The Outworlder (27 page)

A sharp
whiz
tickled Jared’s ear, and
before he had time to react, the arrow was lodged in the scout’s
chest.

The scout wavered for a moment, his face
raised toward the clump of bracken where Jared and his friends lay
hidden, and then toppled into the water.

“Quick!” cried Brytnoth, darting past Jared
and slipping and sliding down the bank, bow in hand. “Quick! He may
have valuable information!”

Jared followed him down to the water and they
struck out together across the current with powerful strokes.
Luckily, the body had lodged itself against an outcropping of tree
roots, or it would have been swiftly carried downstream. Brytnoth
reached it first. He hauled the scout out of the water and dumped
him in the rushes. A moment later Jared was beside him, dripping
and breathing hard.

“Dead?” he asked.

Brytnoth grabbed the scout’s head and peered
at him. “Hard to tell, isn’t it, when you can’t see the eyes?”

Jared stared down at the masked and hooded
face, and then at the wound in the chest. “He seems to be
breathing,” he said.

“Tell me where your friends are,” Brytnoth
demanded of the death-mask. “How many scouts lie between us and the
Great City?”

A burbling, wheezing sound came from the
scout, and in a moment Jared realized that he was laughing.

“I asked you a question!” Brytnoth knocked
the scout’s head against the ground. “Answer, lizard scum!”

“No answers,” answered the scout with another
wheezy laugh. And then, with a sudden choking gasp, his head fell
back and the body went limp.

“Dead,” Jared remarked.

Brytnoth cursed under his breath. “I
should’ve aimed for a less vital spot,” he said.

“And run the risk that he would escape? No,
it’s better this way. Even if we are running blind.”

Brytnoth rose, wiping his hands on his wet
pants. “Let’s go.”

Rafe was waiting for them on the opposite
bank. “What’s going on? What happened?”

Jared explained the situation briefly and
Rafe whistled. “That was close,” he said.

“Too close,” Jared agreed. “We should move
on.”

“How far to the Great City?” asked Brytnoth.
He gazed up through the tangled branches at what small piece of the
sky was visible. “It’s hours yet until night, and it seems a
terrible risk to run the river during the day.”

Jared paced slowly, his brows tight and jaw
clenched.
God,
he thought,
I don’t know what to do. I
don’t know what to do.

“Look,” said Rafe, “if we start now, we
should reach the Great City under cover of nightfall.”

“And risk the river during the day?” asked
Jared. “I don’t know…”

“If scouts police the City, then we’ll be
glad of the shadows, I think.”

“But it’s too dangerous!” Brytnoth
protested.

“It’s a risk we have to take, I think,” said
Jared, rubbing his jaw. “Rafe’s right. We’re short on time as it
is, and there’s no sense staying here. Let’s move out. We’ll go
slowly and keep close to the bank, and whoever isn’t driving must
be ready with bolt nocked.”

They weighted down the scout’s body with
stones from the river, rolled it into the water, and returned to
the boat. Jared clambered aboard and started the engine, while
Brytnoth and Rafe returned to their camp and gathered their
things.

A moment later, all three were aboard, Jared
at the helm and Brytnoth and Rafe on either side of the boat,
scanning the banks for any sign of movement.

Though they were jumpy and raised many false
alarms, they met no other actual trouble. Just as the sun began
slipping under the horizon, Rafe navigated the boat into the
shallows on the western bank and shut off the engine.

“Let’s eat and rest and start again when the
sun is down,” he suggested, and Jared consented with a brusque
nod.

They gathered around the sunken table in the
aft of the boat and Brytnoth produced a skin of water, some meat
pies, a wedge of cheese, and a few
edulia
fruits. Without
speaking, they fell to.

Jared felt like he hadn’t eaten in days. He
hadn’t realized the extent of his hunger until he began to eat, and
when the pies had disappeared and the cheese was nearly finished,
he began to fear that they hadn’t brought sufficient
provisions.

“Is this all you have?” he asked Brytnoth.
“Nothing more?”

“I have some for the return journey,”
Brytnoth answered. “But this was all I could take from the kitchen
without arousing suspicion.”

Jared sighed. “Then it’ll have to do,” he
said.

