The sun was falling in the west by the time Ean reached the city’s westernmost edge, where the city walls abutted those surrounding the Prophet’s al’qasr. A wide plaza opened before the gates leading into the Prophet’s compound. Through this impressive portal lay gardens and the famed Stairway of Stars and its lengthy climb to the acropolis rim.
A few hundred paces west of the al’qasr gate loomed the city wall and the Qobbah al-ilah, or Vault of the God, the most impressive and frequented thoroughfare into Tambarré. Beside this, a set of wide marble steps led to the top of the city walls.
Ean climbed these steps, weaving around people who’d claimed a spot for rest, eating, gaming or debating, and joined many others atop the city’s ramparts, where a tree-lined park ran the length of the wall.
Fifty paces brought the prince beneath the shade of tall palms and close to the wall’s outer, crenellated edge. But he stopped short when he saw what lay beyond the city.
To his right hulked the mound of the Prophet’s acropolis, with its temples and terraced gardens, orchards, vineyards and farms. But directly in front of Ean, the rolling Saldarian plains played host to the ramshackle tents and campfires of thousands of refugees.
Unmistakable among the gathering were the Prophet’s minions—Ascendant ants with their torques and cuffs flashing gold in the afternoon sun; Marquiin-like moths wandering what might loosely be considered streets within the camp.
At that moment, hundreds of men, women and children had amassed along the part of the outer wall that also abutted the grounds of the Prophet’s al’qasr. Most of the refugees stood packed in against one another with their gazes lifted towards the Prophet’s westernmost temple, which jutted from a stepped landing midway down the acropolis mesa.
“Nadori refugees,” said a female voice from Ean’s left.
The prince turned to see a veiled woman swathed in the embroidered tangerine silks usually reserved for Avataren nobility. She had more gold around her wrists than Ean had in his packs. A frothy veil enwrapped her turbaned head and shoulders, but the cloth left her slanted dark eyes free to look him over. Which they were doing with some candor.
“They say not long ago these same refugees collected outside the walls of Tal’Shira by the Sea.” She had a sultry voice, deep and low for a woman, and spoke with an accent Ean couldn’t quite place except that it wasn’t Avataren.
For the moment more intrigued by the refugees than the mysterious woman, Ean frowned off at the patchwork of tents. “What are Nadori refugees doing here?”
“Partaking of the Prophet’s hospitality.” She laid her hands on the sandstone merlon between two crenels and cast him a dubious half-smile. Her dark eyes swept him again, lingered for a moment on his hand, which he had resting on the hilt of his sword, and lifted back to meet his gaze. A smile flickered on her lips. “Or so some say.”
“Curious.” Ean thought the word equally described the Nadori refugees and the woman.
The glint in her dark, slanted eyes implied she might’ve used the same word in description of him.
A rising afternoon breeze rattled through the high palms. The woman lifted her gaze to the sun. “It won’t be long now.” She leaned out slightly over the crenel. “Come and see.”
Ean glanced around. Unlike in the Shadû el-Fnaa, affluently dressed women of many nations strolled the breezy ramparts. Some had guards, but others walked alone. This woman was drawing no eyes, yet her casual candor seemed much out of place to Ean. He considered her carefully, recognizing that she could be working for anyone, allied to anyone, but in the last, curiosity won out over caution, and he joined her at the wall.
The vantage did provide a better view of the Prophet’s lowest temple. In fact, if he leaned across the crenel, he could just see the base of the outer wall and a large gate facing the assembled masses.
This opened even as he watched, and a procession of Ascendants emerged. A dozen of the shaven-headed miscreants led twice as many acolytes, all of whom were carrying baskets of what appeared to be food.
A cheer rose up from the refugees. They swarmed the acolytes.
A feeling of grave foreboding swarmed Ean.
The Prophet is feeding these people? It seemed enormously out of character and deeply in conflict with a Malorin’athgul’s intent.
