But instead she found herself marching through the rain and mud toward the stables. The stub of the chuma stick had wilted. She plucked it from her mouth and flicked it away.
She stepped in a deep puddle and went down in a splash. Her left boot filled with water. “Shit!”
She got back to her feet and entered the stable.
It was dim inside, lit by a single oil lamp. Alem had already taken the saddles off the horses. He saw her and laughed. “Have a nice swim?”
She glared at him, overturned a feed bucket and sat on it. She tried to pull the boot off, grunting and heaving.
“Let me help you.” He knelt, grabbed the boot and started to pull.
Rina suddenly flashed on a memory. In her room. The boy who had come in for the laundry. She’d made him help with her boots to tease him. She gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Alem asked as the boot came off.
“It was you. With the laundry basket. That day in my room.” The last day she’d been just a girl, just her father’s daughter. The same day everything had changed forever.
He laughed again, shaking his head. “I thought you’d never remember.” He pulled of the other boot. “Usually, the castle people don’t even look at the servants. You probably didn’t mean anything, but it really got under my skin when you mocked me. I sort of thought maybe—”
She leaned forward and kissed him.
He pulled away slowly, shocked. “I … what—”
Rina grabbed the back of his head, pulled him forward and kissed him again, hard. His arms went around her, pulled her hard against him as their tongues met.
Rina liked him, but it was more than that. She wanted to be that girl again, teasing the boy who’d come for the laundry. Alem had sparked a memory, of a life she used to have. She wanted to freeze the memory in time, climb inside it. Part of her understood there was no going back. A more urgent part of her didn’t care, wanted this moment and this moment alone.
She tugged at his clothing. He lifted her black shirt over her head, ran his fingers over the tattoos on her arm. Her heart beat so fast. She was dizzy and breathless. He bent, cupped one of her breasts, took a nipple in his mouth. He bit down a little too hard and she gasped.
Her hands went for his belt, unbuckling. There was no stopping this now. She didn’t want to, didn’t care.
Alem lifted her in his arms and dumped her into the pile of hay in one of the empty horse stalls. She lifted her butt and let him pull down her pants. She kicked them away, and then his were off too and he was crawling between her legs.
She reached down to guide him, a moment of pressure then he eased in. He found a steady rhythm, covered her mouth with his to muffle her moans. Rina wrapped her legs around him, crossing her ankles at the small of his back.
She held onto him so hard and so tight that she thought they might never come apart again, even as she knew that in the morning she would have to send him away.
* * *
Maurizan paused at the stable door when she heard the moan. It wasn’t the moan of somebody ill or in pain, and her heart skipped a beat. She eased the door open a crack, just enough to see inside.
And she saw.
She stepped back from the stable door, feeling leaden and sick. She turned abruptly, splashed back through the rain to her horse. She took the letter Rina had written out of her pack, held it in front of her, poised to rip it into little pieces.
She paused. She could always rip it up later if she decided to. She stashed it again in the pack, and mounted her horse and spurred the animal into the downpour, following the muddy road east, the cold rain stinging her face and washing away the tears.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
The sun rose, bathed the muddy world in dirty orange.
Rina sat in the saddle, puffing a fresh chuma stick. She wore the black armor, Kork’s cloak over it, but enough cold still seeped into her bones. She missed Alem’s warmth next to her. She missed his touch.
She missed Alem. One night together and now he was gone again.
Alem had been truly angry for the first time. He was the most long-suffering person she knew, but when she’d said what she’d needed him to do, he hadn’t been happy. At all. Finally they were together.
And apart again.
Brasley stumbled out of the inn, rubbing his eyes, his pack tossed over one shoulder. He squinted up at Rina. “You send the stable boy on his way?”
“Head stable boy,” Rina said. “About an hour ago.”
“You’ll probably never see him again, you know,” Brasley said.
“Your unwavering optimism is an inspiration to us all,” Rina said.
“And the gypsy girl?”
Rina was worried about Maurizan. Not about her safety but about what she might do. When Rina and Alem had finished in the stable, the gypsy girl was nowhere to be found. If Maurizan had seen, if she knew …
A jealous girl could ruin everything.
“She’s gone too,” Rina said.
Brasley climbed into his saddle with a grunt, turned a weary eye on Rina. “Death Temple?”
“Death Temple.”
At least it had stopped raining.
* * *
The Temple of Mordis was four days out of the way. The ride was long and uneventful. Tedious was the word Brasley favored. They’d lucked into a shabby inn at a small village one evening, but the rest of the nights were spent huddled around a usually inadequate campfire.
Most of Rina’s thoughts turned to Alem. She sent the falcon searching for him often, but found him only once, riding hard.
Back to Klaar.
She’d sent the bird in search of Maurizan also, but there was no sight of the girl.
Rina followed the Lord Chamberlain’s directions faithfully. A path broke off from the main road and twisted through a dim wood. On the other side, they saw the temple in a wide meadow. The single building was squat and bunker like, topped by a black dome of some dark, glistening stone. The building was surrounded on all sides by a twelve-foot wall. The entire compound was maybe a hundred yards across.
