Empire of Dust (28 page)

“You little...” He drops the useless base of the torch and springs at her. But Cyn dances through the darkness to the other end of the rock pile as he loses purchase, the rocks tumbling under his heavier, clumsier weight. He claws at the rocks, climbs up a bit, then slides back down, spread-eagled. Cyn jumps down and stabs him through the back of his breastplate, feeling her blade hit the rocks beneath. The man groans and is still.

With each life she takes, she feels stronger, more vibrant, more powerful. Her blood hums. Her heart beats like a battle drum.

Cyn jumps to the bottom of the rock heap and sees one of the wounded guards, his left arm bleeding heavily, stumbling toward her with his sword outstretched. She hits his weapon hard, sending it flying, kicks him hard in the groin and, when he's doubled over in pain, yanks a large paving stone from the ground and crashes it down on his head. Then she darts over a pile of orange roof tiles to pick up his sword. Now she has one in both hands.

She stands there, panting. Done. Free. But she can't just slink away. Where would she go but back to Pella? Olympias would return, too, and try to kill her.

She's not free yet. She cannot let Olympias live. She must kill that lying bitch of a queen.

Like a shadow in the moonlight, she returns to the crumpled courtyard and once again enters the Labyrinth. Without a torch, she feels as if she has been swallowed by a Titan and wanders lost in his bowels. She tests each step with her toe to make sure she is not going to pitch headlong into some hole and, like a blind person, feels her way along with her left hand, one sword clutched firmly in her right, the other tucked into her belt.

The tunnel slopes downward into the cellars of the legendary palace, and the farther she goes the more the cloying smell of ancient dampness bothers her nose. She feels as if she is in a tomb headed straight for the Underworld, with all its terrifying monsters.

Suddenly her left hand touches nothing. Feeling around, she realizes there are three choices she can make: left, right, or straight ahead. Which one should she take? When she docked in Amnisos and asked the way to the Knossos palace, the locals warned her not to enter the Labyrinth at any cost. Most people who go down there exploring never return. The ghosts take pleasure in blowing torches and lanterns out, they warned. Either the trespassers get lost in the dark and die of starvation, or something worse.

She hesitates. It would make more sense for her to wait outside, just beside the tunnel entrance, for them to leave. The guards will not have their swords in hand, and before they know what is happening she will kill them. And then the queen. But her she will kill more slowly.

As Cyn turns, she hears something. A low voice coming from the right-hand tunnel. Silent as a ghost, she follows it. About thirty paces away she stops short of the opening to a large storeroom well-lit with wall torches. On all four sides, enormous round-bellied grain amphorae as high as a man's breast nestle in storage holes.

In the center, she sees the queen. Olympias is kneeling before a hideous, larger-than-life-sized statue of the Minotaur, its human body stocky and grotesquely muscular, its bull head full of hate and hunger. Olympias wears around her neck a large green snake as if it were a scarf, its emerald eyes glowing in the warm brown light. The queen holds her arms out in front of her, palms facing the statue, as she chants in a tongue Cyn does not understand. The guards seem to have vanished.

She creeps behind Olympias, sword raised.

“Bitch, prepare to go to Hades,” she cries, raising her sword. Olympias turns around, red mouth parted, clutching the snake as if it were her child. The two guards spring out of a dark opening. Cyn engages them both, lunging, parrying, thrusting with both swords, whirling and jumping. One of the guards, the shorter one, raises his sword so that his underarm is exposed, that soft, white area unprotected by armor. Cyn thrusts her left sword deeply into it as the man screams and keels over. The other guard, the one who seems familiar, keeps up with her two swords and cries, over their metallic din, “Princess! Stop this. I do not wish to kill you.”

A trembling voice comes from behind the statue of the Minotaur. “Kill her! I will not mind.”

Anger boils in Cyn's veins and she redoubles her efforts to wound the remaining guard. In some positions Cyn has a clear view of her opponent, the twitch of his neck muscle, the glint in his eyes, the movement of his sword. Then they circle a pace or two, and he is plunged in the black moving shadows cast by the torches.

