[fan] fourth talisman 01 - nocturne

by Kat Ross

  Perhaps sensing the mood of its master, one of the abbadax gave a piercing, mournful cry.

  “Will you seal the keep?” Culach asked.

  I have to get her out. Have to get her out tonight….

  “It’s the obvious course of action,” Eirik replied.

  Culach kept his face smooth, but his mind raced. If Eirik deployed Val Moraine’s defenses, no one would be leaving. There was only one way to stop him, Culach knew. Appeal to his vanity.

  “You think we can’t handle a few Danai?” He sneered at the last word.

  “I’m not certain it will be a few,” Eirik replied coldly. “And thanks to you, our army was decimated.”

  “So you’d have us hide in our shell like a turtle? I doubt they’ll even make it through the mountains. And if we don’t finish Victor now, he’ll always be a threat. We’ll make Val Moraine their tomb. All of them.”

  Eirik was silent. Culach held his breath.

  “What would you have me do?” he asked at last.

  “No enemy has ever breached these walls. The Danai have no abbadax. When they come, it will be through the tunnels. We wait for them there.”

  “And if their numbers are overwhelming?”

  “They won’t be. The Danai are cautious. The Matrium would ask for a parley before doing anything. I know Victor Dessarian. He’s a hothead. He won’t wait for permission, which means he’ll have a rag-tag force.” Culach sensed his father’s hesitation and gave him a final push. “Victor seduced Neblis and led her to her death. All the misfortunes of our house can be laid at his feet. If you wish to avenge her, this is your chance.”

  Eirik grunted. “Perhaps you’re right. Let him come to us. But we must be ready. There isn’t much time.”

  In truth, Culach wasn’t so sure they could hold off the Danai at close quarters. But it didn’t matter, as long as Mina got out. He had little to live for anyway. If they cut him down, at least it would be a clean death. He forced himself to stay for another hour, mechanically reviewing every entrance to the keep and where to place the defenders, but every particle hummed with the urge to find Mina. He couldn’t go with her. He’d only slow her down. But if she was willing to take one of the abbadax, he could show her the proper way to ride without slicing herself to ribbons. It was the only way. She’d never make it on foot.

  Culach played the good son, nodding and debating different scenarios—how many men would Victor bring, what would their strategy be—all the while scheming to deprive his shit of a father the pleasure of tossing Mina’s head over the battlements. When he finally broke loose, he was in such a state of agitation, he took several wrong turns on his way back to his rooms. One instant and he knew she wasn’t there. He searched the keep, finally breaking down and calling her name. He found her rooms. They were empty.

  Nearing despair, Culach returned to his own chamber. And there she was, sitting in her chair. He knew because he smelled her hair.

  He fell to his knees before her, shaking all over but barely aware of it.

  “You have to leave. Now.”

  “What’s happened?” she demanded.

  Culach leaned forward, pressing his forehead against her knees. He felt her body tense, but she didn’t push him away.

  “Calm down. Tell me everything.”

  Culach raised his sightless eyes. He wished he could see her face.

  “You’re right to hate us. You were right about everything. And now Eirik intends to murder you.” He seized her skirts in his fists. “But I won’t let him hurt you, Mina. I swear it.”

  “And what do you care?”

  “I care,” he said hoarsely.

  “Why?”

  The last of his resistance drained away. At least he could find the courage to tell her the truth, even if she hated him for it.

  “Because I love you.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’re lonely and I’ve taken care of you.”

  “No! You’re misunderstanding. I….” Culach fumbled for the right words. He’d never been good at this sort of thing. Cutting sarcasm was more his forte. Petur had always been silver-tongued with women. Part of the problem was Culach had never needed to be charming. They wanted him anyway—or perhaps, perversely, because he was such an arrogant prick. Now he wished he’d read more poetry instead of sharpening his sword.

