K’lrsa shifted where she crouched against the wall, uncomfortable with the realization that her gods had once been more powerful than they now were. Maybe that explained why the Lady had done what she’d done…
Badru nodded to the pouch at her waist. “Get out your moon power.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know what we’ll face once we go inside. We need to be ready. For whatever happens.”
Sighing, K’lrsa drew the container with the moon power out of its pouch. Unlike the sun orb and the staff, it didn’t pull at her to be used. It felt like nothing at all. Or, more particularly, the absence of everything.
But it was better than touching the staff again. Even though Badru carried it now, it still called to her.
Vedhe stood up. “We should go now. I can’t hold this forever.” Her eyes were full of dancing flames.
Badru opened the door, leading the way along a deserted hallway that ended in a kitchen where women talked and laughed as they made the first bread of the day. K’lrsa tensed. If they walked into that kitchen, with its fires and people who might sound the alarm, Vedhe would strike.
They couldn’t have her lose control this close to the end.
Fortunately, Badru ducked into a small storage room instead of continuing forward. He shoved a stack of boxes aside and pushed on a trio of rocks embedded in the wall. The wall slid open to reveal a hidden passage like the one she and Sayel had escaped through when they’d fled the throne room with Badru’s dead body.
“Here. Hold this.” Badru handed K’lrsa a lamp from inside the passageway and then reached back inside to grab a fire rock to light it with. But before he could, Vedhe passed the sun orb over the lamp and it sprang to life, the flames dancing almost high enough to burn K’lrsa’s fingers.
“Gee, thanks.” K’lrsa handed the lamp back to Badru and sucked on her hand where the flames had come a little too close.
Vedhe’s eyes were twin flames. “I had to channel the fire somewhere. Get me away from that kitchen. Now.”
Badru led them down the passageway at a fast jog, Vedhe on his heels and K’lrsa behind her. Soon, they’d left the heat and comfort of the kitchens behind as they followed the cold, dark, abandoned passages.
K’lrsa wanted to ask where they were going and how long it would take and how Vedhe was doing controlling the sun orb and how often the passages were used—it didn’t look like often—and who else knew about them and any number of other things, but she kept silent.
She didn’t want anyone to hear them, assuming that was possible through the thick stone walls.
She also didn’t want to distract Vedhe who was sweating now, sparks flying from the sun orb with each step. Or Badru, whose knuckles were white where he gripped the staff.
They climbed upward at every chance they had until they reached the topmost level of the palace. Only then did Badru slow. He blew out the lamp and set it on the ground. K’lrsa wiped her palms on her pants as they waited for their eyes to adjust.
Finally, Badru crept forward, one agonizingly slow step at a time.
K’lrsa didn’t know how he could see where he was going. All she could see was the vague outline of him and Vedhe as they slowly moved farther along the passage. But he continued, slow step by slow step, as silent as could be, the only light at all coming from the sun orb as it spit sparks of flame.
After what seemed like forever, Badru stopped and turned back, gathering them close together so they were huddled around the sun orb. Whispering so quietly she could barely hear him, he said, “Okay. We’re here. At the Daliph’s quarters. Now…”
The wall next to Badru burst inward, spraying rocks and dust in all directions. K’lrsa ducked, but not in time to avoid a large rock that sliced her forehead. She peered through the haze of dust and blood; a large man grabbed Badru and threw him into the ornately-tiled room beyond.
“Glad you could join us,” someone else said. “Thank you so much for the lovely gift, grandson. It’ll make a nice addition to my collection.”
Aran. K’lrsa would’ve recognized his voice anywhere.
Chapter 67
K’lrsa had dropped the moon power when the wall burst. She didn’t know where it was and didn’t have time to find it.
Vedhe wasn’t moving, and there was no sign of the sun orb either.
Aran’s man had already grabbed the staff.
K’lrsa scuttled backward, desperate to flee, knowing what Aran had done to Herin and Lodie and how powerful he must be with whatever weapon the gods had given him to balance theirs.
