Chapter Twenty-Seven

Caelan came back to consciousness as the dagger was drawn from his back. He struggled up, fighting the hands that pressed him down, and was forced to lie on his stomach, sweating and battling the scream in his throat. A man’s knee pushed against his back, bracing hard as the dagger withdrew slowly. It drew Caelan’s life with it, and he heard the blade scrape against bone.

Shuddering, Caelan pressed his face against the floor, and endured the agony until fingers tapped his shoulder.

“Easy, there,” said a gruff voice. “It’s out.”

The pain remained, throbbing and hot. Men spoke to each other in low voices over him. He felt himself being bandaged roughly but expertly.

“Sit him up where he can breathe.”

Pulled upright, Caelan sagged against the man supporting him and felt something placed to his lips.

“Drink,” he was told.

He parted his lips, still half swooning, unable to grab a thought for longer than a moment.

The liquid filled his mouth. He choked, and for a confused moment thought it was blood, drowning him.

“Damn! Tip his head back. Hold him before he spills the lot.”

Then Caelan swallowed, and tasted wine. His panic faded, and he swallowed more, gulping it until he choked again, coughing. They let him go.

Bending over, he slumped against the arm supporting him and fought to breathe. But the wine had helped. His vision cleared, and so did his mind.

He tried to lift his head, trembling with the effort. Sweat dripped off him, soaking his hair into strings, stinging his eyes. Squinting, he looked at his chest and found himself still whole.

A short distance away, the sergeant lay on the floor in a pool of blood, sightless eyes staring at Caelan. Mox’s body sprawled across the sergeant’s legs like a doll dropped and forgotten. Strangers with matted beards and ragged clothes stood around idly, talking to each other in low voices.

Caelan frowned at them, not understanding who they were, and looked up at the man holding him. Orlo, his bald head gleaming in the torchlight, met Caelan’s eyes and smiled.

“So you’re with us again,” he said. “Harder to kill than a Madrun.”

Caelan stared at him, soaking in the realization that he had been rescued. He remembered none of it. He must have lost consciousness before Mox started to cut him. Absently, he rubbed his chest, and Orlo frowned.

“That reminds me,” he said. “Pob, cut out a heart and take it to the prince’s villa.”

A dark-haired man with keen, intelligent eyes came over and crouched beside Caelan and Orlo. “Now?”

“Yes, now! Why in blazes did I just give you an order?” Orlo said grouchily. “Do it.”

Pob smiled lazily, taking no offense. “Sure,” he said, and drew his dagger. In a fluid motion, he rose to his feet and kicked the corpse of the sergeant over on its back. “Someone help me get this breastplate unbuckled.”

“See that you save the weapons and armor,” Orlo told them. “Then clean out this room. We don’t want to draw the demons this high into the catacombs.”

Pob and his companions nodded and turned themselves to their grisly task.

“Don’t worry,” Orlo said quietly to Caelan, patting his shoulder. “Tirhin will be happy with his prize, and it will take him that much longer to discover you’ve survived.”

Caelan wanted to speak, found the effort too hard, and twisted his lips into a wan smile of thanks.

Orlo’s own gaze turned sober. “How bad is it?” he asked.

“Hurts.”

Orlo grunted, peering at Caelan’s back. “I’ll wager it hurts like bloody hell. Can you breathe all right?”

“Don’t know.”

“You’ve been spitting a little blood. If you can’t breathe right, it’s likely you have blood in your lung.”

“Hurts.”

Orlo nodded and squeezed his shoulder gently. “All right. I figure it just reached your lung. Maybe tore it a little, but it’s not a bad puncture. I tried to draw it straight out at the same angle it went in. Less damage that way, provided you don’t bleed to death.”

Caelan shut his eyes, feeling tired.

Orlo patted his cheek. “Stay with me, Giant. I’m going to put you on your feet. No, don’t help me. I’ll do the lifting. But it’s time we got you out of here. The smell of blood will draw things you don’t want to meet.”

Caelan nodded, then grimaced as Orlo pulled him to his feet. A wave of clammy misery swept through him, and the room spun violently. Desperate not to faint again, Caelan struggled to find severance. Shakily he pulled it around him, closing off the pain, and slowly straightened.

Orlo watched him, looking a little awed, a little frightened, a little admiring. “You’re a tough brute,” he said. “Always were. Even if you haven’t any sense.”

Caelan looked over at Pob, who was wrapping a bloody object in a rag while his fellow ruffians watched. “Gladiators?”

“Aye,” Orlo said proudly. “Trained every man of them. Did you really think you could take on five guards by yourself?”

