9780981988238 (38 page)

“Clean,” he said after a moment.
“You attacked a desert lord,” Lord Faer said, as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd just seen. “Are you insane?”
Chac writhed, cursing, and howled as Lord Irrio yanked his arms further back.
“Let him up,” Alyea said, astonished at how cold her voice sounded. “He's not going anywhere.”
Lord Irrio stood and stepped away, the grin still on his face, and watched as the old man staggered to his feet.
“Your life and honor are forfeit twice over now,” he said cheerfully. “Only one way out of that, hask.”
Chac spat on the ground at the desert lord's feet. Lord Irrio's fist lashed out before Alyea could protest, and Chac sprawled to the ground. He didn't get up, but huddled, glaring, and cursed them all in several languages.
Alyea tightened her mouth against speaking. Chac was being maneuvered, and she had no way to stop it. She had a fairly good idea what
one way out
meant, and suspected Chac had another knife hidden for the purpose.
Something tugged at her memory. Acana's face rose in her mind, a vision of the ishrait speaking, saying something important:
Once you begin the blood trials, you cannot stop . . . but there are two exceptions. . . .
Yes
, Alyea thought, relieved.
That's how to get this knot unwound.
Alyea stepped forward until she stood in front of the old man. She crouched to meet his bright, furious stare straight on. “There's more than one way out of this, Chac.”
“
Alyea
,” Deiq said, sounding alarmed.
She ignored him. “Do you want your honor and your life back, Chac, or are you too much a coward to reach for that prize?”
He stared at her, face dark with anger and suspicion. “You have no way to grant me that. Not if you were a desert lord in full could you offer me that.”
“But another Callen can, during a blood trial,” she said, and watched his expression change.
Deiq hissed. “Alyea,” he said again, urgently.
Chac lifted his gaze to Micru, who had moved to stand beside Alyea. The muscles of his throat worked as he swallowed convulsively.
“Micru,” he said. That one word somehow held an entire speech: acknowledgment of years of mutual antagonism, a desperate apology, a plea; but little hope.
A taut silence hung in the air for just a moment; then Micru said, without emotion, “Accepted. You may play a part in this blood trial.”
Deiq let out a hard breath, his dark brows drawn into a sharply wrinkled
V
, but held his peace.
Micru turned and gestured to the two northern women, both of whom now watched events with intense interest.
“Stand,” he said.
Gria helped her adopted mother to her feet. The teyanain guards moved aside a little more, effectively forcing the gathered crowd back. Chac stepped into line beside the women.
Micru scanned the gathered crowd, his dark gaze thoughtful, and finally shook his head. He turned back to face Alyea.
“The trial of Comos,” he said, “teaches you to set your will aside for the larger good.”
Lord Faer made a faint, protesting noise.
“You can't interfere,” someone muttered. “He has the right to do this any way he wants.”
“But it never
starts
with—”
“
Shhhh
.”
Micru smiled, his gaze never leaving Alyea. “The trial of Ishrai teaches you to value your own life for the larger good.”
Alyea wished they could have done this more privately; the stares around her felt like a hundred horseflies chewing on her skin.
Micru paused, watching her, then said, “The trial of Datda teaches you that there are times when you must kill for the larger good.” His smile made a mockery of the words: in the back of her mind, she wondered if he believed his own teachings, or if he killed because he
enjoyed
it.
If the latter, she wouldn't walk out of this trial alive.
The silence became absolute. The heat beyond the shaded area warped the air into strange shimmers.
“I tell you this,” Micru said, “every one of these three is, in some way, a threat to you personally and to the larger good as well. Choose which is to die, and kill that one yourself. That is the blood trial of Datda.”
Gria and Sela's sunburned faces turned splotchy; they both looked as though they might faint. Chac, bizarrely, grinned as though pleased.
Alyea licked her lips. She'd suspected something like this lay ahead, but hadn't been prepared to choose among these three particular people. Her mind seemed mired in disbelief and fear for a moment; then, like lifting a foot from deep mud into running water, everything unstuck and came clear.
“May I ask them questions?” she said.
“One to each, and one to all.”
She drew a deep breath.
