Alexandria (19 page)

Jack grabs Lia’s hand and advances. “Let us go.”

Braylon shoots a hand out and wrenches Jack by the scruff of his shirt. He slaps the hand away and Lia squeals and shirks back.

“Here! Down here,”
shouts Braylon. “I’m sorry, Jack, this is for your own good.”

Jack shoves him and tries to scramble past. Braylon raises up his blade and fixes to strike with the hilt, and as his arm arcs down Jack locks onto it and they counter each other, heaving and shoving. He draws back again and lunges forward in a rush, and without thinking Jack swings his arm up and lodges his knife in Braylon’s solar plexus. All motion stops suddenly and a warm stickiness trickles down Jack’s hand and forearm. Braylon’s mouth gawps wide open and closed like a landlocked fish and the horror of realization floods across his face a moment too late, a twisted grimace of regret and sorrow. He clutches Jack’s shoulder, his life slipping quickly away.

“Braylon—”
Jack pulls him close and holds him as he dies.
“I’m so sorry. Oh, no…”

“Jack…”
he says, “…
run…”

They are his last words.

Jack lays him down and whispers soft apologies as he tugs the boots off his feet and takes his bow and satchel and slips them over his shoulder. Lia’s fist is balled up against her mouth and she blinks tears out of her eyes.

The wolfmongrels are barking and raving just above them—Braylon’s call has drawn the pack’s attention their way.

“Come on,” says Jack, “keep quiet and stay back.”

They skulk along the thin ledge and an aura of firelight glows on the trail ahead, cast down from the torches above. The searchers are moving to the forward end so they can double back as Braylon had done.

“Oh, Jack, they’re coming
.”

Jack considers jumping and making a swim for it, but the rocky shoal extends too far out and they would surely land in a broken heap. He feels his way along to a small alcove and they push through a veil of foliage, looking for a place to hide out and figure their next move. Right away Lia shrieks and jumps on Jack.

“There’s someone here,”
she breathes.

Jack draws his knife on the huddled form. “Who are you?” he asks, rattling forward with his blade.

“Hold! Hold!”
the man says, his voice ragged and shaky. “I won’t hurt you.” Jack pauses and tightens his grip on the knife handle. “You killed that man,” the stranger says. “You’re not… a part of them?”

“Not anymore,” says Jack, struggling to comprehend what is happening.

The stranger gasps.
“You’re running
.”

“Tell me who you are or I’ll kill you right now.”

“I’m the man they’re looking for.”

“I don’t…”

“Look here, boy,” he says, and points down to his leg. Even in the murky darkness Jack can see the white shinbone glistening, a compound fracture, black blood pooling around his foot. “Fell coming down here. I’m done for. And so are you if you stay with me, the dogs are on my scent.”

“They’re coming, there’s nowhere to go,”
Lia says in a panic, gulping air.

“Do they know you’re gone?” the stranger asks.

“I don’t know,” says Jack, analyzing his situation freshly. “Maybe… they don’t.”

“Maybe is good enough. I think I can help you get away, but you have to do something in return.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack can hear voices descending the bluffs. They are not far off now.

“I want you to go somewhere and give them a message.” He pulls a tattered scrap of leather from his shirt and thrusts it forward. “It’s a map. You’re
here,”
he points to a corner of land jutting out from the coast, “and I come from here,” he moves his finger down the map and etches a scribbled star. “Go there and warn them. Tell them that Ethan and Renning are dead. Tell them Nezra knows about Alexandria.” He scrawls the message on the back of the map.

“What is Alexandria?”

“A place worth dying for. I don’t have time to say more, but if you go you’ll understand. They can answer your questions. Go there and warn them,” he speaks rapidly, “and if you swear this to me, I’ll do what I can to get you out of here safely. At least for now. Will you go?
Tell me now
.”

“Where are we again?” Jack asks as he takes the map.

“Here. And you’ll be going south, which is this way. Can you read?”

“Some.”

“Good. Will you go?”

Jack looks to Lia and she is dazed with fear. She nods
yes
.

“We’ll go.”