Caelan grinned at him and nodded his thanks to the men. “Four,” he said, still struggling to find enough breath to talk. “Just four, but thanks for coming in time.”

A rumble passed through the room, and the walls shook ominously. Caelan glanced up in alarm. “Earthquake?”

“Aye. Men, clear out!”

Lifting Caelan’s arm over his shoulders, Orlo guided Caelan out into the passageway. Another rumble came, longer than the first, and this tremor was stronger. Dust rained down on them. Someone called out a breathless prayer. Someone else cursed the world, the gods, and the shadows. Pob tucked the wrapped heart inside his jerkin and ran ahead of them out of sight.

“We’re too far down,” Orlo said, breathing hard. He pushed Caelan forward. “Too close to—”

An unearthly cry uttered by no mortal throat came rising from below them. Caelan looked back. In the torchlight, he could see another flight of steps leading down. He pulled free of Orlo’s arm.

“What are you doing?” Orlo asked in alarm. “You can’t go that way. There’s Haggai and worse down there.”

The shout rose again, uttering words this time that seemed almost understandable. Caelan listened, feeling his skin crawl. “I should know that voice,” he said thoughtfully.

Orlo gripped his arm. “Are you mad? Don’t listen to it. If hell spills its jaws tonight, I don’t intend to be standing down here to meet what comes out.”

More howls, louder than before, echoed through the passageways. A swarm of rats came boiling up the steps toward them. The men turned and ran. Orlo ran too, urging Caelan along with him.

“Run, you big fool!” he said hoarsely. “Forget how much you hurt, and let’s get out of here!”

Fear coursed through Caelan in waves. He could smell a terrible dank, decayed stench like the fetid breath of a predator. A shrieking, skittering, squeaking noise came, swelling in volume as the rats caught up with them and fled on ahead of them, both angry and panicked, their red eyes glinting in the torchlight.

“We can’t let it out,” Caelan whispered, feeling himself choking up. He coughed blood, and his knees tried to buckle under him. “Have to stop it.”

Orlo kept him moving. “Come on! This is no place to fight, you idiot. Mender, come back here and help me. If he swoons, I can’t carry him by myself.”

The gladiator turned back to shoulder Caelan’s weight on the other side. Caught between Orlo and Mender, Caelan ran awkwardly, trying to hold severance and consciousness at the same time.

He looked back once to see four-footed beasts like wolves bounding at them. The creatures came closer, and they were not wolves at all but furred things with claws and heads like cobras.

Their yellow eyes glowed ferociously, and their jaws dripped death.

Caelan gasped out a warning.

Orlo glanced back and turned pale. “Holy goddess mother,” he whispered, skidding to a halt. He shoved Caelan against the wall and met the charge of one of the beasts with a hard thrust of his sword. The creature screamed and fell, its deadly claws missing Orlo by mere inches. Shouting in panic, Mender stabbed at another one with his spear, but it seemed impervious to the wounds he dealt it. Orlo struck it from behind, severing its spine in one blow, and it fell dead at Caelan’s feet.

Gasping for air, Orlo stared at it, then shuddered once and gathered Caelan to run again. Other creatures appeared, frenzied and wild, as though driven forth from the realm of shadow by something more terrible than all imagination. More than once the men had to stop and fight off attacks. A cross passageway teeming with demons cut them off. Orlo, Mender, and Caelan shrank back into the shadows, and the demons rushed on without noticing them, howling in their madness.

The earth quaked again, rending and cracking. Caelan thought at any moment everything would come crashing down on them, but the old passageway timbers held, groaning, long enough for them to duck through.

They ran until he couldn’t breathe. They ran until his lungs were on fire, and every step jolted the pain back through severance like stitches from a long needle. Even with all his control he felt the agony more and more sharply. He was gasping and staggering by the time Orlo half dragged him up the last ramp into the cold air.

Demons and monsters streamed into the streets.

Then a sudden, very strange hush fell over the chaos. Caelan turned his head, sensing something stirring, awakening, coming, something unbearable in its horror.

He shuddered in Orlo’s hold, knowing this was what he had been born to face, but knowing also he was not ready, not up for it. He had lost Exoner, now in Tirhin’s hands, and without the spell-forged sword he might as well throw stones.

Without warning, weakness sagged through his knees. Orlo grunted with the struggle to hold him up.

“Quick,” Orlo said, panting. “Let’s get him to a hiding place. There’s no safety out here.”

They pushed Caelan behind a shaky wall and crept along cautiously, heading toward a collection of buildings on the other side of the city square.

