Despair closed stone hands around Sodur’s throat, strangling the vague hope. It wasn’t likely. No, once again Sodur would choke down the delicacies so that everyone would continue to believe the lie that Geran remained locked in his apartments, clinging to solitude after the loss of his beloved wife. For a man must eat to survive, to get better, to return to his throne and rule his people.
But the Iisand Geran Samir hadn’t eaten in six months. Any ordinary man would have died long since. But then, the Iisand was no longer a man.
Sodur stopped, pain snagging in his thin chest. He teetered and then inched himself around the serpentine wall-niche that disguised the entrance to the prison. He set his feet sideways on the narrow steps of the stairway that dropped away abruptly on the other side of the niche. When he reached the safety of the bottom, he paused, wheezing as Lume pressed against his shins and then stood on hind legs to rub against his thigh. Sodur sank down to sit on the bottom step, hugging Lume.
~I don’t know how much longer I can do this.
Lume’s reply came in a rapid-fire collage of images. Normally they would be too much to assimilate. Yet this time Sodur saw each in surreal slowness and clarity.
~dusty booted feet . . . perfume and the throne . . . sweet ice wine . . . tobacco and mint . . . the Mesilasema . . . clear gray eyes . . . fish and leather and bergamot . . . a scrape across the wrist . . . musty odor of sex . . . pungent ink and dusty maps . . . armor and oil . . . salt and blood . . . booming laughter . . . cedar and raspberries . . . jaggedness . . . tang of
difference
. . . ice and metal and clouds and . . .
difference.
Image after image rolled by. Twenty years’ worth. Circling, coiling, returning to that
difference
again and again. Sodur felt Lume’s animal emotions like a river of blood through the memories. They whispered over his skin, danced along his nerves. His limbs began to shake as he tried to hold it all. It was too much.
His head jerked back, and he yowled. The cry echoed down the stone burrow. When it came back, other sounds rode it, high-pitched, almost beyond human hearing.
Laughter. Voices—gabbling, swarming.
The deluge of images sheered off as quickly as they’d begun. Lume blinked at Sodur with shining green eyes, tufted ears perked up, head tilted.
Sodur panted. Suddenly he groaned, gouging the knuckles of his thumbs against his closed eyes. He pressed, digging hard, trying to squash the wordless sounds that still scuttled in his head on hooked beetle-feet.
Lume whined and licked his rough tongue over Sodur’s fisted hands.
~I am here.
The words burst into Sodur’s brain like a beacon in the darkness. Before its illuminating strength, the teeming sound fled. Sodur sat up and breathed deeply, fear winding his nerves taut. He swallowed, tasting bile. He stroked Lume’s head with a shaky hand.
“Let’s get on, shall we?” He did not dare mindspeak. Did not dare invite a return of the onslaught. Never had he felt Lume so closely, so intimately. And the crawling in his head after—
He shivered. He’d thought he’d escaped unscathed. But more and more he wondered. The memory of the
nokula
perched on top of him flashed through his mind. Geran had been struck within months. Why so long for it to affect him? And if it had, then—
It changed everything.
He ignored the tremor in his hands as he collected himself and stood. He took a torch from the wall sconce above his left shoulder and lit it from the coals. The serpentine niche above would prevent any telltale light from escaping. Leaving the lantern, Sodur picked up the basket and strode down the corridor.
The ancient stone passage had room for three men to walk shoulder to shoulder. The stone walls had been chiseled to give the appearance of mortar and brick. Long unused lucernes hung from chains every fifteen feet. Many of the bronze lamps remained upright and steady, as if impatient to be lit, despite the green of corrosion dulling their metal curves. Others dangled drunkenly from broken chains or had vanished altogether.
Sodur paused at the entrance to the prison ward. Fluted pilasters topped by snarling gargoyle heads framed the doorway. He glanced up at the bestial faces. There was a cunning malevolence to their expressions, as if they knew his fears—and enjoyed them.
He dragged his gaze away and passed inside. The chamber opened into a wide teardrop shape lined by prison cells. The doorways of these were framed by more gargoyle-topped pilasters. At the center of the space was a great hearth fully eight feet across, set upon a round pedestal of stone. Surrounding the hearth was an assortment of stone tables, benches, chairs. Many had metal pins where leather straps had once been fastened. The debris piled on the floor contained bits of bone and teeth, rusted tools, hair and shards of glass. Beneath it, the stone floor was stained black from centuries-old blood.
