The Dawn Star (21 page)

“Your bodyguards went to the main entrance to meet you.”

Why the blazes had they gone there? “We were supposed to meet in the Hall of Oceans.”

“I'm sorry.” He sounded miserable.

Mel made her decision. “It will take too long to reach the stables. If Barker leaves, we'll have to live with it.”

He cleared his throat, hesitated, then said, “Of course.”

Mel sighed. “But?”

“I am but a simple servant, Your Majesty.”

“Tadi, just tell me.”

“Barker will spread tales of deceit.”

She knew he was right. But worse tales would spread if she spoiled tonight's ceremony. “I don't have time.”

His face brightened. “I know hidden ways through the palace. Very fast. We will get there in no time.”

“Hidden passages?”

He gave her a conspiratorial smile. “Keeping on a few of the old guards has its advantages.”

“So it does.” Maybe she could make it after all. And she was curious about these hidden ways. “Show me.”

“Right away!”

As they hurried along the corridor, she said, “Do you remember when I came here with my parents, when I was six? I always asked you about secret tunnels. You never breathed a word.” She pretended to scowl. “Shame on you.”

“Now you know,” he offered, smiling.

They ended up in a secluded alcove shaped like a royal-bud blossom. Tadimaja traced his fingers along a molding at waist height. Mel struggled for patience while he pressed and pushed various ridges. “Tadi, it's taking too long—”

“I've got it!” He tapped a molding, and pins clinked inside the wall. With a grunt, he pushed. A slab moved inward with the scrape of stone on stone, then swung aside to reveal a dark space.

“There!” He turned to her. “This will take us to the yard behind the stables.”

“We need a light.” She had no shapes to make spells.

“I know the way. Just hold my belt and follow me.”

This was making her uneasy. “I don't think so.”

“Your Majesty—”

“No. Please give my regrets to Goodman Barker.” Mel spun around. If she ran fast enough back to her suite—

A blow slammed her head. She staggered and barely stopped her fall. Twisting around, she raised her arms in a defensive move. Tadimaja's face contorted in a snarl Mel had never seen from him before. Behind him, a lanky man with sun-weathered skin was leaving the passage: Barker, the master horse trainer. Motion blurred in her side vision, and she jerked her elbow up barely in time to block the lunge of a wiry man, another of the trainers, as he came at her from the left. Her head was spinning from the first blow, and the slippery silk of her clothes hampered her. Harem pants were made for lounging, not fighting.

Mel kicked up her leg and caught Barker in the side, knocking him into the passageway. As Tadimaja backed up, Barker yelled at him, and the wiry man struck Mel, knocking her forward. Tadimaja tried to grab her arm, but Mel turned the move against him. She caught him on her hip and rolled him over her shoulder, then brought him down hard onto his back.

Barker aimed a blow at Mel's head. As she blocked it, the wiry trainer grabbed her from behind. Tadimaja was struggling to his feet, and Barker caught her arm. Mel could hold her own against one of them, maybe two, but three? They had a great deal of strength, and the wiry one moved even faster than Mel, negating her biggest advantage over fighters who outweighed her in muscle.

Someone wrested her wrists behind her back. As he bound her, Mel shouted for help. Normally people would be in the halls: her guards, a maid or butler, a member of her staff. Tonight no one answered. Tadimaja could have arranged to have the halls cleared, but she shouted again anyway. Surely
someone
would hear.

Barker shoved a cloth in her mouth and Mel spit it out. Moving fast, she kicked him in the stomach. He gasped and doubled over, his face knotted. Tadimaja—Tadi, her lifelong friend—slapped her hard across the face. Her head snapped back against the man who had bound her wrists. Before she could recover, Tadimaja forced the wad back into her mouth and tied a gag around her head to hold it. She felt as if she would choke. She struggled, but Barker had recovered enough to grab her legs. While she fought them, Tadimaja took off her sandals and Barker tied her ankles.

“Come on,” Tadimaja whispered, urgent. “We have to go.”

Barker grasped Mel by the waist and heaved her over his shoulder so her torso hung down his back and her legs down his front. Then he strode into the dark passageway. Mel yelled, but it only came out as a muffled grunt. She struggled furiously, pounding her feet against Barker's front. The trainer swore and hit her across the thighs.

Her other two attackers followed Barker, and Tadimaja closed the stone door. Then they were closed into the passage—and complete darkness. “Go straight ahead,” Tadimaja said. “About fifty steps. Then the path forks. Go left.”

