Oriana found it hard to breathe; the air might’ve been fresh, but it was wet and hot. She and Horace strode across the fifth rung, taking one of two twin staircases to the fourth rung.
They walked a long, meandering cobbled road to the third disc, which served as the kingdom’s greenspace. Her father had designated it such after his first year on the throne; it was a gesture to the people that he would rule with their happiness and good health in mind.
There, among a thick field of grass and trees, stood three enormous bowls made of wrought iron, each supported by four angled legs. Piles of wood lay beneath the bowls.
Children zipped by, chasing one another and squealing with laughter. Some had climbed high into the trees, and others were dangling from the branches like monkeys.
The greenspace was otherwise rather lonely on this day. Oriana blamed the soul-sucking heat for that; most people were likely in the creeks outside the kingdom or on the lower rungs and discs, where the sun wasn’t quite so scorching.
Oriana crouched before one of the iron bowls. She ran a finger around the grainy rim, inspecting it. A small hole had been carved out in the center of the bowl, revealing a compartment. A mutation would be poured inside there, and then a hollow tube would be inserted. When heated, the vapors would billow like steam out of the tube. Craw explained this would allow the vapors to suffuse more evenly, minimizing the risk of waste.
“Well,” Oriana said, getting back to her feet, “I’m sure these will spur rumors. It’s not every day you see iron bowls anchored into the soil of the greenspace. I’m fairly certain my father made it clear that if it didn’t have bark, leaves, flowers, or grass, it wasn’t allowed in the greenspace.”
Horace shrugged. “Tomorrow they’ll learn that—” He stopped at the sound of a sword being unsheathed.
Oriana spun around. Her guards had formed a human shield before her, both of their swords half-unsheathed. She bounced on her tippytoes, attempting to see past the small wall of fire-gilded armor and steel helms.
The Jackals released their grasps on their hilts, allowing the swords to slide back into their scabbards.
A husky, raw voice chewed into Oriana’s ears from the cobbled road ahead. “Do I look like an assassin? Come on, boys.”
Oriana pushed herself between the Jackals. She crossed her arms and fixed her face into a visage of a stern grandmother ready to crack a pair of knuckles for reaching into a plateful of pastries before supper.
“Hmm,” she said, “do I know you?”
Rol jogged toward her, sweat pouring down his face. “Not now, Ori. This is important. The mutations are gone.”
As if their minds were synchronized, Oriana and Horace snapped off a sharp “What?” at the same time.
“Vault’s been busted down,” Rol said, coming to a stand before Oriana. He raked his hand through his wet, sweaty hair. “Door’s mangled.”
That’s impossible, Oriana thought. She almost said it too but chose to hold her tongue. Rol had a good sense of humor and enjoyed his pranks, but she doubted even he’d go this far.
“There were a dozen Jackals guarding the vault,” Oriana said.
“They’re dead,” Rol replied. “Actually, let’s call them mangled. We’ll say the door is, uh… busted, broken, twisted. Any of those apply.”
Horace took a Jackal by his wrist. “Grab a dozen guards and tell them to form a circle around the queen. No one gets within five feet of her.” He straightened a finger at Oriana. “Go back to your quarters and stay there until Rol or I come get you.”
“No,” Oriana said, defiant.
“This is not—”
“I’m going to the vault,” she said. Her flared nostrils and clenched teeth told Horace her decision was not contestable. She nodded at Rol. “Let’s go.”
Horace shoved his hands into his hips and cursed under his breath. He watched the Jackals disregard his orders and fall into standard position, following Oriana at her heels.
He caught up to Oriana and Rol on the cobbled road. “Something,” he said, clearly disturbed, “is wrong here.”
“Yes,” Oriana said, not giving him even a cursory glance, “and I intend to find out what that something is.”
Horace looked to Rol, who raised his brows in a she’s-stubborn-as-a-mule manner. “Queens who engage in such behavior don’t live long.”
“I appreciate your advice,” she said, her pace quickening.
Horace swore and took off onto the third disc, his jog becoming a sprint.
“Where’s he going?” Rol said.
