‘What?’ Swift asked.
Meg stood on a limb, looked up at the young woman, and said, ‘We’ll make them think we never came here.’
Swift, Chase and Wahim stared at the blue haze shimmering in the gap between two marble blocks. ‘There’s not enough time to explain,’ Meg urged as she finished conjuring. ‘The soldiers will be here shortly. Trust me and step into the portal.’
Chase looked at Swift. ‘After you,’ he said.
Swift looked at Meg who said, ‘It might be dark or there might be someone there. Don’t panic. Wait for me to arrive.’
Swift drew her knife. ‘You won’t need that,’ Meg told her. ‘Whisper is on the other side.’ Swift resheathed her weapon, took a deep breath and stepped into the light—and vanished. ‘Chase?’ Meg urged.
Chase swallowed and stepped through. Wahim followed him. Meg looked towards the tunnel through the Khvech Daas foliage, wondering if the soldiers had found it. It won’t matter now, she thought. Time for some cunning and patience. She reminded herself of the cardinal rule to close a portal after using it, smiled with satisfaction at her work and stepped into the light.
The octagonal room was lit when she entered to find her three companions facing Erin who was nursing Whisper, and Erin’s expression showed that he was as astonished as Swift, Chase and Wahim at their arrival. ‘I think introductions are in order,’ Meg said, and she quickly introduced everyone, finishing with, ‘This will be our home for a short while.’
‘Why did you do this?’ Erin asked. ‘Why bring them here?’
Meg explained what had transpired above ground. ‘So this is the only choice,’ she argued. ‘The Kerwyn won’t find us and eventually they’ll think we never came here.’
‘How long will that take?’ Swift asked.
‘As long as it takes for the Kerwyn to give up and leave Chuekwer,’ Meg answered. ‘Patience is the key—patience and cunning.’
‘Like the rabbits,’ said Chase.
‘What about water? And food?’ Wahim asked.
‘I don’t have any,’ said Erin.
Wahim, Chase and Swift looked at him. ‘How do you live down here?’ Swift asked.
Erin looked at Meg. ‘He has magic,’ she said.
‘To live without eating?’ Chase queried. ‘How?’
‘I learned how to use magic to stop my body from changing. I don’t age, I don’t sleep and I don’t get hungry or thirsty,’ Erin told them.
‘Can you teach me how to do that?’ Swift asked.
Erin shook his head. ‘We’re different to you. People used to think it was possible to learn magic, but in fact it’s to do with something else.’ He looked at Meg. ‘Do they know?’
‘About the amber?’ Meg asked. Erin nodded. ‘No.’
‘You told us the story of Lady Amber,’ Chase reminded her.
Meg smiled. ‘About me, yes. But there’s more to the story than the legend.’
‘Like what?’
‘A lot of things.’
‘We’re listening,’ said Chase. ‘We don’t seem to be going anywhere else for a while.’
‘And the truth this time,’ said Swift cynically. ‘We’re stuck with you, but you’re also stuck with us. We should know the whole truth.’
‘You still haven’t told me what we’re going to eat and drink,’ Wahim reminded her.
‘I’ll provide what you’ll need,’ Meg said. ‘I have some tricks you haven’t seen yet.’
‘How long will we stay here?’ Chase inquired.
‘A few days or so,’ Meg explained, ‘but it will seem very quick to us. This place is like Se’Treya. Outside, time will go much faster,’ but she knew her companions didn’t understand the discrepancy in time that would occur while they hid. How could she explain to them that the magic used to construct Se’Treya and sustain the old Khvech Daas library could alter the passage of time?
Hordemaster Lowvalley stood with his hands on his hips and stared at the pile of ash at the edge of the rubble-filled clearing and snorted disdainfully. ‘Rabbit hunters!’ he said with a sneer. He turned on his heel and negotiated the marble rubble until he reached the tunnel that his soldiers had hacked through the overgrown garden surrounding the site. He stopped and gave a short order to the six men who’d found the clearing and the abandoned camp site to start searching the ruins to the north-east. Then he bent low and passed through the tunnel, occasionally catching his coat on ragged twigs.