Barker moved into the darkness, gripping Mel's legs.

“She fights like a man,” the other trainer said.

“I warned you,” Tadimaja told him.

Barker grunted. “Sure as hell doesn't look like a man.” He moved his hand between her legs. Furious, Mel twisted hard and kicked his stomach.

Barker let out a stream of profanity that would have out-done any soldier in Cobalt's army. “Listen to me, girl. Our employer wants you alive, and he'll pay more if we deliver you that way. But he can achieve his ends just as well if you're dead. You kick me one more time, and I'm going to put my hand over your nose and hold you down until you suffocate.”

His employer? What maniac would pay these people to kidnap the wife of Cobalt the Dark? Surely they knew Cobalt would kill them. If this was an insurgency, she couldn't see what they hoped to accomplish. They had to know Cobalt would retaliate.

“She isn't to be touched,” Tadimaja said.

“How am I supposed to carry her,” Barker asked, “if I can't touch her?”

“You know what I mean,” Tadimaja said.

“Why would you care?” the other trainer asked. “You're the one who betrayed her.”

Tadimaja spoke with a hardness Mel had never heard him use before. “It is she who committed the betrayal. She rode in with that monster, cursed our warriors with her witch's light and took Prince Zerod's throne.” Anger desiccated his voice. “She deserves whatever they do to her. But it is their decision. Not ours. They said she wasn't to be touched.”

Nausea surged in Mel. She hadn't even thought Tadimaja was capable of violence. He knew her “witch's light” had stopped the Chamberlight army from massacring Shazire's warriors. He had never given any sign that he believed otherwise. He had wept with her after the battle.

“Fine,” Barker muttered. “I won't touch her.” Giving the lie to his words, he pushed his hand up her thigh. “But she shouldn't have kicked me.”

Mel wanted to kick him again. She didn't doubt he would kill her, though, if she provoked him.

The other trainer spoke uneasily. “I hadn't realized she was so young. She can't be more than sixteen.”

“Nineteen,” Tadimaja said.

“It doesn't seem right. She's so, I don't know. Pretty.”

Tadimaja made an incredulous noise. “That excuses their crimes, that she is young and beautiful?”

“I don't claim it does.” The trainer paused. “In a way, it makes it worse. She is Cobalt Escar's greatest weapon, the lovely child-bride who never wanted to marry him. The sorceress who stopped the war. Everyone who sees her adores her. If she had gone to that festival tonight as their Citrine Queen, half of Alzire would have fallen in love with her.”

“Escar uses her for his own ends.” Tadimaja sounded as if he were gritting his teeth. “And she lets him.”

Mel fought her fear. Before she had convinced Cobalt to keep Tadimaja at the palace, she had formed a mood spell for the aide. She had been certain his fidelity was genuine. Now she realized she had read too much into his responses, based on her knowledge of him. At one time, years ago, she had realized he was half in love with her. Had she unconsciously let that sway her into trusting him? Such a love could turn to hate with her return as the bride of a man Tadimaja saw as a despot. He had suppressed his reaction well, enough even to hide it from her spells. He knew her as well as she knew him; he had known how to evoke her trust.

She had no shapes now to form any spells. They were meant to heal, to offer light and warmth, but they could be reversed. It wasn't just out of goodness that mages swore to do no harm. Whatever they did with spells, they experienced, too, to a lesser extent, but enough to matter. If they healed others, they felt better: if they injured others, they suffered.

Even so. Better to endure pain than die. She could reverse a blue spell. What about indigo? Such spells healed emotions. Would a reversal cause insanity? She had heard tales of a power beyond indigo. Violet. The power to save a life—or take it. She had no violet and she didn't know what to do with indigo, but she could wield blue. If she had a shape.

Barker carried her through the dark. The tunnel smelled of mold. She strained to remember everything she knew about the palace. The Taka Mal architects who built it had probably put in these passages. If Tadimaja were a Taka Mal spy, that might explain how he knew about them.

They finally halted, and it sounded as if Tadimaja were going through the involved process of opening another secret door. He knew these passages well indeed, to do this all in the dark.

Barker carried her out into the night and a cramped yard behind the stables. They hurried to the smallest stable. Inside, a solitary lamp lit the darkness, so dim she could barely make out three waiting merchants. They looked like grain sellers come for the festival market. Their cart was piled with sacks of feed and hitched to a team of two horses. They would blend in all too well with the torrents of people pouring through the city tonight.

