by Evie Manieri
She felt a dreadful ache in her chest. ‘You don’t understand.’
He abruptly stopped that dreadful laughing and passed his hand over his face in a gesture that she couldn’t interpret. When he looked at her again his eyes had softened, and when he spoke his voice was so deep that she could feel its vibrations. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said slowly. ‘You know I do.’ His eyes moved slowly over her face and he moved a little closer to her, as if he wanted to see her better. ‘And I have a Shadari name for you. I just thought of it,’ he told her. ‘It’s “Lahlil”.’
The lilting word filled the space between them. It shivered through her, resonating with something far below the surface, some deep place she had locked away. ‘Lahlil,’ she repeated, closing her mind to the shred of memory that flicked by, quick as a moth.
‘It’s a flower – a very rare flower. It grows in the desert, and it has to stay where it’s taken root. If you take it out of the sand, it withers and dies.’ Another drop of water plinked down into the cistern. ‘I’ve never seen one, but I hear they’re beautiful. They’re the most beautiful things in the world.’
He was closer now. Isa couldn’t be sure whether he had moved closer to her or she had moved closer to him, but she could feel his warmth. She blinked, and something cool touched her cheek.
He reached out an unsteady hand and with his fingertip radiating heat like a flame, he smoothed away the single icy tear. ‘I see the problem now, Mistress,’ he whispered to her, very slowly. He let his finger remain where it was for a moment, not quite touching her cheek. ‘I think the Shadar is melting you.’
With the languid, half-conscious volition of a dreamer, she leaned forward until her lips brushed against his. His warmth shot through her, deeply, and her breath stopped. But she didn’t pull away and neither did he. There was something on the other side of that burning pain, and she wanted it. His fingers grazed her cheek, guiding her closer. Then with a surge of heat like a blast furnace, his lips pressed against hers.
A strangled, inarticulate cry broke from the doorway. Isa froze as Daryan jumped away, snatching his hand back to his chest. Then Rahsa emerged from the hall like a spectre, pale and wild-eyed. One look at her face told them that she had seen and heard everything.
Daryan cried out, ‘Rahsa!’, but as he turned, he knocked into the chair that Isa had left sitting by the tub. He stumbled across the floor, trying to regain his balance, but as he twisted, an object dropped out of his robe and hit the ground with a clang. She watched it skid to a stop a few paces in front of Rahsa.
For one silent heartbeat, all three of them stared at the knife.
Rahsa lunged first, diving to the ground at the same time as Daryan darted forward. She scrambled up with the knife in her hand and thrust it out to him. ‘Take it!’ she screamed, her shrill voice sending a jab of pain through Isa’s head. ‘Quick! Kill her!’
‘Kill her?’ He turned to look at her over his shoulder. ‘What are you—?’
‘She’ll tell them! She could be calling them now!’ Rahsa screamed at him. ‘Kill her! Do it now, or they’ll kill both of us!’
He reached out and slapped the knife out of her hand. It slid across the floor, still in its scabbard, and disappeared into a dark corner on the far side of the room. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘What’s wrong with me?’ Rahsa yelled back at him. ‘You were—’
The air around them shuddered.
The floor tilted and slipped away from Isa, throwing her against the side of the tub. She tried to grab on to it for support but the polished stone slipped out from beneath her hands and she fell down, barking her hip painfully against the floor. Daryan was on his knees, trying unsuccessfully to stand. She couldn’t see Rahsa, but she could hear what sounded like frantic prayers coming from somewhere near the door. Debris rained down from the cavern ceiling, stinging her eyes and snuffing out the lamp. The room was drowned in darkness.
‘It’s the gods!’ Rahsa screamed out wildly.
‘It’s an earthquake!’ Daryan roared back at her.
This was nothing like the earlier tremor, or any of the other earthquakes that she could remember. A crash sounded just behind her and she threw her arms over her head and braced herself for a blow. She pictured the whole temple falling in around them, or sliding off into the sea.
