Rhune Shadow

by Vaughn Heppner

  Grief now thudded in her heart as she glided down the hidden corridor. The Rhune would no doubt have sniffed in distain at the sight of her inner pain. He would have called it excessive emotion, a hindrance to her present aim. The troubadour would have also shaken his head at the traitor’s crude attack upon her father. No subtlety. No artistry. A Rhune would have slid a poisoned dagger into Zarius Magonid’s stomach while whispering important information to him, or throttled the suffete with a wire garrote while Zarius prayed in the temple. What a Rhune would never do is send sword-carrying barbarians to butcher every living soul in their path.

  Elissa barely remembered in time that traps infested this part of the secret corridor. She stepped over a nearly invisible wire. It ran through a bronze pulley and with a tiny knot clutched a Sivishean crossbow’s trigger. The crossbow was primed, with a bolt aimed at her torso. In Elissa’s opinion, this was a foolish trap, as it needed constant attention to keep the crossbow’s string elastic enough to shoot.

  She crept several more paces and paused, bending her head as she tried to achieve Rhune stillness. Disaster had swept upon her, upon her father and his family. Was she going to be like her half-brothers and race to death like a frightened rabbit? The mental image caused her fingers to stiffen.

  Elissa crept a few more paces and peered through a spyhole. She saw more grim butchery. Some of the dead clutched the knives they’d grabbed to fight back. One servant lay in a final embrace with a western barbarian.

  The servant’s hand twitched. The woman was still alive.

  Before Elissa considered the consequences of her action, she slid through the secret door to the serving woman. She was a large lady. By the baked-bread odor that clung to her despite the reek of blood and death, she worked in the kitchens. The woman wore a bloodstained scarf around her neck and held a massive cleaver. A dead Gepid lay sprawled nearby, his split helm and leaking brains proof of the kitchen-woman’s strength. Blood caked the servant’s face. Her right eye had puffed shut, and a purple bruise showed where a mace had cracked her face.

  “Lady Elissa,” the woman slurred.

  “Can you walk?” Elissa asked, kneeling beside the woman. She noticed blood soaking the woman’s dress. Elissa lifted a loose apron. It hid a ghastly wound.

  As Elissa stared at the wound, strong fingers closed around her wrist. “I heard, milady…” The kitchen-woman wheezed painfully. “They want you alive. Himilco—” The woman groaned, and her huge body shuddered as her breathing grew ragged.

  “I have graybloom,” Elissa said.

  The fingers painfully tightened around Elissa’s wrist. “None of your Rhune poisons, milady. You must flee. Find your father—”

  “Good advice,” Elissa said, not having the heart to tell the woman her father was already dead.

  “Himilco desires you,” the kitchen-woman wheezed. “The Gray Wolf of the Gepids asked that you be given to his warriors…given for sport.”

  Anger burst through the sorrow in Elissa’s heart.

  The kitchen-woman gasped for air, trying to speak further. “I don’t think Himilco will give you to the Gepids, though.”

  “What?” Elissa asked, as she glanced out of a triangular window. A sea gull drifted past outside. For a moment, Elissa wished she could fly away like the gull. Then she frowned, turning to the kitchen-woman.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Elissa said. “How can I help you?”

  The woman slowly shook her head. “I’m finished, milady. You must listen. I can warn you, I can.”

  The urgency in the woman’s good eye made Elissa curious. “Why won’t Himilco give me to the Gepids?”

  The woman gulped for air, fighting to tell. “I heard Himilco say the Tyrant of Delium wants you as his newest concubine.”

  Elissa frowned. How can she know these things?

  “They thought I was dead,” the woman whispered, as if reading Elissa’s thoughts. “The Gray Wolf argued right here with Himilco.”

  “Himilco is in the palace?” Elissa asked.

  “No, no, don’t you think about using your Rhune poisons, milady. Don’t throw away your life. Flee before they capture you. The Tyrant of Delium is a wicked man. He collects wenches. At least, that’s what Himilco told the Gray Wolf.”

