Authors: Lynn Flewelling
The hillside was littered with large stones and cut everywhere by gullies full of mud and reeds. He chose a large one and followed it, stumbling over rocks and rabbit holes, and falling often enough to scrape his knees and elbows and jar his throbbing wounds. He was seriously light-headed, hungry, and dreadfully thirsty but he knew better than to drink the fetid gully water.
The grey, overcast sky was beginning to brighten when he heard rushing water in the distance and followed the sound to a broad river. Falling on his bruised, bloodied knees, he washed his hands and scooped up handfuls of water. Or tried. It seemed to disappear in his mouth, leaving him parched. He tried again, then gave up. There was still dried blood on his hands.
Water that was not wet? Going by previous experience, he suspected that it would still drown a person. His stomach rumbled, cramping with hunger. His mouth felt like it was filled with dust.
He stretched out in the long, coarse grass, staring up at the misty grey sky. The light was diffuse, and it was impossible to tell east from west.
His eyelids grew heavy, and he fought off the strong urge to doze. Tired as he was, it was too dangerous to sleep in the open in what had proven so far to be hostile country. A rutted road ran along the bank and he followed it upstream toward the town, dizzy and exhausted.
A wooden palisade surrounded the town, and the road led
up to a large gate framed by torches on either side. The gate was closed, and two watchmen in long tunics sat on low stools around a campfire before it, talking in low voices as they ate their breakfast.
Pulling his tattered coat around him to cover as much of his sword as he could, he approached cautiously. “Please, I need help.”
The first to notice him dropped the bread he’d been eating and he and his companion leapt to their feet and backed away.
“Please!” Alec said.
Instead the watchmen ran to a postern door beside the larger one and began hammering on it with their fists, shouting in a language Alec didn’t understand, though it was clear that they were terrified. The postern opened and they dashed through and slammed it shut behind them. Alec heard the heavy thump of a wooden bar falling into brackets. He started forward to claim the fallen bread when stones rained down around him from the top of the palisade. Alec stumbled back toward the river. Rocks struck him on the shoulders and back before he was out of range. Running as well as his wounds would allow, he reached the river road and turned upstream, hoping for something better than he’d found so far.
It was light enough now to make out farms and pastures around the base of the valley, but Alec wasn’t about to approach any of them. Fact was, he had no idea what he was going to do.
The sound of shouting woke Klia at dawn. Rolling out of bed, she padded over to the window and looked out over the dreary, drab town. Something was going on beyond the palisade but she couldn’t see what, or understand the language.
A night’s fitful sleep in her clothes hadn’t improved the situation any. She pulled on her boots and coat, checked to make certain she had her gorget, and then tried the door. As she’d thought, it was unlocked. Opening it, she stepped out in the corridor, waiting for some sort of outcry or alarm. When nothing happened she hurried downstairs. The dining room door was open, and the aromas of a hearty breakfast
wafted out. She hesitated, anxious to be off, but Rhazat’s warning about going out without food decided the matter, especially since no one seemed to be about. Going to the table, she stood there and ate quickly from the serving dishes, wolfing down all the boiled eggs, bacon, smoked eel, and buttered ash cakes she could hold. It was as if her hostess knew what Klia liked best. It was an unsettling thought: a necromancer who could read minds was doubly dangerous.
Downing a cup of buttermilk, she filled several napkins with food and stuffed them into her pockets, then found her way to the receiving chamber where Rhazat had disarmed her. No torches burned there now. It was dimly lit by daylight through small windows, leaving much of the large room in shadow. She quickly searched the edges of the room looking for her weapons, but found only the long black feather that had been her dagger. She put it into her knife sheath and went to the front doors.
“They’re never locked, Highness.”
Klia whirled around, but it was only Phania, standing near the inner door.
Is it Phania or Rhazat speaking to me?
Klia wondered uneasily.
“The queen doesn’t care if we go out, Highness,” she went on, voice low and hopeless. “I tried to escape. There’s nowhere to go.”
“I have to try.” Klia hesitated a moment, then said, “Quick, pack yourself food and come with me.”
“It’s no use—”
“That’s an order, Lieutenant.”
