“Zizain!” he shouted as he ran. “Zizain!” Barely any of the shoppers looked his way as he ran past. He was only a boy after all, and the possible causes for his frantic cry were numerous.
Then she stood in front of him. Whether she’d come from the crowd or dropped from the sky, he did not know, but he reeled to a stop as she grabbed his shoulders.
“Easy there, boy!” she cried. “What’s the matter?”
He gulped for air, trying to focus, but everything in his vision smeared. “They—they’re after us. H-he’s hurt…got shot.”
“Take a deep breath, lad,” an unfamiliar male voice said. “You’re going to have to lead us back to them, and it’ll be no good if you faint on us.”
A hand guided him under the shade of one of the stalls. Kelm squinted up at a tall man beside Zizain, a tricorn hat askew on his head and a smile askew on his lips. He wore an eye patch, but his other eye twinkled green with danger.
“Now then,” the man said. “Do you think you can find your way to your friends?”
The street seemed abandoned, but Daran stood still, waiting for a telltale shift in the sand, for a shadow, for the slightest wave of inconsistency against the stone. His men hunkered around him, swords drawn and teeth clenched, a few of them already bleeding.
A shadow fell over them from the roof above.
With a yell, Daran raised his sword in defense, but he found himself squinting up at the silhouette of Kilkus. “You,” he hissed. “Where have you been? Did you get his leg, did you slow him down?”
The shard landed in a crouch beside him, claws gesturing frantically as it chattered a response.
Daran’s scowl deepened, and he threw another wild glance around. “I know there’s a chema! She’s right here, somewhere, been harassing us like a ghost. We can’t take two steps without her knife pricking our backs.”
Hissing, the shard swung round, peering as if it could see her against the stone. If only it could. If only it was useful and still had any gifting of its previous existence, not this rocky ruin. Perhaps the presence of the chema girl had revived memories of the old friend he once had in Kilkus, because in that moment, Daran looked upon the shard and hated it.
He turned on the shard with murder coloring his eyes. “Well, answer me, spider! Did you shoot the elf?” He paled as he heard the reply and slammed Kilkus against the wall. “You tried to kill her and he took the shot? What if he’s dead? You thought of that? Did you? No, no, all you thought about was your jealousy of what you once were, didn’t you, you monster, you—gah!” He roared in pain as the knife nicked him again, but before he could respond, Kilkus tore through his grasp and lunged into the air with a snarl.
A feminine scream cried out when the shard landed, and then Kilkus was struggling on the ground with a figure of shifting sand.
“Kill her, kill her!” Daran shouted, shaking his sword above the fray.
A dagger whistled through the air and straight into his wrist. Shouting in pain, Daran dropped his sword and looked up in dismay, squinting into the brilliant sun.
A figure in white leapt down upon him.
Tellie startled when she heard Daran curse, so close by. The men had drawn near to their hiding place, but where Tryss and Kelm had gone was impossible to tell. Please. She tightened her grip around Errance. Please, they couldn’t find them. She didn’t even have anything to defend herself with. Wait. The chemas had given Errance a knife. She felt along his belt until her trembling hands grasped the handle, and she held the knife against her knees. It wasn’t much good since she didn’t know how to use it, but its sharp presence proved a comfort.
She dropped one hand to stroke the prince’s clammy brow. With as much punishment as he’d taken in his life, she could not believe that an arrow would defeat him. But then, none of the torture had been meant to kill him…or maybe they simply had not allowed him to die. Yet he still had his celestial gift; it would heal him just like it had when he’d escaped. Rendar said so, said his delayed recovery only came from the Darkness harassing his spirit—
Tellie inhaled sharply, heart thudding to a stop. All the memories of that strange dream returned in a dizzy rush. Rendar reaching for her hand, her own voice rising in beauty greater than that of this world, seeing her own body asleep on the ground…she remembered that she had been a part of a world dimly veiled.
Shuddering, she touched Errance’s brow again. “Come back,” she whispered. “Come back, wherever you are.” Her hand reached down to his, grasping his fingers hard.
