The Outworlder (23 page)

Emma snatched her hand out of Brytnoth’s.
“What’s the matter with you?” she whispered.

Rafe stirred himself and managed a comforting
smile. “He’s trying to protect you, sweetheart,” he said. “That’s
all.”

Emma tossed her head like a spirited horse.
“Is that what this is? Well, I’m old enough to take care of myself,
thank you very much, outworlder.”

“Do you know how to defend yourself in a
fight?” asked Brytnoth, his voice low. “If three of these men
surprised you in a dark alley on your way home tonight, could you
see yourself safely away?”

Emma sank down on the bench next to Rafe.
“Why are you asking me these questions?” she murmured.

“Because I lost the woman I loved,” he
answered, staring at the table, “to men who respected nothing.”

Emma stared at Brytnoth for a moment, then
impulsively reached out and covered his hand with one of her own.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “So very, very sorry.”

Brytnoth stared at her small hand on his own
and then up into her eyes. Two diamond tears were glimmering on her
lower lashes. “Thank you,” he said.

Emma withdrew her hand and turned to Rafe.
“Will you be here long?” she asked.

“We’ll be here for a good while, I’m sure,”
he said. “Why?”

Emma flushed and twisted her fingers together
in her lap. “I was just hoping that perhaps…perhaps you might see
me home?”

Rafe’s stern face melted into a smile, and he
brushed a few strands of hair out of her face. “Of course I
will.”

“I never imagined you taking up with someone
like her, Rafe,” Jared said as Emma hurried back to the
kitchen.

Rafe jabbed his fork into his meat pie.
“Well, I never imagined you taking up with an outworlder, either,”
he said. He flashed Jared a wicked grin before he stuffed his mouth
with the flaky pastry laden with meat and juices.

Brytnoth glanced at Jared, a smile on his own
face. “What? Is there something between you and Sahara, then?”

“No.”

The answer came like a knife stroke. When
Rafe opened his mouth to counter his friend, Jared shot him such a
murderous look that Rafe raised his brows and filled his mouth with
wine instead of words.

Brytnoth studied Rafe for a moment, then
turned back to Jared. “But Rafe said—”

“Rafe’s an ass and doesn’t know what he’s
talking about,” Jared grumbled, swirling the wine in his
flagon.

Rafe grinned. “Mark you, Brytnoth,” he said,
his tone full of high seriousness, “he called me an ass.”

Brytnoth looked from one to the other and
then burst out laughing. “You two are half crazy.”

“Or something like that,” Jared said. “Now,
are we going to discuss our plans or just banter all night?”

Rafe’s face became suddenly serious. “To
business,” he said. “When will they bring Sahara back to
Silesia?”

Two days from now.

Jared jumped and his fork clattered onto the
stone floor.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Brytnoth,
but his voice seemed to come from far away.

The room swam before Jared’s eyes and was
suddenly replaced by a completely different scene. A squalid hovel
next to the landing platform on K’ilenfir. A mangy three-headed dog
chained to the wall. Rain falling, making soft puddles of oozy
green and gray mud. A window with a single light. Inside, a
ramshackle cot with a dirty blanket. A table with a flask of old
wine and a few hard biscuits. A candle guttering in a tarnished
bowl.

Sahara sat at the table, staring straight at
him with a focused, almost pained expression in her eyes.

Jared.
It was her voice now, in his
head.

Sahara!
he answered, not a little
surprised that he could.
Can you see me?

Yes. And you can see me?

Jared nodded and drank in the sight of her as
a wretchedly dehydrated man drinks water, not realizing the extent
of his thirst until he starts to quench it. He could see a large
bruise on her right cheek, her wrists and ankles weighed down with
chains. She was wearing a simple dress of coarse gray cloth that
seemed too big for her. When she turned her head, he could see mud
caked in her red curls.

What have they done to you?
he
asked.

Sahara smiled wanly then, and Jared felt as
though his heart would burst out of his chest with its
pounding.

Nothing much…yet. But I know their plans. I’m
to be a sacrifice…a blood offering.

We know
. There was so much to say, and
he didn’t know how long he had before the vision ended.
Sahara,
we know. We’re trying to make a plan to rescue you. When are they
bringing you back to Silesia?

