“I will go,” Rafen said, standing up. “I can say it myself.”
“Rafen, have you forgotten everyone in New Isles was trying to kill you today?” Etana said coldly.
“What if the Lashki’s men follow you?” Rafen said. “What if—”
“What if the passage was created by kesmal and made so that only one in the bloodline of Fritz could descend through it?” Adelphia said.
Rafen fell silent.
“There will be a distraction,” Adelphia said. “I will see to it.”
“Let’s not make it a suicide, though,” Sherwin put in, staring at Rafen.
Rafen was thinking about the wedding Richard intended to take place. Only Zion knew what he would do when Etana was in his grasp again.
Chapter Twelve
Etana’s
Departure
They slept right through the day and into the early evening. Adelphia had provided them with a double bed in a royally furnished room down the hallway. The room had mullioned windows that were strangely invisible from the outside. They opened out onto the snowy area behind the house. Rafen gazed out of them, expecting to see hundreds of flaring torches and glittering eyes. There was nothing, except perhaps a scarcely noticeable wall of shadows and the occasional mountain goat. It was immensely still. The world beyond the shield was strangely distorted. Snowflakes fell like dying butterflies.
Nazt was whispering in his mind again, and he tried to remember the Phoenix cleaning him in the Hideout. His hand searched for his phoenix feather. The spirits outside leered at him, and briefly everything was erased from his vision. Within the Mountains, a ravine with a stone floor as white as bone loomed out of the tunnel of his mind. He found himself standing in the middle of it, waiting for something.
He pulled himself out of the vision violently, and a bang brought him back to reality. He reeled around, clutching his head, aware that he had somehow hit it on one of the four posts of the canopy bed he and Etana were sharing.
Etana flinched. She was still lying with her eyes closed, an expression of vague panic on her face. Rafen gritted his teeth. He couldn’t bear to see her go.
Looking away, he forced himself this time to focus on Fritz. He remembered vaguely that Fritz was well-built but slender, with light blue eyes. He compelled himself to see into those eyes, to imagine the thrumming of Fritz’s particular brand of kesmal. What did Fritz think about? What was he interested in?
He felt something brush his consciousness, a conventional, trained mind that was ready to break out of its traditional mold. Fritz had wanted Siana to move toward independence, Rafen remembered. His left arm abruptly grew warm. They were rather alike, Fritz and him.
Returning to the present with a jolt, Rafen reeled with dizziness. He had been exerting himself more than he had realized. Glancing wildly around the room, he discovered he and Etana were still alone.
He said something nasty internally.
Demus had neither given him tuition on how to resist Nazt, nor told Rafen anything about how to bring Fritz back. This meant that Rafen had failed to destroy the Lashki last night, and he had failed, once more, to reunite himself with one of the previous Runi.
Though he tried shaking it off, his shortcomings were weighing on him. Climbing onto the bed and leaning over Etana, he kissed her still lips. Her eyes flew open, one of them still bruised from the previous night.
“Rafen,” she said, “doesn’t it feel like being back home? But it’s not.”
“You’re never going to leave,” Rafen said, settling down next to her.
He wrapped his arms around Etana and strained her closer to him. He remembered Adelphia’s shocked expression when she had discovered they were already married.
“I had hoped for it and provided the certificate,” she said, “yet I had never thought you two would do it immediately. I thought perhaps when times were more suitable…”
Rafen had wondered what “more suitable” times there would be. When Richard was married to Etana? He hated to think.
“I must leave,” Etana murmured. “You can’t tell what everyone is thinking of you. I can tell them what has happened, that you had to leave your house because it was surrounded. I can expose Richard for leaving you exposed. I can get you the men Father promised he would provide for us.”
“Don’t go,” Rafen told her. “At least take Sherwin or Francisco.”
“You need both of them with you,” Etana snapped, sitting up. “Didn’t you realize you nearly died last night? I am going to do this.”
