Chapter Nineteen
Sprays of flowers line the corridor, with hand-made trinkets and effigies and arrangements of votives, melted down to hardened puddles of wax on the floor. A spry little housemaid curtsies past the armed sentries and leaves her small offering at the King’s chamber, a scented wreath that she pins to the middle of the ornate wooden door. She lingers for a moment, hoping to feel some wisp of his great presence as he communes with the forces of the Beyond.
He has not left his chamber in days. He lies in trance-like repose, overseeing from vast distances the safety of his men in the field and beseeching a higher authority to shine a favorsome light upon their victory—or so his followers have been told. None would know with certainty, for they have not seen him since the Sons of the Temple left on their journey to some faraway city days ago.
In truth, he sits quietly before the fire. Scattered about him are the accumulated treasures of his ventures—decayed mementos from a bygone era, frail writings he has perused a thousand times.
He beseeches nothing.
Offers no cosmic protections.
Lingering doubt makes ravenous consumption of his mind. To stand is agony. To eat is torture. Lustful vulgarities offer no pleasure. To live as a man is anguish, and he wonders how any of the others tolerate it. He tries to imagine the glory he will feel standing atop a mountain of ancient ways, when the lore of Alexandria is brought back to the Temple and bestowed upon him—yet some mental pestilence still worms its way through his brain. He settles back, with his relics spread across his lap, and watches the flames lick the edges of his sandstone mantle, wondering if perhaps he has made a horrific mistake.
A scuffling in the corridor rouses him ever so slightly. A woman’s voice calls to him through the door.
Ezbeth.
She argues with the sentries, and more voices join the fray. Dread seizes his heart, fearing that they’ve realized his shortcomings and come at last to lock him away in the pit of his own devising.
A single knock clicks off the redwood door and a struggle ensues.
Arana steps numbly to the door and opens it.
“There you are,” she seethes. She is in the grips of the sentries, her loose gown hanging amiss from her bony old figure.
A bevy of onlookers stands gathered on both sides, taking shy steps backwards as their King moves into the corridor. The sentries offer quick apologies and Arana waves them away and squares himself against Ezbeth.
“What do you want?”
“We have come to ask that you release them.”
Arana settles on the small alliance and they wilt under his gaze. Old Karus is in the back, darting his eyes to the ground, with several housemaids, tears welling up, and two of his own warriors. Eriem bites his lip and swallows hard.
“She set you to this?” he asks them. “You follow her now?”
They offer no reply.
“They agree with me,” says Ezbeth.
Their sadness bites at him, and for a fleeting moment he nearly concedes. He longs to put everything back just the way it was and continue on as before, happily loved and cherished. Ten dissenters, he counts, and wonders how many more are afraid to show their faces. Strangely, his love for them has not faltered—even now he is staggered by the purity of it. Whether they requite or not has become irrelevant in these late days, and if fear should be mingled with their love’s return, then the needful sacrifice must be paid. It is the cost of tranquility.
“What you’ve done is cruel. They don’t deserve this. Please. Release them.”
“No,” he says by rote.
“Your father would be ashamed of you.”
Arana cinches up the loose folds of her gown and thrusts her back against the stone wall, hard enough to bruise the hard bone of her skull.
“My father’s whore,” he breathes into her ear. “That’s all you ever were. You have no right.”
“Arana—”
He presses his thumbs into the hard ribbing of her throat and her eyes flutter wide open, hazel and bloodshot, with the faintest specks of cerulean blue around the irises.
Infinite shame befalls Karus as he watches and does nothing.
“If you love them,” he tells her, “if your loyalty is with them, and not the Temple, then you can die with them.”
He releases her and she keels to the ground, grasping her throat. He motions to the sentries and they brace her up gently and take her away.
“My offer stands,” he tells her brittle alliance. “Would anyone else like to join her?”
Karus hobbles back and the housemaids turn and scurry down the hall.
One steps forward.
“I’ll go,” says Eriem.
“Here,” says Hargrove, “let me hand it up to you.”
