Forbidden (26 page)

H
er name
drummed through Rom’s mind as he slapped his stallion’s hindquarters with his open palm, demanding speed.

Avra. Avra.

Yesterday he’d abandoned the stallion at the edge of the city and it had found its own way to the Citadel stables. He’d recognized the horse immediately upon fleeing the dungeons. It had seemed an auspicious gift from the Maker.

The horse slowed to a walk several times, and Rom let it amble forward until he could stand it no longer. Then he’d cried out and beat the beast into a run. He could not let the poor animal rest; Avra’s face was ever before him.

The sun was nearly at its zenith when he thundered over the final crest to see the estate in the valley below. Quiet. Not a horse to be seen at the front gate. Had he beaten Saric’s guard here?

He thundered down the hill to the gate. He slid off the saddle before the animal came to a full stop, nearly tripping over his own feet.

“Avra!”

Not a sound. The front door was open. He threw it wide.

“Avra!”

A chair at the front table lay toppled, a fresh vase of flowers dashed against the floor.

He stumbled forward, through the side hall, past the kitchen, screaming now.

“Avra!”

Into the courtyard. Then he saw the body. A woman lay at a crooked angle, sprawled facedown on the flagstones beneath a cloud of buzzing flies.

Lila. Jonathan’s mother.

For a minute it was all he could do to fight the vision of his own mother, lying in her own blood in the kitchen of their house. But Lila had not been cut down so much as butchered.

He lifted his eyes and scanned the courtyard, pulling out the knife tucked into his belt. No sign of the assassins.

He hurried to Lila’s side, dropped to one knee, and turned her over. Her eyes were still open. Her stomach had been ripped open, her entrails spilled out the front of her torn dress. Her hands had been cut off.

Under any other circumstance he might have retched. But his mind was on Avra, only Avra.

He laid a hand on Lila’s arm. Still warm. She couldn’t have died long ago. An hour at most.

The thought propelled him into a run. Swiftly, silently this time, on the balls of his feet. At the back door he found the nurse lying on the ground. Also butchered.

Birdsong punctuated the stillness of the country estate, profane in the metallic air. There was no sign of the others.

He crossed the backyard in a dozen long strides and spun into the barn. Empty. No guard, no sign of Avra or Triphon or the boy they’d been sent to save.

No horses. There had been a horse yesterday. With the two Avra and Triphon had brought, there should be at least three. He allowed himself a flash of hope.

He quickly retrieved his stallion and found the tracks in the sand out the back. They looked to be more than those a few horses would make. This was practically a road of trodden earth.

It headed north into the desert.

Rom kicked the horse into a run. Along the flat and up the rise to the north.

There he saw the sword, stuck in the ground. Left by Triphon, thinking Rom might need it? Surely not the guard. If they’d seen it, they’d left it, being fully armed already.

Had he been a horseman he might have scooped it up at a full gallop. But he was no warrior. Only Rom, Avra’s lover.

He stumbled off his horse and grabbed the sword, sending a desperate plea to the heavens as he remounted. He could not be too late.

Avra knelt behind a large boulder at the mouth of the cave, a sword in the sand by her side. Jonathan huddled behind her in the shadow, fear in his eyes. The faint jingle of tack issued from the dark bell of the cave as their horses shifted. Triphon was out of sight farther down, where the passage narrowed along the canyon floor.

An image of the bloody sword in his hand filled her mind.

They were pursued by five guardsmen—elite, by the striped bands on their arms, Triphon had said. His plan was so simple she had believed it would fail.

With stronger horses bred for heavy duty, the guard were gaining. The trio couldn’t outrun them, and Triphon wasn’t averse to taking them on. He seemed to relish the challenge. If he could thin their number to three they stood a chance, he claimed. Though she didn’t see how.

He’d selected a section of the canyon with a narrow file that allowed only one horse to pass at a time. While she and Jonathan hid, he’d backtracked and taken the last of the five from behind, with a knife to the man’s neck.

The guard were now four.

She’d pointed out the obvious: Wouldn’t they know that one was missing? Wouldn’t they retrace to recover him?

“Not the elite,” he’d said. “They feel nothing but fear for their own lives if they fail Saric. To stop would only increase the odds of failure.”

He’d been right.

Now they lay in wait again. She’d brought the boy and the animals to the safety of the cave as Triphon disappeared from view.

She gripped the sword, knowing that if the situation warranted, she would swing it at anyone who tried to harm the boy. To think she’d frowned at the weapon only hours earlier!