“I’m sorry,” Rafen said, also sitting up. He didn’t know what else to say.
A movement near the closed door startled him. He looked up. Fritz was standing near the doorframe, his light blue gaze fixed on Rafen. His face was scantily bearded and framed by pale ash-colored hair that reached down to his chin. Wrinkles of the worries of kingship lined his skin.
Rafen gripped Etana’s hand convulsively, and she looked toward the door as well.
“There is nothing there, Rafen,” she said, and as she spoke, the figure melted away. “I do wish you wouldn’t watch the spirits.”
“You ruined it,” Rafen said, feeling cheated. “I saw Fritz—”
“Rafen, there was nothing there.”
“I know what I saw.”
The silence stretched.
“I must go,” she said, climbing over him.
“Etana, you mustn’t,” Rafen said, wrapping his arm around her waist to help her. “You’ll hurt the baby.”
“The baby is only three months old,” Etana said. “I’m not hurting it or myself by climbing over you.”
She retrieved a shawl from a scarlet-cushioned chair near the bed and pulled it around herself. Then she sat down to put on her boots and lace them with furious haste. Rafen pulled on his own boots, feeling like he had a lump of lead in his stomach. His calf and back ached dully from where Naztwai had attacked him the previous night. She preceded him to the door quickly, turning as she opened it.
“I just realized that tomorrow is your birthday,” she said, “isn’t it?” She was affecting an indifferent manner as a thin disguise for her anxiety. “Here’s for that then.”
She moved forward and kissed him. Though it was meant to be a token, Rafen gently took her face between his hands and kissed her back. He actually lost track of time. It was the saddest affection he had ever bestowed, the most desperate, the most defiant – a ringing declaration in the face of the condemnation of Richard Patrick or death itself.
Etana broke away with a gasp and rushed from the room. Rafen followed more slowly, wandering down the hallway.
Sherwin met him halfway to the front room. He breathed a long sigh as he looked at Rafen.
“Well,” he said. “It’s yer birthday at least.”
Rafen shoved past him wordlessly.
Francisco sat at the dented table in the front room of the shack, as if expecting food. His face was pale and strained, and he was staring at the wall across from him with half-hearted interest.
Etana was checking through a saddlebag that had been left on the floor a little from the hearth. She lifted it quickly without looking at Rafen.
The front door flew open, and Rafen’s hand dropped instinctively to his sword, which he had buckled on shortly after getting up. Adelphia stepped inside.
“Are you ready, Etana?” she said.
“Yes,” Etana said simply, hurrying out.
Rafen followed her, loosening his sword in his sheath.
“Goodbye, Etana,” Francisco called after her.
Within the shield, the world was silent and frigid. No breezes blew in the circular area around the house, and the snow was settled under their feet. The sky darkened with oncoming night. A coyote yelped distantly. Adelphia led a saddled and bridled horse to Etana, and she fixed her bag to it. Rafen tried divining where Adelphia’s stables were, but it was impossible to tell from outside the shack.
Adelphia threw the cloak she had been holding o
n her arm over Rafen. When Rafen opened his mouth, she motioned for silence with a finger.
“Do not forget the scarf,” she said, taking hers from her own neck and wrapping it around him. “You know the path. Follow it through the monoliths.”
She sounded as if she were trying to keep her voice down, but wasn’t really succeeding. Rafen looked into her eyes and understood. Etana, who was now pulling another dark cloak from the saddlebag, was his supposed distraction as he ventured back down the mountain.
Or at least, that was what their silent foes were to think.
Adelphia propelled him behind the towering bay horse. Etana flicked the reins with a knowing look, moving to the eastern side of the shield. Rafen’s eyes searched the darkness she was about to vanish into and pierced it with a skill he hadn’t known was his. A shadowed rock six steps from the shield became a giant monolith gilded with snow. In its side was a gaping maw through which a horse could pass with lowered head. Allowing himself to travel a little further in his strange mental excursion, he could see the underground passage widened from this point until it was easily big enough for the horse to straighten up in. The path plunged steeply down the mountain, through rocky walls carved with surprisingly detailed pictures of Fritz’s explorations and battles.
