The Pearls (14 page)

“That's what I just said. Why do you judge Lord Shadrael so harshly? Did you serve under him?”

“Not me,” Thirbe said emphatically. “But there were things we had no choice about, Gault help us, things we were forced to do. And then there were choices. Shadrael chose to risk his soul committing
shul-drakshera
on a wager.”

“I've heard of that!” Hervan said. “The Kiss of Eternity.”

“It ain't nothing to get excited about,” Thirbe said.

“Only the most courageous—”

“Ain't courage playing games like that. Just stupidity. No one made him. Not even the rites of Alcua went that far. And to my mind, he's the one we want.”

“It could be him,” Hervan admitted reluctantly. Thirbe, he thought, was like most old men who disapproved of
drakshera
, forgetting how important it was to prove your bravery. Hervan supposed that becoming elderly meant losing heart and courage. What a pity. “If so, Lord Shadrael would be the most ruthless renegade of all.”

Thirbe nodded. “Whether it's Mardico or Shadrael, we've got our good lady taken for a pawn in whatever plot's afoot.”

“Ransom?”

“Maybe. Or the stakes could be higher.”

Hervan blinked at that. He hadn't expected Thirbe to be so astute about political matters.

Thirbe drove a fist into his palm. “Damn! I hate being helpless like this. Her, so dainty and young, so innocent and kind and good, held by some band of evil swinegullets. The idea of it twists my guts until I can't think. I should have protected her better, instead of getting walloped off my horse like a green boy.”

The raw emotion betrayed in his voice caught Hervan's sympathy. “Thirbe—”

The protector gestured. “Ah, don't mind me. My head feels like a split melon, that's all. And I'm about dead with shame at that fiend letting me live.”

“What?”

“He could have killed me in the first exchange of blows, and didn't,” Thirbe said fiercely. “As soon as my shield went to pieces, I was done for. Toying with me, insulting me, when he could have snapped my life at any time.”

Hervan stared at him, amazed he would admit such a thing. “You should be grateful you're alive, not insulted.”

“Grateful! I spit on him. If he's hurt her…if he's touched her…ah, shadows smite me.” Thirbe passed his hand across his eyes and fell silent.

Hervan cast about for some way to offer comfort and couldn't think of anything. “Come dawn, we'll be tracking her—”

“Where? Are you daft? They've gone—
whoosh
—into thin air.”

“And the priest said they can't travel the Hidden Ways. When they come out, I shall be waiting for them,” Hervan said grimly.

“What if that itty-witted priest is wrong?”

“What he said made sense.”

“To you, maybe. Not to me. I don't think Poulso's ever gone into the shadow world. It ain't for the fainthearted.”

Hervan drew a deep breath, trying to find patience. “We'll attack as soon as they emerge.”

Thirbe grunted skeptically. “Have you sent to Brondi yet for reinforcements?”

“I don't need reinforcements,” Hervan said. “My men are valiant and well trained.”

Thirbe scowled. “You've lost half of them.”

“Not quite.”

“Aye, by all means, let's quibble over the tally. Today, you were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and outflanked by someone a lot smarter than you. Might as well admit it, and get on with sending word to the emperor immediately for instructions and reinforcements.”

“Who are you to be telling me what to do?” Hervan demanded in a rage. “You're no officer, and never were.”

“Nope. I marched for twelve years in my legion, and after my hitch was up, my tailbone pounded leather riding from one end of the empire to the other, guarding tax collectors.”

“A predlicate,” Hervan said with scorn. “A common guard.”

“Guard, aye. Common, no. As well you know. I've seen plenty of field battle, and more tours of duty than you. I know your regulations, same as I know army ones and most of the others. But say you ignore orders and make a stand, what in Gault's name do you expect to accomplish if you should meet these devils again? Your men couldn't handle them today.”

His bluntness kindled a sullen blaze in Hervan's chest. “We were surprised, that's all.”

“Surprised? Aye. The understatement of the year. And now your men are tired and hurt, less capable than before. Even you're not fit.”

“I can still ride,” Hervan said. “I can issue orders, even if I can't fight.”

“If all this is to impress the lady—”

“I know my duty,” Hervan said. “I will not shirk it.”

“Your
duty
is to send a courier to the emperor, then retreat and gather reinforcements as needed.”

“Crimsons do not retreat. We fight to the death.”

“If you can find the enemy, which you can't.”

