16
Dorian,” Jenine said, “I think you should come look at this.”
He stepped to the window and looked out over Khaliras. Marching into the city were twenty thousand soldiers, two thousand horse, and two hundred meisters. Dorian’s little brother Paerik had returned from the Freeze. Serfs were piling out of the way of a group of horsemen who had advanced before the army. Dorian didn’t have to see the banners to know it had to be Paerik himself.
Dorian and Jenine ran down the stairs two at a time, winding down and down to the base of the TygreTower. The grim cats favored him with their fanged smiles, mocking him. There was still time. If they could get to the front gate, they could cross Luxbridge a few minutes before Paerik arrived.
As always, the slaves’ tunnels were dark. In the distance, figures clashed with sword and spell, but Dorian was able to take them around the worst of the fray. He could See his half-brothers from a great distance.
The path they were forced to take took them down a rough hewn stone tunnel past the Khalirium, where the goddess resided. The very stone down here stank of vir. Dorian rounded a corner a mere hundred paces from the castle’s front gate and found himself staring at the back of an aetheling. Usually, he would have Seen the young man, but the proximity of the Khalirium confused him. He froze. Jenine yanked him back into the rough tunnel.
“Khali’s not here!” the aetheling said.
Someone else cursed. “Moburu really took her to Cenaria? Damn him. He really does think he’s the High King.”
“So much for seizing Khali. What do we do now?” the first asked.
Khali was still in Cenaria? No wonder it didn’t feel quite as oppressive down here as Dorian remembered.
“We gotta join Draef. If we help him stop Paerik at the bridge, he might let us live. Paerik or Tavi will kill us no matter what.”
Dorian and Jenine scooted back into the tunnel as quickly and as quietly as they could, but it was almost fifty paces before it intersected with another hallway. No way they could run that far without the aethelings hearing or seeing them. As soon as they found a large cavity in the rough wall, Dorian pushed Jenine into it and then pressed himself as close as he could, but his thin sleeve caught on the stone and tore.
One of the aethelings stepped into the tunnel and raised his staff. A flame blazed up on it, illuminating the hall and his face. He was perhaps fourteen, as was the youth beside him. Both were short and slender and homely, bearing little of their father’s robust good looks, and only a small portion of his power.
I can take them. Even with southern magic, Dorian was stronger than they were. But he didn’t want it to come to that. Come on, turn. Turn.
If they turned, Dorian could take a shortcut and beat them to Luxbridge. With the advantage of surprise and with Khali hundreds of miles away, he could surely take this Draef and cross Luxbridge. Everything was so close he could taste it. Had not the God favored him already by holding off the snows?
Lord, please . . .
“I swear I heard something,” one of the boys said.
“We don’t have time for this, Vic,” the other said.
But Vic strode forward, his staff held high. He came within ten paces and paused. Dorian readied himself.
Hold, a quiet voice said, cutting through the jumble of Dorian’s thoughts. Take the chutes.
For a moment, Dorian believed it was the voice of the God. He could remember the exact positions the levers required. Dorian could easily overcome two meisters who weren’t expecting him. From there, he and Jenine could climb out—there had to be a stair out for the meisters. Of course, he’d already thought about it for himself, but not for Jenine. The thought of riding a sewage chute down the-God-only-knew how many feet in the close darkness with the stench all around was horrible enough for him, and he’d been working human waste.
Jenine would think he was a coward, running away from fourteen-year-old boys. Maybe she wouldn’t come with him at all. Maybe she would come, but despise him afterward. What kind of man makes the woman he loves crawl through shit?
Vic stepped closer. Five paces away now. Dorian was frozen, one eye exposed. Surely Vic would see them. He had to! And if Dorian didn’t raise some defense, Vic would murder them where they stood. But if he did raise a defense, Vic would sense it. Either way was a decision.
It wasn’t the voice of the God. It was the voice of fear. I can take them.
Dorian stepped out of the crevice and lashed out at Vic with fire missiles.
He recognized his mistake the moment the missiles diverted and flew down the tunnel toward Vic’s brother. The boys were twins. Fraternal twins or Dorian would have recognized it at once. Twins could make a weave to protect each other at the expense of protecting themselves. That defense, if given fully, was far stronger than a meister could give himself.
The counterstrike came from Vic, much stronger than he should have been capable of. It was a hammerfist, a spinning blue cone that in his youthful enthusiasm Vic had actually embellished to look like a flaming fist. Rather than dodge it, Dorian had to stop it completely to make sure it didn’t kill Jenine behind him. Another fist came a second later from Vic’s twin, rattling stones down from the low ceiling of the tunnel. Dorian blocked it, too, suddenly aware of how much magic he’d used today. He was getting exhausted.
With fingers of magic, he reached beneath Vic’s shield and twisted it onto himself. It surprised the boy so much that he abandoned his next attack. Down the hall, his twin did not. His next hammerfist was whipped in a tight circle by the shield that was now protecting Dorian, and arced into Vic instead. It crushed his body flat against the tunnel wall.
Dorian flung a single fire missile down the hall. With Vic dead, the twin was now unshielded, and the fire missile pierced his chest. He grunted an { Here d fell.
Picking up Vic’s staff—the damn thing was an amplifiae, it was what had made the aetheling’s blows more powerful than they ought to have been—Dorian pulled Jenine down the hall. They could still make it to the bridge. It was close now. The last hallway was clear, and though the mighty gate was closed, the sally port opened from the inside.
Almost there!
With a boom, the mighty double gates were flung open. The rancid stench of vir washed over Dorian and Jenine. Four young men stood before them, their skin awash with the knotted dark tattoo-like vir. They were ready; they’d sensed Dorian coming.
