I couldn't understand it. The woman next to me, her teeth green and rotting, her breath foul with drink, grabbed my arm and pointed to the balcony high on the castle wall. “It's her! The witch what married the devil.” And indeed a young woman dressed in plain white robes, her hair a ragged stubble, stood on the balcony watching the man. But as the flames grew, she sank to her knees and covered her eyes and ears until the man let go his agony in a single dreadful cry. The death scream echoed inside my head. . . .
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Father!
Despair and grief and denial ripped through me like lances of fire.
It was not me. I was not yet born. . . .
Searing lightning yet again. Only an instant's glimpse of the still figure on the table and I was no longer in the winter forest or the city of horror, but in the desert. . . .
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The heat sapped the last residue of moisture from my lips; the sun hammered on the back of my head.
“Here they come.”
“About time. The Slavemaster'll be fit to eat someone for 'em being this late.”
The voices were below me, Zhid warriors standing guard duty on the hard-baked desert road, peering into the dust haze to see the gray unwieldy shape resolve itself into a ragged column of half-naked men roped together. Their skin was burned dark by the sun, their lips blackened and cracked, most of them scarcely able to lift their raw, bloody feet. Flies buzzed and stuck to backs streaked with garish mementos of the lash.
“Move on!” shouted the guard with a crack of his whip.
The dolorous column passed by my hiding place, and the doors of the cages slammed behind them with a metallic clang. I knew what came next. My knife was in my hand, and I scrambled down from my rocky perch and sped down the cracked earth of the road. Any child with power could undo the lock. If I was fast, the guards would never expect itâan uncollared Dar'Nethi in the middle of the camp.
The first despairing screams came from the building beyond the cages as I reached for the gate. And then a hairy arm, slick with sweat, wrapped itself about my throat. “What is this? Did we miss one? Shall we drink its blood or collar it with the rest of them?”
“Never again!” I shouted. “I'll not allow it.”
“Not allow? Let us show you who will allow what. . . .”
My hand that held my knife was wrapped around behind me, until I was forced to drop the weapon to make them stop . . . only they didn't stop. I screamed as my shoulder snapped. But the warrior was dragged off my back and I lay in the dirt sobbing. . . .
Get away! Run! I cannot hold!
...
only to wake again to a roaring blast of heat from a fiery furnace. I was stretched upon the tilted slab as a wide strip of glowing metal was pulled from the fire, but before they could wrap it about my neck, the Zhid who held me down was jerked away and thrown to the ground.
Get away from here! Run! Their collars are real. Their knives are real. You'll be trapped here if you stay. . . .
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The desert noonday blinded me as I stumbled out of the smithy, cradling my arm, tears of pain and frustration running from my face. . . .
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The sunlight vanished. I moaned with the pain of my torn shoulder, which did not vanish with the fire and the Zhid. Clutching my arm, I crept closer to see if the man on the table was truly flesh or stone, alive or dead or only another vision. He looked dead. No trace of color in lips or cheeks, his skin with the waxy pallor of those who have lost an inordinate amount of blood. His eyes were open, one of them half occluded by the stone. They were sunken and hollow, wholly black, as they had been when he was a favored guest of the Lords of Zhev'Na and would return from his nights of sorcery with his hosts. I did not believe he could see anything in the world I walked.
“Can you hear me?” I whispered.
Get away from here.
His lips did not move, but it was not the voice of my own fears that spoke in my mind, nor had it been throughout that wicked day.
Go. I cannot hold for long.
“We've come for you, your friend Paulo and I.”
No!
A surge of fear, grief, and despair came near knocking me off my feet.
Get away! You can do nothing for me. Tell them . . . tell my father . . . Ah . . .
A groan resonated in my thoughts, and blood ran from his blackened eyes like tears of horror. Spears of brilliance shot from the spinning ring once more. . . .
