“If not by my word alone,” Otaker said gravely, “you must make them believe.”
Ellonlef did not bother asking how she was supposed to do that. All she had was the truth, and that would have to be enough. Looking at their plan in that light made her fully realize just how fragile it was, how prone to failure.
Otaker closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “We must prepare for war to defend the kingdom from itself. The sooner Varis’s insurrection is stopped, the better. With any luck, this madness will have ended before Tureece or any other of Aradan’s enemies hear of it. If not, while Aradaners battle Aradaners, the realm will be set upon from all sides and torn apart.”
More than before, Ellonlef imagined a rising tide of troubles washing away Aradan, but she kept the pessimism to herself. “I must prepare to leave.”
“Take only water, food, and weapons enough to see you to Yuzzika,” Otaker said. “I will give you a string of my swiftest mounts.”
Within half a turn of the glass, Ellonlef had loaded her limited supplies on six of Lord Marshal Otaker’s finest mounts and departed Krevar through a secret passage that travelled well under a section of the collapsed wall. Beyond Krevar, her way was lighted faintly by occasional streaks of golden-white fire streaking across the belly of the night sky, and by the waning face of Hiphkos, which burned a dull, ashen red.
Not wanting to alert any watchers to her flight with the sound of galloping horses, she kept on at a sedate pace. She rode north until coming to the gouge in the earth that had ripped across the border road and swallowed down that hapless crofter the day Krevar had been torn apart … presumably the day that Varis had become more than a Prince of Aradan, became more than a man. A god made flesh.
A few miles beyond Krevar, the crevasse divided, forcing her to ride due east for several leagues. Behind her, Krevar was lost to the darkness. After several hours, Ellonlef began to lose hope that the deep crack in the earth would allow her to find a route leading back to the north, but within another hour it began to shrink in size. An hour after that, the split had faded to a mere ditch. By then, what remained of Hiphkos had settled behind the western horizon, leaving the ever-present trails of fire to streak from east to west across the dark face of night.
She knew she had spent far too long trying to navigate around the crevasse, and a nagging worry told her she would have to make up for that lost time as soon as possible. There would be no sleep or rest anytime soon, at least not until she found Kian.
At some point, she halted and surveyed the sunken scar in the desert floor. She dismounted, cut a long branch from a tough bush, and slashed her knife blade down its length to rid it of inch-long thorns. She left the horses where they were and walked to the long, shallow depression. With her makeshift pole, she jabbed at the dirt to make sure that a hidden trap did not wait just below the surface. After she had poked along several paces of its length, she strode closer and pressed down with her foot. Sand and stone shifted, but it appeared solid enough to cross.
She climbed back into the saddle and edged the horses forward, listening intently for any sound that might signal a collapse. None came, and she kicked the mounts into a plunging canter down and over the depression. Other than her mount’s hooves sinking deep into the disturbed, sandy soil, the crossing was uneventful.
A hundred paces beyond her heart was still pounding, but she breathed easier as she steered to the north. The land lay dark as a tomb ahead of her, and she tried to think only of her mission, instead of the many dangers waiting ahead. She had the prevailing sense that she was riding not to find the man who could stop an uprising, but rather to escape certain death at the hands of living a demon loosed from the Thousand Hells cloaked in the flesh of a prince.
Otaker, she thought desperately, why did you not come with me?
But she knew well his answers: he must learn what he could of Varis’s power and intentions; he had his wife and children to consider; and he must uphold his own role as a lord marshal. As he had known his path, however unpleasant, so too she knew the path she must take. North toward Izutar … north to Kian Valara.
Chapter 16
“Answer your master!” Uzzret roared, the tendons in his neck pulled taught by his ferocity.
Otaker felt as if he were looking upon a stranger, rather than the man who had served him for over a score of years. Despite the command, he did not answer.
At the prince’s almost offhand order it had taken two guards-men who had been dead, Otaker noted straight away-mere moments to reduce the lord marshal to a battered heap. He now lay gasping and shuddering under the stabbing agonies of broken ribs and other hurts. The two guards stared blankly, not breathing hard at all. They would kill him, or skin him alive without hesitation, if Varis so commanded them. “ … we must serve his will,” Danara had said. This time, his shudder had nothing to do with pain.
“Answer the Life Giver,” Lady Danara said, her croaking voice similar to that of all the resurrected. There was something to that, he knew, a disconcerting unity, but he had not the time or presence of mind to consider it.
At Danara’s sides stood their children, their eyes swimming with the same unnerving emptiness as hers. Where Uzzret’s betrayal angered Otaker, seeing his own children join Varis left a chill in his breast, smothering his desire to live.
Otaker continued to hold his tongue. Doubtless, he would die this night, which had not been part of his plan in the least. But he had no intention of telling them when or by what road Ellonlef had departed. More importantly, he would not tell them why. He steeled himself against the tortures that surely must come.
Carefully, he ran his fingers across the swelling bulge that was already closing one of his eyes. Hot trickles of blood leaked from his nostrils and over puffy lips. His tongue probed a loose front tooth and, with the slightest effort, dislodged it from its socket. He spat it out, along with a mouthful of blood.
Otaker glanced between his interrogators, struggling to focus. His head was splitting, and he was having a hard time not rolling to his side and vomiting. He had already tried castigating them for traitors, but that had achieved nothing. Delaying the inevitable was all that was left to him.
“I did not know that Sister Ellonlef had left the fortress until you told me. I do not suppose, Uzzret,” he said accusingly, “that your addled mind has considered that she might still be within Krevar’s walls?”
Uzzret’s self-righteous indignation melted away in a blink, and he glanced furtively at Varis.
From a skull-like countenance, Varis’s bulging white eyes stared down at Otaker. “As we both know, lord marshal, she is most assuredly gone … along with six horses.”
Otaker did not openly react to Varis’s uncanny accuracy, but his muddled thoughts sharpened in bemused horror. How can he know such exact details? Otaker and Ellonlef had been careful when gathering what she would need for her mission. And before they had moved into the stables, they made sure that Varis was still holding forth over his new followers. There had not even been any guards manning the collapsed walls when Ellonlef departed. Otaker had been positive no one had spied their activities. And yet….
Varis smirked. “You wonder how I can know so much, lord marshal? Suffice it to say, I see and know many things. It matters not if you tell me where she is going, for I know this already … and why.”
“If you are so wise,” Otaker snarled, “then why beat the answers from me?” The one joy Otaker cradled in his heart was that while Varis spoke of Ellonlef’s departure with near omniscience, he had not yet mentioned the two messenger hawks Otaker had managed to send off. He wished he had been able to send others, but wishing for things that could not be was a game for fools.