Naamah's Curse

EIGHTEEN

On the morrow, my situation looked as bleak as ever.

The Vralians were careful not to give me any opportunities for escape or violence-not that I could have taken either easily, entangled in a clinking, rattling mass of chains as I was, unable to take a single full stride.

They gave me hard black bread and water to break my fast in the morning. When I explained to the older fellow that I needed to answer nature’s call, he shook his head, not comprehending. Clearly, his limited Tatar vocabulary did not extend to encompass the mortal body’s most basic requirements.

“I need to piss!” I said in frustrated Alban, using a vulgar slang term and knowing he wouldn’t understand a word of it. I pointed at his crotch, and mimed a man holding his phallus and relieving himself. “Gods! Do you people lack bladders as well as hearts?”

He flushed to the roots of his hair, his face darkening with embarrassment and disgust. But at least he unlocked the chain that tethered me to the wagon and pointed toward the outskirts of the camp.

I made my clanking, mincing way over the plain. Whatever else the Vralians were, they weren’t voyeurs. Both of them turned their backs on me as I concluded my business. And an awkward business it was, hovering in a narrow squat, trying not to let urine splash on my bare feet, my felt trousers, or the bedamned chain between my ankles.

The sheer misery of the experience nearly brought me to tears.

I breathed slowly until the moment passed, distracting myself with thoughts of flight. It was impossible, at least for now. I could barely walk, let alone run. Still, the thought of forcing them to chase me down held a certain grim satisfaction.

But there was no point in rousing my captors’ ire for the sake of a foolish whim-and my body was stiff and aching from the wagon’s jolting. So instead I hobbled back to rejoin them like an obedient dog.

For a mercy, they didn’t force me to hide beneath the tarpaulin today, but allowed me to ride atop it, pointing out a spot where I could sit atop some covered bales of wool. As such things went, it was reasonably comfortable.

We set out once more, heading due north. The younger man drove the cart, his hands firm on the reins. The older sat beside him. Their backs were rigid and upright, and they exchanged few words. There was only the sound of the breeze and the steady clopping of the cart-horses’ hooves.

I endured the silence for the better part of an hour, staring at the backs of their heads and despising them.

“May I ask why your god wills this?” I asked in the Tatar tongue, forcing myself to speak politely.

The older man turned his head in my direction without actually looking at me. “To save you.”

“To save me, yes.” I was as perishing sick of the phrase as I was of his god. “Why?”

He held up his gold medallion, which was shaped like a square cross with flared arms, and kissed it reverently. “Yeshua.”

“Yeshua,” I repeated. It wasn’t much of an answer. “Yeshua ben Yosef? Are you his priests? Did he tell you to save me? Am I to save him?”

That the Vralian understood; he reacted in shock, drawing back as though I had struck him. His companion queried him in their own tongue. They spoke for a moment, and the first man took on a thoughtful look.

Gods, I didn’t understand a thing about these men!

“No talk here,” the older man said. He pointed toward the north. “There, in Vralia.”

I sighed, collapsing onto my canvas-covered bales. If I didn’t escape soon, it was going to be a very long, very miserable journey.

I occupied myself with studying my shackles and chains. Now that my head was no longer spinning and yesterday’s vicious ache had dwindled to a tender, throbbing lump on the back of my skull, I realized I’d seen the like before.

When Raphael de Mereliot and the Circle of Shalomon had summoned the spirit Focalor, a Grand Duke of the Fallen, the silversmith Balric Maitland had wrought a chain to bind him-a silver chain with a silver lock, each link etched with sigils. These were much the same, and I thought the inscriptions on the shackles might have been written in the Habiru alphabet. I’d seen it before in the summoning invocations the Circle studied.

Well and so, I thought. Focalor, who had appeared in the form of a tall man with immense wings like an eagle’s, had broken the chain with ease.

He had also killed Claire Fourcay, another member of the Circle, and breathed her life force into me, forcing me to keep open the doorway to the spirit world that had allowed him to be summoned. And he had very nearly succeeded in pouring his own essence into Raphael, taking possession of his mortal being and wreaking untold havoc on the world.

If it hadn’t been for Bao and Master Lo, Focalor would have succeeded. But the important thing now was that the fallen spirit we summoned had been able to break the chain in the first place.

I racked my brains trying to remember how he had done it, recalling at last that the spirit had accused Claire Fourcay of mispronouncing two words in the spell of binding. That was no help, since the Vralians hadn’t spoken at all when they bound me. If there was a spell, like as not it was written in the inscriptions on the cuffs.

There had been another thing, though. Focalor had told the silversmith that a single drop of solder had obscured the sigil on one of the links.

That, mayhap, could be of use to me-although how the spirit had known it to be true, I couldn’t say. I supposed a Grand Duke of the Fallen, able to wield power over wind and sea, had magical resources well beyond the ken of one frightened, lonely bear-witch. Still, I could examine the chains for myself. I set about examining the links one by one, starting with the chain that ran from my left wrist to the collar around my neck.

Hearing the slow, methodical rattle as I made a close study of each link, the older Vralian glanced behind him to see what I was about. I raised my brows coolly at him and kept at it. He watched me in that reluctant, sidelong fashion for a moment, then shrugged and turned back.

