Daughter of Ancients (43 page)

“Then we shall have to see about that
free
part,” he said, smiling.

“I am not nine years old this time. I don't even think you're real.”

Farther . . . only a little farther. Make him turn away from the stair.
Another step to the right. A thick, charred beam and a heap of crumbled stones blocked my way, forcing me to move within reach of the Zhid's hairy arms, unless—I quenched my handlight.

“Vermin's teeth!” growled the warrior as I pelted him with shards of stones that clattered harmlessly on his leather armor. In the dark he had no idea they were harmless, and I smiled as I heard him crash into the debris from the caved-in roof while scrabbling to get away. An unstable flickering of red light gave away his position, and then I bolted, grabbing Nim and yanking her back past the pit and the stair, where I hoped Paulo was biding his time in the dark.

We hurried through a maze of rubble, and then dodged into the shadow of a half-broken wall. “We're going to go separate ways to deceive him,” I said to the quivering Nim. “You must run back to Rab. As soon as you can, no later than first light, the two of you must have the horses at the place where we crossed the walls of the ruin.”

The warrior cursed and bellowed for someone else to join him. I had only moments.

“But the demons, mistress . . .”

“The only dangerous demons are these inside the walls, and I'll take care of them. You saw my magic light, remember?”

Nim nodded, her face a portrait of indecision.

“Well, I have much more power than that. Just be careful and quiet until you are well away from the fortress. You have been so brave to bring us here. Here—” I pulled a gold coin from my pocket and closed her palm around it. “This is my talisman. It will protect you as you cross the plains. I kept you safe before, did I not?”

“Yes, mistress, you did, but—”

“Then you shall be safe going back. We're going to make sure that you and your friends are safe always. No burning metal to hurt or blind you. No demons to frighten you. But at first light . . .”

“We will be at the wall as you say.”

“Thank you, Nim. Bless you. Together we'll bind these demons forever. Now be off with you. Hurry.”

Without looking back, I sped in the opposite direction, angling away from the flicker of red light cast by the angry Zhid. Nim had shown us far more than I expected. If the young Lord was to be found, I knew where he had to be. But first, Paulo . . .

“She's heading back for the pens!” The shout was far too close. Another red light flared in exactly the direction I was running. I shifted my course, hurrying across the broad practice yards, risking the exposed route in the need for speed. Paulo would have to fend for himself.

By the time I reached the dark, upright, bony fingers of the broken colonnade, ten more red flares had sprung up behind me and to the sides. My luck took its usual course and a squat, barrel-shaped Zhid warrior with a bald head stepped from behind a toppled statue of a gryphon. The warrior's long sword gleamed wickedly in the scarlet light cast from his hand. Chuckling in satisfaction, he edged around the giant paw of the gryphon, waving the tip of his sword in a tight, controlled circle.

I could not retreat. I had some thought of circling, then taking off and outrunning the broad-beamed Zhid, but my hopes were not encouraged by his bellowing laugh when I began the move. My neck prickled. Worse and worse. Armor clanked from my left in the direction of the barracks, along with the unmistakable whisper of swords leaving their sheaths.

Before I could think what else to do, a thin black shadow leaped off the gryphon's crumbled wing and onto the warrior's back, yelling, “Go!” As I ran, the two fell to the pavement, grunting and grappling.

To my right, just beyond a tumbled wall, a tower of fire belched high into the night, blistering my exposed skin as I picked my way through the fallen columns, into the Drudges' courtyard.

This time keep to the shadows, fool
, I thought
.

I sped down an alleyway between the servants' latrines and a collapsed guardroom. I'd had to shovel out those latrines and haul food, water, and lamp oil to that guardroom. Slaves learned all the back alleys. If you stayed out of sight, you were less likely to be detained by random cruelties—like the two Zhid holding a knife to my eyes, threatening to cut them out if I blinked too soon, and then laying bets as to how long I could hold them open. The passage was almost blocked by a fallen slab, but I crawled under and emerged in the courtyard of the Lords.

An unnatural cold crept out of the rubble into my shuddering bones. What forces had Gerick and his father unleashed to shatter the slender towers that had soared so high? The gigantic carvings that had flanked the tall black doors had toppled, and one of the beast heads, double my height, stared at me with dead black eyes from the center of the court. The great fire bowls that had once sat atop the parapets were now cold and broken, the giant shards protruding from a mountain of broken granite.