  “Listen, I don’t expect you to feel the same,” he said. “But you have to trust me. We’ll go to the stables tonight. I know a way no one ever takes. You can be gone before Eirik suspects anything. He could be looking for you right now—”

  “Poor tortured man.”

  Culach felt her fingers slide through his hair. A shock of desire ran down his spine.

  “So you love me, eh?” she said wryly.

  “Rather desperately.”

  His breath caught in his throat as she cupped his face.

  “Kiss me, Mina,” he whispered, praying she wasn’t toying with him. It would be a fine revenge indeed for all the crass comments he’d subjected her to over the years. His heart beat hard in his chest as he felt her move closer until their lips were inches apart. His hand found her calf, the skin like warm silk.

  “I thought I told you I don’t like big blonde apes,” she said softly.

  Culach’s lips curved in a smile. Perhaps Mina didn’t care for poetry either.

  “Well, I’ve never liked dark little kittens. They have sharp teeth.”

  She nipped at his full bottom lip and his fragile self-control crumbled. Culach pulled Mina into his lap and settled her there, legs straddling his waist. He could feel the heat of her.

  “And claws,” he growled, as she raked her nails down his back.

  Then her mouth found his and he sank into the honeyed sweetness of her tongue. She pulled the tunic over his head and kissed each of his scars, and he found the pain was not only bearable but bled into pleasure at her tenderness. He was trying to navigate the complicated fastenings of her dress when the door banged open and they leapt apart.

  “Culach.” It was the voice of his cousin, Agnar.

  “Knock before you barge in next time,” he snapped, rising to his feet. Culach did his best to loom, even though fear gripped his heart. Could they have come for her already?

  “Your father wants you.”

  “Why?”

  Agnar hesitated.

  “Speak it!”

  “We found a Danai a few leagues from the holdfast. He’s half frozen. I thought he was dead at first.”

  Culach frowned. “One? Do you know who it is?”

  “Your father says…. He says it’s her son.”

  Whose son? Culach didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he heard Mina’s gasp and understood that Agnar had gestured to her, momentarily forgetting Culach’s blindness.

  “Galen? Take us to him now,” Culach said, striding for the door.

  “But your father only asked for you—”

  “It’s her son,” he snarled. “Have you lost all sense of decency?”

  Agnar shut up at that.

  As they hurried through the chill corridors, he felt a gentle touch on his back. Both guiding and reassuring.

  “Thank you,” Mina whispered in his ear.

  Culach fumbled for her hand and gave it a quick squeeze. Please let Galen live, he thought. And then: Don’t let my father kill him too.

  22

  Trapped

  Darius was only a few leagues outside of Delphi when the chimeras caught him.

  He’d been running for days, switching to an easy lope that was more realistic than the dead sprint he’d attempted at the start of his journey. His pumping legs ate away at the ground in a steady blur. The monotonous landscape freed his mind to wander and he thought a great deal about Nazafareen. He remembered the first time they’d met four years ago. She’d been so afraid of him, and he of her. She’d driven him half-mad with her stubbornness, and later with the urge to kiss her.

  He should have told her everything. Dar
ius resolved to do so as soon as he found her, which should be within the next day or two—assuming he’d chosen correctly and she hadn’t gone to Samarqand.

  That was the plan, at least.

  He shouldn’t have stopped to rest.

  If he’d just kept going, he might have outpaced them. But his leg had begun to ache again and he didn’t know anything was pursuing him until he heard an ear-splitting howl. Darius squinted into the distance. Three pale shadows moved across the plain. Dogs? When he reached for the Nexus and sought their essential nature, he felt a jolt of shock.

  What he discovered was an…emptiness. A black hole in the Nexus. He didn’t know what to make of it, so he didn’t turn to fight them as he would have done with any other creature, confident that there was nothing faster or deadlier than an armed daēva.

  Which saved his life.

  They streaked toward him in a tight triangular formation—so far as he could tell, since they were precisely the same color as the rocks. After that first single cry, they fell silent. Ahead, the plain gradually gave way to farmland. The sun was clearly visible now, a large molten ball shimmering above the horizon. Beyond that he could make out the city walls and a large hill rising up in the center with a shining white building perched on its crown.

