Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 25

Silver moonlight bathed the snowy forest. The pine trees' needles, sheathed in ice, tinkled softly in the frosty breath of the wind. My cheeks tingled with the cold, and the comforting scent of wood smoke lured me through the quiet to a lamp-lit cottage nestled in the trees. Merry laughter and the plinks of a harp being tuned drifted faintly on the curling smoke from the chimney. Imagining the Singers and Players readying their costumes and the feasting table laden with delights for family and guests, I thought to draw closer and peer inside to see who it was made merry on a winter's night. But from behind me came the soft crunch of horses' hooves in the snow. No jingle of harness. No hail of greeting. No sleigh bells. A silent coming.

Something wasn't right. Dread crept up behind me like a cloud across the moon, sending the merry harp strings out of tune again, and I opened my mouth to cry a warning. Too late. Across the snowy glade flew a lance—flame at its tip —that shattered the lamplit window, silenced the harper's music, and turned the laughter into shouts. Dark figures rushed out of the moon shadows and burst open the unlocked door, while more fire-lances flew from every side, striking roof and walls. The shouts turned to screams. The innocent lamplight burst into orange flame, and the merrymakers were dragged from the cottage and their blood steamed as it stained the pure white snow. Some were slaughtered. Some were hauled away in chains. Some turned, empty-eyed, upon their friends and family, laughing at their screams .

I cried out. But just as a pale-eyed warrior spun on his heel, sword raised, his blood-smeared face searching, an invisible hand clamped itself over my mouth and dragged me deeper into the trees. The one who held me would not allow me to move until the horsemen were gone and the wolves' eyes gleamed from the darkness —waiting. As the flames moved into the woodland to consume the trees, the house fire died into glowing ash. The wolves would finish what the evil had begun .

Released, I turned and ran through the forest. Others lived among the trees, homes and towers scattered in the most beautiful places, in dells and glens, by streamsides and waterfalls, families who welcomed long guesting and souls who hungered for solitude to grow their gifts. What need to crowd together when the whole of the world was welcoming and beautiful? I ran, but always too late, finding only ash, bloodstained snow, and the horrific echoes of death and captivity.

One after the other, hundreds of homes were hit on that winter night. I did not even question how it was I could see them all. The terror and pain grew into something huge, something awful, like a plague or a storm that lived inside me and spilled out into the vastness of the world. I was filled with it and revolted by it, and I wept because I could not make it stop. . . .

I clenched my fists and hammered at my head, fighting to return to my own thoughts, to dangerous reality … the ruins . . . the search. I blinked and the ring of dark stone columns took shape on every side of me. Yet the events that had unfolded before my eyes had borne the surety of reality as well, the truth of lived memory: the beginning, the Catastrophe, the night that terror and war had come to Gondai. On that night a hunger had been born whose feeding would ravage the world for a thousand years, for Three had lurked in that darkness and fed upon those screams.

I could not have warned them . The voice inside me was bent with pain. I could not have stopped it. It happened long before I was born. . . . Before I knew . . .

I hurried toward the center of the chamber where the lurid light of the spinning oculus shone down on the sculpted body of a man stretched out on the stone slab. No! He was part of the stone, yet not part of it . . . bolted . . . Vasrin's hand, he was fastened to the slab with bolts through his hands and his feet. Strips of iron across his wrists, ankles, and forehead were also bolted to the stone, fixing him in place. And the stone had molded itself about his body in thin brittle layers that over time would grow thick and solid until he was indeed a sculpture of a man. It had climbed up his sides and halfway over his shoulders and face. His arms, legs, and neck were already enclosed, every scar and sinew, every wrinkle in his torn shirt and breeches sculpted in delicate detail.

The lightning flashed and blinded me again. . . .

. . . and a crowd surged forward, carrying me with it. Never had I been in such a crush —stinking, ragged bodies, warm on the bitter winter's day, faces distorted with vices I did not know and hatred I did not understand .

"Burn him!" The cries were deafening, and as mindlessly angry as the roaring of beasts.

From above me came the insistent beating of banners flapping in the cold wind, red banners woven with a gold dragon stark against an ice-blue midday sky. The mob flowed from the narrow street into a wide open plaza fronting a squat fortress of gray stone. In the midst of the sea of jeering faces rose a high platform with a wooden post in its center and a man chained to it —a slender, dark-haired man clad only in rags, shivering in the cold, though he stood straight and calm while the storm of hate raged around him. His eyes were burned-out sockets, his face battered and bleeding, and in horror I watched as red-clad soldiers set torches to the wood piled at his feet. The crowd let out a monstrous cheer of satisfaction .