As the food was being distributed, a new cheer erupted among the refugees, even louder than the first. Ean was trying to discover the source of this excitement when he saw the Prophet himself emerge onto a terrace of the lower temple. Bethamin strode to the edge of his balcony and raised a hand, part greeting, part blessing. The cheering became roaring adulation.
Ean felt a cold anger bloom in his chest. Thousands of people…and all of them craving the Prophet Bethamin’s divine attention?
Bethamin was too far away for Ean to see him clearly, though his height and build presented an imposing figure even from that distance. He wore a long white robe that left his chest bare, and a golden torque collared his throat. His black hair hung in a curtain down his back, untroubled by the wind.
So that is Darshan.
Ean felt gravely conflicted. I should leave now. As fast as I can. But he stood rooted.
This was the man who’d given Isabel to Pelas to be tortured and killed, the man who made monsters of truthreaders and demons of men; possibly even the man who’d claimed Arion’s life—the faceless Enemy that had turned the Citadel Mages against Isabel and bound them to his will. Raine’s truth, the Prophet Bethamin was certainly no stranger to compulsion.
“It happens daily, this devotional,” the woman murmured.
“Daily?” Ean stared perplexedly at the cheering refugees. “The Prophet is feeding these people every day?”
She arched a brow as if to share in a curious agreement. “From his own stores, so they say.”
Ean cast her a sidelong look. He couldn’t well make out her features beneath the embroidered veil, but her accent fell a tone flat of Avatar, and her dark eyes had an epicanthic fold—not a trait common to the Avataren nobility.
She noticed him looking at her and smiled. “It’s an intriguing display, no? This, the Prophet’s uncommon charity. This from a man who calls the lightning every night in his sleep.”
“What?”
She arched a brow. “Have you not heard the stories? The Prophet summons the storms with his dreams. Or so they say. I suppose it could just be the time of year.” She shifted a mocking gaze back to the cheering crowd. You would not see actual residents of Tambarré flocking to Bethamin with this level of adoration.”
The more she spoke, the more curious Ean became about her. “What would you see from them?”
She gave a wry half-smile. “Don’t mistake me. I’m not so foolish as to speak ill of the Prophet in his own city.” Her even gaze quite belied the insult in her tone. “Even the most ignorant scamp is not so foolish as that. The people of Tambarré treasure the Prophet’s disinterest almost as much as his gold.”
“I don’t take your meaning, madam.”
She arched a brow, as if this was only common knowledge. “When he came to Tambarré from Myacene, or whatever dreadful rock he crawled out from under, the Prophet Bethamin flooded thousands of gold talents into Tambarré’s economy and purchased by way of his generosity the nobility’s indifference and a blind eye to his work.”
“You’re saying the Saldarian nobility know what Bethamin does to Adepts, and they don’t care?”
She shrugged. “Gold’s voice is louder and travels farther than a truthreader’s anguished cry. The Prophet swore to barter Saldaria’s independence from Radov of M’Nador and succeeded. They would’ve paid him for even the promise of it.”
The cheering from the refugees at last subsided. Ean restrained himself from looking again to see if the Prophet had returned inside. He didn’t want to look upon that man, or think about Isabel being his prisoner, or consider their eventual inevitable meeting, or any of the other hundred things that infuriated him about Darsha
n.
“And what business brings you to Tambarré, my lord?”
Ean turned and really focused on the woman then. Whoever she was, he mistrusted her attention. “Nothing of import to one such as yourself, my lady.” He nodded politely. “If you’ll excuse me—”
“I see you are a true stranger to Tambarré not to know an agent of the Khashathra-pāvan of Pashmir.”
Ean halted. The Satrap of Pashmir was one of the most powerful rulers in Avatar, claiming nearly the status of a Fire King. He had agents in every known market whose duties were to procure the rarest of treasures on his behalf. They were each autonomous and generally afforded princely status among the merchant classes, for the satrap’s appetite for antiquities was legendary.
The prince ducked a conciliatory bow, slight but appropriate, and said in Avataren, “Ma’zerat mi-khāham.” I beg your pardon. “I fear you’ve noted my ignorance. We don’t greet many agents of the Khashathra-pāvan where I hail from.”
