An idea was forming in his mind. If he and Fritz fought together, they might be able to overpower the Lashki.
Just don’t let him touch you with that rod, he told himself savagely.
“I’m not losing you too!” Etana cried.
Francisco wavered. Sherwin lunged toward them all and shoved Etana up onto Trinity, giving the horse’s rump a hard slap.
“Franny, yer don’ ’ave to listen to Raf when ’e’s bein’ this stupid!” he bellowed.
The stallion leapt forward into a gallop. Etana clutched Rafen where he sat before her. Rafen glanced back in horror.
“We can’t leave them,” he said, about to pull the reins. “My brother—”
“Fritz is with him!” Etana cried in his ear.
Fritz was now engaged fully in a battle with the Lashki. Showers of rock cascaded from the distant ceiling as their kesmal flew in every direction. While Annette backed away from her Master in uncertainty, staring at her “dead” grandfather, Asiel joined in the battle too, sending his own spinning emerald kesmal toward Fritz’s face. Sherwin threw the head of an old gargoyle Asiel’s way while the Ashurite was trying to erect a shield. Asiel toppled out of sight abruptly. Francisco had resorted to throwing large stones.
Etana gave a sharp cry, grabbing Rafen convulsively. “Rafen, what are you doing?”
Rafen turned to look where Trinity was going. They were approaching a large drop. Trinity was still galloping furiously, his sides wet with sweat.
Rafen jerked the reins back, and Trinity froze, scarcely two steps from the edge.
“You’ve got to stay awake, Rafen!” Etana shouted.
“I am awake, Etana,” Rafen said through teeth clenched in determination. One too many had died today.
Rafen scanned the left wall for any doors. It was solid. Behind them, the sounds of kesmalic battle had intensified, and the whistling and clattering of many Naztwai punctuated it. He glanced over his right shoulder to see a horde as wide as the hall they were in rushing toward them, mouths agape and eyes swirling. He turned to the right wall. He could feel Nazt numbing him, trying to slow him down. There was a door there, but something in Rafen hated the very sight of it. He put it down to Nazt, wheeled the horse around to face it, and urged Trinity into a canter.
He raised his hand to do kesmal, and an explosion of flame melted the door to dust.
Trinity was through the doorway immediately. The scuttling of Naztwai behind intensified as they galloped down some narrow, winding stairs. Etana pointed her silver scepter behind, creating a shield. The air in this enclosed area was musty and intoxicating. Rafen’s head became even more muddled. He furrowed his forehead and clenched his teeth so tightly he could feel the muscles on his neck stand out as he steered Trinity.
They had arrived in a small chamber. A great, twisted face of green smoke reared into the air and flung itself toward them. Etana screamed. Still clasping his sword, Rafen shrieked something to Zion and threw out his hands. Kasper’s dying visage flashed before his mind’s eye, accompanied by images of Etana and the baby within her writhing in death. His arms felt as if they had split open, and he actually cried out with the pain, but the flames that exploded into view were huge curtains, menacing towers of strength that consumed the ceiling and walls of the room, holding the green smoke at bay for a moment.
Rafen dragged Trinity around violently, and the horse surged through a hole in the wall. Through the immense, hungry flames and green smoke behind them, Rafen glimpsed a rectangular shrine on which a stone coffin rested.
Trinity charged through some kind of portico that led into the open, and then they were on the floor of the Ravine Rafen had seen so much in his dreams. Somehow, he had never connected the Ravine they had crossed today with the Ravine of his fantasies, probably because the floor had seemed so far away. There was no river running through it as he had originally expected, although he should have known this from his dreams. Its floor was closer to the bridges than he had guessed, and it was beetled with Naztwai, like the New Isles’ marketplace had been the night the city was burned to the ground. The sea of black bodies closed in around them. Etana was sending kesmal in every direction. Rafen felt sleep coming over him. His arms were still aching after his effort in the chamber they had left.
Keep… fighting…
He shot several focused beams out at their foes.
There was a narrow passage through a stone wall across from them. The Naztwai had already blocked their access to it, leaping and whistling, an ocean of black-blue faces. A ray of Etana’s kesmal split them momentarily, and Rafen propelled Trinity through it. Blood streamed from the horse’s flanks as talons scratched him and sank into him.
