Tarn had nothing to say to that, but his conscience pricked. He still needed to lead Gard back to his memories so he could unbind him and let him resume his true form. He was just a little reluctant to let his eager, sharp-tongued boy go. The desert had no reason to trust him, let alone like him, and the Shadow would still be searching for Alagard, to tear him apart once more.
“There is a temple here,” Gard continued. “They still come to pay their respects to the Desert God.”
“To Alagard?” Tarn asked, disquieted. “We’re going there?”
Gard blinked at him, startled. “Yes. How did you know that before I did?”
“I’m old,” Tarn reminded him. “It makes me wise.”
Gard’s peal of laughter showed what he thought of that.
A few moments later they reached the temple. Like the dance floor, it was sealed off with red strips of knotted rags, and a clenched fist had been painted over the steps in smeared red paint. Despite that, there was a quiet beauty to the place, with its steps leading up between long pillars that branched into the shape of cupped hands at their tops. There were braziers mounted atop the pillars, but they did not burn.
The temple itself widened out behind the pillars, its front hall open to the air. Gard ducked under the red tapes and headed straight up the steps, tapping his fingers impatiently against his hip as he moved.
It was a big high space, with round balconies sloping up in a spiral from a floor polished to a glassy sheen. Scraps of bright cloth showed where banners had hung. In the center of the floor a crumpled tangle of metal lay flattened. As Tarn glanced uneasily back into the street, Gard picked it up. He straightened the curves of flat metal and then spun it, letting it twist below his fingers. Bright metal spun in shining rings around a faceted piece of quartz, sending rainbows whirling around the hall.
“Dancing in the air and dancing below,” Gard murmured. “I remember the dancers spinning, all in their bright colors.”
“To the side,” Tarn prompted, trying to shuffle him out of the view of any passersby. Istel was dangerous enough without having to cut down a few guards who caught them breaking into a forbidden site.
Gard was already moving, but toward the back of the temple, not the side. Resigned, Tarn followed him. He could just glimpse a second chamber through the door, some less public sanctum, he assumed.
As Gard reached the door, he broke into a run, and Tarn followed fast.
A man lay on the floor. He was wearing a white robe that fit tightly to his upper body and then flared out into a full skirt below. The white cloth was smeared with dried blood.
Gard dropped to his knees beside him, reaching out, but Tarn put his hand on his shoulder. There was no need to check for a pulse. The man’s skin was beginning to dry out, mummifying in the desert air, his skin clutching tightly to his fingers and toes. He had already slumped away from the initial rigor of death. He had been gone for two or three days, at least.
He had clearly been a handsome man once, his cheekbones high and his mouth wide. His hair, like Gard’s, hung in neat, beaded braids.
“I know him,” Gard whispered harshly. “His name is Enis.” He reached out and smoothed the hair from the dead man’s face, a lover’s gesture, and Tarn’s heart caught. “I remember him being younger. How can that be?”
Tarn drew him up and away. They were hidden from the road here, so he pulled Gard back against him, an arm around his waist to cradle him. It was a curse of the long-lived, that lovers drifted away in search of mortal lives, or grew old and went away forever. There was an extra bitterness to a too-early death, though, and he grieved for Gard’s loss.
A soft sound behind them made Tarn release Gard and swing round, reaching up and back to draw his sword.
A girl was standing under the stairs, pressed back against the wall. She was as dark as Gard and the dead man, her belled dress a deep indigo hue that would glow under the sun’s light but disguised her in the shadows.
Almost as soon as Tarn saw her, she ducked away behind a screen, vanishing under the stairs.
“Esen!” Gard hissed, and she reappeared, her face barely showing around the edge of the screen.
Then she saw Gard, and her eyes widened. She darted forward, kingfisher fast, and Gard barely got his arms out in time to catch her.
“Alagard!” she gasped and buried her face in his shoulder, swallowing sobs with audible, painful gulps.
She was very young, Tarn could see now, barely more than a child of fourteen at most, slender and gawky in her unadorned dress.