Outside the Khvech Daas location, he straightened and took off his cap to wipe the light perspiration from his receding hairline and forehead. The old city was a monumental ruin of a size and scope that fascinated him and filled him with awe, easily ten times the size of Port of Joy. Flying over it in the Ranu dragon egg, he wondered how many people had lived in so large a place, and how they managed to build structures out of stone that even as ruins looked as if they would dwarf the Port of Joy palace.
The flight east had been long and difficult, and within a few days he expected to begin the return journey, and he was not enamoured of the prospect. He scratched his neck, replaced his red cap, and waited as the six soldiers crossed the dry moat and began to circle to the west. He estimated when he arrived that it would take his thirty men fully eight days to thoroughly search the city, assuming his quarry were at the ruins. After all, it was possible that they hadn’t yet arrived. Before he left Port of Joy, the royal cartographers told him that it would take at least forty days for a person to travel across land from Port of Joy to Chuekwer. If they had procured horse transport beyond Shesskar-Sharel, they might cut the journey time by a few days. By his estimation, and according to the details supplied by Warlord Fist, his arrival coincided with thirty-eight days since the fugitives had escaped. Already, the signs were that the people Warlord Fist wanted hadn’t reached the city. His men had flushed out three parties of local men who were hunting the strange little grey-and-white animals they called rabbits. Translating the Ashuak tongue was almost impossible, but he had a clever young man in his squad who had a knack for working out what a non-Kerwyn or non-Shessian speaker was saying. He made some sense of the babbling rabbit hunters who were clearly afraid that the soldiers were going to shoot them. And that was tempting, he considered.
Movement among the closer buildings caught his attention and he watched three rabbits hop across a street. I will catch a male and female and take them with us back to Port of Joy, he decided. The rabbit hunters had given them a brace to cook and eat last night and he enjoyed the savoury flavour so much that he saw the potential in raising and selling them to the Port of Joy markets. Besides, his men enjoyed the sport of shooting them, so he could see that they would be a source of fun and shooting practice. His main concern was how effectively they would breed in a new environment. It would be a shame to waste such an opportunity.
He glanced at the two personal guards who were waiting patiently for him to decide where he was going next. He planned to search the city for at least eight days and probably wait another five in case the people he was hunting were still on their way. If there was no luck after that, he would order the return journey to commence, perhaps by zigzagging across the Ashuak countryside in the hope that they might spot the fugitives from the air. With any luck, this long-winded mission might enable him to be absent from the Kerwyn kingdom during the hottest season and that would be a bonus. He squinted as he gazed across the ruins towards the thin, eroded spires of what must have been a huge temple. He knew nothing of this old culture. Were they followers of Jarudha? he wondered. Then he motioned to the guards and headed down the slope towards the heart of the abandoned Ashuak capital.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Seer Prayer stood on a small dais with his acolytes outside the temple in the Southern Quarter, surrounded by a crowd of the Jarudhan faithful. The people were swaying and laughing under the influence of euphoria that the acolytes had freely distributed, while they watched soldiers ransack taverns and brothels along the street. The business owners foo
lish enough to protest were savagely beaten, arrested and dragged away. Prostitutes were hurled into the street and forced to don undyed hessian smocks, before their heads were publicly shaved to the wild amusement of the drug-crazed onlookers.
‘This is how we punish the filthy sinners who flout Jarudha’s teachings!’ Prayer bellowed, his face beaming joyfully. ‘The time for repentance is upon us! Paradise is coming! Paradise is coming! Cleanse the city and yourselves! Purge the sinners and the faithless from your midst! Purify the earth! Jarudha is among us! All praise Jarudha!’
The soldiers hauled every bottle, jar and keg of alcohol they could find into the street and smashed them, pouring the newly forbidden alcohol into the earth. Then they ritualistically set fire to each targeted building, while Prayer continued his diatribe against sin and sinners, crying, ‘Purify the earth! Cleanse the unholy with fire! Do not let the sins of infidelity and lechery, driven by these infected women who flaunt their skin to tempt men, be among us! Be clean, my precious people! Be clean and be blessed!’
Taunted, bruised, beaten, terrified and humiliated, the girls and women driven from the brothels ran for their lives through the mad crowd, while taverners and innkeepers dropped to their knees and begged for mercy.