There was an overhanging rock – Rafen was too late in ducking –
A huge black dot filled his vision.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Into
the Mountains
Tremendously grateful to be alive, Rafen woke with snow heavy on his lashes. The cold was seeping into his bones, and he was surprised he had woken at all. It was the perfect place to sleep. The snow beneath was soft, and its icy powder on his limbs actually formed some kind of insulation. A whistle in the distance shook him properly awake. He sat up and was momentarily blinded by the pain of the wound in his side.
“Etana,” he whispered, then cried, “Etana!”
The falling of the snow around him was so unbearably quiet. He looked desperately around himself and then saw her hand. Her face was already powdered with snow. He quickly lifted up her torso, his side burning as he did so. She was unconscious, and a bruise blackened her left temple. Her silver ring lay nearby, and he pressed it onto her finger.
They had been knocked from Trinity’s back into an opening in the left stone wall they had been riding alongside. The rocky outcrops appended to the wall partially hid them and made the opening look narrow. Yet the area they were in actually widened out into a vast snowy slope from which the wind blew bitterly. The sky above was velvety and dark. Night had fallen.
Rafen’s shoulders sagged. They were entirely without food, and they had no idea where Fritz, Francisco, and Sherwin were. Their enemies had likely missed them and continued pursuing the fleeing horse. It was only a matter of time before they came back for their frozen prey. He had a thundering headache, and his side left him so weak that he could barely stand up, let alone carry his pregnant wife to a place of shelter and safety, away from the path the Naztwai had been following.
He put a hand to his phoenix feather. This wasn’t, after all, nearly as impossible as destroying Nazt. He could do this.
He bent over Etana and draped her torso over his shoulder. With his limbs vibrating terribly, he straightened and started to plow through the snow, away from the path.
He was aiming for the slope. His feet kept sinking into the snow so deeply that he could scarcely pull them free again. Etana was a dead weight over his back. Her breathing was shallow, and her heart fluttered against his shoulder blade.
The wind blew savagely as he began his ascent. The spirits flocking around him were persistent. He ground his teeth (a painful feat, considering his smashed jaw) and determined to focus on Etana’s weight and the phoenix feather in his hem. After all they had been through that day, they were still alive, and he had to do everything in his power to make sure Kasper’s sacrifice was not in vain.
His eyes burned as the wind swept snow into them, yet he was already crying. He asked himself why, though he already knew. He should have been used to it by now. Death had happened numerous times, and each time, weeping never helped – never erased the memories, erased the guilt. He had always thought he was somehow indirectly responsible for each death that occurred in his memory. Well, it was true. He was the Runi ki Hafa. He was supposed to stop this kind of thing.
To think Richard wanted such a position! It was an anathema.
Kasper’s voice kept ringing in his head, saying all kinds of things – all the ridiculous, un-royal things that
Kasper would say. His voice oozed life and enthusiasm:
“I say, old chap!”
“My dear old fruit! Robert and I caught three foxes today. Capital hunt.”
“I do believe it’s a wild turkey.”
Rafen smiled. There had been something very refreshing about Kasper and the way he lived life. Regular nobility were so stuffy. Queen Arlene was cold and positively dull, and even King Robert was more controlled by conventions than he cared to think. Robert, while fiercely Sianian, always did things the way they were supposed to be done. Bertilde, most funny for unintentionally doing precisely the wrong thing, always tried too hard to conform. Annette had kept up a perfect appearance; Bambi had been easily beguiled and influenced by most anyone; and Etana, up until very lately, had been deceived by Sianian conventions as well. So it was really only Kasper who had dared to occasionally say what he thought, do what he wanted, and look how he wished. It was Kasper who had operated by faith and not law.
It had been Kasper, Rafen had discovered much later after the event, who had suggested spying on the Sianian palace while the royal family was in hiding, an event that had made it possible to save Francisco’s life. It was Kasper who had leapt at the opportunity of fighting back, even when Robert had suggested strongly that they were all suicidal. For over a year, Rafen had lived alongside Kasper in the royal family, loving him as a brother. And even though in recent times distance had sprung up between them, Rafen could not forget that.