They rode up to iron gates at a walk. As they drew near, the gates slowly swung open.
A single man emerged and strode toward them. He wore black armor not unlike Rina’s but bulkier. A dark, open-faced helm with a black, glossy horse tail sprouting from the top. “Are you Duchess Veraiin?”
Rina reined in her horse twenty feet from the man. “I am.”
“Come inside,” he said. “You’re expected.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Tchi understood immediately that his strategy had been a mistake.
The small town had fortified itself behind a rickety palisade. Tchi had bypassed it with the thought of isolating it. To make it an island alone, forlorn and forsaken in a place where other places about it had been conquered. Indeed, that’s what Tchi and his men had done. Conquered. They’d gone from village to village and had subjugated each population, put them under the thumb of Perranese rule.
He’d hope to cow the town. Cut off. Alone. They would see it was hopeless. Wouldn’t they?
But no. Instead, the town had offered a false hope. Tchi would vanquish a village, and most would submit, but there would always be a stubborn few, a couple of defiant ones who would escape and flee to the fortified town, find refuge behind the palisade. And finally the town swelled with the foolish hopeful. They were given spears, and they stood behind the walls and they waited, anger growing, revenge like a fruit ripening on the vine and ready to be plucked.
And so Tchi’s men surrounded the town and suffered the taunts from the foolhardy brave within who didn’t know they simply waited to be killed.
But there would be a cost. If Tchi and his troops stormed the palisade, the cost would be high. Too high.
And that’s where the wizards came in.
“Bring them,” Tchi told his sergeant. “It’s time they earned their keep.”
A few minutes later, a brace of soldiers escorted
the wizards Prullap and Jariko to Tchi’s position before the city gates.
“I don’t want to spend lives on these palisades,” Tchi told the wizards. “Do you have spells for the job?”
Jariko smiled, something smug in his demeanor. “Please. You talk to one of the great wizards of the modern age. You have only to ask, and we shall deliver the city to you.”
“I do ask it,” Tchi said impatiently. He gestured to the gates. “Gentlemen, the gates are yours.”
Prullap and Jariko bowed, turned and walked toward the gates.
Jariko leaned his head toward Prullap and whispered, “Can you keep them off me while I work the spell?”
“Of course,” Prullap said.
They stopped in front of the gates, and Jariko began the spell, tossing a pinch of brimstone into the air and muttering the words. He spread his hands, a fiery glow building between his fingers.
Men appeared at the top of the palisade with long bows and loosed a ragged volley of arrows.
Prullap barked arcane words, and the arrows went limp in mid-air and fell to the ground. It was all Jariko needed to finish.
Jariko brought his hands together, molded a seething ball of fire from nothing. He flung his hands forward, and the ball of flame spun and grew and shot towards the gates.
The flames struck with a deafening explosion; the wooden gates shattered, singed splinters flying in every direction. The smoke cleared, revealing that the gates had been destroyed.
Perranese soldiers poured into the breach. Tchi could already glimpse the defenders throwing down weapons and begging for mercy. The battle was over mere seconds after it had begun.
Tchi watched his men take the town. Already he was calculating the change in his plans. He would need to leave men to garrison the place. What could he accomplish with his depleted force? All choices seemed bad ones.
A rider approached. One of the advance scouts.
“Report,” Tchi commanded.
“Our spies in a village to the west have reported a sighting a person matching the description of the Veraiin woman.”
“Tell me everything,” Tchi demanded.
The scout told him the exiled duchess rode swiftly toward a remote temple in the vicinity. The Perranese had thought her beyond their reach, hidden somewhere. Now it turned out she was nearby.
Tchi considered only a moment. “I’ll need all the available horses. And a hundred men.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
The Cult of Mordis worshipped Death.
But to Rina, the grim men inside the temple walls just seemed tired. Scattered soldiers in dark armor leaned on spears as Rina walked past on the way to the temple. There were bedraggled civilians inside the walls too, a few women and children. Apparently the place was not just a temple but also a very small village
“The faithful are few these days,” said the soldier leading them. “But this temple is home to one of the Elders. He is wise. He knew you were coming. High Priest Krell has the sight.”
“The sight?” Rina asked.
“He sees things. Whatever the gods choose to reveal through the mists. Predictions and foretelling.” The solider shrugged. “I’m just a guardsman. I only know what I hear.”
They arrived at the arched doorway in front of the temple. The guard gestured to the entrance. “From here you go on alone, Duchess Veraiin.”
Rina’s eyes went to Brasley.
Brasley said, “You know how much I’ve been wanting to tour the Death Temple, but you heard the man.”
“Thanks.” She turned and entered the building.
The dim, stone hallway was lit every twenty feet by a candle in an iron sconce. Wax drippings piled knee-high under each stone, marking years or maybe decades. There was something cold about the place, and Rina pulled her cloak tightly about her.
