Shadowed By Wings (33 page)

I looked down at my hands. They glowed with strange blue light. My fingertips throbbed in the peculiar way they had done once before, when, in Convent Tieron, the haunt had possessed me and fire had blasted from my hands. Only now no fire had raged from my hands, but some dark force that had shattered a rock wall.

For the wall that had enclosed us lay strewn about the corridor in ruin, and two Retainers, dressed as acolytes, lay dead amongst the rubble.

The viagand women left me there and withdrew to the chambers, shutting the door against me. Outside the fortress, the monsoon raged on. Teeth chattering, stupefied and exhausted, I stayed sprawled on the stone-strewn floor, my bones turning as cold and stiff as the corpses twisted beneath the debris.

Eventually, as middle-night drew near, the wooden door to the viagand chambers cracked open. Misutvia approached me slowly, looking like a glaucous spindle in the dark. As she picked her way over stone, her pale bitoo snagged on spars of mortar.

She came to a stop several feet from me and waited, silent and wary.

“The rain,” I rasped, nodding at the dark stretch of corridor ahead of me, beyond the rubble. “Puddles.”

A pause, then she understood. She picked her way over the moraine and the dead Retainers and staggered into the corridor beyond. Through the ivy-choked casements notched in the corridor’s walls, water dripped from leaf and trickled along vine, creating a murky pool of water on the ground, as dark as a slick of tar. She folded to her knees and dipped her head to the ground. She sucked her fill, then drenched a corner of her sleeve in the puddle and returned to me.

Holding her sodden sleeve above my mouth, she carefully squeezed the water onto my tongue.

“More,” I gasped.

“I’ll get a crock,” she whispered, and returned from the viagand chambers with an emptied paint pot a short time after. The three new women followed her out. In their haste to skirt me and reach the water, they fell over the rubble a clawful of times.

Misutvia crouched again before me and I drank from the crock she held to my lips.

“More,” I gasped.

“I’ll find another puddle, in another corridor.”

“No. You might run across a Retainer.”

“Or Malaban,” she said.

“We need a plan.”

She nodded. “We’ll talk, back in the chambers. Can you stand? Can I touch you?”

“Yes. It sleeps, recovering power.”

“The demon within you?”

To explain was too much effort. “Yes.”

“Why haven’t you used its power before now? Why did you even allow yourself to be arrested and brought here, if such a demon obeys your command?”

“It doesn’t obey me, not at all.” I gave the slightest shake of my head. “When I’m on the soil of my birth Clutch, the creature you call a demon can’t invade me like this and use its powers through my body. It can only try to exert its will upon me, by plaguing my every waking and sleeping moment with visions and whispers. Venom shields me from the haunt’s presence.”

“And when you’re off your birth Clutch?” Misutvia prompted.

I sighed. “The haunt becomes trapped within me. I don’t know how or why, but that’s the way of it. When I’m away from my birth Clutch, the haunt rides within me, holding the reins, blinkering my eyes. It uses me like a puppet, when and how it wants, and I become a prisoner within my own flesh. It’s like being buried alive.”

I closed my eyes, exhausted. “That’s when I need venom the most, see. When I’m off my birth Clutch and the haunt rides within me. Venom envelopes the haunt, creates a membrane about it that it can’t penetrate. And because I’ve been without venom for some time now, it burst free from its shell and overpowered me tonight.”

“I see,” Misutvia murmured, though it was clear she did not. All she knew was what the evidence of her own eyes could tell her: Forks of blue power could blast from my hands, and I was capable of hewing down walls and killing men with it. “I’ve heard rumor of such invasions occurring amongst the Djimbi.”

I licked my lips and opened my eyes. “I’m not demon possessed, Jotan. This is celestial strength.”

“A celestial demon? Ah.” She didn’t believe me; she thought me an instrument of the One Serpent.

But she didn’t care.

As long as she wouldn’t be harmed in the process, she’d use me to escape. I could feel the truth of it emanating from her.

“I’ll help you stand,” she murmured.