He had reached a circle of monoliths halfway up the slope, within which the wind was slightly less strong. He lowered Etana gently to the ground and leaned her against a monolith. A resting mountain goat stirred, rose, and meandered away. Rafen collapsed in the snow next to Etana.
Etana’s eyes opened, and she turned to him, wetting her blue lips with her tongue.
“I’m sorry, Etana,” Rafen said. “You must want to kill me.”
“Why?” she whispered.
“Kasper,” Rafen said flatly. “It was my fault. There was this door – it was the Lashki’s grave… Alakil’s. It was protected by kesmal. Sherwin was there, and I went to stop him. Then Nazt lured me to touch it, and when I did, Etana—” He forced himself to carry on despite his shaking voice. “I touched it, and Kasper came back to help me. He let me enter first.”
Kasper’s face appeared in his mind’s eye, watching Rafen while he rode Trinity that morning. His green eyes had that soft light of a perpetual smile about them.
“I’m jolly glad it’s you and all that, old prune. Richard was a frightful sort… but I know how to die. I’d go all the way for you…”
Rafen was crying in earnest now. He turned away from Etana, feeling ridiculous. He was a man by Sianian standards. He was the Fourth Runi; he was her husband, and father to an unborn child. He dashed away his tears and stared at the white lines of snow falling outside the circle of lichen-sprinkled monoliths they were within. He wasn’t ashamed of his weeping; he was ashamed – and angry enough to kill himself, if there weren’t consequences – at what he had done, even if it had been unintentional. He rubbed his bruised jaw hard.
Etana’s arm crept around his neck. Even though she was frigid, the tiny bit of body warmth she offered somehow comforted him. She drew him closer to her and placed her head on his shoulder as she wept.
“You must hate me,” Rafen said quietly.
“I don’t,” she choked. “It really wasn’t – you are wounded…”
“I’m weak,” Rafen said through tears.
He stretched out his fingers and tried to spark a fire. Nothing happened. His fingertips were heavy behind his mittens. He pulled one mitten off and tried again. Still nothing.
“I don’t know what happened to Sherwin,” Rafen said. “I’m worried about him.”
“It is these Mountains,” Etana whispered. “Poor Kasper. Poor, poor Kasper.”
She started crying again, and Rafen wrapped his arms around her. They sat like that for half an hour.
“The horse and the food are gone,” Rafen said after a while.
He reached out, and this time a fire at last sprang into being at their feet. It flickered feebly, and Etana put her hands out toward it, mittens and all.
“Francisco and Sherwin will be all right,” she murmured to him. “They were with Fritz. Did you carry me here?”
“Yes.”
“Oh Rafen.”
When she felt his wound again, Rafen wouldn’t let her hands through his cloak and many layers.
“It’s too cold,” he said. “I’m frozen. The bandages are still secure.”
His mind had been so preoccupied that something he should have thought of much earlier occurred to him only now.
“The child,” he panted. “The child – Etana, you fell.”
“Oh, I know,” Etana said, turning her wan little face to him, and she began to shake. “I won’t know for a while yet, Rafen.”
“It’s been hours. Can you feel movement? Anything?”
“No,” Etana moaned softly. “No, I can’t.”
She leaned back against the monolith, shivering. Rafen drew closer to her.
“I’ll keep watch,” he said. “The Naztwai might find us.”
“They won’t,” Etana said, standing up and beginning to erect an invisible shield about them with her scepter. “Zion will protect us.”
“Sure. Like He protected your brother.”
Etana turned fierce blue eyes on him. “Shut up, will you?” she said. “Kasper is more fortunate than all of us. He has gone where there is no more pain. It’s us who are here, us who are struggling, us who will hurt and bleed for years to come. And it’s for us that we are crying. Zion was merciful to him.”
“I once wished I would die too.”
“You mustn’t,” Etana said. “It is said if the Fourth Runi dies, Nazt will win for good, and his spirit will become joined to theirs. He will be hungering and naked forever.” She shuddered. “Rafen, don’t wish for death,” she implored, entwining her arms around his neck.
“I don’t anymore,” he said emphatically. “I’m going to fight forever, Etana. I don’t want anyone to go through what will happen if I die.”
She gazed at him in gratitude. He leaned on her, and she nestled her head on his chest against his phoenix feather.