The darkness in the room shifted, becoming no less dark, but somehow allowing visibility. She found herself looking through the walls into the street beyond. Except not really. The street was gone. Instead she saw carved, cold stone stretching away in a terrible tunnel lit by sickly torches. She saw the wooden door in the city of Oolum, and she saw the iron cage gate of Tertorem, both there, both together, both separate. She glanced down at Errance, but it was only the shell of his body. To what depths of this dark dimension had he gone, and dare she try to find him?
Daran’s shouts sounded much nearer, and she hunkered back as his men came into view. Through the wall, she could their shapes, could see them in detail, but they were different. They were darker than ever before and tangled in shredded shadow. Behind them came another, a gleaming creature of green, gold, and blue. She was beautiful and bright as a summer day, and Tellie wondered how she’d never seen Tryss this way before.
She watched as the swirling colors that were Tryss danced around the dark men, leading them this way and that. Then the grey, gangly wraith came, the shard. When it attacked Tryss, Tellie scrambled to her feet. She knew she was using her mortal body, for she could feel her fingers gripping the knife.
A flash, small and bright, flew down from the sky and pierced Daran’s hand. He cried out and dropped his flailing sword.
Then the man in white appeared upon the roof.
Rendar.
Tellie knew it must be him for who else would shine so bright that she could not look straight upon them. As beautiful and magnificent as a crane spreading its wings, he leapt down beside Daran. He threw Daran aside, and then turned to Kilkus, kicking the shard off Tryss and across the street. Shining like a star he wheeled around to confront the rest of the men, but they were already running, Daran cradling his wounded hand to his chest, and Kilkus scampering after them like a beaten dog.
Tellie heard a jumble of voices, one of which was Kelm, another Tryss, and the third she did not recognize at all. Then the man in white dashed towards her and threw open the door. He reached down and took her hand—
And suddenly, there was no man in white anymore. Well, he wore a white shirt, but there all resemblance to the shining knight ended. She blinked up into one bright green eye, the other covered by an eye patch, a bearded chin, and a rakish smile.
“There we are, lassie,” the man said. “Let’s get you and the wounded one out, hmm?” He fetched her from the shed with a deft hand and then knelt beside Errance, pulling him up and over his shoulder and back.
Tryss came alongside to help, her hair a tangle around her smudged face. “Careful,” she cried. “He was shot through the middle, and the bolt is still in him.”
“Yes, yes, so the boy told me. Boy?” the stranger called.
“Yes?” Kelm hurried forward, pale face bright with sweat.
“Take the girl here; she seems to be in a bit of a shock.”
“I—I am not,” Tellie protested as Kelm took her arm. “I just don’t understand wha—what happened.”
A hand spun her around, and she found herself staring at the smiling Zizain.
“We’ll explain later, yes, doll? Now we must get you somewhere safe,” the woman said. “Step quickly.” She placed a hand against each of the children’s backs and propelled them along the street.
Though the set pace was swift, it was still not fast enough. Daran and his men had run, but how far and for how long?
Zizain did not see
m the slightest perturbed by any thought of threat, and she did not slow her firm stride even as they came into an ally that led to a dead end. She marched straight up to the wall and released the children long enough to hook her fingers into a crevice in the stone and pull back with a grunt.
The wall was not made of thick bricks as it appeared, but was instead a thin slab of sandstone. It did not swing open like an ordinary door, but slid backwards into the wall. They all rushed through, and Zizian slid the strange door shut behind them so that all traces of an entrance vanished.
They stood in a street lined with identical houses built of pale, sun-bleached stone, and the brightness and heat emanating from the bricks and the matching sand burned with unbearable potency. Not a sound nor soul stirred the dry-crusted air.
Zizain trotted ahead and up the steps to one of the houses. She threw open the door and disappeared inside with a brisk wave of her hand.
Tellie stepped forward to follow, but then she hesitated. Really, what did they know about these strangers? Nothing at all. But what other choice did they have but to trust them? So she trailed after Kelm up the stair and across the threshold.