‘Paradise is coming!’ Prayer screamed above the chaos and violence, encouraging the crowd to take up his puritanical cry.
King Shadow stood beside His Eminence, Seer Scripture, on the parapet of the palace wall, the rising west wind ruffling his dark hair. Under the Seers’ guidance and Warlord Fist’s authority, his soldiers were undertaking the cleansing operation that he’d promised to institute after his coronation and he was admiring his initial handiwork as smoke rose from the Quarters. ‘I’m getting cold,’ Seer Scripture muttered.
‘I like the synchronicity,’ Shadow replied, without shifting his eyes from the city. ‘An unexpected storm is coming to cleanse the kingdom.’
‘There will be resisters,’ Scripture warned.
‘Of course,’ Shadow agreed, turning to the Seer, ‘and they will be ruthlessly punished. Jarudha is a vengeful god when the unholy dare to oppose His will. Any resistance will be brief.’
‘There will be a lot of work to establish the New Order,’ Scripture reminded him. ‘There are the laws of your predecessors to revoke and the new ones to introduce. There will be schools to create to teach the young how to follow the teachings of Jarudha and women will have to learn their correct role.’
‘I’m sure you and your colleagues will handle that,’ Shadow said. ‘I will provide the support of the army to ensure that those who are not convinced the New Order is for a better world will quickly change their minds.’
‘And the matter of the euphoria supplies?’
Shadow grinned. ‘Resolved, Your Eminence. You will have full and free access to the crops grown on the Fallen Star islands. The Joker has decided to relinquish her involvement in business matters. It seems she has generously donated her euphoria crops to Jarudha’s Paradise.’
‘You have been very thorough, Your Highness,’ Scripture replied, using Shadow’s formal title. ‘I admit that I did underestimate you at times.’
Shadow smiled and bowed his head briefly. ‘The past is the past, Your Eminence. Now we can create the future.’
‘In Jarudha’s name,’ Scripture added and made the holy circle in the direction of the burning city.
Back and shoulders screaming with agony, his arm muscles bulging and filling with lactic acid, Hunter closed his mind to the pain and heaved on the oars, the little fishing skiff bobbing and bucking over the choppy waves. An unseasonal storm was building on the horizon and he would be hard-pressed to beat it to safety if he dared to ease up. The malicious westerly wind slashed the stinging salt spray across his face and saturated his hair and clothes, but he gritted his teeth and pulled with dogged rhythm, steadily crossing the harbour mouth towards the southern bluff. The life of his semiconscious passenger, wrapped in a tarpaulin and rocking in the sludge in the bottom of the skiff, depended on his determination.
He wanted to intervene when the soldiers came to arrest Mrs Merchant, but she refused him the right to defend her. ‘They’ve come for me,’ she said as the soldiers thumped on her front door and demanded that she go with them, ‘not you.’ She pulled Hunter into her lounge, away from Lin and Apple and Cook who were frantically trying to collect important documents and possessions. ‘They don’t know about him,’ she whispered quickly. ‘That’s why you have to take him away from here, take him somewhere the king and the Seers won’t go looking. His life is in your hands. I can’t help him anymore.’ He protested, but she pleaded with him to do her bidding. ‘You can’t save me, Hunter, but you can save yourself and him. Go. I’m ordering you to go. If you are as faithful to me as you say, then you’ll do what Shadow least expects. Save Inheritor.’
Confused as to why the Joker would sacrifice herself and all that she owned for a man she barely knew, he reluctantly left her to her fate. He found the overturned old skiff pulled up inside the smugglers’ cave, but cursed when he discovered the skiff’s sail was rotted. He lugged his mumbling passenger out of the cave and stowed him in the bilge, and rowed into the path of the storm that was sweeping towards Port of Joy.
