7: Enemies and Shadows (11 page)

He saw Fikiri drop out of the Gray Space a few feet ahead of him. With an intense effort Kahlil tore his way free of the Gray Space as well.

The heat of the outside world rushed over Kahlil. His injured right arm burned. A shallow gash ran from the back of his hand to his elbow. He took a deep breath and pain shot through his chest. He couldn’t allow Fikiri to land another kick like that last one.

Fikiri spun on Kahlil. His weathered face was scratched and bloodied. He glared at Kahlil in open fury.

“You will die, Ravishan!” Fikiri growled. He drew his curse blade and sprang forward.

Kahlil’s own weapon was lost. He flicked his fingers apart, ripping the intensely resistant Gray Space into a Silence Knife. He thrust the Silence Knife into Fikiri’s curse blade. The curse blade shattered. Kahlil plundged his Silence Knife up into Fikiri’s chest.Fikiri’s  armor sent Kahlil’s hand skittering. Kahlil struck again and felt the armor crack. His Silence Knife slash through flesh.

Fikiri cried out  then bolted back from Kahlil and sprinted for the cover of the ruins.

The foolishness of pursuing Fikiri into unknown territory gave Kahlil momentary pause. He didn’t know what could be lurking in the ruins. And his body was already at the edge of collapse. But he couldn’t bear to turn back. Not after what Fikiri had done to Ji. How could he tell Jath’ibaye that he’d let Fikiri escape?

The muscles of Kahlil’s legs shuddered, but he forced himself to rush after Fikiri. He pushed himself harder, closing out the sharp cramping pain. He’d endured worse pain for less.

Cracked flagstones littered the ground. The footing was uneven but also innately familiar. Kahlil recognized the ring of broken stones that had marked the common baths at Rathal’pesha. Water still bubbled up from the natural hot spring, but now it reeked of sulfur.

Kahlil raced after Fikiri through familiar and strange corridors. A crumbling hall filled with eroded statues and apple trees led into an old library. Rotting shelves slumped against each other. Tatters of ancient scrolls lay on the floor. All the books were gone.

Kahlil chased Fikiri down a long hall. Shafts of light shot through holes in the roof. Kahlil noticed the remains of priests’ bodies. Hand bones, ribs, cracked skulls and even a few complete skeletons littered the floor. The remnants of clothes still clung to some of them. Kahlil saw Fikiri briefly crouch down beside one body. He clutched something and raced through a doorway.

Kahlil rushed after him. His chest burned with each breath he drew but he forced himself to sprint ahead despite the pain. Fikiri was slowing down already. His hand still bled badly. Kahlil easily picked out the fresh splashes of Fikiri’s blood from the ancient dried stains that discolored the stone floors. Fikiri couldn’t run much longer.

Kahlil burst through the door only seconds behind Fikiri. He sensed something different in the air of this room. It felt dank and subterranean. Dull green light glowed from corroded lamps hung high in the vaulted ceiling. Kahlil’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior quickly. The stone walls were dark and covered in minute inscriptions. The only door in the room was the one behind Kahlil.

Fikiri had run himself into a dead end.

He stood against the far wall, gasping for air. As Kahlil advanced, Fikiri lifted an old Payshmura pistol. Rust caked the side of the barrel. Fikiri must have taken it from one of the priests’ bodies. Fikiri took aim with his left hand.

Kahlil continued his advance. Even if Fikiri managed to get the corroded pistol to fire, Kahlil could destroy the bullets with an Unseen Edge. Kahlil lifted his hands. He expected the Gray Space to resist. Instead he felt nothing, as if the Gray Space were not there at all.

Suddenly, Kahlil realized why the air in the room felt so disconcerting. This was one of the chambers where the ushiri’im had been trapped and punished.

Fikiri grinned as he saw the look of shock on Kahlil’s face. Then he fired the pistol. Kahlil dodged to the side but outside of the Gray Space he could not outmaneuver a gunshot. The bullet punched deep into the muscle of his right bicep. Kahlil clutched his arm as hot blood welled up from the wound.

Fikiri cocked his pistol and took aim again.

Fury surged through Kahlil like strength. He refused to die like this. He would not allow Fikiri to have this cheap, easy victory over him.

 Kahlil charged Fikiri. He heard the loud burst of a second shot and felt a sharp pain tear across his abdomen. Kahlil ignored it. Fikiri attempted a third shot, but the pistol misfired. Then Kahlil seized him.

He punched Fikiri in the face and the man’s head smacked back against the wall. Kahlil punched again. Fikiri brought up his armored arm, blocking Kahlil. But all Kahlil felt was rage. He threw his weight against Fikiri and slammed him back into the wall again. Fikiri attempted to kick free of Kahlil. Again Kahlil hurled Fikiri against the wall with brutal force. Blood smeared across the stone. Fikiri buckled. Kahlil gripped his throat and hammered his head back into the stone wall again and again.