A noise on the path. Avra glanced back at the boy. His wide-eyed gaze met hers.

She had to force herself to breathe slowly as the first of the guard passed below them, his mount a dark silhouette against the gray sky.

A bead of sweat tickled her neck.

The second guard came and passed. They were too close together for a safe ambush! Triphon would have to wait for another chance.

The horses walked with unnerving slowness. The guard’s swords were out, glinting in the sunlight beyond the cave.

Thirty more seconds, and all four would be past.

Twenty.

The third man passed beyond view. She could see the fourth.

Ten.

Behind her, one of their own horses snorted. She felt the heat drain from her limbs. The fourth form halted outside in the wide swath of sand before the narrowing canyon.

Go
, she willed.
Hear nothing. Go!

The guard outside moved on. Cleared the edge of the cave. Avra dared exhale as the sound of their steps faded.

The horse snorted again. A call followed from the canyon, and Avra knew they’d been exposed.

It happened so quickly that she hardly had time to think, much less react. The last guard had sounded a warning, and now Triphon would be committed. As would she.

She heard the rush of feet and skittering stone from Triphon’s location. The clash of steel.

She thrust herself forward, peered down the canyon, saw the situation in a single glance, and caught her breath. Three of the four guard were in a circle around Triphon.

Where was the fourth?

Triphon’s blade connected with the warrior to his left, slicing through his midsection.

But there were two more coming at him. And a third somewhere out of sight. Too many!

Rom heard them before he saw them: the clang of blades, their metallic echo pealing from the rock, shouts raised in alarm.

He took the stallion around the last bend at a full gallop, fifty yards behind the unmistakable form of Triphon. He was fighting two guardsmen, swords slicing in full combat. A third guard lay unmoving on the canyon floor.

No sign of Avra or the boy.

He spurred the horse through the dry bed, straight for Triphon, who was now fighting with his back against a wall.

Rom slid off the saddle, sword in hand, hit the ground rolling, and came up in a run, still ten paces behind the engagement.

Triphon slipped and the taller of the two guards lunged. Triphon spun away, and the guard’s blade clashed into the rock, sending sparks flying.

Rom saw the rest happen in sequence, each instant like the frame of a picture: the guard’s momentary loss of balance, Triphon’s twisting upward cut across the guard’s exposed neck, the guard’s head spinning into the air, face staring at the sky.

Triphon finished high, leaving his entire torso exposed to the second guard. Rom shouted, blade drawn back awkwardly, desperately trying to close the gap. The second soldier’s sword was already arcing in from the side, full-force, two-handed.

Rom lunged and swung blindly, threw all his weight at the guard’s arms, rather than his body or head. At the arms that held the blade swinging right for Triphon’s stomach.

Rom didn’t see so much as feel and hear the impact of blade and bone. A crack and then a clank of metal against rock as his sword twisted from his hands and fell to the ground. The guard’s two hands, still clutching the sword, flew over Rom’s head, leaving his bloody stumps to finish the slash alone.

Rom stumbled forward as Triphon brought his own blade down through the man’s head, splitting it like two halves of a hellish fruit.

Rom staggered, stunned by the sight of so much blood, the splay of limbs and bodies. Triphon stared at him in the sudden silence, his gore-smattered mouth open wide in a macabre grin.

They were both standing. Alive.

From behind him—a piercing wail. It broke the silence in a single panicked cry.

Avra. Calling his name.

“
Rom!
 ”

Avra saw it all from the cave’s entrance: Rom’s thundering entrance to save Triphon’s life. The way he’d rushed in, thinking nothing of his own safety to save them.

He kept his promise
.

That was the man she was going to marry. The world might see a simple artisan, a man more at home with a pen than a sword, but Avra saw her hero.

And then she saw the fourth warrior and watched in stunned disbelief as he rushed in from where he’d waited behind a boulder.

Rom’s sword lay on the ground. Panic struck her like a thunderclap, rattling her nerves with a new terror.

Rom was going to die.

She leaped from the cave and screamed her warning, leaving the boy behind in the shadows.

“Rom!”

Triphon’s eyes went wide, fixed on something over Rom’s shoulder.

Rom would relive the next few moments a thousand times in the days to come.

He spun at the sound of that familiar voice. Avra’s. She was running toward him from the left, her hair a dark wing behind her, his name still on her lips.

She was alive and in seconds she would be in his arms.

