In Thy Name

Part II: Follow the Sword | Chapter 15 - Into darkness

He set it on the counter, then realized the woman was staring at him with a look half suspicious, half flabbergasted. She was going to refuse to sell him the bread, he thought bitterly. A Masunyi with Gladiari money, doubly unwanted. But after a long moment, she slowly pocketed the coin and then picked up the bread and held it out to him, five pieces in each meaty hand. He quickly swung his pack off his back and pulled out an extra piece of wrapping material to wrap up the bread. Then he hurried away before the woman could change her mind, or report him to the city guard.

He walked quickly around the outer perimeter of the market, more alert this time, looking for a seller of olives or fruit or something else that would keep well, and also keeping an eye out for the city guard. However, the farmers who would have been selling fruit had all left the market already, since they came from some distance away. He finally found a vendor of sweetmeats who had nuts and raisins for sale. He charged more than Sareb really thought they were worth, but the money Frostarrow had given him covered it easily.

He had just tucked the nuts and raisins in their "complimentary" cloth bag into his pack, and was wondering whether he would find any other provisions to spend the rest of the money on, when he noticed that it had gotten oddly quiet. It was like the hush a moment before a hawk dived for its prey. The last few shoppers strolling about in the dying light had suddenly disappeared. His desert survival instinct made him crouch down and look around—just as a fist cut through the air where he had been a moment before.

A broad-shouldered man in a butcher's apron loomed over him. The man growled something unintelligible and wound up for another punch.

Sareb dove behind the sweetmeat seller's cart, remembering why he hated Dalaïda so much.

Another thickset figure appeared in front of him, while the sweetmeat seller cringed against the cart.

Sareb scampered sideways and instinctively darted into an alley, as though fleeing into a rock canyon, where he could climb up a ravine and hide in a cave.

Except that city alleys didn't have ravines or caves, but ended suddenly where the walls of two buildings came together, straight and smooth as the sheerest cliff.

Sareb stopped in front of the wall. He could take out his rock picks and climb. Or he could do a levitation spell.

The city-dwellers were still out of sight. They were sauntering along the winding alley, knowing their prey was trapped, calling tauntingly as though calling an animal. Sareb's stomach turned to mush at the thought of the butcher's meaty fists. He drew his knife just in case, but he knew he didn't stand a chance. He was scrawnier, he was outnumbered, and he had no practice fighting.

He was so shaken with fear that he stumbled as he rattled off the levitation spell, but he managed it. He rose into the air, kicking off the wall as though running up it. He had just reached the edge of the roof when the thugs came within sight. He could tell because they began shouting insults and hurling refuse. He didn't dare look down for fear of losing control of the spell. Instead he hooked his foot over the edge of the roof, flung himself upward one last armlength, and then let himself drop to the rooftop. He immediately slid almost to the edge, saved only by one of his armwraps catching in a crack in one of the wooden tiles. A few loose tiles bounced over the edge and hit the dirt below with a muted clatter.

Sareb felt queasy and lightheaded from the spell, sustained for much longer than was usual for levitation spells, and he didn't trust himself to get up just yet on the treacherous roof. Below, the sound of running feet and the shouts of the thugs moved away from him—but he got the impression they were planning to come back, probably with a ladder.

He looked up. Directly above, the sky was a bruised grayish-purple. To the west, the glow of sunset outlined the mountains, but the sun was gone. In the east, night was raising her star-strewn cloak.

There was still enough light that the city guards might spot Djusra, but he had no other choice. He whistled.

He had to whistle three more times, and his throat was starting to hurt along with his head, but she came. She perched on the ridge of the roof and cocked her head at him as though wondering why he lay sprawled there. Painstakingly, he crawled up the roof and then steadied himself against her as he stood. Then, just as he heard the shouts of the city-dwellers returning below, he was on her back and rising into the darkening sky.

***

Selengged paced back and forth in the shadowed little grove. Speaking was not permitted in the castle of the Sibyl, even in the courtyard, but Kuya knew what was on her mind as clearly as if she had spoken. It was getting late. The sky was already a darkening lavender, and gloom gathered among the potted trees and shrubs that turned the courtyard into a shaded labyrinth. They must have waited at least a candlelength. The sun had hovered above the western mountains when they reached the Sibyl's castle. Now it had set, and the city gates were closed, and they were still waiting.

Perhaps they should never have come, Kuya thought, for the dozenth time. Perhaps it was all an elaborate trap. The Sibyl knew they were there, of course, for the Sword told her all. And how easy it would be for her to have them ambushed in a courtyard full of half-wild trees and bushes, a hushed and shadowed jungle. The Doorkeeper alone was said to have dispatched a score of would-be assassins at once.

And yet, if she wanted them dead, wouldn't the Sibyl have struck them down by now?

They felt the presence a moment before they saw her, and Selengged grew still, her hand unconsciously seeking an absent sword. But the Doorkeeper merely glided past, like a solid shadow in her hooded black robe. The soft cloth draped close to a thin, almost frail body, but there was an aura of menace to her that was suffocating. Kuya started to take a step back, but she went by without even glancing at them.

The Doorkeeper was leading a young girl by the hand, a girl in a formless gray tunic, whose eyes stared blindly, but whose expression of wonder said she was perceiving a world she had never known existed. Trailing behind them was a woman in a gauzy saffron wrap. Her face was studiously blank, but her eyes, fixed on the child, were brimming with emotions.

Selengged glanced at Kuya once they had passed, and he saw that her eyes were shining, too, and her pity echoed his own. When the mother returned home, the child would be mourned as though dead. Her family would never see her again, and she would grow up to be one of the many hooded and veiled acolytes of the Sibyl, faceless and nameless agents of the Sword.

Kuya was just trying to think how to suggest, without speaking, that they ought to leave and try to get out of the city before full dark, when the Doorkeeper appeared again, a deeper shadow gliding noiselessly out of the gloom. She stopped a horselength away and raised a thin arm to beckon them toward her; then as soon as they moved, she turned and glided away. The two tassels hanging from the hilt of the sword across her back swayed gently. Selengged followed her with a determined stride, and Kuya brought up the rear, glancing around at the arching trunks and leafy canopies, all gray in the dusk. But they saw no one else as they walked, even when they came to the open area near the visitors' door to the keep.

Selengged exchanged a glance with him as the Doorkeeper drew out a ring of long, narrow iron keys and fitted one of them to the lock. Selengged's face was set and fierce, the face she wore into battle. There was no going back, no other way—they had to know what had happened to her soul, or die trying. Kuya gave her a calm, decisive nod. He was with her to the end, and there was nowhere he would rather be.

The Doorkeeper held out a length of black mulworm-cloth to them, and they each took hold of it. Then she led them through the door into the castle, into darkness.