Master of restless shado.., p.25
Master of Restless Shadows Book Two, page 25
part #2 of Master of Restless Shadows Series
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Esfir crouched down beside them.
“I have to try.” Narsi kept pumping, willing the man’s heart to remember this living rhythm and rouse. “Do you remember the enthralled people from Lord Vediya’s memoirs? Witches transformed them and forced them into battle. These men are the same. Look at them all. There are brands on all their bodies, symbols of the thrall that held them captive. They didn’t choose to become monsters and attack the sacred grove. They were forced.”
Yara lifted the lamp. She and Esfir gazed over the bloody ruin of dead men. Then Esfir reached out and used the tattered edge of a shirt to wipe gore from the chest of a decapitated corpse.
“Is that the Brand of Obedience?” Esfir asked in a whisper.
Narsi nodded and Yara shot him a questioning look.
“Mother mentioned it to us last time she visited.” Esfir said quietly. “It’s a spell that makes slaves of people. It was borne by an assassin in the Duke of Rauma’s household. She said that you tried to save that man as well.”
That would have been Dommian. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that Querra had worked out much of the man’s history. She was clever and paid attention to the people around her.
“He wasn’t a willing assassin.” Sweat began to bead Narsi’s back as he continued to compress the man’s cold chest. He fought a mounting agitation, resisting the urge to push too hard, too fast. “None of these people chose to be transformed into monstrosities. They are victims.”
“But what if . . .” Esfir trailed off as she studied the man’s slack face. Narsi understood her fear—if he was wrong about the thrall being broken, then he was reviving a murderous beast, not a man.
“I suppose it’s a chance we must take,” Esfir said. Like himself, Esfir had sworn an oath to safeguard the well-being of all people. She shoved a loose plait of her pale hair back from her face. “We need help. I’ll have Mouruhd fetch physicians from the Panajha Hospital dormitory. Then, Yara, would you help me search for other survivors?”
Narsi stole a glance to Yara. She looked queasy and grim but nodded. She left her lamp balanced on a cracked stone and then hurried up the hill with Esfir, as if she truly was one of the heroines she played on stage.
Narsi heard the two of them calling out directives to their companions and relations. Then he returned his focus to the body lying beneath his hands. The man looked underfed and worn down. Whether he’d made his living by honest work or as a cutthroat or a con man, Narsi couldn’t possibly know. But his last word, his last concern, had been for a sister.
“Come on,” Narsi murmured to him, or perhaps to his spirit. “Reclaim your life. Come back for your sister. Come back and reclaim your life, your freedom. You can do this.” Narsi spoke more encouragements in an almost mindless stream of words, all while he kept working, willing the man to take a breath, to fight for his life. He didn’t know how much time passed.
He heard crow’s wings flutter through the darkness. A bird alit directly in front of him, on the man’s head. Lamplight caught the black gloss of the crow’s feathers. The glinting iridescence reminded him of that darkness he’d witnessed unfurling from the duke’s figure. The bird’s yellow eyes flickered over Narsi, then it angled its gaze down at his patient’s half-lidded, unblinking eyes.
Even the crows that Bahiim kept were infamous for picking out the eyes of the dead. Horror rose through Narsi. He didn’t think he’d be able to keep himself from lashing out if the bird began to scavenge the corpse.
But all would be lost if he halted his compressions.
“Don’t you dare!” Narsi shouted at the bird. “Leave him! Go!”
The crow shifted its head and seemed to consider Narsi. The angle of the lamplight lent a curved shadow to the bird’s beak, making it appear to smirk at his attempt to scare it away. Then, to his relief, the crow spread its wings and leapt into the air. As it rose, the faintest sparks of gold light drifted down to the dead man and Narsi both. Warmth spread across Narsi’s hand where one of the sparks landed. Then it died away. Narsi continued to work, but he stole a glance after the crow.
It soared over Yara and Esfir as they dragged a lanky boy from out from beneath a heap of butchered remains. The boy’s mouth looked blue even in the yellow lamplight. Likely he’d suffocated beneath the mass of other bodies. The boy’s limbs appeared to slump from a tight animal posture as Narsi watched. Paws unfolded into hands and feet.