  Could he make it to the walls?

  Darius glanced over his shoulder, calculating his own speed and trajectory in relation to his pursuers.

  The answer was a resounding no.

  In fact, they would catch him before he even reached the first farmhouse.

  They were coming fast now, giving everything they had to the final dash, and he was getting a taste of just how bloody quick they could be when they really tried.

  But he could be quick too.

  Darius scanned the plain, his gaze pausing on what looked like a tooth of rock jutting from the ground perhaps a league away. He veered toward it. The creatures must have been fairly intelligent because they understood what he was doing and redoubled their efforts to catch him before he reached it.

  Blood rushed in his ears. He tucked his head and stiffened his fingers to javelins, slicing the air, running, running, the panting right on his heels now, and then the rock loomed before him, black and cracked, at least twenty paces high, and Darius leapt for it.

  His nails caught in a tiny crevice halfway up and he clung there, as growls and wet snapping sounds came inches beneath his dangling boots. With a monumental effort, he hauled himself up, inch by inch. The top was a rugged point about four hands across. He straddled it, legs wide, hands gripping a knife-blade of rock.

  The things had fallen quiet again. They squatted on their haunches at the base, staring at him with baleful yellow eyes.

  The sun beat down. He had no water. No food. It was all gone.

  The weight of despair settled on his shoulders like a funeral shroud.

  Darius stared dully at the things—like transparent wolves, but even weirder. So close to the the city. So close. But too far for anyone there to see him out here.

  You brought this on yourself. You’re a fool and liar. You drove her away….

  Druj.

  The word stabbed him deep. Druj. Evil. Impure. Demonic. That’s what the magi called him. Even Nazafareen had believed it.

  No!

  Darius dug his fingers into the rock, terrified to realize how slack they’d become. He was starting to slide off….

  He squeezed his eyes shut and sought the Nexus. A void, but bursting with wild energy. The place where the threads of every living creature came together. Despair vanished like mist in the face of bright sunlight.

  Every living creature—but not those who waited twenty places below. The Nexus rejected them.

  Darius opened his eyes and summoned a gale. He tried smashing them with earth.

  Nothing worked.

  They absorbed his magic unharmed.

  I might be in some trouble, he thought.

  23

  The Brazen Bull

  Nazafareen had never seen anything like the Great Library of Delphi.

  Javid had helped her find the right neighborhood, then drifted off to wait in a nearby park. Neither had eaten breakfast and Nazafareen felt light-headed as she paused to gather her wits before going in search of their new benefactor. The library was even grander than the Temple of Apollo. It stood alone at the center of a large plaza in the northwestern quadrant of the city, regal and stately as a king’s palace—although Javid said that the Greeks didn’t have hereditary rulers anymore.

  They’d little to do in the evenings but talk, so he set himself the task of educating Ashraf the Hayseed on the history of Solis and its various forms of government. A king ruled Samarqand, but Delphi had three elected bureaucrats known as the Archon Eponymos, the Polemarch and the Archon Basileus.

  The Archon Eponymos was the chief magistrate, the Polemarch headed the armed forces, and the Archon Basileus was responsible for civic religious arrangements, such as festivals and the like. Then there was also a popular assembly called the Ecclesia, where all male citizens over the age of twenty could air grievances and vote on things like whether to go to war, or who to elect as the Archons.

  It sounded complicated, but Javid claimed everything had run smoothly until the Pythia came along and convinced the Polemarch to crack down on magic. Delphi had never embraced it like Samarqand, but the authorities generally turned a blind eye to philosophers who dabbled in alchemy and other fey arts. The new reasoning was that magic had caused the destruction of the cities and stood in opposition to scientific advancement, which was humanity’s proud heritage, while the witches remained literally mired in the dark.