He lunges but she can't quite see where his sword is—

Cold metal and blood-curdling pain enter deep in her abdomen, right below her navel, and she gasps, dropping a sword. The guard opens his mouth in surprise, pulls his sword out of Cyn and looks with horror at the red mess on it. She slides her hand down her skirt and feels blood, warm and sticky, gluing her leather skirt to her skin. It seems that the jolting spasms of an earthquake rupture her every organ, every muscle and bone, followed by a rolling, violent tidal wave of torment.

Concentrate. She needs only to wait this out.

Doing her best to ignore the agony, Cyn uses her remaining sword to twist the guard's weapon out of his hand, sending it flying across the room. He dashes for it, and Cyn, realizing the guard is between her and the queen, grabs a torch and runs down the nearest passage, which is not the one she used to come in. Her abdomen throbbing unbearably, she turns right and left and left again, then right and right—or is it left and right?—passing room after room full of fallen ceiling stones, cracked amphorae and festoons of cobwebs as blood continues to pour out of her heinous wound, soaking her leather skirt and gushing down her legs.

Perhaps she can hide her torch and herself in an amphora until Olympias and the guard are gone and she is healed. Surely they can't check all the hundreds—perhaps thousands—of storage vessels down here. She stumbles into another storeroom and drags herself toward the giant jugs in the corner. She lays her torch across a jug and grips the thick-lipped opening of its neighbor, intending to heave herself up and into it.

But before she can, she keels over from pain and vomits, then lies down on her chest, tearing ancient dirt in her clenching hands. Something sharp digs into her chest. She pushes herself off and sees she's lying on human bones, but whether they are those of a recent lost wanderer or a palace resident killed in the earthquake two ages ago, she does not know.

She must wait, that is all. Wait until the wound heals. Then she will stalk Olympias and the guard if they are still in the Labyrinth and kill them both. But for the moment, she is weak from blood loss and must rest. Should she throw the torch into the amphora so Olympias and her guard don't see its glow? If it goes out, will her life eventually be snuffed out along with it if she can't find her way back in the utter darkness of the Labyrinth? The smoke man—the vision from her dream—told her there were some things even his protective spell couldn't save her from.

But she cannot move. She can only hope her enemies run down another passage.

Torch smoke curls in front of her, lengthening. Soon it is the height of a man and has the head of a man with broad shoulders and arms in wide sleeves. It shifts in the torchlight so that she is not sure if it is an illusion brought about by her wound or if it is him. The man of smoke. Come to help her kill Olympias and her guards.

“No, my girl,” he whispers in his misty voice. “I am not here to help you kill them. In fact, I am come to ensure the opposite occurs. You must let them capture you.”

“No!” Cyn cries as she feels the unbearable throbbing in her gut finally start to lessen. “Never!”

“You must go to Dardania, my child. That is where your fate awaits you.”

Cyn pushes herself up to a seated position. The pain is draining rapidly, and the reduction of pain feels like the greatest physical pleasure she has ever known. “I will not be sold like a broodmare,” she says, spittle flying through the smoke standing before her. “Tell me who you are. Tell me why you protect me. Tell me how to become a great ruler and general.”

The figure bends over her and whispers, almost like a lover, “Very well. I will tell you how to become a great ruler and general.”

Cyn leans forward, feeling the wispy insubstantial body wrap around her. It reminds her of sitting around a fire pit in winter when a gust of wind comes tumbling down the roof hole and wafts smoke all over everyone. But this smoke doesn't make her cough or sting her eyes.

“Go to Dardania.” Suddenly the smoke dissipates. She reaches for it, trying to clutch it in her hands, but she grasps at nothing.

“Over here! I think I see a light!” calls a male voice. Cyn freezes, contemplating the smoke man's words. Two figures enter the storeroom.

The tall guard skids to a halt before her with a torch, kneels, and stares at her face. “Princess, are you gravely wounded?” he asks. He almost sounds like he cares.

“No, I am not wounded at all,” she says. He pulls up her bloody, dripping tunic and stares at her abdomen. There is only the faintest pink line where her wound had been. He looks into her eyes, questioning. And suddenly she remembers him. The guard outside Alexander's office the night she found Sarina in there using the royal seal. The soldier who picked her up from the road when she had collapsed after escaping the Aesarian Lords. The one she called a turd-eating, goat-humping son-of-a-bitch. The one with the white smile and perfect body. Priam.

“I thought...” he begins, frowning.

