Journey Into Nyx (8 page)

“ ‘What is, is, and ever shall be,’ ” the sphinx reminded Daxos. “Are our destinies written in stone? Why don’t you tell her what she’s been asking you all along? Will the gods keep her safe?”

Daxos lifted his face to the blackness of the dome,
and the sadness that Elspeth saw in his expression was overwhelming.

“Elspeth is a divine protector of Theros,” he said to the sky. “She is champion of our father, Heliod. She is destined to be the hero who saves us all.”

“What’s happening?” Elspeth cried. She felt as though Daxos and Medomai were speaking another language. Although she had understood every word, there was a layer of meaning that escaped her comprehension.

“A unified army of minotaurs has struck Akros,” Medomai said. “If Akros falls, so will all of human civilization.”

“We’ve been called to battle,” Daxos said. He grabbed Elspeth’s hand and pulled her toward bronze doors.

“Called by whom?” Medomai called as they retreated. His voice followed them as they ran down the stone steps to the exit. “Poor two-faced boy, blind, mute, and lying. You’ll never learn.”

H
ordes of minotaurs surrounded Akros at nightfall. Heavy clouds obscured the night sky, and no light from Nyx illuminated the flatlands. In the darkness, Anax’s advisors misjudged the number of enemies that surrounded their walls and recommended a counterattack. When Anax sent a contingent of soldiers out of King’s Gate, they were fighting blind, overwhelmed and slaughtered in seconds. Anax ordered all the gates barred until they could better assess the situation in daylight. All night long the strange sounds of industry continued just beyond the walls. The ringing of hammers stopped just before the sun rose.

In the dim light of morning, the Akroans finally glimpsed what the invaders had been doing under the cover of darkness. They had turned Akros into prison by building a mirror image of Akros’s intimidating walls. Akros was built on the edge of the Deyda River, and the minotaurs’ wall was shaped like a massive
U
from one edge of the gorge, around the city walls, and ending at the gorge on the far side. The builders left open ground between Akros’s wall and their new wall, and this is where the invaders sheltered. They finished the sturdy fortification with terrifying speed, and by morning they were building protective shelters and catapults.

By midday the minotaurs began to taunt the city. First, they launched stones over the wall. Next, it was maggot-infested
corpses. Akroan archers had to retreat from the open wall. They were easy targets for the hordes and their siege machines. The archers hid behind the slotted windows in the towers, but their arrows inflicted little damage on the teeming mass below them.

The people of Akros were stunned and trapped. Minotaurs didn’t even build houses. How in the name of the gods could the simple-minded brutes be organized enough to create such a fortification? King Anax hurriedly called a war council and demanded answers. His oracles wrung their hands. His strategists babbled about the “circumvallation” and trembled in their chairs. Because anyone who knew the history of the world knew this was unprecedented.

“Why now?” Anax shouted to his strategists at the war council. “What does it have to do with the curse of the severed heads? There are Nyxborn besieging my city! Did Mogis break the Silence? Where is Iroas? Where is the Alamon? Why haven’t my wandering warriors returned?”

Outside in the corridor, Cymede listened through the door to her husband’s rant. She heard the quieter voice of the general in command of the warriors stationed in Akros.

“Sir, it was with great wisdom that you locked the city down after fire burned in the sky,” the general said. “We were expecting an attack against the city. Your quick action has prepared us for the worst.”

Flatterer, Cymede thought. There was no imminent attack, and after beating the war drum so loudly for naught, Anax’s leadership had been questioned.

“We believe that the omen pointed to an attack on the Alamon, not the city,” the general continued. “Under the command of a warlord named the Rageblood, the Alamon have been targeted and many of them killed. We had numerous reports of bodies in the wilderness.”

Cymede was distracted by the sound of pounding boots coming toward her. A guard rushed around the corner and
skidded comically to a halt at the sight of her. He bowed low as she approached him.

“Let’s dispense with the scraping, at least while the siege is on,” Cymede said.

“I—I have a m-message for the king,” he stammered as he stood up. He towered over the queen, but then most men did.

“What is it?” Cymede asked. Everyone in the Kolophon knew that anything they could say to Anax, they could say to her as well.

“We caught the perpetrator!” the guard said. “He was leaving another head—in the king’s bed chamber!”

Cymede was not expecting that news. But she was a master of control, and her face betrayed no emotion.

“Well, then,” she said. “Take me to him.”

The full legion of the Meletian Army wasn’t due to arrive at Akros for a week. Elspeth and her companions accompanied the fast-traveling Battlewise contingent and arrived in three days. Including Anthousa and her Setessan warriors, the vanguard army numbered only a hundred soldiers. When they reached the ridgeline above Akros, their first sight of the city was a shock. From their vantage point, the minotaur’s fortification looked like a black noose around the city. Black smoke burned north of the wall where the tributary fed the large estates—that was where Nikka’s home was located. Between the ridge and the fortification lay the flatlands, already a battlefield with burned caravans and unburied dead, killed by the approaching hordes. Nikka jumped off her horse and stared down at the flatlands in horror.

