Oathen
Page 6
That was easy. Now, where is this Pavilion?
~~~
Kemsil led Geret, Salvor and Meena to the end of one of the larger buildings and pulled open the pale wooden door. “Library, scribes, et cetera. The Pavilion is at the junction of this wing and the next.”
Geret glanced behind them to make sure they were not followed. So far, everyone they’d seen on the grounds had been at a distance, either running toward the fighting or fleeing from it.
They padded quietly down the marble corridor. Its high white ceiling reflected the few lamps to great effect.
Ahead, the hallway was blocked by a pair of double doors. Kemsil grasped a handle and whispered, “Through here are the historical records: Aldib’s revisionist hist—”
The door handle was pulled from his grasp as someone yanked it from the other side. Kemsil stumbled forward and collided with another body that was hurrying in his direction. Geret and Salvor advanced immediately, swords out.
Kemsil had bumped into a woman in a light blue gown. She and her two swordsmen stared at them, flatfooted. Geret and Salvor darted through the doorway and held the men at sword point, disarming them. Geret put a finger to his lips.
“We mean you no harm if you remain silent,” Salvor said in Jualan.
“Yeah, he’s a real baby at the sight of blood,” Geret added.
“K-Kemsil!?” the woman blurted, as her eyes took in the sight of him. “What are you—”
Meena’s dagger sneaked in from behind her shoulder, pinking the underside of her chin. The woman gasped in pain and surprise. “Hush, now,” Meena admonished her.
“Alima,” Kemsil muttered, his voice a river of emotions. He moved Meena’s blade aside with his hand.
Geret looked over at the woman Kemsil was to have married. Nearly as tall as Meena, with brown eyes and a fascinating mix of golds and coppers in her hair, she stood poised even in the face of death. Her gown left her shoulders bare, and her translucent silk scarf looped over her elbows. She would be a perfect match for Kemsil, he thought, if not for the fact that she was twice his age.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again, though quietly. Her eyes were wide with shock and indignation. “Did you come with the pirates?”
“Yes, and no,” he answered, stepping back from her.
“Not a good time for light conversation,” Meena warned in Versal, glancing behind them.
“Let’s leave her escort here, shall we?” Kemsil replied in the same language.
“My most abject apologies,” Salvor said, raising his sword. The guard in front of him raised his arms to ward off the strike.
Geret hit the Aldiban on the back of the head with his pommel, and the man collapsed bonelessly to the floor.
“I wasn’t going—” Salvor began.
The other guard rushed at Geret; Meena pivoted and smacked her pommel against his skull as well. He joined his companion at the invaders’ feet.
Though shaken, Alima managed to keep her voice level as she said, “At least you didn’t kill them. Thank you.”
Kemsil glared at her as the others dragged the two men into a side room, arguing quietly. “There are far worse things than death,” he told her.
“Kemsil, the banns were not my idea—”
“You willingly participated in a ritual that ruined my life. I intend to return the favor, since I have the opportunity.” He grasped her by the arm and forced her down the corridor.
Geret exchanged a concerned glance with Salvor and Meena, then followed Kemsil. Rounding the corridor’s last corner, they came face to face with the Claim Pavilion of the House of Aldib.
In the center of the great stone foyer stood a tall, finely crafted stone pavilion. Nine slender marble pillars held up the fluted roof, each carved with triumphant battle scenes that wound in upward spirals. Between each pair of pillars, high arching lintels told of alliances formed and lesser Houses subjugated.
In the center of the pavilion, rotating in the air over a short white pillar, gleamed the Circuit of Sa’qal.
Inset in a polished steel gauntlet like a disc of burnt-orange glass, the hollow-centered Circuit had long ago been crafted to wear into battle. The otherworldly glow from its crystalline surface gleamed ruddily despite the lamplight.
A cool blue glow lit the marble floor around the perimeter of the pavilion. “The wardline,” Kemsil said, pointing.
“You can’t be serious,” Alima gasped, grasping his intent.