Jack reaches down, grabs the scope, and lays it gently off to the side, then offers his hand back to Hargrove. He grips it and pulls himself onto the rock ledge, his hands shaking slightly.
“Getting old,” he says.
Sajiress and Denit have already moved ahead, perching on a thin trail that leads to the top of the rise. Jack slings the case over his shoulder and claws his way up the densely grown path, Hargrove following after, taking his time and picking footholds carefully. When the grade flattens, they crawl prone on the ground through the bushes and weeds, looking for a clearing.
“Ellah,” says Sajiress, flagging down the others.
They shimmy over to the alcove he’s found and nestle in beside him. The rear corner of the Temple juts out from the low hill where the amphitheatre lay, still hazy in the morning fog.
Hargrove’s eyes light up, lost in the bizarre beauty of it. He sees his brother in every line and detail.
“All right,” he sighs, “let’s see what we got here.”
He takes the case from Jack and unscrews the end cap and withdraws his telescope. Denit makes a canopy of low-hanging branches to shield the reflection, then Hargrove hunches down and lines up his sight. Through the circular lens, he sees simple folk muddling about the grounds, coming and going through the Temple’s broad door. He scans past the edge of the reflecting pool, off toward the ruins, and narrows on the line of warriors guarding the perimeter.
“Here,” he says, and passes it off to Sajiress, then draws from his jacket the folded map that Jack drew. He compares the map’s features to the landscape surrounding them and finds it accurate. “Arana lives at the top?”
“Yeah, up there.”
“That’s the chimney you used?”
“The one on the corner. You can’t see it from here.”
“Ah. They’ll have it blocked off by now, anyway, if they’re smart.” Hargrove drums his fingers and traces his eyes across the crooks and lines, deep in study, jotting down notes and symbols on the map. “Is there a quick way to get down into that valley?”
“Have to hike the hill behind those homes over there.”
“Mmm. Not much cover.”
“It’ll be easier at night,” says Denit.
“Yeah, I think so. We’ll set up down there, down in the rubble of that old town. You remember what we talked about, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“We can draw them out, and we can get you in, to a certain point… and then it’s up to you. You’re the only one that knows his way around in there.”
Jack nods. He looks down at his hands and finds them trembling.
“We’ll go at sundown,” Hargrove says finally. “Let’s get ready.”
They hike down the small hill and head back to their camp. Denit and Hargrove break off with the men from the outpost and begin dividing up the black powder from Denit’s saddlebag into polite little mounds on the surface of a flat rock. Jack sits on the ground with Sajiress, circled around by the fighters from his tribe, and he proceeds to lay out the plan in miniature using found objects and lines drawn in the dirt, looking like they’re playing out some minor children’s game for amusement. One of the tribesmen mechanically strops his blade against a stretch of leather, diligently watching the little game of chance take shape. Jack moves their tiny rocks with cold deliberation, his heart pounding.
Sajiress takes in the crude depiction of their strategy, then looks at Jack and points to his head. “Eyah.”
In Jack’s mind he sees spirit eyes, and he scolds himself for ever cowering in their presence. He has known the truth throughout, only lost sight of it for a time. These are not supernatural wraiths he will face, manifesting from thin air—they are mortal men who bleed and die when shot through the heart. Jack has known this since the age of twelve.
The tribesman places the freshly sharpened blade in his hand, the one Lia had given them, and he rises and moves down to the water’s edge. Sajiress and several of his men follow suit. They stand in a line looking out at the peaceful bay. Jack scoops his hand down into the water and splashes it on his head, then works his fingers through his wet brown hair and begins to saw off great clumps of it with the knife. When the length of it is trimmed, he drags the blade across his scalp and pares off the stubble, then turns to Sajiress and hands the knife to him. Sajiress kneels over and studies his shadow on the ground. His head is so abundant with hair that he hardly knows where to begin.
Lia gallops alongside Marikez, a long metal-tipped spear braced against her saddle. She looks longingly at the river, remembering the times she spent there as a child, when her family and close neighbors would journey away from the village and camp out under the stars.