Something seemed to spark to life in the woman’s eyes. She pressed her fist to her heart in a salute, then disappeared in the direction of the dining room.
Klia went to the outer doors. They were unlocked and she pushed one open and took a cautious step outside. There were no guards, and no sign of any other people.
Phania was soon back.
“Which way should we go?” asked Klia.
“It doesn’t much matter, Highness,” Phania replied, but with more spirit now. “I tried going upriver and across country,
but I always ended up collapsing from hunger and then Rhazat would come and get me. She always knew where I was.”
“What about townspeople?”
Phania let out a hollow chuckle. “No worries there. They’re just ghosts, as near as I can tell. How would anyone be alive here?”
“There have been reports of people going missing. Have you seen them?”
“There are dungeons below the tower. She keeps them there and—”
“And?”
Phania shuddered. “She feeds on them. No one lasts long down there.”
“I had an escort with me. Are they down there now? Captain Sedge was leading them.”
“Sakor’s Flame!” Phania groaned. “His face is the last thing I saw before I ended up here. If he and the others are still alive, then they’re in the dungeons below.”
“How do I get down there?”
“You don’t, Highness. I’ve tried myself, but Rhazat obscures the stairway somehow. I don’t even know where it is.”
“Why hasn’t she killed you?”
“I almost wish she had, Highness. She said the night she took me that she needed a good servant, and that it amused her to let me linger on.”
“Courage, Lieutenant. We’ll get out,” Klia told her.
With Phania in the lead, they headed for the main gate. The grey, oppressive sky was brightening, but there were no other people on the street. It was eerie, being alone in this dreary town, and she was anxious to be out of it.
“Where is everyone?”
“Sometimes they’re here, sometimes not.”
The gate was unguarded, but the bar was too heavy to lift.
“This way, Highness.” Phania went to a postern door and opened it. There were no guards outside, either.
Rather than relief, this only made Klia more uneasy. This all felt like another trap or a strange dream, although she was
reasonably sure she was awake. She bit her tongue just to be sure.
Once outside, there was the matter of where to go.
“Rivers always lead somewhere, and you said you tried upstream. So we go downstream,” Klia said, setting off in that direction. “Hopefully we’ll find a town less strange than Zikara.”
Phania fell in beside her on the river road but said nothing.
They walked all morning, stopping only to rest and eat. Water was a problem, however. She hadn’t found a waterskin at Rhazat’s tower, and when she tried to drink from the river she discovered that it was some sort of illusion. It looked and sounded like rushing water, but her hands came out of the water dry and drinking it was like trying to chew air.
“How much worse can this place get?” she wondered grimly.
“How much worse could anything be than this?” Phania sighed.
“Don’t give out on me now,” Klia ordered. “Eat something and then we’ll go on. What was it like, when you were captured?”
The lieutenant shrugged as they sat on the riverbank eating. “One minute I was talking to Captain Sedge. The next something grabbed me and I was here, or in the tower, rather. My weapons were gone, and the queen gave me this dress to wear and made me a servant.”
“You do the cooking?”
“No.” The woman shivered. “I don’t know where the food comes from. It just appears.”
“Does she withhold food from you to make you obey her?”
“No, I can eat as much as I like. But no matter how much I do, I’m always hungry. You’ll see, Highness. I think maybe if you stay here too long, you starve anyway.”
“We’re going to get out.”
They moved on, and Klia began to understand Phania’s fatalistic attitude. The air was dead, the countryside dreary, and somehow it was sucking the very life out of her. At least the road was smooth down the middle, between the ruts. As
long as the food lasted, she felt fine, but despite the fact that she tried to ration it to make it last, by midafternoon everything was gone. Thirst was the first to strike, a terrible dryness in her mouth and throat. Then her belly rumbled, and it felt as empty as if she’d had nothing to eat since yesterday.
“You see?” said Phania. “It’ll only get worse now. Begging your pardon, Highness, but if I die out here, I won’t be sad.”
“Keep moving, Lieutenant.”
They pressed doggedly on, since there was nothing else to do. If they didn’t find food quickly, then they really were done for.
The light was beginning to fade above the ever-present clouds when Klia finally spotted a town in the distance.