In that instant, he saw it all—the way he would clasp her. Hold her. Kiss her.

And then he saw the fourth warrior.

The reason for her scream. A guard, like the others, rushing him with blade raised.

His own sword lay on the sand to his right. There was no time.

The thought came to him distinctly, as if spoken with perfect calm and deliberation, surreal in that instant before death: He was a dead man.

But at Avra’s cry, the guard snapped his head in her direction. He turned to protect his flank from the new threat, sword drawn to meet her rushing form.

Pull up, Avra!
Rom’s mind screamed the words, but she was hurtling toward him, unstoppable.

The guard’s blade met Avra in full stride and sliced up through her breast toward her neck, severing flesh and bone in one sickening blow.

Avra knew before she felt the sting of metal that she was going to die. She knew it even as she rushed for Rom. She could not pull back in time. There was no out.

Two thoughts bit into her mind with the blade. The first was that it hurt, cold metal like fire, searing as it severed.

The second thought was for Rom, who stood braced for her, eyes wide.
I will never sleep in his embrace again
, she thought.

The blade found her spine and the world went dark.

Avra fell to the ground, eyes fixed on Rom.

The fourth guard continued his swing around, his blade angling now straight for Rom’s midsection. Rom couldn’t seem to move to defend himself. His eyes were on Avra, who was falling to the ground, gashed and bleeding.

Triphon, already past him, buried his blade in the man’s neck. The guard grunted once and dropped to the ground.

But Rom barely registered any of it. Avra was lying on her back in the sand. The chamber of her chest had been split open, exposed for him to see that her heart was no longer beating.

His breathing stalled. His world tilted. For a long moment there was only silence as he waited for Avra to push herself up from the ground.

But she did not move.

A fly buzzed by his left ear. Triphon stood still, straddling the body of the fourth guard, breathing hard.

And Avra…

Avra lay on the ground.

Rom staggered forward a step and stopped. “Avra?” Her name came out as croak.

He couldn’t breathe. His legs and arms began to shake. Something was wrong with the image before him. She could not be dead. She would turn her head at any moment and look into his eyes. She would jump up, rush him, and throw her arms around him, delivered from this vision of horror.

Avra lay still, wide eyes staring at the sky as the ground darkened with her blood.

R
om fell
to one knee, twisted to his side, and vomited. His retch echoed through the canyon, but it sounded distant, an arcane chuckle from the darkest pit in Hades, mocking his pathetic love for the woman who’d found life because of him.

He twisted and threw himself forward, scrambling on his knees, reaching for her body with bloodied, trembling hands.

“Avra!” His cry was no more than a terrible moan that hitched and became a sob. Her eyes did not move. Her chest did not rise. A fly lit on the corner of her mouth.

“Avra…”

Her breastbone had been split by the sword, baring her lungs to the sun. He knew already that she was dead, but his mind couldn’t grasp the finality of that death.

Triphon dropped to his knees in the sand beside her. “She’s dead,” he said.

She can’t be dead!
Anyone could die. Anyone but Avra. He could die. Triphon could die. Feyn, even the boy, but not Avra.

But not Avra!

“They killed her,” Triphon said.

“No!” Rom felt the world spin, leaving only darkness and the stench of death where there had been sun and life. He grabbed her shirt and tugged it with both hands. “Wake up!”

“Rom…”

He screamed it now, as if his voice alone might resurrect her from the dead. “Wake up!” He slapped her face. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

Avra only stared at a different patch of sky now.

“Rom, please…”

“No!” He could feel rage erupting up from his belly, like a boiling sea of black tar, and he was powerless to stop it.

Triphon’s hand was reaching out for him. “It will be—”

“They killed her!” he screamed, now at Triphon, as if he were the one who’d swung the sword.

He sobbed once, a half grunt of vitriolic protest. One thought only crowded his mind now. And before he could apply any reason to it, he was on his feet, lurching forward, grasping the hilt of his fallen sword.

Rom whirled from the rock wall and rushed the fallen warrior who had ended Avra’s life. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he drew the sword back, still three paces from the dormant corpse, and, closing, swung down with trembling rage.

The blade struck the guard’s back and cut deep into his spine.

And then he was swinging the sword like a bat, hacking into the dead body. He wasn’t really aware of the shredded flesh at his feet; he only reacted with the singular and vicious intent of avenging Avra’s death.

All the while grunting and roaring through uncontrolled sobs.