Kemsil turned back to his companions. “In case this doesn’t work…if I miscalculated, let me apologize now. I won’t be able to later.”
Salvor nodded, eyes on the blue wardline.
“Good luck,” Geret murmured, holding his sword as if it might prove useful in defending against the ward.
Kemsil put his hands on Alima’s shoulders and propelled her across the wardline ahead of him. It flared white at her passage, releasing a chime, and yellow at his. Even Alima stopped protesting and turned to look at it. After several long moments, it faded to pure white, and a second chime echoed through the room.
“Kemsil, you cannot do this! It is not a proper revenge!” she argued, stalking around him.
“Don’t say that, beloved,” he said in a mock-sweet voice. With a tip of his head, he indicated the white wardline. “We’re family. And don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing.”
She had circled him so that she was positioned closer to the Circuit than he was, and she lunged for it. Her fingers just brushed the gauntlet’s passing edge, causing it to wobble in its rotation, before he grabbed her by the waist and flung her to the floor, where she skidded to a stop, gasping. Kemsil turned and grasped the gauntlet before Alima could get up and stop him.
Geret ran a hand through his hair, grimacing at Kemsil’s desperate violence. Beside him, Meena merely watched with interest.
“That does not belong to you! It is the Claim of my House!” she cried, getting to her feet with a bloody knee and torn skirt.
“Take that issue up with your magicians, beloved. Clearly they believe otherwise.” He slid his arm through the gauntlet. “I want you to lift the banns, Alima. Set me free, and I’ll let you live.”
Her eyes focused on his arm. “Not even if I could,” she said through clenched teeth. “You don’t know how to use the Circuit, Kemsil. You shall die on Aldib soil tonight, not I.”
She drew a long metal wand from her hair and lunged at him before he could strap the Circuit on securely. He caught her arm, and they struggled.
“Your feeble House will crumble at a single breath of Aldib’s anger!” she cried. “We will wipe Jath from the face of the sea!”
Salvor’s head whipped around. “I think I hear trouble, and it’s wearing a lot of boots.”
“Oh good, that was you,” came a new voice. Alima glanced toward the building’s main entrance. While she was distracted, Kemsil shoved her away. Geret looked to the main doors as well and saw Sanych pelting in, wheezing for breath.
Salvor, sword in hand, darted over and drew her to the others. “What are you doing here?” he hissed.
She continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “I heard a pair of chimes that echoed all over the grounds. Aldib’s defenders are pulling back from Rhona’s pirates and coming here.”
“You see?” Alima hissed. “They’re coming to slaughter you for your impudence.”
Sanych turned and noticed the Aldiban noblewoman for the first time. With a frown, she told her, “Not yet, they’re not. I heard two of them saying they’d wait for the others to gather outside with them, so the Patrus could conceal them all and show the pirates what real power is.” She turned her gaze to Kemsil. “They think that whoever is in here is about to lead them to victory.”
“That buys us a little time.” Kemsil began to tighten the gauntlet’s straps.
Three men darted into the foyer, swords lowered. “Patrus…?” one began.
“Thieves!” another exclaimed. Their swords snapped up.
“Foul witch.” His hands trembled violently as he finished buckling the gauntlet onto his left arm.
The three Aldibans cried out, enraged, and rushed forward. Geret, Salvor and Meena stepped forward to engage them, while Sanych dropped back, eyes wide.
Rather than using his sword, the blond man facing Meena chose to lunge at her. He earned a sword through his shoulder for his trouble, but his momentum carried Meena into the wardline, which flared red and sounded a low warning gong. The Shanallar screamed as she fell beneath the pavilion’s roof, convulsing.
Geret had already traded half a dozen strikes with his opponent when Meena’s scream distracted him. The Aldiban he faced, short and stocky with a full beard, stepped close and slammed his hip against Geret’s, driving him toward the wardline as well.
Salvor leaped backward from his own sword fight and blocked Geret’s body with his own, deflecting the prince toward Sanych, who reached out and steadied him. They looked back in time to see Salvor stumbling toward the wardline, unbalanced by absorbing Geret’s momentum.
