Prisoner of the Iron Tower (19 page)

“Your gathering is unlawful!” shouted down one of the soldiers in the common tongue. “Governor Armfeld orders you all to go home.”

This was met with jeering from many of the students.

“Let him tell us so himself!” one yelled.

Elysia glanced uneasily at Lukan.

“I am Professor Rafael Lukan,” he called out. “Tell your governor that since he has closed down our university, I am obliged to lecture to my students out here instead.”

A great raucous cheer arose at his words, sending the grey and white gulls lining the rooftops flapping and screeching into the air.

“And today’s lecture will be on the virtues of democracy and republicanism,” Lukan said, balancing himself on the rim of an old well to address his audience, “compared to the evils of autocratic rule and dictatorship.”

“Stop!”

Lukan turned slowly around. Elysia looked up to see where the voice was coming from. A florid-complexioned man had appeared on the ramparts. He seemed agitated.

“You have no right, Professor Lukan, to openly incite these young people to rebellion. I must caution you that you are committing an offense of the highest treason against the New Rossiyan Empire.”

“I am merely continuing with my classes, Governor. Order your men to reopen our university and we will clear the streets and trouble you no longer.”

“But your lectures are seditious, Professor Lukan. I cannot allow you to preach revolution here in the streets—or in the university.”

“Then at least let them discuss their differences with you, Governor,” said Nina Vashteli.

“I had hoped better of you, Minister,” Armfeld said. “Why do you ally yourself with these troublemakers? There is no place for discussion here. Go home. All of you!”

Elysia heard a disturbance in the crowd of students behind her. A young man, bespectacled and earnest, pushed his way through to Lukan’s side.

“Look, Professor.” He pulled a folded cloth from inside his jacket and shook it out. “The flag! Our flag!”

Crimson and gilded chevrons unfurled and glinted in the sun. In the center of the cloth, a gold-embroidered merman with a scaly tail held aloft a trident.

“Well done, Miran.” Lukan clapped the young man on the shoulder. “Now we have our standard again.”

Another of the students came running up, holding a broom handle. With a little improvisation, the standard was soon lashed to the broom. Miran climbed up beside Lukan and brandished it in the air. Another deafening cheer went echoing around the citadel walls.

“I’m warning you, Professor!” spluttered Armfeld from the ramparts. “Send these young people home, or I will be obliged to take action.”

“Lukan.” Elysia was growing increasingly apprehensive. She touched his arm. “The Tielen military is ruthless. They don’t think as we do.”

“They wouldn’t dare fire on us,” Lukan said, arrogantly confident. “We outnumber them, five to one.”

“They have alchymical weapons. They don’t need to outnumber us.”

She saw him hesitate for the first time.

“Alchymical weapons?” He glanced down at her, his dark brows drawn close in a frown. “No. He wouldn’t dare. There are women and children here.”

“Governor Armfeld!” Nina Vashteli called up to the ramparts, her voice stern. “Can’t we come together and discuss these matters in a more civilized way?”

“Tell your mob to disperse!” shouted back the governor. He pulled out a white handkerchief and began to mop his face.

“What is there left to discuss?” yelled a light, passionate voice. Elysia saw that another student, face concealed under a broad-brimmed hat, had leaped up beside the standard-bearer. “What do we want? Tielens out! Tielens out!”

“Tie-lens out!” Other students nearby took up the cry, thumping on doors to emphasize the rhythm. “Tiel-ens out!”

“N-now look here!” Armfeld tried to raise his voice, but it was drowned in the angry chanting.

Elysia saw how red the governor’s face had become. The hand that held the white kerchief suddenly waved in one decisive, furious gesture. Shots rang out and little puffs of white smoke could be seen issuing from the barrels of the left-hand row of carbines.

The Smarnan standard wavered—and the young man holding it fell to the cobbles.

Suddenly the shouting died as Lukan caught Miran in his arms and lowered him gently to the ground. The other student jumped down to help support him. There was no sound in the citadel now but the distant crying of gulls.

“Oh no, no,” Elysia heard herself murmuring. The bespectacled student lay pale and limp; blood gushed from a wound at the base of his throat. Without even thinking, she had taken out her handkerchief and pressed it hard to the wound in a pad.
If it’s an artery that’s been damaged,
she thought, remembering her anatomy classes,
strong pressure must be applied or he will bleed to death.

“A doctor. Get a doctor!” cried out the other student, pillowing the boy’s head against his knee.

Elysia’s white handkerchief had already turned red with blood. Lukan handed her another, already folded.

Miran tried to murmur something.

“Hold on, Miran,” urged the student. “Don’t try to talk. Just hold on.”