Gard took her weight, holding her tight, and shot Tarn a look of sheer panic over her shoulder.
Tarn mimed patting her on the back, wondering who exactly she was. She obviously knew Gard. That, and his reaction to the dead man, showed Tarn that Gard had clearly taken human form before in this body he wore now. Selfishly, it was a relief to know that it hadn’t been his own desires that had given Gard shape, but his curiosity wasn’t satisfied. How easily and how often had Gard walked among men? How much danger was there that one of the governor’s guards would recognize him?
How many human lovers had Gard taken?
The thump of boots jerked Tarn out of his thoughts. Someone was marching into the front chamber of the temple.
The girl—Esen—startled back and then darted for her shelter behind the screen, her hands fastened around Gard’s elbow. He went with her, and Tarn followed in three swift strides. As Esen and Gard ducked under the stairs to crawl into a low, concealed space, it was obvious to him at a glance that he would not fit.
Instead, he strode back out into the room, drawing his sword with a sense of pleasure at the old familiar rasp. He stood over the body, setting the point of his sword into one of the grooves in the floor, and waited.
When the first guard marched in, he stopped for a moment in surprise, and then barked out orders. Four more came at a run.
“Drop your weapon and surrender to arrest!” the leader demanded as the rest spread in a loose arc across the back of the room.
Tarn needed to hold their attention away from the pair hiding below the stairs. He probably shouldn’t provoke an incident, but he wasn’t going to cooperate, not with men who wore that sign upon their chests.
Without moving, he tensed his shoulders, making the muscles swell dangerously. Then he said, in the most ancient dialect of the hill tongue, one which had died from use before the Shadow crept out of the caves below Eyr, “Flee, lest I cut you down.” That was all the fair warning they deserved.
He saw their uncertainty and confusion, the way they glanced at each other, and held still. They weren’t anything to be alarmed about—two of them middle-aged and paunchy, and the rest young, acne-ridden, and blank eyed.
Evil often looked banal, he had learned long ago, and the frustrated young and resentful older men were often vulnerable to the Shadow’s wiles.
“Put down your sword,” the leader said again, “or we will force you.”
“You could not force a mouse from its cheese,” Tarn said, still in the old tongue, and grinned at them, showing as many teeth as he could. “Run, while you still can.”
“I don’t think he knows what you’re saying,” one of the young ones observed, snickering. “Fucking foreigners. Can I teach him some real words?”
Tarn turned to look at him, yawning deliberately. For a moment, he thought he’d intimidated them enough and they would back away to fetch reinforcements.
Then the leader said contemptuously, “There’s only one of him. Just kill him.”
Tarn sighed and lifted his sword as they surged forward. He called on the old spells until the blade caught fire. Flames wreathed the steel as he swung it two-handed to lop off the first man’s head and send it rolling across the floor in a spray of blood. Bringing the sword down, he cleaved the second man’s skull as the rest closed on him, stabbing wildly.
The blood went sizzling off the blade as he stepped back, out of their reach, and shook the still twitching body off his
sword.
They feinted at him, the leader urging them on from the back, and Tarn lunged forward, severing one man’s sword hand as he slammed his shoulder back into the other’s chin, forcing his head back before bringing the hilt back to smash his nose, sending blood splattering wetly across his own arms as the struck man gurgled and choked on his own blood.
The leader was blanching now as Tarn advanced on him across the smeared floor. Now, in the clarity of battle, he remembered that this sword had once borne a name feared across the north. This was Ulc-Sarnir, the Shadowdrinker.
It drank again, and the leader screamed a protest, his eyes bulging as the sword plunged into his gut, and his own sword clattered to the floor.
“When your soul goes to the Shadow,” Tarn told him, cutting up through the ugly sign of the red fist until he sliced through the man’s heart, “tell your master that the Dragon has risen again in the north.”
He got no response, only a dying gulp and the sag of the man’s limbs. Tarn dragged Ulc-Sarnir out of the man’s belly, flicking the mess off his blade. Only then did he realize that the man whose hand he’d lopped away was running, his bleeding wrist rammed into his armpit as he stumbled out.