“You have a permanent source of warmth,” she whispered, smiling weakly.
*
Rafen woke halfway through the night, horrified he had slept at all. If a philosopher had found their shield, Etana and their child could have been killed, and he wouldn’t have known any better. And yet, as he stared at the starry sky above, he realized this was the first time he had slept so well in ages. He had not had dreams about Nazt or the Ravine. He hadn’t even dreamed of Kasper, though as soon as he opened his eyes, he felt like Kasper’s ghost was before him, reproving him.
The fire had gone out, and he tore off a glove again and restarted it. Another mountain goat had settled nearby, its head lying in its white fur. Etana was breathing deeply, clutching him so that he couldn’t escape. The warm phoenix heartstring she had around her neck was close to his phoenix feather, and it was times like this that he remembered their union before he had been incarnated. He remembered what he was truly meant to be.
Unwrapping her cloak a little, he moved his hand down to feel her protruding belly. He sat like that for twenty minutes, his eyes scanning the quiet area surrounding the monoliths. His hands were sweaty as he remembered the incomprehensible trap of that morning. He supposed the Lashki’s men had known the only way to get through the Mountains was the Ravine. The Den Nyolam, which had once been a route, had been a dead end in more ways than one.
His thoughts were shattered when he felt a ripple under his hand. His heart stopped. Another faint flutter.
“Thank you,” he murmured to Zion.
His child was still alive.
*
Rafen’s disappearances seldom aggravated the Lashki anymore. With a sticky tread, he walked
calmly within his Ashurite Palace in the mountain. Kasper had died. The Lashki’s own protective charms around his former body’s tomb, activated by Rafen’s touch, had killed him, and the chances were that Rafen and Etana would return to the Ravine floor to search for ashes. Rafen had been that sentimental in the past. He had returned to the marketplace once before to view the suspended corpse of his mentor. Rafen would likely return now, and thus meet his death.
Even if Rafen was not there, the Lashki knew he would come back to this same Ravine. The trap had been sprung. If Rafen managed to escape the lure of the Mountains – and this was not possible – the Sartians would kill him. That day during the Festival of Zion had been the masterstroke. In the end, the Lashki had simply had to make sure Richard knew the right things about Rafen, and he had two philosophers among Richard’s protectors who had said everything he had needed them to. Besides which, Rafen had not exercised any self-control. He had acted precisely as the Lashki had wanted him to. The Lashki had allowed the boy time to embrace the Secra and then deliberately tested him, to see what he would do if the fool Robert was threatened. The result had been perfect. Finally, simply by casting a shield, the Lashki had finished the job Richard had started. He had turned the public against Rafen.
Afterward, the Lashki and his army of two thousand had made a move to claim Rafen. Rafen was quick when he was afraid, and he had escaped, making it to Adelphia’s. However, the true revelation had been the moment the Lashki had placed the copper rod to Rafen’s throat on that mountainside. Nazt had a hold on the boy. Although Rafen had wanted to seriously harm Alakil, Nazt had prevented him.
After that, the Lashki had planned a pursuit of Rafen through the Mountains. He intended to press the Fourth Runi hard. Yet, he did not see it as all important that Rafen was captured. Again, he knew Rafen had to want to die. The army would help accomplish that. Any traps the Lashki set would reinforce Rafen’s desire to surrender to Nazt. Of course, everyone would try to get their hands on the boy. The Lashki was content to wait until the proper time, because he knew it would arrive. He no longer had to work to attract the boy. The boy would come, drawn like a magnet, to the place of Nazt’s choosing, and that happened to be wherever the copper rod was. Once Rafen was there, the Lashki would transport him to Nazt’s arms, for he did not want another one on one combat with the boy. Even though the copper rod could immobilize Rafen, there was always the possibility Fritz and the boy would work together to bring the Lashki down – and nothing must ever hurt the Lashki again. After Nazt had swallowed the boy alive and broken free of its ancient bonds, it would give the Lashki Siana, as it had promised, and he would kill the Fifth and Sixth Secrai, Adelphia and Etana, and locate and destroy the Seventh Secra for good measure.
The Fourth Runi (The Fledgling Account Book 4) Page 21