Revelation (19 page)

Before I could get one decent answer, some twenty riders, all dressed the same, were mounted and ready. It was difficult to determine their heritage save by their eyes. At least four or five appeared to be Ezzarian. One man was a Thrid, no coal needed to stain his dusky skin. Three of the riders were women.

As the sun soared toward noonday, Blaise stood before the group, facing north along the dirt track that led out of the valley. He swept his arms in a wide circle and brought his hands together in front of his face. In his gesture was a splash of enchantment, but I could not discern its nature nor could I hear any words. The riders waited quietly, their heads bowed as if making an invocation to their gods. With no other movements or gestures, Blaise mounted his black horse, and we were off.

Some twenty others, men and women and even a few children, stood along the track that led out of the valley, waving and wishing the riders well. They were Manganar and Suzaini, a Thrid woman, and even a few Kuvai, most of them young, in their late teens or twenties. Only three were Ezzarian, all of them in middle years, all wearing the same slack-jawed look as Saetha. A prickling of foreboding brushed my skin.

I rode between Blaise and Farrol. I had never been more than an adequate horseman, and though Blaise and his fellows did not ride with the easy art of Aleksander, they were far better than me. Feeling awkward and graceless, I had to work to stay centered and keep from being jolted from the saddle as we galloped down the road. It occurred to me that we were leaving late in the day and going out awfully fast for a long ride. I could not imagine what target Blaise could have in mind that was anywhere near the Kuvai hills. Yet it seemed no more than an hour until I looked up from my concentrated efforts to stay in the saddle and noted that the landscape had changed a great deal. We were in drier country, more like the fertile wheat fields of Manganar. Perhaps Blaise had moved his people farther than I had imagined while I was out of my head from the lashing.

Another short while and we were traversing a flat, wide land of parched grasslands and angular prominences. The terrain was very like the land near the Azhaki border, which opened onto the dune seas of Aleksander’s homeland. But that was impossible. Unless I had fallen asleep in the saddle for more than a day, we had been riding for only two hours. We were coming from the south, and the sun was still high. The shadows of the thornbushes were just beginning to stretch to my right. No geography of my study matched what we had traveled.

Blaise led us into a dry riverbed, a long, narrow valley cut deep into the flatland. “I found a quick passage, but we must wait for nightfall,” he said. “Eat and rest. The baron has left only fifty men to await this caravan.”

I spent most of the afternoon walking up and down the narrow gorge, trying not to think of the demon fingers that had touched my blood, the grotesque words that had knitted my flesh, the cold blue eyes that had looked on my pain and fed on it. Saetha was a healer in her own right. Perhaps it really was her enchantment, not that of her demon companion. Yet the echoes of demon music scraped at my ears, and I could not summon the cleansing words to silence them. Was it distraction? Creeping corruption?

Blaise’s riders lolled in the shade, sleeping or talking quietly, an odd sight in their paint and beads. The Thrid man laughed and took off his shirt, teasing a pale-fleshed Manganar to do the same and offering to paint his friend’s skin to match his own dark coloring. Two slight Ezzarian youths, neither one older than eighteen, sat quietly playing draughts with chips of stone.

Blaise and Farrol sat apart from the others, talking intently and tracing their fingers in the dirt. Farrol was arguing his points vehemently. Hoping to discover what I’d gotten myself into, I perched on a rock where I could watch the two, and I passed the back of my hand before my eyes to trigger my deeper listening.

“. . . good a chance to miss,” said Farrol. “Take Nyabozzi out of the game, and we’ll halt the trade in this region for three years. There’s no single merchant strong enough to take his place.”

“I don’t like it,” said Blaise. “To burn him out . . . there’s no assurance we could get everyone away. A few more raids and he’ll take himself out of the game.”

“You said it yourself. Time is just what we don’t have. You’ve shifted too much—”

“That’s enough!” Blaise jumped up and faced away from the short man. “I’ve done only what I had to do, and I’ll take whatever comes with it. But it’s no excuse to be rash. We need to be in and out quickly. We’ll only have an hour—two at most—before the baron brings the main force. The plan is unchanged.”

“What’s happened to you? We agreed to be more forceful.”