“Rom!” Triphon’s voice cut through his carnage. A hand grabbed his shoulder. “Rom…”

Without thinking, Rom swung his sword to fend off the objection. His blade hissed through the air, missing Triphon by only an inch as the man leaped back.

His friend stared at him, stunned. “What are you doing?”

“Why did you let her die?” Rom cried. He could hardly hear himself. “You swore to keep her safe!”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Rom. Please—”

“She’s dead!” Spittle and snot sprayed the air with his outburst. “She’s dead!”

Triphon’s face was set and red. He barged forward, grabbed the blade from Rom’s hand, and thrust it at the hacked-up body. “
He
is your enemy, Rom. Saric killed Avra!”

But Rom no longer cared who had killed Avra. Only that she was dead, and dead under Triphon’s watch.

He threw himself at the man, who jumped out of the way. Rom instinctively spun back, blinded by rage. But before he could rush him again, Triphon leaped forward and swung the blade at the fallen corpse’s bloody neck, severing his head from his body in one slashing blow.

“
He
is your enemy!” Triphon cried, and he swung again, this time taking off the man’s right arm. Without a moment’s pause, he leaped over to one of the other fallen corpses and buried his sword into his prone body, shrieking.

He stood back, panting. A soft sobbing sound reached into Rom’s heavy world. But Rom’s eyes were back on Avra’s body. He’d felt the terrible curse of death once already, when he’d wept over his mother’s body only hours after being awakened by the blood.

He wavered, feeling that same hammer now, crushing his nerves with even greater brutality than before. This was the great terror eradicated by Order. Nothing could compare to this mockery of love. If there was peace in death, it left only horrifying pain behind.

“Jonathan!” Triphon whispered.

Rom stepped over to Avra’s body, sobbing, only vaguely aware that Triphon was running toward a rock. The boy was there, curled up in a ball, crying.

But Jonathan was alive. Avra lay dead at Rom’s feet. He sank to his knees by her body and set his hand on her leg.

Dear Avra! Oh Maker, Avra, I’m so sorry.

Triphon was down on one knee beside the boy, who was weeping.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jonathan said.

But it hardly mattered now. Avra was dead.

“It’s all my fault,” the boy was saying. A bird cawed above them. “They killed my mother, didn’t they? It’s all my fault.”

“We don’t know that.”

“But Rom does.”

A pang of sorrow for the boy joined Rom’s own, but then it was gone. He couldn’t think straight much less feel straight. His mind was being shut down by this ruthless sorrow. It was all wrong.

“Rom?”

Triphon was calling to him, wanting to know if he knew the fate of the boy’s mother.

“She’s dead,” he said.

The boy hesitated a moment, then pushed himself up, turned his back, and limped away from them. His gentle sobs drifted up the canyon.

It was all terribly, terribly wrong, Rom managed to think.

Then he slumped to his side beside Avra, wept into the sand, and lost himself to the pain.

“We will bury her here,” Rom said, stopping his horse at the top of the hill. The sun was well past its zenith, but in Rom’s mind time had ceased to exist. He’d wept over her body, arms thrown around her, head resting on her belly.

At some point he had risen, stiff-legged and numb, loaded her body on her horse, and led Triphon and the boy from the canyon without a word.

He would not bury her in that chasm of death. Not among those bloody corpses in the sand.

He dismounted. Triphon pulled up behind him. Jonathan sat on his own horse off a way, on the next rise. The boy blamed himself, and in some ways so did Rom. Avra had given herself for the boy as much as for him.

It took them twenty minutes to dig a shallow grave using their swords, Rom weeping all the while. They were in Hades.

They lay Avra’s body next to the grave and Rom sank to his knees.

“We have to leave,” Triphon said. He held out a knife.

“What’s this?”

“The boy said something to me in the barn. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. He told me that he thought we should protect her heart.”

“Protect her heart?” Rom cried. “Protect her heart? She’s dead!”

Triphon swallowed and nodded. “She’s the first of the living to die. Keep her heart.”

Rom stared at him through a prism of tears. “You…expect me to
cut her heart out
? Have you lost your mind?”

Triphon flipped the blade on end and thrust the handle toward Rom. “Take it, Rom. Don’t leave her heart behind.”

The knife was as long as his forearm. Straight, simple.

“Just c—” He could barely say it.

“Cut it out.”

He stared at her chest, horrified. How could such an innocent boy make such a grisly suggestion? But no—he had said only to protect it. It was Triphon who wanted to take the heart.