  Elissa nodded, hardly hearing the woman now, already lost in her own thoughts. The Tyrant of Delium had sailed to Karchedon with his fleet of giant galleys known as quinqueremes, huge galleys with four men to an oar. His ships had defeated Karchedon’s ships in a sea battle…six weeks ago now. The Tyrant had come to aid the nomads who besieged Karchedon, the tens of thousands of Nasamons huddled in their goat-hide tents, unable to breach Karchedon’s massive land wall. The coming of the Tyrant of Delium had changed the equation. With his galleys, the Tyrant had closed the sea to Karchedon. His soldiers had helped the nomads build siege towers and giant ladders.

  Elissa hissed through her teeth. Her father had sent clumsy assassins to attack the Tyrant in his camp on the beach. Elissa had begged him to let her do this deed. That’s what she had trained to do ever since the troubadour. Her father’s assassins had failed, the siege had continued and now the nomads had found a traitor in Himilco Nara. The traitorous sorcerer would open the city gates to the nomads and seal his position as the new suffete of Karchedon.

  “You must disappear, milady. Go before the barbarians return.”

  “I will, and I thank you.” Gently, Elissa pried the brave woman’s fingers from her wrist. Her Rhune dagger lay in the bottom drawer of her father’s desk. The knife had cloaking powers, and the blade’s touch…her father had taken her knife when she’d spoken about assassinating the Tyrant. Her father thought the dagger’s location a secret, but she was bonded to it and needed the dagger for what she envisioned.

  The dying woman moaned, closed her good eye and lay still. Even in death, she clutched her cleaver.

  Elissa stood, and the Gauntlet of Ice she’d taken from her father tinkled strangely in the bag tied to her belt. She sensed the gauntlet’s hostile magic, which interfered with her Rhune training. She had to hide the gauntlet, put it in a place where Himilco would never find it.

  Before Elissa could decide where, she cocked her head. Doors slammed nearby. Barbarian Gepids shouted, no doubt, as they searched for her.

  Elissa’s dusky features stiffened. The Tyrant of Delium wanted her, did he? Then he would get her, with her Rhune knife at his throat!

  -2-

  Elissa glided through another secret passageway, heading upward toward her father’s study. As she did, she muttered a Rhune litany under her breath to help restrain her fierce emotions.

  Dust floated through slashing rays of light, each of them coming from various spyholes. The dust tickled her nose. Fortunately, the troubadour had taught her a trick against sneezing or coughing when one needed to keep silence. The larger problem was the evil magic from the Gauntlet of Ice. Because of it, she almost missed the smallest of impulses.

  Elissa stopped, slowly moving her head. She heard a faint sound. It came… She cupped her hands against the left wall, pressing an ear against her hands.

  Through the wall, she heard: “I know his spells. None could allow him to send a person elsewhere or make them fade into a ghostly form.”

  Elissa recognized Himilco Nara’s voice.

  Someone mumbled a reply, maybe a Gepid giving Himilco an excuse.

  “No,” the priest said. “The palace is riddled with hidden passageways. That’s how the Rhune disappeared. That’s how—”

  Elissa closed her eyes, trying to place where Himilco stood exactly. As she listened, hairs stirred on her scalp. Why had they stopped talking? Why had—?

  Elissa leaped to the side just in time.

  A sword rammed through the wall where she’d been standing. At the same moment, a sickening lethargy tugged at her eyelids.

  “The gauntlet is here,” Himilco said triumphantly. “I’ll give a helmet of gold to the one who brings it to me.”

&nb
sp; Elissa shuffled her cat-soft boots as she tried to escape down the secret corridor. She silently berated herself for being a fool. Himilco was a deadly sorcerer. He might have already trapped her.

  She glanced back. Light poured through a ragged opening. Thick fingers appeared there. A Gepid shouted, splintering wood as he tore at the wall.

  Elissa struggled to counter the magical lethargy. She sought serenity. As she did, she heard the priest chanting to his barbarians:

  “Feel the power flow into your limbs. You are lions, invincible in battle.”

  With maddened oaths, Gepids smashed at the wall, using axes and strength-enchanted fists.

  Elissa refused to moan. She felt her way, trying to increase her speed. Finally, she remembered the needed litany. The Rhune logic reacted against the magical lethargy like acid eating away at metal. But it worked much too slowly and with too much froth and hissing. Elissa almost lost her balance as her feet drummed down a narrow flight of stairs. Behind her in the passageway, Gepids howled their war cries.

