That of course assumed that Nesha-tari would still be alive to continue on her task in another few hours, which to her mind was far from certain. While she was confident she could fulfill her Master’s purpose if she could get to where she had to go, the fact that her only viable route there led through Codian Souterm was patently ridiculous. Not because of the Codians themselves, for their bureaucracy was easily defeated by official paperwork, and if the girl Wizard at customs was a fair example then the Circle was every bit as feeble as Nesha-tari had been led to believe. Again, the world of humanity was an inconvenience, but not really a problem.
The Codians, however, were merely the newest bunch of humans to claim dominion over the city now known as Souterm, which the locals still called The Lady. There was something much older here, someone to whom the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires was only of passing interest. She was mistress of a realm marked on no map, but it was a realm which Nesha-tari could not pass through without permission.
Providing of course that the Lady did not simply kill one such as Nesha-tari Hrilamae, daughter of the Lamia, just on principle.
Edgewise walked most of the length of the ridge north and only capered at the intersections. They went on until they were almost directly below the white cathedral at the end, with its flying buttresses and spires filling the sunny sky above. Ahead of them loomed a great wall of giant black stones interlocked like bricks, running across the street and right up a steep side of the ridge. The old work gave the appearance of having thrust up from the ground in the middle of the neighborhood, though surely it had been here long before and the houses only built much later, flush against it. Edgewise took the last left before a cul-de-sac in front of the old wall, turning onto a lane that was as much a staircase as a street, multiple terraces several strides across that climbed the ridge. The goblin mounted several until reaching a fenced gate across the narrow alleyway between two tall houses in the shadows of the angling black wall. Nesha-tari caught up to Edgewise as he stopped to fish out one particular key on a ring holding many.
“How far are we going?” Nesha-tari asked, not winded but apprehensive.
“Until we get there,” Edgewise snapped without looking at her, as though that had been a stupid question.
The goblin opened a large iron padlock and swung the gate open. He gestured Nesha-tari into the narrow alley, and after a look at him she went. He stepped in behind her and pulled the gate shut, and in the deep shadows Nesha-tari’s blue eyes and Edgewise’s bronze ones both flared.
She could see perfectly now despite the shadows. The alley was uncluttered but so narrow that Edgewise could not easily squeeze around her. Nesha-tari went forward as there was no other choice, stopping only as she heard the big padlock snapping shut on the other side of the gate, though Edgewise was still right behind her. Nesha-tari went on. The houses to either side had fronted narrowly on the street, but both were very deep so that the alley between was almost a canyon, ending at the towering black wall after short lengths of tall fences enclosed the back yards.
The moment Nesha-tari drew even with the fences an explosion of snarling barks came from behind the one on her right. She hissed and flattened herself against the left fence, eyes flaring but seeing only the outlines of a hulking shape through the slats. Edgewise chuckled, rapped his knobby knuckles on the fence, and almost cooed in soft-spoken Codian. The barking changed to pants and whines, and the goblin grinned at Nesha-tari.
“I hate dogs,” she said.
“That,” the goblin said, “is not a dog.”
Edgewise stepped into the lead as Nesha-tari remained flattened against the fence. She sidestepped after him, still pressing back hard enough that splinters snagged her cloak. The unseen shape behind the fence growled, but it did not bark again.
The goblin rounded a corner, for while the right-side fence was built flush to the stone wall, that on the left turned in at a post and left a gap. Both Edgewise and Nesha-tari had to turn their shoulders sideways to step along, hands on the smooth stones and hips squeezing around posts. The goblin trailed the pads of his fingers along until halting halfway down, and held his hand sideways as though the tips were in the faintest crack. He turned to look back and up at Nesha-tari, one pointing earlobe twitching as it brushed the fence.
“Be right back,” he said, then turned and followed his hand into the crack that was not wide enough for a playing card. Edgewise.
Nesha-tari blinked at the space where the goblin had been, but in another moment there was a startling creak from the wall right in front of her. The dog, or whatever, started to bark again from the next yard, booming yaps that covered the grinding sound of stone moving against stone as a block as tall and wide as a doorway rumbled down right in front of Nesha-tari’s nose, and into the ground at her feet.