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. . . and I was standing on a tower in Avonar, watching as the Zhid swarmed over the city walls. The empty-eyed warriors slaughtered the Dar'Nethi one by one as the desperate defenders fell back through the streets. Warning bells rang. Balefires burned on the heights like scarlet demon eyes. Behind me refugees streamed out of the rear gates, while below me, all around, and everywhere, Avonar, the City of Light, was in flames. The night had come. The last night. Unending slaughter. Unending darkness. Unending pain . . .
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Truth held me in its steady gaze and left me no alternatives. While watching the destruction of all our hope, seeing wave upon wave of the soulless enemy pour through a ragged breach in the white walls, I fumbled for the dagger at my belt. My right arm unusable, my awkward left hand did the work in a place far distant from the nighttime battle that held my senses in thrall. The deed must be done before I could return from this place to the bowels of Zhev'Na.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered, tearing at flimsy fabric, feeling for the right place. His flesh was already cold when I struck. As warm blood gushed over my hand, the vision of terror flickered and faded, and I stood once again in the Chamber of the Oculus, looking down on the tortured young man with my dagger in his heart. From the doorway behind me came a cry of dismay.
“Liar! Murderer! You'll die for this!”
My dagger clattered to the floor as a ragged, bloody Paulo pulled me away from his friend with a roar. Darkness fell as his fist proved to me the power of love and grief.
“He won't die. He won't die.” From somewhere in the thrall of midnight, I willed the words past my thick tongue. I had to be fast or the matter of Gerick's dying would be of no importance next to the matter of my own. Was my timing always to be so wretched? I grasped for a handhold that would help me drag myself upright.
Fool, not the right hand or you'll be flat out again.
Darkness toyed with my senses until I was motionless long enough to banish it.
Now, again. Left hand on the cold, broken stone this time. When the streak of painful fire split my aching head, I thought I might be transported back into the young Lord's visions . . . or dreams or memories or whatever were these unending horrors to which he was condemned. But my distorted vision seemed to be only the result of the brain-rattling blow Paulo had laid on me when he saw me stabbing his dearest friend and king. Fortunately, he was so much stronger than me he felt no need to consummate his murderous intent before attending to the young Lord. My handlight had died out, leaving the lurid gleaming of the oculus our only illumination.
“He won't die.” This time the words took shape in the air, though heavily distorted by my swollen lip. “She'll have worked it so he can'tâeven if he wants to.”
The lanky figure whirled about, his freckled face ravaged with unashamed grief. “You meant to kill him all along. I knew it.”
He hadn't heard me, and it hurt so much when he grabbed my hair and wrenched me to my knees that I wasn't sure I could say it again. His knife reflected the purple-green-and-gold light as he bared my throat, all the time the tears running down his grimy face. “I told you you'd die for it.”
“Listen to me if you want to help him,” I croaked. “He won't die from what I did. But I had to stop him. His visions were going to kill us. I think my shoulder's broken, and not from falling down the stairs.”
“You're a cursed traitorous liar. Why would I believe you?”
“He's breathing, Paulo. I stabbed him in the heart, but he's still breathing.”
The blood welling out of the knife wound slowed, the red droplets rolling down the cocoon of shellstone that covered Gerick's flanks. But his chest still moved.
“We don't have much time,” I said, clutching my throbbing arm and easing my aching body upward, bracing myself on the fallen slab. “We've got to get him out of this before the wound heals. Whatever she's done to him makes the things in his head come alive. He tried to save me from getting hurt by them, but it wasn't easy and not always successful, and he may not be able to protect us any longer. It's why he's been trying to frighten everyone away. Don't you see?”
Paulo shook his head. I didn't envy him his dilemma.
“Trust me, Paulo. I'm telling you that he's doing exactly what you say he's done before. He's trying to save us. Trying to save everyone by creating that illusion of terror out on the plains to keep them away from here. No matter the cost to himself. These things inside the fortress are walking out of his nightmares alive, and he can't control them.”
“I won't leave him here.”