“Sela,” she said, noting the way the woman's hands shook. “What is the worst thing you have ever done in your life, the thing of which you are the most ashamed?”
“You must speak truth,” Micru said before the northern woman could answer. “I will know if you lie, and your life will be forfeit for it, whether she chooses you or not.”
Oddly, that seemed to restore the woman's courage. High color flared across her cheekbones, replacing the pale blotching with a redder pattern; she straightened, glaring at the small man. “I'm an honest woman! But . . . there is a lie I've been carrying for years, and it's haunted me.”
She looked at Gria. “Your mother wasn't some stranger who died on our doorstep bearing you. She's my half-sister, and she's still alive. Her name is Gaillin, and her mother was named Bela.” Sela rolled a quick, haunted stare around the watching crowd. “And Bela's mother was named Cida.”
Against the murmurs from the crowd, sharp and clear, came the sound of Deiq laughing.
Gria stared at her aunt. “You lied about my mother's death?” Years of pain and frustration rang through the question.
Sela winced but met the girl's fury steadily. “Yes. It's what she wanted. She said you were safer with me, and not to tell you anything about her. I only saw your grandmother's name when the s'iopes gave me the papers to sign. And they all swore the list of names only served as proof that you had enough southern blood to be allowed to marry into a desert Family. They swore your ancestors weren't anyone noble, or important. One of many things they apparently lied about,” she added bitterly.
“
Where is my mother?
” Gria shrieked, her hands tightly fisted. She looked ready to pummel the answer out of the woman.
“I don't know,” Sela said. “That's honest truth.”
Alyea shook her head slightly, her thoughts knocked out of order by the revelation. It took her a few moments to gather herself again.
“Stop,” she said as Gria began to speak again. “Gria. My next question is for you.”
“I'm not playing your stupid game!” Gria said hotly. “I want to know where my mother is!”
“This isn't a game,” Alyea said.
Gria stared at her, seemingly caught by Alyea's tone of voice; slowly, her temper faded. “You'd really kill me?”
Alyea stopped herself before the words
I don't know
came out of her mouth. “Answer this question: are you virgin?”
The teyanain all tautened into full alertness, and someone in the crowd made a soft, thoughtful noise. Alyea thought she heard Deiq mutter, “
Gods
, girl!”
Gria's face darkened. “I'm not going to answer that!”
Alyea wished she could rub the tension from her forehead and eyes; but that would show weakness at a very bad time.
“I'll take that as a no,” she said. It explained the last bit that had puzzled her: why a northern of any rank would be interested in his daughter wedding a distant desert lord. It would have been far enough that nobody would carry news of the scandal to the wedding.
“The Church would have—” Sela started.
“You don't answer,” Micru cut in sharply. “Speak again and I'll have you gagged.”
Sela swallowed, cast Alyea a beseeching look, and shut her eyes.
“Answer the question,” Micru said evenly. “Yes or no. Are you virgin?”
“No,” Gria spat. “And I'm in disgrace. Nobody at home would take me now, since some
kind
people saw fit to spread the word about what I'd been caught doing. Not that it was any of their business in the first place, or yours; I'm old enough! Boys younger than I am aren't called whores for bedding a girl; why should I suffer for enjoying myself with someone I liked?”
Sela pressed her lips so tight they almost disappeared.
“Chac,” Alyea said, focusing all her willpower on keeping her voice steady and emotionless, her expression impassive. “Who hired the machago Ierie to take Gria and Sela south?”
He grinned at her, as if pleased she'd asked that question. “I did.”
Gria and Sela stared, open-mouthed, at the old man. He went on, unprompted, his words filling the silence. “Oruen wanted to secure an alliance with the teyanain. I needed something of value to offer; a chance informant gave me a lead on a female of pure Scratha descent. When Scratha put himself in disgrace, I convinced the king to send him out of the way. The timing got a little tricky in spots, but it worked out in the end. I chose Water's End for the exchange. The ugren cuffs surprised me; I didn't think they'd put permanent slave cuffs on a woman destined to be Lord Evkit's wife.”
