The Road to Hell - eARC (80 page)

She was sobbing again, as grief and fear lashed through her. She was responsible for those deaths. She’d been the target. The target to destroy. It hurt so deeply, she couldn’t breathe against it, but that freezing tide of lethal fury bore her up, turned her quivering sinews to iron and her will to steel.

“Find them!” she rasped. “Find them and
arrest
them!”

“Your Grand Highness,” the captain gripped her shoulders, peering down into fiery gray eyes which streamed with tears and flashed with fury, “my Voice will flash that message to every law enforcement agency, every military base on Sharona. Those bastards will go down. I swear by Vothan, they
will
go down.
Tonight
. There’s no hole deep enough to hide them, not anywhere on Sharona.”

“Thank you, Captain,” she whispered.

Then she turned her gaze helplessly to stare at the burning palace on the shore and that terrible, supporting rage flickered and she sagged as the agony whipped through her again. The surgeon’s hands touched her, urging her to lie flat, and the moment his hands touched her, the terrible pain in her heart eased away, grew dim, disappeared. He was murmuring softly to her.

“Rest, now, Your Grand Highness, close your eyes, yes, that’s right, we’ve got you safe, hush, now. Breathe softly…softly…light as down feathers from a gosling…”

Her eyes closed over unutterable weariness.

Andrin’s last thought was a plea to Shalana.
Have mercy, Lady, please. Let my parents and sisters be alive. Please, I can’t bear this burden alone…

Then even that disappeared.

* * *

Relatha Kindare had come a long way from Estafel and the servants’ quarters at Hawkwing Palace.
Trainee Healer
. Those two words meant more to her than anything ever had in her life, and she had the crown princess to thank for it. Not only had she been accepted into the training program at the legendary Tajvana Healing Academy, one of the Imperial Healers had volunteered to give her extra tutelage in his spare time.

But for tonight, she was just Relatha the servant, again, by choice. She’d wanted to be part of the celebration at the Grand Palace, and gods knew the Grand Palace staff needed all the help they could get! Since she was already well-known and thoroughly vetted by Security, it had been relatively easy to be added to the duty roster for the evening.

So here she was, in the midst of the glittering assemblage on the stone terrace, carrying a tray of drinks, enjoying the fireworks, and surreptitiously stealing glances at the Ylani Straits. She hadn’t learned until just a few minutes ago that the crown princess and her husband were leaving Tajvana for a few weeks of long delayed honeymoon.

If she looked sharp, she could just pick out the dark silhouette of the royal yacht slipping out of the harbor, to be joined by the destroyers waiting in mid-channel, and her eyes went watery. Such a good man, she’d found. Relatha had gone nearly out of her mind thinking about Andrin in the hands of one of Chava Busar’s unholy brood. During her work at the clinic attached to the school, she’d heard horror tales of girls who’d come in for medical help and emotional counseling after running afoul of the Uromathian emperor’s sons. The thought of
any
of them with Crown Princess Andrin had made Relatha’s blood run cold.

She was just passing Mister Kinlafia and his bride, the Privy Voice, who were talking to First Councilor Taje about some piece of legislation, when shouts erupted on the balcony above the terrace. Relatha jerked her gaze up to see the emperor running toward the Palace, shouting at the empress to get off the balcony.

She froze, unable to breathe, even, when Security started to run, as well, converging on the Imperial family. The emperor was shouting for Anbessa, but Relatha didn’t see the youngest Imperial Grand Princess anywhere on the long marble balcony. She raked her gaze along the whole, immense length of it—the marble balustrade ran for at least fifty or sixty feet along the open doors of the Grand Imperial Salon—but there was no sign of Anbessa anywhere.

Relatha gripped her tray of wineglasses hard enough to hurt when Security lifted the Empress Varena and Grand Princess Razial over the side of the balcony rail, lowering them to the armsmen below. What was wrong, up there? Why hadn’t they just retreated into the safety of the Grand Imperial Salon? Was there a crazed gunman in the salon? Surely not—Security would’ve been on top of him long before this and there hadn’t been a single gunshot. But if everyone else was running
away
from the salon, why was the emperor running
into
it—?