News of the coup in the foreign country fascinated him because it had been relatively unexpected. His advisors always kept him well informed regarding the political stability of the places he visited, so he knew in advance that the Kerwyn king was an ill man. Consequently, he had ordered his emissaries to visit Port of Joy to begin the economic invasion of the country because the time was ripe to apply pressure to the ailing kingdom. However, circumstances had rapidly changed. Within days, King Hawkeye was dead, and his eldest son had risen to the throne, only to be rapidly supplanted by the next prince in line within a few weeks. Two dead kings in short succession—the Kerwyn kingdom appeared to be crumbling. He knew otherwise, however, because his spies had already assessed the merits of King Shadow and the Seers and reported that the new order had all the hallmarks of a tyranny—a strong and ruthless leadership. That pleased him immensely. While it meant that the original plans to gradually white-ant the Kerwyn kingdom through trade deals and political agreements would have to be patiently modified, he knew that tyrannies inevitably self-destructed as the enmity of the common people grew against the cruel leadership. Then the Ranu armies could invade as heroes, overthrowing the tyrant to save the people and establish democracy.
He gazed into the mirror to adjust his collar and straighten his white tie. He smoothed his neatly groomed silver hair that matched his equally trimmed silver moustache and beard, and smiled, satisfied that he was ready to meet the public. He waited for his servant to bring his coat and help him put it on, adjusted the gold chain attached to his fob watch, and strode towards the door.
As he stepped onto the deck into the daylight, he heard a voice call, ‘The President!’ and saw the lines of sailors and soldiers in their crisp white uniforms snap to attention, eyes averted. His personal aide, Sharzeer, a broad-shouldered, pot-bellied man dressed in the traditional Ranu robes, bowed and ushered him along the ranks. Ahead, swaying slightly in the ocean breeze, the white fabric of a Ranu dragon egg filled the sky, waiting to launch from the deck. He was oddly conscious of his boots clunking across the metal deck, but he knew that his heavy steps stamped his authoritative presence on the minds of his people. He walked, he spoke, he smiled, he dressed always aware of the impact of his image on those who served him. Thirty tears of Ranu politics and countless years of political experience in a long-forgotten place a thousand years beforehand meant that he understood exactly what was needed to be both popular and effective as a leader. That he had led the Ranu nation in its years of inexorable expansion across the world also ensured that he would be its president until he died.
An entourage of officials greeted him at the door to the dragon egg carriage, ambassadors, politicians and his military general, Harem el Jaza. Jaza saluted and smi
led as he climbed the three steps into the carriage and took his seat. The officials followed him in and respectfully took their allotted places and then the elite Ranu bodyguard, ten soldiers trained to protect the president, settled in readiness for the flight.
He had not lost his love for flying. Ever since his first experience in a dragon egg, he had relished every opportunity to go aloft. Though it could never compare to the power and majesty that he remembered from his experiences on the back of a dragon, or his abilities to take the shape of a peregrine falcon and fly with absolute freedom, to be above the earth and gazing down from a dragon egg was as close to a religious epiphany as he could imagine. He had flown over every city of every nation he had conquered, the first time always as a visiting dignitary as he was now and always the last time as its leader. It was a ritual he observed, beginning with his first flight over Lightsword in Central Andrak more than thirty years ago.
The dragon egg shook and shuddered as it gained height, and the pullers droned softly as they drove the windwheels. He leaned against a window and looked down at the horseshoe bay and the northern bluff where the Kerwyn palace and the temple of the religious leaders clustered within their surrounding wall designed to keep out the people. It was thirty or more years since he’d briefly visited the palace, arriving through one portal and leaving by another. Then, the Kerwyn were the invaders. Now, they were about to be invaded.
‘President Ki?’
He looked up at his aide, Sharzeer, whose fat face sometimes reminded him remotely of another bloated Ranu who’d visited his Ithosen tower in the desert a long, long time ago.
‘President, I will brief you on some intelligence we received just before we took flight,’ Sharzeer politely explained.
‘Go ahead,’ A Ahmud Ki said, but he only halflistened to his aide’s information because it was something to do with the religious reforms taking place in the city and he wasn’t particularly interested. The Kerwyn culture was barbaric and it would be changed when the Ranu took over. He understood that the religious zealots would make it difficult in the early stages, opposing Ranu initiatives and requests to establish military bases, but they’d already called upon Ranu military aid to dethrone Inheritor so they’d established a precedent that would eventually be their undoing. They were an inconvenience, not a threat.
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