The parchment was unsigned, and from the clumsiness of the letters been written in a hurry.
“It is not too late to save yourself. Get word to Avin Brone inside the castle. Tell him what you know. Otherwise, both Southmarch and Xis will be destroyed. The madman S. has no allies. Everything that lives is his enemy.”
Just looking at such a thing made Vash feel as if he stood in an icy wind, that he held a restless, angry viper in his hand. He knew he must destroy it, and quickly. Whether he remembered the words written in it or not, whether he let himself think about them or not, he would have to make sure nobody ever saw this piece of paper. Avin Brone indeed! Pinimmon Vash looked around, suddenly feeling like a thief forced to walk slowly down the street with stolen goods bulging in his pocket. Did he dare carry it all the way back to his own tent where he could burn it in his brazier?
Something made a bubbly, sighing noise nearby. Vash, his thoughts racing so fast he could barely move, looked absently at the scotarch, whose mouth was already moving again. This time Vash realized that the eerie noise, a nasal moan punctuated by wet sloshes of consonants, was actually somebody speaking words, and that with a little concentration he could even understand what was being said.
“Parsshhhmen isssh… shmalll…” Prusus repeated, his hand clenching and wriggling in the air as though it had its own life, its own secret joys and sorrows. “Jushh eaddd iddd…”
The parchment is small, he was saying. Just eat it.
Astonished, Vash did. It almost stuck in his throat, but he got it down at last.
22. Damnation Gate
“… And the village of Tessideme, like most of its neighbors, suffered beneath year-round snow, icy wind, and frozen fields. The animals wasted and died, and the crops turned black and perished in the earth…”
The sun had burned the fog off the bay and Southmarch Castle’s tall towers glinted in the sun from behind the great outer walls as they stretched toward heaven, each a different color, each with its own peculiarities of design. In ordinary circumstances it would have been an impressive sight, but to Qinnitan, a prisoner being taken to the one man on earth she was most terrified of seeing again, the sight meant nothing except failure and horror and the power of inescapable Fate: the gods were clearly bent on humbling her for trying to avoid the destiny they had assigned her.
As Qinnitan watched the approaching castle, she suddenly felt something she hadn’t experienced for months, the sensation that had swept through her when the high priest Panhyssir had force-fed her his terrible potions: the world was not solid. It was as fragile as a bubble, and things waited beneath it. She could feel one of those things this moment. It was alive to her presence and unfazed by distance, because even though it lay more than a mile away across the cold waters of Brenn’s Bay and buried beneath hundreds of feet of stone, it was also beside her, even inside her. Qinnitan could sense its interest—it felt her just as strongly as she felt it. Couldn’t any of the other people on the deck of the troop ship feel its ghastly, intrusive presence as she did?
Why did you leave me, Barrick? Why did you stop talking to me? I’m so frightened… !
But it was pointless to mourn. Wherever he was, Barrick was only a mortal. In fact, like Qinnitan herself he was little more than a child: he couldn’t do anything to save her from Sulepis, let alone from the gods themselves.
The sun was far too bright. Daikonas Vo knew it must be Hexamene now, almost summer, but the light still seemed too strong, a glare all around him as though he walked over a bank of blazing, white-hot coals.
“First rays, Nushash praise,” he said out loud. When he was a child, his mother had always said that when she got out of bed in the morning, although she didn’t say it much as he got older. Strange—he hadn’t thought about the bitch in what seemed like years. Fitting that excruciating pain should bring his memories of her back.
As they rode a light tide into the docks in mainland Southmarch, the little cog stuffed with traders and their goods slipped between half a dozen Xixian warships lying at anchor or being escorted into harbor. The sailors on these other ships, unless they were in the middle of some task, watched Daikonas Vo and the others crowded on the cog’s deck. He was still the object of much attention from the crew—a ragged beggar who had somehow commanded a place on a vessel the autarch had commandeered—but Vo did not intend stealth. If the girl from the Seclusion was being taken to Sulepis, perhaps had reached him already, it was far too late for stealth.
The deeper Vo walked into the camp the more eyes followed him. Men began calling to him, shouting at him to stop and tell who he was, did he think beggars could simply walk in among the tents of the famous White Hounds? Vo knew a few of his old comrades were following him. Ordinarily, he would have thought nothing of turning and confronting them. None of the White Hounds were cowards, but Vo had a way of looking at people, even very strong, very fierce people, that seemed to remind them that there were still things they wanted to do in life. But he dared not waste time.
He grunted and had to stop for a moment, bending double with his arms clutching hard across his belly, trying to keep his jaws clenched, to keep in the scream fighting so hard to get out. It was like a hot coal with legs crawling back and forth in his guts.
None of his old troop had recognized him yet; he must look like a beggar indeed. He finally managed to fight down the pain and straightened up before any of the soldiers confronted him. His goal was only a few dozen paces away, so he set off toward it, trying not to stagger, trying not to show any weakness that would make them hurry after him again, that might prompt them to pull him down like jackals on a wounded lion. Or to try, at any rate: Daikonas Vo knew he would kill them all first if he had to—fingers in eyes, kicking even as he heard bones snapping, all his weight pushing his hard forearm down until the other man’s throat collapsed....
Vo could taste blood in his mouth. He spun around, arms up, ready to protect himself, but the soldiers who had been watching him had not followed. They were laughing among themselves, watching him stagger and twitch and talk to himself. Vo was full of shame. How bad was he? Had he pissed himself, too?
Shuddering, his guts like knotted, burning rags, he turned back and stumbled toward the quartermaster’s tent.
Vasil Zeru looked up as he entered but clearly did not recognize his face: he curled his lip at Vo’s appearance and turned back to scolding one of his underlings.
“Zeru, it’s me, Vo,” he said, leaning in the doorway. “Daikonas Vo.”
It still took a moment more for the look of recognition to come. “By the fiery boots of the Lord, is that truly you? You look like you caught fire and someone put you out with a Thunderman’s saber.”
“I am…” he clenched his teeth again, waited for the spasm to pass, “I am in need of your help. And your private counsel.”
The quartermaster understood. He sent the underlings away. “We have all wondered about… about your mission.”