The Firebird's Vengeance (56 page)

There was no cover beyond that jumble of rocks. No way she had not been seen, nowhere to slip away and take up position. This was Kalami’s home. If he had brought allies, all efforts were futile now, but she had to try.

Mae Shan angled for the tree line. Allies or no, perhaps she could lose them in the tangle of the forest, watch and see where Bridget and Sakra would be taken to, if they weren’t killed outright …

“Mae Shan!” A child’s scream rose high over the ocean’s roar, like the call of a hunting bird. It jerked Mae Shan’s head around before she could stop herself.

On the boulder, beside Anna, stood a man, and the man held a knife at the child’s throat. Mae Shan skidded to a stop, spraying black and gold sand up around her.

“Mae Shan!” called the man. “No farther!”

There was the trap. She should have seen it as soon as Anna appeared. Their boat had been spotted as it came to land. It had been too late before they even set foot on shore.

Mae Shan gripped the shaft of her spear with both hands and raised it high over her head. She would not drop it unless ordered to do so. Even a trapped animal might find a chance to bite.

“Very good. Now, come here. I would speak with you!”

Keeping her spear held high, Mae Shan slogged through the loose black and gold sand. Patches of black stone stood out here and there. Scoured clean by wind they looked like dark pools of oil, or bottomless holes waiting for someone to make an unlucky step.

Already done
, she thought toward her own fancy.

She was close enough now to start taking in details.
Waste not one breath when you are looking for your opening
, her trainer had said.
One breath may be all you have
.

A flat black rock, speckled with lichen, thrust out of the sand, making a kind of natural platform. Ocean or mountain had tumbled clusters of man-sized grey boulders around it in a complex and disorderly jumble that left only one corner of the platform rock clear for easy climbing. A man, who was tall and wiry, stood with his back to the jumbled stones and his face toward the opening. Anna stood in front of him, as still as a statue, her face blank, but her eyes filled with fear. He had one hand on her shoulder. To the left side of her throat he held the point of an obsidian knife.

Mae Shan had seen one of these once, in the home of one of the imperial doctors who favored it for surgeries. He said there was no steel so sharp.

Mae Shan looked hard at the man. He seemed to have lived soft. His arms and long, brown face were without scars, or the whipcord lines of muscles. His clothing was simple. He wore no armor or protective gear. There was no sign of any weapon save that black and glistening knife beneath Anna’s chin. His hands were nearly doll-like in their smoothness, yet he held the knife with confidence. He kept his eyes steadily on Mae Shan’s progress. If he had confederates, he was sure of them, because he cast no glance in any other direction looking for signs of readiness or arrival.

He remained silent until Mae Shan drew abreast of Bridget and Sakra.

“Excellent,” he said. “You can stop there.”

“Kalami,” spat Bridget.

Mae Shan started, but stilled herself quickly, concentrating on her watching and on alternately tightening and loosening her grip on her spear so that her hands would not grow numb. So this was Valin Kalami. She did not ask how he found this body. He was a sorcerer and a barbarian. It was their way to perform such blasphemies. She was only glad he was no longer inside Anna. Now she would have a chance to kill him without harming her charge.

Kalami was smiling at Bridget. Smiling, he should have been a handsome man, in his way, except for the cruelty in his eyes.

“Yes, my dear. So good of you to come and finally meet your daughter.”

Anna also looked to Bridget, bewildered. She had thought her mother dead and her father a kind savior. What did she think now?

“Anna, has he hurt you?” asked Mae Shan.

Anna began to shake her head, but felt the knife. “I’m sorry, Mae Shan,” she said softly.

“It is of no matter, mistress.”
Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. Release. Keep your hands ready. Keep your eyes on him. Don’t let him see the way you stand. Don’t let him know your readiness
.

“Let her go,” said Bridget. “I will do anything you ask, just let Mae Shan take her and go.” She swallowed. “I beg you.”

“Yes.” Kalami’s smile grew broader and sharper. “You do, and you will. But our child should be with the parent who did not give her away as an infant, don’t you think?”

Which was too much for the woman. “You stole her!” she cried as if her heart were breaking afresh. “You stole her in the middle of the night and you made me think she was dead!”