Oriana didn’t answer, because she didn’t care. She had bigger and more important things to worry about. The vault door was made from twelve-inch-thick steel and anchored into the very spiraling jut of rock Haeglin was built upon. Oriana couldn’t fathom the power necessary to break it down.
“It should have caused a commotion,” she said.
“No one noticed a thing,” Rol said. “I only saw the aftermath because I was out and about, trying to find Craw.”
“Horace told me he’d gone missing.” She pointed overways. “Let’s take the King’s Skirt.”
The Jackals followed her through a maze of short and squat feed silos. All citizens of Haeglin were allowed to either purchase feed from the silos or obtain it in exchange for brief labor.
“You didn’t find Craw, then?” Oriana asked.
“Not in a tavern and not tossing horseshoes, I can tell you that much.”
The King’s Skirt took Oriana down a series of staircases that would level out every twenty feet into a T-shape, where on either side stood a bunker large enough to accommodate three people.
Raegon’s father had conceived the King’s Skirt due to an assassination attempt. The path avoided the markets on the third rung, bypassed the social gatherings and ruckus on the second rung, cut through an inlaid road on the first rung, and led straight to a one-stall stable where a horse was always kept.
The path doubled as both an escape route and a safe avenue through the city. Intrusion onto the King’s Skirt by anyone other than the Jackals, king and queen and immediate family thereof was punishable by death, but in practice resulted in long and hard labor.
“I don’t mean to stir conspiracies,” Rol said, “but don’t it seem, er, well… peculiar that the moment when Old Man Craw goes missing, we end up in this quagmire?”
“Why would Craw do this? He’s the one who brought us the mutations.”
Rol shrugged. “Suppose you’re right.”
Oriana’s short journey through the King’s Skirt ended upon reaching the first rung. There, she went up a ramp, emerging from the inlaid road onto hilly, uneven terrain.
The pervasive stench of fish choked her. The infamous fishmonger’s hut on the first rung attracted the poor and hungry with its buckets of live fish. Common offerings included haddock, eel, salmon, mussels, and herring. Buyers would fork over some coin, pluck the fish from its bucket, and cook it themselves.
Oriana continued toward a wall of stone halved by an opening in the middle. A cobbled path descended from that point, leading to a cliff the vault was built into.
“It’s not pretty,” Rol said.
Oriana paused midway down the ramp. The twelve Jackals who’d been posted at the vault lay facefirst on the cobbles. Blood had pooled out from beneath them and seeped out around their corpses. It looked like they were contained in a pool of crimson liquid.
“They didn’t move,” she noted, starting down the ramp again. “Dropped right where they stood.”
“Strange, huh? It’s like a dozen assassins sprang from the shadows.”
Oriana kept her head straight, but subtly checked her peripherals. Assassins were stealthy, and the best could blend in anywhere. But to sneak up on twelve Jackals? It seemed unlikely at best.
And then there was the matter of the vault door. Rol had called it mangled, which was an apt description. The hinges and rods that anchored it into the cliff had been snapped and shattered.
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The door lay off to the side, a feat in and of itself, given its immense weight. Worse, its frame was bent and twisted and contorted in ways that forged steel cannot be—that is, unless of course, you apply a tremendous force. A force impossible except by the hands of nature itself and—or—sorcery.
Oriana couldn’t piece together the whys, but the hows were becoming clear. With a breath held in her chest, she walked into the dimly lit vault, illuminated only by the far-reaching rays of sunlight.
“They didn’t touch the coffers,” she noted.
“Didn’t lay a finger on them,” Rol agreed. “Whoever busted this door down knew exactly what they wanted. The thing I don’t understand is this. Barely anyone knew about these things. You, me, Horace, Craw. I think that’s it.”
“Lord Ayres,” Oriana said.
“Sure, him too. But I don’t know that Lord Ayres can haul off on a dozen Jackals and then rip a twelve-inch-thick steel door right off its hinges. I don’t think any of us can do that.”
Oriana swallowed. “I think—” Her eyes widened. “Did you hear that?”
“As clearly as I hear you.”
“Lady Oriana,” barked a rugged-voiced Jackal.
