If we are to learn balance, we must at some point lose our footing.
—the Swordmaster of Ense
Jubal turned to Tavaris and gave him a shove. “What I said!”
Dimly, Tavaris was aware of Loop shouting at their escort. The big cats were arguing with one another, and at least one seemed on the point of springing at Jubal. Several others looked like they might jump at the swamp fauns. A large number of cats had leapt over the barricade and were running towards them, but whether they meant to help or harm Jubal was never clear. Sharon-zool gave a hand signal, which brought swamp faun soldiers from every building bordering the plaza. They surged forward to hit the disorganized group of cats and cliff fauns, pushing them back to the barricade and then over it, breaking like water across a dam.
In the midst of the fighting, Tavaris caught a glimpse of Jubal swept up by a lizard rider. He had not even attempted to flee.
* * * *
“I have another story about this dagger,” said Fenrah. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Alright,” said Laylan.
“When we came to Selbis, we investigated the inner keep. I found the dagger on the first day and, by the second day, I knew something of what it could do.
“On the third day we were walking in one of the great halls, and there was a mirror along one wall. The castle must have had mirrors everywhere at one time—many of them smashed now, but not all. I turned around, and there he was—a huge black wolf, the biggest I’d ever seen. He was in the mirror and nowhere else. Later, we saw him in other mirrors, too. He followed us around the castle.
“None of the others believed he was a real wolf. They thought he was some sort of echo of magic or something meant to frighten trespassers. He howled and barked sometimes, but we could not hear him. On the fifth day, a strange creature joined him—a shelt the size of a child, with rat’s feet and tail. He breathed on the glass and wrote with his finger, but he wrote in the old picture script, and we could not read it.
“On the seventh day, I found a room with a freestanding door. It was made of many kinds of wood, and it faced a mirror. When I came around the front, I saw that it was sealed with three seals, which I think were meant to represent the three moons—blue lapis for Wanderer, yellow gold for Runner, and for Dragon a cloth that might have been soaked in blood.
“Everything else in the room was dusty and crumbling, but the door looked untouched. The wolf in the mirror pawed at it, ran around it, gave a silent bark. The rat shelt wrote frantic unreadable messages on the glass.
“We tried to cut the seals or pry them off with a sword, but we couldn’t make a mark, not even in the cloth. Finally, I thought to try the dagger. It went through the seals as thought they were made of silk.
“As the door in the room opened, its reflection opened in the mirror, and the wolf and the rat shelt came through. They’d scarcely bounded into the room before a wind sucked the door closed again, and there was a sound like a hinge being twisted out of true. Then the whole door crumbled into ash.
Laylan sat up straight. “Then Dance is a Durian wolf—a talking wolf.”
Fenrah scowled. “I believe he was. Until someone cut out his tongue.”
* * * *
Danthra pushed Jubal from the water lizard and ushered him up the main street at sword point while the battle roared behind them. “You didn’t even try to run,” muttered Danthra as he maneuvered Jubal into an alcove and unlocked a door.
Jubal said nothing. He hardly looked like the same shelt Danthra had met in the courtyard—so grim and self-contained. This faun looked beaten. Danthra directed him into the house that Sharon-zool was using as her headquarters. “You’re to wait here.”
Jubal’s gaze fell on the Monument that graced the foyer of most cliff faun houses. The little brazier in front was cold, and someone had hacked off the golden wings.
“I know why you didn’t run,” murmured Danthra. “You’re a liability to them now. They’d fight over what to do with you.”
“Jubal of Undrun.” Sharon-zool’s voice fairly purred. She stepped into the room, shaking blood from one spattered sleeve. Her bodyguard came with her. “Quite a show, wasn’t it?”
Jubal looked at her with dull eyes. Sharon-zool walked across the room and slapped him—backhanded, so that her ring left a cut across his cheek. “You have been far more trouble than you’re worth, Captain, but now it’s over.”
Jubal blinked. He reached up to touch the blood welling on his cheek.