No, no, no . . . this was not me ! The voice inside me cried out in agony. Oh, gods, not this !

* * *

I couldn't understand it. The woman next to me, her teeth green and rotting, her breath foul with drink, grabbed my arm and pointed to the balcony high on the castle wall. "It's her! The witch what married the devil." And indeed a young woman dressed in plain white robes, her hair a ragged stubble, stood on the balcony watching the man. But as the flames grew, she sank to her knees and covered her eyes and ears until the man let go his agony in a single dreadful cry. The death scream echoed inside my head. . . .

Father ! Despair and grief and denial ripped through me like lances of fire. It was not me. I was not yet born. . . .

Searing lightning yet again. Only an instant's glimpse of the still figure on the table and I was no longer in the winter forest or the city of horror, but in the desert. . ..

The heat sapped the last residue of moisture from my lips; the sun hammered on the back of my head.

"Here they come."

"About time. The Slavemaster'll be fit to eat someone for 'em being this late."

The voices were below me, Zhid warriors standing guard duty on the hard-baked desert road, peering into the dust haze to see the gray unwieldy shape resolve itself into a ragged column of half-naked men roped together. Their skin was burned dark by the sun, their lips blackened and cracked, most of them scarcely able to lift their raw, bloody feet. Flies buzzed and stuck to backs streaked with garish mementos of the lash.

"Move on!" shouted the guard with a crack of his whip.

The dolorous column passed by my hiding place, and the doors of the cages slammed behind them with a metallic clang. I knew what came next. My knife was in my hand, and I scrambled down from my rocky perch and sped down the cracked earth of the road. Any child with power could undo the lock. If I was fast, the guards would never expect it —an uncollared Dar'Nethi in the middle of the camp .

The first despairing screams came from the building beyond the cages as I reached for the gate. And then a hairy arm, slick with sweat, wrapped itself about my throat. "What is this? Did we miss one? Shall we drink its blood or collar it with the rest of them?"

"Never again!" I shouted. "I'll not allow it."

"Not allow? Let us show you who will allow what …."

My hand that held my knife was wrapped around behind me, until I was forced to drop the weapon to make them stop . . . only they didn't stop. I screamed as my shoulder snapped. But the warrior was dragged off my back and I lay in the dirt sobbing. . . .

Get away! Run! I cannot hold!

. . . only to wake again to a roaring blast of heat from a fiery furnace. I was stretched upon the tilted slab as a wide strip of glowing metal was pulled from the fire, but before they could wrap it about my neck, the Zhid who held me down was jerked away and thrown to the ground .

Get away from here! Run! Their collars are real. Their knives are real. You'll be trapped here if you stay. . . .

The desert noonday blinded me as I stumbled out of the smithy, cradling my arm, tears of pain and frustration running from my face. . . .

The sunlight vanished. I moaned with the pain of my torn shoulder, which did not vanish with the fire and the Zhid. Clutching my arm, I crept closer to see if the man on the table was truly flesh or stone, alive or dead or only another vision. He looked dead. No trace of color in lips or cheeks, his skin with the waxy pallor of those who have lost an inordinate amount of blood. His eyes were open, one of them half occluded by the stone. They were sunken and hollow, wholly black, as they had been when he was a favored guest of the Lords of Zhev'Na and would return from his nights of sorcery with his hosts. I did not believe he could see anything in the world I walked.

"Can you hear me?" I whispered.

Get away from here . His lips did not move, but it was not the voice of my own fears that spoke in my mind, nor had it been throughout that wicked day. Go. I cannot hold for long .

"We've come for you, your friend Paulo and I."

No ! A surge of fear, grief, and despair came near knocking me off my feet. Get away! You can do nothing for me. Tell them . . . tell my father . . . Ah … A groan resonated in my thoughts, and blood ran from his blackened eyes like tears of horror. Spears of brilliance shot from the spinning ring once more. . . .

. . . and I was standing on a tower in Avonar, watching as the Zhid swarmed over the city walls. The empty-eyed warriors slaughtered the Dar'Nethi one by one as the desperate defenders fell back through the streets. Warning bells rang. Balefires burned on the heights like scarlet demon eyes. Behind me refugees streamed out of the rear gates, while below me, all around, and everywhere, Avonar, the City of Light, was in flames. The night had come. The last night. Unending slaughter. Unending darkness. Unending pain . . .

