by J A Hutson
“By the saints,” whispers Bell, her fingers lacing with my own as we stare awestruck at this buried city. “What is this place?”
“The home of the Lady, or so the nuns claim,” Xela says. She points at one of the few structures that looks to still be intact, a many-tiered pyramid. “The doorway is atop the ziggurat. That’s where they’ll be.”
I squint, but the distance is so great I can make out few details. There does seem to be a curving ribbon of stone atop the pyramid, but I can’t see any figures moving.
“Why are we fucking waiting?” says Fen Poria. Then she starts on the incredibly tall set of stairs that go down to the floor of the cavern.
“Oh, by all the tainted saints,” groans Shalloch. “More stairs.”
“We must be careful,” Deliah commands as she follows Fen Poria, drawing her glaive from her back. “This is the perfect place for an ambush.”
With this in mind, I keep my eyes on the ruins as we descend, but nothing moves among the tumbled buildings and stalagmites. We regroup when we reach the bottom, in the shadow cast by the broad brown cap of a soaring mushroom.
“We need a plan,” I say as the others turn to me. “Xela,” I say to the shadowdancer, “I want you to cloak yourself in shadow and scout ahead for us. I’ll be next, and if you encounter any trouble I want you to return immediately and tell me. If you can’t for some reason, make a sound so I’ll know you need help.”
Xela’s brow knits in confusion. “What kind of sound?”
“I don’t know. The sound of something that lives in these caves.”
She frowns. “Mushrooms are pretty quiet.”
I sigh. “Just yell ‘help,’ then. Now, you and you,” I continue, pointing at Shalloch and Deliah, “follow about twenty paces behind me. Bell, you have the middle. Vesivia and Fen, take up the rear.”
“I want to go ahead and scout, too,” mutters Fen Poria. “I can smell the ones we’re chasing – there’s men, women, an alethian, a brek’nato . . . and something I’ve never smelled before.” She sniffs the air, wrinkling her nose. “Real sharp and bitter, like where someone pissed in the snow.”
“You’re not invisible. Xela is. Stay in the back, and make sure no one sneaks up on us.”
Fen Poria’s mouth twists in disagreement, but she doesn’t say anything further.
“All right,” I say, holding each of their gazes in turn. “We go towards that pyramid, quickly and quietly. Our luck holds, maybe we can catch them unawares. Remember, these are all great warriors and trained killers.”
I wait for nods from everyone, then I motion towards Xela. She scoops some of the shadows that have accreted at the base of the mushroom’s great stalk and quickly slathers herself in darkness. When she’s nothing more than a patch of blackness, she slips with uncanny grace into the ruins and is gone.
I follow behind her, leaping over the tumbled remnants of a statue with the head of a falcon. Something familiar tugs at my memory, and a moment later it comes to me: this statue reminds me of the animal-headed statues that lined the walls of the ancient temple in the red wastes. Could this place have been built by the same people? I shake my head, trying to keep my concentration on my surroundings. The ruins I’m moving through are draped with shadows, both from the teetering piles of stone that still stand, and the great mushrooms that strain towards the distant purple jewel. A clatter of falling rocks and a shiver of movement bring my sword from its sheath, but it’s just some six-legged lizard no bigger than a dog scurrying from us. I slide my sword away.
The pyramid swells larger as we traverse the cavern, its peak rising over the tops of the tallest mushrooms. While most of the shattered buildings we’re moving through are made of the mountain’s ubiquitous black rock, the ziggurat has a pale luster that glows slightly in the perpetual twilight of the cavern. It reminds me of the nacreous white stone that the other portals I’ve encountered have been fashioned from, both the one I passed through and also the one I discovered in the poelthari’s barrow-lair. The key in my pouch seems to be growing heavier as we approach the ziggurat, but that might be my imagination.
“There! Right fucking there!” Fen Poria cries suddenly, and I whirl around to try and see what she’s screaming about. Listing ruins, the twisted remains of some great metal device, a colony of mushrooms rising to our left . . . Fen Poria is rushing towards me from her position at the rear of our party, pointing a dagger at one of the mushrooms . . .