His lack of concern didn’t bode well.

There was good reason for it. The chains that bound me were impeccably wrought. Every single bedamned link was a miracle of perfection, joined without the slightest gap or chink, burnished to immaculate smoothness. I couldn’t find a single drop of solder that had fallen astray. Every perfect link was etched with a tiny, perfect sigil.

Insofar as I could tell, the chains were flawless. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I would have done if I had found a flaw. Focalor had spread his enormous wings, and thunder had rolled. Lightning had flashed in his eyes. The chain wrapped around him had burst with a sharp crack and fallen to the floor.

I couldn’t summon thunder and lightning, only the gentle twilight. I was good at the arts of pleasure and coaxing plants to grow, not commanding the sea to rise and fall.

At last, I gave up searching for a flaw that didn’t exist, and that I wouldn’t know how to exploit if it did. Instead, I began testing the chains’ strength, gathering short lengths in my hands and hauling on them with all my might. Mayhap there was some weakness in a link not visible to the eye.

Again, the older Vralian glanced back at my strenuous efforts and the elaborate contortions that accompanied them.

I was short of breath, furious, and sweating beneath my thick Tatar coat. “Do you expect me not to try?”

He shook his head, his expression curiously gentle. “No.”

I wore myself out with trying.

By the time we made camp that evening, I was too tired to despair. Chained to the axle once more, I ate my bowl of stringy stew-meat and stale roots, and retreated beneath the wagon to curl up in my nest of furs. The ground was harder and rockier than it had been. Shifting stones out of the way, I had another idea. Selecting an especially keen-edged shard, I fell asleep clutching it in my hand.

On the following day, I set about trying to destroy the integrity of my chains. I affected a docile appearance and hid the stone shard in my sleeve until we were under way. As soon as the cart-horses leaned into their traces and we resumed our plodding, jolting progress toward the north, I shook the shard into my palm.

Both Vralians gazed fixedly forward. I had begun to note that they had a marked reluctance to look directly at me, especially the younger one.

Fine.

This time, I took care to make my movements small and unobtrusive. Leaning back against the covered bales of wool, I drew up my knees. I braced my left wrist against my left knee, shoving my last remaining jade bangle higher on my forearm so it wouldn’t rattle against the metal and give me away. I chose a link, the third closest to the cuff around my wrist, easiest to reach.

Its perfect little sigil gleamed.

With my right hand, I drew the sharp edge of my stone shard across it, timing my action to the dull, thudding fall of the cart-horses’ hooves.

It didn’t even make a scratch at first. But I kept at it, patient and deliberate, timing each careful stroke to hide the faint scraping sound, scoring the metal’s surface over and over until the lines of the sigil were blurred and imperfect.

It should have worked. I don’t know why it didn’t, except that it didn’t. Like as not there was some rule governing its magic. The chains had been made perfectly at their inception, and I could not unmake them by inducing a flaw after the fact.

And I hadn’t been as discreet as I’d thought. When we halted for the evening, the older Vralian came around to the side of the wagon and put out his hand, looking like a reproving parent. “Give the stone.”

I hesitated, fingering the edge of the shard. With sufficient force behind the effort, it was sharp enough to cut through flesh.

A trained warrior like Snow Tiger wouldn’t even have hesitated. I’d watched the princess snatch an arrow from an enemy’s hand and plunge it into his throat in a move as swift and deadly as a snake striking.

Of course, she hadn’t been laden with chains.

A clever, cunning fighter like Bao would have found a way to use the chains to his advantage. He probably wouldn’t even bother with the stone. I could imagine him vaulting over the Vralian’s head, wrapping his chains around the fellow’s neck in the process and throttling him on landing. By the time the second man had a chance to react, Bao would have plucked the knife from the first man’s belt and armed himself.

But I wasn’t a trained warrior or a skilled, clever fighter any more than I was a Grand Duke of the Fallen. With the element of surprise, I might, might succeed in slashing the first man’s throat. Even if I did, I could barely climb out of the cart unaided. I didn’t like my chances against the second fellow.

The Vralian watched me with his deep-set gaze, holding out his hand and waiting for me to make up my mind. Obviously, the element of surprise was gone.

With a heavy sigh, I put the shard in his palm.

His expression softened. “Good girl.”

I lowered my gaze in a penitent manner, replying in vulgar Alban and a sweet, remorseful tone. “Go to hell, you miserable goat-fucking bastard.”

We made camp that night within the sight of mountains. After I finished the bowl of barley gruel that they gave me for the evening meal, I sat with my back against one of the wagon-wheels and gazed at the distant range. Here and there, I could make out carpets of dark green on the slopes.

Trees.

As much as I’d come to be fond of the vast, wide-open expanse of the Tatar steppe and its immense blue sky, I’d never stopped missing trees. I’d never imagined that my first glimpse of them would be aught but joyful. Instead, it was a reminder that I was bound and helpless, cut off from my own inner senses, and headed in the opposite direction from everything and everyone I had ever loved.

It was not a joyful moment.