“We need to get him out of the street,” Elysia said.
Hold on,
she echoed silently to the injured boy, trying not to remind herself that he was not so much younger than her own son; it could have been Gavril who lay here, bleeding his life out on the cobbles, felled by a Tielen bullet. . . .

A stretcher was improvised from a ladder draped with coats, and Miran was hurried into a nearby doctor’s surgery. Elysia followed after, aware that the students were massing outside. The silence that had followed the shooting of Miran was now replaced by an angry buzz that grew steadily louder.

She remembered the crowd that had raged for vengeance outside the Winter Palace in Mirom. Innocent blood had been shed then too. There would be a riot now; she recognized the signs. And nothing Governor Armfeld could do would stop it.

“My brother has been shot. And why? Because he dared to hold up our Smarnan flag!”

Elysia peered out through the little window and saw it was the other student who had seized the standard and was standing at Lukan’s side on the top of the well. The broad-brimmed hat she had been wearing lay on the ground, and dark auburn hair streamed unbound about her shoulders. Her voice throbbed with bitter emotion.

The citadel square had filled with protestors. And now Elysia saw weapons: axes, pitchforks, sabres, pistols. The Smarnans were by nature easygoing—but when they cared about a cause, they would fight to the death.

“Take care, dear Lukan,” she murmured. “Oh please take care.”

The spring sun shone on the imperial dockyards, but the brisk wind off the Nieva stung like a whip. Eugene, well-protected by his greatcoat, hardly noticed the cold. He was inspecting the warships of the Southern Fleet, which had put into Mirom after a refit in Tielen. And he smiled as he surveyed the new pride of his fleet, the iron-prowed
Rogned
. The fierce figurehead portrayed the fearless warriorprincess of ancient Tielen legend, gilded braids streaming behind her as she thrust her spear toward the waves.

“What do you think of her, highness?” asked Admiral Janssen, who had been accompanying him on his tour from the hold to the upper decks.

“She looks superb,” said Eugene. “But how does she handle under sail?”

“Oh she’s fast. She completed her trials with flying colors. Sturdily built—but with a good wind, she can outrun all the others.”

“We may need her,” Eugene said, nodding, “and sooner than we anticipated.”

“Smarna?” Janssen’s jovial expression became grave.

Smarna.
Just the sound of the name was beginning to irritate Eugene. It seemed to represent all that frustrated him in his efforts to unite the empire.

“The negotiations have broken down. Armfeld’s latest report is frustratingly vague, but he may well need backup.”

“Just give the word, highness,” Janssen said loyally. “We’ll be ready.”

CHAPTER
15

Gavril stumbles on across a hot, dark shore. Stars gleam red overhead, unfamiliar constellations half-obscured by poisonous fogs.

“I’ve been here before . . . but when?”

Every step burns the soles of his bare feet. The air stinks of sulphur; every breath he draws sears his mouth, his throat, his lungs.

Yet even as he wipes the sweat from his brow, he is aware that he has never visited such an inhospitable, desolate place.

This dream from which he cannot awake must be woven from someone else’s memories.

“It’s through here. It must be.” He hacks his way through the dense vegetation with an axe, chopping at great creepers that snap and sting his skin like whips. He has no idea what he is searching for, only that some desperate obsession forces him onward.

In the distance, a cone of fire simmers; choking fumes and vapors drift past. The sulphurous air is becoming hard to breathe.

Suddenly he trips over a tree root and topples forward onto his knees. He raises his head. He is kneeling at the foot of a great overgrown archway, its ancient grey stones smothered in mosses and clinging lianas.

“Is this finally it?” he asks. “The Serpent Gate of Ty Nagar?”

Closer to, he can make out the forms of twisting snakes carved into the old stones. Fanged mouths snarl at him, baring forked tongues. He lifts one hand to touch the carven scales.

“This is the Gate,” answers the voice in his head, “but where is Nagar’s Eye?”

Gavril looks up and sees the carven head of a great winged serpent crowning the gateway. It stares balefully back at him from one empty eye socket.

“Without the Eye, the Gate remains shut.” The soft voice is choked with anguish. “Shut for all eternity.”

“What Eye? What do you mean?” Gavril cries out, his shout sending a flock of fire-feathered birds shrieking up into the air from the overhanging trees. “Have you brought us all this way for nothing?”

Gavril awoke in darkness, overwhelmed by a black mood of despair—and yet it felt as if the despair was not his own.

Those names in his dream, Ty Nagar, the Serpent Gate . . . He had read them somewhere before.

He sat up on his hard prison bed, suddenly alert.

In my grandfather Zakhar’s books. I’ve been reliving Zakhar’s last memories. The Drakhaoul must have planted them in my mind. Has it also left me the memories of other, far older ancestors?

He heard a quiet footfall on the stair outside.