And then I see her, pressed against the stalk just below the lip of the mushroom’s cap, lost mostly in the shadows. Pale green skin and hair, translucent dragonfly wings spreading from her back. The patriarch Belav’s Shield, the woman who seemed to have been pulled from the deepest wilds. She’s holding a bow, a nocked arrow pointed at me.
“Talin, look out!” cries Bell as she sees the woman. Then she’s beside me, fumbling for the crossbow slung across her back. The green woman adjusts her aim slightly and looses the shaft, and at the same time I throw myself to the ground behind a chunk of tumbled masonry.
But she wasn’t firing at me.
“Bell!” I cry in horror as the arrow pierces her chest. She stumbles back a step, then catches herself, swaying. The crossbow falls from her slack fingers as she stares in wonder at the shaft protruding from below her collarbone.
“No!” I cry as she topples over, and from somewhere nearby Deliah screams as well. Fen Poria dashes past me, whipping her three-pointed throwing daggers at the Shield. A moment later the green woman gives a pained cry, and I see her clutch at her shoulder as she drops her own bow and leaps from her perch. A moment later she has vanished among the mushroom stalks, Fen Poria in close pursuit.
“Bell, oh Bell,” I moan, rushing over to her and cradling her head. Her breathing is shallow, her eyes glazed in shock. My hands frantically slip beneath her shirt and run along her back, and a wave of relief goes through me as I feel the tip of the arrowhead. The shaft has gone through her completely – terrible, but better than having to dig the head out of her body. “Can you hear me?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer, grimacing.
Deliah crouches beside me, her face a mask of concern. With practiced efficiency she grabs Bell’s shirt and rips it wide open, exposing where the arrow has punched into her body. Blood is leaking out around the edges of the wound, slower than I would have expected.
“Should we push it through?” I ask, though I suspect I know the answer.
Deliah shakes her head. “No. The arrow is keeping her from bleeding out. If we are unsuccessful in staunching the wound, she’ll die.”
“She’s dying now!” I cry frantically. In the periphery of my vision I sense that Shalloch and Vesivia have come to hover beside us.
Deliah looks at me and I can see her frustration. “If I was in a surgeon’s tent, I might be able to save her . . . but down here, with no bandages or thread or arrow-puller . . .” She returns her gaze to Bell.
“Maybe someone can carry her back to the Umbra,” Shalloch offers, but again Deliah shakes her head.
“She’d be dead before you got halfway there.”
“Talin.”
Bell has turned her head towards me. She blinks, struggling to focus. “Talin, I’m sorry.” She lifts a shaking hand, and I squeeze it fiercely.
“Bell, you shouldn’t have been here. This is my fault.”
Her thin lips twist into a pained smile. “My choice,” she says simply.
“Is she dead?”
I shoot an angry glance at Fen Poria, who has emerged again from the copse of mushrooms. She ignores me.
“Yeah, that doesn’t look good,” she says as she approaches, and lets out a low whistle.
“Oh, by the Shadow! Bell!” Xela cries, the darkness flaking away from her as she bursts from the mushrooms and rushes over.
“You were supposed to be paying fucking attention, shadowdancer,” Fen Poria snarls as Xela goes to her knees beside Bell.
“I didn’t see anyone . . . I must have passed right bel
ow them . . .” She reaches a shaking hand towards the arrow’s shaft, then draws back. “What . . . what can we do?”
“Get revenge,” Fen Poria says simply, staring in the direction the green woman vanished. “They know we’re coming now, though. Going to be bloody.”
“Valyra,” I say suddenly, hope filling me. “Valyra is a healer . . . she has the power to save Bell.”
“We have to hurry, then,” Deliah says, watching Bell in concern as her eyes flutter closed. “She already fading.” I nod, gently moving Bell’s head from my arms and standing.
But I’m still torn, watching her ragged breathing and the rise and fall of the arrow protruding from her chest. “Someone has to stay with her,” I say, looking at the others. “The arrow could shift, the bleeding might get worse . . .”