Tarn swore, and turned to snap at Gard. “Move, before he brings reinforcements!”
“Don’t shout at me,” Gard complained, sweeping Esen out of their corner. “We hid.”
He had his hand over the girl’s eyes, sheltering her from the slaughter, so Tarn just grunted at him and tore the red scarf from the nearest corpse’s hair to clean his sword. “They needed killing.”
“Barbarian,” Gard grumbled, but his eyes were bright and fierce, and his breath was coming fast.
The girl spoke then, a long lilt of scolding in a language Tarn did not know.
“Esen says we should run now and argue later,” Gard translated lightly.
“Wise,” Tarn said and sheathed his sword. “Back exit?”
The girl pointed, trying to shake Gard’s hand off, so her understanding was clearly better than her speech. Neither rushing nor hesitating, Tarn moved them both in that direction, ducking through layers of low-hanging veils until they came out on a platform above the lake. The desert shimmered before them, the reflections off the water casting strange shapes into the bright sky.
Gard took his hand away, and Esen stepped carefully to the edge of the platform before lowering herself off the side.
When Tarn followed her, he found it was a low drop, and then they were lost in a tangle of narrow streets. Esen moved quickly, pressing herself against walls to peer around corners, and it didn’t surprise Tarn when they suddenly emerged in the trade compound.
“Get her hidden,” Tarn snapped at Gard and left them. Aiming to seek out Ia and Sethan, he found Cayl instead, who took one look at the blood splattered across Tarn’s chest and began to swear profusely.
“It was self-defense,” Tarn said sheepishly. Perhaps he should have burned it off before trying to explain himself to Cayl.
“Shitting, fuckwit elemental, rock-brained—”
“Servants of the Shadow are the guard here. They wear its symbol.”
That stopped Cayl midflow. “You’ve seen the governor’s guard? Rumors we’ve heard say they’re in Savattin livery.”
“The red fist, clenched,” Tarn said.
“The Savattin call it the Fist of God.”
“We called it the bloody fist, when the Shadow’s armies bore it as their foremost banner.”
Cayl closed his eyes and began to swear again.
“There is a girl,” Tarn added.
“Now there’s an excuse I never expected to hear from those lips,” Sethan remarked from behind them. He strolled round and then caught sight of Tarn. His sigh was as evocative as Cayl’s continuing stream of obscenities. “Oh, it’s a good thing I’d already decided to pull out of Istel. Barrett has one of the fake bottoms, doesn’t he?”
“If it’s not full of smokeweed,” Cayl grunted.
“Not on a desert run,” Sethan protested. “That boy only smuggles if it’s worth the price.”
Tarn shook his head. “The dead?”
“Their numbers are getting rather thin. You finished off the majority yesterday. I’d rather fight our way out and try to get home than be trapped here with a war brewing. Now get out of sight before the guards come looking. You’ll have food supplies stacked above you, so don’t expect to see us again until we’re five hours out.”
When Tarn got back to Barrett’s wagon, Gard and Esen both looked up from their intense conversation, their faces similarly wary.
“Another drain on our rations?” Sethan asked mildly.
“This is Esen,” Gard said, his hand protective on her shoulder. “Her father Enis was a priest of Alagard, the desert incarnate. She was his acolyte and now takes on his mantel. She is in need of asylum.”
“If we ever make it back to the civilized north,” Sethan said, “I will recommend a temple that will shelter her. Get Ellia to lend her a less conspicuous outfit and move out of the way.”
Chapter 14: Escaping
TARN SPENT an uncomfortable time lying flat in the base of Barrett’s wagon, in a concealed compartment that was disguised in the bed of the cart. He had never noticed it in the weeks he had been riding beside Barrett, and he hoped the Shadow’s guard would not either.
The guard descended in an uproar soon after he had been locked away, crashing and clattering through the wagons in a frenzy of rage. He felt them heaving boxes aside, but they did not find the compartment.