Everyone moved fast. Barker heaved her off his shoulder and set her against the cart. He yanked the blue scarf off her head, and she gasped when he ripped out a long tendril of her hair. Then someone pulled a sack over her head and down to her feet. Before she could catch her breath, they hoisted her into the cart. The rough weave smelled of grain, and it scraped her face and stomach where her tunic pulled up. Panicked, she kicked hard, trying to get free. Someone tied the bottom of the sack, and then she was caught, lying on top of other bumpy sacks.

Something heavy landed beside her body. A second sack. A third thudded against her side. With horror, she realized they were covering her. With sacks on top of her, weighting her down, Mel screamed. Or tried. She barely make a sound. She couldn't breathe; she would die—

“Listen, Dawnfield queen.” Barker's harsh voice came through the layers of grain and burlap. “Every one of these men lost someone he loved in the war. A son. A brother. A father. They all have good reason to wish your husband dead. It wouldn't take much for them to extend that to you. I suggest you be as still and as quiet as you know how. If you do, you might live.”

Mel froze, breathing hard. She could survive this. She could manage. Schooling herself to calm, she repeated in her mind a nonsense chant from her childhood, over and over. Gradually her pulse slowed and her mind cleared.

Rustles came from somewhere. Then Tadimaja said, “Barker, go to the plaza. Say nothing about contracts.” His voice faded as he moved away. “And you there, cut a pig for the blood. Leave her scarf and hair with the dagger.”

The bags shifted as someone sat near Mel. She lay stiff and terrified as the cart creaked and rolled forward.

To where, she had no idea.

M
el didn't realize she had fallen asleep until someone dragged the bag off the cart and jolted her awake. Her muscles protested with stabs of pain. Dim light came through the sack and enough of a chill to suggest they were outside at dawn or in an overcast day.

They untied the bottom of the bag and set her on her feet, holding her up. Someone pulled off the sack. She swayed, nauseous from the miserable ride. Sunrise hadn't yet touched the horizon, and predawn light softened the barren countryside. This had to be eastern Shazire; it was the only region of the country this empty and this harsh.

Her three captors all had the brown hair, stocky builds, and medium height common to Shazire farmers. The oldest wore a beard. One of the younger men had a bent gold hoop in his ear, and the other a thick belt with metal studs. For lack of any other names, she thought of them as Beard, Hoop, and Belt. She concentrated on Hoop's earring, but the shape was too distorted for a spell.

“All right,” Beard said.

Mel tensed. All right what?

The other two seemed to know what he meant. They picked her up unceremoniously and sat her on the back of the cart. Then Beard leaned down and untied her ankles. Mel could barely feel her toes or move her legs, but at least they were free.

“We're going to eat.” Beard straightened up. “I'll take off the gag, but if you scream I'll put it on again and you won't get food or water. Do you understand?”

Mel nodded, relieved they didn't intend to starve her. Hoop stepped closer and untied the cloth, then pulled the wad out of her mouth. She focused on his bent earring—and a spell stirred. Then he drew back and the spell faded.

“Better?” Beard asked. They were all watching her.

Mel tried to answer, but her mouth and throat were too dry. So she nodded.

Beard spoke uncomfortably. “I want you to know something. It is true, what Barker said, that we each lost someone in the war. We have no wish to see your husband rule our country.” He paused. “But it is not true that we desire to kill you. Unless you force our hand, we will deliver you alive.”

“To who?” she rasped. “Where?”

“Can't say,” Hoop told her.

“Taka Mal?” she asked. No one answered.

Beard indicated a campfire they had set up. “Over here.”

After spending a night tied up, Mel could barely move. Hoop lifted her from the cart and helped her over to the fire, putting his arm more tightly around her body than necessary. He sat her next to Beard, who stayed put, taking advantage of his seniority while Belt and Hoop cooked food in dented tin pots. Mel shivered in the chill morning. She had nothing to warm her except her thin pants and tunic, and she hurt everywhere. She could barely sit up. Until her body recovered, she needed to guard her strength, not only for herself, but for her child. She would do anything to protect that fragile life. Anything.

Mel had never used spells for harm, but she wouldn't hesitate now. She needed a shape. She had never realized before how few perfect shapes existed in nature. Nothing in this broken landscape came close. For that matter, neither did the utensils or supplies of her captors.