For a moment the shouts and snarls of the chase seemed distant, muted by a sighing wind that crept about the ruins and curled about my feet, grasping with dead fingers at my trousers. The wind whispered in my ears of evil upon evil, lingering remembrances of pain and fear, of souls lost and wandering, cruelly, everlastingly separated from the Way of light and hope and joy.

It was all I could do to go forward. My blood pounded. A warning blazed in my head like a beacon:
Begone from this place!

He was here. I knew it with a certainty I could attach to nothing else. I half expected to feel his strength moving my legs again. I could have used it; my knees would not stop shaking.

Yet the fortress where I had lived in constant fear was a shattered shell, while I stood here alive and uncollared. The Lords who had terrorized me and tormented those I loved were dead. Whoever these warriors were, whatever this cold terror might be, they were only an echo.

I ran for the gaping maw where the entry doors had stood. From beyond the dark mouth came murmurings, weeping, curses and hoarse, mocking shouts.

The roof of the temple hall was open to the night, the wind howling through cracks wider than a man. Yet no rubble, sand, or thornbush cluttered the polished black floor, so like a lake of black ice. Nothing remained of the giant statues of the Lords—the fearsome monoliths carved in black stone that had been alive with the Lords' presence behind their masks of gold and gem-studded eyes. Far across the cavernous space was the way I had to go, the downward passage into the bowels of the palace. My pattering footsteps mocked my false courage as I sped across the shining floor, while in my head the warning blazed louder, desperate:
Begone from this place! You have no business here!

As I hurried downward into the oppressive darkness, I cast my light again. It flickered feebly. I'd not be able to maintain it for long. I sped down flight after flight of broad steps, not daring to look anywhere except into the pool of light at my feet. When I at last faced the smooth black door that led into the innermost heart of Zhev'Na, I stopped to listen. The warning hammered in my head with the certainty of mortal danger.
Go back! Do not come here!

But I couldn't change my mind because of some cowardly palpitations about cold stone and memory. Paulo had put himself in jeopardy to get me this far. I pushed open the door.

The walls and columns of the vast chamber showed gouges and great charred and jagged rents as if damaged in a cataclysm of fire. In its center lay the sculpture of a man resting on a bed of stone, very like those you see atop a coffin lid or carved in relief upon the face of a standing tomb. But before I could examine the sculpture or the damaged walls, a bolt of lightning flashed from the palm-sized ring of brass that hung spinning in the air above the sculpted man, drowning my handlight in such brilliance it forced my eyes closed. And when I opened them again, I was in a different place altogether. . . .

 

I clenched my fists and hammered at my head, fighting to return to my own thoughts, to dangerous reality . . . the ruins . . . the search. I blinked and the ring of dark stone columns took shape on every side of me. Yet the events that had unfolded before my eyes had borne the surety of reality as well, the truth of lived memory: the beginning, the Catastrophe, the night that terror and war had come to Gondai. On that night a hunger had been born whose feeding would ravage the world for a thousand years, for Three had lurked in that darkness and fed upon those screams.

I could not have warned them.
The voice inside me was bent with pain.
I could not have stopped it. It happened long before I was born. . . . Before I knew . . .

I hurried toward the center of the chamber where the lurid light of the spinning oculus shone down on the sculpted body of a man stretched out on the stone slab. No! He was part of the stone, yet not part of it . . . bolted . . . Vasrin's hand, he was fastened to the slab with bolts through his hands and his feet. Strips of iron across his wrists, ankles, and forehead were also bolted to the stone, fixing him in place. And the stone had molded itself about his body in thin brittle layers that over time would grow thick and solid until he was indeed a sculpture of a man. It had climbed up his sides and halfway over his shoulders and face. His arms, legs, and neck were already enclosed, every scar and sinew, every wrinkle in his torn shirt and breeches sculpted in delicate detail.

The lightning flashed and blinded me again. . . .

 

...
and a crowd surged forward, carrying me with it. Never had I been in such a crush—stinking, ragged bodies, warm on the bitter winter's day, faces distorted with vices I did not know and hatred I did not understand.

 

No, no, no . . . this was not me!
The voice inside me cried out in agony.
Oh, gods, not this!