‘Rahsa! Stay in the doorway! Keep still!’ Daryan called out.
‘The gods have come to judge us!’ she keened. ‘They’re going to throw us into the sea, like the ashas!’
‘Rahsa, come back!’ he called to her, but from the sound of her screams she had fled out into the hall.
Isa kept her back up against the tub as the floor rocked sickeningly beneath her. One of her slippers had come off and her naked foot was the only thing she could see in the darkness. ‘Isa!’ she heard Daryan call out, and an instant later his arm brushed against her. ‘Are you—?’
A loud cracking sounded from somewhere overhead and the next thing she knew, he had grabbed her bodily and was diving out of the way. She heard the crash as the tub shattered and a moment later a current of gritty water washed over them both.
They lay there, soaked to the skin, panting for breath, listening fearfully as the rumbling and grinding noises grew fainter. She drew in a breath and held it. The floor stopped moving and the room fell silent except for Daryan’s soft panting near her ear. His hands were still clutching her arms and Isa realised that she had her palms pressed up against his chest. The heat was painful, but fell just short of being unbearable; she didn’t feel it was harming her. His face was so close that she could count his long eyelashes by the light from her own skin.
Then he released her and pushed his wet hair out of his eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked unsteadily.
Isa moved back as well, tentatively moving her neck, her arms and legs. ‘I think so,’ she told him. ‘Just … wet.’
‘Wet?’ Daryan repeated vaguely. Then she heard him patting his own soaked robes. ‘Wet,’ he repeated again, this time in an entirely different voice. ‘The lamp!’ he cried hoarsely, startling her. ‘Where’s the lamp!’
He sprang to his feet and while he was still splashing around in the darkness, Isa listened for the sound of the water dripping into the cistern to orient herself. At last she rose and picked her way carefully around the smashed tub, then followed the sound to the ledge where her hands soon found the lamp. It had been knocked on its side but still contained a few drops of oil. She righted it, drew out the flints and struck a spark.
Daryan held a sheaf of loose papers in his hands. As she drew closer she could see that the pages were covered with tiny characters – not Norland writing, nor any other language she had ever seen. But the paper was soaked and the characters were beginning to run into indistinct blobs. He peeled back the top page and looked at the one underneath, then the one beneath that, but there was nothing more than row upon row of smudges. He gave a tug and the paper came apart easily in his hands. With a blank stare he shredded the soggy sheets and dropped them onto the floor. She watched his chest rise and fall; she saw the way he pressed his lips hard together, and the tension hiking up his shoulders. The spoiled papers lay in the dirty puddles around his feet. She didn’t know what it was all about, but she understood.
The lamplight retreated and then jumped back up again as the flame sucked up the last few drops of oil. In the unsteady light, the room still seemed to be tilting downwards towards the sea.
‘She was right,’ Isa whispered, ‘Rahsa was, about the gods – my gods. They hate me.’ She looked away. ‘That’s why I have to leave, before it’s too late.’ She focused her burning eyes on the ruined papers at his feet. ‘Before I make your gods hate you, too.’
With a hiss, the last drop of oil in the lamp evaporated and the tiny light snuffed itself out.
Chapter Thirteen
Eofar turned Aeda back around. His eyes burned from staring into the darkness and seeing nothing. Acid gnawed at his empty stomach. Phantom
sensations, some sort of lingering influence from the elixir, crawled along his spine. He had flown from one end of the city to the other, up above the mountains and along the other side and even out into the desert as far as he dared, but he’d found nothing that even resembled the place in his vision. Dawn was not far off; soon he’d have to give up the search. The thought of another day shut up inside the temple, at the mercy of his worst fears, filled him with desperation.
