Tezdal rose. He shook his head as if to clear it of nightmares’ memories and picked up his sword. He looked at the weeping Changed and came staggering toward her.
I said, “No!”
He paid me no attention; only raised the blade and cut off her head. It rolled away over the dry ground in a fountain of blood.
I forced my stomach not to empty itself. I heard Rwyan make a sound that was part scream and part cry of hope.
The first victim of Tezdal’s attack knelt over a glutinous mass of spilled entrails. My Sky Lord comrade beheaded him with the calm efficiency of a slaughterman. Then he drew a patch of silk from his belt and wiped his sword. His face was an expressionless mask. I swallowed bile. I looked to where Rwyan stood. Her eyes were wide with disgust and horror, but there was also something more that I could not properly define. She clutched Urt’s arm, and on his face I saw only amazement. I looked around, suddenly aware that twilight fell. Stars already freckled the eastern sky. The darkening of the clearing amongst the beeches matched the darkening of the ground. The sun hung red in the west; the soil lay red at my feet.
(Is it always so? Must we always find our truths in blood?)
Tezdal sheathed his cleaned sword and said, “Come! I’ve horses waiting past the wall.”
Urt said, “Where can we go?”
Rwyan said, “Toward hope! Do as Tezdal says!”
I said nothing. I knew we were committed now, all of us. Did we remain, we had no hope at all. Allanyn should have her revenge on all of us, unthinking and blind as her ambition. I could only trust that whatever came to us in those oneiric sendings did not offer false hope but told us truth. I felt, still, that certainty that had come to me; but also the surety that now we were horridly dead, save we escaped this place. Our lives balanced on a knife’s edge: I saw no choice save to trust in Tezdal and run. In those moments I did not think at all of the planned invasion or of what Ennas Day should bring to Dharbek, but only of our personal survival.
I said, “Urt, do you stay here, you’re dead! Come with us!”
I took his hand and Rwyan’s and ran after Tezdal.
I felt a tug, and then Urt was with us, leaving go my hand to run faster than I, going by Tezdal.
As he passed the Sky Lord he shouted, “Where past the wall?”
Tezdal yelled an answer I could not hear, and Urt loped ahead. I saw his canine ancestry then, as he ran, loose-limbed and fleet. But I heard him shout back, “After me, then. I know these trails.”
Trails?
I had seen this woodland from the window of our prison. I had walked here: gardens, surely, woven by Changed magic into disregard of season, but no more than that. No more than some expression of sorcerers’ vanity, or the vested power of Trebizar’s crystals. I should have guessed better when we trod that grove of beeches. I should have known magic better.
We did not run through some garden: we fled through a forest. It was not possible, and yet the evidence of my eyes told me it was so. We quit the clearing, and beeches were replaced with majestic oaks. We splashed across the stream I’d heard and followed Urt through the willow curtains beyond. We ran across a meadow that could not have occupied so much space, the grass long-and leaving a clear trail for trackers, I thought; did those who must surely come after us have need for such mundane signs. We ran past stands of ash and hornbeam, and it became quite impossible to judge time, my chronological sense distorted by these weird dimensions.
Dusk fell, the sun offering a last defiance of encroaching night, layering the western sky with red and gold as if some vast furnace threw wide its gates. Urt slowed that we not lose sight of him. I felt my damaged leg begin to throb. I had not run so hard or so far in too long. I looked to Rwyan and saw her panting, her hair flung wild, her skirts gathered up to reveal long slender legs. She smiled at me and without speaking urged me on. I nodded. I thought we could not escape. Even did we reach the wall, even did we find the promised horses-where should we go? Where could we go? The valley ringed us with hilly walls. Even did we reach those mountains undetected-and I could not see how that might be-we should still find all of Ur-Dharbek our prison. Either coast was too far, the Slammerkin was a barrier, the north an unknown country.
North.
Sheer startlement made me stumble as the voice spoke inside my head. It was an emotional compass, a disincarnate magnet that summoned the fibers of my nerves.
North!
It was an imperative: a clarion of promise, urgent. It was as soundless as the voices of my dreams, but so clear, so vivid, I turned my head, thinking to find the speaker running at my side. I pitched full length onto the dirt of the narrow trail. Rwyan cried out and halted, stooping to help me rise. I spat dirt, embarrassed and confused. She said, “You heard it,” and it was not a question: I nodded.
“Then come!”
I grunted. My leg hurt badly now, twisted by the fall. I limped as I matched her pace. She took my hand, and it seemed strength flowed into me. I thought her magic was returned her, but likely it was only her determination. I wondered if I heard a bell ringing, an alarum, or if I heard only the pounding of my blood within my skull.