He glanced at Lord Evkit, but the teyanin lord's face remained expressionless, his attention focused on Gria as if he'd hardly heard the last few words. Chac licked his lips and raised an eyebrow, affecting a confidence Alyea didn't think he really felt.
“Micru,” she said, hoping she'd put the pieces together correctly, “what happens to the honor of the one I choose for death?”
“It is restored in full,” Micru said readily.
“What about those who live?”
“The same.”
“And if any are slaves?”
“Freed,” Micru said.
“Even from ugren cuffs?”
He nodded. “In this one instance alone, yes. The teyanain must remove them, by ancient law they themselves set down before the Split.”
Sela sucked in a hard, gasping breath, her expression suddenly hopeful.
“Then I ask,” Alyea said, turning to the three people in front of her, “that each of you think hard on what you've said, and what you've heard, and choose for yourself whether you deserve to live or to die for your actions.” She paused, then said, “Sela?”
“I think I deserve to live,” Sela said, straightening. “I've done nothing but protect my niece; my worst crime is believing Ierie's good intent. That's not an offense to kill over.”
Alyea kept her mouth shut on her opinion of what the woman's stupidity deserved, and looked at the girl beside her. “Gria?”
“I haven't done anything wrong!” Gria said. “I believed people who said they loved me.” She shot her aunt another sharp look, but this time Sela shrugged it aside without becoming rattled. “I've done nothing worth dying for.”
Alyea looked at Chac, already knowing his answer.
He grinned at her, reached into his shirt, and drew another knife. He held it out to her, hilt first.
“Kill me,” he said simply.
As she took the knife, she saw the faintest of dark stains on the lower edge of the blade. Poison, more than likely; fast or slow, she had no idea.
“The choice is made,” she said, and drew a deep breath. “Gria and Sela are free to go.”
The two women reached out and clasped hands, their stares wide and disbelieving. Gria's earlier resentment no longer evident, they fell into each other's arms, trembling.
“Take them away,” Alyea said, her mouth dry. The teyanain, moving not as prison guards but as honor escort now, led the two shaken women towards the other side of the shaded area. She watched them go safely out of hearing range; looked at Micru, at Deiq, and finally back to Chac.
The hysterical sobs of the two reprieved women echoed through the taut silence.
“I won't do this for the amusement of an audience,” Alyea said. “Let's go for a walk, old man.”

They stood at the lip of the great cavern bowl, looking at tunnels that led like spokes on a wheel in all directions. Scratha's frown worried Idisio.

“Which way do we go, my lord?” Idisio ventured, hoping for a clear answer.
“I don't know,” Scratha admitted. “I thought the ha'rethe would tell me, but it isn't saying anything.”
“Why don't you just read the signs?” Riss said in a practical tone of voice.
“The. . . .” Idisio looked where she pointed, and saw, crudely etched into the nearby wall, a single word:

The last 'L' sat at an odd, drunken slant to the rest of the letters. Scratha's frown deepened.
“Wall,” he repeated softly to himself. “Wall.” He finally looked away as if forcing himself to move. “Let's walk around and see what the other passages say.”

Many had no label, or an obscure pictograph, or a word in some language Idisio didn't know. The desert lord paused in front of one, however, and traced the outline of two words, roughly etched as the first had been, with his fingertips. Idisio, peering around the man's elbow, didn't need this one translated.

The last letters of each word slanted at the same odd angle as the one for the Wall had displayed.
Scratha repeated that one, too, very quietly, and they moved on. A dangerous edge emerged in the desert lord's manner, a brittle searching quality in his movements. Idisio hung back another pace and urgently waved Riss to give the man more room as well. She obeyed, her gaze anxious and puzzled.
Almost back to the spot they had started from, Scratha stopped at another tunnel entrance. He stood very still, his fists clenching and unclenching rhythmically. Idisio edged forward, motioning Riss to stay well back, and squinted at the word beside the tunnel opening.

Here again, the last 'A' was slanted.
Idisio had never seen anything like it. Shivers ran up and down his arms. The silence became oppressive. He caught himself just before saying something idiotic, like
Well, good, we'll just trot on up this one and be at your home in no time, right?