Cayl’s steady voice sounded through the side of the wagon. “We have no man of that description with us. We have a trade schedule to meet and need to leave.”
“You have mages in your employ. We saw you raise the flames as you rode in.”
“And you have swordsmen in yours. Perhaps you should look to them for the answer to this wild accusation you are making. It wouldn’t be the first time a man tried to blame a stranger for his own misdeeds, would it?”
“The dead will devour you.” This voice was bland and low, but Tarn could taste the stain of the Shadow in it.
“We’ll take our chances,” Sethan said. “Now, if you’re done, perhaps you could search elsewhere for, what was it? Oh, yes, a giant of a man with a flaming sword and the mane of a lion, who foamed at the mouth as he slaughtered your defenseless little soldiers.” He must have turned his head, because the next few words were muffled, yet still distinct. “Funny how it takes these boys when they first make it out of Tiallat and discover wine and opium, isn’t it?”
“I resent that slur on my men’s honor,” the governor snapped.
“Oh, resent away, do. I’m afraid nothing can stop me from letting these little comments slip out. You’d get quite used to them if I were staying.”
There was a brief silence, and then the governor said, his voice low and cold, “The dead will come for you.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Sethan said. “They are more honorable company.”
BEFORE LONG, they were trundling through cobbled streets. By now Tarn’s legs, too long for this small space, were beginning to cramp, and his head was aching from banging against the wooden floor with every jolt. Was poor little Esen hidden in a similar space or had they disguised her as a trader?
He heard the gates rise and felt the first slide of the wheels on the glass road. Within moments, he heard the scrabbling hands of the dead against the slick sides of the ditch.
No one fired, so they must be down deep enough that Ia chose to ration arrows.
As the wagon rumbled steadily on, he had nothing to do but think. It had disturbed him to discover that the temple was to Alagard. He himself possessed far more power and had once had more followers, but he had never demanded that they worship him. When he gathered them around him in his citadel, it was to create a home for them all, not a place for sycophants and priests.
It disappointed him, with a bite so deep he began to question his heart.
He had wanted to possess the desert since the moment he landed here and felt its warmth embrace him. He had liked the fierce spirit of the desert and been entertained by it.
Gard himself, though, had been a surprise, from his flirtation to his sharp humor and his quick mind. He was beautiful too, in his human form, from his soft lips and his pale eyes to his slender body and eager response to Tarn’s touch. Even locked away in this sweltering box, Tarn’s human body thrilled at the thought of him.
How had he crept so deeply into Tarn’s heart in but a few days?
It felt like a long time before the caravan stopped and anyone let him out. He crawled out with a groan, stretching his legs and shoulders before he limped off to find Gard.
It was dusk, and they were high above the desert on a red hillside. There were trees, a few olives and cypresses that cast long shadows, although the soil below was still dry and sandy. Clumps of purple and yellow flowers were scattered across the slope, their blooms beginning to close as the sun set, streaking the sky with deeper hues of violet and gold. There had been islands once, Tarn remembered, in the Gulf of Gardalor.
Far below, Tarn could see the lights of Istel, where flares of burning oil showed where they still fought the dead from the walls.
“Where are we?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
“We’re in the Riada,” someone said softly, and he turned to see Jancis sitting on the back of one of the wagons, gazing down on the desert. “On a road to nowhere, I think, but young Esen was insistent, and there are none of the dead here.”
“Why not?” Tarn asked.
She shrugged. “Less graveyards, maybe? Don’t question a miracle, my friend.”
He smiled at her for that. Some of the guards had barely spoken to him since he had transformed, and he was glad that she could still call him friend. For that, he didn’t immediately rush away but sat beside her, flexing his legs to get out some of the aches.
“Uncomfortable, that box of Barrett’s, isn’t it?” she asked sympathetically. At his quizzical look, she nodded. “I got into a bit of a scrape in Verres last time we went west. Thought I’d never get the cramps out of my shoulders, and I’ve got considerably less shoulder than you.”
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