Oriana wheeled around, facing a Jackal who was fast-approaching the vault. “Come with me.”
Oriana heard the noise again, this time louder and higher pitched.
Screams. Wails. Shrieking cries that sent a chill zigzagging down her spine.
“What’s happening?” she asked. One of the Jackals who’d escorted her broke off, running up the ramp, sword withdrawn.
“I’m unsure, milady,” the remaining Jackal said. “It would be best if we took the King’s Skirt and fortified ourselves in the bunkers until we know.”
Oriana side-eyed Rol, who nodded in agreement. She plucked at the whistle around her neck. Sarpella would hear the call—even from deep in the den of Oriana’s estate—and she’d arrive quickly.
“A plague!” cried the guard who’d run off. He rounded the wall, pausing at the top of the ramp. “A plague is consuming the city!”
“Coming from the fourth rung,” added a nearby man. “It boils everything it passes over.”
Oriana and Rol dashed out of the vault. Her guardsman reached for her, but she brushed him aside and sprinted up the ascending cobbles. The screams grew louder, the voices more frantic.
“Lady Oriana!” called a Jackal desperately.
She ignored him and raced across the first rung, whistle in her mouth. She didn’t blow, not yet.
The scent of charred hair lingered in the air, overpowering the stench of fish near the fishmonger’s hut.
“Look out!” Rol said, shouldering her to the ground. He fell on top of her and rolled off.
Nearby, Oriana heard a deadening thud. She bolted upright and witnessed a sight that sucked the color of life from her cheeks. A woman’s corpse lay a few feet away. Her flesh had turned the color of walnut and had a crustiness to it, like a seared fillet of fish. It began to pry away from her bones in curling strips.
A wail brought Oriana’s eyes to the sky. There a man plummeted from the third rung, tumbling over and over. Moments later, she heard the same deadening thud as before.
“King’s Skirt,” Rol said, “now!”
Oriana drew in as big a breath as she could muster and blew into her whistle. Rol reared back, plugging his ears.
“Dammit, woman! Warn me next time.”
“Rol,” Oriana said, whistle falling from her mouth. She pointed a finger high into the upper echelons of the kingdom.
A sickly green vapor, thick and voluminous, crept down the spire of Haeglin, sheathing it and swallowing all that it passed over. It emanated from the fourth disc on the fourth rung, a slow outpouring of plague.
It had reached the edges of the second rung now. A horde of women clutching babes tightly to their chests, of men and children—they swarmed down the twin staircases leading from the second rung to the first.
They lamented of death, of vengeful gods. Of the end.
A roaring, angry sky turned their heads. Some surely thought the heavens were crashing down, but then they saw beneath the beneath the sun a glint of ice streaking over Haeglin.
“A dragon!” screeched a woman.
“We’re doomed!”
“Run! Just run.”
“We can make it, Momma. We can—”
Oriana heard nothing more. She jumped up, flagging down Sarpella. The dragon tucked her wings down and plunged toward the surface, a vertical blur of brilliant blue scales. She flattened herself and stretched her talons, landing firmly on the rocky, uneven terrain of the first rung.
Good thing she didn’t rip her saddle off, Oriana thought. Sarpella had a tendency to do that if you took your eye off her.
Oriana ran to her little girl. She pumped a foot into the stirrup, launching herself onto the saddle. Rol followed close behind, leaping on ungracefully.
“Take us up,” Oriana told Sarpella.
Where?
Sarpella pushed off with her back feet, lurching into the air. She beat her wings and spiraled upward, the incline so steep Oriana squeezed the saddle knobs as tightly as she could. Rol likewise squeezed her waist; she thought her guts might just explode out from the force he applied.
“The queen is leaving!” screamed a voice from below.
“They said she was a sorcerer. The rumors were true! She’s brought death to us all.”
Oriana closed her eyes, tried to ignore the cries of treachery and betrayal. They didn’t understand. She couldn’t blame them for their hurtful words. Death wreaked havoc upon their city, and in their eyes Oriana and Rol were the only ones capable of fleeing. If she was one of the poor souls below, she’d have thought the same.