Hervan fumed for a moment. The last thing he intended to do was inform the emperor of his failure. No, it was imperative that he keep any news of this disaster contained until he could rescue Lea.

“Lost your nerve, Protector?” he asked at last with a sneer. “A short time ago you were striking the priest because he would not open the Hidden Ways. Now you want to run away for help.”

Thirbe gripped him by the front of his cloak and pulled him around, seemingly oblivious of Hervan's bitten-off cry of pain. “Damn your eyes! If Poulso had found us a way to the shadows, I'd be there,” he said hoarsely. “Now you listen to me, you puppy! We're less than a day's ride from Brondi. There's a garrison there, with men enough to supply those you've lost, and more!”

“Foot soldiers,” Hervan said with contempt, trying to pull free of Thirbe's grip without jarring his collarbone. Barsin approached him, but Hervan waved his adjutant back lest he overhear too much. “A legion camp hardly better than an outpost.”

“It's got men, ain't it? And maybe dragon couriers to send word fast to New Imperia.”

“And I tell you that we'll handle this matter ourselves, without interference.”

“You calling the emperor interference?”

Hervan swallowed. “No, of course not. But he's too far away to be of use. Lady Lea needs us
now
.”

“Aye, I'll agree with that. But we send for reinforcements from Brondi, as required.”

“No. My men were caught unprepared once, but I assure you that in a rematch they'll more than hold—”

“Rematch?” Thirbe said with scorn. “This is battle, not a game of terlio.”

“I know that. But you do not command this force, Protector. I do. And my decisions stand.”

“You'll get the girl killed, if she ain't dead already.”

“Her safety was entrusted to me. If she's alive, and I can reach her, I'll do everything in my power to save her,” Hervan said. “Everything. I'm sworn to this duty, and the Crimsons do not fail.”

“Seems to me the Crimsons already have.”

Furious, Hervan stood nearly nose to nose with the protector. “Hear this,” he said in a quiet, rigidly controlled voice. “As soon as we're done, as soon as the lady is safe, and my shoulder is mended, I'll see you eat that remark. Name the day. Name your weapon. Am I clear?”

Thirbe stepped back from him and stood in silence before shaking his head. “You pathetic little…don't you know reality from games, boy? Don't you?”

“Of course I do!”

But Thirbe shook his head again, and limped away, leaving Hervan's challenge unanswered.

S
lowly
Lea regained her wits, blinking open her eyes to find herself still trapped in a nightmare. Dark, pervasive gloom surrounded her, illuminated by a sickly gray light that made her think of the pale underbellies of fungus found in woods. The icy cold and snow did not intrude here. No wind blew. The air carried a tang of stone and soil and cold ashes. And everywhere could she feel evil's oppressive breath.

Malevolent
jaiethquai
pervaded stone, mist, and shadow. She felt swallowed by it, suffocated, and remembered that her abductor had taken her necklace of
gli
-emeralds away, as though he'd known exactly what they were. Without their protective shield of magic, she felt vulnerable indeed. But not helpless, she reminded herself.

She was still on horseback, riding sitting up and propped against her captor's breastplate. Her elbow was pinched uncomfortably between his armored body and the saddle, for he held her close. A portion of his black cloak had been pulled forward to cover her. Even with its protection, she felt cold, as though she'd gone and lain in a wintry stream. Her mouth started to tremble, but she compressed her lips very hard and forced her
quai
to be strong. At the moment she might be a mouse pinned by a predator's paw, but she would remain still and silent in order to gain opportunity. It was
not
weakness, she assured herself, to be prudent.

Obviously they were
between
, inside what the shadow folk called the Hidden Ways. Lea had gone
between
a few times in her life, escorted by the earth spirits and later by the Choven mystic Moah, but those had been experiences of shining, ethereal light and a mist as soft and refreshing as spring water. This passage—
this
reality—between the physical and spiritual worlds was like something broken and perverse. Everything about it was so very wrong.

Tears pricked her eyes, but she held them back.
Stay strong,
she thought.
Breathe normally and have faith in the teachings
.

They moved at a slow, steady, almost cautious pace. She wondered if the men had any sense of time passing, if they realized how long they'd trudged through what seemed to be a cave passage.

It was not, of course. Lea—if she squinted—could see the illusion of stone and dirt walls fade. In their stead she saw jutting fingers of rock, and dead trees split into jagged stumps. They passed through the shadow of forest. She suspected these might be the woods she'd aimed for in the small valley before her capture. Or perhaps not. If her captor was strong enough to move quickly through the Hidden Ways, they might have left the valley far behind, be well beyond the hills, or even farther. She did not know how long she'd been unconscious.