“We have another!” Esfir shouted, and at once an older Haldiim woman in a gray physician’s coat pelted to her. She beckoned and two young students raced behind her with their medical satchels. Past them, Narsi spied other shadowed figures. Most searched among the dead, but three physicians appeared to be working, just as Narsi did, to revive dead men. From behind him he could just pick out the voices of several women discussing in Haldiim how they would shelter any survivors, if there were any.
How long had he been working over this one man’s body?
“What about the royal bishop’s guardsmen?” a girl asked.
“Occupied by a fire in the Weavers’ Ward. With any luck it will keep them busy for a little time yet,” a woman answered, then she spoke more softly. “There won’t be many survivors here. We’ll be done and gone before the next bell.”
Narsi looked up to the sky and for the first time realized that it wasn’t just lamplight or the glow of distant burning buildings that lent an orange glow to his surroundings.
The trees of the sacred grove blazed with such intensity that they appeared to burn away the clouds of smoke rolling over the stars. Beneath them Narsi glimpsed a figure outlined by the light, and he could have sworn it was Lord Vediya.
But that was impossible, and yet Narsi felt certain he heard him ask, “What have you done?”
What answer Lord Vediya received, Narsi didn’t hear over calls of crows. Dozens of them now circled the sacred grove. When Narsi looked back, the figure was gone. Several birds dropped down to feed on unguarded remains, but here and there Narsi sighted a few more of those faint golden blessings raining down from passing wings. Whether they were lending strength to would-be rescuers or simply blessing the souls of the dead, Narsi didn’t know.
He muttered his thanks for the warmth that eased the ache of his fingers. Then he returned his attention to his compressions and the cold body beneath his hands. It felt like he’d been at this for hours. His back ached and the scent of blood filled his mouth with a rank taste.
“No, those two are past hope,” a physician instructed from somewhere across the sacred grove.
Ahead of Narsi, the older woman kneeling beside the lanky boy shook her head and Esfir looked like she might weep. Yara hung her head. But the student compressing the boy’s chest refused to stop her work. For an instant she glanced to Narsi, and he recognized the ferocious determination in her expression. He felt the same drive.
And yet he knew that neither resolve nor willpower could sway the reality of death. If they couldn’t rouse the men they worked over, then at some point their efforts amounted to wasted strength that should be used to tend the living.
Not to mention the need to evacuate before the royal bishop’s guardsmen arrived. At some point, they would have to give up.
Just not yet.
Not yet.
Then Narsi felt the kick of a heartbeat hammer back against his palm. He nearly missed the weak pulse, almost went on pumping the man’s chest. But then as he drew back to prepare for another compression he felt the man’s ribs rise under his fingers. He heard the intake of a shaky breath. Narsi sat, stunned between hope and disbelief. A faint, living heat kindled up from the man’s chest, spreading across Narsi’s palms. The man drew in a deeper breath and then another.
“He’s revived!” Narsi shouted.
“Here too!” the medical student called. An instant later a third man revived. Such exhilaration filled Narsi that he threw his hands in the air and shouted a cheer. They’d won in the face of death.
After that, three medical students hurried to Narsi’s side. The young women congratulated him as they carefully lifted Narsi’s revived patient onto a canvas litter. The man moaned as they shifted his broken leg.
Then he blinked up at Narsi.
“My sister . . .”
“If she’s here, we’ll find her,” Narsi assured him, though so far they hadn’t discovered any women among the enthralled dead. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Riquo . . . you find her.” The man’s eyes fluttered and then fell back closed. The medical students lifted his litter and Riquo again jolted awake. Panic filled his face as he stared around himself. “Where… you taking me?”
“To Panajha Hospital,” Narsi assured him. “Your leg needs to be set and your wounds will be cleaned. We’ll talk after you’ve rested—” Narsi cut himself off when he realized that the spindly man had again lapsed into unconsciousness. He let the students take Riquo away and turned his remaining energy to saving other lives.
