The Golden Sword (12 page)

“I am exploring the material sign,” he said to me casually.

Khemi’s head swung between us as, she listened without understanding.

“Nothing I cannot survive. Keep in mind that what the helsar sees is shown to me also,” I suggested to him.

“When are you going to do me the great service yris-tera promised?” Hael inquired. Just then Besha’s bulk loomed dark and menacing behind him. She stepped over Hael and in three strides was at her beast’s head.

“I have seen your face too often,” she said to me, pushing me away from the corpse. I rolled to the wall near the dharener.

Having examined the beast, she rose from him and came toward us. Her huge hand came down upon Khemi’s fragile shoulder, and Besha hurled the crell across the stall, so hard that the girl hit the far wall and crumpled senseless at its base. Hael bent over the fallen Khemi. Besha came toward me, hands raised. I could retreat no farther. I put my chained wrists before my face, to defend myself. The tiask struck my wrists away and slapped my face so hard my temple cracked against the stone wall. I saw another universe, and suddenly I could not breathe. I curled into a ball. My back exploded in white pain. Kicks rained upon me where I lay.

Far away, I heard voices. Eventually I could see the sand beneath me, and I was conscious that they moved me. I remember being carried into the dim crell chamber and locked into place upon the chain. I remember Aje’s voice, but I did not answer. I found no sleep, but worked as best I knew how within my body to ease it. A part of me raged and paced. After a time, I was conscious that the crellkeep came for Aje. Besha wanted her plaything. Aje paid a heavy price that he might be a ten.

When I felt no pain in me, I lay gaining strength. I had almost calmed the raging within, when Aje was carried into the chamber by two jiasks. The crellkeep scurried along beside them, carrying a torch, and in the torchlight upon Aje’s body I saw for the first time what a Parset huija can do to human flesh. The steel-burred lash had torn muscle and sinew from the crell’s chest. I wondered, as they chained his ankle, if he would live.

The jiasks who had brought him departed. The crellkeep remained, standing over Aje, holding the torch high. His face was sorrowful. I too felt some sorrow.

As he moved to lower his torch, I lured the crellkeep toward me with artful moaning. He knelt beside me, setting down his torch upon the stone. As he bent closer to examine my face, I opened my eyes, smiling while I slid his knife from its sheath. My chains rattled as I plunged the knife between his ribs. The crellkeep fell upon me in his death agony. I took the keys from his slitsa belt, removed my wrist bonds, and unlocked the manacle from around my ankle.

Many of the crells had seen. Some were sitting up staring, but none said a word. I tossed the key ring down the line. I wished Khemi had been there, so I could have freed her. She had not been returned with me this night. I leaned over Aje. He needed skilled attention. I had not much in healer’s skills, but I took precious moments to do what I could.

The crell who caught the key ring did not free himself, but laid it down, regarding me levelly.

I looked down at myself, and in the flickering torchlight saw what he saw—that I was covered in the crellkeep’s blood.

“Free yourself,” I urged him.

“Why?”

I looked around me. My chain-mates appeared uneasy and frightened. They were not happy with this choice I offered them. I looked at Aje, once Lalen, musician of Stra. I did not understand the crells’ indifference.

“I need someone to get me to the court. I do not know the way. Is there not one among you more oppressed by this life than afraid to flee it?” I spoke that the moment might match my vision.

There was one. I got the keys from beside the crell who would not use them and threw them down the chain to the dark, curly-haired man standing. He unlocked his bracelets, freed his ankle, and came to stand beside me, the keys in his hand, rubbing his wrists.

“We will need these for the gates.” He hefted the key ring in his hand; grinning around him. “None else for a clean and easy death?” he asked them. The wind blew in his husky voice. His white teeth flashed like a carnivore’s.

In an easy motion he had the torch and the dead crellkeep’s weapons in his hand. He dragged the crellkeep to his vacant place on the chain, then, motioning me to follow, slipped into the corridor.

I followed, wondering if I could move in such silence, down the corridor and into the crellkeep’s cubicle before the barred steel gate. There he sconced the torch and rummaged in a deep wooden chest.