Edgewise doffed his hat in the doorway and waved Nesha-tari inside with a flourish.
It took her a moment to proceed. As much as a squeeze as the alley and fences had been, there was still open sky high above Nesha-tari’s head. Edgewise was beckoning her forward into a low-ceilinged tunnel, the interior the same black stone as the rest of the wall. She looked at the goblin’s eyes, and the glowing bronze pupils by which she had recognized him for what he was, just as he had known her by her blue ones. Nesha-tari balled her fists and stepped in past the goblin.
Edgewise knelt and spread his hands flat atop the section of wall that had slid into the ground, a great block as thick as it was wide. He lifted his hands, not gripping, but the block rose with them and continued to do so even when he took his hands away. The gap closed with a sound Nesha-tari imagined like a shutting tomb, and she shivered. With all natural light cut off she could see absolutely nothing until her blue eyes flared a bit brighter, and then she could. Edgewise was still grinning at her.
“Allow me a guess. You hate enclosed spaces as well.”
Nesha-tari did not answer. The goblin chuckled and stepped past her, wide feet slapping the smooth stone floor.
She followed him with her hands balled at her sides and ducking for the low ceiling. She could hear her own heartbeat loud in her ears. A tunnel wound deeper into the ground at a slope, soon changing from black blocks to a natural stone cleft with a rough floor and a higher, though not nearly high enough, ceiling. A minute or two seemed much longer before light from ahead began to thin the pitch darkness. Edgewise stepped out of the tunnel into a larger, dimly-lit space with a sandy floor. Nesha-tari almost sprang out of the cramped hall behind him, and regretted it immediately.
Her dampening spell which she was presently maintaining with no more thought than it took to breathe crashed in on her like a wind storm striking from every direction. Nesha-tari’s feet flew out from under her and she gasped, spinning wildly in the air a time or two before she landed shuddering on the sandy floor, on all fours.
“Did you have a spell raised?” Edgewise demanded, voice sounding alarmed for the first time. “You can’t come in here with that!”
The goblin squatted in front of her, bronze eyes gleaming. Nesha-tari snarled.
“You might have told me that!”
“I did not think it necessary to say. Would you be allowed in the presence of your Blue Master with an active incantation?”
“Of course not, but how was I to know we were close?”
“Oh, we are that,” Edgewise said, straightening and stepping aside. “Close indeed.”
Nesha-tari had her breath back but she gasped again as she took in their surroundings. They had entered a great cavern, rough rock rising to a dome high above the sandy ground over an area larger than several city blocks, which was an easy judgment to make as there were several city blocks within the cavern. Two compass-straight boulevards lined by rows of stone buildings rising two, three, and even four stories in the air met at a square around a massive, ziggurat-like pyramid, so tall that the rough ceiling actually pressed on the top tier as though it were a central pillar. The buildings all around the pyramid gaped
hollow and empty with thick sand visible in the interiors, but the two wide boulevards were swept clean to reveal the brick surfaces. Both were lined by flickering torches on regularly spaced staffs, lighting the paths to the pyramid.
“Welcome,” Edgewise said, “to what was once the ancient city of Ettacea.”
Still on all fours, Nesha-tari stared at him, but she could think of nothing to say. Edgewise extended a hand and after a moment she took it and got to her feet.
The goblin led her down the ancient street between the torches. Nesha-tari saw no one else about, and though her spell was now ended she sensed no attention on her either. Certainly not that of a human male.
Great stairways extended out on ramps from the central pyramid which may have been constructed of the same beige sandstone as the surrounding buildings, though it was faced with panels of veined marble. Edgewise and Nesha-tari took the long stairs facing them up to the first ziggurat tier, where a circular doorway big enough to drive a wagon through awaited. The entrance was rimmed in bronze, casting back the torchlight from below, but the space within was a total darkness not even Nesha-tari’s eyes could penetrate. Edgewise took his hat off as he stopped before the portal, and held out his hand again.