“What else was I to do?” Kalami shrugged. “You were not going to let me take her, were you?”

Which story is it? Mae Shan watched confusion growing in Anna’s eyes. You should stick to one lie, Valin Kalami. What is the matter with you?

Apparently Sakra noticed as well. “You were a better liar when you were alive, Kalami. The Vixen would be disappointed you learned nothing in her company.”

“Quiet!” Kalami’s whole body stiffened with fear and for one moment his whole attention was on the sorcerer.

Mae Shan swung her spear into her right hand and cast it out, straight for Kalami’s exposed chest and watched with elation as it flew straight and true.

The spear struck the sorcerer with a high ringing noise as if it had just struck a bell made of glass and fell clattering to the rock, rolled away, and thudded onto the sand.

Inside herself, Mae Shan howled to shake the Heavens. Anna went paper-white. Kalami did not even stagger. He just turned his head to look down at the weapon with an oddly inhuman fluidity.

“Pick up your toy,” he said to Mae Shan, his voice brimming with satisfaction. “And do not trouble me with it again.”

Slowly, carefully, so the sorcerer could see each movement, Mae Shan walked forward to the base of the rock. It came up to her shoulders, too high for her to make any sort of leap. Any such attempt would be too dangerous for Anna, who did not seem to have blinked this whole time. Mae Shan held up her right hand as she retrieved the spear with her left, and raised it over her head as she had before, and slowly backed away to stand beside the others.

“I understand you had to try,” said Kalami magnanimously. “And I am glad we have gotten that out of the way. As for you” — he looked toward Sakra, but this time Mae Shan could see he kept her in his peripheral vision — “I caution you, Southerner, I might decide you are not needed after all. There are plenty of bodies to spare.” His hand clamped down tighter on Anna’s shoulder and the child winced in pain.

Bridget bit her lip. Her hands twitched. It seemed to Mae Shan that the air grew a little colder.

“We must climb the mountain now,” Kalami went on, visibly forcing himself to relax once more. “You will walk in front of me. Mae Shan, you will go first, as you are. The other two will follow you, with their hands folded behind their backs. You will all remember that I have this knife at Anna’s throat, and her only purpose here is to prevent attack. Should attack come, she will no longer be of use to me.”

“I swear, Kalami,” said Bridget hoarsely. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Whatever you want, just …”

“No, no, my dear Bridget. Whatever I want, and then.” He smiled. “Go. You will see the path. Do not one of you look back.”

Mae Shan turned to face the mountain. She did see the path, thin and snaking up the hills that blended together to become the mountain. It was far more green than brown, apparently a lightly traveled route. Still working her hands to keep them limber, Mae Shan marched toward it, keeping her shoulders and arms relaxed and loose, remembering to breathe. There would be some chance. There would be some way. She traveled with sorcerers. She still had the spear. There would be some way.

To believe otherwise was to despair, and she had not come so far, she had not witnessed so much to give way now.

She did not hear Sakra and Bridget fall into step behind her. The sound of the ocean was too loud to hear footfalls on sand, but neither did she look back to see they were there. The path of the dead from Hell this might be, but she would not make the mistake the poems spoke of and look back to see where she had been and thus lose her promised freedom. Kalami would not kill Anna on this path. He needed her yet to control her mother, and Mae Shan, and through them Sakra. What chance she would have lay ahead of her.

The path up the mountain was steep and winding. The trees were stunted, but they grew together in tight clumps, leaving room for little between them but bracken, or a patch of grey or black stone. The cool of the ocean breeze soon fell behind them. Mae Shan began to perspire freely, and her lungs strained to keep her supplied with air. Now she could hear the others moving behind her, the rustle of cloth, the crackle of sticks and last year’s leaves, the hiss of labored breath. Anna’s whisper, then Kalami’s. She almost forgot the orders not to look back, but caught herself in time.

Gradually, the trees grew taller and straighter, cutting off the sunlight. Clouds of tiny, black insects swarmed around Mae Shan’s face, settling on her neck and behind her ears to drink their fill. She did not let go of her spear. She did not look back or shake her head to try to clear them. She thought she would go mad with itching, but she did not want Kalami to become tense and wary again. She wanted him to think they were cowed.

