Hidden Warrior (32 page)

A few of the remaining prisoners had to be forced up, but most of them must have been braver, or shamed by the priest’s example. One man made the warriors’ salute as best he could with his bound hands and flung himself off. The jeering of the crowd failed for an instant, then redoubled as the next man clung to the rungs, struggling and pissing himself as the guards beat him about the head. The young boys and women went more quietly.

The old priests’ turns came last. They didn’t hesitate, except to raise their bound hands to their hearts and brows before they climbed the ladders. This impressed even the lowest sort in the crowd and no one threw anything at
them. Both tumbled off the ladders without struggle or protest.

The crowd was almost silent now. Ki thought he heard weeping. The old people had died quickly, their frail necks snapping like dry sticks. But the women and children were light and the warriors had necks like bulls; most struggled hard and long before Bilairy claimed them. Ki had to force himself to watch, not wanting to shame Tobin by turning away. Usually hangmen gave the strugglers a good yank on the legs to put them out of their misery, but no one helped them tonight.

When it was finally over the drumming resumed with a sharper, faster rhythm. A large, high-sided cart rumbled into the square, pulled by a pair of black oxen and surrounded by ranks of grey-backs with shields and upright swords. Six Harrier wizards stood in the back of the cart, facing inward with their arms linked.

No one dared throw anything at them, but an ugly muttering swelled to screams of anger and outrage. Ki shivered, feeling the sudden fury like a wave of nausea. But whether it was the Harrier wizards or their unseen prisoners who were jeered, he could not tell.

T
obin had never seen an execution before and it had taken all his willpower tonight not to kick Gosi into a gallop and flee. What little dinner he’d managed roiled and burned at the base of his throat and he swallowed convulsively, praying Korin and Porion would not see his weakness. None of the others seemed to be bothered by the spectacle; Korin was acting like this was the finest entertainment he’d ever seen, and shared whispered bets with some of the others on which of the hanged prisoners would last the longest.

As the cart reached the platform a sudden, irrational fear overwhelmed Tobin. What if it was Arkoniel they pulled out, or Iya? Gripping the reins so tight his fingers
ached, he watched as two naked prisoners were dragged from the cart.

It’s not them!
he thought, dizzy with relief. Both were men and neither was hairy like Arkoniel. There was no reason to think that it would have been him, he realized, but for an instant the possibility had seemed all too real.

Both men had elaborate patterns painted in red on their chests, and iron masks strapped over their faces. These were featureless except for slanting slits where the eyes and nose would be and gave the prisoners an evil, inhuman appearance. Metal shackles bound their wrists.

The guards forced them to their knees and Niryn stepped behind them, raising his hands above their heads. He’d always struck Tobin as rather bookish, but now he seemed to swell and grow taller, looming over the condemned.

“Behold the enemies of Skala!” he cried in a voice that carried to the farthest corners of the square. He waited until the renewed roar died away, then went on, “Behold these so-called wizards, who would overthrow the rightful ruler of Skala. Witches! Blighters of crops and flocks, preachers of sedition, these storm bringers call down lightning and fire on the innocent people of their villages. They defile the sacred name of Illior with perverse magics and threaten the very safety of our land!”

Tobin shuddered; these were charges of the most serious nature. Yet as he looked at the condemned wizards, it struck him how helpless and ordinary they looked. It was hard to imagine them hurting anyone.

Niryn pressed both hands to his brow and heart, then bowed low to the king. “King Erius, what is your will?”

Erius dismounted and climbed up to join him. Facing the crowd, he drew Ghërilain’s sword and planted the tip between his feet, hands folded over the hilt. “Cleanse the land, loyal wizards of Skala,” he cried. “Protect my people!”

No soldier stepped forward. Instead, Harrier wizards dragged the condemned to the upright frames. Three stood
a little apart, chanting steadily as the prisoners were loosed from their shackles and quickly bound spread-eagle to the frames with silver ropes.