Fen Poria snorts as my eyes meet hers. “Not me. I want that feral’s blood.”
“I could stay,” Deliah says, also rising to her feet. “But you need me.”
She’s right – without her glaive I doubt we’d stand any chance against the Swords and Shields. My gaze settles on Shalloch and Vesivia.
“You have to say,” the pirate says, turning to his lover. “You know more about battlefield medicine than I do.” He reaches out for her, but she jerks away from him.
“I’m not going to let you fight without me,” she says angrily.
“Vesivia,” I say softly. “Please.”
The Zimani swordswoman stares up at the distant stalactites dripping from the ceiling and curses in a language I don’t know. But when she looks down again, I can see the resignation in her eyes.
“Very well. I’ll keep her alive as best I can. But you have to hurry.”
They are waiting for us.
We watch from deep within a mushroom grove, recessed among the shadows. Eight warriors, arrayed around the base of the pyramid, guarding the incredibly steep stairs that climb to its peak. I recognize several of them: the green-skinned girl is there, a strip of cloth wrapped around the wound on her shoulder. Something more like sap than blood oozes from beneath the bandage and trickles down her arm. In her other hand she holds a black-metal trident. There’s also the mantis-man – I assume it’s the same one – who had been standing behind the fat matriarch when Auxilia summoned me to show off for her friends. It carries no weapons, but the serrated scythes that serve as its front limbs look like they could cut a man in half. Finally, the ebony-scaled alethian with the broken head spines prowls in front of the stairs, his tail lashing. The rest of the Swords and Shields are Zimani, each dressed in the flamboyant style favored by that people, their clothes of bright glistening silk sewn with feathers and colorful gems.
“We need to bring Valyra to Bell as quickly as possible,” I whisper, my eyes traveling up the thousand steps to the top of the pyramid. “She must be at the top already.”
“What’s the plan?” Shalloch asks, all trace of his usual good humor gone.
“I’ll take the stairs while the rest of you hold off the Swords and Shields. Rescue Bell before they can do whatever they’re planning.”
The pirate grimaces. “You’ll have to go through that lizard.”
“I plan on it.”
Shalloch turns and spits. “Saints give you strength, mate. I’ve spent my life trying to avoid pissing off an alethian.”
A moment’s silence settles over us. “Thank you all,” I finally say as I look at these companions – these friends – who would give their lives here. “This is greater than just one woman’s life, I feel it. It’s all part of something terrible, and if we save her, I think we can help hold off what’s coming.”
“Shut up and stop stalling,” Fen Poria says, and then she’s up and running, screaming a primal war cry. Deliah follows her a moment later, whooping and brandishing her glaive. Shalloch and I share a brief, surprised glance, and then we’re on our feet, exploding from the mushroom grove as the Swords and Shields turn to face us. My green-glass sword sings as I rip it from its sheath, its crackling power singing in my veins.
Fen Poria draws first blood, sending one of her throwing daggers spinning into the neck of the closest Zimani. The warrior goes to his knees clutching at the spike embedded in his throat, blood squirting from around his fingers. Fen sends another dagger whirling towards the green-skinned woman, but she knocks it from the air with a swipe of her trident.
Deliah ducks beneath a slash from the mantis-man, then thrusts out with her glaive. The insect Sword is surprisingly fast, though, leaping backwards on its segmented legs like a grasshopper. It clashes its scythe arms together, its mandibles making a harsh clacking sound that I interpret as some kind of war cry.
A Zimani woman wielding a pair of swords – one a shorter, broad blade for parrying, the other much longer for thrusting – slides in front of me as I try to make for the stairway. She’s fast, and I barely get my sword up in time to deflect a quick jab. Then I’m lunging forward, and she catches my blade with her short parrying sword . . . her eyes widen in shock, though, as the length of green-glass passes through her sword’s metal, shearing it off at the crossguard. I continue the strike, separating her head from her shoulders.
