The Grave Thief: Book Three of The Twilight Reign (29 page)

Unable to move, unable to speak, Natai sat rigid and horrified as Ganas slid unceremoniously from his saddle and to the ground, one foot still hooked in the stirrup. A black-fletched arrow protruding from his back snapped as Ganas fell onto it. Natai stared down at her husband’s contorted face in disbelief, paralysed by the sight as the Land exploded into movement around her.

Figures ran forward, a hand grabbed her reins and wrenched her horse around until the beast kicked out. Men yelled and swore on all sides, swords rasped from scabbards. Captain Fohl barged his horse into hers, barely raising his shield in time as another arrow thwacked into it. She saw Sergeant Kayel draw and strike in one movement, turning back towards her before the priest’s corpse had even hit the ground.

The ground started shaking, reverberating up through her horse’s body and into her own. Before Natai even realised what was happening, her horse gave a shriek and staggered. Beside her, Fohl slashed down at someone just as a spear appeared from nowhere to catch him in the ribs with such force he was thrown from his saddle, crashing into her horse before he fell under its hooves.

She couldn’t look down as her horse reared up. Everything lurched, and the cloud-covered sky seemed to reach out to her as Natai herself began to fall—

Suddenly something smacked into her forearm and wrenched her forward. The sky wheeled and became a dark blur of buildings as the pressure on her arm increased, wrapped around it and wrenched her forward. Natai felt herself crash against the ground and almost bounce up with the impact. Her arm was almost torn from its socket as whatever was hanging onto her dragged her along, her feet flailing uselessly beneath her.

She heard a grunt of exertion as she was swung up and landed heavily on something, the wind driven from her like a punch to the gut. She was lying over a saddle. Now she recognised Kayel shouting above her; short, brutal words she couldn’t make out. Something clattered hard into her leg and fell away, and she felt Kayel lean over her body to hack down with his sword. There was the wet crunch of flesh and bone parting. Screams and roars came from all directions, but her eyes and ears refused to make sense of them.

Kayel’s voice and the hot stink of the horse were the only things she could recognise, until suddenly the uproar was behind them and she realised they were clear; they were safe. Only then did her mind catch up and the sight of Ganas falling returned, bright and vivid, and as sharp as a knife in her belly. When at last the soldier stopped and allowed her to slide from the saddle Natai didn’t feel the hands trying to help her to her feet. The buzz of voices came only distantly: questions, shouts, orders, all meaningless in the face of that pain in her gut. She crumpled to her bloodied knees and puked, and again, but the agony of loss remained.

 

High Priest Antil paused at the doorway of his personal chamber, peering around the jamb and feeling foolish as he did so. While he was Shotir’s chief cleric, the God of Healing’s temple in Byora was a modest one, and his room was appropriately small. Normally a wide window covering half of the north wall provided most of the room’s light, but since his patient’s dramatic arrival, that was covered in sacking. There was a tiny window in the side which admitted a little pale winter sunlight, but Antil had still brought a candle.

Stop being such a fool
, he chided himself,
she’s your patient, for pity’s sake!
The remonstrations had little effect. He still felt like he was intruding. He glanced behind him to check no priests or novices were watching him, but there was no one. People rarely came up to the top floor of the temple; they knew this was his personal space, where he could get his thoughts back in order and rest after working in the hospital below.

Antil was a middle-aged man of average height, with thinning hair and somewhat thick around the waist - a professional hazard for Priests of Shotir, those who could heal at least. Magical healing produced a fierce hunger, and only Antil’s vanity had kept that in check. Unlike most of his order, his belly was a modest bulge under his yellow robes, and a tidy beard hid his fleshy neck. There was nothing he could do about the worry lines.

He forced himself to enter the chamber, and once over the threshold habit reasserted itself. She was very sensitive to light, so he walked around the bed and crouched at her side. She wasn’t asleep; he could sense her wariness, like a wounded animal, and he was careful not to touch her yet. However badly hurt she might be, she was still touched by a Goddess, and he didn’t want to do anything to provoke alarm in her. Instead he just sat awhile and looked at her face, fascinated by the mystery she presented.