An eerie quiet surrounded them, unnatural and unsettling. The men did not talk among themselves as they marched behind the commander's horse, following where he led. Even the cadenced tramp of their feet seemed muted. They had been trained, she supposed, to stay silent and not distract his concentration.

For it was not easy, Lea knew, to traverse the ways of
between
. Landmarks were illusory and what seemed to be real might not exist at all. Distance was the most difficult element of all to gauge. Perhaps this warrior was counting, as some did, or perhaps he was heeding a guiding force. But let him falter or stray, and they could become lost forever.

Although tempted to interfere, she did not. She did not want to be lost with him and his small army.
Wait,
she told herself.
Wait
.

At last her abductor raised his hand, and they halted. In the sudden stillness, punctuated here and there by a cough or the scrape of a boot sole on stones, she heard a faint trickle of running water.

Thirst assailed her, and her tongue felt glued to the roof of her mouth. Suddenly she felt so parched she could barely swallow, yet she knew to drink here would be an illusion. Shadow water would not sustain her.

He shoved her slightly forward. “Sit up, and stop pretending to sleep.”

Startled, she sat very still while he swung out of the saddle with a creak of leather and reached up for her. Instinctively she shrank back, but he gripped her slim waist and set her on the ground effortlessly, as though she weighed little more than a feather.

“Walk. Stretch,” he said. His voice was gritty and rough with strain. “You can't escape, but don't wander far.”

The light was too dim for her to see him clearly. Tall though he was, in his black armor he became almost invisible in the gloom. Now and then he moved in such a way that the pallid light glimmered on the medal at his throat. His posture, even his quiet gestures showed him plainly to be no ordinary soldier, no common ruffian. His armor fit him too well to have been stolen, and his gear was neither cheap nor ordinary. His helmet visor remained down, concealing most of his face, but she saw that his eyes no longer glowed red the way they had before. She did not walk in
severance
, yet in this place she could see the threads of life, as ugly and sometimes as frayed as worn ropes, floating up from the heads and shoulders of the men. Only, there were none visible around her captor. It frightened her. If he was
casna
—demon spawn—then she had no chance of escaping him.

Yet some instinct in her could not believe him such a creature. He did possess
quai
. She sensed it now, although it was so bleak that she had been unaware of it at first. She frowned. Perhaps…

He lifted a gloved hand in repudiation. “Don't.”

Although he spoke softly, there was a warning in his tone that she heeded at once. Hugging herself, she drew back without a word, yet made no effort to walk away as he'd suggested.

“Commander.”

It was one of his men, the scarred centruin with the ruined voice, the one that had killed Rinthella.

No,
Lea thought with an inner sob.
I killed her.

The centruin came up, clutching a short whip, and here in the Hidden Ways, his face between the leather cheek guards of his helmet looked skeletal, flesh worn away to reveal pale bone. His cruel eyes held neither compassion nor pity when he glanced at Lea, and his teeth were rimmed black with rot. The mark of Beloth was burning in tiny flames on his left cheek. His threads of life looked charred and frayed in clumped knots. Lea saw that his
quai
was very dark, darker even than her abductor's.

“Commander,” he said again, his voice a harsh croak.

As the two men began to converse in low, almost inaudible voices, Lea hurried away, not caring where she ventured as long as she left their proximity.

Within a few steps, stumbling a little on ground that she could almost see clearly yet never was quite what she expected, she reached the stream. The water sounded very shallow and fast. Seeing and hearing it made her thirst burn so intensely that, although she knew better, she knelt and tried to dip her hand into the liquid.

Her fingers passed through nothing.

Miserably she licked dry lips and sat back on her heels, bowing her head. On her left, the men began taking turns approaching the stream, scooping up a cup of illusionary water, and moving away. They did this in a disciplined, orderly fashion, as soldiers would.
Renegade soldiers,
she thought. Lawless men, no longer in her brother's service. She watched them drink, wondering if they realized no real water was passing between their lips.

Even if under orders to stay quiet, they should have been grinning, bright with triumph, but they weren't.

Maybe, she thought, they were as afraid of this evil place as she was.

Concerned that she seemed to be the only prisoner, Lea stood up and craned her neck, looking over the men in search of anyone she might consider friend. But, seeing no one she knew, she felt terribly alone.

