Truth? When the whip sliced the air a finger's breadth from my left cheek and cracked into the broken stones at my feet, raising a spurt of dust, I came to the sickening conclusion that this illusion might be real.
"It is most unseemly for such a one as you to exist uncollared," snarled the Zhid. "At least you kneel, as should Dar'Nethi vermin before their betters. Yet clearly you do not remember all your manners."
The whip cracked to the other side of me, ripping the shoulder of my tunic and leaving a stinging warning underneath it. The next one would be on my hands. I knew what he wanted, and I was not about to do it.
I jumped to my feet and dodged the ripping slice of the whip, trying not to trip over the cringing Nim as I shifted to my right. I needed to move away from the pit—force the warrior to turn his back to the steps where Paulo would appear at any moment.
"The days of my servitude are over," I yelled, hoping Paulo would hear. "I kneel to no one, and I spread my arms for no one, especially not a pitiful Zhid who acts as if one mindless brute can stand against a free Dar'Nethi."
"Then we shall have to see about that free part," he said, smiling.
"I am not nine years old this time. I don't even think you're real."
Farther . . . only a little farther. Make him turn away from the stair . Another step to the right. A thick, charred beam and a heap of crumbled stones blocked my way, forcing me to move within reach of the Zhid's hairy arms, unless— I quenched my handlight.
"Vermin's teeth!" growled the warrior as I pelted him with shards of stones that clattered harmlessly on his leather armor. In the dark he had no idea they were harmless, and I smiled as I heard him crash into the debris from the caved-in roof while scrabbling to get away. An unstable flickering of red light gave away his position, and then I bolted, grabbing Nim and yankjng her back past the pit and the stair, where I hoped Paulo was biding his time in the dark.
We hurried through a maze of rubble, and then dodged into the shadow of a half-broken wall. "We're going to go separate ways to deceive him," I said to the quivering Nim. "You must run back to Rab. As soon as you can, no later than first light, the two of you must have the horses at the place where we crossed the walls of the ruin."
The warrior cursed and bellowed for someone else to join him. I had only moments.
"But the demons, mistress . . ."
"The only dangerous demons are these inside the walls, and I'll take care of them. You saw my magic light, remember?"
Nim nodded, her face a portrait of indecision.
"Well, I have much more power than that. Just be careful and quiet until you are well away from the fortress. You have been so brave to bring us here. Here—" I pulled a gold coin from my pocket and closed her palm around it. "This is my talisman. It will protect you as you cross the plains. I kept you safe before, did I not?"
"Yes, mistress, you did, but—"
"Then you shall be safe going back. We're going to make sure that you and your friends are safe always. No burning metal to hurt or blind you. No demons to frighten you. But at first light . . ."
"We will be at the wall as you say."
"Thank you, Nim. Bless you. Together we'll bind these demons forever. Now be off with you. Hurry."
Without looking back, I sped in the opposite direction, angling away from the flicker of red light cast by the angry Zhid. Nim had shown us far more than I expected. If the young Lord was to be found, I knew where he had to be. But first, Paulo . . .
"She's heading back for the pens!" The shout was far too close. Another red light flared in exactly the direction I was running. I shifted my course, hurrying across the broad practice yards, risking the exposed route in the need for speed. Paulo would have to fend for himself.
By the time I reached the dark, upright, bony fingers of the broken colonnade, ten more red flares had sprung up behind me and to the sides. My luck took its usual course and a squat, barrel-shaped Zhid warrior with a bald head stepped from behind a toppled statue of a gryphon. The warrior's long sword gleamed wickedly in the scarlet light cast from his hand. Chuckling in satisfaction, he edged around the giant paw of the gryphon, waving the tip of his sword in a tight, controlled circle.
I could not retreat. I had some thought of circling, then taking off and outrunning the broad-beamed Zhid, but my hopes were not encouraged by his bellowing laugh when I began the move. My neck prickled. Worse and worse. Armor clanked from my left in the direction of the barracks, along with the unmistakable whisper of swords leaving their sheaths.
Before I could think what else to do, a thin black shadow leaped off the gryphon's crumbled wing and onto the warrior's back, yelling, "Go!" As I ran, the two fell to the pavement, grunting and grappling.
To my right, just beyond a tumbled wall, a tower of fire belched high into the night, blistering my exposed skin as I picked my way through the fallen columns, into the Drudges' courtyard.
This time keep to the shadows, fool , I thought I sped down an alleyway between the servants' latrines and a collapsed guardroom. I'd had to shovel out those latrines and haul food, water, and lamp oil to that guardroom. Slaves learned all the back alleys. If you stayed out of sight, you were less likely to be detained by random cruelties—like the two Zhid holding a knife to my eyes, threatening to cut them out if I blinked too soon, and then laying bets as to how long I could hold them open. The passage was almost blocked by a fallen slab, but I crawled under and emerged in the courtyard of the Lords.
An unnatural cold crept out of the rubble into my shuddering bones. What forces had Gerick and his father unleashed to shatter the slender towers that had soared so high? The gigantic carvings that had flanked the tall black doors had toppled, and one of the beast heads, double my height, stared at me with dead black eyes from the center of the court. The great fire bowls that had once sat atop the parapets were now cold and broken, the giant shards protruding from a mountain of broken granite.
For a moment the shouts and snarls of the chase seemed distant, muted by a sighing wind that crept about the ruins and curled about my feet, grasping with dead fingers at my trousers. The wind whispered in my ears of evil upon evil, lingering remembrances of pain and fear, of souls lost and wandering, cruelly, everlastingly separated from the Way of light and hope and joy.
It was all I could do to go forward. My blood pounded. A warning blazed in my head like a beacon: Begone from this place !
He was here. I knew it with a certainty I could attach to nothing else. I half expected to feel his strength moving my legs again. I could have used it; my knees would not stop shaking.
Yet the fortress where I had lived in constant fear was a shattered shell, while I stood here alive and uncollared. The Lords who had terrorized me and tormented those I loved were dead. Whoever these warriors were, whatever this cold terror might be, they were only an echo.
I ran for the gaping maw where the entry doors had stood. From beyond the dark mouth came murmurings, weeping, curses and hoarse, mocking shouts.
The roof of the temple hall was open to the night, the wind howling through cracks wider than a man. Yet no rubble, sand, or thornbush cluttered the polished black floor, so like a lake of black ice. Nothing remained of the giant statues of the Lords—the fearsome monoliths carved in black stone that had been alive with the Lords' presence behind their masks of gold and gem-studded eyes. Far across the cavernous space was the way I had to go, the downward passage into the bowels of the palace. My pattering footsteps mocked my false courage as I sped across the shining floor, while in my head the warning blazed louder, desperate: Begone from this place! You have no business here !