Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (64 page)

She descended the ladder, not looking back. The man I did not follow. The first ladder gave out on dirt, a tiny space within the wall, banks of sod and timber, so tight

king's dragon
she could hardly breathe. She found the other ladder and climbed still farther down, twelve rungs, to a tunnel lined with fired bricks. The space was barely wider than her shoulders. She hesitated, touched her bow, then drew her short sword instead. Her fingers brushed the words graven in the hilt: "This good sword is the friend ofLucian."

"I pray you," she whispered, "be my good friend as well."

She walked cautiously, for it was dark and she could hear the distorted echoing noises of battle not far above her, crossing and crossing back like a complicated tapestry being woven. Pray God that this tapestry was not to be the fall of the city of Gent.

The narrow side tunnel debouched into a larger passageway, one that might support two men walking abreast but not more. Behind, where she judged the wall stood, she caught the flickering glare of fire and smelled the stinging scent of smoke. Her eyes had already adjusted to the dark. Ahead, it was darker and more silent. Behind, she heard a grunt and the hard thunk of a person landing on dirt. She whirled. Saw the betraying gleam of white hair. What else to do?

She had the advantage. She ran forward, and just as the Eika whipped round, she stabbed it in the gut. Felt the resistance of its skin, as if it was alloyed with metal. But Lucian's was a good sword indeed. Perhaps the Dariyans had known secrets of metallurgy lost to the blacksmiths of today. Perhaps Eika skin was not as tough as it looked. The blade sank in and pierced the creature through.

It howled and sliced at her. She yanked backward and cut at its face; it went down. The stink was horrible. Above, fire flared and she heard a man screaming over and over and over again, Ai! Ai! Ai! and more distantly, heard through smoke and pounding feet and shouting and the whole chaotic cacophony of a battle being slowly and brutally lost, a sharper call: "To the prince! To the prince!"

She jumped back from the Eika's body. It twitched and she fled away down the tunnel. If any followed, she did not notice them. She was too busy running. Too busy remembering.

He had touched her cheek. Did he care for her? Surely he would be killed. And what did it matter, now? There were not enough defenders in Gent now that the Eika had breached the gate. Not enough in any case, if the Eika had, as their leader, an enchanter
—even if his only gifts were for illusion. Illusion was a powerful weapon in the hands of one who dared use it any way he wished.

"Save those you can."
So Sanglant had said. Surely that was why the saint had appeared to them. Saints, like angels, like the daimones of the upper air, were not bound to the world of time: They could see the future.

She passed side tunnels and all she heard was fighting and screaming, all she smelled was blood and smoke.

The tunnel led to the barracks. She climbed up a narrow ladder into the tackroom, head butting into a trapdoor which, with main force, she shoved open from underneath, scraping knuckles on the iron bands that bound the trapdoor together.

The barracks were entirely empty now; there was only the distant sound of drums and the clarion call of the horn. And, drifting ever closer, the aroma and music of battle. All the Dragons were gone.
Gone.
Dead, soon enough. She had no energy to cry. She had to warn Wolfhere. She had to lead as many people out through the catacomb as possible before the city fell. She no longer doubted Gent was doomed.

But at the door of the barracks, she stopped dead. Hesitated and turned back, staring at the empty ranks of stalls, smelling the straw, some of it dry, some of it damp with urine or manure. The barracks would burn very well.

She ran back to the stall where she and Manfred and Wolfhere had slept. Manfred's saddle sat against a post,
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just where it had always sat this past month. Its presence was like an accusation. What had happened to him? Was he still alive? Had she though of him once since the breaching of the gate? But she did not have time; she should not even be here. Every moment meant another life saved, or lost.

But she had to get the book. She heaved her saddle up and over, grabbed the saddle bags and slung them over her shoulder. Then she sprinted back, outside, crossing the deserted courtyard. It was far too quiet, here in the mayor's palace. "Liath!"

Wolfhere stood on the palisade. He practically jumped down the ladder, he was in such haste to get to her.

"No hope!" she cried. "The Eika have breached the gate. Everyone must arm and fight, or go to the cathedral." "How
—?"

"An enchanter." She remembered, suddenly, that strange exchange. Someday it might be important that more people than she and Sanglant knew that name. "He calls himself Bloodheart."

Wolfhere nodded once, sharply. "Then go, Liath. Go. If you win free, you must get word to the king."

She did not wait to ask him what he meant to do. She did not have time. Already smoke rose in thick clouds, heavy, black, and forbidding, from the eastern part of the city, and flames licked the roofs of houses near enough to see. Perhaps the mayor's guard had already run to the eastern gate.

But when she crossed out through the arch and started down the main thoroughfare of Gent, she found utter confusion. The street was packed, every soul there wild with fear. Half of them seemed to be headed to the western gate. Some few, armed with butcher knives and staves and shovels and hatchets and any object that might be used as a weapon, shoved their way toward the

east. But not as many ran east. Mostly, the people of Gent had forgotten everything and completely panicked.

Liath pushed and elbowed her way through the crowd. At first she tried to yell, every third step, "To the cathedral!" but there was no point to it. Her voice simply could not be heard above the roar of shouting, donkeys braying, chickens squawking, children wailing, fire snapping, and untold feet slapping down on plank and stone roadway
—all headed every direction and none.

But she needn't have worried. Pushing her way along the length of the palace palisade, crossing the square, and reaching the broad steps and inviting facade of Gent Cathedral proved the easiest part of her journey.

The cathedral was packed.

People were shoved together on the steps, crowding in, crying and pleading, lifting their children high over their heads so the infants might be granted sanctuary inside if not their own selves.

"Make way!" Liath cried, although their noise drowned out her words. She drew her sword and used its hilt to knock hard into the people. When they turned, angry or sobbing, they gave way before her Eagle's badge.