  The Pythia despised daēvas to a fanatical degree, spurring all sorts of rumors: her family had been slaughtered by daēvas, or she’d foretold that they planned to invade Solis and was keeping it secret so as not to panic the populace—and so on. The Archon Basileus was completely under her thumb, they said, leaving only the Archon Eponymos to offer any degree of resistance, and he was notoriously corrupt.

  So many intrigues, Javid told her with glee. It was worse even than the time of the Tyrants.

  The Guild of the Philosophers lay just a few blocks away from the library. Nazafareen had seen those learned men strolling around the grounds, deep in conversation or debate, and felt her own lack of education keenly. But Herodotus had said it was just scullery work and she could manage that, even with only one hand.

  Nazafareen climbed the broad stone steps to the entrance, feeling every bit the street urchin in her stinking rags. Once inside, she asked a young scholar where to find Herodotus. He raised an eyebrow at her appearance, but finally condescended to lead her deeper into the honeycomb of scrolls and stacks of parchment. The scholar stopped before a closed door.

  “He’s teaching a class.” He pressed his lips together. “I have work to do, so you can wait here by yourself if you’ll promise not to wander off.”

  Nazafareen nodded obediently. She waited for him to leave, then slipped inside the room and took a seat unnoticed in the back row. It was very warm and stuffy inside, and she listened with half an ear as Herodotus lectured a group of young students about someone named Jamadin, who seemed to be a famous general. But the time he spoke of was long ago and Nazafareen’s eyes grew heavy. She woke with a start to find the classroom empty and Herodotus standing in front of her, a bemused expression on his face.

  Nazafareen jumped to her feet.

  “It’s me,” she said. “The girl from the alley.”

  “Of course it is.” He gave her a warm smile. “What do you think of the library?”

  Herodotus looked different today, with his beard neatly brushed into two large curls and the confident air of a man in his element. But his kindly manner put her at ease.

  “Very impressive.”

  “It’s taken years to rebuild the collections. The library was burned to the ground in the Vatra war. Only the stone foundation survived. Of course, there are very few records
from that time, but one of the curators managed to smuggle hundreds of the scrolls out and hide them in caves. Still a tragic loss, but at least a fragment of the collection survived.”

  “The Vatra war?”

  He peered down at her. “The fire daēvas, Ashraf. What do they teach children in school these days?”

  Fire daēvas? Had Javid been telling the truth? Nazafareen felt a chill. Darius had never mentioned them, which seemed very odd. Maybe he’d never heard of them either. As far as Nazafareen knew, there were only three clans: the Avas Marakai, the Avas Danai and the Avas Valkirins. Avas meant child of, and Mar meant sea, Dan forest and Val mountain. Did Vat mean fire?

  “When did this happen?” she asked.

  “Why, nearly a thousand years now. We have several treatises on it, if you’re interested.”

  “That’s all right, I can’t read anyway.” She relaxed. A thousand years was a long time, even by daēva standards. “Where are these Vatras now?”

  Something flickered in his eyes, there and gone too quickly to identify. “All dead,” he said with a bright smile. “So you needn’t worry.”

  An awkward silence descended. Herodotus tugged at his beard, still grinning, though it seemed a bit frozen.

  “Are you in charge of the whole library?” Nazafareen asked.

  “Oh no, just the cataloguing.” He lowered his voice. “My predecessor was overly fond of wine, if you get my drift, so the organization is rather a mess. There are tens of thousands of scrolls and at least half of them have never been properly examined.”

  “You don’t expect me to help with that, do you?” she asked. “As I said, I never learned to read.”

  “Oh gods, no. We have trained scribes for that. They record the work’s title, author and editor as well as its place of origin, length in lines, and whether the manuscript contains a single text or more than one work.”

  Nazafareen nodded politely. Herodotus clearly relished the finer points of his position.

  “Then it must be assigned to a proper category.” He ticked them off on long, elegant fingers. “We have rhetoric, law, epic tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science and miscellaneous.”