He watched Brytnoth slice two
edulia
fruits and set the pieces on a board, feeling his memory prickle.
He clenched his jaw as the fragrance of the sweet, ripe flesh
scented all the air around them.

“Is something the matter?” Rafe asked,
watching him intently. “The fruit’s good—you can tell by the
smell.”

“It’s…not that,” Jared replied. “It’s
just…it’s nothing.” And to kill any further questions, he snatched
a slice and stuffed it in his mouth.

When no memories assailed him and no visions
of Sahara appeared, he was half relieved and half disappointed. He
thought about the last time he had seen her—her face bloodied and
bruised, but her spirit as fierce and unbroken as ever—and smiled
faintly.

Rafe, still watching him with unwavering
attention, said softly, “I’m sure we’ll be in time.”

Jared glanced up at him, but could find no
words to say in reply.

It was the deep of night when they finally
reached the Great City. Jared inhaled deeply, feeling for the first
time in his life the cool brushings of the night wind without the
violent lashings of sand and frenzied gales. As the boat slipped
down the last few meters of the river, Jared saw wild fields—the
remnants of cultivated farmlands—spread out on either side, fuzzy
with vegetation in the hazy moonlight.

“It’s beautiful,” he murmured, turning his
eyes up to the heavens.

Stars lay scattered over the fabric of the
sky like precious but tiny diamonds, obscured vaguely here and
there by wisps of cloud. Rafe, like Jared, gaped up in awe at the
glory of it, but Brytnoth, after only a brief glance, lowered his
eyes earthward once more.

“When you’ve lived out there for years,” he
muttered, “it doesn’t look so beautiful.”

“What?” Jared asked.

“I said it only looks beautiful from here.
Out there…out in space, I mean, it’s just emptiness filled with
empty worlds. Cold and harsh and deadly.”

Rafe and Jared exchanged glances, but neither
said anything in reply.

Brytnoth directed the boat into the shore
just next to the outer wall of the city. A water gate, massive and
interlaced with metal grillwork, towered over them, but it was fast
shut.

“We’ll have to go around,” Jared said
quietly.

They secured the boat and clambered up the
sloping bank. A flight of stone steps met them, running up to the
top of the water gate. The wall arched away to the west, and there
was no sign of another way inside the city.

“Let’s go,” said Brytnoth, jerking his head
toward the steps.

When they at last stood panting on the summit
of the gate, the entire city lay spread out below them. Crumbling
walls and towers of white stone glowed with ethereal beauty in the
moonlight, and smaller structures, charred and ruined, crouched
beside them. The streets wound in labyrinthine paths through the
remnants of the buildings, here and there blocked by piles of
rubble or gouged by deep pits.

“Where do we go from here?” Brytnoth asked in
a hushed voice.

“Look there.” Jared pointed to a tall
building rising from a hill in the center of the city. “That’s it.
The Temple.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Rafe agreed.

“Follow me,” Jared said.

He set off down the steps leading into the
city, and Rafe and Brytnoth had to jog to keep pace with him.

“What happened, do you think?” asked
Brytnoth, waving a hand at a jumbled mass of charred and broken
stone as they trotted past.

“The Dragon-Lords, of course,” answered Rafe.
“It’s just as we always feared.” He shook his head. “Not a soul
left alive. Gives me the creeps.”

They continued on for another half-hour in
silence. Jared led them in serpentine fashion through the streets,
pausing briefly now and again to check his direction. His eyes were
alert, snapping from side to side as he scanned the shadows for any
sign of movement.

As they turned down yet another avenue, a
massive pile of rubble blocking their path brought them to a sudden
halt. Jared swore under his breath and glanced back the way they
had come.

Brytnoth sat down on a stone, breathing hard,
and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “You drive a hard pace,
Jared!” he said.

“Not hard enough,” Jared snapped, frowning
terribly.

“We’re making good time,” Rafe noted. “We
were bound to hit something like this sooner or later.”

“No. I made a mistake.” Jared swore again.
“We’ve got to go back to the last turning.” He set off down the
street at a jog. “Get up, Brytnoth!” he called over his shoulder.
“Move it!”