Back in the viagand chambers, the both of us sank upon floor cushions, exhausted by our efforts. Sutkabde and Greatmother sat there, too, ashy mounds in the dark. The three new women cautiously joined us.

“You have removed the obstruction,” Greatmother rasped. “You have killed two Retainers. Defying the will of the Retainers and the daronpuis is a transgression, as is murder. I claim the right to report both.”

An abrupt, humorless snort from Misutvia. Greatmother obviously hadn’t witnessed, nor been told about, how I destroyed the wall, or else she’d have more to concern her than just claiming the right to report disobedience and murder.

I ignored her and drew in a quavering breath. “Do we know the layout of this fortress?”

“I’ve memorized every passage I’ve walked,” Misutvia answered.

“Sketch it.”

Moments later, I was studying the glistening streaks she’d made with paint upon the pearly surface of one of her torn-off sleeves. I pointed.

“The daronpuis’ quarters are over here, yes? Two corridors lead to it, if your memory serves correctly: here and here. Both will be guarded by Retainers dressed as acolytes. The entrance to the fortress will most likely be in this area, too.”

“If Malaban is here, he’ll lead us to the entrance.”

“We have to reach your brother and escape without the Retainers’ notice. The daronpuis stationed here will have us all murdered, your brother included, before they allow the truth of this place to escape. They don’t care how influential your family is, Jotan. They won’t let you out alive, knowing what you do of dragons.”

“They wouldn’t murder Malaban Bri merely for fear that I’d speak of what I’ve been subjected to,” she said. “To murder my brother would earn the wrath of many powerful families in the merchant guild, not just the Bri.”

So it was true; she did not believe the dragons divine. She really thought this fortress, the bestiality we were subjected to, were all just to enhance Temple’s political power by obtaining venom-induced counsel concerning alliances, conspiracies, and stratagems. She had no inkling what Temple really sought.

But I knew differently.

The dragons
were
divine, and the daronpuis stationed here wouldn’t let a viagand woman go just to avoid confrontation with an affluent merchant guild. Temple wouldn’t take the risk that Clutch lords might learn of the rite from an escaped viagand woman, didn’t want them knowing what happened when a woman lay with a dragon. Because some lord, on some Clutch, at some point, would see the true potential behind that telepathic exchange.

As Kratt had done.

Only unlike Kratt, those Clutch lords would know that because Misutvia was merely an ordinary woman,
any
woman could lie before a venomous dragon and hear its song, not just the Skykeeper’s Daughter of a little-known prophecy. And with the many venomous dragons each Clutch lord possessed, and with the thousands of rishi women Clutch warrior-lords could force into dragon union, chances were Temple would be the last to solve the riddle of the bulls.

Temple wanted a monopoly on that answer, to make the Emperor’s power vast and unassailable. Malaban Bri of Lireh was but a gnat Temple would swipe aside.

“Let’s not be hasty,” I said to Misutvia. “Let’s think this through.”

Greatmother stirred. “There is nothing to think through. Our duty is clear. We’re to stay here, as the daronpuis so clearly desired.”

Misutvia made a strangled noise in her throat. In the brackish night-gloom eking through the chamber’s casements, her hands convulsed.

Greatmother smacked dry gums. “I should never have sat here while you plotted murder against the two Retainers you believed to be guarding our door. I failed in my duty then. I will not do so now.”

I stared at the ashy mound that was Greatmother. “What do you mean?”

“I must go. Report your actions.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You deranged old crone,” Misutvia hissed.

I leaned forward. “Greatmother. As soon as you approach the Retainers, as soon as they realize you’ve breached their seal, they will strike you down. They won’t risk this Malaban Bri learning of your presence, even though you’re doing them a service by informing on us.”

Silence, ripe with the conflict fomenting in Greatmother’s conscience. I sat tensely, wondering how strong her faith was.

“If death is to be my lot for alerting the daronpuis that you’ve breached their wall,” she finally husked, “then so be it. But they must be warned of your corruption. It is my duty.”