In this fashion, though slowly, she got up the steps. If possible, it was more crowded inside. All of them had shoved inside until she could not understand how anyone could breathe pressed up toward the Hearth, the haven, the holy space. Surely not even savages like the Eika would profane the holy space of the God of Unities.

They stank of fear and sweat. It was impossible, absolutely impossible, to imagine getting through this crowd to the Hearth where she might hope to find the biscop. She sheathed her sword.

And then, amazingly, she heard a shift in the tone of the crowd. Like a muting blanket drawn bit by bit across the congregation, the wordless mutter and yelling and
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weeping took on form and flow. Creeping back from the front, a hymn slowly took hold.

"Lift me up!" Liath commanded.

Half to her surprise, two men did so, grabbing her by the legs and hoisting her up. There, at the Hearth, the biscop presided, arms lifted toward the heavens as she led the congregation in a psalm.

"
'You that live in the shelter of Light, you who say, 'The Lord is my safe retreat, the Lady the fastness in which I trust.'

He will cover you with His pinions.

She will grant you safety beneath Her wings.

You shall not fear the arrow that flies at night or the spear that stalks by day.

A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand close at hand, but you it shall not touch.' '

Liath sang with them. When the psalm finished in a somber
Kyria,
the biscop turned her hands, palms outward, and the mass of people quieted so all were listening. Only the hiccuping sobs of terrified children broke the silence.

"Pray, let us have silence," cried the biscop.

In that moment, while silence trembled and the roar of fire and battle and distant drums leaked in through the walls and the open doors, before the panic of the people outside could overset this tenuous peace found here, Liath raised her voice. She called attention to herself in the very way Da had warned her against.

"Never be noticed. Never stand out. Never raise your voice."

"Biscop, I pray you, listen to my words. I am a King's Eagle!"

The men holding her shifted, and she had to steady herself, one hand on each of their shoulders. Every head in the cathedral skewed round, faces bleached white with fear. The biscop lowered her hands and signed to her to continue.

"Your Grace, please believe my words. I have seen a sign. St. Kristine appeared to me
—" Liath faltered. She could see she was losing their attention, their belief. "St. Kristine of the Knives appeared to Prince Sanglant! It was a true vision. There is a catacomb beneath the cathedral, a tunnel, leading west. By this way— That was all she had time for. A shout rose from the gathered crowd outside. "The Dragon! The Dragons have broken!" Liath clapped her hands over her ears just as the two men lost their grip on her. She fell but could not land hard because the people were packed so tightly in the cathedral. Even shoving, panicking, trying to move one way or the other, no one could shift more than half a step to right or left.

The next instant a horn call blasted through the space, echoing off stone, deafening her and every other soul inside. But it silenced the crowd long enough, just long enough, that the biscop could be heard.

"This I say!" she cried in her powerful voice. "This I say to you, my people, that I will not stir from this Hearth until all have reached safety or the Eika have been repulsed. So must all who are fit take up any weapon you can find and fight to save this, our city. In the name of Our Lady and Lord, in the name of St. Kristine who, though she suffered and died in this holy place, did not forsake us."

She drew breath, but such was the power of her voice and the tense expectation that none spoke or filled the void with clamor.

"So has St. Kristine appeared to the prince, he who even now fights with his own body to spare ours pain and desecration. This is my word, and you my people shall obey it. Let those who are children or who are nursing children follow this Eagle into the crypt, in an orderly fashion. Gather the children, for they and the holy relics of this Hearth are the treasures of our city.

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We must save them, if it is so willed by Our Lady and Lord and the saint who watched over us. Let the elder children shepherd the younger, and let the infirm wait with me at the Hearth. Let us put our trust in God. Lord, have mercy. Lady, have mercy upon us."

Her deacons brought torches. With the crowd parting before her, Liath took a torch and led the way down into the crypt. As she descended the steps, all the din and tumult was lost to the muffling encasement of stone and earth, to the cloak of death and the pale tombs of the holy dead. The torch burned steadily, heat blowing in her face, stinging her eyes.

She stood while deacons carrying the holy relics of St. Kristine crowded behind her and the stairs filled with softly weeping children, pressing, waiting. She felt them at her back like a weight: on her all depended.

"Save all you can,"
Sanglant had said. And others, crying out:
"The Dragons have broken."

She had no idea where the saint's tomb was. Everything looked changed. The crypt opened out before her in silent mystery, taciturn, unwilling to give up its secrets.

Then, on a whim, she knelt where her footsteps and Sanglant's, so short a time before, had scuffed the earth. She cast about, and
—
there!

On the dirt perhaps two strides away she saw the flecking of dried blood.

She followed this trail left by the bleeding saint. It led her to the sinkhole and the stairs that yawned into the black earth beneath. The crypt quickly filled behind her. Deacons whispered, frightened. An infant sobbed and was muffled.

Of the battle in Gent, she could hear nothing. She did not know whether Sanglant yet lived; she had no idea what had happened to Wolfhere and Manfred.

She could at least hope that Hanna had made it away from Gent alive. It seemed ironic now that Hanna, forced to flee, had been granted the safer path, though it had not seemed so at the time.

She could not delay. What lay there in the dark earth could not be worse than the fate awaiting those who faced the Eika onslaught. She took in a deep breath and started down the steps.

She counted as she went, aware always of the press of refugees at her back though she never turned to see them, to help them, to make sure they did not stumble. She had to walk the unknown path. She counted eighty-seven steps, because counting gave her the courage to go on, speaking the numbers aloud so she couldn't hear, so the blackness didn't seem so utterly enveloping. The air was close, smelling of mildew and earth. Once, or twice, hand brushing the wall, she thought her fingers touched worms or other moist creatures that live only in the night. But she did not have time to flinch. She had to press forward.