In two days.
She shook her head
.
They’ll take me to the old fortress. I’ll be held in the north
tower until the full moon.

But that’s only a week away!

Sahara smiled at him again, but this time
with a little of her old spunk.
Yes, so think fast.

Jared’s vision began to swim and a splitting
pain throbbed in his head.
No, don’t go. Don’t go.
He
reached out a hand to her.
Sahara….

Jared!
Her voice was urgent, and
though he could no longer see her, he heard her for a moment
longer.
Jared, please come for me! Don’t leave me….

With a gasp, Jared came back to himself. He
was sweating all over and his head hurt so badly that he could
barely keep his eyes open.

“Jared,” Rafe gasped. “Are you alright?”

Jared held up a shaking hand and gulped down
the rest of his wine. Breathing raggedly, he struggled to restore
his inner calm. After a minute or two, the pain in his head
lessened and he opened his eyes.

“What happened?” Brytnoth asked. “What just
happened to you?”

Jared laughed weakly. “It’s…a bit hard to
explain. And it’s going to sound insane.”

“Try us,” said Rafe.

“Sahara and I have the ability to communicate
mind-to-mind,” Jared began.

“You said that before,” Rafe said. “But that
power doesn’t really exist, Jared. It’s all a myth!”

“It’s
not
a myth. I just saw her…spoke
with her. She’s in the guard’s quarters just beside the landing pad
on K’ilenfir. They’re bringing her back to Silesia in two days, and
she’ll be kept in the north tower of the old fortress until the
full moon. That’s when they’ll perform the ritual sacrifice.”

Jared took a breath and poured himself more
wine. Rafe and Brytnoth were both staring at him as though he’d
lost his mind.

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Brytnoth at last.
“You said the other night that you’d said something to her and she
heard you…so does this happen all the time?”

“It’s never happened like this,” Jared
answered with a shake of his head. “Never for this long. And I
can’t predict when I’ll hear her thoughts, or she mine.”

Rafe’s mouth twisted in a smile. “That could
make things interesting…”

Jared arched an eyebrow at him, but he
couldn’t help a grin. “Well, this time she could see me—we could
see each other, just as if we were in the same room.” He couldn’t
keep the thrill of excitement out of his voice. “I don’t know if
you can even imagine such a thing.”

“I can imagine it,” said Brytnoth. “But if it
isn’t a myth, it’s certainly rare.”

“That’s what Childir told me.” As soon as the
words were out of his mouth, he froze. Then he swore viciously and
slammed his fist on the table.

“So he knows about that too?” Rafe asked,
lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning against the back of
the booth. “Is there anything he
doesn’t
know?”

“Jared said he was missing a key piece of
information, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was,” Brytnoth
said.

Rafe studied Jared for a moment. “No,” he
murmured. “Things like that are best kept close.”

They ate the rest of their meal in silence.
When at last Jared pushed his plate away and drained the last few
drops of wine from his cup, he noticed that the tavern was nearly
empty. The bartender was wiping down the counter.

“Have we been here that long?” he asked,
looking at his companions.

“It seems so,” Rafe answered. “But here comes
Emma.”

The young barmaid maneuvered her way around
tables and chairs and slipped into the booth next to Rafe.

“It’s nearly closing time,” she said. “The
keeper wants me to collect your plates and your payment. Then I’m
free to leave.”

“We’re sorry to have kept you late,” Brytnoth
said.

“Not at all,” she said with a warm smile. “I
had to close tonight anyway. Now Rafe can see me home.” She kissed
Rafe softly on the cheek, rose, and clapped the plates together
into a heap. With a wink at Brytnoth, she whisked them away to the
kitchen.

“We still haven’t decided what to do about
Sahara,” said Rafe, watching Emma as she ducked into the kitchen.
“And we only have two days before they bring her back here.”

“I’m going back to the archives,” Jared said.
“If we can get some kind of understanding of the ritual itself,
then maybe that will give us a clue.”

“I’ve got to see Emma home, but I can meet
you there afterwards,” Rafe said.

