“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” murmured Jared.
“What! Our scholar-soldier-minstrel-healer has never seen this sign? Then it must be from a time beyond the inscription of human memory on parchment!”
Jared’s mouth twisted into a half-smile, half-frown. “Always the joker, Rafe! But perhaps this sign is not…” His explanation was swallowed up in a gasp. “Oh, my God!”
“What? What is it?” Brytnoth took a step toward him, peering with concern at Jared’s face.
“I’ve seen this before…I’ve seen it…I know what it means.” The words spilled out, broken and breathless. “Quick! Let’s get out of here, and then I’ll explain.”
They gripped the edge of the tomb and peered inside. A small cache of weapons was clustered at the bottom: a long, straight sword with an ivory grip and silver sheath, a bow with a quiver full of arrows, a silver shield with the strange device worked in ivory on its face, and a javelin about five feet in length.
“I call the bow and arrows,” said Brytnoth softly. “My people are known for being deadly archers, and I can’t say that I’m less a master of the skill than the rest.”
“Give me the javelin,” said Rafe. When Jared opened his mouth to protest, he shook his head and smiled. “I know whose fight this is. We’re just backup.”
Wordlessly, Jared took the sword and shield from the tomb. The light followed them as they set off for the stairs at a run, but as they approached the entrance to the necropolis, it began to fade. By the time they had reached the upper temple, it had dissipated entirely.
Once out on the streets of the Great City, Rafe stopped and turned to face the others, the javelin resting easily on his broad shoulder.
“So what’s it all mean, Jared? Where have you seen that device before?”
“It’s something I’d rather forget, to tell you the truth,” Jared said with a frown.
“Why?” asked Brytnoth.
“Because I betrayed someone’s confidence.”
“Sahara’s.” Rafe tipped his head back and eyed Jared expectantly. “So? How is she involved?”
“Rafe, you were right about one thing. I never saw this device on any piece of parchment. It was branded onto Sahara’s back, at the intersection of the three lash strokes she received when she was taken prisoner by the Dragon-Lords and sentenced to the labor camps.”
Brytnoth and Rafe exchanged glances.
“What do you mean, branded? You mean like we brand sheep and cattle at home?” Rafe asked.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
After another long silence, Brytnoth asked, “But I don’t understand. Why would they use that mark to identify their prisoners if that is also the mark that identifies these weapons…the weapons that are supposed to destroy them?”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” Rafe suggested quietly. “Maybe they didn’t brand her…maybe someone else did.”
Jared glanced at him, ready to laugh at yet another of his friend’s outlandish and tongue-in-cheek suggestions. But Rafe was staring at the ground, and everything about his body language told Jared that he was absolutely serious.
“What?” Jared said, unable to keep all of his laughter out of his voice. “You’re serious?”
A glimmer of a smile touched his face. “Yes, for once. It’s like a tale told by a skilled poet, you know? A sign that’s used to identify common criminals…”
“Or ones who are particularly threatening to the established order,” interjected Brytnoth.
“…or ones who are threatening to the established order suddenly becomes the sign by which that order and all its evil designs are overthrown. The Dragon-Lords read such a sign as the image of their power—the sword that annihilates opposition and conquers worlds. The resistance sees it as the symbol of the oppressors’ destruction—the sword transfixes the tyrant. It’s a paradox, you see? And only history will tell which reading is right.”
Jared stared at him for a long time. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Rafe,” he said at last.
“Well,” Rafe said, his cocky smile returning, “I don’t spend all my time drinking, fighting, and wenching, you know. I like a good story once in a while. And I like thinking about good stories.”
“Well, you must not listen much to mine, then,” said Jared with a laugh. “Because none of the stories I tell are as carefully crafted as that!”
“Sometimes the singer doesn’t know what he sings.” Rafe shrugged. “Anyway, we’re wasting time. We’ve got to make some history here—we need to prove that our reading is the right one!”