However, the next hour tempered some of Narsi’s triumph. Of the thirty or more men who’d been enthralled and then cut down, only those first three revived. There were no other bodies whole enough to even attempt to bring back. Once the three survivors had been moved to Panajha Hospital, there was little for any of the physicians or their students to do. Narsi gathered up the herbs he’d collected—though his hands were so bloody that he had to wipe them on the wild grasses to get them clean enough that he wouldn’t spoil the herbs by touching them.
When he descended the hill, he found Yara, Esfir as well as the physicians and their students all gathered on the road. They all looked terrible. Hands, clothes, faces and hair spattered with blood, their expressions strained. The oldest of the physicians leaned on a cane. Her students ringed her.
The Cadeleonians who had taken shelter in the sacred grove were nowhere to be seen. Taking in the surroundings, Narsi couldn’t fault them for fleeing. The smell alone was sickening. Flies and other insects gathered in swarms. It was a charnel house of dismembered men—nearly all of them Cadeleonian—laid out at the foot of the Circle of Wisteria. The scene could have been lifted directly from any number of bigoted Cadeleonian stories of Haldiim curses, sorcery and sacrifices.
“The royal bishop and his guardsmen will blame us for this,” the elderly physician remarked. One young medical student standing at her side appeared surprised by the thought. But no one else showed any doubt. The Haldiim population was already blamed for conspiring with Labarans and poisoning holy men. Who knew what horrors might be attributed to them now that so many mutilated corpses ringed the sacred grove.
The author—Narsi still couldn’t recall his name—suggested that they bury the bodies to hide them from the royal bishop’s guardsmen.
“It would take days to dig a grave deep enough that every cur on the street wouldn’t come dig up hands and feet.” Yara stared at the mounds of bodies with a grim expression. “It will be worse for us if we try to hide this.”
“There’s no time, in any case.” Esfir pointed, and as a group they all turned to see a Haldiim boy in a courier’s uniform come pelting up the road. He ran so hard that he nearly careened into Esfir.
“The fire’s nearly quenched, but word’s spreading—” The boy paused midsentence, gasping. He bent over and drew in several deep breaths, then went on quickly. “They’re saying the wolves and the fire are our doing. A Bahiim curse or a Labaran spell! Captain Yago’s been sent for, and a battalion of the royal bishop’s guardsmen are on their way here.”
“We’d best go. Though we must take care not to lead them directly to the hospital,” the elderly physician pronounced. She turned her attention to Narsi. “I don’t recall your mother’s name, young man. Is there someone looking after you?”
“He’s called Narsi Lif-Tahm, he’s staying with my aunt and me,” Esfir supplied. “But are you certain that we shouldn’t remain here to guard the sacred grove?”
“The holy grove exists to protect the Haldiim people, not the other way around,” Yara replied. She took Esfir’s arm in hers. “And I can assure you that standing in direct opposition to Cadeleonian soldiers will only stoke their violence. It’s wiser to present them with nothing to fight, no one to kill. Let them wear themselves out beating at tree trunks and dirt. The roots down deep and the crows on high will be laughing. Isn’t that so, Narsi?”
“Absolutely,” he agreed. Honestly, he might have agreed with anything if it meant that all of them could leave this place immediately.
Though to his surprise, they didn’t make directly for the Haldiim District. Instead they flitted between shadows and edged along walls, working their way to the Shell Fountain. There, they took turns keeping watch for the royal bishop’s guardsmen as each of them rinsed the blood from their hands, faces, feet and shoes.
“Wet tracks will be hard to see in the dark and will dry quickly enough,” the elderly physician explained. “But bloody ones linger. They could lead Captain Yago right after us.”
Narsi scrubbed his boots as well as his hands and face. The entire time he felt certain that he could hear hoofbeats drumming through the cobblestones of the street. Then a door across from the Shell Fountain swung open and light poured out. Narsi flattened himself into the spray of the fountain. Ahead of him a big Cadeleonian man staggered out from the doorway. He swayed on his feet and crooned a drunken melody about the moon. Then he pissed into the gutter, turned back inside and slammed his door closed behind him. The instant he was gone, Narsi raced back to join Esfir and Yara as well as the would-be author, a stagehand and the courier boy against the brick wall of a print shop.
