The Outworlder (31 page)

“Another underground hiding place,” said
Rafe. “Lovely. I was hoping we’d get to stay above ground this
trip.”

“Did you bring a light?” asked Brytnoth.

Jared took a light stick out of his pocket
and cracked it, revealing a set of curving stone steps that ran
away from them into the darkness. They plunged into the tunnel,
ducking large cobwebs and breathing in a stench of damp stone.

“You didn’t read anything about spiders in
those agriculture books you found, did you, Brytnoth?” asked Rafe
as he got a particularly large web right in the face.

“Nothing you’d want to hear about at the
moment,” he answered with a grin.

The spiral tightened the further down they
went, until they barely had room to walk single file between the
stone wall on their right and the central pillar on their left.
Just when they thought the stairs would pinch off completely, they
suddenly rounded the shaft and stepped off into a vast chamber.
Jared flashed the light around the room, but the beam was not
strong enough to penetrate all the way to the far walls.

“Good God,” breathed Brytnoth. “I wonder what
else is down here besides maps!”

“I don’t know, and we haven’t got time to
find out,” Jared said. “Let’s find what we came for and get out of
here. We’ll have plenty of time to explore later.”

“Unless we die fighting the Dragon-Lords,”
said Rafe. “Then we’ll never know.” He shook his head. “What a
shame.”

“Well, if we’re dead, then I guess we won’t
care whether we know or not,” said Jared, a smile taking the edge
off his words. “Let’s go.”

As they made their way around the room, they
passed shelves loaded with manuscripts far more ancient than any
kept in the upper library. Other shelves held trays and baskets
full of gold, jewelry, and loose gemstones. A long, intricately
carved chest stood against one wall, filled, as they supposed, with
weapons. Suits of armor, of an intricate artistry the likes of
which Jared had never seen before, hung above the chest.

“It’s like a treasure house,” Brytnoth said
at last, spying strange scientific instruments gleaming on a set of
long tables. “But whose treasure?”

“I’ve never seen workmanship like this,”
Jared said, turning a gold arm-ring over in his fingers. “This is
from an age long past…perhaps from the time before the
Dragon-Lords. The Golden Age.” He gently replaced the band on its
shelf.

“Is that what we’re looking for?” asked Rafe
suddenly, pointing to an enormous table in the middle of the
room.

Stacks of parchments littered the surface,
some of them so old that Jared feared they would crumble to dust if
they were moved.

“It looks like a map table,” he agreed.
“Let’s see what we can find.”

As the first hour ticked slowly by, Jared
felt his frustration and anxiety swell. They didn’t have time to
waste mucking around in old documents. They needed to be on the
move.

“What exactly are we looking for, anyway?”
asked Brytnoth, voicing Jared’s impatience. “This seems like a
waste of time to me.”

He lifted a large stack of crumbling
parchments and set them down, none to gently, in front of him.
Something slipped from between the pages and fell with a small
tinkling sound on the floor.

“What was that?” asked Rafe, looking up from
the faded
mappa mundi
that he was studying.

Brytnoth was already on his hands and knees
under the table. “I don’t know.”

Jared and Rafe bent down and watched him
scuffle around, swiping the ground with his hand. After a few
moments of breathless silence, his hand knocked against a small
object. The next moment, he had it in his grasp and they were
crowding around him to see what it was.

“It’s like a seal or something,” said Rafe,
taking the object out of Brytnoth’s open palm.

It was indeed like a seal, small but heavy,
with deep groves in the base as if for stamping wax. The dull,
lead-colored metal seemed to absorb light rather than reflect
it.

“It’s ugly,” said Jared. “Compared to what
else is down here…look at it. It’s just…it looks evil.”

“There’s no ornament on the stem,” remarked
Brytnoth. “Nothing to explain whose it is or where it came
from.”

“No, we’ll have to actually use it to find
that out.” Rafe rubbed his finger over the base of the seal, a
furrow creasing his forehead as he did so. “Let’s go,” he said
suddenly.

“Go where? We haven’t found anything yet!”
Jared snapped, running a hand through his hair in frustration.