“Come on, Brytnoth,” said Jared, sliding out
of the booth. “You’re with me. Maybe a fresh pair of eyes will
help.”

Back in the library, Jared lit every candle
he could find, flooding the cavernous chamber with a soft,
flickering light. He sent Brytnoth to the shelves to scour the
agricultural manuscripts for the missing scenes in the sequence of
marginal drawings.

“What are you going to do?” Brytnoth asked
over his shoulder, settling himself cross-legged on the floor.

“I need to study these in more detail,” Jared
said, already more than half absorbed in the first
illumination.

It was a curiously worked design, connected
to the other marginalia on the page by gold-leafed scrollwork. The
field was deep blue, and the five dark figures arrayed against it
were barely visible. They were more shadow than light, and they
appeared to be hooded, for no facial features could be
distinguished, no matter how hard Jared strained his eyes.

He finally gave up on the figures and turned
his attention to the rest of the scene. The architectural detail
was high, he noticed. On either side of the robed figures stretched
an arched colonnade, punctuated at regular intervals with torches.
In the center of the right-hand colonnade hung a massive golden
gong, its mallet in an ivory stand.

Jared moved to the second illumination, which
portrayed the same scene from a perspective behind the robed
figures. The colonnade ended abruptly at the edge of what appeared
to be a ledge or cliff of some sort. The illuminator had been at
some pains to convey the threshold between inner court and outer
ledge: marbled floor clashed against bare rock, deep blue ceiling
against the shimmering pinks and silvers of an evening sky.
Stabbing upward into the softness of the sky, in the very center of
the cliff edge, was a pillar, black and terrible.

With growing foreboding, Jared pulled the
third tome towards himself, sliding the second out of the way. It
was as he feared. This third illumination was exactly like the
second, save for the pillar. Small white hands were pinioned behind
the pillar with a cruel chain, the victim facing out over the ledge
and towards the sunset. Masses of gold hair spilled over her
shoulders and whipped around the pillar, and Jared shivered as
though he could feel the wind that buffeted her.

With a heavy sigh, Jared pushed the book away
and rocked back in his chair.

“What do you think?” asked Brytnoth. His
voice sounded alien after such a long silence.

Jared slowly turned to him. “I think we need
the rest of those pictures,” he said. “How’s it coming?”

Brytnoth rose and stretched his stiff back.
“I haven’t found a thing. What if there aren’t any more, Jared?
What if there are only those three?”

Jared rubbed his face, the stubble of his
unshaven beard rough against his hands. Exhaustion washed over him
in waves, and he fought hard against the urge to lay his head down
on the table and let sleep drown him.

“Any luck?” Rafe strode into the library, his
voice echoing in the chamber.

“Is Emma safely home?” Brytnoth asked
him.

“She is.” Rafe perched himself on the table.
“Found anything interesting?’

“I don’t know,” Jared answered,
ill-concealing his irritation.

Rafe cocked an eyebrow at him. “What’s
wrong?”

“I’m afraid Brytnoth might be right. There
might not be any more to the series than these three.”

“Well, what do we know from what we have?”
Rafe asked.

Jared lined up the three books in order and
pointed to each in turn.

“This is some kind of designated chamber, a
sacred place,” Jared began with an all-encompassing wave of his
hand. “There are five of the Dragon-Lords present here, so I
suppose we can assume that’s how many are required for this ritual.
Here the artist shows us where the chamber is. It seems to be high
on a mountain, and it’s open on one side. The pillar, to which the
victim is chained, sits on the edge of a cliff. And it seems that
the ritual takes place near sunset.”

“And that’s all we know? Nothing more
specific than that?” asked Brytnoth.

“That’s why I was hoping for more drawings,”
replied Jared with a wry smile.

“Why is she chained to a pillar?” asked Rafe,
peering at the drawing. “And why is the pillar on the edge of the
cliff?”

“And it would seem that the Dragon-Lords
themselves are merely witnesses or something,” added Brytnoth.
“None of them show up in the third cameo. And the way it’s drawn
seems to indicate that the pillar is right on the edge—there would
be no room for one of them to get in front of the victim and slit
her throat. Or however such things are done.”