Then, through a line of yews, I saw the white barrier of the wall. Urt halted there; Tezdal shouted, gesturing, and they both began to search along the wall.
Tezdal had planned well: I marveled at his resourcefulness. A length of thick rope, knotted to afford firm handholds, hung down. He called, beckoning us.
Urt went first, limber to the wall’s top, where he perched, reaching back to help Rwyan up. She joined him there, looked back a moment, and disappeared. Tezdal pushed me to the cord, touching his sword as he stared back, head cocked. I heard the bell clear now. I took the rope and began to climb. I thought my leg should fail me then: it seemed that fire burned my muscles. I moaned and gritted my teeth and willed myself to climb. I felt Urt’s hand on my wrist, strong, hauling me up. He took my belt and manhandled me over, setting my hands on the rope on the farther side.
I dropped the last few feet and cried out as I struck the ground. Urt appeared beside me, then Tezdal, and they each took an arm and raised me to my feet, almost dragging me to where Rwyan stood with the reins of four restive horses in her hands.
Then they must shove me astride, for my leg could no longer support my weight. It was a relief to find the saddle.
North!
It seemed to echo in my mind like the ringing of the bell behind us. I drove heels against my horse’s flanks and brought the bay to a gallop. Rwyan rode to my left, Tezdal on my right. Urt was a neck ahead. We rode as if all the Church’s demons bayed at our heels. I thought no kinder creatures would follow us. I thought of Allanyn’s feral eyes and decided confrontation with demons might well be the lesser torment.
The land was gentle here, like a park, grassy and undulating, with small hursts visible under the light of the moon. That orb was risen full, huge and butter-yellow. It minded me of the eyes of my dreams.
North!
And with that command, a sense of urgency. It was not articulate but entirely emotional. It was a promise I could not define but only accept. I knew, somehow, that we must gain distance from the building by the lake-from the aegis of the Raethe’s strongest power-before the promise might be fulfilled. I hunched in my saddle, willing this stranger horse to run as I knew my old gray could. My hurt leg throbbed; I dismissed the pain. Far worse awaited me-awaited all of us-did we not make whatever rendezvous lay ahead.
I chanced a backward glance and saw the town across the lake lit bright. There was light from the Council building, too; and the moon’s image shimmered on the water. I saw the skyboats glimmer redly, the fires of the Kho’rabi encamped below reflecting off the sanguine flanks of the great craft. I turned away: there was no point in looking back, now less than ever. Did Changed magic not somehow find a way to reach out and strike us down, then surely the Sky Lords must soon enough launch their little boats and quarter the night sky until they found us.
North!
It was our only hope.
The lights of farmhouses shone far off around us. Dogs barked, their keen ears doubtless alert to our desperation. The land rolled and folded. We galloped through streams and crossed, slower, rivers. We ran through fields of autumnal wheat and stands of trees. Our horses threatened to falter. We drove them hard; too hard. I felt slaver blow back against my face, and under my knees I could feel the bay’s ribs heaving. His neck was wet with sweat. I knew he could not hold this pace much longer.
Urt shouted, gesturing back. I could not hear what he said, but there was no need: the sight of it was plain enough.
Low in the sky came a skyboat.
It was one of the little scout craft: a questing hound that darted this way and that, crossing our trail, returning to the scent. It followed us inexorable as doom.
I saw others, but none so close. They roamed the valley, but only this one seemed to find our path. I wondered how long before the Kho’rabi wizards felt sure of their prey and sent word to their fellows, and all those darting specks I saw should converge above us and send their magicks against us, and we be all destroyed.
Or would they only trap us? Come down and ring us with such might of magic or plain steel as must deny us all escape?
I thought that then I must deliver Rwyan my promise.
I thought of that gifted I had slain and saw my love’s head turned loose in my hands the same way. I should do it: I had given her my word, and it were better than to leave her to Allanyn’s revenge; but still I felt my belly recoil at the notion.
We rode on. Hooves drummed on hard-packed dirt. I thought the sound must echo against the sky, an aural beacon to our pursuers.
What need of that, to those who bound the aerial spirits to their cause? They could ask the elementals to sound the air, the vibrations of the ground, the flavor of the wind; all of it to their cause: to find us. I looked back and saw the little skyboat cease its questing. It ran straight now, after us; sure as a scented hound. I thought I saw the archers in the basket beneath. I felt my shoulders tense, anticipating the prick of arrows, the blast of magic.
I wondered how it should feel to die. I looked to Rwyan and saw her smile. She called out words I could not hear over the thunder of the hooves and the rush of the wind. I smiled back. I felt no hope at all and could not understand how she could; not now.