“It’s wonderfully ironic,” continued Sharon-zool. “The wolflings finally have their revenge on Danda-lay. The city fell because of them, and they weren’t even here. In a larger sense, you’ve won, eh? This is what you wanted.”
Jubal’s eyes came to life for a moment. He started to say something, then decided it wasn’t worth it.
Sharon-zool sneered. “Is this the faun whose threats so unnerved you, Danthra? Look at him. He’s already given up.”
She turned to one of her guards and murmured something. Then she looked back at Danthra. “Take him to the tower room. Cut his throat at the exact moment our flag flies unchallenged from the castle’s peak. Not before.”
Danthra stood up straight. “My shelts—”
“Will be fine,” murmured Sharon. “I will take personal care of them.”
Danthra’s eyes widened and flicked around the room. None of his subordinates were present. He’d even left his mount outside.
“I’m sure they will fight bravely and return home laden with treasure,” continued Sharon-zool.
“They won’t fight for you!” snarled Danthra. “You can’t take my clan from me!”
“In the heat of battle? With the smell of blood in their nostrils and swords in their hands? They will fight. They will fight well and even the odds with the big cats.”
Danthra’s naturally white skin had gone even paler with rage. She watched him dispassionately. “I don’t intend to waste them, Danthra. I think most will return to you.”
“Our agreement—!”
Her voice hardened. “I am sick unto death of your bleating about our agreement. Best not do anything that might cloud my judgment.” She jerked her head towards the stairs. “I have given you, at least, a safe, easy job. Be content, and take him!”
Danthra looked at the fauns, several with half-drawn swords. If I resist, she will cut me down. Perhaps she even wants me to resist. Then my clan will be in confusion, trying to choose a new leader, and she can control them more easily.
His glance fell on Jubal. The faun was staring at Sharon-zool. Danthra’s eyes narrowed. No, not at her. At the mirror behind her. And in the mirror...
Danthra swallowed a yell. The Monument in the mirror was on fire—the broken wings replaced by feathers of flame. Danthra knew, even before he looked, that the Monument in the room was still dark and cold. His legs felt weak.
Sharon-zool caught Jubal’s fixed stare, but did not see what he was looking at. Danthra glanced around at the swamp faun guards and realized that they could not see the apparition. Suddenly, Danthra had to be out of that room. He took Jubal’s arm and directed him towards the stairs. Jubal came slowly, glancing back at the mirror.
* * * *
“I just want to know one thing,” said Corry to Syrill. “Are you the one who pushed me off that dancing platform?”
Syrill looked up. They were alone in Archemais’s library. “No.” Syrill’s ears drooped. He looked like a shadow of himself. “But I might as well have been.”
Corry nodded. He didn’t trust himself to have a civil conversation right now, so he turned to leave. “Targon wanted to kill you,” said Syrill. “I didn’t understand why. He said you would interfere, that you were too close to Capricia. I told him that was ridiculous, but he insisted, and the swamp fauns didn’t care one way or the other. I told them I would personally accompany you to Lupricasia, make sure you didn’t cause trouble. It was the only way he would agree to let you live. I see now he was only us
ing me to keep track of you.”
Corry’s hand clenched. “You used me, Syrill—to find Capricia.”
“I know,” whispered Syrill. “I’m sorry.”
Corry left the room.
* * * *
Jubal saw very little of the battle for the palace of Danda-lay. By the time he reached the tower window with Danthra at his back, the fauns and cats had abandoned any attempt to defend the barricade and backed up into the palace itself. He could imagine the fighting—room to room, hallway to hallway, ambushes in the dim passages, cats stalking the swamp fauns as they would in their native wilderness. Yet in the end, even the cats stood little chance against an organized, systematic attack with careful use of arrows and spears. Danthra’s terrible water lizards would certainly speed things up. He’d reached the tower in time to see several of them disappearing into the palace complex. Even that brief glimpse told him that they were faster than they looked, and their huge jaws were reputed to have tremendous crushing strength.