“It’s coming,” Caelan whispered, swirling through a mist of darkness and raw, burning pain. Severance came and went, sustaining him for a blessed moment of relief only to fade again. “Coming.”

“He’s raving,” Mender said worriedly.

“I know,” Orlo replied. “Let’s go to the tavern. We can hide there.”

Caelan knew he must explain to them. They needed to understand that he was warning them, not babbling in delirium, but he couldn’t gather the words. Stumbling over rubble and timbers, he lost his footing and fell, half dragging Orlo and Mender down with him. From a long distance he heard them pleading with him to climb back on his feet and keep going. Orlo sounded afraid, and that surprised Caelan. He didn’t think Orlo knew what fear was.

But the earth was spinning beneath him. He reached up, but the black waters of Aithe, river of dead souls, swept him away.

He slept and dreamed and fought the creatures that tormented him in his feverish haze. Concealed in the underground cellar of a burned-out tavern, Caelan lay propped up on a crude pallet of straw and blankets. He dreamed of red-eyed demons and men who breathed smoke. He dreamed of the arena, hot in the merciless sun, the spectators screaming. He dreamed of Elandra. Her eyes were radiant, glowing only for him.

“I have a secret to tell you,” she said.

He reached for her, only to have her turn to smoke in his fingers and vanish.

And there stood Kostimon, yellow-eyed and sly, cloaked in purple with a crown of gold on his head. Pointing at Caelan, he laughed scornfully. Beyond the emperor, a trio of Penestrican women robed in black lifted despairing hands to the sky, while they wailed cries of mourning. Darkness crawled across the earth like a vast serpent, swallowing the light, swallowing Caelan.

Lea’s voice called his name. Holding up a lamp, she came searching and did not find him.

“I’m sorry,” he said as she passed him by.

“I’m sorry,” he said, unexpectedly finding himself kneeling to Moah, the leader of the Choven tribes.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And Exoner lay broken in the snow, while he dreamed and shivered and burned in fire.

The queer tolling of cracked bells awakened Elandra. She could hear them across the city, some near and some faint on the distant hills. One rang whole and pure, its beauty serving only to accentuate the dead, flat notes of the others.

She lay there in her bed, in the fine suite of apartments, and thought of another day when the bells of Imperia had rung for her. It seemed a lifetime ago.

She had been on her way to be married.

“No!”

Sitting bolt upright, she flung off the covers and swung her feet to the floor. Around her, servants were moving quietly, refilling the lamps with oil and lighting them. Pushing back her hair, she glanced at the window and could see the sun hanging halfway above the broken spires of the city, still veiled by the hazy gloom.

She remembered the horrible talk with Tirhin last night, and fresh grief rose inside her along with grim determination. She would not marry the man. No matter what he did, no matter what he plotted, he could not coerce her.

Iaris came toward her, veering around a maidservant carrying a tray of food. “It’s about time you woke up,” she said. “Your bath is being poured. I’ve been sewing since dawn, trying to alter the wedding gown your groom has provided. He says it belonged to his mother. It’s charming, but very old-fashioned. Still, we do what we must. Hurry!”

Elandra ignored her as she would a buzzing fly.

Gripping her by the wrist, Iaris marched her into a small bathing chamber wanned by a burning fire. Curls of steam rose off the surface of the water.

“This is the fate of women,” Iaris said, stripping the sleeping robe off Elandra’s back and pushing her into the deep marble tub. “The more you fight, the more miserable you will be. The result is still the same. Find obedience in your heart, and cease this struggle.”

Elandra sat in the water, letting it lap around her shoulders. She could not cry now. She had cried all her tears for Caelan the night before. Now she felt hollow and empty inside, as empty as the city around her. She felt as though she had died, yet still was able to move about and talk. It seemed so strange.

“I am a ghost,” she said, staring into the distance. “I am nothing.”

Iaris slapped her hard. The blow rocked Elandra backward, and stung enough to get her attention.

Lifting her hand to her face, she turned her head and stared at her mother.

Iaris was glaring at her, looking both angry and afraid. She gripped the rim of the tub so hard her knuckles turned white. “Stop this!” she repeated sharply. “Our lives depend on you. Don’t you understand? Your father, Pier, myself, the others. If you displease Tirhin, he will hurt us. Not you. Us.”

Elandra’s eyes widened. She looked at her mother, heard the truth in her mother’s voice, and felt shame rise inside her.

“You are safe,” Iaris said in a tight, hard voice. “But we are not. No one in Imperia is safe except you. He needs you, Elandra. The rest of us are expendable.”

Elandra’s lips were trembling. She felt cold despite the warmth of the water. “He is a monster,” she said. “A madman. He killed Caelan.”