“What are your names?”

“Jack.”

“Lia.”

“I’m Ethan.”

He pulls himself up, dragging his wasted leg behind him.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to let them catch me. When they stop the search and clear out, run south as fast as you can.”

“Thank you,”
says Lia.

“Just don’t break a promise to a dead man.”

He hops out of the shrouded recess, then drops to his knees and crawls along the ledge toward the encroaching voices.

“There—”

“There he is.”

“Get the hell off me
.”

Jack and Lia hold stock still as the violent frenzy ensues. The men strike Ethan’s damaged leg, and he screams so shrilly that Lia nestles closer to Jack’s side and buries her face in his shoulder.

“What is that?”

“I killed your friend,” Ethan says, and there is another sharp crack and then silence.

Dark shapes lurk past the alcove and cast their light on Braylon.

“Dead.”

They drag his body back the way they came and join the others, still binding the unconscious Ethan. Murmurs and footsteps continue on for so long a time that Jack is sure they’ll search deeper and find the two of them cowering in the shadows. He takes the shallowest breaths his lungs will allow and sits holding Lia for the longest time, feeling like the night will never end.

In due course, the warriors take their prisoner and their fallen brother and move south along the bluffs to the spot where they descended. After they’ve gone, Jack and Lia sit motionless for another span of time, terrified to move, convinced there must be one last man lying in ambush just outside ready to slice them.

Ever so slowly, Jack leans forward and peers out. They’re gone. He sits back and holds Braylon’s boot up to his own foot. Braylon’s are a bit larger and he switches his out and gives them to Lia.

“Put these on.”

They lace their boots, then Jack shoves everything in his pack and slides the satchel of arrows over his shoulder along with the bow and steps out onto the ledge with his knife drawn. Lia pokes out behind him and they move with caution along the westward face, toward the ruins.

They pass the steep incline the warriors used to reach the grounds and they hear harried voices off in the distance by the Temple. Crouching low, they move on down the hill that leads to the valley below, spiny bushes and dry weeds scratching at them as they go. Lia’s foot slides away and Jack catches her with his free arm and they cut an impromptu switchback down the steepest part of the hill. At last the grade levels off and they pick up pace, wending their way through the collapsed wreckage and racing off on their southern course. A thin sliver of moon casts a pale nimbus over the ruins and the air is still. The Nezran Temple fades into the distance, and soft footfalls tattoo the night as Jack and Lia escape into the untamed wilderness.

Chapter Eight

In the high cloistered dormitory, a group of new boys crowds around the thin window, squeezing together in a heap and craning their necks to see the action unfold on the grounds. They watch breathlessly as the unconscious man is dragged across the garden, his leg bent wickedly askew. When the eruption began, they had thought with heartbreaking naiveté that perhaps someone had come to rescue them.

Calyn huddles with her husband in their cottage, his fighting days long since gone, and they look out their own small window at the goings-on. They invoke the spirits of the Beyond and whisper devotions to their King’s divine protection—swearing off the Rain of Fire and saying their due should it all come crashing down.

Jeneth holds little Mariset close and rocks her gently. Eriem escorted them to Sena’s cottage to stay through the night, before suiting himself up and joining the hunt. Sena wraps an arm around each toddler and they sit in silence, gazing up at the ceiling as if waiting for a squall to pass. Such is the way across the hillside, frightened denizens cowering in darkened rooms, waiting for the spark that will ignite their downfall.

As the night grows quiet they venture out to see that their Temple is not burning, that whatever trouble had assailed them is dealt with and all crises apparently averted. The unsettled men keep watch through the dark hours, pacing the grounds and chattering nervously about the unknown origins of these intruders, speculating as to their intentions and wherewithal. They look to the Temple’s crown and whisper solemn wishes that their sacred protections have not been revoked.

Arana watches from above, silent and still. All candlelight around him has been extinguished and he stands in darkness, frozen in place since the chaos began. His breath is racing and he attempts to control it, his mind a swirl of confused thoughts. No premonition has foretold the arrival of these midnight prowlers, no vision or wisp of vision, nothing to portend the events he has just witnessed with his own sparkling spirit eyes. He opens himself as a willing vessel and bades the forces lingering in his very blood to show themselves.

