The Outworlder (33 page)

“You’ll need to be closer to the temple, I
think,” said Jared. He studied the temple for a moment and then
indicated a small escarpment of rock jutting out from the side of
the temple wall. “There,” he said. “Get behind that bit of
rock.”

“What about you, then?” Brytnoth said as they
reluctantly got to their feet on trembling legs.

“I’m going to find Sahara.”

As he and Rafe slipped along the cliff edge
toward the temple, Jared glanced back to see Brytnoth’s tawny head
poking up over the top of the cairn he had taken as his cover.
Another moment brought them to the edge of the temple, and Jared
deposited Rafe behind the rough wall of the temple.

He took a breath and crept forward alone,
sword out and at the ready. No sound came from within the temple.
He flattened himself against the wall and peered around the
corner.

The inner sanctum was empty and full of
sinister shadows. Four torches, two on either side, provided scanty
illumination to the space. The whole interior was pillared, and
between the columns horrific murals of sacrifice and death covered
the walls. Dark and bloody forms crowded one upon another in a
macabre dance, and weaving in and out of the haphazard mass crept
the sinewy form of the dragon.

A long, low bench hugged the far wall,
directly in Jared’s line of sight. And there, huddled in the
shadows near the middle of the bench, was Sahara. The tatters of
her clothes seemed to be held together only by the crusted blood
that caked her arms and shoulders. Heavy manacles held her ankles,
wrists, and circled her throat. Suddenly, she lifted her face, and
Jared felt his blood pounding in his ears.

She didn’t see him, but swung her gaze toward
the back of the room. She seemed to be listening for something. He
dared not risk slipping out of cover to see what might be lurking
in the back of the room, but he suddenly realized that there was
another way to find out what she saw.

He flattened himself once more against the
wall and closed his eyes.

Sahara
, he called, praying with his
whole soul that she would hear him.
Sahara.

He waited for what seemed an eternity, and
then her voice said within his mind,
I’m here.

Thank God! Sahara, are you all right?

Another awful silence.
They’re getting to
me at last
, came the voice. A broken, almost spiritless voice.
I can’t hold out much longer.

You don’t have to hold out any longer
,
he said, almost frantic to reassure her.
We’re here. We found
you, thanks to your song earlier. I can see you, but I don’t want
you to look this way. Not yet.

But I want to see you! Are you really here?
Have you really—

There’s no time
, he interrupted.
I
need you to look around the room and tell me what you see. I have
to find a place to hide until the ceremony.

There was another long silence, and he waited
impatiently for her to examine her surroundings. When her voice
came again, it was stronger.

The room is empty now
, she said.
I
thought I heard someone a moment ago, but there’s no one there.
Where are you?

Jared moved his head and shoulders into her
view as he said,
Look straight ahead.

When her eyes met Jared’s, such an expression
of relief and joy flooded her features that it took Jared’s breath
away. Even under the grime, sweat, blood, and tears that covered
her face, she glowed.

You’re here
, she said, and there were
tears in her voice.
You’re really here!

Yes.

Without another word, he slipped around the
corner. The columns marched down the length of the chamber, casting
dark shadows in the flickering torchlight. The sacrificial pillar
protruded like the hilt of a knife out of the smooth floor at the
edge of the cliff.

Jared realized there was only one place to
hide that was close enough to the pillar to make him an effective
threat, and that was exactly where he stood now. The room’s final
pillar partially concealed him, and he could change his position
with ease depending on his enemies’ vantage point.

He swung his gaze back to Sahara, hesitated
for one awful moment, and then took a terrible risk. Crossing the
room in a few swift strides, he crouched in front of her. He laid
the sword beside him on the floor and clasped both of her chilled
and bloodied hands in his own.

“I want you to be strong,” he whispered. “If
you die here tonight, you won’t die alone…and you won’t die first.
The only way they will get to you is through us.”

She didn’t speak, but her hands tightened
convulsively in his own.

“Be strong,” he said. “It’s almost time.”