Sodur circled the torture chamber, swallowing uneasily at the shapes looming in the flickering darkness, like
rashanis
bound for vengeance.
The Iisand’s cell was the farthest from the door and down another passage, this too narrow and low for Sodur to do much more than slide sideways, chin hunched into his neck. It was almost as if the builders had never meant for it to be used. Or perhaps it was that they did not want it remembered.
At the end, it widened into a cul-de-sac containing one cell. The gargoyles here had bulbous, red glass eyes that seemed alive in the torchlight. They were half again as large as those standing watch in the outer chambers, as if whatever was kept here needed more powerful warding. Almost they might have been brethren to the Blessed Amiya’s griffins, but these disturbing creatures seemed more likely to have been spawned in the realm of the Demonlord. The light flickered over their beast-faces, and Sodur steeled himself against the reflex to startle at their seeming movement.
Inset into the iron-bound oak slab covering the Iisand’s cell was a window. Through its grille, Sodur could see the vertical bars of the interior door. He inserted his torch into a sconce on the wall and set his basket on the floor. He gazed broodingly at the heavy door. Three bars set at shoulder, waist and knee heights secured the outer door, each fastened in place by a different lock. Each bar was inscribed with ancient symbols scrolling across the flat metal surface in now meaningless beauty. Those same symbols were etched across the interior of the cell, as well as the bars of the inner door. Prayers, Sodur supposed, or incantations robbed of power by age and disuse.
Vare would join him soon. He should wait. After a moment he dug in his pocket for a ring of keys. He never liked sharing this moment. Sodur never liked exposing Geran. Especially to Vare.
He began at the bottom, removing each lock and bar in turn, his ears straining for noise on the other side of the door. There was only silence. He grasped the iron handle with his left hand, his right hand falling on the hilt of his sword. The well-oiled hinges made no sound. Sodur swallowed, hesitating before borrowing Lume’s sight in an effort to pierce the gloom within. Their connection wrenched Sodur out of himself. He felt the cold floor gritty beneath his paws and flexed his claws uneasily. His skin prickled with a sense of wrongness, of danger, and the hackles on his back and neck pricked up in stiff points. He growled low in his throat, nostrils flaring at the smell within, like lightning after a strike. He crouched nearer to his
ahalad-kaaslane
’s tall legs, glad of the bars that separated them from what lay within. His stumpy tail twitched back and forth, and he growled.
Sodur fought against the sensations, struggling to separate himself from Lume, to share the lynx’s mind without losing himself. At last he found a precarious balance. But it was like standing hip-deep in a rushing river. If he shifted wrong, if his foot slipped, he would be pulled under by the current, to be lost in its powerful embrace.
The interior of the cell appeared empty but for the bed, the mattress long since shredded to bits, the heavy pedestal scarred and gnawed. On the floor were scattered bits of the splintered washstand, shards from the basin and pitcher, and the dented, overturned chamber pot. There was nothing else to be seen.
Sodur pulled himself from Lume’s mind, feeling an odd prickling behind his eyes as he did so.
“Geran?” he called, his voice gentle and cajoling. “Come now, it’s only me. I’ve brought some food. Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you remember Lemmuel’s seedcakes? They are still warm from the oven.”
There was movement within, a tapping and a scraping in staccato succession.
Sodur squinted and inched closer.
Light flickered and gleamed in the cell, running like molten silver to outline a shape—too close. Sodur gasped and stiffened.
Geran, what had once been Geran, rippled into sight, one moment invisible, the next a shape made of moonlight and water.
Nokula.
Translucent hairs sprouted along his head, back and arms. They moved separately and deliberately as if tasting the air. Daggerlike talons tipped his six-jointed fingers, and Geran’s mouth had become a maw of shining fangs. His tongue had grown long, prehensile, and was tipped with a gleaming tooth, like one of Lume’s brilliant fangs. He stood stooped, sometimes walking on all fours, as graceful as a hunting cat, his body powerful and thick. But worst of all were his eyes. Set wide apart above ridged cheekbones and a pointed snout, they were as hard and curved as the bowl of a silver spoon. They appraised Sodur with keen intelligence. But there was something deeply alien about them, as though the mind behind that intelligence was entirely different from the man Sodur had once called friend. Different and malevolent.