He found himself grasping for his memories of Harotha, as if by holding on to them he could somehow pull her towards him. Something had changed in him the very first time he saw her: for the space of one blink, he had felt as if he looked through the eyes of a god, straight through to the world’s design, and it all made perfect sense. The feeling was gone an instant later, but after that, nothing had mattered except his need to be near her. Still, it wasn’t until months later – he remembered it perfectly, she had just set a carafe of wine down on the table, he had thanked her, and she had looked up at him – that he understood what it meant, and then only because he recognised it in her eyes. The first touch of her fingers still burned on the back of his hand; the first kiss still raced through him like liquid fire.
He looked beneath him at the broken walls and shattered towers of the old royal palace and guided Aeda down, but then with a frustrated snap brought her back up again. He had searched there already; and in any case, the Norlander soldiers had combed through those ruins decades ago. His father had never rid himself of the nagging suspicion that some of the royal family had survived the invasion and gone into hiding. Eofar himself had once teasingly accused Harotha of being a renegade Shadari princess on a secret mission to destroy the Norlanders. She had laughed her low, musical laugh, and it wasn’t until she lay sleeping by his side that he realised he hadn’t been joking.
As he flew westwards towards the mountains he became more aware of the damage the second, more powerful earthquake had caused. The abandoned neighbourhoods on the edge of the city had been completely destroyed; it looked as if part of the mountain had broken off and come crashing down.
An idea suddenly grabbed hold of him and he sat bolt upright in the saddle. He had been assuming the place in his vision was some sort of house or building, but all he had really seen was a doorway mostly blocked up with rocks. These mountains were riddled with caves: might he not have seen the entrance to one of those? With so many rocks jarred loose, some hidden place might have been revealed, somewhere not even Daryan knew about.
A rush of air whistled past his ears and the head of a triffon floated up out of the darkness. His heart flew into his mouth as Aeda, panicked, snapped in her wings and plummeted towards the ground to avoid the collision. His stomach dropped; he yanked hard on the reins and Aeda tossed her head and snorted, but she checked their descent only twenty feet or so from the ground. The thump of wings sounded behind him and he whirled in the saddle in time to see the other rider swing past just overhead.
Rho banked sharply and turned his triffon towards the temple. He didn’t answer.
Eofar could feel the frantic thrum of his anxiety, but he didn’t think the near-miss was the cause of his distress. Something else had shaken Rho out of his usual patrician languor. But before Eofar could question him he was gone, heading back up towards the temple. Feeling even more anxious than before, he took up the reins and prepared to take Aeda up higher.
And there it was.
He sprang up in the stirrups, afraid his eyes were playing tricks on him, but no, the symbol was there, as tall as a man standing, and below it was the doorway – or at least the top of one, just like in his vision, with a pile of rocks almost completely blocking it.
Eofar snapped the reins down. When he whistled for Aeda to land she tilted her wings and dived into a tight spiral. His tired eyes lost focus for a moment and he shut them and pressed his hand to his forehead—
—and then, in the darkness, he was no longer in control.
The elixir’s visions howled through him again, unwavering in their intensity, like the sustained scream of metal against a grinding wheel, refusing to be anchored to anything like reality. He swatted at the air, struggling frantically to breathe and trying to fend off the onslaught. The elixir boiled in his blood, and again he saw Harotha standing in front of the doorway, backing away from some danger, with an unfamiliar knife in her hand and an expression of such hatred and fear on her face that it rent at his heart, and then just a flash of the second vision, a single image of Daryan, grappling with an unidentifiable Norlander on a stone floor. It was why he had insisted Daryan take his knife.
The jolt of landing flung him up against the straps of the harness and he tugged blindly at the buckles until he found himself on his hands and knees in the sand, retching violently. A few moments later he rolled on to his side, breathless and trembling, wiping at his watering eyes. The elixir had left his skin crawling and his white hair and the back of his linen shirt were damp with cold sweat. Slowly, he sat up.