Blaise turned back to his friend, but before he said anything, his eyes met mine across the heads of his resting band. I was well out of range of normal hearing, but I believed he changed what he was going to say. “We need to remind the others that we have a stranger with us. I think it’s best we stay discreet until we know if we can trust him.” Though he had no reason to know I could hear him, I felt he was speaking to me.

“Ezzarian shit. We should kill him.” Farrol was not at all discreet in his opinions.

I did not approach the outlaw leader or any of his companions during that afternoon. I recognized it as a testing time, when silent observation was the correct behavior. There was nothing to be learned until the testing was done.

As the sun settled into a thin smear of silver-gray clouds in the west, the sleepers woke and the quiet conversations and laughter died away. Blades were drawn from their sheaths to be wiped and tested and caressed with soldiers’ invocations. Friends checked each other’s paint, and nervous horses were soothed. The hot afternoon had depleted the waterskins hung from each saddle, and I wondered if those who stood draining them dry had some instinct that they would need no more for their return journey.

My own preparation was not without anxiety. I was not afraid of fighting—a battle with human opponents had little to concern me, and death would come when it would—but I was sorely afraid that I would be forced to betray Aleksander in order to protect my son.
Damnable stubborn people,
I thought.
Demons are altogether easier.
Ezzarians were not born to meddle in the sordid business of the world. I had to find some way to avoid involvement in the raid.

As if summoned by an alarm bell, the troop gathered about a tall rock. A man climbed atop the boulder, the hot breeze stirring his black tunic and pulling at his long dark hair. Though I could see nothing of his features in the growing gloom, save the painted daggers on his cheeks, I recognized the power of his presence.

“Once more we stand ready to test our resolve.” He spoke softly, yet the force of his words drew me from my rock to the fringes of his band. I could not take my eyes from him. “Justice lives in our hands. No man is slave if our hands can free him. No child is hungry if our hands can feed her. No tyrant rules if our hands can bring him down. Our swords will bring light to this dark world.”

“Lukash!”
The whispered word swept through the twenty riders, spoken not as a cheer, but as a prayer.
Lukash
—light.

“You all know your duties. The gate will be open when you arrive. There should be no more than ten of the garrison on the walls, and no change of guard until after the caravan arrives. Be quick, my friends, and be strong.”

Blaise stepped down, and I lost sight of him in the mass of black-clad bodies. It was Farrol who sought me out and told me to stay at his side. “Blaise wants you in on this,” he said as we mounted and led the column of riders from the rift. “Though I’ve known him since we were cradled, it’s beyond me as to why. But be warned. If you blink an eye at the wrong time, I’ll have your heart out.”

“Will you tell me where we’re going?”

“You’ll see soon enough. We’re going to roust a devil.”

With disciplined speed the band raced over the plains, past misshapen rock outcroppings outlined dark against the stars. The air that lifted my bead-woven hair was cool and dry, scented with sere grass and dust. That ride across the plains, dressed in the color of midnight, evoked strange sensations. I felt the boundaries of my physical self dissolving, as if I had melted into the darkness. Did my companions feel it, too? Was that what bound them so closely? All I could see of them was the white paint on their faces. A broad streak of white across the land. The sword of light.

Blaise was not with us. I was sure I would sense his presence. And indeed it was Farrol who commanded the party. He waved one hand, and two riders peeled off in the direction where the last fading remnants of sunset had been consumed by night. Within a quarter of an hour, the angular mountain in front of us took on an ominous shape. Atop the rocky prominence was a massive fortification, a castle of five towers and thick walls that could house a thousand warriors. Two stone towers bearing gates of steel-banded wood protected a steep causeway that wound up the mountainside. I could not fathom twenty men and women being able to disturb one stone of that rock pile.

Nyabbozi. The name was familiar, yet I did not trust my memory of it. Nyabozzi was one of the Twenty Hegeds, the oldest and most powerful Derzhi families. But my memory told me that the stronghold of the ruthless Nyabozzi sat on the western boundary of Azhakstan, where the Emperor’s Road crossed the caravan routes into the lands of the Veshtar and the Hammadi, only a ten days’ journey from Zhagad itself, no less than four weeks journey from Kuvai. Impossible. Yet it made the conversation of Blaise and Farrol settle into some sense. The Nyabozzi held the reins of the trade in slaves. Verdonne’s child . . . what had we done . . . and what were we doing?

