The Rose of Sarifal (39 page)

Amaranth threw down her lamp. It shattered on the rocks and spattered a blue, glowing liquid. Likewise released from the magic, she drew the short sword she had carried from Caer Moray, and as the drow raged close she struck then jumped back. Surprised, she saw Amaka was still with her and, though unarmed, had seized one of the drow’s arms as she pressed her blade
between his ribs, watched the hot blood flow down. Under the hierophant’s spell, all time seemed to have slowed and thickened. Now, released from it, she felt a burst of frantic energy, as if gravity were weak, as if the air were thin and offered no resistance, and as if all the processes of her body were quick beyond control. It could not last. Lukas was cutting through the drow as if through scarecrows, and the genasi had raised a barrier of murdered corpses, some of which still twitched erratically. There were several dozen drow at least, but they fell back from the onslaught of the blades. It could not last.

Eleuthra had reached the creature, drawn her claws down her face and neck, opened up her flesh and then sprung for her throat, and missed. Instead her jaws had closed on the hierophant’s shoulder, cracking her collarbone and her upper arm, such was the fury of the wolf’s assault. She’d fallen on her prey like a crashing wave, but like a wave, now, she drew back after marking her high tide. As she did, she felt the hierophant’s magic reinvest itself, flow into the spaces she had left, fasten itself around her like a living chain, squeeze her chest so she couldn’t breathe, and all her struggles drew it closer. Desperate, she struck again, cutting with her heavy paws, and this time she felt the softness of the drow’s breast, and tried to cut through that and through her ribs and through the plastron of her chest to reach her heart.
But the wolf could no longer breathe. She released her grip on the hierophant’s arm so she could strike again, and miss again, and now her jaws closed upon nothing, and instead she felt a coldness overtake her lungs, like a cold liquid poison injected in her viscera, causing the failure of her organs one by one, and the closing of her body processes until only her heart was left, fluttering in a bath of ice.

“Come to me,” said the daemonfey, and she saw him spread his leather wings until he filled the entire vault of the cavern, his red eyes diabolical, his gold skin and body perfect in her mind. “Come to me.”

And she went.

The hierophant stepped back from the wolf’s corpse. Staggering, she fell against the statue of the knight, seizing the haft of its stone sword to stay upright. The blood flowed down her arms and face. But she was in a rage. She lifted her uninjured arm, and Gaspar-shen felt the air congeal around him, slowing his weapon and offering resistance as he drew it back and raised it up to strike. It seemed too heavy for his strength. One of the drow caught him by the arm and pulled him forward, and he realized suddenly they were not trying to kill him but disarm him, capture him alive. Again he struck at them, the circle of black faces which were close enough for him to see the silver rings in their nostrils and lips and in the ridges of their ears, even the scarified, raised
patterns on their cheeks, even their filed and pointed teeth as they grinned at him in fury and drew him down.

After a moment he flopped helpless as if resting on a bed of slaughtered bodies, pinioned at his wrists, while at the same time he heard the noise of the hierophant’s harsh breath next to his ear, and he felt her hands fumbling over his chest, and smelled her blood dripping over him. Nor did he have to hear her tell him that a spider must immobilize her prey with a cold bite, before wrapping it in pale cords to save for later, when she is hungry. The eating habits of spiders, he had always thought, should not be emulated by any higher being with a claim to civilization.

Far above, in the fomorian highway that ran under the Cambro Mountains from Harrowfast in the south and all the way to Winterglen, Suka rode on Marabaldia’s shoulder. Sixty miles they had come in just a day. The princess seemed to gather and grow in strength as time progressed. Suka was exhausted even so. She had not wanted to be carried like a sack of potatoes, but every stride of the giantess was four of hers. And she had not expected they would never stop, or pause, or rest, or eat, or drink, hour after hour. Irritated, she had never complained, which was unlike her. But the mystery was easy to solve.

Suka felt the weight of Ughoth’s death, caused, she imagined, by her own clumsiness on the borders
of Synnoria. And she imagined, in this punishing pace, that Marabaldia was working something out, expressing some profound emotion. Suka didn’t blame her for wanting to move quickly, leave the surface of Gwynneth Island, and burrow down deep into the Underdark. She would deny the princess nothing for the sake of her own dignity, so grateful she was that Marabaldia hadn’t punished her, or even questioned her about what had happened between her and Captain Rurik and the Marchlord Talos-claere in Synnoria. She could only remember how her friend, and Ughoth too, had backed her without question in the council hall, supported her without hesitation when Lord Askepel had demanded that she stand trial, and answer for what she and Rurik actually had done, the mistakes she actually had made. Even now, even after the price she’d paid, Marabaldia did not question her. It was as if the past were gone, and Suka were the only one still carrying its burden.