“You shouldn’t have brought her here,” Daxos said.

“This is her home,” Elspeth said. “And she’s not a child. She doesn’t need to be shielded from the truth.”

The vanguard force set up camp on the ridge overlooking
the polis. At night the black noose transformed into a ring of fire as the minotaurs lit pyres inside their fortification. The mood inside the Meletian camp was tense. The Meletian general had disagreed with Daxos’s call for action and dismissed Anthousa’s opinions as irrelevant. With no contact with King Anax, the general decided the best thing to do was wait for reinforcements, either from Meletis or from the wandering Akroan army, which should have already returned in aid of their city.

Anthousa, Elspeth, Daxos, and Nikka were inside their tent. Anthousa and Daxos argued while Nikka brooded alone. Elspeth worried about Nikka while trying to keep Anthousa and Daxos from taking out their frustration on each other.

“The general is not interested in Setessa’s position—” Anthousa fumed when she was interrupted by a voice outside the tent. Someone requested entry. It was a female voice, and Anthousa opened the door flap to let her inside. A slender figure in a dark cloak stepped inside the tent. When she pushed back her hood, Nikka fell to her knees. The other three were surprised by Nikka’s reaction and stood awkwardly behind her.

“Queen Cymede!” Nikka said. “What are you doing here?”

“Please stand,” Cymede said. “I have spoken with your general, and he sent me here.”

Daxos and Elspeth exchanged a look. “Would you like to sit? Can we offer you something?” Daxos asked.

“There is no time,” Cymede said. “The minotaurs have blocked every way in or out of the city—except I know a secret way. There are tunnels above the Deyda River Gorge, but only an elementalist can make use of them. The Deyda rejects all other attempts to tame her.”

Nikka’s eyes widened. “You came through the gorge?” she asked in disbelief.

“What can we do to help you?” Daxos asked.

“Even before the siege, my husband was struggling,” she said. “He’d believed he was under some kind of curse. Each day, we would find the severed head of a creature somewhere in the Kolophon. No matter the number of guards, the culprit placed it without being discovered. We consulted oracles and mercenaries alike.”

“What sort of creatures?” Anthousa asked.

“Nyxborn,” Cymede told her.

“Did you find out who was tormenting your husband?” Daxos asked.

“I believed it to be mystical,” she said, “but it was much more mundane. We caught a satyr sneaking into his chambers. He is some sort of mage who’s able to cloak himself and move unhindered, or at least I believe that’s how he operates. We have him locked up in a cell under the fortress.”

“With everything else that’s happening, why are you concerned with him?” Anthousa asked.

“There is some connection between the Nyxborn creatures and the siege,” Cymede said. “The minotaurs who built the wall—they are Nyxborn. When we captured the satyr, he claimed he was an oracle trying to warn us of the Nyxborn threat.”

“Could that be true?” Nikka asked.

“Perhaps, but now we can’t find out,” Cymede said. She peered first at Nikka, then Anthousa, and finally her dark eyes settled on Elspeth. “He refuses to talk to us anymore. In fact, he won’t talk to anyone except a single person.”

“Who is that?” Daxos asked.

“A woman named Elspeth,” Cymede said, and everyone at the table reared back as if she’d dropped a snake in front of them. “The general said I would find her here.”

“I am Elspeth, but I know no satyr,” she said. “What’s his name?”

“He calls himself the Stranger,” Cymede said. “Please, will you come inside and meet with him? In my heart, I feel he has the answers that will break this wretched siege.”

Once inside the Kolophon, Daxos didn’t want Elspeth to see the satyr alone. He warned her that it could all be a mage’s trick. Elspeth assured him she would be careful and left him fuming with Cymede. She heard the queen reassuring Daxos that someone would stay with her at all times while the guard led her down to the prison level.

When the guard opened the iron door to the tiny cell and Elspeth saw the satyr, she knew Daxos had worried for nothing. “Stranger” looked so small, even forlorn, chained to the wall in the windowless cell beneath the Kolophon. He was shirtless and shivering, and red paint flaked off his skin. He had a raw and weeping scar on the left side of his chest. When the door opened and he saw Elspeth, his features brightened for a fleeting moment, and then he looked crestfallen once again. When her eyes met his, she remembered the Temple of Deceit where
KING STRANGER
had been written on the walls. With a sense of revulsion, Elspeth remembered the bodies in the dark corridor that led to Phenax’s temple and the man who had intruded into her mind. The memory caused her throat to constrict, and she took a deep gulp of air.

“Do you want me to come inside with you?” the guard asked.

Elspeth shook her head, so the guard retreated to the hall but left the door cracked open.

“Unfortunately, I can’t offer you a seat,” the satyr said.

“What do you want?” Elspeth said. “And how did you know my name?”

“I have a friend who speaks highly of you,” the satyr said. “His name is Sarpedon, but you may remember him as the Priest of Lies.”

“I met Sarpedon once,” Elspeth said. She felt disoriented. The satyr was talking about the very thing she’d been thinking about. “He barely knows me. What’s your name?”