She arrived at a stairway of black stone and climbed.
The top of the stairs opened into a wide room with a high ceiling. She realized she stood underneath the black dome they’d seen as they rode in.
Her eyes were drawn to the shriveled man seated on the stone chair directly below the center of the dome. Frail in a black robe, bare feet, skin chalky and thinly stretched over old bones. He looked like a stiff breeze would scatter him.
“Welcome, Rina Veraiin.” His voice was dry and unpleasant. “I’d hoped you’d be the first one here and not the other one. Mordis has been merciful in this.”
Rina walked slowly toward him, eyes darting into the shadowed corners. She didn’t feel threatened, but she didn’t like the temple. It was dark, and the priest had an unnerving way about him. “Did someone send word I was coming?”
The priest rose from the chair. He was stooped, a slight tremble in his limbs. “I have foreseen.”
“The sight?”
The priest waved a hand at the dark dome above him.
Rina looked. The inside of the dome was filled with glittering stars, exactly like the night sky although not a sky she’d ever seen before. A ringed planet drifted lazily across the nightscape. A streaking meteorite flashed by before winking out of existence.
“I sit here as the immensity of the universe moves around me,” the priest said. “I am allowed glimpses.”
“You knew I was coming, but do you know why?”
“Your tattoos make you powerful, duchess,” the priest said. “But they weaken you, drain you.”
“That’s in their nature,” Rina said.
“What if you could replenish yourself?” asked the old priest. “I can give you a tattoo that does that.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“It’s called The Hand of Death,” he told her.
“That sounds a bit ominous.”
A dismissive gesture from the old man. “The cult has dealt with such misconceptions since its founding. In almost every act of life there is a little death. Every time you eat fish or fowl or even a vegetable, something gives its life to sustain another. My cult represents the more thankless side of the eternal circle.”
“And what do you want in return?”
He smiled thinly. “Not me. I am but a servant.”
“Then what does the Cult of Mordis want in return?”
“An errand,” the priest said. “A favor to be collected at a later time.”
“I’m not selling my soul for a tattoo,” Rina said.
“Nobody wants your soul, duchess. But debts must be paid.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
He laughed, a reedy, sick sound.
“You said there was another,” Rina reminded him.
“Another who wants the tattoo, yes. I will trade it to you or to him. Not both.”
Another Ink Mage? “Why?”
“You and he are a fork in the road,” the priest said. “I cannot see all ends. But only one of you gets The Hand of Death. This much is clear.”
She thought about it, remembered her battle with the stone serpent, how it had almost completely drained her of spirit. To be able to replenish …
But she’d have to make a bargain not knowing what the payment would be, and that was too much of a risk. She refused to commit to some unknown errand in some vague future. Rina shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not the one.”
The priest shrugged. “We shall see.”
“I mean it,” Rina said. “If I had it my way, I wouldn’t even have these tattoos. I just need them to fight the Perranese.”
“If you want to fight the Perranese, you needn’t wait,” he said. “They are at our front gates even now.”
“What?”
He waved offhandedly at the stars overhead as he lowered himself back into the stone chair. “I have seen it.”
She turned abruptly and raced down the stairs two at a time and into the courtyard beyond.
The little village churned with frantic activity, armored men racing for the front gates which shook with a thunderous boom.
Brasley was suddenly next to her. “They’ve got some k
ind of makeshift battering ram.”
She didn’t pause to talk to him, raced for the front gates where men were trying to brace it with rough-hewn logs. It thundered again as the ram struck. The sound of splintering wood.
She spotted a ladder and climbed to the top of the wall. The soldier who’d escorted her into the temple was there.
“How many?”
“I count about a hundred,” he said.
“How many do you have?”
“Fighting men? Twenty, including me.”
She watched as the ram pounded the gate again. The Perranese soldiers had cut down a thick evergreen and were using the trunk.
“Can the gate take it?” she asked.
“Not much longer.”
“You have a plan?”
“Fight the best we can once they’re though the gate,” he said. “I’m open to suggestions.”
Damn it.
She looked back at the village, women and children scurrying into shabby huts. She looked back out at the Perranese army and the woods beyond. It would be easy. Jump down, and with the lightning bolt tattoos on her ankles she could get away.
But she’d have to leave Brasley and the people of the village, who might or might not find mercy at the hands of the Perranese. She could fight them. She would kill many before she was drained. But not enough.
“Damn it!”
Rina slid down the ladder and ran back to the temple at full speed.
She entered the dome chamber. “Krell!”
“I’m here, duchess.”
“I accept your bargain.”
“Come forward,” said the priest.
She approached. Stood directly in front of him.
“You sword hand is your right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He reached out and grabbed her left wrist. He was surprisingly strong. Krell turned her palm upward.
“You enter into this covenant freely?” The priest asked. “You will honor your debt?”
“Just do it before I change my mind.”
She saw now that the nail of his right index finger was sharp and hooked. He pierced the skin of her palm with it.
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