Dorian threw up a hurried shield, as thick as he could manage with the rest of his Talent, and turned to flee. The damned amplifiae didn’t help at all; it was attuned to vir. In rapid succession, the shield absorbed a hammerfist, eight fire missiles, the staccato jabs of a needler, and the diffuse flame called a dragon tongue, meant to finish an opponent after his shields were down. But Dorian’s shields weren’t down, he could survive another wave so long as none of them dared a pit wyrm.
“Draef!” a young man called out triumphantly from behind Dorian. It was Tavi, with three of his own aethelings, blocking the hall’s other exit. The first group stopped attacking Dorian instantly.
Dorian looked from one camp to the other, and they looked at him. He and Jenine were trapped between them. “Hold!” Dorian shouted. “I am Dorian Ursuul, the Son-That-Was. I know they expunged my name from the rec-ords, but I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors. I’m real, and you can’t afford to attack me.”
Tavi spat. “You’re not even a meister.”
“Why?” Draef asked at the same time.
“Even if I were only a magus, I won’t go down easily. If either of you attack me, you’ll leave yourselves open to be attacked by the other. But I am an Ursuul of the twelfth shu’ra.” Just a touch, just a touch. He could manage that much and still not surrender to the vir.
Dorian reached down, and the vir rushed from the depths like a leviathan and rode the surface of his skin in great knots that obscured almost all of his skin. Quickly, he pushed it back.
The aethelings, all of them sixteen or seventeen years old at most, looked at him with awe. Several of the boys standing with Tavi looked on the verge of bolting.
“An illusion!” Tavi shouted, hysteria edging his voice.
“An illusion that smells?” Draef asked contemptuously. Yes, Draef is the first of this seed class. Tavi’s the pretender. “What do you want?” Draef asked.
“Just to leave. I’ll go, and then you can slaughter each other to your heart’s content.” As he addressed Draef, Dorian let his eyes go to the staff amplifiae he carried. He hadn’t used the aetheling’s hand speech in years, but with his body blocking Tavi’s view, he moved his hands to signal over the amplifiae—for you.
Draef’s eyes glittered. The amplifiae would be enough to turn the battle.
“Dorian,” Jenine whispered. She was still slouched unassumingly by his side, trying to look like a body servant, and Dorian wasn’t about to draw attention to her.
“Fair enough, get out,” Draef said. His fingers signaled when?
Through clenched teeth, Jenine whispered, “Tavi’s looking at me funny.”
Dorian was trying to remember the finger speech vocabulary he hadn’t used for so many years to answer Draef’s question. There it was, he remembered. When we get to the bridge.
Draef looked satisfied, though tension still stood stark on every feature, and Dorian and Jenine started walking. Only now did Dorian risk a look back to Tavi. He was afraid that the young man’s quick hatred might be roused even by meeting his eyes. Dorian had won, but with the overweening arrogance this aetheling possessed, it was best not to appear to take any joy in the victory.
The eight aethelings all had their eyes jumping from Dorian to their opponents on the opposite side of the hall. For them, any move Dorian made might be the distraction they or their enemy might take advantage of. And whether he made out of the hall alive or not, they would fight. Soon.
Out of the side of his mouth, Dorian said, “Remember to walk like a—” It was too late; Jenine had been drilled on proper comportment for far too long.
“She stays!” Tavi shouted suddenly and reached out with vir to grab Jenine.
The move set one of Draef’s boys off. He threw up a crackling shield reflexively.
That unleashed a magical firestorm. Dorian threw a shield around himself and Jenine. A fire missile made it through before the shield formed and scored his ribs. He hunched and almost lost the shield. Jenine grabbed him and held him upright.
The hall filled with magic, stroke and counterstroke, gouts of fire, lightning bolts that smote the rocks as shields diverted them, the rocks cascading from the ceiling turned into missiles themselves and hurled down the hall. Most of the attacks weren’t directed at Dorian and Jenine, but they were in the line of fire.
Dorian’s shield thinned, layer after layer snapping, melting, withering. The aethelings were all fresh. This battle would last long after Dorian’s shields finally gave way. He was going to die, and worse, he was going to let Jenine die. He had failed her.
No, not while I have breath. God, forgive me for what I’m about to do. It was no true prayer to beg forgiveness while choosing to sin—but he meant it fervently all the same.
Dorian reached to the vir. It came, joyfully.
Someone was screaming, a terrible scream compounded a hundred times by the vir to shake every hall and tunnel of the Citadel. Dorian stood and flung his arms out. As they passed in front of him, he saw that his skin had totally disappeared beneath the all-absorbing, wriggling blackness. Nor did the vir stop at the bounds of his body. They lashed out from his arms—out farther and farther, like great wings—and came down on either side, barely registering the aethelings’ last desperate attacks.
He felt the boys crunch beneath those mighty wings like beetles popping under his boot. Their shields broke like shells and the softness within was ground to gory smears on the rock.
The vir sang power and hatred and strength. It is vile, and I love it.
He stopped screaming, and it was long seconds before the sound stopped echoing back from the Citadel’s halls. Dorian quieted the vir from his skin with effort. “Are you all right?”
Jenine’s big, beautiful eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them. She tried to speak, couldn’t, and nodded instead.
“I’m sorry,” Dorian said. “It was that or die. We’re almost there.”
But as they stepped through the now-smoking gate, Dorian saw that he was wrong. Halfway across the glowing spans of Luxbridge was a man in a majestic white ermine cloak like Garoth Ursuul had worn. He wore the gold chains of a Godking around his neck and vir swam on his skin.
Dorian’s brother Paerik Ursuul had come to claim his throne, and blocking the bridge with him stood six full Vürdmeisters.