The riders slipped from their horses, and I grabbed the sleeve of the short man as I dropped to the ground beside him. “Farrol—”

He shoved his knife into my ribs, just enough to prick my skin through my shirt. “You will stay by me and do exactly as I say, or I’ll give Saetha a bigger challenge than she’s ready for. I’ll take your tongue before I’ll let you warn these Derzhi devils.”

I was not ready to reveal my skills, or I would have planted his paltry knife in his own neck. As it was, I pushed his arm away. As soon as they began their foolish enterprise, I would find a way to stay out of it.

Two riders took the horses away, and the rest of us scuttered toward the gates that barred entry to the sloping causeway. What could they possibly be thinking? Yet impossibility seemed no barrier that night. As we stepped onto the hard-beaten roadway, a body, undeniably dead, toppled from one gate tower to the rocks below it, and soon afterward the steel-clad gates swung slowly open. Quickly and silently we slipped through the towering opening. I followed Farrol into the shelter of the tower stair just beside the causeway, while the rest of the group melted into the jagged rocks alongside the path that led up the mountain to the castle. The gates swung shut again behind us. No sound. No alarm. I saw Blaise leap from the tower stair and land lightly on his feet just ahead of us.

Mystified, wondering, I watched the outlaw run lightly up the path, nodding, checking positions, waving one or the other of his men or women a little farther up the path or a little deeper into the shadows. A brief time of silence, then I heard the call of the zhaideg—the scavenger wolf—from a distance outside the walls, and Blaise himself disappeared into the darkness.

We held silent. Waiting. Soon, on a dry desert wind that blustered about the towers and the rocks, there came a mournful moan that was nothing of nature’s making, and tainting the scent of desert night was an odor of such foul familiarity that my knees grew weak. The moan was everything of desolation—unbearable loss, unfathomable pain. The scent was of unwashed filth and seeping blood and rotting wounds, of sickness and horror and tainted food. Slaves. Hundreds of them. The slow clank of chains grew louder.

Bodies . . . close around me, slimed with sweat or burning with fever . . . no room to move save with the mass of others like a crawling worm . . . no breath of air that was not laden with the stench . . . feet torn and blistered from days of travel . . . eyes bleared with sleepless agony . . . flesh shredded with the lash . . . wrists and ankles raw from the jerking motion of the steel bands linked to hundreds of others.
How many times . . . three . . . four . . . had I been moved in a slave caravan? The last time from Sikkorat to Capharna, thirty-seven days across the scorching desert. I took a heaving breath and commanded my stomach to be still. I drew my sword and crouched beside Farrol, who glared at me through his paint.

A challenge from the gate tower. A laugh and an answering call from beyond the gates.

I coiled my muscles. Ready. I needed no commanding.

The gate swung open, and two Veshtar in striped robes rode through.

Hold . . . hold . . .
I could feel Blaise’s will restraining his soldiers. Accompanied by the harsh cries of the overseers and the crack of the lash, the leading edge of the massive misery that was the slave caravan passed between the towers. As if we had planned it, Blaise and I cried out at the same time. “Now!”

The dark-clad outlaws fell upon the caravan, cutting down the overseers and scattering the guards. A few of the raiders carried axes with which they began to hack at chains and ropes, freeing the slaves before the garrison could come to the aid of the Veshtar. They told the stunned slaves to seek help in the temples of Khessida, a nearby city on the border of Basran, and to scatter quickly, as the baron would soon return with a large force and would be mightily unhappy to discover his valuable shipment dispersed.

I took down two snarling Veshtar guards, who were slashing at Blaise’s riders with long, curved swords, then I got into a skirmish with a bewildered Derzhi, roused from his bed in the guardroom of the lower tower. He woke quickly and gave me a reasonable challenge before I bound him to a post with his gold-linked belt. Two of his fellows came out rubbing their eyes and staring at him in astonishment before noticing the melee about the gates. They were unarmed, and I stepped out of the shadows and urged them forcefully back into their rooms, piling barrels in front of the door so they couldn’t get out again. I called up a wind and snuffed the torches that lined the causeway. Now that the slaves had scattered, there was less likelihood of killing the wrong person.