Mel spoke to Beard. “Will you untie my wrists? I won't fight.”

He jerked, startled from whatever thoughts preoccupied him. Then he fumbled with her wrists. It took him several moments to loosen the thongs, but finally her arms fell free. She was so relieved she didn't even care when pain shot up them.

Belt brought her a cup of water. Her arms shook, and she had to hold the cup in both hands as she drained it. Hoop gave her a bowl of meal. Just looking at food nauseated her, but she forced herself to eat. The others sat around, chewing in silence. Belt stared at her avidly while he ate. He had a scar on his chin and another on the back of his hand.

Hoop suddenly said, “You married him for a treaty.”

“Do you mean Cobalt?” Mel asked.

“The king.” He spoke awkwardly. “You wanted to stop him from doing to your country what he did to ours.”

“Yes,” she said simply. It was true, after all.

“Do you hate him?” Hoop asked.

“No,” Mel said. It was none of their business.

“Pretty bride,” Belt muttered.

Hoop persisted. “His Majesty's a lot older than you, eh?”

“Fifteen years.” Mel wished they would stop asking personal questions. She didn't want to antagonize them, though, especially not before she found a good shape. If she incited them with a spell but couldn't hold them off, they might change their minds about killing her.

Belt's eyes gleamed. “Gets young wife. Every night.”

“Shut your mouth,” Beard said. “She's your queen.”

Anger flashed on Belt's face. “No more.” He jerked his chin at Mel. “When she wed him the Dark, her kin swore never to attack his. They all of them stood by an' watched while her husband come and took our land.”

Mel had no answer. Her father had faced a grim decision when Cobalt invaded Shazire. If Muller had sent forces to defend Shazire, it would have violated his treaty with Cobalt. Then nothing would have stopped Cobalt from invading Harsdown. In the end, Muller had made a choice that haunted him. He protected his country at the price of leaving Shazire undefended.

“I don't see her attacking you,” Beard said crossly.

Belt regarded him sullenly. “She's a witch.”

Hoop smirked. “So how come she don't make you a pig, eh?”

“I
saw
her.” Belt's face contorted. “At the Alzire fields. She walked with a sword of fire that reached into the sky and no one could touch her. If we don't put her back in that sack, she'll burn us alive.”

Hoop shifted his weight. “You're crazy.”

“You know what Pickaxe said.” Belt was clenching his cup so hard the scar across his knuckles turned white. “Don't let her see or touch anything. It's the only way to stop her spells.”

Mel shifted her weight uneasily. It was true, if she couldn't see or touch the shape, she couldn't do anything with it. She hadn't realized Tadimaja had figured that out. She had never told him.

“If I could make spells,” Mel said, “I would. But I can't.”

“Liar.” Belt spat at the fire. “Witch.”

Beard stood up, shaking out his clothes. “I don't know about hexes or witches. But we have to get moving.”

Belt jumped to his feet. “Put 'er back in the sack.”

“If you want her in,” Beard said, “you put her there.”

Belt sneered. “You're afraid of her.”

“Maybe we better put her back,” Hoop said.

“Please don't,” Mel said, pulling herself to her feet. Her whole body protested. She didn't think she could bear an entire day in burlap. “I won't do anything.”

“I have ether,” Beard told her. “We were going to use it on you if we had trouble at the palace.”

Her pulse stuttered. “I don't understand.”

“It will knock you out,” he said. “Then we won't have to cover you with the bag.”

“You don't need to do that,” Mel said quickly, afraid. “I won't make trouble.”

A frown hardened his face. “Choose. The bag or the ether.”

Mel didn't want to be unconscious. But she wanted even less to be bound and gagged and suffocating. Finally she said, “Ether.”

Beard glanced at Hoop. “Go get it.” Then he took Mel's arm and dragged her toward the cart. As Mel limped with him, she thought furiously, trying to see a way out of this.

At the cart, Beard put his hands on her waist to lift her up. Mel was about to push him away when his shirt shifted. She saw it then: he wore a talisman around his neck. A metal ring.

I get one chance.
She could see Hoop and Belt coming back.
Make it fast.

She regarded Beard with what she hoped was a helpless look. She didn't do helpless well, but she was scared enough to make it work. “I'm afraid.”

“It shouldn't hurt you.” He spoke gruffly. “I'll look after you while you sleep. No one will touch you.”