The night answers with silence.

On shaky legs he snakes down to the underground keep, steadying his hand along the wall, averting the concerned looks of the men that escort him. In the antechamber he hears the suffering of the chained prisoners, and when he passes the heavy keep door he sees them—one old, one young. Ropy strings of drool hang from their mouths, their bodies covered with welts and lacerations, and Keslin stands to the back, ministering new abuses for his men to perform.

“Who are they?” Arana asks.

“Trying to find out,” Keslin says, flushing with exhilaration. “They won’t speak a word. Found them just past the tree line. Spying on us.”

“Spying?”

Keslin hands over the parchment. Arana unfolds it and stares in terrified wonderment at the finely sketched layout of the Temple and surrounding provinces. Bold letters inked across the top read
NEZRA.

His blood runs cold. An interminable silence passes as Arana looks from parchment to prisoners and back again.

“We can add two horses to the stable,” Keslin says optimistically. “They were tied a ways back in the woods. Here’s the rest of their things—we’ve been through it… this little drawing is all we’ve found.”

The clothing is scattered across the back of the keep. Arana sifts through the garments numbly, casting aside the boots and packs and belts and toolkits. He picks up a torn jacket and lays it out flat. There is something disturbingly familiar about the odd tailoring—the seam line at the shoulders, the tapered cut. It has been years, not since his childhood days, but he has seen craftwork like this before.

Frantic footsteps rush down the stairs and a breathless sentry bursts into the keep and shatters the stillness.

“We finished our head count,” he says, panting. “We’re missing two.”

“Who?”

“One girl gone from her room, and the east guard is not at his station.”

They blink around at one another, dumbstruck, until all eyes eventually settle on the King. He tries to form a sentence but his dry, clumsy tongue forbids him and his jaw simply drops open and hangs slack.

Keslin is the first to move. He advances on the prisoners and wrings his hands around Renning’s neck, crunching his crooked old thumbs into his windpipe.

“If you’ve hurt them…”
he seethes. Renning’s eyes bulge in confusion and his face turns a deeper shade of purple. He releases Renning and clutches onto Ethan. “Or maybe it was you? You’ve already killed one of ours.
Where are they?”

Ethan’s head lolls to the side and he mumbles unintelligible nonsense. Keslin grabs a stout length of wood from a pile and slams it into his broken leg. Ethan’s eyes sharpen to fine points and he wails so fiercely the sound carries up the stairs and into the foyer, resonating through the whole structure like an enormous woodwind. His cries shrivel away and he passes out again, his shocked body quivering and rattling his shackles.

“He killed… one of ours?” Arana asks. “Here?
At the Temple?”

“On the bluffs. Braylon’s body is upstairs.”

Arana’s mind reels.

“Let’s go,” says Keslin, already lurching toward the stairs.

They break for the upper levels and run to the vaulted overpass that connects the Temple with the dormitory, then fan out down the off-shooting corridors with Keslin charging after, shouting orders.

Arana walks to the center of the high bridge and looks out across the calm waters of the reflecting pool, his consummate protections come to naught, his lifelong streak of Temple harmony shattered to pieces—the evidence of his failure lying on a cold slab in the Temple morgue.

Almost immediately a frenzy of hollers from the furthest corner draws him away and he strides down the hall toward the warriors collected at the narrow service entrance. A path is cleared for Arana and Keslin and the stifled moaning from behind the pantry door quickens their pace. They arrive just as the door is battered once more, busting the wood plank at the hinges and throwing it open with a loud crack.

Bound and disoriented on the floor is their missing sentry, his scalp coated with dried blood and his mouth muzzled with rope.

When he’s undone he sits for a moment and takes several long, deep breaths. Then he pours forth. Arana listens in stunned silence as the account unfolds, his pulse throbbing in his eardrums. The heaviness deepens when they find the soggy torch in the sink and the cabinet of knives standing wide open, with two slots empty.