The empress touched the terrace first, followed an instant later by Razial. More Calirath armsmen were vaulting the rail, jumping down to close in around the empress and her daughter. They were shouting at everyone to get back, away from the building, and Relatha stumbled backward, her hands unsteady on the tray. She needed someplace to set it down as more people crowded back, away from the palace walls, but her eyes were locked on the emperor as he slid between two or his armsman like an eel and disappeared through one of the Grand Imperial Salon’s dozens of doors.

The armsmen charged after him. She could hear them calling his name, but the emperor’s voice rose over theirs like thunder, shouting at Anbessa. The girl must be inside the Salon, Relatha realized, and craned her head, trying to see as more people crowded around her, partially blocking her view—

The Salon exploded.

Relatha screamed. She dropped the tray as the whole, long room filled with fire. The Salon was a raging inferno—an inferno licking out to envelop the Emperor of Sharona and his armsmen. There was fire everywhere—
only
fire, roaring and hissing like one of the Arcanans’ dragons—and then a small, familiar figure arrowed out of the furnace, thrown high into the air. She cartwheeled out above the crowd, her gown smoking and trailing cinders.

“It’s Anbessa!” someone screamed, even as a heavier, far more massive body came charging out of that flaming hell.

And then there was a second explosion.

The blast front picked up that heavier body and flung it out across the night in a corona of fire.

Dozens of people were reaching up, trying to catch the grand princess as she fell, but Relatha’s gaze tracked that second, heavier body. She knew exactly where he’d come down, and she started to run, shoving her way through the stunned crowd, even as the Salon blew apart in a third massive explosion.

Flame and death belched out into the night, an overpressure of sound and debris roared across the terrace at treetop height, and the entire balcony came down.

Chunks of marble slammed down into the crowd, and Zindel chan Calirath plunged down like a boulder as shocked spectators screamed and scattered. He crashed into the elegant little tables set with crystal and candles, punchbowls and wine and fancy pastries. He smashed down across them. Slid through them. Tumbled and rolled sickeningly off the end. Vanished into a large flowerbed filled with trees and shrubbery and flowers.

Panic-stricken people slammed into Relatha. Heavy bodies almost knocked her down, and she cursed and shoved people aside. She ran frantically forward, toward the spot where the emperor had fallen. More of the balustrade crashed down around them, sending people running in wild terror, but Relatha Kindare didn’t care. She fought her way to him. She hurled overturned tables out of the way, climbed across tumbled chairs, heaved burning debris aside with her bare hands as she searched frantically through the shrubbery.

There!

He lay at a grotesque angle, and he was frightfully still. Horribly still.
No!
she cried in denial, and dropped to her knees, nerved herself to search. Her fingers shook as she reached for his wrist.…

A pulse
! She sobbed aloud just once. Then she closed her eyes, concentrated…and whimpered.

There was pain everywhere. Pain from broken bones—
dozens
of broken bones. Some of those breaks lay near major arteries, too close for her to dare to move him, even though his pulse was thready, fast, and weak. Shock was dropping his blood pressure, far too quickly, and she concentrated hard. Energy flowed through her body, down through her heart, where she filled it with as much love and strength as she could muster.

She sent that healing flood through her arms, out through her hands, and her life force merged with his. She absorbed some of his shock, reeled under the wave of agony that crashed through her, and her hands shook as it threatened to suck her under. But she refused to yield. She fought the darkness aside, sent more of her life force into him. Her training told her to stop—screamed that she
must
stop! She was pouring too much of herself into him, spending her own life force like fire, emptying herself into a cold, dark void of death. She knew that…and she didn’t care. He was the Emperor,
her
Emperor. She would die before she let him go, and she turned her back on her teachers’ warnings. She emptied herself against his pain and the savage injuries of his broken body.

And it wasn’t enough.

She could feel him slipping away, under her fingers.

“
NO
!” She screamed at him, but her voice emerged as little more than a hoarse, rasping whisper.
Tears blinded her. “Don’t you
dare
go!”

She moved by raw instinct now and lunged for his feet. She jerked off his shoes, jammed both hands hard against the balls of his feet, locked what her instructors had called the “wellsprings of life” in the soles of his feet. Energy centers there drew energy in and let energy flow out. When death came, her instructors had said, a person’s energy bled away to nothing through those wellsprings.