Despite the balmy summer evening, Narsi was still shivering. He thought he could hear Yara’s teeth chattering. Finally, the last of the medical students had washed. They agreed to take slightly different routes away from the fountain into the Haldiim District.
Alone on the streets and dripping wet, Narsi shuddered and started at every noise. For nearly half an hour he crouched beside a broken cart after guardsmen rode past him shouting murder. They raced from the sacred grove to the nearest church barrack. When at last the street seemed quiet, he sprinted to the cover of a tavern. There the crowds of stumbling costumed drunks disguised his height. And when he vomited in the gutter, he hardly stood out.
Narsi closed his eyes, willing himself away from the horror he’d witnessed and the terror that smoldered in his guts like an ember.
Fear is the threshold we must cross every time we find our courage. He tried to remind himself. But it didn’t feel like a mere threshold now. No, this day had been like walking into an entire palace of terror. But what could he do about it?
Flee? Leave people he cared about to face all this? Near him an inebriated Cadeleonian wearing a dog mask called a cheer for the new king’s health and others took up the cry. Someone inside the tavern began singing a lewd song about the royal bishop. Things were going to change, he had to believe that.
Narsi got back up to his feet. If fear was a threshold, then he had to cross it—had to keep crossing it, because retreating wouldn’t alter anything. The things that scared him would still be there.
“No going back,” Narsi whispered to himself. “Keep pushing ahead.”
He sprinted to the alley behind the Kir-Naham pharmacy and scaled the garden wall so that no one would see him enter from the street. His relief when Esfir and Yara welcomed him inside nearly overwhelmed him. For a startled moment he found Esfir leaning against his shoulder and weeping as she tried to express some of her shock. Yara joined him in hugging her. Yara didn’t look much better. All three of them jumped like startled cats when Querra came through the door.
Narsi calmed considerably when he learned that she’d brought fresh clothes and other necessities for him at Lord Vediya’s request.
“Did he send a note for me or any message?” Narsi attempted to sound unconcerned as he hunched beside the kitchen fire, drying his hair.
The smile Querra turned on him was both knowing and pitying. “Only that I should wish you a good night and sweet dreams.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ariz rolled his shoulders forward and soared over the burning city. His wings sliced the night air as if sweeping long strokes through dark water. Sweltering plumes of woodsmoke climbed after him. Ariz skimmed the hot, rising currents, soaring so effortlessly he nearly floated. When the smoke disturbed the animal body enfolding him, he instinctively flicked a wing tip and banked away from the choking clouds.
To his dark-adapted eyes, the city streets below blazed with torches and lamplight. Flames leapt across rooftops. Shouts and alarm bells sounded. Guardsmen poured from barracks like ants streaming from their hill. They meant nothing to the brand smoldering in his chest or the molten hunting instinct coursing through his blood.
But then he felt a spark of recognition. His attention fixed on a small, dark form, and for the first time he acknowledged the strangeness of the scene beneath him. Warehouses burned in the Weavers’ Ward, while a jet-black rider pursued a pack of wolves through the city. The animals were so large and so numerous that they filled the street like a living river. The wolves and rider raced toward the growing golden glow that emanated from the trees of the Haldiim sacred grove.
From this height, the rider and his mount appeared as little more than slivers of darkness in a vast expanse of the city. But Ariz felt Fedeles’s presence radiating from that distant form, like a sweet, soothing note calling him.
His indifference to the drama beneath him waned.
Ariz banked again, turning from the direction of the Slate House and swinging into the glow of the sacred grove. He heard crows calling in clear, sharp voices. Wolves turned on Fedeles. Heedless, Fedeles charged into the midst of bared teeth and snapping jaws. One wolf sprang up and Fedeles threw his arms wide. A swath of darkness enveloped them all and swirled around the sacred grove like a cyclone.