“If you are in for the small wager, would you stay in for the great?” I whispered to his back.

His curly head came up from out of the chest, followed by his arms, in which he held assorted weapons and belts. Among them was a huija.

“What mean you?” he said, tossing all but the huija and a short blade at my feet.

I knelt down and chose a sword belt with a light blade and a gol-knife that suited me.

“I would exchange a friendly greeting or two with the tiask Besha before I leave this fair land,” I explained, rising.

“Hold the torch for me,” he said, and I did, as he fitted the key in the lock and slid aside the barred gate, which he then locked behind him. He took the torch from me and discarded it.

We sidled down the corridor, pressing our backs against the smooth stone.

“So you would see my mistress,” he grunted, jumping from out one shadow into another. Around the corner, he awaited me, his head flat against the corridor wall.

“Did you hear something?” His voice was harsh. I strained my ears.

“I hear nothing,” I said.

He laughed. “We will both be hearing things soon. We will be here sneaking about at sun’s rising, at this rate. And you would seek audience with a tiask! If I sought out every Nemarsi who has laid hands upon me, we would be still here next Detarsa.” He turned his head, and our faces were very close. “Where would you expect to find her, this time of night, after such a busy evening?”

“She is your mistress,” I reminded him. He chuckled and sprinted off down the corridor. I followed him down that one, and then to the left and past three, and then to the right. There we halted. I gasped for breath. He whose name I did not know pressed me back against the wall.

“Up those stairs, “ he whispered, “are the kitchens, and among them one room where food and drink are always provided. They often go there to while away the time. She goes there, when her irascibility invades her sleep. But remember that the Nemarsi use all twenty-eight enths of the day, and others may be there also. Men right out of the desert often have trouble sleeping through the night.” And he did not ask after my fears, but took the stairs in a dozen leaps. These corridors were larger, muffled with tapestries, almost well-lit. He silenced me when I tried to speak, and shook free the huija in his hand.

Then he simply stepped from the stairwell into the middle of the corridor, the huija slithering like a living thing beside him. I tightened my clammy grip upon the gol-knife and followed.

After a time of aching silent progress, we stopped, just short of a wide-open doorway on our right. From within, light, sound, and the smell of baking bread poured forth into the corridor.

“What better could we ask?” he whispered as we peered within.

The room was intimately lit, and L-shaped, and through three high windows I could see the spent evening sky, the stars fading away. There were a number of plank tables, all deserted save for one, at which sat Besha and a jiask unknown to me. Across the remains of a meal they leaned toward each other, engrossed in earnest conversation. It had been their low, angry voices we had heard out in the corridor. The kitchen help clattered about, somewhere around the far corner.

My companion touched me upon the arm and walked boldy through the doors. The sound of my body’s movements was deafening. My skin prickled, my mouth was dry, yet the soles of my feet seemed slick with sweat. My eyes upon Besha’s broad back, I sheathed the knife and drew the short blade at my waist, for I was reminded of her girth and reach, and knew I must keep my distance to keep my life.

They did not look up until, standing a man’s length from them in the aisle between the tables, my companion spoke.

“There is a certain fitness, Diyjar, in meeting death, upon a full stomach,” and the huija flicked out even while the jiask Diyjar was drawing his sword and still rising, wrapping itself around the blade. My companion snapped his wrist back, and the jiask’s blade skittered across the stone floor. Then again did the huija strike, and the jiask wore no longer gol-knife or scabbard at his waist.

Besha stared, her recurved stra blade wavering, her eyes going from my companion to myself and back again. She took two steps backward, then held her ground.

My companion had the jiask backed against the wall.

“Speak my name and petition me for your life,” the curly-haired man suggested to his terrified victim.

“I know it not,” stammered the perspiring jiask, “but leave me my life, and whatever is mine shall be yours.”

“You no longer have what I want. You had it once, and it was named Mera. Remember me now, jiask?” And the horrified realization was still on the jiask’s face as the deadly huija curled hissing about his throat and snapped tight. He slid lifeless down the wall, to crumple upon the floor, his neck at an unlikely angle.

The dark man knelt over him and pulled the burred lash away from the flesh in which it was embedded. He turned and regarded us, coiling it carefully in his hands.