For a moment Sodur was back in the foothills near Veneston. He was lying on top his horse, the
nokula
straddling him, the same alien knowingness in its silver eyes, in the cold, dank touch of its mind against his.
Sodur drew a harsh breath and yanked himself out of that memory. Geran—the
nokula
—had moved closer. His eyes gleamed beyond the bars. Sodur’s eyes fastened on the barb tipping the creature’s long tongue as it swayed just beyond his nose. Milky poison pearled on its tip, looming large as the moon. As he followed the hypnotic movement, Sodur’s stomach twisted and his throat jerked. He forced himself to remain still.
And so they stood. Minutes ticked past, and Lume growled low in his throat, an angry, forlorn sound.
Suddenly there came a clatter and the sound of something rolling from the main chamber. The
nokula
jerked his head and snarled, a high, windy sound. Sodur took advantage of his distraction to lurch out of reach.
Quick, determined footsteps and a nimbus of yellow light in the darkness of the passage signified the arrival of Lord Marshal Vare. Sodur straightened, drawing a calming breath, cold sweat making his undertunic cling to his back and ribs.
“Ah, so there you are. Everything secure?”
The Lord Marshal glanced into the cell, brighter now with the added luminosity of his torch. Once again the Iisand had faded from sight.
“Not showing himself today, eh? Well, our guests from Scallas should be running the Piiton any time now. Won’t be long before we’ll know if they can save Geran.”
“You really think they’ll help?”
Lord Marshal Vare glanced sharply at Sodur, his walnut gaze quick and discerning. A slender man, he stood a bare inch over six feet. His face was clean shaved, sporting a thin, crooked nose and wide, sensual lips. His short brown curls were threaded with silver. Over his shoulders he wore the collar of his office, a heavy chain made of flat squares of blue and black enamel embossed on yellow gold. His reputation for tactics and strategy was well earned, and his intensity and charisma made men and women alike flock to his side, hanging on every word, every nuance of expression. He was notorious for his passionate devotion to the Iisand and Kodu Riik, and was not to be diverted from his duty for anyone. His only vice was women. He kept multiple mistresses, leaving his wife of twenty-five years to molder at their country estate.
“Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind?” he asked, brows winging up.
Sodur shook his head. “I don’t know. The closer they come . . . I think, can they help? Maybe. Will they? It’s a desperate game, and the scheme could easily turn on us. Except for Reisil, we’re defenseless against them.” He paused. “And even if they
will
help us, it won’t come cheap.”
“What price is too high if we get Geran back and keep that puppy of his off the throne? Aare’s got a taste for Patverseme blood and an eye for glory. He’ll have us back at war within a month of being crowned.”
“He’s not going to take it well. Are you ready for that?”
“He’s not regent yet. I head the Arkeinik at the moment and have no obligation to consult him on my decisions.”
“Still, we should have let Reisiltark have a try—” Sodur broke off. Vare was already shaking his head, his lips pulled tight in an expression of distaste.
“I know you think highly of her, Sodur. But I cannot share your faith. Besides, the
ahalad-kaaslane
are in bad odor right now. If it weren’t for your discretion about this,” he waved his hand toward the Iisand’s cell, “you wouldn’t even have been included in the discussions.”
“Lucky the Iisand came to me first, then,” Sodur said, bristling at the other man’s condescension. “But she is one of
us
. We shouldn’t expose ourselves to the Scallacians without at least giving her a try.”
“Is she really one of us?” Repugnance curled his patrician lip. “Even the
ahalad-kaaslane
don’t claim her. And if, as she claims, her powers really aren’t as strong as they were in Patverseme, she’s useless for this. I’ve been to Scallas. I’ve seen what the sorcerers can do. With enough money, they will be reliable.”
Sodur rubbed his hand over the stubble on his cheeks and chin, pinching his upper lip between his thumb and forefinger. After a moment, he nodded reluctantly.