“Is my cousin prepared to meet my mistress?”
Nesha-tari stared into the blackness darker than any she had ever known since her Master, Akroya, had given her eyes that were as blue as his, a very long time ago now. The thought of the Great Blue Dragon brought to mind thoughts of the petty misdeeds for which Nesha-tari had seen Akroya maim or even eviscerate others among His servants. Nesha-tari was more favored than any of those others had been, but she had no expectation of mercy if she displeased the Dragon in a major way. She nodded, the movement feeling awkward and jerky, and took the goblin Edgewise’s rubbery hand. They stepped into the darkness together.
It was like passing through a veil, or a wisp of cobweb. One step and Nesha-tari was again on a sandy bit of floor, and a soft light without source dazzled her eyes.
Before her were treasures beyond comprehension; coins and gems and objects carpeting the floor, mounded into piles, spilling from chests. The wealth of kingdoms and empires spread out to the inner walls of the ziggurat, which were themselves hung with embroidered tapestries and rich curtains of purple and gold. Yet none of it made any impression on Nesha-tari, for her attention was fully transfixed by the being in front of her, for She was Ladamia, The Lady, The Great Bronze Dragon, and she was beyond magnificent.
She was massive, nearly as large as Akroya though where the Azure One’s scales shimmered like a sunny sky, the Lady was everywhere a burnished shade of bronze, deepening to a warm brown along her great flanks and powerful limbs. Those limbs ended in grim claws like swords, presently sunken into the treasure carpeting the floor beneath her. She lay supinely, seeming to fill the vast chamber with her very self, tail coiled along the edges of the room and great wings folded back against her flanks of overlapping scales, each larger than a man’s shield. On her back along her spine emerged a double row of spikes, also folded down, that ran up the length of her long, graceful neck which described a vast over-reaching arc, like a bridge up to the heavens. Then there was her head, suspended in the air over Nesha-tari like the face of a god.
The Lady was crowned by a pair of horns with flared bony plates extending back from them, giving the joint of head and neck an armored appearance. She had a long, broad, reptilian snout that nonetheless gleamed as though polished, and her teeth were a white fence of swords. Though reclining in rest the Lady’s very stillness spoke of power, as though at any moment she chose she could languidly reach out a limb and throw down the stone walls around her. A flick of her tail could slice the great spade-shaped tip through the solid black bedrock beneath the city of Souterm, which the locals still called by her name.
Yet for all that, her gleaming eyes were gentle. Though Nesha-tari willingly served the Great Blue Dragon, his attention was always piercing. No one came under Akroya’s blue gaze without falling to their knees. But in the eyes of the Great Bronze Dragon there was a warmth. Almost, strangely, an inexplicable feeling of home. A home of a kind different than any Nesha-tari had ever known.
“Great Mistress,” Edgewise said, releasing Nesha-tari’s hand. “May I present my cousin, a servant of your Blue cousin in the east.”
The Lady’s voice came to Nesha-tari then. The Dragon’s mouth did not move but her words filled the room.
“Nesha-tari Hrilamae,” the voice said, conveying a sense of faint distaste that was something other than audible. “One such as you should not be.”
Though it was not said nor otherwise conveyed with malice, Nesha-tari’s heart lurched and she choked out a sob. She thought she might fall to her knees after all, but the Lady’s bodiless voice continued.
“Stand up straight, girl. I do not condemn you for what you are.” The great serpentine neck eased back and the Lady’s head lowered to regard Nesha-tari on a more even level. The great unblinking bronze eyes looked into hers with a depth of expression impenetrable to a human, or half-human, mind.
“You are protected by my Pact-given word, child,” the Lady’s voice said from everywhere. “Even were you not, I do not choose to kill indiscriminately. No matter your dark origins, you are what you do. Not just what you are born.”
Nesha-tari stammered. “I…I have not always done well.”
“No,” the Lady agreed, sending a wave of disapproval rolling over Nesha-tari that brought her close to nausea. The bronze eyes before her seemed to darken momentarily.
