Bribery and bartering aren’t conducted with imaginary coin, she thought, and unhooked the purse. And he won’t need these, not where he’s gone.
A thick gloom hung over the hallway as she crept out of the cell, pulling the heavy door almost closed behind her. Silently, she crossed to the opposite wall and paused to consider her route.
If she followed the hallway down, it would take her back to the prison. Since Jared had already been released, she had no reason to go back there. She turned and surveyed the other direction, following the curved slope of the passage as far as her eyes could make it out in the darkness. It led, she knew, toward the Council Hall and the tower. It also led to freedom. With a final glance back toward the prisons, she started up the gentle slope.
The wall on her left hand curved around, and the hallway hugged it for some distance. Sahara encountered no one and nothing but blank stone walls. She paused every hundred feet or so to listen, but there was nothing to hear. She tried not to think about where she was headed and what she might find. It was enough, for now, that she was free.
Suddenly, without warning, the wall on her left dropped away into nothingness.
Sahara crouched down, her palms pressed against the smooth flags of the floor. Several hundred feet below her lay the Council Hall, illuminated by three huge torches, one at each corner of the room. Not six feet in front of her stood a heavy door. Glancing to her right, she saw that the hallway turned sharply and continued on into darkness. Sahara hesitated, weighing her options, trying to remember the layout of the place.
The door in front of her began to open, and she heard voices approaching from the passage beyond it.
There was no time to run down the hall to her right, and if she got caught she would be executed on the spot.
She crawled as quickly as she could to her left, to the edge of what had been the hallway. She discovered that she was on a ledge, almost like a balcony, overhanging the Council Hall. Long twisted beams of stone and metal arched from the walls to the center of the great hall, forming a support system for a giant dais suspended by chains from the beams. One of the braces was just within Sahara’s reach, and she quickly lowered herself onto it.
The voices were growing louder, and she could now hear footsteps too.
She shimmied down the beam into the darkness below the ledge and huddled against the wall. Barely breathing, she waited until the footsteps paced slowly past her position and receded down the hall in the direction of the prison.
When all was utterly still once again, she maneuvered herself so that she could straddle the brace, its firmness supporting her stomach and chest and making a suitably comfortable seat. She was now facing into the center of the hall, and she wondered how long she would have to wait before the Council convened to decide her fate.
I hope it’s before they discover the dead guard and the fact that I’m not back in my cell.
Even as she finished the thought, the door below her opened, and the Council members filed slowly into the hall. They were all hooded and cloaked like the figures who had questioned her, their features completely concealed.
At first, they all seemed identical, but as the roll was called and each figure spoke, the colors of their cowls changed subtly to match the tone of their voices. Soon the hall was filled not with black figures, but with figures of every shade of grey. On the dais below her sat a figure all in white and the figure in black who had come to her cell.
The black figure spoke first. “This Council is called to order.”
All the figures sat down simultaneously with a whispering of robes on stone benches. They waited.
The white figure spoke then. “You have been summoned here to decide the fate of the outworlder, who led the rebellion against the Dragon-Lords of Silesia two weeks ago.”
Two weeks! She was stunned. Had it been two weeks?
“What need have you of the Council’s decision, my lords?” a delegate in a silver robe asked, lifting his voice to address the dais. “Can this not be resolved in the customary way?”
The customary way. Like last time. A sentence to life in the labor camp of some barren planet. In spite of herself, her mouth twisted into a grin. It hadn’t worked out so well for them last time.
“This outworlder has been here before,” answered the figure in black. “She has caused trouble of this kind before. She is dangerous to the order established by the Council.”
A murmur of agreement swirled through the hall.
The white-robed figure continued, “She was here five years ago, accused of plotting rebellion on her homeworld. But she escaped, curse her and all those who aided her! Then, a year ago, she herself assassinated our minister and High Dragon-Lord Zhezhna-ban. But the price for her victory was her own capture. She was brought here and sentenced to the labor camps of Silesia.” He paused, and Sahara realized that they must not know how she had escaped. “Two weeks ago, she led an assault on the fortress of the Dragon-Lords on Silesia. But she found their defenses to be much more effective than they were on her own homeworld.”
Sahara bowed her head. That much was true. She had banked too much on her earlier success, not considering that her enemy might have made some adjustments in their security measures. And then, Arnauld had not been patient. It wasn’t supposed to have been that way.
“Speak, then, my lords,” a Council member in charcoal robes said. “What choices lie before us?”
The white-robed figure held up a scroll etched with a red script. “We have two choices for the Council to consider. First, we have received this message from Silesia. The Dragon-Lords have laid claim to her.”
Sahara felt a queer cold knot tightening in the pit of her stomach, and she clutched the stone brace. Why do they want me? Why? She was relieved when one of the council asked that very question, for she desperately wanted an answer.
“She is to be a blood-offering.”
A murmur shivered through the hall. Although she could not discern individual voices, she instinctively sensed the pleasure this caused.
“A blood-offering!” Sahara breathed in the barest whisper.