Now it’s just the alethian standing before me and the stairs. He holds back as I approach, and there’s wariness in his slitted yellow eyes. The lizard man hisses a challenge, working his scimitar through a series of flourishes, the massive sword light as a feather in his taloned hand. It has a strange yellow tint, like ancient bone. I approach cautiously, shuffling forward in a fighting stance, well aware of how fast these creatures can move. They may look as sluggish as crocodiles drifting in a river, but in truth they strike as fast as a serpent.
“Alesssk,” the alethian hisses, tossing the scimitar to his other hand and catching it smoothly. “What are you doing here?”
Alesk. That was what the silver-eyed stranger had called me in the mucker barracks. Did this thing know me?
“My name is Talin,” I reply, my gaze flicking to the stairs behind him. As much as I want to know what the alethian is talking about, I need to rescue Valyra if Bell is going to live.
The creature’s long tongue flickers from its fanged mouth. “No! You are trying to confussse me. You are the Pilgrim and your brother Talin is the Heretic, he who left the right hand of the Prophet to preach his foul gospel of redemption. Your liesss have no power here, traitor!”
I’m expecting the attack, but still it comes with devastating quickness. The scimitar arcs closer and I turn it aside; metal shrieks and yellow dust flakes away but the blade holds, and I’m pressed back as the huge lizard man surges forward. If I tried to catch each of his hammering blows I think my arm would break, so I’m forced to let the scimitar slide off my own sword, which keeps me unbalanced and unable to press him back.
“Your demon blade cannot shatter mine,” he gloats. “For it was fashioned from the bones of the Old Mother.”
His tail whips out and I dance backwards, its tip coming within a span of smashing into my legs and sending me sprawling.
“Sssstill fast, Pilgrim,” the alethian growls, stalking after me.
Pilgrim. That was what the Voice called me in my first memories, when the Shriven ambushed me in the red wastes. My yearning to know what this thing knows about me is almost overwhelming . . . but I cannot afford this delay.
“How do the spirits feel about you following this Prophet?” I goad him, remembering the other alethian’s obsession with his old gods. “Must be pretty disappointed that you’ve turned your back on your own kind.”
The alethian roars and charges, and our swords come together again and again, dragonbone on green glass. I duck beneath a wild swing and slash the lizard man’s side, opening a cut among his obsidian scales. He draws back a pace, hissing in pain and rage.
Above his cracked spines looms the top of the tiered pyramid; there’s now a golden glow creeping from something I can’t see . . . but I know that light. One of the doorways has been opened.
There i
s no time, and I rush the lizard man. His lips curl away from curving fangs, and he also lunges to meet me, the curving length of yellow dragonbone slicing the air. At the last moment I duck beneath his blow and drive the point of my sword into his stomach – it slides between his scales smoothly, almost to the hilt. Before his hurtling bulk can smash into me I leap to the side, ripping my blade loose as he crashes to the ground.
Our gazes lock as death steals into his eyes. Beyond the alethian the fight is still raging: Xela and Deliah are circling the tall insect man, trying to get inside the reach of his long curving scythes; Shalloch is holding off a pair of Zimani warriors, and the green-skinned girl has lost her trident in the melee and is now dueling Fen Poria and her daggers with a pair of flickering short swords. I turn and start bounding up the stairs, sending a silent prayer that my companions do not need my help.
The glow intensifies as I approach the summit, and when I arrive at the top I’m blinded for a brief moment. Then my vision clears, and I scream in defiance of what’s before me.
There’s an archway of the same opalescent white stone that I’ve seen before, but much larger, easily big enough for an elephant to pass beneath. A rippling golden veil fills the portal, and standing before it is Valyra, her arms thrust up to her elbows in the swirling radiance. She’s facing away from me, staring into the doorway, but that red hair has haunted my dreams for months.
“Valyra!” I cry, rushing across the cracked and ancient stone. But she does not turn around, even when I put my arm on her shoulder. Now I can see that her mouth is slightly parted, and she’s staring glassy eyed into the undulating portal. Ripples are emanating from where her arms vanish into the light, as if she has thrust herself into golden water.