She regarded him with quiet amusement. “Yet you know how to apologize to one.”
He smiled thinly. “The product of a prudent education.”
“Or provident breeding.”
Ean was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable as the object of her attention. Her smile appeared benign, but beneath her overtly casual manner, Ean sensed an oddly fervent anticipation. “I’m just…” he hunted for an explanation that might dull her interest rather than pique it.
“Searching for a plausible lie?” She smirked at him.
Ean’s gaze tightened. “Forgive me. My business grows pressing elsewhere.” He bowed and moved on.
She turned after him, still obviously smiling. “If you hope to remain anonymous, my lord, might I suggest keeping your sword beneath your cloak? Kingdom Blades might be a rarity in Tambarré, but few are likely to mistake them for common steel.”
Ean came to an abrupt standstill and turned a swift look over his shoulder. Feeling highly unsettled by her warning, he nodded once more. “Thank you for the explanation. A good day to you, my lady.”
“And to you, my lord.” She smiled, artfully innocuous, but Ean felt her dark eyes following him all the way down the ramparts.
The encounter had disturbed him. Had the satrap’s agent recognized him, or just his blade? Could others have put two and two together as well? But no…if she’d known his identity, why had she let him walk away? Surely an agent of the Khashathra-pāvan knew Dore Madden had out a bounty on his head.
Ean clenched his jaw and stalked through the park, his mind a whir. The best thing to do would be to finish his mission and get out of there fast, before anyone else connected on his identity. Yet attempting to infiltrate the Prophet’s temple with the Prophet in residence would be foolish beyond measure, while the idea of returning to Kandori seemed no less palatable an option. Surely there was some way…some solution…
Ean knew one thing for certain: Arion wouldn’t have given up that easily.
Ean secured lodging and then spent the rest of the afternoon exploring possible ways into the Prophet’s al-qasr while grappling with his conscience over the right course of action.
In his previous attempts, Dore had been expecting him; Tyr’kharta, Tal’Afaq—Ean had knowingly been walking into traps. This was the point he couldn’t dismiss in his battle with his conscience—that this time Dore didn’t know he was coming.
And of course, his purpose remained just as imperative—he had to test their matrix to determine if it disrupted the eidola’s connection with Darshan. This matrix was doubly important, because if it worked like they expected it to, anyone could wield it, and do so without putting themselves at risk to counterattack from Darshan. Previously, every time Ean unworked one of the eidola, he risked contact with the Malorin’athgul’s mind. This matrix would ensure a degree of separation that would protect anyone working it from Darshan’s mental view. Ean knew that in every way, this effort was vital to the game.
Yet Darshan had returned…
Round Ean went on that carousel of should I or shouldn’t I? But no matter how many revolutions he made, he always stepped off feeling like the opportunity was too valuable to pass up, their need too dire—providing he could smartly find a way into the al-qasr and out again.
That was the crux of the problem, and the reason that nightfall found him dressed in his fighting blacks exploring one possible route inside.
The roads in that part of Tambarré were closer kin to alleys than streets, with windowless stone walls that shielded inner gardens, each riad, or household, a self-contained oasis. The riad walls were high, the streets narrow, revealing the barest slip of the heavens on the best of nights, and that night storm clouds were rapidly overtaking Ean’s patchwork view of the sky. He called upon the currents to light his way instead—the barest of workings, a calculated risk.
Sure, calling the currents is a calculated risk, Fynn’s voice remarked in his head. Siphoning off the first strand to keep yourself awake is a calculated risk. Staying in the Prophet’s city at all is a calculated risk. Just tell me this, Ean—how long before the sum total of all of these ‘calculated’ risks adds up to the end of you?
The Fynn voice had a point, and yet—
If he hadn’t called up the currents just then, he might not have noticed the men until it was too late. There were at least a dozen of them coming at him from both ends of the street, thugs of the commonest sort, but they looked properly armed for the close quarters of the Lower City.