“I’ll kill you!” Misutvia shrieked at Greatmother, and she threw herself on her. “Deranged whore, I’ll rip you limb from limb!”

A shredding noise, flailing arms. A gravelly, choking wheeze from Greatmother. A thud, awful in its melon-thick resonance.

Greatmother lay upon her back, clutching her throat to catch her breath from Misutvia’s attack. Misutvia lay motionless atop her. Sutkabde knelt at Greatmother’s head, paint crock in hand; she had slammed it against Misutvia’s skull to save Greatmother.

“If I’m to die,” Sutkabde said hoarsely, “it will be at the mouth of a dragon. I won’t be killed over your futile attempt at escape, rishi via. I believe in the divine. I serve the dragons.”

SEVENTEEN

W
hile Sutkabde helped Greatmother to her feet, I frantically checked Misutvia, seeking blood, broken bone, a pulse, life.

“Sutkabde, don’t do this,” I said, even while my fingers found a gross swelling beneath Misutvia’s thin hair. “You don’t want to remain imprisoned. You can’t believe it’s holy and right.”

“What Temple does here is an abomination,” she said, steadying the wheezing, teetering form of Greatmother. “But I know this much: I won’t live without the dragons and their venom.”

“But the Nask Cinai, the sanctuaries for infirm bulls! As an onai you can lie with dragons in such a place and receive their venom.”

“Temple would search such places for me.”

“Sutkabde, you go down those corridors with Greatmother, and they’ll kill you. What venom will you experience then?”

“I mean to survive this debacle, rishi via,” she said. “I’m not leaving the corridor beyond these chambers. I’ll help Greatmother over the ruins, that’s all. Greatmother is determined to do her duty, aren’t you, Greatmother? She doesn’t need me by her side the entire way.”

“I strive,” Greatmother breathed, her voice withered and thin, “to be holy.”

“You strive admirably, Greatmother,” Sutkabde said. “You strive admirably.”

I watched in dismay as she led the wobbling old woman to the chamber door.

“Now what?” cried one of the new women the moment Sutkabde and Greatmother disappeared.

I thought furiously, stroking Misutvia’s cheeks to rouse her. Her pulse staggered under my fingertips.

“Greatmother can barely walk,” I said, thinking aloud. “It’ll take her some time to reach the daronpuis’ quarters. Bring me the map Misutvia drew.”

The pearly, torn-off sleeve fluttered before my face as one of the women draped it shroudlike over Misutvia.

“Look,” I said, stabbing at the diagram. “This corridor is shorter than the other one, and it leads directly to the daronpuis’ quarters. Greatmother will take the short route, surely. At the rate she moves, we can reach the daronpuis’ quarters just after she does. When the Retainers guarding the corridors see her—and there will be Retainers, make no mistake—they’ll leave their posts to deal with her as quickly as possible, before Malaban Bri is roused. They’ll immediately rush here to contain us, perhaps divide to check that the seal they constructed over the stable entrance stands intact.”

I looked up at the black shadows of the three women standing before me, my heart a crazed thing. “This might work to our advantage. If we’re quick and quiet, we may be able to escape yet.”

“What choice do we have?” asked one.

“I won’t do it,” another gasped. “I’m going to stay here, stay in my burrow. To leave is to defy them at their weakest moment. I won’t do it. They’ll kill you, but they won’t kill me for staying here, where I should.”

Hesitation in the other two.

“All that remains here for you is rape and torture,” I pressed, knowing by their newness that their taste for venom and their desire for dragonsong was not yet fevered. “No one survives here long. This chance for escape will never come again. Don’t you want to feel rain on your face once more, sun on your back? Embrace loved ones?”

I threw a frantic look at the door; Sutkabde would have helped Greatmother over the rubble, would be returning any moment.

“A bludgeon, quick,” I gasped, holding out a hand and rising. A swirl of shadow and cloth as a woman moved. Coarse wood slapped against my outstretched palm.

The door to the viagand chambers creaked open.