He continued beating Fikiri’s skull against the stone, until Fikiri’s weight went dead in his hands. Kahlil’s arms failed him. Fikiri’s body slumped to the floor.

Kahlil swayed on his feet. His hands were caked in blood, hair, and a pulp of flesh and bone. Exhaustion welled through Kahlil. His legs trembled under him. His arms and side throbbed with pain. He wanted to collapse.

He couldn’t afford that. Not in this room. He had to get back to Vundomu.

He turned. In front of the door stood two large spiderlike hungry bones and a small blond woman. Even swathed in heavy black robes, her body looked unnaturally thin. Her face was surprisingly young and pretty. Her eyes were nearly as intensely blue as Jath’ibaye’s. She lifted a delicate skeletal hand and pointed at Kahlil.

“Hurt him,” Loshai said quietly to the hungry bones.

And for a long while, they did.

Chapter Seventy-Five

Arc Six: Fai’daum Underground Uprising

The big tahldi charged through the drifts of snow. Its white breath rose like steam through the slowly falling flakes. Each motion of the tahldi’s body sent waves of pain through John’s broken legs and hands.

The tahldi bounded easily over a frozen stream. The jolt of its landing crashed through John’s body. He clenched his jaw closed against a cry of pain. His vision went white at the edges. The black branches of the surrounding trees suddenly seemed to recede. He slumped forward against the tahldi’s thick neck.

“Jahn?” Ravishan tightened his grip around John’s chest to keep him from falling. “Do you need to stop?”

Ravishan pulled at the reins, slowing the tahldi to a walk.

“No. I’m all right.” John straightened.

The buttons of Ravishan’s coat felt soothingly cold against his back. Huge snowflakes tumbled down onto his face as he lifted his head. They melted almost instantly against his fevered skin. John welcomed the numbing cold that seeped through his tattered clothes.

The smell of another man’s sweat rose up over John. The clothes he wore had been stripped from the bodies of the city guards Ravishan had killed. Blood, veru oil, and smoke caked the fabric.

Far behind him, the black smoke of the bodies still smoldering on the Holy Road streaked the white winter sky. John focused on the clouds overhead. He imagined frigid water vapor condensing around the particles of smoke. Perfect crystalline symmetries encased the black, charred remains in patterns as ornate as Lisam lace. No doubt, the flakes of snow falling over him carried ashen nuclei.

John tried to concentrate on those tiny flecks of carbon at the center of each snowflake. He tried to think of their elemental futures. Perhaps a hundred thousand years from now they would become tiny diamonds.

“Just a little longer,” Ravishan said. “We’re very close now.” He had been saying the same thing for hours.

Or maybe it just felt like hours. The intense surges of pain distorted John’s sense of time. Agony stretched seconds like a black hole pulling light into infinite darkness. He’d blacked out more than once. Maybe they had only been riding for an hour.

“I’m fine,” John said. Then he laughed at the obvious untruth of his words. His voice sounded weirdly thin.

Ravishan’s left arm tightened across John’s chest. John braced himself for a new jolt of pain as Ravishan reined the tahldi ahead faster.

Pain burst up from John’s legs. All thoughts burned from his mind. He slumped back against Ravishan. It would pass. The pain always passed.

It was just a matter of his neurotransmitter receptors reaching saturation. At some point they simply would not be able to convey more of the agony of shattered bone and torn muscle. There was a limit. John took that as a consolation.

Snow poured down, filling the tracks from their passage as they rode farther into the forest. Dark pines and evergreen brambles formed tight thickets. Snow blanketed every surface, as if erasing the world around them. The passing scenery blurred into swells of white and brief glimpses of dark branches. It all looked the same. But John felt the miles passing.

He felt the sharp hard stone of the mountains giving way to soft earth. Beneath the drifts of snow, the soil grew richer. Loam and decaying leaf litter sheltered nests of sleeping weasels. The glassy surface of a frozen stream cut across the land.

The tahldi slowed.

“Jahn,” Ravishan whispered his name softly.

John opened his eyes. They had stopped on a frozen stream. A stone bridge arched up ahead of them. Ravishan dismounted from the tahldi. He kept one hand up against the small of John’s back. He led the tahldi to the left bank of the stream beneath the shelter of the bridge.

“No one uses the Voun Bridge in the winter,” Ravishan said. “We should be protected from the wind here.”