His hands trembled.

And yet…there was mad logic to it. However disturbing, wouldn’t it honor Avra to take her heart and treasure it always?

Rom cried out, sank the blade into the open wound, cut the organ free, and lifted it from her body. It was cold; thickening blood ran from his fingers.

He wrapped her heart in a white cloth and set it in a glass food jar the boy’s mother had packed in one of the saddlebags.

“Avra’s heart,” Triphon said quietly. “We will always remember.”

But to Rom the pronouncement sounded profane. She was his to remember, not theirs.

When they’d covered Avra’s body with dirt, Rom took a large stone and rolled it to the head of the grave. He etched with his knife on the rock:

It was all he could manage.

Triphon led them north toward the ruins. The boy rode behind and to the left, slumped in his saddle, silent. Crushed.

Rom followed them, carrying Avra’s heart in his saddlebag. His own heart was dying.

Perhaps it was already dead.

Triphon rode in silence, mind gone to the turn of events that had so drastically reset the playing field.

Avra…dead.

Rom…near dead, riding like a ghost fifty paces behind him. A darkness had swallowed his friend—not just sorrow, but true rage that threatened to compromise him.

He could almost understand the sorrow; the fact that Neah had abandoned them in the night still followed him like a black cloud. But if they had a leader, it was Rom. He was the one who’d driven them through every turn to this point. And with Avra gone, leaving only himself as a balance in the mix, they were as good as lost.

Did this leave
him
to take charge?

Charge of what? Saving the boy, yes, but Rom had been convinced that the boy must be brought to power. How were they supposed to accomplish such an impossible task now? Never mind that—how had they
ever
expected to bring him to power?

One thing was now certain, even if Rom was lost to them: The boy was no ordinary child. He’d known that Avra would die, hadn’t he? Perhaps not how or when, but Triphon was sure that he’d intuitively known it, perhaps from those dreams of his. He’d all but said so in his mother’s barn.

“One day,” Jonathan had whispered, “everyone will remember her.”

He looked back and saw that Jonathan was staring at him as if trying to determine whether he could be trusted. Maker knew Rom had ignored the boy in the wake of Avra’s death, not that Triphon blamed him. Neah had cursed the pain the blood had brought them. Maybe she was on to something. The emotions of Chaos had been forbidden for good reason.

The boy nudged his horse and slowly pulled abreast. He looked so fragile on the massive beast. It was strange to think that this simple boy carried any hope, a vessel for the blood that might awaken a dead world. Tears had dried on his dusty face, leaving small trails down his cheeks. His eyes were wide—the poor boy was frightened. And no wonder.

“I’m sorry,” Triphon said softly. “No boy should have to live through this.”

Fresh tears gathered in the child’s eyes.

“Don’t be bothered by Rom, Jonathan. He loved Avra. He’ll come around.”

“We need a keeper,” Jonathan said.

“A keeper?” Triphon blinked. “Your mother said to find the nomads, right?”

“But we need a keeper.” Jonathan looked at him. “Do you know where the keepers are?”

Triphon scratched the back of his neck. “As far as I know there’s only one keeper left alive. He’s in the dungeons at the Citadel.”

“Then I think you should get him.”

“Get him? He’s in the Citadel, I said.”

“A keeper will know what to do.”

It seemed to be like this with the boy: He knew some things but not most. At least he seemed to be aware of what he didn’t know. So if he said they needed a keeper, maybe he was right about that.

Triphon looked ahead at the winding canyon.
Listen to me, I’m deferring to a nine-year-old boy.

“All right,” he said. “But just how are we supposed to get to the keeper?”

“Ask Rom. He’ll know, won’t he?”

Triphon glanced back at his friend, slumped in his saddle. They hadn’t talked about what had transpired at the Citadel, but Rom had sneaked in twice now.

Triphon could get them in easily enough. Between the two of them he was sure they could find a way into the dungeons. But breaking the keeper out would be a different matter. They would need inside help.

“We’re running out of time, and that’s a long way back.”

Once again it struck Triphon that this boy was placing his full trust in them. If the vellum was true and Jonathan was the boy it hoped for, he and Rom were now his only hope.

Unless they could get to the keeper.

“I’m sworn to protect you, Jonathan. I promised Rom I wouldn’t leave you. You’re sure we need a keeper?”

The boy nodded, fixated on this one task. “He’ll know what to do.”