  Wood splintered ahead of Elissa, and she could hear feral shouts from that direction. Lantern-light poured into the dark corridor. The Gepids were hunting her from both ends of the passageway. She was trapped.

  Elissa stopped as their distinctive meaty odor preceded them. Gepids ate vast quantities of pork. In their homeland, they supposedly wrestled one another at mealtime for the choicest pieces. A Karchedonian eating so much pork would gag in revulsion.

  They’d trapped her, but they hadn’t defeated her yet. What was the correct maneuver? The Rhune had foreseen such a situation, having taught her many gambits. She would employ an elementary trick: to pretend defeat, to cower for the moment.

  Elissa popped a yellow capsule into her mouth. The capsule was grainy, with hard little bumps on the chalky shell. With her tongue, she noticed that one bump was missing. It made her chest clench. Did cluthe seep into her mouth? No, no, she didn’t taste its sour, grapefruit flavor. As she hurried, Elissa tore off her headband and mussed her long, dark hair, letting some of it fall in front of her face.

  A muscled Gepid loomed before her, holding an ugly-looking dagger. If the Gepid were wise, he would try to kill her, as the barbarian no doubt had been doing to others all afternoon. But the warrior’s bloodshot eyes took in Elissa’s meek submission. Battle enchantments such as Himilco had put on the man were tricky things, often foiled by guile. Like a fool, the Gepid grinned. He uttered barbaric words over his shoulder. Other Gepids laughed from the next room.

  “Come here,” the Gepid told her. He sheathed his dagger and held out a callused hand.

  Elissa pretended to move with leaden feet. That exasperated the Gepid. He grabbed her, yanking her so she crashed against his armored chest. Despite his enchanted strength, Elissa could have slipped a stiletto through the iron links and killed him. Before she did that, she needed him to bring her among his companions.

  The Gepid dragged Elissa into her father’s study. Scrolls and folios lay everywhere. There was a smashed stool and Carazian papers with inked hieroglyphs lay scattered beside a blood-red folio. A boot-print was stamped on a half-crumpled, priceless paper. The barbarians had no idea of the sorcerous knowledge Zarius had stored in his study. Elissa spied an open window. She would need it once she had the dagger. The doorway into the hall was also open. She heard Himilco from another room.

  Four Gepids leered at her. They joked about how easy it had been to catch her and boasted about the things they would do to her.

  Elissa took a deep breath and with a decided crack crushed the capsule with her molars. She exhaled sharply in small puffs, sending a yellow fog of cluthe into each face.

  The first Gepid sagged as his hand fell away from Elissa’s arm. Vast strength meant nothing against Rhune poisons. A second later, the Gepid slumped onto the floor. A different Gepid staggered backward and tripped. He violently struck his head against the desk and bounced to the floor. The last two barbarians seemed to understand, but it didn’t matter. The first fell down and died. The second looked at Elissa with horror. The warrior might have done any of a number of things. Surprisingly, he ran for the door and shouted a warning before he slumped down dead onto the floor.

  While holding her breath, Elissa rushed to the desk, palmed a stiletto and picked the bottom lock. She yanked open the drawer, shoved aside her father’s papers and snatched her Rhune dagger. It was in a special black leather sheath. While still holding her breath—the need for air burned in her chest—she glided toward the window.

  Perspiration dotted the base of her neck. Her face was cold, the aftershock of spewing cluthe. She had ingested minute amounts of the poison ever since the troubadour had begun her training. It gave her a fraction of immunity to it. The bigger trick was owl fat, which she’d used to coat her mouth against the yellow death. She now spat repeatedly on the floor, wanting to rid herself of all of it.

  While the dying barbarians thrashed on the floor, Elissa blanketed her emotions as the troubadour had taught her to do. She jumped to the open window. Her father’s study was three stories up and beside the portico of Bel Ruk’s gigantic temple.

  The portico had gargantuan pillars, taller than cedars, with bas-relief battles chiseled up and down each column. Elissa’s gaze fell upon a winged dragon entwined about and squeezing to death a luckless merchant. In the stonework art, the fanged beast had already begun to devour the merchant. Elissa shuddered, wondering in a split moment of time why such a thing should be carved into the pillar of a god’s temple.