Truth held me in its steady gaze and left me no alternatives. While watching the destruction of all our hope, seeing wave upon wave of the soulless enemy pour through a ragged breach in the white walls, I fumbled for the dagger at my belt. My right arm unusable, my awkward left hand did the work in a place far distant from the nighttime battle that held my senses in thrall. The deed must be done before I could return from this place to the bowels of Zhev'Na.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, tearing at flimsy fabric, feeling for the right place. His flesh was already cold when I struck. As warm blood gushed over my hand, the vision of terror flickered and faded, and I stood once again in the Chamber of the Oculus, looking down on the tortured young man with my dagger in his heart. From the doorway behind me came a cry of dismay.

"Liar! Murderer! You'll die for this!"

My dagger clattered to the floor as a ragged, bloody Paulo pulled me away from his friend with a roar. Darkness fell as his fist proved to me the power of love and grief.

"He won't die. He won't die." From somewhere in the thrall of midnight, I willed the words past my thick tongue. I had to be fast or the matter of Gerick's dying would be of no importance next to the matter of my own. Was my timing always to be so wretched? I grasped for a handhold that would help me drag myself upright. Fool, not the right hand or you'll be flat out again . Darkness toyed with my senses until I was motionless long enough to banish it.

Now, again. Left hand on the cold, broken stone this time. When the streak of painful fire split my aching head, I thought I might be transported back into the young Lord's visions … or dreams or memories or whatever were these unending horrors to which he was condemned. But my distorted vision seemed to be only the result of the brain-rattling blow Paulo had laid on me when he saw me stabbing his dearest friend and king. Fortunately, he was so much stronger than me he felt no need to consummate his murderous intent before attending to the young Lord. My handlight had died out, leaving the lurid gleaming of the oculus our only illumination.

"He won't die." This time the words took shape in the air, though heavily distorted by my swollen lip. "She'll have worked it so he can't—even if he wants to."

The lanky figure whirled about, his freckled face ravaged with unashamed grief. "You meant to kill him all along. I knew it."

He hadn't heard me, and it hurt so much when he grabbed my hair and wrenched me to my knees that I wasn't sure I could say it again. His knife reflected the purple-green-and-gold light as he bared my throat, all the time the tears running down his grimy face. "I told you you'd die for it."

"Listen to me if you want to help him," I croaked. "He won't die from what I did. But I had to stop him.

His visions were going to kill us. I think my shoulder's broken, and not from falling down the stairs."

"You're a cursed traitorous liar. Why would I believe you?"

"He's breathing, Paulo. I stabbed him in the heart, but he's still breathing."

The blood welling out of the knife wound slowed, the red droplets rolling down the cocoon of shellstone that covered Gerick's flanks. But his chest still moved.

"We don't have much time," I said, clutching my throbbing arm and easing my aching body upward, bracing myself on the fallen slab. "We've got to get him out of this before the wound heals. Whatever she's done to him makes the things in his head come alive. He tried to save me from getting hurt by them, but it wasn't easy and not always successful, and he may not be able to protect us any longer. It's why he's been trying to frighten everyone away. Don't you see?"

Paulo shook his head. I didn't envy him his dilemma.

"Trust me, Paulo. I'm telling you that he's doing exactly what you say he's done before. He's trying to save us. Trying to save everyone by creating that illusion of terror out on the plains to keep them away from here. No matter the cost to himself. These things inside the fortress are walking out of his nightmares alive, and he can't control them."

"I won't leave him here."

Feeling a momentary reprieve, I pressed my advantage and moved in for a closer look. "We've got to break away the shellstone where it holds him in—and undo the straps. That's the trickiest, as that's where D'Sanya's enchantment will be held. And we'll have to time it just right. Once he's free of the enchantment, if the knife wound isn't healed yet, he'll bleed to death, but if it heals before we've got him away, his visions will start coming alive again, and we'll get skewered by some Zhid."

"Shit."

"I couldn't think of any other way to make him stop. He has no control of it."

Paulo closed his eyes and tugged at a clump of his sandy hair, as if to focus his thoughts. "I've got linen bandages in my pack."

"Good. You can bash away the shellstone while I look at the bolts. But first"—I really hated to ask him— "you've got to tie up my arm, or I'm going to pass out and be no help at all."

He did it, and gently enough, considering the circumstances. Fortunately he appeared to be uninjured. From the blood decorating his shirt and breeches, I didn't have to ask about the other fellow.

"What about that?" he said, pointing to the spinning ring. "If I was to stand on the table, I could grab it . . . stop it maybe . . ."

