Once the way was clear, Hya produced a crude key and inserted it into a keyhole crusty with frozen slime. She tried to turn the key, but it would not budge. Hazad immediately squatted down, took the key in his fist, and cursed as he tried to turn the stubborn mechanism. After a vigorous rattle, it turned.
Behind them, a furious shout went up. Kian spun, as did Ellonlef. Azuri moved beside them, casual in his stance, his gaze merciless. A dozen howling men rushed forward like a pack of rabid wolves. Rabble they were, bearing knives and cudgels, their wrath fired by the mindless rioting. Kian had seen such crazed behavior before, and knew bloodlust had stolen their reason. Taking a wider stance, Kian made ready.
“Come!” Hya said sharply. She had to repeat the command twice more before Kian turned away from the fast-approaching mob. Hazad, his great bulk straining, heaved open the small iron door that lay just behind the outer wooden door. Rusted hinges shrieked in a voice higher and angrier than either the storm or the surging tide of murderers charging down the alley. Without pause for breath, Hazad turned, caught hold of Hya, and tossed her through the opening. He went after, straight into the face of her outraged curses.
Kian did not bother a second glance at the attackers, but rather spun Ellonlef around and propelled her toward the small dark opening. She vanished quicker than either Hazad or Hya, followed by Azuri.
The pounding of many feet rumbled the ground, maddened shouts filled the air. Kian dove headlong through the tiny doorway. He tumbled down a short flight of stone stairs, rolled a short way, and then shot to his feet. He rushed back the way he had come, lending his strength to Hazad’s in closing the iron door. A hand bearing a dagger poked through the shrinking gap, and bones broke with the sound of snapping twigs between mud brick and metal. The wielder screamed, the dagger clattered down the steps, and the mangled hand jerked out of sight.
After the door boomed shut, Hya’s voice rang out. “There is a bar to the right.”
From outside, heavy pounding shuddered the door. Hazad’s frantic curses told that he was searching for but not finding the bar. Then, as the door began to creak open under the press of the rioters, his oaths cut off in a shout of triumph. Kian was knocked sprawling when the man slammed his girth against the door and fumbled the bar into place. The pounding lasted for a time, but there was easier prey elsewhere, and the marauders gave up and went after it.
“Everyone stay where you are,” Hya ordered. “My warehouse is unkind to those who do not know how to navigate it without light.”
Kian waited in cold, lightless silence, as Hya shuffled through the gloom. After few moments, the gentle sounds of running water filled the chamber. Slowly, a faint amber luminescence grew brighter and brighter, showing a wide, low-ceilinged storage area. The water he had heard emptied from a crude spout into a long and winding trough that fed numerous firemoss lamps situated throughout the underground warehouse. While that was rather ingenious to his mind, what amazed him was the untold amount of loot stored in crates, barrels, or simply heaped up in wobbly piles. While a quick study told him none of the goods were worth much individually, taken as a whole, Hya was in truth quite wealthy.
Hya noted everyone gazing at the loot, then snorted quiet laughter.
“All this,” she said, motioning with a wave of her arm, “has been collected in payment over the many long years of my time here. The Chalice offers little in the way of enticement for an old woman, so I use what I need, and put the rest here.”
She got a faraway look in her eye then. “I had intended to sell it all and send the gold to Rida … now, I suppose that is a task I will never accomplish.”
Kian felt her sorrow, yet at the same time he felt a growing sense of urgency. Moment by moment, he was sure the tide was turning in favor of Varis.
Speaking gently, he said, “We must reach the palace, otherwise none of us, perhaps no one in the world, will ever finish put-off tasks, or any tasks, save those laid out by Varis.”
Hya scrubbed the sheen of tears from her eyes, and that distant expression was replaced by fierce determination. “You speak the truth, Izutarian. Come, follow me.”
Chapter 46
Hya led them through the maze of stacked goods to the far side of the warehouse, and then climbed up a set of wooden stairs. She rattled a bolt and eased open a thick door, allowing the glow of leaping flames to filter past her. After a moment’s hesitation, she passed out of sight beyond the doorway, and Kian and the others hurried after.
The room beyond proved to be a hovel so dilapidated as to be unappealing to looters. Sometime past, a fire had gutted the small building, and the previous owner, perhaps Hya herself, had boarded up the windows. Rot had created wide gaps in the boards, allowing the light of the Chalice’s present burning to cast a lurid radiance over the dusty floors and walls of the tumbledown building.
Kian moved to a window and peered out. Men and women rushed by like animals fleeing crazed butchers at their heels. He had hoped the chaos had not spread so far. For all he knew, the Chalice and Ammathor both were beset by the desperate madness of the night.
“Hya,” he asked, “which way do we go?”
“Left out of the front door and down Wine Street,” she said, shaking her head in disgust at the sight of so much wanton carnage.
“Against the flow,” Kian said, shaking his head. “We need horses, but without those …” He glanced around to Hazad.
Hazad rolled his eyes. “I will lead. The rest of you just make sure no one pokes my backside.”
All moved to the door facing Wine street and gathered behind the big man, Kian and Azuri placing Hya and Ellonlef between them and Hazad. Hazad looked back, received Kian’s nod and, with a bearish roar, kicked the boarded door, sending it and its splintered frame soaring into the street. In the general panic, few runners so much as glanced their way.
Then they were out, running into a maelstrom of wind and snow, screams, blood, fear, and raging fire. Hazad was a ram before them, battering aside anyone who came too close. The rest followed in a narrow cone bristling with sharp blades. Hazad halted them as a handful of howling riders charged past on lathered horses, their swords and cudgels falling at will. Their victims, old and young, rolled through the deepening snow, leaving trails of blood.
A battle cry turned the murderers, and a dozen mounted House Guard charged them. Outnumbered, they wheeled their mounts and galloped away. The guardsmen surged after, so intent on their prey that they did not see their true targets standing not twenty paces distant.
Hazad set off again, going this way or that under Hya’s guidance. Every turn revealed sprawled, bloody corpses and innumerable wounded littering streets and alleys. A screeching trull was assaulted by a pair of crazed brutes, while not three paces away one of her companions indifferently rifled through the pockets of a dead man. Farther off, a gathering of urchins was busy trying to break into a closed shop, even as another group was using torches to set afire whatever they could, apparently just to watch it burn. Mostly, however, people who could ran. Everywhere was madness, chaos, fury and terror.
“These people deserve Varis,” Kian growled, even as he broke from the group to strike off the arm of a bloated wretch of a man dragging a squalling naked girl of no more than ten years into an alley.
His pain muted by shock and wine, the man reeled, his stump pouring scarlet. His mouth yawned wide as if to protest, but Kian gave him neither a hearing nor mercy, and rammed his steel into the man’s filthy guts. As the brute sank to his knees, his one hand failing to hold back the roping spill of his innards, Kian searched for the girl. She was already gone, fled into the night. He gave a brief and silent prayer for her safety. Of the man who had been intent on raping her, he left him moaning in the snow. For him, Kian prayed that the bastard would suffer through the whole night before death stole him away.