The Necromancer's Grimoire (51 page)

William raised his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I was taken there…” Her eyes looked inward, remembering every detail of her experience in Alexandria. She knew she could relive it every day if she desired.

“Don't drift off like that, Nadira.”

She came back to him. “I would hear what Alisdair has to say. I can feel their suffering.” She moved her hand to his shoulder and squeezed. She told him what she had seen at the docks in Alexandria. He did not interrupt until the moment Montrose fell.

“Stop there,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I need not know the rest.” He put a hand over his throat. “Alisdair…Garreth…I can feel them right here. God, they hurt.” He put a hand over his heart where he felt their pain.

Nadira paused, deep in thought. “I must go to them now.”

He knit his brows. “You just came back from hell. Rest first.”

“My body has been resting. It is not my body I take to Alexandria. You keep it, William. I will put it here.” She pointed to the stones at their feet. “I have to go to them.” She met his eyes and showed him her grief.

Alisdair and Garreth sat on the floor in a plaster prison. They were unbound, but housed together in a small mud and clay room with only a high opening in the wall for air and light. Piles of straw clustered in the corners and every now and then the straw moved, indicating hidden vermin. The men were still covered in the caked remains of their enemies, and the feeble energy she felt from their bodies told her they were in desperate need of food and water.

She put a hand through Alisdair's body and he raised his head. Her heart tightened at the look in his pale blue eyes. He had given up. She saw no life in them at all. Both men were patiently waiting for death.

Alisdair licked his dry lips and his voice was hoarse. “Lady Montrose is here, Gar.”

She could hear him. She touched lightly on the ground beside him and put her other hand on Garreth's shoulder and felt him stir. He looked around the cell as well.

She tried to materialize herself. She imagined the hot sands of Egypt, and focused on their need. She watched Alisdair's face to tell her when she had succeeded. His eyes widened and she knew he could see her as a shimmering blue light.

“Alisdair,” she said to test his ears.

His eyes widened even more and his face moved through many emotions quickly, one upon the other, amazement, misery, grief. He covered his face with his hands to hide it all from her.

She turned to Garreth who always seemed resigned to whatever life threw at him. He tried to smile at her, was unsuccessful. Stopped trying.

Alisdair took a sharp breath and turned to Garreth. “D'you see her, too?”

Garreth nodded and raised one of his huge arms to point at her. She was saddened to see that the arm wavered and that he was unable to hold it up for long.

Nadira pointed a spear of light at the small doorway. “If I get that open for you, can you escape?”

Garreth shook his head, but Alisdair's eyes took on a familiar glimmer. “My lady, we are sick. We can hardly walk; they will be on us easily. But I would rather die anywhere but here.”

Garreth agreed with a nod.

“I will return for you,” she said. “Be strong.”

Nadira blew herself through the thick mud bricks of their prison to where she could map a route for them. The cell was part of a group of similar holding cells separated from the main building, also of mud brick, but larger. They were still near the harbor. She spun around to see. This compound was harbor security. Armed men patrolled the area and merchants and their accountants moved in and out of the larger building. She watched them until she understood their purposes and intents.

After the melee at the docks…she closed her eyes to bring the images to her…yes. Neither Alisdair nor Garreth had made any attempt to flee. They were in the same places she remembered. Massey lay mutilated on the ground, his men dismembered around him. Garreth knelt in the red sand, Alisdair sat holding Montrose to his chest, his head bent over his friend's. The sound of pounding feet reached her like a distant echo. Shouting, running, the flash of steel in the bright Mediterranean sun. The harbor's security forces converged on them. She watched as Alisdair and Garreth were wrenched unresisting to their feet. Montrose's body slumped to the sand as the two men were hauled away.

She followed. There. They were tossed into the cell and left there. They had been given water, but not enough. In this hot dry land they would not last much longer. They had been given very little food. The harbor masters were waiting for something. She stretched out her mind. No one knew who the men were. They could not be executed, nor set free until the authorities knew to whom they belonged. They were foreigners, perhaps belonged to a powerful lord or king, perhaps protected. If so, there would be a hefty ransom to free them. If not, then their deaths were of no account.

She opened her eyes and focused on the area around the buildings. It would be easy to get the door opened for them, but after? Where could she send them, and where could they hide? How would they leave this land?

The
reis
.

In a surge of energy she disappeared from Egypt and found herself flying over the sea, searching for him.
The Goke
. There she was, in full sail off the coast near Damascus. She saw him on the deck near the helmsman, his robes billowing in the fresh breeze, his face turned to the wind, testing it, feeling it. He was free now from the necromancer, but not from her. The cord he had placed in her remained firm, connecting them heart to heart. He felt her presence immediately.

She put herself in the wind and watched his eyebrows rise. His mouth formed the word, “
Sultana
”.

She knew better than to materialize on deck. The sailors would go wild with fear. Instead, she sank through the thick timbers of the deck into the captain's quarters at the stern. She swirled herself into a thick column, drawing in the energies of the wind and waves to enhance her form. Kemal entered, breathless, his eyes darting about searching for her. By that time she had achieved a substantial appearance as a priestess of Elysium in shimmering blue veils.

“
Hanim
!” he dropped to his knees.

“Ahmed Kemaleddin Reis, I apologize for the intrusion…”

He chuckled deep in his throat and raised his dark eyes to the swirling blue haze in his cabin, “Nadira
Hanim-effendi, Sultana
,
Jiniri
, you are welcome at any time.” He touched his heart, his lips, then his forehead. “Peace.”

“I have a great favor to ask of you.”

“Ask and it shall be done.”

Nadira felt a great wave of affection for the
reis
and sent it into his chest through the cord that connected them. He drew in a long shuddering breath and slowly pressed a trembling hand over his heart. “Ahhh…” he breathed, “How can you do that? Make such a feeling appear inside me?”