He looked back up to the temple to orient himself. He was still in the Shadar, not the desert, but a dune was there, rising to about twice his height and measuring about thirty paces to either end. In the sandy dirt all around him were footprints: smaller footprints than his own, and made by sandals, not boots. The first led south, towards the mines, while the deeper set wound around the dune and turned towards the mountains. Eofar lurched to his feet with his heart pounding in his chest. He followed the deeper set around the dune, and then swerved with them around the piles of fallen rocks, zigzagging as if he were running by the side of an invisible companion.
He cut around the jagged sides of a boulder, and there she was.
She had climbed a treacherous pile of rocks all the way up to the doorway and was leaning with her face close to the wall, tracing the line of the carving. Strands of her dark hair waved in the breeze. The moonlight was bright enough for his Norlander eyes to make out every change in her: her full lips were fuller than before; her round cheeks were a little rounder; her rich brown eyes were the same, but underneath were pink swells that told of fatigue and worry. But it was the baby, the baby that was enormous within her, that made Eofar feel the stirrings of an impossible joy.
He was trying to find a way of calling out to her without startling her when she suddenly turned to him. The expression on her face changed, her eyes opened wide and her lips parted. One hand fluttered to her mouth as she reached back with the other to brace herself against the rocks.
‘Eofar!’ she gasped. ‘I don’t believe—’ She began to stand, and grit and pebbles skittered down around his feet.
‘Careful!’ he cautioned her, his flat voice reflecting none of the agony of his concern as he watched her climb down to him, but he was there the moment her foot touched the ground, and he swept her into his arms. She shuddered, either from emotion or the chill from his skin, he didn’t know and he didn’t care. For him, her heat was like a brushfire, burning away the misery and doubt that had infested him while they’d been apart. He was renewed, reborn. ‘You’re all right – you’re all right,’ he repeated, releasing her by necessity but kissing her searing lips, weak with relief. He couldn’t stop staring at her firm, round belly.
‘We can go, right now – tonight,’ he said finally, leaning back to look into her face and carefully tucking a strand of hair back under her scarf.
One of Harotha’s fingers strayed up to stroke her bottom lip, a familiar gesture that enflamed his desire to kiss her again. ‘But how did you find me? And here, of all places?’
He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out the little bottle. ‘You told me about it,’ he reminded her as he held it up for her to see. He had not taken it all; the bottle was still almost a quarter-full. ‘We can sell the rest. The Nomas—’
‘Elixir!’ she cried, taking the little bottle from between his fingers and holding it up to the predawn sky. She tilte
d it and watched the dark liquid slide slowly down to the lower end. ‘And you took it?’
‘Yes.’
Her shoulders twitched excitedly. ‘So? What happened?’
‘I saw you, here. Then I had to find you, and I did.’ He leaned in to kiss her again, but she evaded him.
‘Is that all?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Eofar, I need to know: is that all you saw?’
‘That’s all that matters.’ He watched her tuck the little bottle into the pocket she wore at her side. ‘The sun will be up soon. We must find some place to spend the day. Then we’ll leave when the sun goes down. This cave, maybe? With Aeda’s help I could move the rocks.’
She didn’t need to say anything; he had only been pretending not to know. He stared at her bowed head, a few locks of lustrous hair falling over her face, as their future together, his one and only dream, broke into bits.
‘We’re not leaving,’ he finally forced himself to say. He felt sick to his stomach again, but this time the elixir was not to blame. ‘You never sent the signal – I thought something had happened to you, but you just didn’t want to go.’
She winced as if in pain and clasped his arm for a moment, but still she didn’t look at him. ‘Eofar, I’m so sorry.’
‘Is it your family? Is that why?’
‘Not exactly. It’s— Eofar, kiss me,’ she sobbed suddenly, but this time, he was the one to avoid the embrace.
‘Tell me,’ he insisted.
She fell back from him, her eyes clouded over with the worry he’d already sensed. ‘People are scared and angry. Three years ago, when word got out that your father was ill, everyone assumed that you would take over the colony – but then, when the White Wolf—’ Harotha wet her lips. ‘Eofar, they brought the Mongrel here. She’s here in the Shadar, right now.’