They set off at a quicker pace. Jared led them back along the serpentine route through the city toward the river and the water gate. He never stopped to consider his direction, nor did he mistake his route this time.
“I wish my sense of direction were this flawless!” Brytnoth muttered to Rafe as they pounded down the streets behind Jared.
“Spend a few years navigating the desert and you’ll get there!” Rafe answered.
At last, they pulled up next to the long flight of stairs that led over the high city walls. Brytnoth sprawled on the lowest step, breathing hard.
“What a run!” Brytnoth exclaimed.
“Take a moment only, friends,” Jared said softly. “Something feels wrong here…but I don’t know what. I’ve got this strange crawling sensation in my spine.”
At that, Brytnoth was scrambling back to his feet. “What do you mean, a crawling sensation?”
“Perhaps our friend is giving a ride to some of the less desirable inhabitants of dark, dusty, underground places,” Rafe suggested.
“No, I’m not.” Jared reached over and flicked a large spider off Rafe’s shoulder and into the darkness behind them. “But you are.”
He turned and began making his way cautiously up the stairs. Brytnoth hesitated a moment, then plucked Rafe’s sleeve.
“I don’t have one of those things on me, do I?”
Rafe checked him over, and then slapped him on the shoulder. “Nope. You’re good.”
As they started up the steps behind Jared, Brytnoth said, “Thanks. Too many legs, you know.”
In spite of Jared’s apprehension, they met no danger on the steps, and soon they were standing once more on the level outside the city walls.
“Well, maybe everything’s fine after all,” Jared muttered.
“No!” Rafe shouted. He leaped toward the river, a curse punctuating every step.
“Where the hell is the boat?” he shouted over his shoulder.
At that, Brytnoth and Jared dashed after him, half-running, half-sliding down the bank to the water’s edge. The boat was nowhere to be seen.
Brytnoth dropped to the ground and put his head in his hands. “No, no, no, no!” he mumbled, clutching his hair as if to pull it out by the roots.
Jared walked five or six paces down river, viciously kicking the rushes that whispered against his boots. When his short search yielded no sign of their boat, he hung his head and clenched his fists until the knuckles turned white. The force of his frustration enveloped him like a sandstorm, and because he didn’t know whether to weep like a child or yell curses like a drunk man, he did nothing at all.
I’ve failed her, he thought. We’ll never get back in time. Not now. Not without a way to get back upriver.
“What now?” Rafe asked from behind him, fury seething in his voice. “How are we supposed to get back to Albadir without a boat?”
Jared took a deep breath and turned his face toward the east. The sky was just beginning to brighten, and a furtive dawn breeze fluttered against his cheeks.
“Well,” he said, rejoining the others, “we can start running.”
“Run?” Brytnoth asked despairingly. “Jared, you can’t possibly be serious!”
Jared arched an eyebrow. “Do we have another choice? And maybe we’ll find the boat further upstream.”
“That’s a fool’s hope,” Rafe said with a shake of his head. “The bo
at was stolen, or sunk, or both. The current would have driven it up against the water gate, not back upstream.”
Jared shrugged. “So be it. But if we don’t try to get back to Albadir, Sahara will die.”
Without another word, he turned and set off at a fierce pace along the riverbank. Brytnoth groaned and Rafe held out a hand to haul him to his feet.
“Got to run,” Rafe said with a grin. “Care to join me? You’ll love it.”
Brytnoth laughed then and adjusted his pack. “Waiting for you, princess,” he said. “Just waiting for you.”
*****
Sahara sat on a low stone bench, shackled hand and foot to an iron post driven into the marble floor about two feet away. There was a fiercely cold wind gusting through the high window in the outer wall of her prison chamber, but no blanket had been given to her. Her clothes were tattered and crusted with blood in places, but her face, though bruised, was confident. Even proud.
She leaned her head back against the harsh stones and smiled softly. He is coming…he is on his way, she thought, feeding her hungry soul on the wellspring of hope and joy that bubbled up within her. She had retreated to this thought so many times, taking comfort in the certainty that she would not just be abandoned to her fate.