“And our other choice, my lords?” one of the council asked.
“Your other choice is to send her to the prison world of Al’alsunne. None sent there ever escape, and none are ever released alive.”
There was a long silence.
Sahara didn’t want to be sentenced to Al’alsunne, but the reason that sprang into her mind was idiotic.
I’ll never see Jared again.
Then she laughed at herself. You fool, and you’ll never see him again if you’re given to the Dragon-Lords as a blood-offering either!
Still the silence dragged on below her. Sahara wondered what they were doing. Would there be no debate? No statements of the pros and cons of each choice? Apparently not.
At least Jared got out, she thought. I wonder how he managed that? Then she remembered that he had charmed the guards with his minstrelsy. They called him the poeilil, she remembered. It must be on account of his songs that they let him go free.
Or perhaps they had underestimated him. It was easy to do. He was unassuming, hiding his true self under many guises. But whatever the reason, he was free.
For a split second, she wished she’d tried the charm route instead of strangling a man to death. Now she truly was in a bad position. If they discovered she had murdered a guard, their justice would be terrible and swift. And although she might be free of her prison cell, she couldn’t get off the moon without a ship. And even if by some miracle she got hold of a ship, she didn’t know how to fly.
Stupid, stupid! she thought. I couldn’t possibly be more stupid!
All the failures of the past two weeks—of the past five years—swelled within her like the rising of sand before a strong wind, and she found it suddenly hard to swallow. She had never learned patience, in spite of everything that had happened to her, in spite of all the times she had failed.
She bent her head t
o the cool stone of the beam. Until this moment, she had never grasped that some chasms are best crossed by careful planning and slow descent rather than risking everything on a single leap.
But hadn’t Jared always told her that?
“Cities are not built in a week,” he used to tell her. “Stone by stone, Sahara. Stone by stone.”
Stone by stone.
And that was why she hadn’t found the trap door leading out of the holding room. In her confidence that she remembered where the switch was and in her haste, she had skipped every other stone.
God! she thought. What a miserable fool.
And now here she was, dangling in the shadows hundreds of feet above the heads of those who would decide her fate. It might not be too late for her, if she could just manage to stop hindering herself.
“We have decided,” rang out all the voices of the Council in unison. It was a strangely harmonious sound, and Sahara felt the beam under her vibrate in consonance.
“And what have you decided?” the white-robed and black-robed figures asked together.
“Let her be given to the Dragon-Lords. Her offense is against them—let them exact the penalty that will satisfy them. We do not want trouble with them. It would endanger the peace.”
“So be it.”
The Council members rose and all filed out of the room, as silently as they had entered. As the heavy metal doors clanged shut behind them, Sahara breathed a deep sigh. For some reason she felt relieved, and she did not allow her mind to frame the reason into a name. But it was there anyway.
She waited for a few minutes to make sure no one was walking in the hall above her, and then she shimmied back up the beam and clambered onto the ledge. As soon as her feet touched the cold stone, she was up and running without a sound back down the hallway toward the prison.
Chapter 15
When Jared staggered into the council hall, a wall of surprised and stunned faces greeted him. Arnauld rose slowly from his seat, the color seeping out of his face.
“Jared!”
Jared managed a smile and a choking sort of laugh. “I’m not a ghost, Arnauld.”
Chair legs scraped on the stone floor as everyone stood, watching the two men in breathless silence.
“My God, Jared,” Arnauld said at last, “you look like hell!”
Jared rubbed a hand across his shaggy black beard and his smile widened. “It’s good to see you too,” he said.
“A goblet of hot spiced wine for Jared!” Arnauld called to a steward. As the man bowed and disappeared down a hallway, Arnauld gestured Jared to a seat at the table. “Sit and tell us your tale! We never thought we’d see you again when you didn’t come back after the battle.”
Jared dropped gratefully into a chair and stretched out his legs. “My thanks, my lord,” he said. “Those miserable wretches dropped me in the foothills and I had to hike all the way back.”
A servant set a goblet of spiced wine in front of him and he drank deeply. The rest of the men sat down again and waited for him to speak.
“First,” Jared said, replacing the goblet on the table, “I want to know what’s happened since my absence. And then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about my own adventures.”
“Rafe can tell you better than I what happened on the battlefield,” Arnauld said, nodding to the younger man across the table.
“There’s not much to tell,” Rafe answered. “After Sahara left with her picked squad, we waited under that escarpment as she had commanded. But when the harbingers began their warning, we retreated to the city. She didn’t come back that night, and neither did any of the men she had taken with her. We’ve been waiting two weeks for some word of you. And that’s all we’ve done. Wait. Things have been quiet. Too quiet. It’s strange.”
“Strange indeed,” Jared agreed. After a moment, he spoke again. “After the last rebellion, they came. They laid waste to every village and outpost between Albadir and their fortress. But there’s been no retaliation this time? Nothing at all?”
“There’s been no sign of them! We brought all our people inside the city walls for protection—all the outposts are abandoned and the villages are empty. We send scouts out every day, but there’s been no movement from the fortress since the attack.”