“Chain her,” says a sharp female voice. After a moment's hesitation, Priam takes manacles off his belt. His hands are strong yet not unkind on her arms as he pulls them behind her back. His breath is hot on her neck as he snaps the manacles on her wrists. “I thought I had killed you,” he whispers.

“Take her to the ship, Priam.” The imperious coldness of that voice cannot chill the warmth of the man's strong hands on Cyn's arms. “Go with her to Dardania. Stay with her there to make sure she does her duty or I will have your head.”

“Yes, my queen.”

Cyn twists around to look up at him, knowing Olympias can't see her smile.

Safe from the queen's glance in the shadows, Priam smiles back.

Chapter Twenty-Six

HEPH DIGS HIS
knife into the hinges of the dungeon door, trying to force open a small crack in the iron. They've been here for three days and nights now and have eaten all their food supplies. Every evening at sunset a guard opens the door to set a bucket of water inside, seemingly unaware they might need food. When they begged him to take them to Princess Laila, or at least bring them something to eat, he ignored them. Heph knows they have to do something to get out of here or they will starve to death.

Kat draws her sword from its scabbard and admires its reflection in the sliver of moonlight coming through the high, barred window. She has been practicing with it the past days, attacking imaginary warriors in the cell, and sometimes Heph sparred with her. Just to have something to do.

“Beautiful,” she says, running her hand over the glistening iron. “And in this place, utterly useless.”

Her words sink into the cool, humid air around them. They both know that their weapons won't do them any good. Not against an army of darkness. That's why the guards allowed them to keep them. This afternoon, Heph and Kat discussed attacking the guard the next time he opened the door to set down the bucket, but a few hours ago, when they gazed at his enormous creaking clay muscles and flaming eyes, neither one made a move.

The city of Sharuna is damned, cursed, alive and dead at the same time. Though Heph can hardly comprehend the horrors they witnessed in the city's streets—at first seemingly abandoned and then suddenly echoing with the anguished cries of the dying and the stench of the dead—the images refuse to stop swirling through him, making him feel sick somewhere deep in his gut. This time a few months ago he was still a schoolboy who hardly put any stock in the notion of magic. And now here he is, inextricably caught up with a girl who can accomplish wondrous feats of the mind, in a city that is clearly under the spell of a very dark magic the likes of which he's never imagined.

With each hack of his knife at the stubborn hinge, he thinks of the irony. Less than a month ago he was breaking Kat out of Pella's damp and moldy dungeon in a rush of righteousness. He believed she was innocent and, just as Alexander always claimed, he acted first and thought later. He doesn't regret it, of course. Then again, he still can't shake the foreboding prophecy from his mind—Leonidas's hastily scrawled words in the margins of the Cassandra scroll... That the moon would blot out the sun; the girl would kill the boy, and the world would come undone. Kat, Leonidas wrote, was the girl, the moon; Alex was the boy, the sun.

And now, here he is, attempting to break her out of another dungeon—only this time, from within.

Though he hates himself for thinking it, he wonders if Kat really
is
doomed, if somehow the magic in her has brought about this terrible turn of fate. If the powers in her could ever become as dark and corrupt as the magic of Sharuna. He pictures Pella like Sharuna, corpse-strewn and ruined at night, Kat sunbathing in the Poseidon garden during the day.

And that's when he drops his knife and turns to look at her.

Her big eyes stare back at him. “What is it?” Her voice comes out like barely more than a breath.

“Forget escaping. I have a better idea.”

Kat looks at him suspiciously. “Which is?”

“We'll offer them something extremely rare and valuable instead, something that might particularly interest a legendary, enchanted princess.”

“But we have nothing...” Kat surveys the darkness of their chamber, and in the shifting moonlight he can see how vulnerable she looks, despite her courage, despite her strength. After all, she is just a girl, no older than him, who until recently had never left her small village. Who hadn't known she was sister to the prince, and who
still
doesn't fully know the extent of her power, nor the power she has over
him
. Which is why he can hardly believe what he's about to say.

“But we do,” he says softly.

He continues to look at her, the mixture of sweetness and fire in her eyes. And then, slowly, understanding.

“Me,” she says, a tight edge to her voice. “You want to give her
me
?”

“No,” Heph says quickly. “That's just an excuse to get her to agree to meet with us. To keep us from dying of starvation in here. If we can just see her, maybe we can convince her to let us go, or find what it is she wants and promise to get it for her.”

