“He is mine,” she said again, her voice a crooning purr.
“Protect the boy!” Ba’Sel roared.
Many hands drew Leitos away, but he barely noticed. His focus was on Zera.
With a shout, Ulmek and a few others set themselves against Pathil and Zera. Swords broke against her vaporous form, and her gaze never left Leitos. Growling, Pathil backed away from the warriors, but was quickly surrounded. With reckless abandon, Ulmek and his brothers continued their desperate assault.
Ba’Sel, Adham, and the others carried Leitos away. A dying howl and the screams of men filled the Sanctuary … then silence fell. Leitos managed to look over his shoulder, and saw that Pathil was finished, gored through and slashed in a dozen places. Around his corpse lay a few men, torn to rags.
Zera took up the chase. When she moved away from the doorway blocking the lower passages, a surge of Alon’mahk’lar burst forth. Leitos knew them well-the slavemasters. Horned and baying, they charged around her. Cudgels and crude swords smashed against Ulmek’s pitiful band, and hobnailed soles trampled the dead under.
Zera’s wings swept slowly behind her, whipping up dust from the floor to create a blinding cloud. The infernal glow of her eyes burned through the haze, never leaving Leitos.
Leitos collected himself enough to turn and run on his own, though hands still held him fast. Before the dust obscured their faces, Leitos saw the brothers who had been waiting at the far end of the Sanctuary, all staring with dazed expressions at the enemies bearing down on them.
“Go!” Ba’Sel cried.
The bulk of Ba’Sel’s men responded as he wished, but a score rushed to protect their leader. Taking advantage of the dust, they split into two equal bands and converged on Zera’s flanks. Screams immediately filled the chamber.
Ba’Sel spared a look back, cursed, then led the way into a passageway narrow enough to force the brothers to run single-file. An unexpected voice pressed against the running men. “They are coming!” Ulmek cried. “Run!”
The passage grew tighter, but the torch-lit air cleared and smelled fresher the farther they went. Behind them, the sounds of battle faded, replaced by harsh breathing and drumming feet.
All at once, Leitos and the others burst into the open. The brothers sprinted across a broad, stepped plain of sandstone. Behind them a rugged bulge of rock rose high above the narrow cleft that led into the Sanctuary. Overhead, twinkling stars and the waning moon cast down their weak light. A few miles to the south, waves pounded themselves to foam against a thousand rocky pillars marching out into the sea.
Not rocks, Leitos thought dazedly, a sunken city. Ancient towers leaned in all directions, and what he had first believed were rounded rocks proved to be domes.
His amazement faded, as the warriors set off at a dead sprint.
Two brothers kept hold of Leitos’s arms, helping him run. After a pair of hard, desperate miles with no apparent pursuit, Ba’Sel called a halt. The brothers instantly spread out and made ready to fight.
As Leitos struggled to breathe, he knew the blessed calm could not last. Zera was coming, and with her a host of Alon’mahk’lar. He glanced at Ba’Sel and found the same despair in the warrior’s eyes that filled his own heart. Zera, why? The answer left him sick in his souclass="underline" Zera was a creature conceived only to destroy humankind.
Adham took his shoulder in hand and turned him this way and that, making sure he was not hurt. He breathed hard too, but seemed better off than Leitos. “Can you go on?” he demanded, and Leitos nodded in answer.
“We must reach the sea,” Ba’Sel said then. “We will sail for the Singing Islands. For fear of drowning, the Alon’mahk’lar dare not follow.”
“What is the use?” Ulmek countered. “The islands will shelter us for a time, but there we will be trapped. We must stand and fight.”
“We are too few, brother,” Ba’Sel said gently. “Such has always been the reason we attack from the shadows of night, and spend our days hiding below ground. We are not now, nor have we ever been, strong enough to oppose the forces of the Faceless One in open battle.”
Ulmek shook his head. “I am done running and hiding. It is all we have ever known. I say we fight. If the brotherhood is shattered, so be it.”
“No!” Ba’Sel said. “We must survive. That is the only chance that the Faceless One will one day taste destruction. We have no choice but to run this night, and fight on a day of our choosing … the right day.”
Adham pointed out what the others had failed to mention. “If the winged creature can fly, the sea will not bar its way to us.”
“Perhaps not,” Ba’Sel said in a hushed voice, “but we stand a better chance against one, no matter how fearsome, than against an army of Alon’mahk’lar.”
Back the way they had come, a thundering shriek crushed the night’s calm. All eyes turned to find a living shadow blotting out the stars above the rugged hill guarding the Sanctuary. The creature winged higher, wheeling, searching.
Zera, Leitos thought. Even after seeing her change, he could scarcely believe she was not human. She would spy them soon, and moments after that she would be upon them, destroying the brothers with the same contemptuous hatred for humankind as that shared by all Alon’mahk’lar. Once finished with Ba’Sel and his men, she would take and use him for whatever purpose she intended.
Her cry came again, filling the night. In answer, Alon’mahk’lar horns trilled far off, from all quarters save the sea.
“Whether we flee or fight, it must be decided now,” Ulmek announced, his fierce stare proclaiming what he thought was the right course.
“Some must stay behind,” Ba’Sel said in a pained voice, “in order that the rest can reach the boats and sail for the Singing Islands.”
Before he finished, a score of men had broken ranks in the defensive line. They looked on their leader with unflinching eyes. As word quietly spread, others joined the first brothers to volunteer, until none stood apart.
“I could have wished all of you would have cast down his weapons and fled,” Ba’Sel said. “That you have not leaves the choice to me.” He took a deep breath and called by name a dozen of the best archers, and did the same until an equal number of the finest swordsmen joined the first group.
“He is mine,” Leitos heard Zera say again. “Grow strong and cruel,” the voice of Adham whispered.
“I share your fear, but let none of us despair your sacrifice,” Ba’Sel was saying, voice wavering with emotion. “You will not be forgotten, my brothers.”
He might have said more, but Leitos did not hear. By then, he was running back the way they had come. Someone tried to grab him, but he dodged and kept on. Terror coursed through his veins, not courage. What drove him was guilt for allowing Zera to use him to find the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. He would not let them be annihilated for his mistake.
Chapter 30
Zera came, a winged nightmare falling from the sky, scattering those brothers who had given chase. Leitos steeled himself against whatever might befall him. Misty talons gently clasped his shoulders, and Zera carried him high, the wind of her wings buffeting him. As the world fell away from his dangling feet, his stomach knotted and rolled before relaxing. In that moment he knew a freedom he could never hope to describe.
Behind him, the brothers called out as they gave chase, their voices growing smaller and smaller, until they were no more. Leitos hung limp, eyes squinted against the wind, watching as the world spread wide beneath his feet. The shield of sandstone over which he and the brothers had run looked like stairs from on high. Farther north, a dozen separate bands of Alon’mahk’lar searched for their prey. To the east, the Mountains of Fire thrust upward, daggers of rock scrawled with veins of glowing crimson. In the west, the direction Zera took him, the scrubby desert ended at an irregular line of smooth dunes, frozen waves of white sand.