One of them seemed drugged or ill. His legs would not support him and he had to be held upright as he was lashed into place. The other one was not so passive. Just as the wizards reached to tie his hands, he suddenly twisted loose and staggered forward. Raising his hands to his face, he let out a muffled scream and the iron mask shattered in a cloud of smoke and sparks. Blood spattered the robes of the closest wizards. Tobin watched in horrified fascination, unable to look away. The man’s bloody face was horribly torn, and twisted with agony. Shattered teeth showed in a defiant snarl as he raised his fists at the crowd, screaming, “Fools! Blind cattle!”

The wizards grappled with him, but the man fought wildly, throwing them off. “Your reckoning will come!” he shouted, pointing at the king. “The True Queen is at hand. She is among us already—”

He jerked away as another wizard seized him and suddenly he was staring straight down at Tobin.

Tobin thought he saw a spark of sudden recognition in those crazed eyes. A strange tingling sensation spread over him as they stared at each other, locked eye to eye, for what felt like a long time.

He sees me! He sees my real face!
Tobin thought numbly as something like joy came into the man’s eyes. Then the others were on him again, dragging him back.

Freed from that gaze, Tobin looked around in panic, wondering if the crowd would let him flee if Niryn denounced him. From the corner of his eye he saw the wizard and king standing apart from the scuffle, but didn’t dare look directly at them. Were they staring at him? Had they understood? When he finally chanced a look, however, both were watching the execution proceed.

The Harrier wizards hauled the struggling man back
by his arms and hair, yanking his head down so that another could gag him.

“Lightbearer will not be mocked!” he managed as they forced a loop of the silver rope between his teeth. Even then he kept fighting. Transfixed, Tobin didn’t notice the king move until he’d plunged the Sword of Ghërilain into the man’s belly.

“No!” Tobin whispered, horrified to see that honorable blade stained with a prisoner’s blood. The captive thrashed once, then crumpled forward as Erius withdrew the blade.

The wizards held the man upright and Niryn pressed his hand to the man’s brow. Still alive, the prisoner spat at him, leaving another red stain on his white robes. Niryn ignored this insult and began to chant softly.

The prisoner’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and his legs gave way. After that it was a simple matter to bind him into place on the frame.

“Proceed,” Erius ordered, calmly wiping his blade clean.

With order restored, the wizards formed a circle around the frames and began a new chant. It grew louder and louder until white flames, brighter than anything Tobin had ever seen blossomed over the condemned men’s bodies. There was no smoke, and none of the stench that sometimes wafted into the city from the burning grounds outside the walls. The doomed wizards struggled for a few seconds, then were consumed as quickly and completely as a moth’s wing in a candle flame. Within a few seconds nothing remained of them but their charred hands and feet, still hanging in the silver bonds at the corners of the scorched wooden frame.

The searing brightness left dark spots before Tobin’s eyes. He tried in vain to blink them away as he stared at the frame on the left, remembering that look of recognition he’d glimpsed in the man’s pain-wracked face. Then the world was tilting crazily around him. The square, the jeering crowd, the pathetic, shriveled scraps on the frames, it
all disappeared and Tobin was staring instead at a gleaming golden city set on a high cliff above the sea.

O
nly Ki was close enough to hear Tobin’s faint cry as he slumped slowly over Gosi’s neck, and he didn’t understood the single word Tobin gasped out, nor would Tobin remember it for a long time.

“Rhiminee!”

N
o one, not even Niryn, noticed a tiny charred pebble lying among the ashes of the wizards.

T
wenty miles away, under that same yellow moon, Iya rested her head on a tavern tabletop, gasping as white fire filled her vision as it had that day in Ero. In it she made out another doomed face, twisted in agony. It was Kiriar. Kiriar of Meadford. She’d given him a talisman that night in the Wormhole.

The pain passed quickly, but left her badly shaken. “O Illior, not him!” she moaned. Had they tortured him, learned of the little band of wizards hidden away under their feet?

Slowly she became aware of the tavern noise around her.

“You’ve hurt yourself.” It was a drysian. Iya had noticed her earlier, healing village children outside the shrine. “Let me tend to you, old mother.”

Iya looked down. The clay wine cup she’d been drinking from had shattered in her hand. The shards had cut her palm, crosshatching the faded scar Brother had given her the night she’d brought Ki to the keep. A sliver still jutted from the swell of flesh just below her thumb. Too weak to reply, she let the drysian wash and dress her wounds.