“He will kill Albain next,” Iaris said. “You know that. Stop being so selfish, girl, and think of someone besides yourself.”

Bowing her head, Elandra began to cry.

“Stop it! Pull yourself together. Did you tell him about the child?”

Still weeping, Elandra shook her head.

“Thank Gault for that.” Iaris sighed. “I am sorry about your lover,” she said, making her voice more gentle. “He was not suitable in birth or rank, but—”

“He was noble in his heart,” Elandra said, aching for Caelan. She told herself she would never see him again, she would never hear his voice or feel his arms around her. It seemed unreal. How his eyes lit up when he smiled. His mouth had a funny way of quirking up at one corner when he teased her. Oh, her dear, gentle Caelan, a man who could be fierce, savage, and unbending. He was also a man with a heart as tender as a child’s, a man who gave himself heart and soul to whatever and whomever he believed in.

She looked at her mother desperately, seeking solace that was not offered. “What makes one man better than another? Is it an accident of birth, or is it what he proves himself to be?”

“I don’t know,” Iaris said. “But if he is dead, then he is dead. Your tears won’t bring him back. And if Tirhin is mad, then you truly are the last hope Imperia has. Don’t throw that away, Elandra.”

Elandra wiped her face and nodded. She felt colder than ever inside, but her grimness had not lessened. Nor did her intentions waver. No matter what her mother said, or how much she pleaded, Elandra would not let herself be made Tirhin’s wife.

She thought of the Magria’s strange prophecy and how she had been given two destinies. If she locked herself in her chamber, refusing Tirhin, there would be civil war. She remained popular with the people, and they would support her. But Tirhin had killed the man she loved, and Elandra hated him for that. Her grief hardened inside her, becoming cold, implacable hatred. She would not sit in passive resistance. No, she meant to strike hard. She must avenge Caelan. The goal burned in her heart like fire. Woman of fire, the prophecy had called her. So be it.

When she was dressed and adorned with jewels and veiled, Elandra dismissed everyone.

“I am going to say my prayers,” she said. “I will be alone.”

Iaris looked at her suspiciously. “What are you up to now?”

“By tradition, a bride has the night before her wedding to fast, meditate, and purify herself. I have not had that privilege.”

“They are waiting,” Iaris said. “There is no time for this.”

“I will have my prayers,” Elandra said angrily. She glared at Iaris with all the stubbornness she possessed.

“What are you up to?”

“Nothing more than I have said. I shan’t be long.”

Iaris pointed across the room at the window, where the jinja sat pouting because it was not allowed to go. “Go stand in that corner, then, and say your prayers quickly. The gods will understand your haste. I will wait here by the door.”

Anger flashed through Elandra. Through her teeth, she said, “You are a blasphemous woman. Get out.”

Red surged up Iaris’s throat into her cheeks. But she never flinched. “I do not trust you.”

“I have given my word,” Elandra said. “Take care. You are treading close to treason.”

Alarm flickered in Iaris’s eyes at that threat. She frowned as though she would protest further, but instead she said, “Very well. But for a few moments only. The escort is waiting.”

Elandra waited until the door was closed; then she ran across the room to the window. “Jinja, give it to me.”

The jinja sprang up at her command and jumped off the window sill. It had been sitting on her sheathed dagger, concealing it from the maids who had straightened the room.

Elandra strapped the thin sheath on her arm and pulled the sleeve of her dress down over it. A more sensible, safer course of action would be to go through the ceremony today and kill Tirhin tonight in the bridal chamber, but she had no interest in safety. She would give Tirhin a knife in the heart instead of her vows. It would be her vengeance for the man she had loved. She did not care what happened after that.

The jinja pressed close to her skirts, making a worried, mewing sound.

“Danger,” it said. “Danger great. Hide is better.”

She paused and stroked its small, golden head. “I know,” she said sadly. “But I can’t.”

“I go,” the jinja said. “Bad magic here.”

“No.”

The jinja hissed, but she gave it no chance to protest.

“You will stay here and hide yourself from what will happen. That’s an order.”

The jinja glared up at her, its pointed little teeth bared. “No orders give to jinja. Only love.”

She bent over and kissed the top of its head. “You have served me well,” she whispered.

“Danger,” the jinja insisted. “Need jinja.”

She sighed. “The laws of Imperia forbid you to go with me.”

Growling, the jinja darted away and jumped back on the windowsill with its back to her.

She stared at it a moment, but she could not relent. In silence, she fastened her veil in place, grateful that it would conceal the defiance in her face, and went forth with murder in her heart.