“No!” Geret shouted, rushing back to pull him to safety, though he knew he was too far away.
Then Kemsil’s gauntleted arm reached through the barrier, catching Salvor on the back of his shoulder, holding him mere inches from death. The tip of Salvor’s braid swung past the wardline and shriveled into nothingness. He gave Kemsil a breathless word of thanks.
Several more Aldibans rushed into the foyer from the twilit grounds, shouting and readying their swords as they pelted across the room. Salvor and Geret stepped up to engage them.
~~~
Beside them, inside the wardline, Kemsil turned his attention to Meena, who had turned a silent, ashy grey beneath her wounded opponent. He yanked Meena’s sword from the man’s shoulder and repositioned it in his back with a firm thrust. Then he rolled the man off of her, ignoring his final gasps.
“Kemsil…” Alima’s voice quavered.
“You’ll want that sword when they find what you’ve done, Alima,” he said. Putting his hands under Meena’s shoulders, he slid her back across the wardline. Fragments of her grey skin flaked off onto the floor.
“Sanych!” he called. The girl ran over, and he exited the pavilion, creating another white pulse and a chime. Together they dragged Meena back from the fight. “How long until she wakes?”
Sanych looked down; Meena’s skin was already pinking up. “Soon.”
He fiddled with the glassy Circuit embedded in his gauntlet. “I need to turn the accursed thing on—”
“Kemsil, look out!” Sanych cried, dragging at his shoulder.
He looked behind him to see Aldiban forces thundering out of one of the building’s main corridors. Swearing, he scrambled to his feet, jamming a finger at the symbols on the magical gauntlet. When the closest soldiers were a dozen paces away, the world went orange as a pulse of light flooded out from the Circuit in all directions, washing through everyone and disappearing through the walls of the building.
Everyone in the room paused to look, except Meena. Seemingly dead, she lay ignored near the feet of the closest Aldiban. Whirling into motion, she swept his legs out from under him, commandeered his sword and slew him with it. Rising from her knees, she positioned herself between the newly-arrived Aldibans and her unarmed friends. Three of them engaged her blade immediately. A swift kick to one of their sword hands garnered her a second weapon. Pivoting and weaving, she parried their swords with her own in a deadly, swirling dance. In seconds, the three men were writhing around her feet, but several more stepped up to take their places.
While Sanych kept watch on both fronts of the battle, Kemsil studied the black symbols etched into the Circuit’s surface. “I’ve heard nearly all the stories of Aldib’s conquests using the Circuit,” he panted, resting a finger on the triple-circle symbol. “Entire Aldiban armies have hidden inside the Circuit. Other times it’s just been a single assassin.” He frowned in concentration, and the orange light returned through the walls, hovering at arm’s length. Its ripply surface steadied to a smooth, barely visible glow. Still touching the same symbol, he widened the orange barrier toward Meena on one side, and toward Geret and Salvor—now fighting nearly back to back against several Aldibans—on the other.
“No!” Alima shrieked from the edge of the pavilion, as Kemsil and his companions vanished from her sight.
Kemsil gave a triumphant laugh. “It worked!”
Meena hadn’t stopped fighting, nor had Geret or Salvor. But their opponents suddenly couldn’t seem to find them with either eyes or swords. Their slashes and cuts became ever more wild as they searched for their targets.
Meena stabbed her last opponent, then backed up to Kemsil and Sanych, pulling a dagger from between her ribs as she did so. “Immortality makes me so lazy,” she commented, wiping her own blood off on her pant leg. “Geret, Salvor!” she called. “Time to go!” The two men gave one last slash at their frustrated opponents, then dashed toward Kemsil. The group gathered close and angled toward the main entrance.
“Search the whole room! Leave no space uncut by your blades!” one of the Aldibans shouted.