“You have the blood of innocents on you, it is true. But many of us do.”
Tears she was scarcely aware of coursed down Nesha-tari’s face, her real face. She felt an urge she never had before Akroya, whose presence demanded only supplication. But the Blue was a very different sort of dragon than was the Bronze, of the Sky and not of the Earth. Before the Lady, Nesha-tari wanted only to ask forgiveness for her failings, and perhaps for her very existence.
“But it is not mine to give,” the massive head before her said before anything was asked. “Now, you will speak to me of why my Blue cousin in the east has sent you into my domains, for I know you have not come for your own reasons.”
Nesha-tari had been instructed on precisely what to say to the Lady, beginning with a long, memorized litany of formal salutations from the King of the Sky. None of it was in her head at the moment and Nesha-tari spoke only truth, and that simply.
“Lady, I am bound for Vod’Adia, and must pass through your domain to reach it. Once there, I must kill a man who seeks to enter the Sable City.”
*
Zeb and the Westerners were awakened sometime before dawn by soft knocking on the door of the long bunkroom they had taken in the dockside inn. Zeb answered the door in his skivvies and was told by the night deskman that Nesha-tari Hrilamae was waiting for them outside. The fellow looked disappointed that Zeb did not tip him, but of course the Minauan did not have a coin to his name. Zeb perhaps could have used that fact to justify, at least to himself, what he was still doing here. Lunch, then dinner, then a good night’s sleep had been his self-justification yesterday. Now with Nesha-tari again close by, Zeb forgot for the moment that he needed a reason to stay.
Amatesu helped Shikashe back into the myriad straps and ties of his complicated armor, a process that took even longer than it had to remove the whole works the night before. The three then made their way downstairs through the dark inn and found their hooded employer waiting out on the street where a drizzle rippled puddles on the cobblestones. Nesha-tari had a goblin with her and the little cherry-colored creature had a wheelbarrow, but it left as soon as the others appeared. Their baggage went in the barrow under an oiled tarp, and Zeb did not have to be told he would be the one to wheel it.
Nesha-tari said nothing but led her band north up the waterfront, walking ahead with Shikashe just behind her, Amatesu staying close to Zeb and the barrow. Zeb watched Nesha-ta
ri walk, and his thoughts were simple.
He noticed their surroundings only dully as the group passed by tall granaries, then a sheltered cove of the harbor where Codian warships sat at anchor. They turned east at the head of the cove, passing in front of a blocky, ancient fortress of black stone, renovated and flying the Codian flag from four towers. Beyond the fort a grand boulevard ran north, so wide that a series of miniature parks with low stone walls filled the center lanes, trimmed grass and shady trees from which birds were just beginning to sing. Nesha-tari turned up the boulevard and walked up the right-hand side of the street in front of gaily painted row houses with flower boxes under tall windows, plated with high-quality glass.
The rain picked up, dripping onto Zeb’s nose from the edge of his helmet. Amatesu lifted the cloth covering in the barrow and put her patched, high-collared jacket beneath it with the bags, leaving her in a long shirt of coarse cloth. The shukenja then managed to distract Zeb from ogling Nesha-tari as she turned her face up to the rain, which arched her back a bit, and ran her hands back through her long, black hair, ringing out strands and actually cleaning it for the first time in what must have been ages. She did so while stepping nimbly among the cobbles more smoothly than Zeb was managing with the wood-wheeled barrow.
“Amatesu, may I ask you something?”
Amatesu glanced at Zeb, and the slight, unconscious smile that had begun to play at the corners of her mouth disappeared, returning her face to its typical look of solemnity. She wrung her hair a final time and let it plaster loosely against her face and over one shoulder.
“A unseemly concern with one’s appearance is…unseemly. I bathe to be clean, and to be healthy, but not so that I might be…”
“Pretty?” Zeb asked. Amatesu kept looking forward.
“As you wish,” Zeb said. “But whether you are pretty or not is not really up to you. I mean, I suppose we could get you a long wax nose. Maybe with some warts.”
The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) Page 19