Feeling a momentary reprieve, I pressed my advantage and moved in for a closer look. “We've got to break away the shellstone where it holds him inâand undo the straps. That's the trickiest, as that's where D'Sanya's enchantment will be held. And we'll have to time it just right. Once he's free of the enchantment, if the knife wound isn't healed yet, he'll bleed to death, but if it heals before we've got him away, his visions will start coming alive again, and we'll get skewered by some Zhid.”
“Shit.”
“I couldn't think of any other way to make him stop. He has no control of it.”
Paulo closed his eyes and tugged at a clump of his sandy hair, as if to focus his thoughts. “I've got linen bandages in my pack.”
“Good. You can bash away the shellstone while I look at the bolts. But first”âI really hated to ask himâ“you've got to tie up my arm, or I'm going to pass out and be no help at all.”
He did it, and gently enough, considering the circumstances. Fortunately he appeared to be uninjured. From the blood decorating his shirt and breeches, I didn't have to ask about the other fellow.
“What about that?” he said, pointing to the spinning ring. “If I was to stand on the table, I could grab it . . . stop it maybe . . .”
“No! Don't touch it. Don't even look at it. I once saw a slave touch one of the rings back in the Lords' house, and it withered his hand. We don't have power enough to deal with it. We just have to get him away from it.”
To my relief, what I'd seen as bolts through Gerick's hands and feet were, in fact, long spikes attached to the metal straps, like those I'd seen in D'Sanya's lectorium. Barbed, I remembered, thus wicked enough. Only the straps were bolted to the rock. If we could get them loose, then the spikes could be eased out of his flesh. With luck, there would be no damage to his bones. With luck, we could stop the bleeding. With luck, removing the straps and the shellstone and getting him away from the oculus would leave him free of enchantment. With luck. I had never considered myself a particularly lucky person.
Warning Paulo to stay back, I touched one of the metal straps with my finger. The gut-wrenching slap of power convinced me instantly that we needed a tool with which to get them loose. D'Sanya's enchantments were far beyond me. Setting Paulo to chipping at the thin layers of shellstone with a fist-sized rock, I cast my handlight again and explored the adjoining rooms.
Several of the rooms had collapsed walls and were completely filled with rubble. One was littered with piles of old bones. I spoke words of peace sending and apologized for having no incense, then left quickly.
A skull sat in a niche above the doorway of the innermost chamber. The lintel was cracked and the doorway skewed to one side, the heavy wooden door hanging by one hinge, but the room itself was intact. I had never been inside the Vault of the Skull when I lived in Zhev'Na, only heard tales of cruel and restless spirits who inhabited it. But someone more substantial than a ghost had been here . . . and fairly recently, too. A torch in a wall bracket still smelled of oil. I whispered the spell to set it aflame, then let my handlight die. I'd best hoard power for the spikes.
The chamber was a Metalwright's workroom, containing tools and materials similar to those I'd seen in D'Sanya's lectorium. I dared not touch the shaped scraps on the worktable, but in one corner lay neat stacks of metal bars of all lengths and sizes. They looked fairly innocent. I grabbed a long flat bar of black steel and a few of the tools and stuffed them under my arm. Grabbing the torch from the bracket, I then hurried back to the larger chamber.
Paulo had created a mountain of stone chips. His face was coated with chalky dust. In a few places the sweat held enough of the shellstone dust that a thin white glaze had formed, like the skim of ice on a still pond. He wiped his face with his upper arm. “He's bleeding again,” he said as I came in, “but the knife wound has started to close. As you said.”
“Good. I knew she wouldn't want him to die. As long as he doesn't heal too fast . . .”
I found a bracket for the torch on a nearby column, gave Paulo the steel bar, and warned him again not to touch the metal straps with his hands. “When you get the straps loose from the rock, I'll get the spikes off him.” He nodded and set to work, levering the black bar under one wrist strap and prying with all his strength, his shoulders bulging. I took up his rock and carefully chipped away the brittle stone that had molded the young Lord's cheekbones.