenched his tunic; as soon as Nir released his hair, he fell facedown in the square, dead.

  The crowd gasped in shock.

  “Desecration,” someone muttered. “To kill on the spot where the God of Wine married the chief’s daughter.”

  Was that what the mosaic depicted? Sara supposed the laughing man could be Tol, God of Wine, and the two other figures a Gotian chief and his beautiful daughter. Blood trickled over their faces. Tol appeared to be offering the Gotian chief a ring.

  The butcher sobbed, one thick-fingered hand reaching out to his son. “No, no...”

  “I gave you your chance,” Nir said harshly. “Decurion, burn down his shop.”

  A stoic legionnaire lit a torch.

  The butcher lifted his head, dazed. “But—but you can’t. How will I support my family?”

  “Wait!” A curly-haired Elysinian man pushed forward. “My shop’s next to his! In this dry weather, it’ll burn, too. I’m a loyal citizen, an equitain.”

  More voices rose in protest. The city guards, who might have helped, looked on in confusion. Pushing and shoving broke out among the crowd. The legionnaires drew their swords, forming a solid wedge that allowed the torchbearer to advance on the butcher’s shop.

  A man elbowed Sara in the stomach; someone else stepped on her toe in her haste. Everyone began to yell, a deafening tumult of people’s names, calls for buckets of water and ash, pleas to save merchandise, and curses.

  As the butcher shop’s awning went up in flames, the incipient riot spilled out of the square, sweeping Sara along with it.

  * * *

  Smoke tickled Lance’s lungs. Coughing, he raised his head from the study of his plodding feet and looked ahead.

  A heavy gray pall hung over the city. Lance pondered this and concluded Tolium must be on fire.

  A man carrying a large sack over his back walked straight toward Lance; he kept glancing behind him and didn’t appear to see Lance.

  Lance squeezed to the left as far as the road allowed, but the man still jostled him going past. Lance’s shoulder scraped the stone wall; looking down he saw the brown river flowing far below. When had he gained the bridge?

  Rhiain had fretted that he would be stopped by city guards and searched for a slave brand, but he was safely past the sentry tower. He didn’t remember seeing any guards at all. Perhaps they were preoccupied with the fire.

  As he passed the halfway point of the bridge, the crowd thickened until it seemed the entire population was streaming out from the city, every individual determined to block his path.

  Lance kept his head down, using his bulk to plow forward. He must, he must, he must—what?

  He swayed, light-headed. For a moment he wondered if there really was a fire, or just the fever burning in his veins.

  But no. Now that he was almost across the bridge he could see a few distant flames as well as taste the smoke clogging his lungs. Tolium was most definitely on fire. Only now he couldn’t remember why he was so set on entering the city. Everyone else was fleeing.

  He half turned and then remembrance struck him: Sara. The Goddess had said she needed him. Urgency beat in his pulse like a drum. He began to search the crowd.

  Was she in the burning city? No. She was Nir’s slave. So why was he going to the city?

  His head pounded, but he stubbornly started forward. Another three steps dislodged the information stuck in his head. He was going to the Temple of Desire. Jazor was Fitch’s spy. She could tell him where Nir was, and thus where Sara was, too.

  Goal set, Lance walked deeper into the smoky streets.

  * * *

  Sara had made a grave error in not checking what direction the wind was blowing. The crowds had forced her east toward the bridge, and it had been easier to angle slightly northeast than change directions entirely. But now a hot wind had cut her off from the Temple of Desire and pushed the fire uncomfortably close. Sara lifted her skirts and fled before it, pregnancy making her stride awkward.

  From the size of the smoke cloud, Sara concluded that Nir’s legionnaires had set more than the butcher shop on fire. If one of the townspeople had dared throw a stone, Nir would have seized the excuse to burn the whole city.

  People looking for excuses to do something always found them.

  Sara didn’t know if Tolium could be saved. Her chances of saving herself were dwindling rapidly. The fire had already cut her off from both the main city gate and the temple one, and the bridge lay too far away. She’d never make it. If she was to escape the flames, she needed to get over the fifteen-foot-high city walls.

  She inhaled smoke-tinged air and began to cough. Eyes watering, she searched for a house, or a tree growing ne
xt to the wall that she could climb. She rejected two trees as too spindly, but the third yard yielded a gnarled olive tree that might do.

  No time to look for a better one.

  The lowest branch was out of reach, so Sara approached the trunk. She sought hand and toeholds in the grooved bark, but the baby got in the way and her grip kept slipping. She either needed to grow taller or find help.

  She knocked on the door of the nearest two houses, but no one answered.

  The wind swirled, and she coughed in the thickening smoke. Flames shot out the windows of the building two houses down.

  Time to retreat.

  Sparks filled the air. One burned a hole in her cloak; she batted at another that touched her arm. She hunched over, coughing.

  When she straightened again, Lance stood in front of her. “Sara.”

  He took her arm, and her chest stopped spasming, though she still couldn’t find enough air. Lance was tall; he could help. “This way.” She pulled him off the street, into the backyard with the olive tree. “Help me climb over the wall.”

  Obediently, he boosted her up. With one foot on his shoulder and her hand on the branch, she clambered onto the lowest branch. She peered through the network of limbs and dusty green leaves, plotting a route over the wall.

  She climbed two branches higher, but stopped when she realized Lance remained on the ground, leaning against the trunk.

  The fire had spread to the house closest to them now. What was he waiting for? “Climb.”

  Lance lifted his face, blinking. He swayed slightly and Sara realized he was feverish. The first realization brought on a succession of others:

  In his condition, it would be difficult for him to climb without falling.

  If he broke a bone, he couldn’t heal himself.

  But the fire was too close for him to escape any other way so he would have to risk climbing.

  “Come up here,” she ordered.

  His eyes stayed closed.

  She climbed down a branch and carefully transferred her ungainly body until she was astride the broad limb, her skirts hiked up. “Lance!” she yelled. The flames consuming the thatched roof twenty feet away roared, drowning her out.