She’d go back to M’lara. Get the necklace. Find a way to use it against him.
But she had to get away first.
Before she could sneak away, Aran stepped into the passage, his toad-like face twisted into an evil grin. “Don’t leave now, my dear. The fun is just getting started.”
K’lrsa turned to run, but she only made it two steps before she ran into a man so large he took up the entire passageway. She stumbled backward, caught between Aran and the giant.
She dropped into a fighting stance. She wasn’t about to give up that easy. The space was too narrow for most of the hundred and five attacks, but she tried anyway. It was like fighting a wall. The man didn’t even grunt when she hit him.
Aran laughed, his voice filling the small space where she was trapped.
Someone dragged Vedhe out of the passage as K’lrsa attacked the giant again, lunging for his eyes this time, desperate to get away.
He grabbed her wrist and squeezed.
The agony as he crushed her bones was excruciating. He twisted her arm in a direction it wasn’t meant to go, and she collapsed to her knees, sobbing.
“Enough, Manen. Bring her out.”
The man grabbed K’lrsa by her hair and dragged her out of the passage, the jagged edges of the broken wall scraping her arms and back. The room on the other side of the wall had likely once been a large bedroom and sitting room combined, but most of the furniture had been emptied from the space. There was a bathing area in the far corner like she remembered from her own rooms in the palace, but where her bed would have stood was a single long table.
The center of the room was bare—except for Badru and Vedhe who’d both been dumped on the multi-colored tiles. Neither one was moving. Badru was bleeding from a nasty slash across his forehead. Vedhe was covered all over with tiny cuts. K’lrsa longed to help them, but she there was nothing she could do, so she continued to scan the room, looking for weapons or ways to escape.
On the side of the room opposite the table, a small group of soldiers and courtiers stood, stationed against the wall, awaiting orders. There were two pallets nearby with a small table between them. The table was covered with black candles and metal bowls that seemed to absorb the light—death walker tools.
K’lrsa shivered as Manen dumped her next to Vedhe, wondering who Aran planned to kill or torture and then heal with his evil magic.
She fought to find the Rider’s version of the Core, to set the agony in her wrist aside so she could think. And act. She had to get away. To find M’lara and the necklace. To save Vedhe and Badru.
But each time she reached for the Core, her thoughts shattered and scattered away from her, the fear too strong for her to set aside.
She crawled to Vedhe’s side.
Was she dead?
No.
Her chest was still moving—barely—but she had hundreds of tiny cuts all over her face and body. She’d taken the brunt of the wall’s collapse.
“Larek. Heal this one first.” Aran pointed to Vedhe and a man dressed in brown except for a black sash around his waist, came forward to grab her.
“No. Don’t touch her.” K’lrsa stumbled to her feet, placing herself between the man and Vedhe.
“Don’t be a fool, girl.” Aran stepped closer, looking down at Vedhe like she was a bug he wanted to squash. “She’ll die if Larek doesn’t heal her. Not that it looks like that would be much of a loss.
Ugly, isn’t she? So pale. And scarred.” He turned away in disgust.
“Why do you want to heal her?” K’lrsa glared at Larek as he once more tried to take Vedhe away.
“Why? It’s no fun to just kill someone. That’s so easy. Especially now.” He flexed his right hand. He was wearing some sort of glove woven of a dark metal that seemed to suck up the light. “Like my gauntlet? You’d be amazed what it can do. That was nothing.” He nodded towards the wall.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Why, why, why. Can’t you say anything other than why?” He shook his head. “I will never understand what Badru sees in you. I mean, you’re pretty enough, I guess. But…” He kicked Badru who moaned and rolled away from him. “Not worth a Daliphate, that’s for sure. And not nearly as interesting as Herin was. I bet you kill yourself the first chance you get. Whereas Herin…” He grinned. “She was a fighter. Worth the effort it took to break her.”