Ean inwardly swore. How could he have been so unaware as to let them trap him this way? Had he really been that lost in thought?
This is what happens when you and Sleep have a contentious parting of ways, Ean Alyneri’s voice chided. Awareness tends to take its own hiatus until you two mend your fences.
Ean rubbed one eye and admitted to the Alyneri voice’s point. He admitted also to a slight sense of disheartenment that Dore had found him so quickly. Maybe the Satrap’s agent had turned him in for the reward after all.
With his next exhale, summoning focus, Ean drew his blade and spun into the cortata. Elae quickly flooded into him, strengthening the innate patterns that formed the woof and warp of his Adept composition.
He turned to face the closest of his attackers.
They were grinning at him. Perhaps they thought him mad, twisting and spinning like a dervish in the middle of the alley.
Ean rushed them.
He slew the closest two before they got their weapons up, and a third as he was swinging his. Now the currents sang in Ean’s ears. Now he felt the cortata’s power coursing through him. Having begun the pattern, he could work any part of the long sequence and keep his energy constant.
He whipped a dagger towards a fourth man and spun to engage a fifth. As their blades clashed, his dagger found its mark in the hollow of the fourth thug’s throat, and the man staggered back in a fountain of blood. The others closed in on Ean, and for a time he knew only the motions of the cortata’s pattern bolstering his strength, and the song of his Merdanti blade.
Twelve men? Only twelve men? As Ean slew another, he felt an almost indignant irritation. He’d faced off against the Sundragon Ramuhárikhamáth when Ramu was intent—if not on outright destroying him, at least he hadn’t been holding back. Even without elae, twelve men hardly posed a threat to him. Dore Madden knew this better than most—
No…damn it—the truth hit Ean with a clap of how-could-you-be-so-stupid? Dore wouldn’t have sent thugs after him. Dore would’ve sent eidola.
Dore would’ve sent eidola.
This realization brought a tingle of possibility. Suddenly Ean knew how to test their matrix.
He spun and brought his blade down across the chest of the man coming up behind him, elbowed another in the nose and kicked a third into the wall. The last two men wisely backed off, even as a hulking brute came forward between them carrying a scimitar big enough to take down a charging bull.
“There now, little prince,” he s
aid in Avataren in a voice as deep as his chest was broad, “you’ve made a good show, done your duty.” He spun his scimitar in an impressive showing that proved he knew his way around his blade. “It doesn’t have to end this way for you. Just do what she wants. Work a bit of magic—”
He swung for Ean.
The prince sidestepped and blocked his swing. Even with the cortata, the force charging through this clashing of steel sent pain flaring all the way back to Ean’s shoulder. A similar clashing of blades followed as the Avataren made a rapid charge. Ean felt suddenly as if the Avataren was the bull. The strength of his blows forced the prince on the retreat; the rapidity of his attack pushed Ean to the edge of his ability. Any more, and he’d be forced to work elae.
Which seemed to be exactly what the Avataren wanted.
What had the man meant when he’d said ‘work a bit of magic’? It certainly seemed like he was doing everything possible to push Ean into a desperate position. Perhaps desperate enough to work elae in the Prophet’s city?
Ean danced back as the Avataren came at him anew—three, four, five fast slashes of his weapon, each one aiming for the prince’s chest, each one only narrowly avoided. Ean took a few steps to try to recover the cortata, but the Avataren blocked him as if he knew his intention, as if trained also in its pattern—trained actually to prevent Ean from reclaiming it.
Another barrage of punishing blows, and the Avataren spun and kicked Ean in the chest. The prince hit the ground and somersaulted backwards onto his feet, but he came up with his head spinning and the taste of blood on his tongue. He backed up fast, putting some distance between them while he recovered his breath.
Thunder sounded. The rising wind tore at Ean’s clothes. The Avataren’s face seemed sketched of shadows.
He spun his blade as he advanced. “I kill you, or I let you live. It doesn’t matter to me. But I get nothing if you don’t do magic. What’s it gonna be then, little prince? You choose.”
Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Page 43