“In some ways, that’s worse than if they had come for retribution,” said Jared. “I’m afraid their silence means there’s something else more terrible to come.”
“That’s our fear as well,” Arnauld said. “But now tell us what happened to you! We can discuss the Dragon-Lords after we feast your safe return.”
Jared took another draught of his wine, then began his tale. “When Sahara called the retreat, I figured that she’d try to seek out the mountain pass into the fortress. It was something we had discussed as a last resort, a fool’s hope if all went badly. When she called the retreat, I slipped ahead of her to scout the path, intending to wait for her at the pass. But I never got that far. The pass is being patrolled again, as I found out too late, and by two of the Dragon-Lords themselves. They had me pinned down and bound before I could escape.”
Arnauld gave a low whistle. “You’re fortunate that they didn’t gut you on the spot,” he said.
“I know it. But they didn’t want my blood. Not yet, anyway. Gagged and bound as I was, I couldn’t warn Sahara not to attempt the pass. They dragged me onto a hovership, and I waited there for what felt like hours. And then….” His voice fell away, and a puzzled frown appeared between his brows.
“And then?” prompted a young man sitting opposite Jared.
“Ah….” Jared rubbed his forehead. “It’s difficult to….” He stopped again, and then shrugged. He might as well tell them everything. “Well, suddenly I could see what was happening below me somehow. Not with my eyes, you understand. But somehow I knew. And I saw Sahara’s men, one by one, fall into shadow behind her. The Dragon-Lords disposed of them quickly, I think. But she didn’t know. She didn’t see. And then….” Again his voice faltered, but he continued without a prompt, “And then I called to her without my voice, and she heard me.”
There was a stunned silence around the table.
“Jared, we’ve all heard that legend about some mythic power that allows people to communicate without words…mind-to-mind, as it were. But that’s just a fable…a story for children!”
“So I thought too…until it started happening to me,” Jared said wryly.
“And you’re sure she heard you?” the young man across from Jared asked.
Jared glanced at him once, and then again.
“I don’t know you,” he said, his voice edged with suspicion.
“This is Brytnoth, Jared,” Arnauld explained. “He came into the city out of the desert three days ago and has been recovering here since.”
Jared stared into Brytnoth’s eyes until the young man’s gaze wavered and fell. His eyes were not Silesian, and Jared wondered where he had come from. He opened his mouth to ask a question, then hesitated. Instead of asking a question of his own, he decided to answer Brytnoth’s and get on with his tale. There would be time later to figure out who this stranger was.
“Yes, I’m sure she heard me,” he said. “I saw her fall to her knees. She must have heard me. But that was all I could do. She saw she was alone, and then my vision faded. When I could see again, I saw only the innards of the ship, and she was lying next to me, unconscious, gagged, and bound.”
The servant refilled Jared’s goblet and then returned to his place against the wall.
“They took us to the prison moon of K’ilenfir,” Jared continued, nodding his thanks to the servant. “We were put in the same cell bay. But when the guards discovered I could sing, they started to let me out to entertain them at their board. Sahara lay in some kind of sleep for days. She only woke the day I was released.”
Arnauld laughed. “I don’t think any one of us ever thought your blasted singing would get you out of trouble!”
“It did, and more. It a
llowed me to overlisten their conversations.”
“What did you learn?” Brytnoth asked, a little breathless.
Jared studied him again, noting the eager flush in the young man’s face, the starry brightness in his eyes. Too many questions surrounded this stranger from the desert. Too many to ask and answer that night.
“A great deal, in fact,” Jared sighed. “It hardly seems possible that I was there for two weeks. The guards were loose with their counsel, I sang many a drasty tune, and then they set me free.”
“But tell us what you heard!” Arnauld insisted.
“Sahara was a popular topic.” His jaw closed against some of the things he had heard them say—things that made him clench his hand into a fist so hard that the knuckles cracked.
“What did they say about her?”
“Well, for instance…” His voice faded and he ran his finger along a grain of wood in the table. “For instance, do you know why she was on that prison ship bound for the Dragon-Lords’ labor camps?”
“She never told anyone why. She just said she’d made a miscalculation…or something like that.” Arnauld glanced around, and the men all nodded their agreement. “Did you find out something about it?”
“Yes, I did.” He hesitated again. “She was on that ship because she had assassinated the Dragon-Lord Chieftain on her own homeworld.”
There was utter silence in the room. Jared raised his goblet and drank, watching the men over the rim of the cup.
“I’ll…I’ll…” Arnauld didn’t even have voice enough to curse.
“She killed him? You’re sure they said she killed him?” Brytnoth asked.
“She killed him.” Jared slowly rotated the cup between his hands, watching the wine swirl like a languid whirlpool. “But she was captured immediately afterwards. She attempted too much. Caught him in his own chambers, they said, and put a dagger through his heart. But she didn’t have an escape, and they found her in the hall before she could make it out.”
The Outworlder Page 14