K’lrsa spat at him. “I wish you’d stayed dead when Lodie killed you. I can’t believe someone cared enough to bring you back.”
He stared at the spit on the ground for a long moment and K’lrsa shivered with fear, wondering what he was going to do to her as he stepped closer. “Some people know how to choose the winning side. You, my dear, are not one of them. First Badru, then the tribes, now trying to oppose me. As for the wall…I did it because I could. And because it surprised you. Seems to have worked pretty well if you ask me.”
One of his men brought the sun orb from the passage and he gestured towards the table at the end of the room where the staff already was. No moon power. Yet.
K’lrsa glanced towards the gaping hole in the wall. If she ran for it…
Aran would strike her down before she even reached the passageway.
The giant picked up Vedhe and carried her to the corner, Larek following behind. K’lrsa watched, her fists clenched in anger as they brought out a young child to heal Vedhe’s wounds. Why did men like this always use the innocent?
It disgusted her.
She watched as Larek went through the death walker ritual—lighting the candles, taking blood from Vedhe and the child, saying his words. It didn’t take long. It was a simple ceremony. No wonder Herin had learned it after all the times Aran had hurt her and healed her again.
Vedhe sat up, her wounds gone, completely healed.
All of them.
Even the scars from crossing the desert. Where her skin had once been patchy and red, there were now fine white lines that blended into her fair skin.
She held her arms out in front of her and cried, tracing the lines of the scars with a fingertip.
She was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as that idealized image of her they’d seen in the mirror at the heart of the labyrinth. She was still too pale, her nose too narrow, her cheeks too thin, but there was a symmetry about her face that was strangely compelling.
Aran laughed in delight. “Ah, much better! Now that’s a girl I could spend some time with.” He licked his lips as he stepped closer to Vedhe. “Tell me, child, what would you do if I took this beauty from you again?”
Vedhe touched her cheek. She glanced towards a full-length mirror standing in the corner and away again, crying even more. “I don’t want it. Take it.” She glared at him. “Carve me up,” she growled. “And then leave me be.”
“You don’t want it? You’re rather be ugly? Scarred?”
“Yes,” she screamed. “Why do you think those slavers killed my family and took me? Because of this.”
She tried to claw at her face, but one of the soldiers stopped her before she could do more than cut one small groove into her cheek.
Aran turned away. “Restrain her. If anyone’s going to cause her harm, it’ll be me.”
The soldier bound Vedhe’s wrists behind her back and returned her to the center of the room, dumping her at K’lrsa’s side.
“Are you okay?” K’lrsa asked.
“I’m fine.”
But she wasn’t. Her eyes were wild with panic.
K’lrsa leaned closer, whispering. “Can you use the orb from here?”
“No. I need to touch it.”
“Okay. Forget Aran for now, Vedhe. He isn’t going to harm you. We’ll kill him before he can. Do you understand? No one will hurt you again. We’ll get you to the orb and then you can use it on him and every other person in this room.”
Vedhe focused on K’lrsa’s face, a calm coming over her. She nodded. Once.
Aran came closer and bowed gracefully as he waved towards Larek. “Your turn, my dorana. Unless you want to lose the hand?”
K’lrsa cradled her shattered wrist to her chest. She’d been healed by death walker magic twice before. She didn’t want it again, especially if a child was harmed to do it.
“I’m fine.”
Aran crossed his arms and glared at her. “You understand I can’t let you keep your hand the way it is? So you have a choice. I call a surgeon in, he chops your hand off just above the injury, puts the stump in a fire to stop any further bleeding, and we hope for the best. But if the wound festers you will still need to be healed, you just won’t have a hand. Or…” He gestured to Larek again. “We heal you now. So…What’ll it be, Rider? Can you shoot a bow one-handed? Or ride a horse one-handed?”
K’lrsa flinched. She didn’t want to lose the hand, but she wasn’t going to let some child lose their hand because of her either.