They had not paused, neither to draw breath nor drink some water from one of the subterranean streams. Long used to human beings, now Suka had grown accustomed to the heavy stamp of the cyclopses, though she could not hope to copy its rhythm. Their single eyes glowed like lanterns. She looked back to see Mindarion and Altaira, similarly carried. Behind them, the tunnel was in darkness.

When the venom wore off and Lukas regained consciousness, he guessed the drow had taken him in through the cave mouth where he’d first seen the hierophant, in between the shattered statues where Amaka had first tried to lead them. And in this new cave he found himself bound to a stone pier, perched unsteadily atop a mound of architectural refuse; iron spars, chunks of fallen masonry, loose bricks and coping stones, enormous wooden beams. All of this had been arranged around a hollow well, and the entire circular pile was alive with scurrying vermin, rats and lizards, but especially spiders, who wove their webs in the interstices, or else hung suspended from the pinnacles of stone. The mound of debris rose almost twenty feet from the cave floor, and the interior well descended through a crack or a crevice to a depth he could not guess, as it was choked with garbage and old bones, and layers of moon-white web as thick as mats. Entire bricks were caught in them and did not fall. Light came from the gas vents in the burning rocks, and from the bottom of the well—a diffuse pale glow. Light came also from a makeshift altar at the top of the pile, an assortment of marble slabs, and urns and reliquaries that looked to have been looted from some other shrine, all surmounted by a cylinder of black, polished stone, which supported a circle of brass candlesticks, and fat, white, flickering tapers shedding beads of melted wax.

Gaspar-shen lay nearby, trussed as he was in silken, sticky ropes. Lady Amaranth was below the altar, tied down by her wrists and ankles. It occurred to Lukas that
he had been in this place before, or else this situation, and then he remembered the lush temple where they had all come to Gwynneth Island, the gate whose other side was in the Breasal Marsh. The druid—Eleuthra—had been with them, and here she was again. As Lukas watched, a detachment of the drow marched from the cave’s mouth, carrying the bodies not just of the druid but of their fallen comrades. Unsteadily they climbed the pile of rubble at its lowest point, and then tumbled the corpses down into the well, through a trap in the webs that looked as if it might have been woven for that purpose. Last of all they flung Eleuthra, dressed in her wolf skin, in her human shape.

She had scarcely known them, but she had given her life for theirs—in vain, as it turned out, because here they were, prisoners just the same. Why had she done this? It was for the Savage’s sake, he guessed. It was for love.

The drow seemed eager to finish and be gone. One or two glanced anxiously into the bottom of the well before they retreated to the cave’s mouth. Lukas waited for the genasi to speak.

“In the desert realm of Calim,” Gaspar-shen began diffidently after clearing his throat—the air was thick and humid and full of dust, “there is a town called Calimpest. But they have nothing to eat.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. They have nothing to eat.”

“Surely they have bread.”

“No bread. Only pieces of stone, which they suck until they are smooth.”

“And … is there anything to drink?”

“Nothing. Only fine white sand.”

“And the inhabitants of Calim … are they happy?”

“No, they are not happy. They are very sad. All night long they howl and complain.”

“I don’t blame them.”

“No one blames them. It has been this way for many years.”

“How many years?”

“More than six years. Fewer than seven.”

Lady Amaranth was too far away to hear this nonsense, but someone else was not. Turning his head, Lukas saw the handmaiden of Lolth sitting above him, hands clasped around her knees. It was Amaka, the girl who had betrayed them and led them to this place. Yet she looked disconsolate, soot in her close-cropped white hair, her face streaked with dirt, her white shift streaked and torn.

“Does he speak seriously?” she asked.

“No one knows.”

“Yet I,” she said, “would rather live in Calim than in Winterglen among my own kind. Calim is a paradise to me.”

During their battle with the drow, Lukas had seen this girl fighting beside Amaranth, hampering the drow soldiers who attacked her. Why was that?

She could not read minds, he knew. Yet she answered him as if she could. “I couldn’t bear to see her harried so, like that, like a hart inside a circle of dogs. That’s what I felt—the truth. But what I told that woman,
the guardian of the shrine, I told her I was protecting the blood of the leShay. I didn’t want to see it spilled prematurely, see it sink into the dust. That is why I brought you to this place, isn’t it?”