“Are you okay?” asks Marikez.
“I’m fine. Just thinking. My old home is near here.”
“The home you lost?”
“It’s just over that hill, in the forest.”
Marikez looks to the west, where the redwood forest looms nobly, rising out of the foothills like a drove of aging sentinels.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“You miss it?”
“Every day.”
“I can’t imagine…”
“I hope you never have to.”
“It will happen. We’ll lose our home someday, too. Though for different reasons.”
“Why?”
“Our river is dying. Without good trade, we wouldn’t eat. We have two more good decades, maybe three. Probably we should have moved long ago, but we have very old roots there. My mother, Maya, she was a good woman, but stubborn. Refused to give it up, even the years when our water ran dry.”
“Where will you go?”
“This valley doesn’t seem such a bad place. Maybe here. I don’t know, really. It’s up to our people.”
They trek through the lonely cities along the bank, where flocks of birds use the tilting gridiron as enormous aviaries, their squawks and chirps echoing through the hollow of the boulevard upon which they ride. Marikez turns his attention to a strong-looking woman named Rosa, planning out their next stop. Lia rides forward and takes the lead. The wind whips braids of hair across her face as her horse beats the path ahead.
The trail slips away from the river and cuts left, through a cavernous runway of sinking skyscrapers. She looks back at the resilient people who’ve joined her cause, feeling a heavy responsibility for each of their lives.
Ahead, a metal framework lay sprawled across the roadway like the fossilized spine of some prehistoric leviathan. They slow their progress and start single file up the easiest path over the blockage. As Lia’s horse minces down the other side, a scream rings out behind her.
She canters ahead and turns her horse, and back across the fallen wreckage one of Marikez’s men slips off his mount with an arrow in his chest. Marikez and Rosa bound off the rubble next to her, then wheel around to see the rest of their caravan bunching up at the mouth of the slender passage.
“Take cover,” shouts Marikez.
More arrows zip through the air. One punches into the ground at the feet of Lia’s horse and it rears back frantically and she fights to settle it.
“Over there,” she cries, and bolts across the roadway toward the slanted opening at the foot of a great structure. She ducks beneath the fallen pillars and shelters inside, Marikez and Rosa right behind her. Outside there is another scream and the commotion stops suddenly. Marikez drops off his horse and creeps toward the opening, then risks a look back toward his riders. Three lay dead a ways down the road and the others are absent from view. He draws his bow and trains it along the black window openings, waiting for motion or a sign from their attackers. The horses snort and shuffle into a corner, seeking a way out.
The street falls deadly quiet. Lia grips her spear with both hands and crouches forward with Rosa.
“Expecting us,” says Rosa.
She takes her bow next to Marikez and aims down the opposite way.
Time passes.
Sweat dampens them and their arms begin to shiver on their bows.
“Here they come,” says Marikez simply.
He lights off an arrow and slips another against the bowstring. Rosa steps out from cover and fires a quick shot, then ducks back as a hail of arrows whizzes past.
“Come on,” says Marikez, “they’ve seen us.”
They press farther back into the dreary recesses of the abandoned lobby, a virtual terrarium, overrun with weeds and creeping kudzu. Marikez ducks behind a large column and Lia finds cover with Rosa behind a long marble counter. They sit still and wait.
After an agonizing minute of silence, Lia crawls on the ground and peers around the corner. Two of them stand in the center of the space, slinking toward her. She fetches a rock and chips it off a far column, then skirts around the other side of the counter with Rosa.
The warriors split off to the edges of the room. Rosa rises slowly and peels off an arrow, skewering one through the neck. As she lines up another, the second man rushes her. Marikez lofts a shot and it goes wide, just missing him. Rosa stumbles backwards and the warrior raises his blade. Lia slides onto the surface of the cracked marble, levers herself to her feet, and pushes off the edge of the counter with her good leg, throwing herself through the air with her spear thrust forward. The tip sinks in just below his shoulder blade and they tumble to the ground. Lia keeps her grip and shoves the spear tip deeper. He drops his machete from his lamed arm and tries to snatch it back with the other, and she withdraws the bloody spear and plunges it down again, running it through his belly with sickeningly little resistance. He shudders and locks eyes with her.