He inhaled sharply and returned to his regular perception of the world, fretted with spirits. Adelphia urged him to shadow Etana as she prepared to penetrate the wall. When the horse lowered its head to pass through, Rafen glanced at Adelphia, who was now standing in the doorway of her shack again. She raised one eyebrow. Half limping because of the previous night, Rafen bolted to the opposite side of the shield, ducking as if he were afraid of being under fire already. He burst out of the shield, and the wind hit him in his bruised chest, roaring. The air exploded with kesmal, and thirty Naztwai hurtled toward him, gambolling and whistling, their mouths filling his vision.
He whirled around and stumbled back into the shield. The Naztwai hit it with a silent, yet nasty impact. A number pounded their heads against it. The kesmal whirling through the air struck the shield in a score of different places, dying in splotches of light that turned the interior of the shield multi-colored and the snow around the shack into a kaleidoscope. Rafen glanced desperately at the monolith. The area to the east of the shield was also filled with bursts of light and shambling forms. Etana was nowhere to be seen.
Adelphia motioned to Rafen from the doorway, and he moved back into the house, his loss a burning hole in him. He collapsed on a rickety chair near the hearth and lowered his head into his hands.
“Zion, protect her,” he whispered.
“She will be safe, Rafen,” Adelphia said.
“Would it not have made more sense to cast the shield around the entrance to the passage also?” Francisco questioned, straightening in his chair at the table.
“There you show your ignorance of kesmal, Francisco,” Adelphia said, moving over to the fire. A small cauldron hanging over it contained some bubbling stew. “Rafen will explain to you what you do not understand.”
“The bigger the shield is, the more energy it takes to maintain,” Rafen said tonelessly. “Whether it is joined to you physically or not, you must always mentally energize it – you know, thinking of its size and walls.”
“If I had surrounded the monolith also,” Adelphia said, “the shield would only have lasted three days – that is, it would be gone by late tomorrow. As it is, you have two more days in which to study your route through the Mountains.”
Lounging on a nearby settee, Sherwin watched Rafen with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. When Rafen rose, Sherwin looked away. Then Rafen remembered what had happened last night – it had been completely driven from his mind.
Sherwin had survived a direct confrontation with the Lashki’s kesmal: one similar to the incident that had almost killed Rafen in the king’s bedchamber exactly three years ago today.
“How come it didn’t hurt you?” he asked abruptly, pretending to examine the wounds Etana had cleaned and bandaged beneath his trouser leg.
“Wha’?”
“The Lashki’s kesmal.”
Adelphia paused in her stirring of the stew and then started stirring in the opposite direction.
“Ah. ’e wasn’ puttin’ ’is jam tart into it, I s’pose.”
Rafen stared at him, knowing this wasn’t the full explanation. The only time he had survived a blow like that was when the Lashki had hit his phoenix feather by mistake. Even then, he had suffered great pain. Sherwin didn’t appear to have suffered any, and there was no way he could have a phoenix feather…
“Jam tart?” Francisco said hopefully from the table.
Sherwin snorted derisively and got up to look out of the small window in the right wall of the front room. From where he was sitting, Rafen could already see the frolicking of the Naztwai.
“They didn’t stand a chance with the shield being so close,” Adelphia said.
“Annette is out there,” Rafen said.
“Yes?”
Rafen’s chest tightened.
“She’s descended from your husband, that’s all,” he said through his teeth. Annette could travel through the passage after Etana.
Adelphia followed him with her eyes as he moved over to the window. Sherwin made space for him to look out.
“You may keep watch outside, if you wish,” Adelphia said. “If she attempts any such thing, step outside the shield a moment and make her pay for it. If you keep one foot within the shield, you should have every chance of getting back inside it on time.”