The look in Cafad Scratha's eyes could have melted sand.
“I never realized,” the desert lord whispered, as if completely unaware he had a frightened audience watching him. “All these years, and the answer was that simple.”
He shook himself, rather like an asp-jacau after an unexpected rainstorm, and strode forward into the tunnel. Idisio scrambled to follow, afraid of being left behind. Scratha seemed to have forgotten about his dependants. His old madness had full hold on him, and Idisio wasn't sure how long it would take the man to snap out of it.
Ten steps into the tunnel, Idisio glanced back to check on Riss; she hurried close on his heels, her eyes huge and her face pale. He turned forward again, not wanting to miss a step and stumble.
Scratha was gone.
The tunnel continued straight, well-lit, and utterly empty ahead of them for a goodly distance. Idisio, unable to stop himself, broke into a run for a few hopeless strides, opening his mouth to yell—
—and found himself falling through blackness, with a feeling similar to emerging from the ha'rethe's den; from faint chill through intense cold into a blazing dry heat. As before, he fell forward onto his hands and knees, astonished as he felt sand giving way under him.
A hard hand hooked under his armpit and yanked him to his feet.
“I'm sorry,” Scratha said, sounding more impatient than contrite. “I forgot about you for a moment. Is Riss—”
A thud and yelp cut him off.
“Apparently she is,” the desert lord said dryly, and moved to help her up as well.
“What just happened?” Riss said in a high, strained voice as she stumbled to her feet.
Idisio took a moment to be sure Riss hadn't been hurt by the unexpected fall, then turned his attention to their new surroundings.
“Welcome,” Cafad Scratha said with a proprietary, proud, and distinctly tired edge, “to Scratha Family Fortress.”
They stood in the center of an enormous, roofless space, much of it paved with wide, sun-bleached brick tiles. White stone walls towered high above them to four sides, each broken at ground level by a single, centered archway. A series of small, connected stone fountain-troughs sat silent, worn, and cracked. Dry sticks, decaying trunks, and a heap of desiccated leaves were all that remained of what might have once been magnificent desert palms or sand-reeds.
Idisio's skin crawled with the uneasy feeling of being watched, but except for the sounds of their own small motions and breathing, the silence and stillness lay thick and absolute.
“How did we get here?” Riss shrilled. Her voice echoed around the empty, dead space. “What is this place?”
Scratha, who had been staring at a dry, cracked fountain, started and looked around.
“Hm?” he said. “Oh, this is the central gathering-yard—at least, it was. I haven't been in this part of the fortress for a long time. I used to play here; there were great desert palms. . . .” He pointed at the piles of dry-rotted sticks and broken trunks, his expression distant, and sighed. “Long gone. There's been no water; the well dried up. . . .”
“How did we get here?” Riss demanded, the fear in her voice no less sharp for being tinged with anger now.
Scratha turned and studied her thoughtfully, as if deciding how to answer. “I don't know,” he said at last. The answer clearly didn't satisfy Riss, and the desert lord added, “I learned a long time ago not to ask
how
when the ha'reye are involved. I've seen much stranger things, Riss, than instant transport from one spot to another.”
“But you're a desert lord,” Riss said.
“That doesn't mean I know everything about the ha'reye,” Scratha said. “I suspect what I know about them wouldn't fill the average thimble.” He pointed to one of the archways. “Let's get out of the heat.”
They moved from scorching, stifling midafternoon heat into a distinctly cooler, shaded passageway lined with dull grey tiles on each curving wall. The rough brick from the courtyard continued underfoot. Their footsteps scraped on patches of windblown sand for the first few steps, then became almost silent, as if the brick absorbed sound.
Scratha led them past several archways, some of which opened to more courtyards, smaller than the first but similar in style. Others had the remains of wooden doors blocking the views of what lay beyond, and two actually had fine metal latticework doors. At the second of the metal doors, the desert lord paused, put out a hand, and pushed gently against the edge of the door. It swung, noiseless, and stayed wide open, as if waiting patiently for them to enter.
Scratha sighed. “These were my rooms,” he said, staring through the doorway.