With a tiny whimper the woman turned her head to look at him and he saw those curious eyes focus on him. They were dark green, possessing an inner light that reminded Antil of the jade ring his mother had worn until the day she died. The woman’s face was bruised and covered in splinter-scratches, but the swelling had already gone down. He realised she would be arrestingly beautiful once the discolouration faded.

‘Well, my girl, and how do you feel this morning?’ he asked gently, not expecting a response. His ability with magic was as unremarkable as he, and healing was the only skill he’d ever worked on, but his latent senses recognised enough to be worried by her. The one-sided conversation was principally for his own benefit, helping him maintain a normal train of thought so he could focus on his healing - not that he’d been able to do much yet, partly because the divine spark in her was far stronger than a priest’s, and resisted Shotir’s workings, but also because replacing the ruined was beyond mortal skills.

Antil let a trickle of warm energy run into her body to soothe her, stroking her hand until she stopped fighting it. Once the fear was gone he pulled the blanket covering her down a little, but the mark was still there, as he’d expected.

‘Damn,’ he said, scratching at his beard and frowning. Around her throat was a clear hand-print of greyish shadow. The skin itself was not damaged, just tinted - as though an ash-covered hand had grabbed her - except it would not wash off.

‘Someone’s marked you,’ he told her, ‘you who have been touched by a Goddess as profoundly as one Chosen. They grabbed you and they beat you senseless. They broke your leg, a shoulder, an arm, ribs, a bone in your neck - and their very touch was enough to leave a permanent mark on your skin.’

He shivered. It wasn’t the only strange aspect of her neck: running his finger over it he could feel a series of lumps, for all the world like a necklace
under
her skin - and what magic he had been able to work had confirmed that was exactly what it was: a necklace she had been wearing had been driven completely into her flesh.

‘That’s not even the worst,’ he continued, looking down at the hand-print thoughtfully. ‘We all felt it, what happened in Alterr’s chamber. Every priest in Hale felt something terrible. Folk are saying a God died . . . but I wonder if it was not a Goddess?’

He found a cloth and almost mechanically began to wipe her face.

‘I went to the Temple of the Lady. It’s shut; the priestesses have not been seen outside the walls. Hale is in chaos, so no one else has really noticed yet, but that will change soon enough.’

He removed the blanket covering her body and stared down at her body. A small wrap protected her modesty for form’s sake, though the sheer number of bandages and wrappings meant almost half her total skin surface was covered. He saw to each one in turn, humming the mantras of healing as he worked. Without channelling magic they would do little, but the familiar sound was better than silence.

It was clear that she was healing supernaturally well. Antil was not so vain as to believe it was down to him.
Perhaps I helped a little
, he conceded,
but no more than that
. When he touched her tightly splinted leg the woman moaned and tried to reach out, but the effort of sitting up defeated her. She sank back down, her eyes rolling up as her lips moved fractionally. He placed his hands on her chest and channelled magic into her body, not focusing on knitting bone or flesh, which she would manage on her own, but on blanking out the pain. That at least he could manage: her mind was still human, and a mind could be fooled into ignoring pain, even if the substance of her body resisted any efforts beyond that.

After a minute he stopped to catch his breath, feeling like an old man. He’d left a small bag of willow bark pieces by her bedside. He picked it up and fumbled stiff-fingered with the tie for a moment before managing to get it open. As he did so the sacking nailed over the window fluttered under a rogue gust of wind and the movement caused him to flinch, dropping the little bag. But somehow his patient’s hand had slipped off the bed and instead of hitting the floor, the tie of the bag snagged on her fingers.

Antil looked down. Her eyes were closed, her expression one of restless sleep. There was no sign she’d even noticed what had happened.

‘Good catch,’ Antil muttered with a puzzled frown, ‘or should I perhaps say lucky catch?’

He didn’t know whether to wince or smile at that thought; luck was a fickle mistress - if the expression could endure after the Lady herself was dead. It would not be long before the bands of penitents began to ask earnest questions about the damage to the window. He had explained it away as a thrown fragment of stone from the explosion that had obliterated Alterr’s temple, but sooner or later someone would realise that was peculiar.