Kat lowers her eyes. “But what if the thing she really wants
is
me? What if she makes you leave me here?”

Heph runs a hand through his dark curls. “You're right,” he says. “It was a stupid idea.” He picks up the knife and returns to chipping at the door hinge.

After a moment, he feels the weight of a calming hand on his shoulder. “I'll do it,” she says.

“No, really, you're right,” he says. “We'll find another way.”

“Heph, listen to me,” she says, her breath warm on the back of his neck. “I've lost my entire family. Alex is all I have left. I'll do anything to help him, even if it really does mean staying here. If the princess agrees to see us, and if she wants me to stay—bear in mind, that's two very big ifs—you can return to rescue me.” Here she smiles, just slightly. “But first let's see if we can convince her to help Alex. You've said all along that this trip isn't about either of us. It's about him.”

Heph turns. A shaft of moonlight makes her hair glow silver. How can this girl, so willing to give up her life to help Alex, be the one prophesied to kill him? The prophecy must be wrong or, at least, Leonidas's interpretation must be incorrect.

His gaze sweeps the four walls and lands on their packs, empty of even a scrap of food. He feels his stomach rumble. Despite the darkness, he can see a gleam of eagerness in her eyes. Even if he has to leave her here, she will be better off in the palace with the princess than starving with him in this filthy cell.

“All right,” he says. “Scream.”

Kat's shrieks pierce the air as Heph twists her arms behind her back and holds her in a tight lock. “I won't!” she cries. “I won't tell her!”

“You will!” Heph grunts, surprised at how strong Kat is, and how readily she has put on the act. If she really wanted to break from his grasp, she probably could. “It's our only way to get out of here!”

“Guard!” Kat wails. “Help me!”

“Guard!” Heph repeats. “Come and see what I have for the princess!”

Heavy footsteps echo down the corridor. A key scrapes in a lock. The door opens. The guard's eyes are as orange and fiery as the flames curling from his torch. Heph feels a shiver of revulsion creep up and down his spine.

“What is this?” the guard says, entering, his bulk completely blocking the door.

“This girl has Blood Magic,” Heph says, as Kat struggles against him. “She is a great enchantress. Perhaps the princess can use her magical abilities.”

The guard steps forward, holding the torch close to Kat's face, and stares at her with a terrifying, burning emptiness in his eyes. “The princess will know of this,” he says in a deep monotone voice. As quickly as he appeared, he's gone again, almost melting into the darkness beyond their cell with a click of the lock.

Heph lets go of Kat and she turns to face him. “Do you think this will work?” she asks, searching his eyes. A cobweb is caught in her hair, and a streak of dirt covers most of her right cheek. How any anyone be so filthy and yet so incomparably beautiful?

“I don't know,” he says honestly, his pulse thudding through him. This
has
to work. He is too far down this road. He is too committed to the prince to fail. Without Alex, Heph would be nothing. As for Kat, he realizes with sudden, simple clarity that he is in love with her. Without this wildly exciting, quicksilver girl, so strong and brave and
noble
,
his life would be flat and gray and empty. Not a life worth living. But he cannot ever express his love, cannot commit himself to both her and Alex. Not with the prophecy weighing on him like it is. Not with the chance that one could do harm to the other.

And on top of these miserable contradictions, there's the fact that he promised her he'd never kiss her again. Not after the way she reacted. He can't stand the idea that she doesn't want him. Even with her rejection, he can't cut the hope out of his chest.

He studies her from across their chamber, trying to memorize everything about her. The way she bites her lip to steady her nerves. The way she stands a bit on her toes, as though she's always just on the brink of running. He looks at her until he can't look at her anymore without her guessing the truth of his feelings.

After a time, Heph hears boots marching toward them and sees a glow of torchlight outside the door. Kat jumps up. The guard unlocks the door and says, “The princess will see you now. Come with me. Bring your things.”

Kat flashes Heph a look that reflects his own emotions back at him, somewhere between terror and victory.

They march up a long spiral staircase and through a room with several silent, motionless guards, who truly look like crumbling ancient statues except for the flames coming from their eyes. Together, they stand and fall in behind Kat and Heph.

The door to the street opens, and for a moment Heph is glad to be out of the filthy cell, out in the night air—until the stench of rotting flesh stings his eyes and makes him want to retch.

