Shards of Time (46 page)

Seregil flipped him a rude gesture, then accepted Micum’s hand and let him help him onto his feet.

“What about the stone?” asked Micum. “Are you going to wash it?”

“No, I’m not touching it again, after what happened to that poor bastard I just cut it from. Thero will know what to do with it. I hope.”

R
HAZAT
’
S
patience and hospitality had worn thin after Mika disappeared in a blaze of red light and force that had knocked both of them across the cave. Rhazat had been the first to recover. Pulling Klia up by her hair, she’d screamed at her, demanding to know what magic she’d used to make the child disappear.

“Illior’s love, I expect.” Klia laughed, relieved beyond measure. Either Mika had gone back to their own plane, or he was dead and beyond the dyrmagnos’s torments.

Rhazat dragged her back to the glowing stone. “Break it!” she hissed, showing her true colors at last, if not her true face. “Break it or I will have my monsters tear the child from your womb.”

“That won’t make me comply,” Klia replied, fighting down her terror at the prospect. “Kill us both now and be done with it. Stay here forever and rot!”

With a snarl of rage, the dyrmagnos summoned a single dra’gorgos, which bore Klia back to the tower and dumped her at Rhazat’s feet outside the dining room. The dyrmagnos pointed down the corridor.

“I think, my dear, that it’s time you did a bit of cooking.”

She pushed Klia, propelling her down the corridor to a door she hadn’t seen before, one that hadn’t been there when she’d searched, she was certain. Throwing it open, Rhazat shoved her in and slammed it shut behind her, leaving Klia alone in an archaic kitchen—a small, windowless room with a single table and a green fire leaping on the hearth of a huge
stone fireplace. As Klia’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw that there were haunches of meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling beams. But there was something odd about them: the shapes.

Klia staggered back until she slammed into the door. The haunches were arms and legs. Sedge’s head regarded her with dead eyes from a trencher on the table.

Falling to her hands and knees, Klia vomited up everything left in her stomach, then kept retching until there was nothing but bile to come up. “Illior—Sakor—”

How could she pray with human meat stuck in her teeth?

A nasty chuckle came from the shadows of a corner. Rhazat stepped out into the unnatural light. “Would you like me to tell you who you had for breakfast, my dear?”

“No—please, no.” Klia crawled away from the mess and pulled herself up by the table.

“You’re alive and well fed. Didn’t I serve you your favorite dishes, the ones you wished to see? Wishes are powerful things.”

“Why?”

“What else was I supposed to do, send Zella into Deep Harbor with a market basket? I only eat their lives. I have no use for the bodies. But waste not, want not, eh?”

Klia stood gripping the edge of the table, rocked and sickened by this revelation.

“I’ve been simply aching to eat your life, Klia,” Rhazat said, advancing on her. “How sweet it will taste, so wonderfully tainted. However will you live with the knowledge?”

“You’ve sealed my fate, you know. And your own,” Klia gritted out. “I’ll never eat another mouthful in this place.”

Rhazat laughed merrily at that, the mask firmly back in place. “You are dramatic, and so easily gulled. Look again, Klia, at our larder.”

The arms and legs were haunches of meat again, sheep by the look of them, and a skinned sheep’s head lay in the trencher where Sedge’s head had been.

“You must allow me my little amusements. Of course, it’s a riddle. Which illusion is the real one?” Rhazat opened the kitchen door and let her back into the corridor, then slipped
her arm through Klia’s and led her upstairs to Klia’s bedchamber.

“Good night, my dear,” Rhazat said, all sweetness now. “Pleasant dreams.”

Klia went into her room and closed the door, then stood there with a hand over her mouth, trying to blot out the memory of that kitchen.
Which is the real one?

She went to the bed and lay down for no better reason than she couldn’t think of anything else to do. Something was different here, too, though it took a moment to figure it out. The drapery at the window was faded, and she could see where bits of it had rotted away in the sun. The coverlet she lay on was threadbare, the sheets full of holes. The carpet was missing, the stone floor bare.

Is this an illusion, too?
she wondered. Was she being punished with poor accommodations? It seemed petty and halfhearted revenge at best.

She and Mika had taken everything with them when they’d tried to escape. There was no sign that he’d ever been here. For the first time since she’d been trapped in this hell, Klia felt truly alone. She gave way to despair for a brief moment, then sat up and wiped her eyes. It didn’t matter if she was alone or not; she still had a duty to destroy her enemy.

She hadn’t taken off her gorget since the day she’d used it as a mirror to see Rhazat’s true form. Unhooking the chain, she turned it over in her hands: carved side, smooth side, carved side, smooth side … She ran a thumb along its curved edges. Rhazat couldn’t touch it. If a harmless gold object caused her distress, then what would a golden blade do to her?

Going to the window, she opened it and began rubbing the curved outer edge of the gorget on the angle of the stone sill, using it like a whetstone. If it didn’t work on Rhazat, she could always use it on herself.

Seregil and Micum arrived two days after Micum had gone, riding into camp as the sun was dipping behind the glistening peak of Mount Erali.

“Where have you been?” Alec demanded, walking with them to Thero’s tent.

“I’m feeling much better, thank you.” Seregil threw an arm around Alec’s shoulders. He was sporting another green head scarf today. With that covering his shaved pate, he looked quite well.

“Any news here?” Micum asked.

“Mika’s doing well, and we’ve been busy.” Alec told them of the fruitless search in the palace, and what they’d discovered in Zikara.

Thero was sitting at the desk when they came in, and Mika was leaning on it, watching his master work on another amulet.

Seregil took out the golden seal Gora had made and placed it on the desk in front of Thero, then put the rolled chamois containing the stone beside it.