As the soldiers drew near, blades flashing, Geret swiped the dagger from Meena’s hand and hurled it across the room. It jammed itself into the back of a man near the far corridor. Instantly, Aldibans converged near him, angrily waving their swords about. Others insisted they’d seen the dagger fly from various points around the room.
“I believe that’s our cue,” Salvor murmured. Keeping close to the rounded wall, the group ran in single file past the arguing, flailing soldiers and out into the night.
Kemsil’s eyes were on Alima, who had crumpled to the pavilion floor. Tears ran unheeded down her cheeks, and she gazed at the swarming Aldiban guards with wide, pained eyes. Meena’s bloodied short sword rested in her hand.
One of the men stepped close to her, demanding answers. His tone left no doubt as to which side he believed she was on. Her sword hand twitched.
The group slipped through the doorway and ran through a shrubbery garden. Shouts of treachery went up inside the foyer and spread across the grounds like wildfire.
They had just settled behind a low hedge to assess their escape options when a woman’s ragged scream echoed out from the foyer’s marble walls. Sanych put a hand to her mouth and winced. Geret put a comforting arm around her shoulders, then glanced at the Jualan nobleman. The prince’s eyes were hard, but Kemsil wore a small smile of triumph.
Whether by her own hand or another’s, Alima had suffered Kemsil’s revenge.
Chapter Seven
“This way,” Meena said. The group ran for the seacliff, passing frantic and furious Aldibans who were slashing wildly at the air, cursing and shouting at the top of their lungs. Many had stopped attacking the retreating Clansfolk, even though some of the pirates carried loot.
Rhona was holding a line of defense at the cliff’s edge, ready to defend the lifts when the fight reached them. The elevator ropes were whirring madly in their cantilevered pulley systems as Clansfolk cranked them down the cliff’s face.
Kemsil touched a finger to the multi-circle symbol again; Rhona swore loudly as its radius crossed her, making the small group appear before her eyes.
“I see you got it,” she said to Kemsil, recovering herself. “Get on the next lift down; we’re pulling out. And you,” she said to Sanych, eyes narrowing. “Later.”
Sanych gulped.
Meena led everyone to an elevator that had returned to the cliff top. They received a series of surprised looks from the Clansfolk they passed as they flickered into and out of their sight.
They clustered onto the small wooden balcony, and Salvor and Kemsil cranked the handles. Sanych gripped the wooden railing as the elevator began to descend down the cliff in the dark. Large explosions erupted on the
cliff top.
“Cannons?” Geret asked.
“They’re firing on our ships,” Meena said, pointing. The Clan fleet was already at anchor parallel to the beach. The muzzle flashes from their return fire were silent in the distance.
“Faster, please,” Sanych begged the cranking men.
A moment later, most of the Clan’s cannon balls landed among the buildings in the Aldib compound, exploding brightly.
But not all of them.
“Look out!” Geret cried, as a cannonball crashed into the cliff’s crest above them. One of the shards that splintered from the rock face fell toward Sanych’s side of the elevator. The roar of the distant Clan cannons echoed off the cliff a heartbeat later.
“Sanych!” Salvor called, trying to grasp her hand.
Sanych leaped toward Meena, throwing her arms around her just as the man-sized rock crushed an entire corner of the lift, ripping away both rail and floor. What remained of the elevator spun crazily, slamming into the rock face several times in quick succession.
Wind whipped at her hair, and she heard retreating voices.
“Sanych? Where’s Sanych?”
“Meena!”
“Folly, Folly, Folly! Get us down there!”
Meena’s arms were already around Sanych as they both tumbled toward the sand. Sanych whimpered in pain and fear, her fingers digging into Meena’s shoulder.
“Hold tight,” the Shanallar murmured, her voice soothing and calm.
Sanych gasped, arching, and her eyes opened of their own will as a massive rippling sensation washed through her, tingling every nerve nearly to the point of numbness.
Then her world was pressure and sand. An earthen rain of dry kisses fell from the sky, lightly blanketing her skin.
Meena pulled her arms out from under Sanych and rose to her knees, leaving the girl face up in an Archivist-sized crater.