She improvised frantically as she went along. “I don't have anything for good luck. I usually wear a charm around my neck.” She never had in her life, but he wouldn't know that.

His gaze dropped to her chest. “You do?”

Mel wanted to sock him for staring at her breasts. “I'm afraid of bad luck.”

Hoop came up to them, carrying a cloth that was soaked in some liquid. “You going to get us with bad luck?”

Beard shot him an irritated look. “Stop it.”

“Sorceresses kill,” he said.

“For saints' sake,” Beard said. “She's not a sorceress.”

“Please,” Mel whispered, focusing on Beard.

“Pickaxe said not to let you see,” Beard said gruffly.

“I don't need to see it,” she said. That wasn't true for making a spell, but she had to say something to convince him. “I'm so scared.” She added a catch to her voice. “I'll feel less afraid if I know it's there.”

“You
should
be afraid of us,” Belt said harshly.

Mel didn't like the way he was watching her, as if he enjoyed her terror.

“Don't got no luck charms,” Hoop told her.

“I have a ring at home my mother gave me.” Mel tried to sound as young as possible. “I always keep it close.”

Beard made an exasperated noise. “Enough of this.”

“I'm scared,” Mel whispered.

“Hell and damnation.” Beard yanked the cord over his head, pulling his ring out from under his shirt. “Here. This is all we got. Now be quiet.” He dropped the cord around her neck and laid the ring on her chest, stroking her breasts in the process, which made her grit her teeth. Grasping the ring, she focused. A ragged spell formed—

Hoop slid his hand behind her head and plastered the wet cloth over her mouth and nose.

No! Mel tried to jerk away, but he held her head in place with the cloth over her face. Fumes saturated her…sickly sweet…her spell was dissolving…

And then her consciousness did as well.

Her Majesty's Army assembled in the Rocklands near the Saint Verdant River. The Citadel of the Dragon-Sun stood on Sharp Knife Mountain above them. Within the citadel, in the Narrow-Sun Room, Jade met at a circular table with all the commanders: her cousin, Baz Quaazera, General of the Taka Mal Army; Generals Spearcaster, Slate and Firaz of Taka Mal; Sphere-General Fieldson and Sphere-Colonel Arkandy Ravensford, formerly of Aronsdale and now from Harsdown; Penta-Major Jason Windcrier of Harsdown; and Colonel Leo Tumbler from the Misted Cliffs. And Drummer. The meeting was contentious and hot, and Jade liked none of what she heard. Her world seemed determined to implode.

“We're talking almost fourteen
thousand
men.” Firaz was shouting at Fieldson. “Six thousand Chamberlight, more than four thousand Jazid, and three thousand Taka Mal. On
our
borders. Blazing hell, man, it would be insane to take an envoy of thirty men out there.”

“Thirty-one,” Drummer said, including himself.

Fieldson met Firaz's glare with a steely gaze, his iron-clad calm a striking contrast to his fiery Taka Mal counterpart. “Those armies hulking at your door are why we
must
leave.” He motioned at Drummer. “This man is the reason we came. If I take him home, it defuses the threat.”

“Then you admit Cobalt's army is a threat,” Jade said tightly. She kept asking herself the same question:
Had he known Escar was coming?
He claimed not, but she saw no reason to believe him. She should never have trusted him.

Fieldson's answer was guarded. “Cobalt has concern for his wife's uncle.”

“We have dealt with you in good faith,” Spearcaster said, his craggy face furrowed with anger. “Yet Cobalt brings an army.”

“And you brought the Jazid Army,” Leo Tumbler said.

“Ozar marches by his choice,” Jade said. “Not mine.” Her anger threatened to overtake her calm. What was Cobalt about, bringing his entire flaming army to meet a little envoy? If that didn't qualify as a hostile act, she didn't know what did.

General Slate practically snarled at Tumbler. “Cobalt marched up the Jazid border. If we took an army up your border, you expect me to believe you wouldn't bring yours, too?”

Baz hit the table with his palm, and the strike reverberated in the hall, which had heated with sun and tempers. “Send the boy back. Let them take their chances.” He gave Drummer a scathing look. “You have been far too much trouble.”

Drummer met his gaze. “I never asked to ‘visit' Taka Mal.”

“It's too dangerous to send him back!” Firaz said. “The envoy will be traveling with our men. Sphere-General Fieldson is the only one in that party Cobalt might consider an ally, and given the strain between Harsdown and the Misted Cliffs, even that has doubt.”