“Come on!” She took Phania’s hand and urged the woman into a stumbling run. But as they got close enough for a good look, Klia slowed to a halt and stood there with her heart in her boots.
It was either Zikara, or its exact twin. The palisade, the roof of the tower beyond, the gate and side door—it was all the same, apart from the guards visible at the gate and on the palisade above. People on foot and in carts pulled by dispirited nags were on the road.
“By the Flame, what’s going on?” she whispered in disbelief.
Phania let out a choking laugh. “This is the farthest I’ve ever made it here in this Bilairy-forsaken place, and we’ve ended up just where we started!”
Whatever doubts Klia clung to of this not being the same town were dashed when the gates opened and Rhazat rode out mounted on Moonshine. She galloped up to them and reined the stallion in sharply. Phania fell to her knees, face in her hands.
“How—?” Klia began, hope flaring in her heart at the sight of her beloved horse, but it was even more swiftly dashed as she looked into his eyes, eyes that had once been so warm and brown and wise. Now they were cloudy and white.
Rhazat stroked the horse’s neck. “Lovely, isn’t he? You’re welcome to take him out whenever you like, though I fear you’ll find him a bit harder to manage than he was.”
“Do you corrupt everything you touch?”
Rhazat laughed and offered Klia a hand up, kicking her foot out of the stirrup so Klia could mount behind her. “What a thing to say! Come, you must be starving. And perhaps a clean set of clothes. You smell like smoked eel, my dear.”
“Go to the crows,” Klia growled.
“Well, you may not be hungry, but I am.” Smiling, Rhazat crooked a finger and Phania rose in the air with a despairing cry that choked off as the necromancer’s hand closed around the back of her neck. Hanging there in that impossible grip, she closed her eyes and set her jaw, a soldier to the end.
“Let her go!” Klia shouted.
Rhazat arched a brow at Klia. “Yes, I am famished!” With that, she pressed her lips to Phania’s brow in an almost motherly kiss. Phania shuddered in her grip, then went limp. It was over in an instant and Rhazat draped the dead woman over her saddlebow like a deer. “Shall we go? Please, there’s still room for you up here.”
Klia glared up at her, silently refusing.
Rhazat nudged Moonshine into a walk. “Very well, you can walk. It’s not like you have anywhere else to go, and I believe you’re out of food. Come along, my dear princess, you must eat, if not for your own sake—”
“I know!” Klia snapped, following her toward the gate. No wonder Rhazat didn’t bother with locks. She didn’t need them; this whole horrible place—whatever it was—was a prison.
Perhaps I’m already dead and beyond Bilairy’s gate
.
Klia pushed the thought away, reasoning that if she was dead, this necromancer wouldn’t be working so hard to keep her alive.
Doggedly putting one foot in front of the other, Alec followed the river up into the grassy hills. There were no birds singing, no trees, not even a breeze to stir the dead air. It was neither hot nor cold, but vaguely muggy. It was still early morning, if you could trust the light in this place, but he felt like he’d been walking for days without food or water.
“Please, Illior, don’t let me die in this awful place,” he
whispered hoarsely, nearing the end of his strength. Perhaps the Lightbearer had heard him, for a few moments later he noticed something very strange ahead of him—a patch of blackness hovering in the air just off the road, rippling like a silk scarf in a breeze.
He approached it cautiously, suspicious but desperate. Could this be how he’d gotten here, through some sort of rent in the air? Stopping within arm’s reach, he stared into the center of it, but it showed only blackness. As he stood there, baffled, it rippled again, brushing his face and chest—
—no dawn sky, no rushing river. All was silent and pitch-black. Reaching out, Alec felt smooth wall under his hand. The ground was level and hard under his feet, and the air smelled of dust and fresh plaster. Completely disoriented, he reached down and felt the floor: dressed stone, no carpet. That, and the smell of plaster, gave him hope that he was back in the Hierophant’s palace. He chose a direction and felt his way along the wall until he saw light ahead, streaming in through a glazed window. Reaching it, he could make out a few newly built villas outside that looked familiar. Deciding it was safer outside than here in the dark, he opened the window and climbed painfully out onto a dewy verge next to a paved street. He was somehow back in Menosi.