Amber light peered in from the slats of a shuttered window and the rickety door, but the pleasant shade of the room and the coolness kept inside the thick walls was a blessing unlike any other. The room was spacious and square, and not a single piece of furniture or ornament arrayed it from roof to floor. A faded purple curtain hung across a door to another room, but other than that, there was not any sign that anyone had ever lived here.
“M’name’s Coren, by the by. Captain Coren,” the red-headed stranger said as he entered the room and kicked the door shut. He dropped to one knee and carefully unloaded Errance from his back, propping him up against the wall. “Zizain, fetch some water for this fellow here, and while you’re at it, our guests could use a drink.”
Tellie sat beside Errance, trying not to look at the dark stain spreading around the bolt in his stomach. She looked to Kelm and Tryss for assurance, but they were also the worse for wear. Exertion had dulled Kelm’s skin to a sheeny grey, and Tryss’s complexion was even more ghastly with bloody scratches across her cheeks.
Zizain had vanished behind the purple curtain but she returned now, carrying a tray with pewter cups sloshing over the brim with water. She gave one to each of them with careful instructions to drink slow, and then she plopped to the ground beside Tryss with a cheerful, “How about washing those scratches, darlin’?”
Tellie took an unsteady gulp of the tepid water as she studied their extraordinary saviors. Zizain and Coren could not have been more different in body—her short, dark, and softly rounded while he was tall, tan, and sharply featured—but they both talked and moved with as little care as a breeze.
Coren pushed off his hat and shook loose a shock of copper red hair that seemed to burn with fire embers. Tellie’s gaze traced down from the tips of his unkempt bangs, past his vivacious green eye, to the neat little patch of red beard under his lip. He was, in short, devilishly handsome, and she decided it was not safe to stare. She blushed and looked quickly to the floor when he pulled off his papery white shirt and began to tear it into shreds.
“So…what exactly are you?” she asked.
Coren flashed a quick smile her way. A dangerous smile, the sort that could be worn while charming or killing. “Respectable citizens of Oolum of course,” he said. “Captain of the Solitary Star, at your service, and you’ve already met, Zizain, dancer extraordinaire.”
Having finished tearing his shirt into neat little strips of bandage, he reached out to Errance’s shirt and rent the cloth around the bolt a little wider so it could be worked off without catching. He pulled out a knife, and Tellie stiffened, ready to jump to her prince’s defense, but the captain simply slit the seams across the shoulders and down the sleeves. The shirt slid down, revealing the scars and the terrible tattoo of His Darkness.
Coren stilled. He stared upon the words and marks slashed across Errance’s body, and a shudder ran down his rigid frame. Then slowly, carefully, he stretched out a hand and brushed away the slick hair covering Errance’s face.
All color left the captain’s skin. He stared upon Errance like he saw a ghost.
Tellie cringed, expecting a torrent of questions, though why he would ask them, why he would recognize Errance at all, she could not guess. Perhaps, this man once served in Tertorem. Perhaps he still did. Perhaps this was a trick, and he intended to turn them back in.
But Coren asked no questions. Though his hands trembled, he silently removed the arrow, cleaned the wound, and wrapped the torso in the white linen. When at last he washed his hands in the bowl of water that Zizain had brought and sat back on his heels, he spoke.
“I am no surgeon, and there is no one in this city whose methods I can recommend. He is yet alive, but who can say what was pierced or what might infect. I am sorry, friends, but I cannot say if he will live or die.”
“He’ll live,” Tryss murmured from where she slumped in the corner of the room. “He has a stubborn way of surviving.”
“Of course he’ll live!” Tellie exclaimed. “He can live through anything.”
“So I see,” the captain said, staring dully at the scars. Every trace of his merry ease had drifted away, leaving a shadow of age and regret across his youthful features. He laid his hand against Errance’s brow, looking a trace sick at the mere touch. “This sleep is strange. He hasn’t reacted to anything I’ve done, and his spirit should not be this distant.” He cocked his head, listening for a distant sound.
And then he bent close to Errance and whispered in a voice low and gentle as evening wind, “Come out of there.”