"No! Don't touch it. Don't even look at it. I once saw a slave touch one of the rings back in the Lords' house, and it withered his hand. We don't have power enough to deal with it. We just have to get him away from it."

To my relief, what I'd seen as bolts through Gerick's hands and feet were, in fact, long spikes attached to the metal straps, like those I'd seen in D'Sanya's lectorium. Barbed, I remembered, thus wicked enough. Only the straps were bolted to the rock. If we could get them loose, then the spikes could be eased out of his flesh. With luck, there would be no damage to his bones. With luck, we could stop the bleeding. With luck, removing the straps and the shellstone and getting him away from the oculus would leave him free of enchantment. With luck. I had never considered myself a particularly lucky person.

Warning Paulo to stay back, I touched one of the metal straps with my finger. The gut-wrenching slap of power convinced me instantly that we needed a tool with which to get them loose. D'Sanya's enchantments were far beyond me. Setting Paulo to chipping at the thin layers of shellstone with a fist-sized rock, I cast my hand-light again and explored the adjoining rooms.

Several of the rooms had collapsed walls and were completely filled with rubble. One was littered with piles of old bones. I spoke words of peace sending and apologized for having no incense, then left quickly.

A skull sat in a niche above the doorway of the innermost chamber. The lintel was cracked and the doorway skewed to one side, the heavy wooden door hanging by one hinge, but the room itself was intact. I had never been inside the Vault of the Skull when I lived in Zhev'Na, only heard tales of cruel and restless spirits who inhabited it. But someone more substantial than a ghost had been here . . . and fairly recently, too. A torch in a wall bracket still smelled of oil. I whispered the spell to set it aflame, then let my handlight die. I'd best hoard power for the spikes.

The chamber was a Metalwright's workroom, containing tools and materials similar to those I'd seen in D'Sanya's lectorium. I dared not touch the shaped scraps on the worktable, but in one corner lay neat stacks of metal bars of all lengths and sizes. They looked fairly innocent. I grabbed a long flat bar of black steel and a few of the tools and stuffed them under my arm. Grabbing the torch from the bracket, I then hurried back to the larger chamber.

Paulo had created a mountain of stone chips. His face was coated with chalky dust. In a few places the sweat held enough of the shellstone dust that a thin white glaze had formed, like the skim of ice on a still pond. He wiped his face with his upper arm. "He's bleeding again," he said as I came in, "but the knife wound has started to close. As you said."

"Good. I knew she wouldn't want him to die. As long as he doesn't heal too fast . . ."

I found a bracket for the torch on a nearby column, gave Paulo the steel bar, and warned him again not to touch the metal straps with his hands. "When you get the straps loose from the rock, I'll get the spikes off him." He nodded and set to work, levering the black bar under one wrist strap and prying with all his strength, his shoulders bulging. I took up his rock and carefully chipped away the brittle stone that had molded the young Lord's cheekbones.

After a seemingly interminable time, the bolts holding the strap to the rock finally gave way.

Paulo wiped the sweat from his face and moved to the other side. I took D'Sanya's pincers and sharp little trimming knife and, swearing at the uselessness of left hands, awkwardly removed the barbed spike from Gerick's cold flesh. Foul-smelling black fluid gushed from the wound in his palm, and only when it ran healthy red again did I bind his hand tightly with a strip of linen.

It seemed to take us an eternity to free his wrists, head, and right ankle. The torchlight was wavering. Paulo was straining at the last strap, his body shaking with the effort, and I was trying to stanch the flow of blood from Gerick's right foot, when my vision blurred and a musty scent enveloped us.

"Hurry," I said. A quick check of the knife wound revealed only an angry, seeping scar on Gerick's chest. With a furious growl, Paulo pressed again, and I tied off the ankle wound.

"This way! They've trespassed the fortress!" The shouts filtered down the stair. Boots trampled overhead.

"Ignore whatever you hear and see," I said. "You've got to keep working even if you can't see the strap."

Footsteps on the stair. "I'll sup on their entrails!"

The strap snapped loose. We were out of time. Reality was flickering before my eyes and I didn't know how long Gerick could hold back his lethal visions. Without skill or delicacy I slit the flesh around the spike and ripped the vile implement from his left foot. Paulo tied off the wound without waiting for the poisonous flow to end.

"We've got to get him away from here," I whispered. "Away from that." The ring still spun its evil magic overhead.

"Lead the way," said Paulo. "He won't die in this place at the least."