It was strange, she reflected, that she had never known freedom until it was so far from her. Her entire life was now circumscribed by a circle four feet in diameter, and yet it had liberated her soul. She felt a strange sense of calm and peace knowing that her fate rested in someone else’s hands—she had done all she could do, and now she just had to wait for her knight in shining armor to show up and take care of the rest.
The thought of Jared as a knight at all still made her smile. He was prudent almost to a fault and preferred stealth to open confrontation, but she had seen flashes of the fell warrior beneath the minstrel’s gentle exterior. It was in there, she knew—perhaps she would finally see it if he really did come to her rescue.
When he comes, she told herself fiercely. When, not if. When.
With a horrific sound that made her jump in spite of herself, the heavy door suddenly rasped against its hinges. Through the gaping black maw, two dark, hooded figures entered. One carried a bowl of some thin gruel, which he set on the floor on the far side of the iron post.
“Time to feed, human filth,” he said.
Sahara laughed and shook her head. “You know, you’re going to regret that you ever demanded my life.”
“Oh, yes. We forgot that you’re expecting to be rescued before you die,” the other figure sneered. “It’s too bad that they’ll have to run all the way here, since their boat is now at the bottom of the Alba River.”
Sahara didn’t move, but her eyes narrowed.
A jagged chuckle came from somewhere inside the darkness of their hooded heads. “What, you think we didn’t know? You think we were blind? You think we had no scouts trailing them? We were warned, you see. Childir’s message only reached us in part, but we heard enough to set plans in motion.”
Sahara said nothing for a moment, but when their hideous laughter began again, she remarked, “Enjoy this moment, because your day of mirth is at an end. This wind that blows through the window brings your death-day ever nearer.”
The laughter stopped abruptly. The payment for her brave words was a stunning blow across the face.
“Eat that with your gruel, you filthy maggot. That’ll teach you to ape prophecy!”
Sahara’s chains rattled against the stone as she lifted a hand to her cheek. With another wave of terrible laughter, the figures were swallowed up in the darkness beyond the door, and it closed with a bone-jarring bang behind them.
Alone once again, Sahara could not stop the tears from flowing. It can’t be true, she thought. I warned him in time…I know I warned him in time!
Despair, fear, and anger swelled within her until she felt she would fly into a million pieces. She let it all vent out into her silent cry.
Jared! Tell me it isn’t true!
Rafe and Brytnoth, trailing fifty or so paces behind Jared, suddenly saw him reel and fall to the earth as though someone had struck him violently.
“Jared!” Rafe called. “Are you all right?”
When Jared neither moved nor spoke, the two broke into a sprint and reached him a few seconds later.
“He’s breathing,” observed Brytnoth with relief.
“It’s true, it’s true, it’s true,” Jared moaned. “God, I’m so sorry!”
“What are you talking about?” Rafe asked, helping him to sit up. “Your nose is bleeding! Did you run into….” He stopped and looked around, realizing in a flash that there was nothing in their immediate vicinity that could have done such damage.
Jared swiped at his nose and saw the back of his hand come away red with blood. His face, even without the nosebleed, was as utterly forlorn as Brytnoth had ever seen it.
“It was her,” Brytnoth said matter-of-factly. “Wasn’t it, Jared?”
Jared nodded, taking the cloth Rafe offered and holding it against his nose for a moment. “I heard her voice—she was so angry, so desperately afraid…and I could say nothing! I couldn’t hold her at all…I could offer no words to encourage her, no consolation.” He gritted his teeth. “What if I’ve lost the ability to communicate with her? What if….” His voice trailed off, but with an effort he finished the sentence, “What if I’ve lost her and I’ll never be able to find her again?”