“Carth.” Besha’s voice was uncertain. She searched for a commanding tone. “Give me that, and naught shall come of this.” She held her free hand out to him.

He shook his head, grinning.

“I will not hurt you, mistress,” he said “I stand here only to see that you two are not disturbed.” And he hunkered there over the corpse, the huija in his hands.

Besha turned to me, and her eyes were blazing with fury. Her dark lips curled back from her teeth, she made a great number of allusions as to my probable parentage and the condition of my female. parts.

She advanced toward me, thrashing the air with her blade. Now that the moment was here, I could think of nothing to say. I had not the knack for talking and killing at once.

I think I somehow expected my companion to dispatch Besha for me, knowing that I desired it. But he had taken me at my word, and only watched as I retreated before the bulky tiask, trying somehow to get a sense of her. She bellowed with every new leap, and her cuts descended right to left and ascended always the same way. She sought by sheer force to batter me to the ground, but her bulk made her slow. I danced and jittered to keep out of her reach on those furious downward swings. Each time, my blade met hers, my arm was rocked in its socket. I sought to score her while the inertia of her cut left her open, but she caught herself and ripped her own blade up my side. I ducked a clumsy attempt to cleave off my head, and blooded her sword arm. My ribs burned.

I fled around the table from her. She huffed and wheezed. No longer did a steady stream of filth run from her mouth. I caught sight of my companion, grinning, as I whirled out of the way of Besha’s longer reach. Her thrusts became predictable, but my arm was leaden from her concussive parries, and sweat ran into my eyes and blurred my sight. As I retreated before her, I suddenly grasped the double-eight pattern of her tiring sword arm. I could not last much longer. I could barely keep her spark-throwing cuts from my breasts.

I feigned a stumble, and landed rolling. She flung herself through the air toward me, thinking to crush me under her enormous weight. I closed my eyes in that final thrust, that I might not see my ending. Besha impaled herself with such force upon my blade that it was torn from my hand. Her ponderous hulk thudded to the stone beside my head, so close that her great thigh landed upon my face. Only a handbreadth of misjudgment, and I would have been dead beneath her. I lay there and trembled, too weak for a moment even to lift the flaccid weight of her thigh from me.

I heard the snap and hiss of the huija, and scrambled to my knees. My companion stood between me and the doorway, and in that doorway were a number of jiasks, and the dharener of Nemar.

Without thinking, I rolled Besha’s corpse and retrieved from it the weapon that had so fully served me. The tensed muscles knotted and twitched in my companion’s dark back as he made the huija dance and writhe on the azure floor around him.

I knelt there over Besha a moment, despair and triumph chasing each other around within me. I wiped the blade on my naked thigh and went to stand beside the curly-haired man. I could hear at our backs the buzzing of the kitchen help, who peeped around the corner. I wondered where I had gone wrong in my sorting, and then, not even that mattered to me. I stared at Hael, who leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe in breech and belt only. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he seemed pleased with himself. I wondered what they would do to us—two crells who had slain Nemarsi and been caught while still about it.

“We stand upon the swirl of change, past the dying threx, and the sword has found its destined scabbard,” he remarked.

I failed to see what bearing yris-tera had upon this moment.

“Shall we go now and see the cahndor?” he asked, bestirring himself from the wall to approach us. The huija hissed and cracked. Hael stopped. His face was calm. The jiasks, six of them, stood waiting in the doorway. There was no escape for us.

“You will have to take this from me, dharener,” I warned him.

“Retain it,” Hael said. “And you also.” He spoke to my companion. “Retain your weapon. But coil it up and come with me to the cahndor.” Such an odd smile the dharener had upon his face.

I chanced a sidelong glance at him who held the huija. In his eyes was a dawning understanding. He pulled up the lash, coiling it carefully, metal burrs meshed inward. I touched him.

“What means this?” I whispered.

“That we may yet go free,” he said in a low voice. “It is a chance only, if the Day-Keeper means what he implies. But we have no other.” And he put his left arm around my shoulder. I sheathed my blade and let my companion propel me toward the door.