He gazed up at the dark stripes of night sky that showed through his barred window. The prison day began early—but it was nowhere near dawn yet.

Was I shouting out in my sleep again?

A key creaked in the lock and the door swung slowly open.

“Who’s there?”

Someone held up a shuttered lantern, its single beam directed right in his face. Dazzled, he flung up one hand to shield his eyes.

“You’re to come with us.” Two warders had entered his cell.

“Now? But I’m not dressed—”

“Come as you are.”

Has Linnaius told Eugene that I am of no further use? Dear God, is this to be the end? Have they come to take me to some secret place of execution?

“At least let me put my shoes on.”

They hurried him down the silent staircase and out across one of the many inner courtyards. The night air was fresh with a fine drizzle; no stars or moon could be seen overhead. Gavril, dressed only in shirt and breeches, shivered in the damp. Somewhere, a prison hound bayed dolefully into the empty night.

They hustled Gavril into another tower. The room into which they brought him was empty except for an iron chair and a wooden trolley covered in a cloth. Gavril halted in the doorway, staring at the chair and the leather restraints fixed on the arms and feet.

“Torture?” he said. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “Do you mean to torture me?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Director Baltzar appeared. He was dressed in a brown overall and wore a bizarre headpiece with a single thick glass lens attached to it, not unlike a jeweler’s loupe. “No, I’ve brought you here to cure you, Twenty-One.”

“But I’m not ill!”

“Put him in the chair.” Baltzar turned away and busied himself with unwrapping the contents of the cloth on the trolley.

The two warders began to drag Gavril toward the chair.

“Just what do you intend?” Panic overwhelmed him. He dug his feet in, resisting their efforts with all his strength. “Leave me be!” He rammed his foot into one of the warder’s shins. The warder let go with a shout of pain, and hopped away, cursing.

The other kicked Gavril’s legs out from under him and pinned him to the floor with the weight of his body.

“Stubborn to the end,” Baltzar said with a shrug. “Hold him steady.” He came up to Gavril and, even though Gavril squirmed and turned his face away, pressed a cloth to his nose and mouth. A strong chemical smell issued from the cloth and suddenly the room wavered as all the strength leaked from his body, leaving him weak and limp as a marionette.

A strong light shone above him. He blinked, unable to focus in its dazzling rays.

Where am I?

He tried to move his head—and found that it was firmly clamped. A thick leather collar had been buckled about his neck so that any movement other than blinking was impossible. He looked down and saw that his wrists were buckled to the arms of the chair in which he sat. Another wide belt secured him at the waist. When he attempted to move his feet, he found his ankles were secured as well.

A shadowy form appeared above him and leaned in close to raise one of his eyelids.

He recognized Director Baltzar.

“So you’re awake,” Baltzar said. His voice boomed hollowly, as if heard through water. “Good. This procedure only works if the patient is conscious.”

Procedure? Gavril tried to narrow his eyes against the glare of the overhead lantern to see what Baltzar was about.

“Stand ready to swab, Skar,” Baltzar said. “You know how profusely these incisions in the scalp bleed.”

Gavril caught the glint of steel in Baltzar’s hand as he leaned forward again. Behind him he saw an array of scalpels, probes, and tweezers laid out on the trolley.

“What—are you going to do—to me?” Each word came out so slowly, as his tongue and lips moved sluggishly against the effects of the drug.

“We are going to cut into your skull to free the pressure on the part of your brain that has been giving you these delusions, Twenty-One. You call it your ‘daemon.’ But from my extensive researches, I suspect it is the result of some injury or disease of the brain.”

“No!” Gavril cried out with all his force. “The daemon is gone—”

“You will be so much more placid when we have finished the procedure. You may feel a little pain during the operation—but when it is done, I assure you, you will be an altered man.” Baltzar’s eye glinted through the single magnifying lens.

Terror surged up from deep inside Gavril in a black, choking wave. He had heard of the technique of trepanning and its frequently disastrous results. This self-styled doctor intended to cut into his brain. When he had finished with him, he would be no more than a drooling idiot, incapable of remembering his own name.

“Help me!” Gavril shouted, though he knew there was no one who could come to his aid. “Help—”

And then he felt the tip of the cold steel blade slice into his scalp. Something warm trickled down one side of his forehead—and was wiped away.

They are cutting into my head. They want to excise my daemon—but all they will do is amputate my memories, my dreams, all that goes to make me who I am. Why is there no one to help me?

And now he heard the sound of a small drill boring into his skull, felt the terrible juddering as the bone resisted the bite of the metal. Until, with a sickening crunch, the tip went right through, penetrating the soft tissue of his brain.

The lantern-lit room imploded in a chaos of colored shards and dark stars. And then there was only the darkness.