Rafe’s eyes flashed at him. “Yes, we have.
And if my suspicions are correct, we need look no further. Let’s
go. We can always come back if I’m wrong.”

Without another word, they followed him out
of the deep treasure-chamber and back into the blazing midmorning
sun.

“Meet me at the tavern in a half-hour,” Rafe
said, taking off at a run toward the Great House.

Jared turned on his heel and walked along the
river bank, kicking stones into the clear water.

“I sure hope he’s actually found something
useful,” Brytnoth muttered, staring after Rafe’s retreating form.
“Because there’ll be hell to pay if he hasn’t.”

He turned to follow Jared, who was now
sitting some distance away, skipping rocks across the surface of
the river. Brytnoth dropped into the grass next to him and picked
up a rock of his own.

“I never learned to do that,” he said,
watching Jared spin another stone across the glittering water.

“You’re not missing much,” Jared said. “It’s
an idle habit.”

“We’re not just wasting time, you know.”

Jared examined the stone between his fingers,
feeling its smoothness. “I wish I could be sure of that.”

“Rafe doesn’t just waste time. He knows the
stakes. He must have some reason for stopping the search when he
did.”

“I’m not so sure he does understand the
stakes,” Jared said after a long silence. “I don’t even know if I
understand the stakes.”

“Knowledge in this life is never perfect.
What we do know is that we have less than two days to find Sahara
before she’s executed. Rafe would never jeopardize her life, you
know.”

Jared stared out across the river and made no
answer.

At the appointed time, Jared and Brytnoth
found a corner table in the nearly deserted tavern and sat down to
wait for Rafe. Several minutes slipped away, and then several more.
Jared was fairly grinding his teeth in impatience when Brytnoth,
who was facing the door, breathed a sigh of relief.

“Here he comes,” he said.

As Rafe slid into the bench next to Brytnoth,
Jared favored him with a ferocious scowl. “You’re late.”

Rafe ignored his irritation. “I was right,”
he said in an excited whisper. “I was right!”

Curiosity ate away at Jared’s anger, and he
leaned forward as Rafe spread a small piece of paper on the
table.

In miniature, in wax as red as blood, was a
tiny landscape—mountains, a valley, and a high and desolate
temple.

“Are you kidding me?” Brytnoth murmured,
awe-struck. “Are you kidding me?”

“It’s fantastic,” said Jared. “And exactly
what we needed.”

“But why would they put a map on a seal?”
Brytnoth asked. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Well, it all depends on whom you mean by
they
, doesn’t it?” Rafe paused, but when no one spoke, he
continued, “The Dragon-Lords would never put something like that on
a seal. Why would they? They know where they live. But my suspicion
is that someone discovered the whereabouts of the sacrificial
temple and inscribed it here, and somehow it was smuggled into the
Great City. The map remained secret except to those who knew where
to look. Like the weapons themselves.”

“Well, now that we know where we’re going,
what are we waiting for?” Jared asked, smiling suddenly. “Let’s
finish this.”

*****

“You have two days to live. What say you,
prophetess? Where is your savior now?”

Sahara’s eyes flickered up to rest on the two
guards, who delighted in reminding her of the passing hours and the
dwindling chance of a rescue. She hazily contemplated any number of
possible responses, but she hadn’t the energy to utter a single
word.

A dull and raspy laughter fell on her ears,
but it was as though someone else was hearing it, as though someone
else was sitting there in the cell, cold, near despairing. It
didn’t matter that they were laughing—it rolled off her soul like
water.

And even though it didn’t matter, she
mustered the last of her energy to say, “Go to hell.”

This seemed only to increase their mirth, and
she knew that they knew how close she was to breaking. It
infuriated her, but only for a moment—a brief spark of white hot
rage that burned out almost as soon as it had ignited. As she
dropped her head wearily on her arms, she heard them rustle out of
the room, still laughing.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, where she
was still able to think rationally, she knew with certainty that
Jared would never abandon her, that he would die before he gave up.
But in her conscious thoughts, where the nebulous eddies of dark
terrors swirled, this certainty was but a shadow, a figment of a
dream that was never meant to come true.