“I have to fix this,” she said. “Sar, level out. Pass over the greenspace up above, but keep yourself out of that green mist.”
“Ori,” Rol said, looking out over Sarpella’s haunches. “There’s—”
“Just wait,” she said. “If I can find out where this plague originated from, I can st…op…it. Oh, no.”
Sarpella circled the greenspace on the fourth disc. Small fires burned beneath the iron bowls, the vats. Pipes had been placed inside the tiny cutouts in the centers of the bowls. From the pipes’ flared openings surged the green vapor that encapsulated nearly half of Haeglin.
“Shit,” Rol said. “Someone must’ve been hiding in the trees, waiting for us to leave.”
Oriana swallowed. “Or they were in plain sight. Hidden within an illusion.”
“You think…”
“Dammit!” Oriana slammed her hands down on her thighs.
“Ori,” Rol said, pointing overways. “I was trying to tell you earlier that Horace, I saw him at the stables. He was roughing someone up.”
Oriana shielded her eyes, surveying the kingdom. “I see him. Sar, get to the stables. Over there, on the first—do you see it?”
Yes.
“Hurry. This plague travels quickly.”
Sarpella swooped down to the first rung, navigating over the toxic cloud that diffused across the second rung in its entirety. Soon, it would swallow the first.
Oriana heard fewer screams now. She didn’t want to think about why, but the graveyard of corpses below gave her the answer.
Sarpella landed hard, several feet before the stables. Her tail splintered fencing and her talons chewed through soil and rock, spewing debris into the air.
Horace had the face of a cloaked figure—masculine in shape—smashed into a tie stall. “Look who I found,” he said, blood on his lip. He grabbed the figure by the back of his neck and stood him up.
Oriana shoved her head forward in shock. “Craw? What are you—”
“He was trying to escape,” Horace said.
Rol tapped Oriana’s shoulder, pointing her in the direction of the roiling plague that seemed to ooze from the pores of the nearby cliffs. “We need to go.”
She swore. “Sar,
can you carry all four of us?”
The dragon hesitated.
“Saddle’s not big enough,” Rol said.
“What about your foot, Sar? Can we fit Craw in there?”
I think so.
Horace dragged Craw along, slapping him in the back of his skull and screaming at him to move.
Rol squinted at the sky. “Sun’s getting a little brighter. Almost—oh, shit. Ori, Ori!”
Oriana was halfway off the saddle, attempting to help Horace haul an increasingly uncooperative Craw to Sarpella’s foot. She glanced toward Rol.
Her eyes drifted toward an impassioned glowing sphere in the sky. It plummeted from the sun, as if the star had given birth to its child.
An elementalist, Oriana thought. She’d never seen an elementalist conjure such ferocity from the realm of fire, but if not a sorcerer, then what?
“Run to me,” Oriana said, letting herself fall away from the saddle. She landed stiffly on her legs and hurried to Horace. Together they dragged Craw to Sarpella’s right front foot. By the time Rol joined them, the menacing ball of fire had cast a vast shadow over Haeglin.
“Keep hold of me,” Oriana ordered. “Whatever you do, don’t let go.” She touched Sarpella’s scaly foot and closed her eyes.
“Help me with this bastard,” Horace barked. Both he and Rol wrestled with Craw’s hand, pulling it up and stamping it into Oriana’s thigh. The old man displayed an impressive amount of strength, fighting them every step.
Rol licked his lips, grimacing. “I’ve got an idea.” He punched Craw in the nose, and the fight went right out of him. “Ori, I hope you have a really good plan, because that fireball is—”
“No longer there,” Horace remarked. He looked at his hands, felt himself all over, as if surprised his limbs were still intact.
“We’re in a locus,” Oriana explained. She tenderly rubbed Sarpella’s foot, then got up and strode to the saddle. “We need to hurry. This won’t last long, not with other illusionists nearby.”
Rol dusted his hands off. He found himself the recipient of Horace’s dumbfounded stare. “Bit o’ sorcery. Comes in handy.” He extended a hand, helping Horace to his feet. “Sar, mind if we leave Craw here in a heap?”
Reign of Gods (Sorcery and Sin Book 2) Page 36