Rafe looked at Brytnoth, grinned, and
shrugged. “You heard the general!” he said, following Jared into
the shadows.

Jared found the missed turning and soon had
them heading in the right direction once again. It wasn’t long
before they began to feel the ground rising beneath their feet.
Jared glanced back at his friends, smiling for the first time since
they had entered the city.

Another twenty minutes brought them at last
to the ruins of the Great Temple. Brytnoth fairly collapsed on the
doorstep and groped for his water skin.

“My God!” he gasped. “I haven’t run so much
since I was a kid!”

“You haven’t been with Jared on his desert
runs,” Rafe said. “And I mean ‘runs’ literally. This is nothing.”
He sat down next to Brytnoth, taking the water skin he
proffered.

Jared ignored them both. He was pacing up and
down the front of the edifice like a caged wolf, pausing every now
and again to feel the stones.

What are you doing?

Jared stopped in his tracks as if he had been
punched in the stomach. He waited breathlessly for a moment,
staring fixedly at the air in front of him.

Rafe and Brytnoth rose slowly. They could
tell something had happened to Jared, but they didn’t dare ask him
what it was.

What are you doing? Jared?

Jared’s vision clouded for a moment and then
cleared, and he saw her. Black stone walls surrounded her, and she
was huddled on the floor in a corner. Her cheek was black and blue,
and her upper arm was gashed and crusted with dried blood.

God, Sahara
, he breathed.
What have
they done to you?

My fault. Shouldn’t have challenged
them.
She smiled weakly, and Jared wanted to fall to his knees
in front of her.

My brave girl
, he said.
We’re
coming for you. We’re coming.

Not like that you’re not. What are you
doing?

Looking for the way in!

A smile blossomed across her face, and tears
glimmered in her eyes.
Stone by stone, Jared,
she whispered.
Stone by stone.

And she was gone.

Jared came back to himself with a gasp and
staggered forward. Rafe and Brytnoth caught him under the arms and
helped him to sit down, his back against the temple wall.

“What did she say?” asked Rafe.

Jared turned surprised eyes on his friend,
but answered with a short laugh, “She reminded me to have patience.
It was a lesson I tried tirelessly to teach her, and now it seems
the pupil has become the mistress.” His laugh caught in his throat,
and his eyes misted with anguish. “They’ve hurt her,” he said.
“They’ve beaten her.”

Brytnoth and Rafe exchanged glances and Rafe
gripped Jared’s shoulder. “She’s strong, Jared. She’ll make
it.”

A sudden rush of fury drowned Jared’s grief.
“Then let’s finish it!” he gritted, jumping to his feet. “Help me
find the stone!”

In a moment, the three of them were
positioned at intervals along the stone face of the temple, feeling
each stone in turn. It was painstaking work, and Brytnoth felt his
own patience wearing thin. The dust lay thick on the ancient
bricks, and there were more of them than he could count. It seemed
a cruel turn of fortune’s wheel that all their efforts should meet
such a dead end.

A particularly obnoxious cloud of dust
spurted into Brytnoth’s face as he ran his hand over a slightly
protruding stone. His eyes welled with tears and he leaned against
the wall, preparing for a massive sneeze.

With a reluctant snapping and creaking, the
stones to his left began to shift. Brytnoth forgot about his sneeze
and reeled away from the moving wall in surprise.

“He found it!” Jared cried, rushing
forward.

They stood for a moment in front of the musty
opening, staring into the black. Jared laid a hand on Brytnoth’s
shoulder, squeezing it in gratitude, and then he reached into the
back pocket of his pants and pulled out what looked like a small
stick. He cracked it in his fist and a pale, cold light emanated
from his hand.

“Let’s go.”

Rafe and Brytnoth followed him inside, hands
on sword hilts. The light from Jared’s stick did not penetrate far
into the blackness, but what they could see did not make them
confident that they would meet with success. Their feet stumbled
over shattered stones, and many of the pillars holding up the
massive roof were damaged. A smell of mildew and rotting wood hung
thick in the air, nearly choking them.

“If I remember right,” said Rafe, his voice
sounding loud and unnatural in that moldering place, “the stairs
down into the crypt were in the very center of the temple,
underneath the great altar.”