Errance’s eyes flared open.
oOo
Far off in his fortress hold, the Voice stiffened as an ice-water chill ran over his body. He rose from his dark throne and passed through the wall onto a terrace pointed west where the faintest glow of sunlight edged the teeth of his mountain borders. He gazed across the vast distance, hands clasped tightly behind his back.
He could no longer see his Prisoner, no longer feel him. The amusing game he’d been playing had been brought to a sudden halt by a player unforeseen.
A tremor of anger ran through his body and through all Tertorem, for there was nothing he hated so much as the weakness he now felt from the presence and power of one man and One.
18
oOo
No…no…NO…cold, wet walls press in around me, pushing the breath from my lungs, and something hard and agonizing pierces my torso. My mind snatches helplessly for the bronzed sands and glaring sunlight that spiral away as I fall deeper into this dark pit. Blood runs down my hands as I shred my fingers against the stone in a useless effort to climb up, to escape. It has taken me again. Where it wills, when it wants. I collapse to my knees in the darkness, panting. I was a fool to think I was free.
And then somebody reaches in and pulls me out.
Coren caught Errance’s swinging arm before it hit, and with a dignified series of twists, he neatly pinned him stomach to the ground, arms folded underneath. “Careful there,” the captain said, calm as a summer day. “No need to wrench about so when you’re wounded.”
Tellie spotted it—Errance’s right hand squirming free, reaching up to catch Coren’s elbow. Before she could even think of the consequences, she darted forward and seized his hand in both of hers. “We’re safe, Errance, we’re safe! He’s here to help you.”
His hand paused, trembled, and then fell back to the floor. She blinked in astonishment as his fingers tightened around hers, not in aggression but in desperation. Even so, his grip hurt. His heaving pants echoed in the room and his body shone with a fresh sweat, but he offered no more struggle.
“Where—are we?” he choked. “I was back—Tertorem—”
“You were unconscious, Errance,” Tryss said softly. “It was just a dream.”
A dream. The eerie things Tellie had seen in that strange
vision were as blurry and unclear as a dream, but she no longer doubted their reality. Errance had been gone, really gone, and for just a moment, she had glimpsed where he’d went.
When Coren eased off, Errance pushed up with a wince and braced against the wall, hostile gaze sweeping the room. Each one he studied sharply, with a scowl at Zizain, but when his eyes turned again to Coren, little fear could be seen. Dislike, certainly, but he showed no signs of flight or fight as might have been expected.
“There now,” Coren said amiably. “Can you talk or does it hurt too much? All you have to do now is listen anyway. I’m Captain Coren, and at your service if you need it, which judging by the looks of how we found you, I’d say that you do.”
“Don’t we need a ship, Tryss?” Kelm asked.
She shushed him, then looked to Errance with the same question in her eyes.
Errance did not deign to look at any of the attentive faces watching him. He stared down at his bandaged torso, stroking the bloodied strips with the tip of his fingers.
When no answer proved forthcoming, Coren rocked back and forth on his haunches and studied the ceiling. “Escaping from the city, I take it? Trying to cross the sea? I know some smugglers…” he began.
Without warning, Zizain dropped the tray of water she was carrying. “Oops! My fault, entirely.”
Coren threw her a wink. “No need to stop me, Zi, I know what I’m doing.” His green eye danced with the spunk of a firefly. “I’m going to be honest here, my strangely marked friend. I am the smuggler of which we speak. It’s not something I spread around, but you…you are special, aren’t you? So how can I help you?”
Tellie started in surprise at the announcement and scooted a little closer to the wall. Smugglers were not considered respectable, in fact she was quite certain they were on the wrong side of the law. But these folks had rescued them, and if there was any hope of escaping this cursed city, then smugglers could be exactly what they needed.
Errance’s eyes narrowed to slits, and bared teeth gleamed under his raised lip. “Why would you help? What’s in it for you? ” His words broke between breaths, but none could mistake the danger in his tone.
Moonscript (Kings of Aselvia Book 1) Page 21