As Paulo hefted his friend into his arms and then over his shoulder, the torch guttered and died. The faint gleam of the oculus danced on the shellstone rubble, but on nothing else.

Stale, fetid air … a whispering evil that crept around

us, moaning, sighing . . . Entombed with madness . . . danger . . . You are our instrument. . . Destroyer . . .

As panic threatened to choke off the wail rising in my throat, one small part of my mind continued to function. Where is the door ? I felt my way forward, waving my uninjured arm ahead of me . . . holy Vasrin, how did Aimee manage this every day of her life? Ten paces … fifteen . . . how large was this chamber? Think . I crashed into the stone door frame, almost knocking myself senseless.

Light. . . you've got to have light, idiot girl . Cursing my stupidity and my incapable sorcery, I cast a feeble handlight. It wouldn't last a quarter of an hour.

On our way up the stair we had to step through piles of moaning wounded, begging us to stop and give aid, clawing at our legs with handless arms, weeping with the dreadful wails of lost souls. "Not real," I mumbled. "Not real." The farther we got from the spinning oculus, the more transparent the visions became, until they faded away altogether. No murderous apparitions awaited us at the top of the stair.

Stepping out of the ruined temple into the desert air was the closest thing I'd ever felt to having my slave collar removed, a burden of vile oppression lifted so that the world came to life once more. The sky curved above us pure black and studded with stars, and the wind that rolled the thornbushes through the ruined courtyards was the natural cold of a desert night.

Nim had kept her promise, and she and her wrinkled friend were waiting beside the fallen gates. When they glimpsed Gerick, eyes sunken, skin pale, body slathered with drying blood and shellstone dust, it was all we could do to keep them from abandoning us. Only my threat to bring back the smoke demon kept them with us.

Paulo draped Gerick over one of the horses and tied him securely. Pesca's back might have been the surface of the moon for all the likelihood of my climbing so high, so I took the reins and started walking away from the ruin, my left arm. wrapped tightly over the bound right one.

"Wait!" Paulo grabbed Pesca's halter and dragged the two of us toward a granite block, fallen from the broken wall. "Step up."

I stepped onto the knee-high block, and Paulo grabbed my waist and leg and heaved me into the saddle. I almost passed out. The stars smeared across the sky as I wrapped my left arm about Pesca's neck.

The desert dwellers led us across the plain and up a steep, twisting path into the jagged cliffs, outlined like dark teeth against the stars. For every jarring step of that journey I prayed that my arm would fall off. After the mostly invisible track through the cracks and hollows of the ridge leveled into a wide trough between two high walls, Nim stopped and pointed into a small pocket of night on our right. "You can stay here."

I bent my head down to Pesca's mane and sobbed in gratitude and terror. Though happy to stop moving, I just couldn't comprehend how I was going to get off of that horse without coming completely apart.

By the time Paulo had taken Gerick deeper into the dark hollow in the cliffs and laid him on the dirt, Nim and Rab had pulled my feet out of the stirrups and, as gently as four trembling hands could manage a cursing, weeping wreck of a woman, dragged me from my mount and sat me down. They pointed at a muddy waterhole under a rock overhang and shoved a pile of thornbush scraps at us. "The riake vontu can make fire, yes?" asked the old man, his voice quavering. Before I could answer, they scurried off into the night.

I felt nothing like a demon vanquisher , but did feel my humiliating performance of the last hour was somewhat balanced by the wan yellow light that still glowed from my numb fingers. As Paulo settled Gerick on the sand and whipped two blankets out of our saddle packs to bundle around him, I managed to spit one small spark from my handlight to set the dry brush afire. Hiccupping, trying not to moan too grotesquely, I rolled onto my left side and let my light die. I would leave it to Paulo to organize the blaze, while I concentrated on not moving or screaming.

"Here, let me look at that," said Paulo after a moment, dropping to his knees next to my face.

He touched my shoulder, and I threatened to gouge his eyes out amongst other things. From out of the blinding red haze, I heard him say that my arm seemed to be pulled out of its socket instead of broken, and that he had helped some stableman aid a fallen rider who had the same condition. I heard myself sobbing and saying something like, "Well then do something about it before I take an ax to it!"

"All right, then. Hold on." And he held my wrist firmly, bent my elbow, and did something that seemed to plant a hook in my stomach and draw that organ right up through my chest and out through my shoulder. I yelled and collapsed in a gibbering heap. All in all, a fortunate outcome for both of us. The pain was miraculously reduced, and I had no strength left to kill him.