‘What are you in all this?’ he wondered, running his fingers down her arm, feeling how hot her skin was. ‘If you were there with the Lady, how is it you survived and she did not? A servant cannot be stronger than the God - did she believe you important enough to save at the expense of her own life?’

Antil shivered again. The idea that an immortal would do that was ludicrous, but it was the only answer he’d come up with so far.

‘My vow means I must protect the injured, even if the penitents of Death try to take you,’ he said, resolved to do his duty, ‘but if it’s true the Lady saved you for a reason, you may not need that protection longer than a few days.’ He took the cloth and trickled a little more water onto her lips. This time they parted eagerly to accept it. ‘Let us hope whatever did this to you doesn’t come looking, for if that happens you’ll need more than my vow, I think.’

 

Ilumene looked up at the cloudy sky and tried to discern the position of the sun. It didn’t do him much good; the western horizon showed nothing more than an overall glow, but it was a more cheering sight than the east, where an ugly swell of grey crowded the jagged mountain cliffs. His instincts told him that it was not quite mid-morning - after a fight, perceived time raced along, in his experience, fuelled by adrenalin and panic.

Without warning a voice spoke into his mind. ‘
They’re coming.’

‘Aracnan?’
he thought after a moment of confusion. The only being to speak to him like that in the past had been Azaer and that had not happened since the fall of Scree. ‘
What about the storm on the mountain?
’

‘
They ignore it. The floods do not come with every storm, only once or twice each season, but I have done what I can to draw more power to the clouds. Kiyer of the Deluge is coming, but not before the penitents; look to your left.
’

Ilumene did as he was told. For a moment he saw nothing, then a jerking movement caught his eye. On the roof of a building attached to the inside of the wall he saw a small hunched shape, no bigger than a child. It was difficult to make it out clearly for the colours of its body seemed to shift, adopting the lichen-spotted hues of the wall behind.

The creature seemed to feel his gaze upon it and turned its head towards him. The curious shape to its body was suddenly revealed as a dozen sets of tiny wings down the length of its back and arms started flapping. The pattern-less flutter increased in speed until the creature’s body was almost completely hidden by a blur, whereupon the flapping stopped abruptly, leaving nothing behind. Ilumene blinked in surprise. It had gone - not flown away but disappeared.

‘
An Aspect? They called an Aspect to incarnate here and probe our defences?
’

‘
Exactly so
,’ Aracnan replied. ‘
Your mages are on edge, they reveal themselves by their raised defences. The priests now know how many you have, and they will not fear marching on you.
’

‘But the deluge will cut off their escape,’ Ilumene said out loud, a cruel grin appearing on his face. ‘
Hard luck for them. Go and watch over the master until it is time to act.
’ He wiped the smirk from his lips and looked over at Major Feilin, who acknowledged him and trotted over.

‘Sergeant Kayel?’ Feilin was a decent soldier, if lacking somewhat in personal bravery. He walked with a slight limp, Ilumene had noted with satisfaction. Feilin might have been in charge of the compound’s defence, but Ilumene made it clear who was top dog two days before. Feilin gave the orders still - once Ilumene decided what they were to be. His approach might not have worked on a nobleman who had arrogance and pride to contend with, but everyone in the Ruby Tower knew Major Feilin had been born to a cook and had lived his whole life in service here. The man had seen enough bullies in his life to know when he had no chance; Ilumene hadn’t needed to push matters.

‘Major,’ he said, saluting for the benefit of anyone watching, ‘everything in place?’

‘They are, but I’m far from happy about leaving the compound open to attack - it’s a big risk to take.’

Ilumene had suggested the gates be left open and a fair number of the men sent out into the city. Kiyer’s flood notwithstanding, Ilumene didn’t want the people to feel abandoned by their secular rulers. Over the years the city’s streets had been built so floodwater could be safely diverted away. He was confident the battle would follow Azaer’s script and be short-lived. What was far more important was the perception people in Breakale, Wheel and Burn would have of this day - in preparation for the day they were forced to choose sides.