“Follow me,” the guard says, leading the way down a street lined on both sides with charred, roofless buildings.

Heph steps over sooty copper pots in front of one door and heaps of scorched leather sandals at the next. This was a street of colorful shops once. Lying in front of the third door is the bloated, blackened corpse of a very fat man, stiff fingers wrapped tightly around a half-burned sack of gold. His head spins at the thought that all this could even be real. He had been taught—both before he came to Pella and after with Alex's tutors—to rely on logic and his own perseverance. That the gods existed—or at least they had centuries ago—as well as a few witches and fortune-tellers who dug up bones and sold spells. But he had never considered any enchantment like the one in Sharuna could exist. He feels the horror of it crushing him, grinding him down like the heel of an enormous boot.

Heph puts an arm around Kat and finds she's shaking. Even though she's Snake Blood and trained with Ada in her enchanted fortress, Kat, too, has evidently never experienced anything as gruesome and ghastly as this.

They turn at the next corner and Heph sees a street nearly blocked with the broken golden statues of gods three times the size of a man, arms crossed over their chests. Behind them, temple columns painted lapis blue have fallen in orderly rows.

Then he sees it. The royal palace. Not burned and broken; it has obviously been spared from the enchantment that falls over the rest of Sharuna at sunset. The windowless walls sloping outward to the ground are covered with colorful paintings of war: Egyptian kings in chariots fire arrows at fleeing enemy soldiers who leap into the air in panic or fall beneath horses' hooves. Soldiers launch spears and wave knives as winged gods fly calmly above. Huge cressets—iron fire baskets on long poles filled with logs—burn brightly around the base of the walls, casting enormous shadows of the actual soldiers standing guard there.

As Heph and Kat enter the gate, these soldiers fall in behind them. They walk through a courtyard with pillared porticoes on all four sides and enter the double doors in the portico ahead. In the corridor, life-sized paintings of Egyptian gods seem to move in the torchlight, turning their profiled heads to gaze at them full-face. Heph recognizes Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the afterlife, and his consort, Bast, the mother goddess with the head of a cat, and wonders if they will jump off the walls and attack him and Kat. He is glad when they emerge in a fragrant garden with a long pool.

At the far end of the garden stand two pillars—one seems to be of solid gold, the other of emerald—and both gleam in the light of cressets with an unearthly radiance. The guard motions Heph and Kat to enter the door between them.

What will they find inside? Has the princess, too, become a rotting corpse? Heph's heart thuds in his chest.

They enter a throne room with ceilings six or seven times Heph's height, the walls and countless thick columns brightly painted with figures of kings and queens and kneeling captives. Set into sconces on the columns are dozens of priceless alabaster bowls, the oil lamps inside lighting up the colored striations—white and cream, yellow and orange—and casting the entire chamber in a soft glow.

Heph has a sudden pang of longing for the comparative coziness of King Philip's throne room, the simple stone benches on all sides, the plain iron wall sconces for resin-soaked torches, and the low ceiling designed to retain heat from the fire pit. It is a room where anyone—even the lowliest peasant with a grievance—can feel free to speak. Laila's throne room—so alien and extravagant—would make the greatest nobleman feel small and unimportant, as perhaps it was designed to do.

And then he sees her. Atop a tall dais, the princess sits on a golden throne, each arm a roaring lion. Her skin is the color of burnished bronze. Her nose is long and commanding, her full lips are painted a deep, bloody red. Her large eyes are of a brown so dark they are almost black, and a thick, shoulder-length, blue-black wig frames her face. She is fiercely, breathtakingly beautiful, but there's something icily cold about her.

She stands, and Heph sees that she is impossibly tall and slender, though perhaps it is the effect of her crown, a golden pillar rising from her head at least six handsbreadths high and flaring wide at the top. So liquid are her movements that Laila seems to pour herself down the dais steps rather than walk.

Kat, Heph notices, is massaging her elbow as she takes in the princess's robe of turquoise netting with gold sequins and carnelian beads, and a sheer, sparkling gold capelet around her shoulders. Even the princess's sandals are gilded, with thongs shaped like lotuses. It occurs to Heph that Kat, in her travel-stained tunic, covered with filth from the dungeon, must be comparing herself to Laila's regal splendor.