Dismounting from the tahldi was torturous. Ravishan took as much of John’s weight as he could bear. But John still had to drag one broken leg over the tahldi’s back. Sweat streamed down his back and thighs. He didn’t want to scream in front of Ravishan. He clenched his jaws and concentrated on the white sky far above him. He felt the flex and shudder of his leg muscles but he focused on the winds rolling through the clouds high overhead.

Clouds moved effortlessly. They entwined in immense columns of ice crystals and water vapor. They tumbled and stretched across the sky. Wind lifted them, rolled them, wrapped them into white knots. John longed to lose himself in those painless motions.

He slumped clumsily onto Ravishan. His calves felt like they were going to explode. He clung to Ravishan with the crook of his elbow. His hands were too swollen and twisted to grip anything. They were hardly recognizable. Still the reflex to clench flickered through his fingers in sharp pangs. Ravishan pulled John under the shelter of the bridge and eased him down to the ground.

John expected the cold wetness of melting snow to soak through his clothes. But Ravishan had laid his own coat over the snow. He crouched down and pulled the front of the coat closed around John. It didn’t cover him completely.

Ravishan reached out to touch John’s hand and then stopped short. His naturally tan skin blanched to a pale gray.

“The bones will have to be set.” John only glanced briefly to the black and purple masses at the ends of his arms. It sickened him to think that they were his hands.

Ravishan pulled his gaze to John’s face.

“I could go get Hann’yu—”

“No.” John felt a spark of anger at how Hann’yu had already chosen to help him. He suppressed it. He didn’t have the energy to feel betrayed and guilty at the same time.

“Hann’yu already did all that he could,” John said. “We can’t involve him in this.”

“But I don’t know how to set bones, Jahn,” Ravishan said.

“I do.” John tried to sound assured. “I helped Hann’yu with broken bones in the infirmary.”

Ravishan frowned but remained silent.

“We’ll need supplies,” John went on. “Splints, bandages, plaster rags if we can find them…”

“There’s a physician in the village near here,” Ravishan said. “He should have what you need.”

“Do you think it would be safe for you to go?”

“Certainly, if no one sees me.” Ravishan smiled briefly. He looked exhausted. “Will you be all right here?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You keep saying that.” Ravishan gently pushed an oily clump of John’s hair back from his face. He studied John intently. John gazed back up at him.

Ravishan looked so young, John thought. He looked like a kid who’d just survived a six car pileup. Dried blood spattered his cheeks and forehead. His dark eyes were all but wide black pupils. The pink scars at the edges of his mouth blazed next to his bloodless lips.

“I keep saying it because it’s true.” John sat up slightly, resting his weight on his forearms as if it were an easy thing to do. “Stop looking so worried. I will be fine.”

“I should have come for you sooner.” Ravishan bowed his head. “I should have come last night. I didn’t realize anything was wrong until Ushman Serahn told me that you had been condemned to the Holy Road.”

“You couldn’t have known any earlier.” John’s arms were beginning to tremble, but he maintained his pose.

“If I’d come sooner—”

“You came before they killed me. That’s all that matters.” Pain and fatigue lent a harsh edge to John’s voice.

Ravishan nodded. He kept his head bowed as if he were ashamed of himself.

“You aren’t to blame for this,” John said. “You shouldn’t act like any of it is your fault.”

“But you were punished for what we did in Nurjima,” Ravishan said quietly. “You were punished for me.”

“What are you talking about?” John demanded. “I wasn’t sent to the Holy Road for fucking you. I was condemned for killing Dayyid.”

Ravishan looked startled, as if he had somehow managed to forget the murder.

“But they blamed the Fai’daum,” Ravishan said.

“Hann’yu discovered that Dayyid had been killed with a Payshmura curse blade. He called me back to Rathal’pesha and I confessed.” John closed his eyes for a moment, pushing back the memories of Bill and Laurie, Fikiri and Lady Bousim. “It had nothing to do with what we did in Nurjima.”

“Why did you confess?”

“I couldn’t help it. They gave me fathi.” John couldn’t remain upright any longer. He slid back down into Ravishan’s coat. Above him, fine white needles of frost spread across the stones of the bridge. Clumps of bright green moss hunched in the sheltering cracks of the old masonry. John closed his eyes. He thought of the stone above him and the earth below him. The nearness of them comforted him.

“Jahn?” Ravishan’s voice was soft.

“Yes?” John didn’t open his eyes.

“I’m going now. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“Be careful,” John said.

“I will.”

John felt the warmth of Ravishan’s lips brush lightly against his forehead. The sensation was so different from that of the stone and earth all around him. John briefly opened his eyes.

“Be careful,” John said again.

Ravishan nodded. He stood. The hiss of the open Gray Space sent a shudder through John. Then Ravishan was gone.

John closed his eyes again.