He smiled at her, and watched her mouth
tremble upward in response. He gently took her face in his hands
and kissed her cracked and parched lips.

“I love you,” he said. “I just want you to
know that.”

Her eyes welled with tears as she threaded
her fingers in his dark hair. She pulled him close again and
pressed her forehead to his. “Go!” she whispered earnestly. “Go
before they come and find you here! Go! They’re coming!”

Jared snatched up his sword and retreated to
his post. Heart hammering, he tested his grip on the sword. There
was nothing more to do but watch and pray.

He didn’t have long to wait.

The door at the far end of the chamber
suddenly grated on its hinges and swung open. Jared held his
breath, hoping that Rafe and Brytnoth were ready at their
posts.

The entire room seemed to shake under a slow,
heavy tread—an executioner’s tread. He didn’t dare look at Sahara,
but he mentally willed every ounce of strength and courage he could
spare in her direction.

“Outworlder,” came the voice and the steps
stopped.

Jared heard the chains jingle as Sahara
moved, but she said nothing.

“Outworlder,” repeated the voice, chilling
Jared’s blood in his veins, “your hour has come.”

After a long silence, he heard Sahara reply,
“So get it over with already.”

The chamber echoed with the executioner’s
sudden laugh. “Where is your knife now, Outworlder? Where are your
companions? Their halls are destroyed. Their princes lie slain in
the river. The mead that was flowing is spent. Now is the time for
weeping. Desolation has come to Albadir, and your death will
baptize it with blood.”

Jared’s heart pounded in his throat.
Had
there been an attack on Albadir? Were the city and its
people destroyed? Or was this all a cruel joke—a bluff meant to
make Sahara despair?

It doesn’t matter
, he thought.
I
can’t do anything for Albadir now except destroy the dragon. Focus.
Focus on the task at hand.

Sahara’s chains suddenly clattered violently
against her stone bench. Jared tightened his hand convulsively
around his sword hilt as he listened to the noise of the chains.
Sahara didn’t scream, and as the noise came again, Jared realized
what was happening.

They’re releasing her
, he thought.
They’re bringing her to the pillar of execution.

The next moment, he saw her, driven forward
by a creature more terrible than he could have imagined. It was
taller by a man by at least two feet, with dragonish scales and
features of a variegated gray. Claws like talons protruded from its
fingers, and they pressed into Sahara’s arms as the monster
positioned her at the pillar and wound the chains around her.

Sahara, her face ghastly white, looked tiny
and fragile beside the rough pillar and her grotesque executioner.
But it suddenly occurred to Jared that she was here—that she was
being fed to the dragon as a blood offering—because they were
afraid of her.

They’re afraid of her.

Somehow, it was a comforting thought.

“Watch,” the beast said to Sahara, rousing
Jared out of his musings. “Watch the horizon, outworlder. Watch for
your destruction.”

“Anything to keep me from looking at you,”
Sahara said.

Her reward for her insolence was a blow
across the face. The cruel scales bruised as they cut into her
cheek, but Jared saw her bite her lips against her cry of pain.

Jared’s hand tightened around the hilt of the
sword. Watching the creature glory in Sahara’s pain, he swallowed
hard.

Do I have to wait for the dragon, or can I
just kill him now?
he thought.

He knew the answer. He had to wait. If
anything went wrong before the ceremony, they could lose their
chance to destroy the dragon He had to stay the course, no matter
what.

“Stand here and contemplate your agonizing
end,” the creature growled in Sahara’s face. “The next time you see
us, we will be ready to devour you, and you will realize that you
have never known pain until we rend you to pieces.”

With another of its blood-curdling laughs,
the creature lumbered out of Jared’s view. A moment later, he heard
the door grate shut at the other end of the chamber.

Jared took a breath and gazed out across the
rocky landscape. The western sky was blazing red, tingeing the
ragged edge of the clouds like blood on a broken knife blade. To
the east, through a gap in the clouds, he saw the moon. It was
full, huge and bloody, drinking in the color of the sunset like a
sponge.