I might have destroyed him myself, that
last time
, she thought miserably.
That would just
figure…I’ve destroyed every other good thing in my life somehow or
another.

She forced herself to raise her head, seeking
out the sliver of sky that taunted her through the window. As if in
answer to an unspoken prayer, a sudden gush of sunlight flooded
through a gap in the high clouds, poured through the cruel window,
and drowned her in a pool of warmth and light. She closed her eyes
against the brightness, seeing red as the light illuminated her
translucent lids, and took a deep gulping breath, as if she could
breathe in the sunlight, or drink it in like strong liquor. She
felt strength returning to her spirit.

It’s going to be all right.

Her eyes flew open, and for a moment her
heart caught in her throat. The brightness of the light and the
influx of strength had turned her thoughts unconsciously to higher
powers—and for that one moment, she thought God spoke to her in
that voice. The next moment, the terror faded and recognition
flooded in to take its place.

Jared!

The relief made her laugh inside and out. As
her vision cleared and he came into focus, she saw the surprise on
his face.

Why are you laughing?
he demanded,
frowning a little.

I thought you were God
, she
confessed.

He stared at her for a moment, looking at
once elated and horribly ashamed.
Why would you ever think
that?

She explained briefly what had happened.
So I was afraid for a moment that it was God speaking to
me.

Well…
Jared looked profoundly awkward.
I’m sorry that it’s just me.

She laughed aloud again, a delicious,
rippling, soul-born laugh that reverberated through her grim
cell.

I’m not. I was afraid I’d killed you last
time…I’m sorry.

Jared bowed his head slightly
. I
understand. You don’t need to say you’re sorry.

So I guess you’re still coming, then?

Jared nodded
. Can you tell us anything
about where you are? We have some clues, but I’d really feel better
about all this if we had something more solid.

Her vision wavered. The sunlight was suddenly
swallowed up in roiling clouds, and at the same moment she heard
the bolt drawn in the lock.

Someone’s coming
, she said.
Someone’s…I have to…
Her eyes fixed on his, the only thing
she could still see as the connection was severed
. Pray for
illumination.

He was gone. In his place stood a monstrous
figure, easily twice the size of a single Dragon-Lord and with four
claws like razors on each hand. Sahara felt her renewed courage
quail like a desert flower closing under the chill of the
night-wind.

“It is time,” said the creature in a voice
that seemed to shake mortar from between the stones of the walls.
“The long march to your death-day is almost at an end.”

They had made good progress in the last two
days. They were already high up into the craggy cliffs to the north
and west of the city, safely out of reach of the nightly dust
storms that plagued the desert flatlands. The sun was sinking
beneath a blood-red horizon, leaving the rest of the sky prey to an
ever-deepening darkness punctuated by thousands of stars.

“I guess this is as good a place as any for
the night,” remarked Brytnoth, casting a dubious eye around the
shallow hollow they had discovered.

Jared clambered down from his vantage point
on the western side of their shelter, skidding a bit in the scree
that had collected on the shallow slope of the cliff. Rafe was
wordlessly unpacking their gear.

“Rafe doesn’t think so,” Jared noted,
reaching the level in a small avalanche of pebbles and dust.
“What’s the deal, Rafe? You saw something better somewhere
else?”

“Nope.”

“That’s hardly helpful, is it?”

“Nope.”

Jared sighed and shook his head. Brytnoth was
obviously uneasy that they were in disagreement, so Jared said,
“We’ve got some cover here.” And then, echoing Brytnoth’s earlier
statement, “It’s as good a place as any.”

“Need I remind my stealthy scout buddy that
creepy things that go bump in the night could pounce on us from
either side of this miserable little pit?” asked Rafe, his words
jesting but his tone clearly combative.

Jared surveyed him in mild surprise. “You
needn’t,” he said. “So why are you?”

“Because if you didn’t need reminding, then
we wouldn’t be camping in this hole!”