Peering around him, Idisio saw a short passage, opening into what looked like a larger room littered with dust-covered furniture. “Why is everything so quiet?” Riss said. “Where is everyone?” Scratha turned and looked at her in what seemed genuine surprise. Idisio searched his memory hastily, came up blank, and said, “You never told her anything about your family, my lord, and she's not from Bright Bay; she probably never heard the name Scratha before she met us.”
“I didn't, other than Karic and Baylor talking about you being on their trail,” Riss said. “What happened?”
Scratha reached out and tugged the metal lattice shut again. It closed with the faintest
clank
.
“My family was murdered,” he said, “slaughtered in the middle of the night with no warning. Nobody knows who was responsible, or if they do, they're not telling.” He ran his fingers lightly over the door. “I was walking the sands outside when it happened, as a preliminary test to see if I was fit to become a desert lord.”
“How old were you?” Riss said, looking horrified.
“Ten,” Scratha said. He started down the passageway again. “Isn't that a little young?” Riss said.
“A little,” Scratha admitted. “But things were going on that . . . well. It would take too long to explain.”
Idisio blinked as he worked through the numbers. “You're only . . . twenty-five?”
“Twenty-eight,” Scratha corrected.
“You look twice that,” Riss said tactlessly.
Idisio glared at her; Scratha ignored them both.
They walked along empty, silent corridors, turning apparently at random into different passages. Idisio began to suspect Scratha simply wandered without direction, and tried to think of a tactful way to ask just where they were going.
“Here,” Scratha said at last, and pushed open another wrought-metal door. They filed into a huge room, lined from floor to high ceiling with wide shelves of books: large and small tomes, racks of slender or thick rolls of parchment and vellum. Sunlight slanted from high windows to spread distorted squares of brightness against the dusty shelves. A heavy layer of dust coated a table in the center of the room.
Idisio sneezed. The room felt heavy, solemn, and old; above all, it felt neglected, as if lonely for human company. He seemed to hear a faint murmur in his head, as if the books spoke to welcome them. He shook his head sharply to dispel the frightening notion.
Cafad Scratha stood for a moment looking around the room, his expression slowly becoming grim. Riss's gaze lingered over each shelf as if she longed to reach out and sweep all the books into her arms at once.
“Sit down,” Scratha said finally. “This might take a little while.” He moved forward and squatted before one of the shelves. He began to examine the bound volumes, lightly pushing each aside to see another before shaking his head and shifting to his right.
They watched him without moving, stuck in mutual bewilderment.
“Er. . . .” Riss said after Scratha had searched through perhaps ten feet of the shelf. “What are you doing, my lord?”
“There's a book,” Scratha said without looking back at her, “with a brief passage which never made sense to me before. But now I think it might lead me to the answer of how my family was slaughtered with no witnesses.”
Riss and Idisio exchanged a long look; their shared, silent question
What are
we
supposed to do now?
hung in the air between them.
“Er . . . can we help you look?” Riss said, moving a tentative half-step forward.
“I can't describe it,” Scratha muttered, studying a book spine intently, then shaking his head and moving on. “It's been so long since I've read it, I don't even remember what it looks like. I'm hoping I'll know it when I see it.”
“Er,” Idisio said, swallowing hard. The murmuring of the books seemed to be growing both louder and clearer. He could almost make out the words: not that he
wanted
to. “Er, my lord?”
“What is it, Idisio?”
“Um.” Idisio looked at his feet, wishing he'd kept silent.
Scratha didn't look up from his study of the shelves, but he snapped his fingers impatiently. “Say it already!”
“Well,” Idisio said, “if . . . what if you could . . . sort of . . . ask where the book is?”
Scratha stopped his search and turned to stare at him. Idisio could tell he hadn't said that clearly enough.
“I mean, the . . . the fortress would know,” he went on, and heard an astonished snort from Riss.
“You've lost your mind,” Riss said. “The heat's wiping your brain out. Ask
who
?” She swept her hands out to indicate the room. “The air?”
“Um, yes,” Idisio said. “More or less the air, yes. It's . . . it feels like that tunnel. Like something's trying to talk to us.”