And surely, he thought, Sharon-zool is not foolish enough to fight the cats for the whole palace. All she needs is control of the flood tunnels. As soon as the water stopped, the other half of the swamp faun army would sweep down from Port Ory and crush the defenders.
He could imagine the little room deep in the subbasements and the dripping passage leading to it. They were narrow, those passages, defensible. But for how long? And would the fauns and cats be sufficiently organized to rally around the proper junctions? Jubal didn’t think so. They were confused and frustrated and likely to argue. Even taking himself out of the equation, their fragile trust of one another would remain severely strained. Loop trusted Tavaris, but if Tavaris is killed...? And what if Loop is killed? Will the cats keep fighting? Why should they? If Sharon-zool offers them a truce, they would be mad to refuse.
Jubal watched the swamp faun activity in the courtyard around the barricade. He saw Sharon-zool a few times, giving orders at a safe distance. He saw mounted fauns running into and out of the castle, and occasionally they brought out bound cats and took them away. No cliff fauns emerged from the buildings alive.
Shadows began to grow long, and still the flood tunnels gushed. Jubal felt a deep pang of guilt as he imagined the passages in the subbasement, choked with dead bodies, slippery with blood. I should be down there—not up here, where my death will mean nothing. He tried to remember why he’d given himself up, but his mind kept thrashing like a hooked and desperate fish. The Raiders, Istra, bargaining with Loop, Sharon-zool’s accusations, the expressions of confusion and betrayal on the faces of the cliff fauns and the cats, even on Tavaris’s face—they all blurred together in his mind.
Jubal didn’t realize he was falling until Danthra caught him. Then he was on his knees, retching. He tasted acid and tears. When he raised his head, Danthra was crouching in front of him. “How long has it been since you slept?”
Jubal shook his head. He couldn’t remember.
“When did you last eat?”
Jubal didn’t respond.
Danthra glanced around. The room was obviously a study, with a desk in one corner and bookshelves lining the walls. A rug lay in the center of the room, and Danthra dragged Jubal to it and made him lie down. Then he left.
Staring up at the patterned tiles of the ceiling, Jubal felt dimly surprised that Danthra would leave him alone. Maybe he thinks me too weak to escape. Maybe he’s right. Jubal concentrated on a small fault in one of the tiles directly overhead. He tried to think of how it might be fixed. While he was considering various types of grout, he thought he might have heard a shout from below, but he felt no concern.
Danthra returned moments later with bread and cheese, candied nuts, some fruit, a skin of water. Jubal ate obediently. He kept thinking about the tile. He was trying so hard not to think of anything else that he almost didn’t notice Danthra cleaning his dagger on a handkerchief. Danthra tucked the bloody cloth back into his tunic. Their eyes met. “I killed a guard.”
Jubal took a moment to process this. “Why?”
“He didn’t want me to leave the tower.” Danthra got up, paced around the room a few times, looked out the window, his claws making little clicking noises where he crossed stone. Jubal didn’t have to look to know that the water was still running. He could hear it.
“What will you do with us?” asked Danthra softly.
“Do with you?”
“With my clan? Or what’s left of it—after the zool is finished.”
Jubal shook his head. “You’re the one with the weapon, Danthra. You’re supposed to kill me, remember?”
Danthra’s pale eyes narrowed. “I saw it,” he hissed. In his excitement, his normally clear voice had grown thick with the accent of his race. “I saw what you saw in the mirror!”
Jubal’s eyes opened wide. He’d almost forgotten. “And you think, even now—?”
Danthra held up his hand. He was staring out the window. A moment later Jubal heard it too. Somewhere underground the struggle had ended. The flood tunnels had fallen silent.
Chapter 8. What Came from the Flood Tunnels
Rat shelt: one of the races of diminutive shelts, standing no taller than a six or seven year old faun. In ancient times, they had a powerful kingdom and were known for their cleverness and, sometimes, for their trickery. They were one of the first to oppose the wizard Gabalon in his rise to power, and he destroyed them so that hardly any trace remains. Some say their city used to be in old Canisaria, others that it stood on the edge of the desert. One story claims they had an underground empire, and Gabalon built his city over top of it.