Nadira smiled down upon him, “You have loved and been loved, Kemal. It should not be a question you need to ask.”

“Yes, but this feels different, like I am drowning in the softest silks and warmest kisses of a thousand maidens,” his eyes took on a faraway look.

“Kemal,” she brought him back from Paradise, “My friends are in a holding cell in Alexandria. They are kept by the harbor patrol and will die from thirst. I could release them, but they would be quickly recaptured. I need to send you to them. Please claim them and bring them back to Istanbul.”

“Claim them?”

“I can either release them at night and have your men carry them secretly to the ship, or you can go into the building and pay their fine.”

“Pay their fine.” He narrowed his eyes. “What have they done?”

She paused. “It is murder.”

He shook his head. “
The Goke
does not carry enough coin for that. I have not enough with me now, and what I do have is for supplies and for the men.” He thought. “And Alexandria…my orders…”

She knew he was not refusing, but making plans. She helped him, “Supplies,” she suggested. “Re-supply in Alexandria.”

He nodded slowly. “That I could explain to The Porte. I am on patrol.” He stood and put a hand to the bulkhead as a swell rocked the ship. “Who?”

“The men are the
frenki
Alisdair and Garreth. The red one and the yellow one. You will remember them at the oars of the
Illuyankas.
”

“Who could forget them,
Hanim-effendi
?”

“How long?”

“Two days in this wind.”

“In two days, at midnight their cell will open. Their guards will be fast asleep. My friends will come out slowly, for they will be near death, Kemal. Your men must be there to help them. They may not be able to walk far.”

“Understood.” He smiled at her, bowed his head slightly and put his hand over his heart. “Peace,
Hanim
.”

“Peace, Kemaleddin,
reis
of the Sultan's Sea. I will soon thank you properly for this favor.”

“Ah,
Hanim
…” he sighed with a dreamy smile. “You already have. The kisses of a thousand maidens are in your touch.”

She blinked her eyes on the floor of the temple. Her body felt sluggish and heavy. When she could see again she moved her hand and then felt William lifting her to a sitting position.

He peered at her face. “Did you find them? Are they well?”

She nodded and tried to push her hair back over her ear. When he saw her arm trembling, he took her hands and chafed them, then he picked up a discarded veil from one of the still forms on the floor and wrapped her shoulders in it. “You are shivering,” he said gently.

“I feel sick,” she admitted.

“Alisdair? Garreth?”

“They are imprisoned in Alexandria. The
reis
will get them out.”

He sighed. The soft glow of the many oil lamps was fading. There had been no one to refill them for several hours. Soon it would be total darkness within the cave that was the temple of Elysium. He mentioned this to her. “We should leave now before the lights go out.” He looked at the bodies on the floor. “While you were gone I counted them. There are thirty. That is a great many to bury, and the ground is rocky.”

She shook her head. “No. We will not bury them.” She turned to look at the couch against the far wall. “Tell me where there is a more holy place than this temple.”

He let his breath out in a low wheeze, reminding her that he was tired, too. “True.”

“We will close the door behind us. In a few years I will return when there is nothing but bones and hair and cloth and build a cairn for them. They deserve to remain here.”

He took her hand. “Then none will use this place…?”

She nodded. “This temple will be a tomb for three years.”

“Three years?”

She tried to get to her feet. “That is how long it will take me to go to Persia and come back.” She braced herself on his shoulder and pushed. He helped her up. They both swayed.

“My knees feel weak,” he mumbled. “Persia?”

She did not try to explain further. The time for that would come later. Now she just wanted her bed. She thought of Montrose.
An empty bed.
A great pain twisted in her chest.

William took her elbow and made his way to the center of the room. He picked up the
Grimoire.
He tugged at her until she followed him to the body of the priestess on the couch. “While you were gone I saw this,” he pointed to the pale corpse. “She holds a blue veil in her hands. It is not around her body, Nadira. She holds it for you. Put it on.”

She lifted the long swath of blue silk from the stiff hands and put it over her head, wrapping the ends around her face. She felt a comforting glow and remembered what Kemal had said to her. “The kiss of a thousand maidens,” she murmured. “He felt this too.”

“Who felt it?” William steered her toward the door that led from the chamber to the corridor and the cleft in the rock.

“Kemaleddin. I touched him and…” She stumbled against the rock wall. She didn't finish. William knew what she was going to say. The souls of every priestess of Elysium were gathered in the blue silk. Thousands of them.

The searing shaft of sunlight pressed them against the cave entrance for several minutes. When William could see again he led her carefully down the hillside to the path.

The house was tense with Corbett's death. Thedra greeted them at the door and gave them the news of all the activity since they had been gone. She followed them up the stairs to Nadira's room, talking the whole while. Nadira did not remember half of it. She allowed William to tuck her into her bed. She lay curled on her side. She heard him push Thedra out the door and give her instructions.

Then he joined her.

“I told Calvin you would see him tomorrow. I am not leaving you alone,” he said. “You are not yourself.”

“Who am I, then?” she mumbled.

He climbed in behind her. He put his head on the pillow beside hers and draped his arm over her side. “I will not leave until I am certain…” His voice trailed off into her hair. “Your bed will never be empty.”

“What?”

“I must be certain that you won't do what the temple ladies did.” He squeezed her very gently. “That you won't try to go to my lord, the baron, and leave me here all alone, forever.”

She shook her head. “No.” She thought about it, though. It would be forever springtime in Andalusia. This made her smile as she sank into the soft blankets.

They both heard a clang, like the dull ringing of a bell. She sat up, William did too. On the floor by the bed lay a huge dagger. William was quicker than she. He leapt from the bed and had it in his hand before she could say a word.