It seemed that the sun set under his very
gaze, more rapidly than he would have imagined possible. He looked
around his pillar at Sahara and glimpsed her face turned toward
him, streaming with tears.

He wanted to speak, but a sudden sound froze
his lips and the blood in his veins.

Four voices began to speak from somewhere
within the temple, their voices sounding in unison but in total
discord. “Sahara Acwellan, we sentence you to death in atonement
for the blood you have spilled here and on your own homeworld. You
will die in the jaws of the Dragon. The hour has come.”

As soon as the voices ceased, a mighty clang
echoed and re-echoed through the temple and the cliffs around
them.

The gong.

He knew what came next.

And looking at Sahara’s white, grime-streaked
face, he knew that she had guessed as well.

Twice more the gong called across the
wasteland, and then the air was still once more. Peering around his
pillar, Jared saw that the room was empty. He looked back toward
the western horizon. The dark clouds that cloaked the mountain
peaks were roiling as if they were being agitated by some monstrous
dervish. And then the sound reached his ears—a gritty roaring, like
that of the sandstorms that plagued the deserts below.

Something was there.

He turned back to Sahara, hoping that perhaps
she might not see what was unfolding in front of her. But she saw.
She knew.

“I’m not afraid to die,” she said aloud as
soon as she caught his eye. “If you have to let me—”

“I told you,” he said. “They have to come
through us to get to you. Don’t you dare think like that! Their
tyranny ends tonight.”

The night deepened, and Jared’s nerves buzzed
with anticipation. He had no idea how long they would have to wait,
but as the seconds dragged on, he felt his fear growing along with
his impatience.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Jared
hazarded a glance around the pillar. Sahara was twisting her hands
in her chains, and Jared saw that the skin around her wrists was
already rubbed raw. Sensing that he was watching her, she turned
her head toward him.

“Jared….”

Her voice trailed off into a scream that
would have shattered glass.

Jared’s vision was suddenly obscured by a set
of leathery wings and a huge, serpentine body. The horror of it
nearly brought him to his knees. The dragon perched on the edge of
the cliff. Jaws, brimming with silvered teeth that gleamed like
jagged bits of metal, were snapping hungrily in Sahara’s face. She
sagged against her chains, overcome at last by utter terror.

The eyes, flaming like the long vanished sun,
narrowed into slits. Two curls of smoke, like the harbingers of the
desert, wound their way from flared nostrils.

Just as it reared its head to strike,
something seemed to draw its attention. A high whine reached
Jared’s ears, and the next moment he saw a feathered arrow
protruding from the soft skin just under the dragon’s right
foreleg.

Brytnoth’s arrow!

He nearly yelled aloud in triumph.

Another whine. Another arrow struck close to
the first, wedging itself in dragon’s tough hide.

The dragon heaved its hulking mass around to
face the cairn where Brytnoth crouched concealed. Before Jared
could move or cry out, the dragon scorched the place with a torrent
of flames, bombarding it with heat until it shimmered.

Jared clenched his teeth against his fear.
When the dragon reared back on its hind legs to destroy Brytnoth,
it left its vulnerable underside exposed.

With a high and horrible battle scream, Rafe
jumped out from behind his own cover, knelt, took aim, and loosed
his spear. The weapon sailed true, piercing the beast’s flesh just
under the massive rib cage. With a roar of surprise and rage, the
dragon fixed its gaze on Rafe.

Jared held his breath even as the dragon
released its own. Rafe dove back behind the escarpment. Jared
prayed it was in time to keep Rafe from being burned alive, but he
had no more time to worry about his friend.

In the agonizing silence, broken only by
Sahara’s quiet, shaking sobs, the dragon turned back to its
prey.

Jared took a breath. It was all up to him
now. He was all that stood between Sahara and her death-day.

The dragon stood there, poised for the final
strike. And it seemed to Jared that it hesitated, as if wordlessly
vaunting over her, glorying in her terror and its certain
victory.