—Anson’s Political Encyclopedia of Panamindorah
Sharon-zool bounded up the tower steps two at a time, hardly hearing the roar below. The unthinkable had happened. But all was not lost. She still held much of the city and the citizens—that was the important thing. She must plan, must think—
The white tiger. He’d been the first one out of the tunnel. Targon, you liar! You told me he was dead!
No, she must not think of that. She could set the city on fire. Yes, that was it. Turn Jubal’s weapon against him. Jubal at least won’t get away.
The tiger. She’d been standing across the plaza when he leapt from the tunnel—leapt all the way to the ground without touching the steps.
Sharon-zool stopped, panting, on a landing. She’d left her escort behind. No, that wasn’t right. They’d left her. Why? Because I told them to...to...what?
She could still hear the wail that had come from the throat of the messenger beside her. Like a stupid she-goat in kid, she’d thought. But then she’d seen them, too—fealidae, pouring from the tunnels. It should have been Rquar with my army, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t.
The tiger. Some cursed trick of the light had made the Monument flash in the moment he jumped, and she’d thought, for a just a second, that he had wings. Sharon-zool had heard someone whimpering and turned to tell them to shut up. Then she realized the noise was coming from her own throat.
We’ll kill them all—every last fealidae. We should have done it a long time ago. Father said we had gotten greedy, bred too many to control. Daren and his stupid speciation plans! He wanted to make them even stronger and smarter! Just as well the disaster happened now. We’ll kill the fealidae and take the wood and cliff fauns to replace them.
She was beginning to feel better and lifted her head to continue up the tower stairs. Danthra was standing above her. He had a crossbow. “You’re here,” she grunted. “Good. Your water lizards have proven resilient. We’ll need them now more than ever, and this time I want you to lead them. Where is the prisoner?”
Then she saw him—coming around the curve of the stairs above Danthra. Jubal had a sword in his hand. Sharon-zool pointed. “Danthra, behind you!”
“I know,” he said and shot her.
* * * *
Corry was in Port Ory, sitting across from the swamp faun general, Rquar. His fealidae guards seemed to be hoping he would
try to escape, but he disappointed them by sitting quietly with his nose in a book. Does he know I’m here to keep his guards from killing him?
Most of the fealidae had come from the pelt factories. Char had been sure they would be the easiest to convince on short notice. But the word had spread, and by the time the little army reached the foot of the cliff, slaves were coming from everywhere. Most of the swamp fauns were away in Sharon-zool’s army, so the fealidae found it relatively easy to escape. They were disappointed in Port Ory, however. To everyone’s surprise, Rquar had surrendered at the first offer of clemency. The fealidae were angry at having to keep his swamp fauns alive. The swamp fauns themselves were begging for cliff faun guards, but these were in short supply.
Corry watched the hungry, slitted eyes of a spotted female near the door. She’d kill this faun for a wrong look, and I couldn’t do much to stop her. Fortunately, the fealidae were afraid of Corry. They’d heard of the giant snake. They’d seen him now with their own eyes, and this was his son.
The door to the room opened, and Archemais came in. His clothes were spattered with blood. Corry guessed he’d come from the fighting in Danda-lay.
The swamp faun’s eyes flicked up, though he did not raise his head from his book. He had an insolence about him. Corry could see why he excited his fealidae guards.
“I need to talk to him.” Archemais was a little out of breath
“Will you torture him?” asked the leopard-spotted fealidae. Her tail twitched. She’d love to help, thought Corry.
“What I do, I do alone,” said Archemais. He urged the fealidae out of the room. Corry got up to leave, but Archemais shook his head. “You stay.”
He turned to the swamp faun. “I need some answers, Rquar. Your cousin isn’t here, and I don’t think this is all of your army. I’ve lived in the swamp long enough to know.”
Rquar closed his book. “You want to know where Daren is?”
“Yes. And I want to know some things about this centaur, Targon.”
The Prophet of Panamindorah - Complete Trilogy Page 41