Rafe shook his head. “I don’t think you can lose her, Jared. We don’t know anything about this mind-speech thing anyway, you know. I always thought it was just a myth! What if she broke the communication on her side? I mean, you said she was desperate and angry and afraid—maybe if there’s too much emotion, the communication breaks down or something.”
“That sounds reasonable, Jared,” said Brytnoth. “You should try to reach her. Later. When you’re calmer and she is too, presumably. I’m sure it’s not as bleak as you think.”
Jared took the cloth from his face and smiled at his friends. “I hope you’re right,” he said.
“Well, hope is what we’re in the business to provide right now,” said Rafe with a grin. “Not just for her, either. But sitting around here doesn’t get us anywhere.” He stood and pulled Jared up with him. “Come on. Let’s go kill us a dragon!”
Chapter 24
By midday they had to stop. They were back in the dense underbrush that clung to the water’s edge, and it provided adequate cover for a bivouac.
Brytnoth dropped his pack at the foot of a tree and went to the river to splash his face with water. When he returned, his hair dripping, a fierce frown had settled on his lips and between his brows.
“What’s wrong with you?” Rafe asked. “Did you swallow a toad or something?”
“No.”
Brytnoth’s uncharacteristic curtness made Jared glance up from his meal preparations. “What’s going on, then?” he asked.
“I think I’ve found something.”
Jared and Rafe both rose to their feet.
“What? What did you find?” Rafe prompted.
“Come and see.”
He led the way back to the river’s edge. When they were assembled on the bank, Brytnoth pointed to the middle of the swiftly-flowing water. Something was protruding from the water, barely large enough to create a small swirl in the current.
“What is that?” Rafe asked, squinting hard. “It looks like a stick.”
“Wait for it.”
A moment later, the sun flared out from behind a cloud, and the thing in the water shone like a beacon.
“That’s metal,” remarked Jared. “What would something metal be doing….” His voice trailed off, and his face went white with fury. “That’s our boat,” he gritted between clenched teeth. “That’s our damn boat out there in the middle of the river.”
Rafe’s mouth opened and shut wordlessly. “How did it get all the way up here?” he finally managed to ask.
“Do
n’t you see?” said Brytnoth, his voice like ice. “They found it. They brought it here. They sunk it. They knew. They knew all along.”
After a moment’s pause, Jared asked, “Can we get it out?”
“No way,” Brytnoth said, shaking his head. “We’d need cables and some way of pulling it up to the surface. We’d never be able to lift it.”
Jared ran a hand through his hair in utter frustration and swore softly under his breath. When he raised his eyes he was shocked to see Rafe’s face plastered with a huge grin.
“What’s so funny about this?” he snapped.
“We don’t have to lift it,” Rafe answered, eyes shining as though he’d found Heaven. Jared and Brytnoth both stared at him,
“What the hell are you talking about?” Brytnoth barked. “Of course we have to….”
“No, we don’t. Not this boat.”
“You’d best explain what you mean right now,” Jared said slowly, impatience lacing his voice as well.
Rafe seemed oblivious to his friends’ annoyance. He was almost dancing in his excitement. “Didn’t I tell you that Arnauld’s boat used the latest and greatest technology? Didn’t I? Well, that technology, from the rumors I’ve heard swirling about, included an underwater propulsion system.”
“What!” Jared burst out. The swell of hope was so extraordinary that it made him angry.
“I’m telling you—all we have to do is swim down there and activate it! The boat can bring itself up. And then we can use it again!”
Jared stared at Rafe for a moment, at the radiant joy in his eyes and the smile on his lips, and then he started to laugh.
Once he started, he couldn’t stop. Then the tears came, running down his cheeks as he laughed and laughed. Rafe and Brytnoth were soon laughing with him, and the sound echoed through the forest on their left and over the water on their right.
“Well, so who’s going to swim down there and turn on the boat?” Brytnoth asked when at last they lay on the bank with aching sides and light hearts.
“I will,” volunteered Rafe. “I know where the controls are.” He shrugged and grinned. “A man’s got to know his machine,” he added.
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