“Oh, and this, too.” Seregil presented him with the golden arm ring.

Thero unwrapped the black opal and just sat there staring at it for a moment. “How?”

“We’re on an island, and Deep Harbor is the only city. I took my chances there and it paid off. The workman who stole the seal swallowed the stone to conceal it, and it killed him. Most of the gold part had been hacked away to pawn, but there was a piece left and I had the goldsmith incorporate it in this new casting. I thought it might help.”

“You are brilliant, both of you.”

“It was Seregil who figured it out. I just did the digging,” said Micum.

Mika reached for the stone, but Thero caught his hand. “It’s dangerous,” he warned. “Fetch me the medium-sized toolbox, please.”

Mika opened one of the large chests Thero had brought and returned with what looked like a workman’s caddy. Thero took out a large forceps and carefully picked up the stone to examine it. “Should I ask what this dark matter is caught in the carving?”

“Let’s just say it needs a good wash,” said Micum.

Thero rinsed it in a bowl of water, then picked up the rosette
and set the stone into the space at the center. It fit. Thero covered it with his hand for a moment, and when he took it away the stone was perfectly beveled into the gold. He set it down and regarded it pensively. “Thank you both. This is incredibly powerful. But—”

“But what?” asked Micum.

“Mika, please go to the fire circle and have your supper. Stay there until I send for you.”

“But Master—”

“Go on now.”

As soon as Mika was gone, Thero cast a silencing spell on the tent, so that no one outside could hear their conversation.

“So what’s the ‘but’?” asked Seregil.

“Alec and I have done some research while you were gone, and have been talking things over. The boundary between our plane and Rhazat’s is permeable in a very limited way. Alec and Mika can get through, but I can’t. We tried and failed. As I told you earlier, Nysander refused to teach me any magic that would allow me to cross. Klia and Rhazat’s other prisoners were brought through by dra’gorgos controlled by the dyrmagnos.”

“She possessed Zella with one, as well,” said Seregil. “The poor woman was a puppet, for all intents and purposes, and a spy.”

He explained what had happened in the carriage.

“Are you sure it was a dra’gorgos and not a demon?” asked Alec.

“If it had been a demon I wouldn’t be standing here now. She attacked me, but when she touched the amulet Thero made, it drove the dra’gorgos from her and it disappeared.”

“And Kordira witnessed all this?” said Thero.

“Yes. It couldn’t be helped. For what it’s worth, she kept a remarkably cool head about it, and was very helpful.”

“I see. How much did you tell her?”

“Nothing, really. She already knew what a dra’gorgos was. I did get some history from her, though. Nhandi was the last Hierophant, and supposedly the island was struck with a huge black wave that killed thousands. Kordira’s theory is that it was a gigantic tidal wave. Anyway, Nhandi had an
Aurënfaie lover, a wizard, who somehow betrayed her and was executed. Which may explain the skull in the cave.”

“But not the vision I had,” said Thero. “I saw Rhazat with the man she called Khazireen in the cave where the seal was. If he was her accomplice, then why wasn’t he sealed up with her?”

“Maybe someone killed him before they sealed her in,” said Alec.

Thero nodded. “Punishment for his perfidy. Mika had a vision of the two of them being celebrated in Menosi. It seems she might have ruled for some time with him as consort.”

“And now he’s caught yearning for his lost Black Pearl for all eternity,” said Micum.

“His lost Black Pearl—Black Pearl, Black Pearl.” Seregil paced across the tent and back. “I asked Kordira what Nhandi had looked like. She was also called Nhandi the Lovely and Kordira’s theory is that Nhandi would have looked like our modern-day Plenimarans, since they are direct descendants who didn’t mix blood much. Her exact words were, ‘If you want to know what the Hierophants and their people looked like, look to us.’ ”

“Rhazat looks a lot like Kordira,” said Alec.

“Either of whom would be worthy of the love name Black Pearl,” Seregil pointed out. “Micum told me about the strange word Mika heard in the cave when Rhazat was torturing him.”

“Eshrlee,” said Thero.

“No, Thero, it’s es rili, old Aurënfaie for ‘my skin.’ ”

“What does that mean?” asked Alec.

“I don’t know.” Thero picked up the golden arm ring. “I’m hoping this can tell us something, if anything is left after so many years.”

He sat down cross-legged on the carpet and took out his crystal wand. Holding it and the arm ring between his joined palms, he closed his eyes and went completely still. Seregil could hardly see him breathe.

The arm ring was made from gold mined in the north of Kouros and cast by an Aurënfaie woman with grey eyes and silver hair. It was given to Nhandi, daughter of Kala, by her lover, Khazireen í Alos, on the occasion of her twentieth birthday. Nhandi was a beautiful young woman with black hair and eyes the color of the evening sky. She wore it for 414 days
.

She took it off and gave it to Khazireen after they made love in the Cave of the Pictures, after they’d discovered Rhazat’s tunnel into the fourth cave, the way she’d been coming and going to ravage the populace of Menosi. The entrance of the tunnel had been cloaked with magic, but Khazireen had discovered and unmasked it. It was a remarkable work of engineering, running under the ridge to the hillside overlooking Zikara
.

Khazireen embraced her desperately and gave her the last of a thousand kisses. Holding the arm ring to his heart with his right hand, weeping, he stood facing his beloved as she stood in the mouth of the fourth cave, facing him. They both raised their left hands, each holding a Seal of Holding, each of which was mounted on a golden spike. Together they recited the spell
—Saka dosthey arnatha somay—
then touched the ends of the golden spikes together. Khazireen watched in despair as the cave behind Nhandi disappeared, replaced by an opening into a dead, grey vista
.