  The vast temple threw the lane below into shadows. Down there prowled Gepids with shields and drawn swords. Several saw her and shouted, and they shouted the priest’s name, thereby warning Elissa.

  She swiveled her head. Himilco Nara stared at her from a nearby window. He had a face like a rat, narrow with greedy eyes. He pointed at her and chanted, and a churning oily cloud sped at her like a fist. Elissa ducked back into the room. The tightly configured cloud roiled past and hit brick and mortar several feet away. The bricks made hissing noises as the cloud dissolved them.

  Elissa poked back outside and shouted at Himilco. “Tell your Gepids that to hold me is to hold death!”

  “You can win my favor,” Himilco shouted at her.

  That the priest attempted to bargain with her told Elissa he had to gather himself before he could cast another spell. That was the essence of this sorcerer priest, a cunning schemer, always dangerously ready to shift tactics and come at you from a different direction.

  “I’m headed for the sea!” Elissa shouted. “There I’ll drop the Gauntlet of Ice so the fishes can war over it. In the years to come, watch the shadows with great care. Death will strike you from them. This I promise, Himilco Nara.”

  His face twisted with hatred.

  “Today, you are a bride,” he shouted, “soon to be wed to a sword.” Himilco raised his voice and his hand. “I unleash the Gepids of battle against you.”

  Barbarians from in the palace and those on the street bayed like wolves. Worse, the barbarians on the street looked up, their gazes locked onto Elissa with an almost cannibal lust.

  Before such inhumanity could unnerve her and steal her resolve, Elissa unwound a knotted silk rope from around her waist. She swung the weighted hook and flung it up toward the roof.

  She watched it with fear. She had so little time. The hook sailed up and up—and it caught hold.

  With simian speed, she began to slither up the rope. She doubted Himilco could cast another of his oily clouds just yet. Then something swished past her head. It was a knife. The knife hit the wall to her right and bounced off. One of the barbarians on the street must have hurled it at her. Before the knife clattered onto the street far below, she had scaled the ornate gold-work on the roof’s edge, dropping behind it and disappearing from their view.

  She coiled the silk line as she raced across the broad roof. The aftereffects of the cluthe had made her woozy so the blood pounded in her ears. Her eyesight dimmed for
a moment. She shook her head as taught until her vision returned.

  She noticed a stone tower half-a-mile away—a world away for her—built into Karchedon’s mighty sea wall. Above the huge tower waved the blue flag of the Seahorse Squadron. Elissa could make out the red seahorse in the middle of the billowing blue flag. She wished some of those mercenary lancers were here to stop the enchanted Gepids. As Elissa wished that, she heard a trapdoor slam against the roof.

  With a twist of her head, she saw a spiked helm poke through the opening. A big sweaty Gepid with blue tattoos on his cheeks climbed up. By the sounds, there were more barbarians behind him.

  Elissa sprinted toward the edge of the roof opposite the side that she’d just climbed. Only a towering plinth was higher than she was now. The plinth was a column of marble with gilt words attached to its sides telling about the majesty of the Lord of Dragons, one of Karchedon’s gods.

  Elissa judged the distance to the street below. She could jump, but she would likely snap bones upon landing. They would have her then.

  What was the right—?

  A man screamed in terror. He was farther down the street. Two sword-waving barbarians ran after him. The frantic man bolted for a door, his hat falling off his head. One of the Gepids crushed the feather in the hat as he trampled it in his haste to butcher another of Zarius’s fleeing servants.

  The barbarians on the roof had climbed out of the trapdoor and now closed in on her.

  “We have her!” shouted one.

  The warrior sounded winded, so that was something, at least. The others made slithering chainmail sounds as they moved.

  “Whoever touches her first can test her first,” Himilco shouted from the trapdoor.

  Elissa had already unwound her silk line again. She couldn’t defeat these barbarians in open battle. She had to escape, and there was only one possibility left.

  She twirled the hook and heaved, playing out the line. The hook sailed toward the plinth, latching onto one of the gilt letters bolted to it. With a cat-like sudden leap, Elissa launched off the edge of the palace roof. Her slender hands gripped viselike onto the spider-thin line.