Aran narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. “Hm. Maybe I’ll just have him take the hand now and heal you anyway. Not like I need your cooperation for the ritual, as you already learned with Herin.”
As K’lrsa opened her mouth to argue further, she noticed movement in the passageway behind him, at the edge of the broken wall. She moved so Aran was directly between her and the passage, pretending to look at him while she tried to figure out who it was.
M’lara. She peered around the edge of the wall, eyes wide with fear.
What was she thinking? If Aran saw her…
He started to turn.
She stood. “Fine. Heal me. Here. Look. I’m going. Right now.” She backed away from him, making sure he stayed focused on her as M’lara ducked back behind the broken wall.
Chapter 68
Two men dragged out a young servant girl, her head down, and pinned her to the pallet next to K’lrsa. She struggled against them, but she was too small to resist as they tied her hands and feet into place. Her body—what was visible as they bound her—was crisscrossed with scars the way Herin’s had been.
She had to be no older than M’lara. K’lrsa shuddered. This was the fate that awaited her sister if Aran noticed her.
As the girl thrashed on the table, she met K’lrsa’s eyes and K’lrsa choked. It was the girl from the stables. The one without a tongue that K’lrsa had spared the night she fled.
Spared but left behind to the cruelties of Aran and his men.
This girl’s fate was K’lrsa’s fault.
She cradled her shattered wrist to her chest. The hand was useless. Injured beyond repair. Aran was right, if she wasn’t healed, she would lose it. She could probably still ride Fallion—he was such an amazing horse he’d adjust—but she’d never shoot a bow again. She wouldn’t be a Rider anymore.
And wouldn’t be welcome in the tribes either.
But this girl…
What she’d suffered already…
And to lose her hand on top of it?
No. She didn’t deserve that.
K’lrsa stepped away from the pallet. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to be healed.”
Aran turned from where he’d been taunting Vedhe. “Why? Are you feeling sorry for the girl?” He came closer.
The girl trembled uncontrollably, scrabbling to free herself, her eyes white with fear.
K’lrsa stepped between them, afraid Aran might kill her just because. “Why are you like this? Why do this to people?”
He studied her, a slight smile twisting his fat lips. “Yo
ur hand is shattered. The man you love is on the floor, in desperate need of attention. If we leave him much longer, he’ll probably die, and then Larek will have to kill this girl to bring him back. And you want to know why I do what I do?”
She looked past him to where Badru lay, unmoving, blood pooled by his head.
“Yes.”
Aran smiled and the menace in it chilled her to the bone. “Perhaps I can see a little bit of what my grandson finds so intriguing about you. But now is not the time.” He nodded to Larek. “Finish it. Force her if you must.”
K’lrsa moved back to the pallet and lay down as two guards moved towards her. She turned her head so she could meet the girl’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed as silent tears trickled down the girl’s cheeks.
The ritual was quick. Larek efficiently collected a small bit of K’lrsa’s blood in a bowl and then did the same with the girl. He placed the bowls within a circle of black candles that smelled of death and decay, and muttered words she couldn’t quite understand over them. When that was done, he marked both K’lrsa’s and the girl’s foreheads with the blood and muttered another series of words before clapping his hands together.
And, just like that, K’lrsa was healed. She flexed her hand and bent her wrist. As good as new. Just like when Herin had used death walker magic to heal her after the fight with Balor.
They dragged the sobbing girl out of the room, her wrist now shattered like K’lrsa’s had been, and rage burned through K’lrsa like fire. She glared at Aran, wanting him dead more than anything she’d ever wanted before.
But how?
Badru was bleeding to death, Vedhe was huddled in a ball weeping, and K’lrsa had no weapons to attack him with. He’d taken both the staff and the sun orb and who knew where the moon power was—not that it would do her any good in defeating him.
And, of course, M’lara was lurking in that passageway just waiting to be discovered and used against them…
How had they failed so miserably?
Chapter 69
Rider's Resolve (The Rider's Revenge Trilogy Book 3) Page 24