Riss opened her mouth as if to argue, then shut it again without speaking. Her eyebrows drew down in a thoughtful squint, and she looked around the room with far more suspicion than she had a few minutes previously.
Scratha cocked his head as if listening for something, then shook his head. “I can't hear anything,” he said, “but I think you may be more sensitive than I am, Idisio. Why don't you try asking?”
Idisio took a deep breath and shut his eyes.
Lord Cafad Scratha wants a book,
he thought, trying to form the words as clearly in his mind as he could, but not sure where to aim them.
Who was he trying to talk to? The room? The fortress? He wasn't sure, and somehow it seemed important. He couldn't just talk to empty space. There had to be something to talk
to
. He hesitated, wavering, wondering if this whole idea was absurd.
The silence continued unbroken, with no feeling of a response. Idisio decided to give it one more try. He found himself imagining the fortress as a large, friendly beast—he carefully kept
lizard
from his mental picture—curled into a huge circle around them. He addressed his thoughtspeech to the head of the giant creature, which seemed to rest somewhere in the center of the fortress.
Lord Cafad Scratha is looking for a book,
he thought again
. Please help him find it.
The image in his mind abruptly clarified and shifted into something much more alien and less friendly. Huge golden eyes opened and seemed to stare at him from inches away. Idisio stood frozen, unable to move under that overwhelming scrutiny. He heard a faint whimpering and realized, distantly, that the noise came from his own throat.
Se'thiss t'akarnain
, a voice said in his head.
Welcome
.
He heard a gasp and a thud. The image in Idisio's head vanished abruptly. He felt his knees giving way; a moment later his body connected gracelessly with the floor.
His eyes opened at the jarring impact. Riss knelt beside him, her face a ghastly white and her eyes huge.
“Are you all right?” she shrilled.
He blinked, shook his head tentatively, and sat up. The room seemed to spin around him for a moment; Riss's hands, gripping his shoulders, brought everything back into focus.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “I think so, anyway.”
Scratha, several feet away, had a thick tome in his hands and a strange expression on his face as he stared at Idisio.
“It just fell,” he said. “I've never seen anything like it. It fell flat, and open to the page I wanted.”
“Maybe I'm not all right after all,” Idisio muttered, and shut his eyes again. His stomach seemed ready to turn itself inside out, and a headache started to pound behind his eyes.
“I felt. . . .” Scratha hesitated, as if unsure of himself. “I felt, for a moment, as if there was a ha'rethe in the area. But that's not
possible!
”
“Why not?” Riss said sharply.
“Because if there were a ha'rethe in this fortress, my family would never have been slaughtered. They won't allow the people they protect to be harmed. And I've
never
seen or heard a single hint of one being here.”
“The one by the Wall said it had just woken up,” Idisio said, rubbing at his temples. “What if this one was asleep?”
“A protector would have woken,” Scratha said, but a note of doubt threaded through his voice. “It wouldn't have slept through the attack. . . .”
Idisio had a sense of those great golden eyes opening again. They seemed amused.
We protect those you call desert lords
, the voice said softly.
If there is no desert lord present, there is no obligation.
Idisio leaned forward and put his head between his knees.
“It said something,” Scratha said, his voice hard and excited. “There
is
one here!
Gods!
I couldn't hear it clearly. What did it say? How long has it been here?”
Seeing no safe way to refuse an answer, Idisio repeated the words, lifting his head just enough to be clearly heard, and kept his eyes shut tight.
“Oh, gods.” Scratha sounded sick. “The attack came within days of Lord Scratha's passing . . . but what about Orde? What about. . . .” He fell silent for a moment, then added, plaintively, “Why hasn't it ever spoken to me?”
This desert lord has never been bound to this place
, the voice said.
I only allowed him passage as was his right.
With a sense of awakening interest, the beast stirred and raised its great head.
He never called my notice properly.
Idisio repeated the words again, watching Scratha's face take on the darkness of sudden anger.
“Nobody ever told me there was a ritual involved,” the desert lord said, almost spitting the words out. “I thought that if there was a ha'rethe here, it would know me.”
I saw him as a desert lord, not as one bound to me
, the voice said, indifferent now, and lowered its huge head, closing its eyes.