“
You may not leave
!” she screamed at him, her voice stronger, and his soul hesitated, trapped by her hands and her will. “We
need
you,” she cried. “We need you too desperately to let you go! Oh, goddess…Shalana, give me strength, we
need
him.
Please,
Your Majesty, stay with us…”

A terrible spasm went through him. Then he started to shudder, violently. The shuddering lasted for several terrifying seconds. Then he relaxed with such suddenness, such totality, she thought for a moment he’d died, after all. She drew breath to howl in anguish, when a low, deep groan tore from him. He tried to move under her hands, and pain flared, cruelly. He cried out in agony.

“Don’t move!” she cried. “You have broken bones!” She didn’t dare release her grip on the wellspring points, but he was trying to move, trying to thrash around.

“Anbessa…” The name tore from him, raw with anguish.

She searched the terrace with a frantic gaze, trying to find someone—anyone—in an Imperial Security uniform. There were so many people running in panic-stricken horror, she could see nothing but total confusion. But then a face she recognized resolved itself from the wild melee and she screamed out a name.

“
DARCEL!
”

* * *

Darcel Kinlafia jerked around, yanked out of his efforts to help the dozens of injured, sort out the panic, by the sound of his name. The scream cut through the chaos and the confusion with an impossible clarity. He knew he couldn’t possibly have heard it through the chaos and the bedlam, but he didn’t need to hear it with his ears, for he Heard it with every fiber of his Talent and he wheeled, eyes searching for its source.

“Down here, Master Kinlafia!” Relatha Kindare shrieked. “
Help me!
”

His gaze dropped to the flowerbed. It focused on her—then on the shape she crouched over, in that flowerbed—and his face turned paper-white in the ghastly light of the burning palace. He charged forward, tossing aside tables, chairs, and people with equal abandon, and Alazon was right behind him.

“Find a healer!” Relatha gasped, as he slid to his knees beside her. “Please! I can barely keep him stable, I’m just a student, oh, Goddess, I’m so scared…”

Both Voices went glassy-eyed. It took her gibbering mind a long, horrified moment to realize they were sending out a broadband distress call. She tried to feel grateful, tried to hope someone would Hear in time, but the battle to force the emperor to live consumed her and despair tore at her as she felt him slipping away once more.

The Privy Voice came out of “send mode” first and her eyes focused on Relatha once more, huge and dark in her ashen face, glittering reflections of savage firelight.

“What can I do?!”

“Don’t let him move, don’t let him thrash around. He’s got broken bones. If he moves, he’ll tear things open, inside. And he’s asking for Anbessa.”

“Alazon,” Kinlafia said.

“Got it,” she replied immediately, and set a light hand on Relatha’s shoulder. “I’ll find out how the Grand Princess is. Darcel will stay with you.”

She disappeared into the wild confusion, but her husband stayed close by Relatha’s side, searching, for injuries. The emperor’s arm had a ghastly break, a compound fracture pumping blood, and Kinlafia’s face blanched even whiter. He ripped off the capelets of his formal court dress and used a strip torn from them to tie a tourniquet around the Emperor’s right arm. A jagged splinter of bone had torn through flesh and skin and sleeve. There was blood everywhere, so much blood…

“More cloth strips,” Relatha said, her hands still clamped like death on the soles of the emperor’s feet. “And something for splints.”

Kinlafia tore more strips from his capelets. His explorer’s good sense kept his nerves steady and the emergency medical training which went with it told his hands what to do, and Relatha held tight to Zindel’s life force, trusting him to staunch the wounds while she refused to let her emperor slip away.

Kinlafia bound Zindel’s right arm to his chest so he couldn’t move it, then smashed a tumbled chair to bits for splints to secure the shattered arm more securely. Then another chair went to pieces as he splinted the emperor’s right thigh and left calf.

He’d just finished that when several uniformed armsmen came running from another part of the terrace, and Relatha heard fire alarm bells clanging as fire wagons fought their way through the victory celebration crowds, trying to reach the burning Grand Palace. A ponderous crash marked the collapse of the Grand Imperial Salon, and she flinched as a fresh shockwave of heat, flame, and smoke belched across them. Cinders rained down like hailstones.