Rafen made a move for the door and Adelphia intercepted him impossibly fast, pressing a painfully hot pottery bowl of stew into his hands.
“Eat,” she said. “And above all, do not let any harm come to you. You are our last chance.”
Rafen accepted the bowl, slopping some stew on the floor as he rushed out the door.
Chapter Thirteen
The Wrath
of Richard Patrick
Rafen scarcely slept at all that night and would have forgotten to drink if Adelphia hadn’t come out with a water pouch that she advised him to down immediately, before it froze. He had learned the hard way with his stew, which had solidified minutes after he failed to eat it. After this, he had created a cheerful fire for his vigil. He sat in it and placed his soup nearby, warming it.
Nobody that he saw came near the monolith, and the only sound to disturb the night was that of the bats that haunted the alpine regions. Rafen used all his concentration to attain the vision he had had before Etana left. The difficulty was maintaining a particular extension of sight for a long time. His eyes would get tired, the spirits would flock his vision, and he wanted to sleep…
At one point, he lay back on the slushy snow amid his excited flames and drifted away. Once more, he saw the Ravine. He looked up at a teenage boy with a tanned olive face that was etched with many lines already, like that of an old man’s. His eyes were black and seemed to lack pupils. The eyelids were wide, and his hair was dark, exploding in wild, free curls around his head. He watched Rafen continually, and Rafen became aware that they too were being watched by Nazt, which this time formed the roof of the Ravine – great churning, black naked bodies that seemed about to fall on him at any moment. He couldn’t move, no matter how hard he tried. Alakil kept staring, and Rafen felt the Ashurite was winning some kind of competition.
Rafen came to himself and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Judging by the slush around his fire, which had not melted much more, he had only dozed for a minute. Yet anything could have happened. He clenched his fists in frustration at himself.
“Zion, please help me fight this,” he said loudly.
He needed Fritz. He couldn’t fight this battle alone. Demus was right: if Rafen brought Fritz back, he would be welcomed into the people’s affections, and his way into the royal court would easier. Everyone would see the truth.
He once again brought Fritz to mind, imagining him as he
had been at Rafen’s door that morning. He felt the raw energy of Fritz’s kesmal and was convinced the previous king was talented at manipulating earth. His kesmalic beams were like iron. In his mind, Rafen heard Fritz’s crisp voice. He forced himself to listen closely, drawing the unintelligible words nearer to himself out of an impenetrable void.
With a jerk, he brought himself back again. He had to keep watch for Etana. He felt so tired he wanted to black out. Allowing kesmal to reach his fingers, he absorbed it, reusing its energy.
There, directly before the monolith across from him, King Fritz watched Rafen, a mute sentinel.
Rafen leapt up, flinging out his hand to pull Fritz into the shield. As suddenly as he had appeared, Fritz blinked into nothingness. Rafen stood there alone, intensely watched by the unseen and calm ranks that filled the darkness.
*
Desperately tired, Etana reached the city without event. Her great bay horse was as strong as ever, and without complaint, carried her from the hole in the incline near the Cursed Woods to the New Isles gates where the fleeing of wood thrushes announced her arrival. The Sartian guards clustered around the gates muttered among themselves as she approached, her plain black cloak stained with travel and her eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. The bruises on her face made her look like a tramp. She reined in the horse, dismounted, and reeled before vomiting into a clump of weeds near the road of packed dirt. Clutching her stomach and gasping for air, she tried to repress the blush that was already rushing into her cheeks.
It had been hard to hide her pregnancy, and weariness made it more difficult still.
“Your Highness,” a decorated Sartian official said, moving over to her with dignity and bowing low. His face was devoid of sympathy. “The festivities are already in progress, and we have shut the gates in order to avoid… any incidents. Yet, we may admit Your Highness if you are well enough, perhaps.”
The Fourth Runi (The Fledgling Account Book 4) Page 13