When she’d finished, the woman laid her hand on Iya’s head, sending a cool soothing energy through her. Iya smelled fresh green shoots and new leaves. The sweet tang of springwater filled her dry mouth.

“You’re welcome to sleep under my roof tonight, Mistress.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” Better to sleep on Dalna’s hearth tonight, than here where too many curious idlers were still watching the crazy old woman to see what foolishness she’d do next. Better, too, to be with a healer if the awful pain returned. Who knew how many wizards Niryn might burn tonight?

The drysian helped her down the muddy street to a small cottage at the edge of the village and settled her on a soft bed by the fire. Names were neither asked for nor given.

Lying there, Iya was glad of the thick bands of protective symbols carved in the beams and the hanging bags of charms. Sakor might be at war with the Lightbearer in Skala, but the Maker still watched over all equally.

Despite that, Iya found little comfort that night. Every time sleep claimed her she dreamed of the sybil in Afra. The girl looked up at her with shining white eyes and spoke with the Lightbearer’s voice.

This must stop
.

In the vision, Iya fell on her face before her, weeping.

A
rkoniel had watched the Alestun road hopefully in the months since Iya’s visit. Spring had passed with no visitors. Summer burned the meadow brown, and still no one but tradesmen and Tobin’s messengers raised any dust above the trees.

It had been another blisteringly hot summer; even the valley around Alestun, spared the worst of the ongoing droughts for years, was struck. Crops withered in the fields and new calves and lambs died in the meadows. The river shrank to a gurgling stream between cracked, stinking expanses of mud and dead water plants. Arkoniel stripped to a linen kilt again and the women went about in their shifts.

B
e was working in the kitchen garden late one afternoon in Lenthin, helping Cook dig the last of the yellowed leeks, when Nari shouted down to them from a second floor window. A man and a boy were coming up the road.

Arkoniel stood and brushed the dirt from his hands. “Do you know them?”

“No, it’s strangers. I’ll go.”

Watching from the gate, however, Arkoniel recognized the broad-set, grey-bearded man walking beside Nari, but not the little boy perched among the baggage on the sway-back horse the man led.

“Kaulin of Getni!” Arkoniel called, crossing the bridge to meet them. It had been ten years or more since he’d watched Iya give the man one of her pebble tokens. Kaulin had been solitary then. His little companion looked no older than eight or nine.

“Iya said I’d find you here,” Kaulin said, clasping hands with him. He gave the younger wizard’s stained kilt and sunburned chest a wry look. “Turned farmer, have you?”

“Now and then,” Arkoniel laughed. “You look like you’ve had some hard traveling.”

Kaulin had always been ragged, but it was the boy who concerned Arkoniel. He seemed healthy enough, and was brown as a trout, but he kept his gaze on the horse’s dusty withers as Arkoniel approached and he read more fear than shyness in those wide grey-green eyes.

“And who’s this, then?” asked Nari, smiling up at the child.

The boy didn’t look up or reply.

“Did a crow steal your tongue?” she teased. “I’ve got some nice cold cider in the kitchen. Would you like some?”

“Don’t be rude, Wythnir,” his master chided, when the child turned his face away. Grasping the back of the boy’s ragged tunic, Kaulin hoisted him down like a sack of apples. Wythnir promptly retreated behind the man’s legs and stuck a finger in his mouth.

Kaulin scowled down at him. “It’s all right, boy. You go with the woman.” When Wythnir didn’t move, he grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him none too gently to Nari. “Do as you’re told!”

“There’s no need for that,” Nari said tartly, taking the child’s hand. Then, more gently to the boy, “You come along with me, Wythnir. Cook has some lovely cakes baking and you shall have the largest one, with cream and berries. It’s been a long while since we’ve had a little boy to spoil.”

“Where did you meet with Iya?” Arkoniel asked, following with Kaulin. “I’ve had no word from her in months.”

“She found us up north a few weeks back.” Kaulin pulled a pouch from the neck of his tunic and shook out a small speckled stone. “Claimed she found me by this and
told me to come here to you.” He looked around the tidy kitchen yard and his expression softened a little. “Said we’d be safe here.”