At that moment, something tugged at the hem of her skirts.

Startled, she turned around but saw nothing next to her. She frowned, knowing she hadn't imagined it, and her heart began to thud a little faster.

Again, there came a sharp swift tug at her skirts, this time from the side. She twisted her head, but still saw nothing.

But she heard a faint, almost inaudible, hissing. She swiftly moved only her eyes, and glimpsed a pale, slim creature about the size of a cat except that it walked upright. It vanished before she got a good look at it.

A splash in the water made her turn. She saw the liquid gleam of two eyes on the water's surface as something small came swimming across the stream. Emerging, the creature lay flat and shimmering on the pebbles before it swelled into a three-dimensional shape with legs and arms and talons and fangs. Its head was misshapen and narrow, and its shiny little eyes glared at her fiercely before it scuttled sideways into the darkness.

The hissing noise came again from beside her. Lea bit her lip, but stayed otherwise motionless, letting the cat-sized creature tug at her skirts. It grew bolder, creeping around her, prodding the cloth with its talons and sniffing a long while before it paused to stare up at her. Its sly eyes glowed like yellow flames.

Another of its kind joined it, crawling out of the shadows to venture closer. This one, she saw from the corner of her eye, was malformed, its head misshapen and its spine contorted. It was as pale as soured milk, and the sight of it made her swallow hard.

The hissing sounded louder, accompanied now by a muted clicking. She saw more yellow eyes glowing at her from the shadows, and could endure no more.

Her courage slipped, and she crouched swiftly, causing the creatures to scatter back into hiding. Yet they did not go far. She could hear them hissing and clicking, watching from all around her. More and more of them were gathering. Demons, she thought, unnerved. Shadow spawn that should not exist. Never mind that they displayed deformities, scars, or even missing limbs; their very survival, along with the fact that it was still possible for men with magical powers to open the Hidden Ways, meant that Beloth's vile influence remained far stronger than common knowledge believed. There was still enough evil lingering in the world, still enough malevolence, to keep these remnants of shadow going.

Why feel surprised? she asked herself angrily. Had she not witnessed enough pettiness, greed, and misspent fervor at court these past three years? Were there not even now misguided wretches in New Imperia who sought to worship and deify her, to form a cult of adulation around her, to seek her wisdom on every matter as though she were an oracle? It was why, when Caelan had asked her to travel to Trau in his place, she had seized the opportunity so eagerly. To get away…to fulfill her last official function and then vanish into the mountains near the glacier. Yes, she intended to return to the Choven and abide among her mother's people, safe and isolated in a proper balance of
jaiethquai
thereafter.

Now, as she crouched on the ground with the little demons watching her, she groped about for pebbles and swiftly rowed them in the shape of a square before stacking more in a simple pattern.

As she worked, the boldest of the creatures crept up to stare at what she was doing before it bleated a cry and recoiled, slashing the air with its claws and hissing. Glad, she reached for another pebble just as a booted foot stamped the abacus-like pattern she'd made, grinding some of the stones into the dirt and knocking the rest awry.

Startled, Lea had no time to react before the commander's gloved hand gripped the front of her cloak and yanked her bodily to her feet.

“Stupid,” he snarled at her.

She hardly heard what he said, for he stood before her without his helmet. For the first time she saw his face. Lean, chiseled features…the high cheekbones and slightly tilted dark eyes of a Ulinian aristocrat. Slim black eyebrows knotted angrily over an aquiline nose. A jaw firm beneath its stubble of beard, surprisingly youthful. A mouth refined and mobile, with perhaps a touch of sensitivity at the corners, although at the moment it was clamped in a thin line. Handsome, he might be, but cruelty and impatience formed his expression. He glared at her without mercy.

“Don't you know better than to work your magic here?” he asked.

Lea's small chin lifted. “They're demons. I won't have them gathering around me.”

“Leave the little ones be,” he said, his tone harsh and flat. “They've suffered enough.”

“They could never suffer enough. They shouldn't even exist.”

He barked a brief laugh that held no amusement. “Stupid
and
naive. Light Bringer may rule the empire, but we have not all curled up into dust and ashes just to please him.”

“You—”

He gave her a shove. “Move.”

She tried to jerk away, but he caught her hand with crushing strength and wrenched her around. It was the first time he'd touched her without his glove, and the involuntary
sevaisin
between them caught her by surprise.