The path steepened. Despite her efforts, the feeling in Mae Shan’s hands began to drain away, replaced by an aching in her elbows and shoulders. Her feet felt leaden and the cloth of her shoes was damp with sweat.

“No, Anna,” said Kalami suddenly. “Not there. We have a way to go yet.”

So they kept climbing.

The path wandered through the trees and the thickets that sprang up wherever there was a patch of sunlight. That sunlight was steeply slanted now, and the forest was dimming toward twilight. Hunger cramped Mae Shan’s belly and thirst made her throat itch as badly as her face and neck did from drying sweat and insect bites. A dozen times she thought she saw a place where she might dive out of sight, and turn, spear at the ready. But who would she kill like that? He had already shown her he had no reason to fear her weapon. She could turn, throw the spear to distract attention, snatch Anna and run away, vanish into the forest and wait for darkness, but could she do any of that before the black knife flickered?

Patience. Patience. It is still ahead of you. Keep walking. You will meet your chance
.

Eventually, the trees began to thin and shrink again. Mae Shan emerged, blinking, into the deep golden light of evening. The forest spread out behind and below her now. Ahead, the ground rose steeply enough to become jagged walls of grey veined with black. Here and there she saw the white forms of mountain goats, looking calmly down at the humans, and knowing themselves to be perfectly safe. There was no climbing these cliffs.

“To your right, Mae Shan,” called out Kalami. “Go carefully. These screes are treacherous.”

Her arms ached as they never had. Her legs were weakening as well, and still, Mae Shan turned as she was bidden, putting the cliffs on her left side and the open, stony slope on her right. She let her eyes dart quickly to the side as she did, and managed to glimpse Kalami, who was — oh, thank Heaven he had that much compassion — carrying Anna now. The exhausted child lay limp against his chest. Her color did not look healthy.

The knife still glittered in his hand.

Sakra and Bridget marched grimly between Mae Shan and Kalami, with Bridget closest to her child. Their shoulders were slumped and they stumbled against the ridges that centuries of wind had carved in the stone. Her own balance was none too certain, and she wobbled and skidded like a clown on stepping stones in a bad comic play. The light was dimming rapidly. Soon she would not be able to see at all.

Soon I will break my neck, and at least I will be able to wait for Kalami in the Land of Death and Spirit
.

Forgive me, Anna
.

“Look sharp, Mae Shan,” called out Kalami. “Watch for the marking stone of obsidian. Turn toward the cliffs when you see it, and walk straight ahead.”

Her eyes were bleary, her head ached, and the light was only getting worse, but Mae Shan gritted her teeth and tried to obey. Stones clattered underfoot and behind her. Overhead, a goat let loose a tiny bit of scree, and a pebble bounced down in front of her, startling her and almost robbing her of what little balance she had left. The wind blew cold against her exposed and bloodless hands. She stumbled, and stumbled again.

Then she saw something glint in the last rays of day. A finger of black and glassy stone thrust itself out of a rock fall. As she had been ordered, Mae Shan turned to face the cliff and trudged forward, wondering sardonically to herself if Kalami would be happy once she had broken her nose against the solid wall of stone.

Then, in the fading light, she made out a narrow crack hidden in a cleft in the cliff face. There seemed to be a grey twilight shining through, and she realized this was a passageway, through to … somewhere.

“That’s far enough, Mae Shan. Stand aside.”

Mae Shan did. She fell back with Bridget and with Sakra. They were as disheveled, as exhausted and filthy as she. They let Kalami pass them, able to do nothing more than glare at him. He cradled Anna against his chest and held the knife pressed against her back. He couldn’t cut her throat quickly from this position, but if such knives were as sharp as she’d heard, he could sever her spine and leave her to die slowly.

“There, there, Anna,” he said in a mocking parody of father’s love as he passed Bridget. “We’re almost done.” He kissed the half-sleeping child on top of her forehead. “And you will all please remember, I know what is on the other side of this, and you do not. I still hold her life as I hold her body. If you do not all come through before a man may count to one hundred, she will die within moments and your only consolation will be that it will be quick. Mae Shan, you will come first.”