She watches him die. He was Calyn’s boy.
Marikez is back at the opening, scanning the street, and Lia and Rosa rush to his side. A one-armed man on horseback bursts past them, racing down the street, leading his small army over the twisted metal obstruction. Lia knows the horse at once and hot anger flushes through her, seeing the monster that now rides Balazir. Rosa raises back her bow and Marikez stills her.
When the Nezra warriors have surmounted the rubble-strewn pass, the counter-attack begins. They hear it more than see it, and the uproar soon reaches a fever-pitch.
“Now,” says Marikez, launching from the opening and sprinting toward the mangled pile that divides the roadway. He clambers up and surveys the battle. His fighters, some mounted, some on foot, engage the bloody warriors as they descend the tight passage. Marikez and Rosa start firing on them. Lia huddles behind, tightening her fingers with nervous tension. The Nezra scatter wild, abandoning their horses and diving for cover.
Rosa lets go another shot, then bucks forward as an arrow tears through a chunk of her thigh. Lia spins and sees two warriors stealing away behind a concrete wall. She calls to Marikez, then works herself down to street level and hides in a vine-covered niche. Rosa leans back against the rusted iron beams, ripping her robe and tying a quick tourniquet around her leg while Marikez covers her.
One of the warriors steps out and lobs a shot, then shirks back. Marikez fires and misses. When the warrior steps out a second time, Marikez is ready and his arrow lodges in the man’s ribs. He stumbles back and falls, and two more arrows follow in quick succession, striking his leg and back.
Across the barricade, a stillness has settled, both sides shielding themselves from view. Unseen archers fire on Rosa and Marikez. They stumble over the beams and lurch down the other side and run toward shelter.
Lia reaches to her side and withdraws the knife she took from Marikez’s armory, short-bladed with braided leather around the handle. She pushes her head through the vines then swiftly pulls it back. A warrior treads fast along the outer wall. As he passes the shadowed niche, Lia swings her arm through the tangle of vines and runs her knife into the soft hollow of his chin. He seizes onto her arm and bucks to the ground, and she keeps pushing until she sees the blade rise between his teeth and puncture the roof of his mouth, and further still until his eyes flicker out and his body jitters to a stop.
She scampers out and runs to join Marikez, picking her way over the pile. An arrow thumps off the trunk of a sapling growing out the mound, and Lia rolls to her side and nestles herself amidst the flaking metal beams. She crawls under the snarled mass of junk and edges closer to the other side of the street. Bodies are strewn haphazardly, some still moving. Beyond that, it is vacant.
A short distance separates her from Marikez’s hideout. She takes a deep breath and rushes across, loping awkwardly on her wounded knee. An arrow strikes neatly in the ground before her and she flinches back. Marikez steps out and shoots toward the source of the attack, giving her enough time to cover the distance and join them under the fallen wall. A smattering of arrows chocks off the concrete.
The outnumbered Nezra have vanished. Birds chirp dulcetly from the slanted rafters of the slowly listing buildings. Marikez looks from window to window, searching out their archers. He sees one on the forward corner, across the street.
“I have to find the others. Rosa, can you shoot?”
She nods. Lia takes her hand and pulls her toward the edge of the wall, then hands her the bow.
“Watch there,” he says, pointing up toward the corner, then he steps out and hoists himself atop the wall and runs down the other side.
He dives in an open storefront and scans around. A whispered call issues from the darkness and five of his men step forward. He beckons them over and motions across the street.
“There,” he says, “on the second level.”
“Jivann is there,” says the man to his side. “On the ground.”
Marikez stares into the shadows, then risks a call.
“Jivann.”
A lean young man shies his head out and locks eyes with him across the boulevard. Marikez points to the floor above him and Jivann nods and disappears through the interior of the building.
They stiffen their backs and watch the window. Out of the blackness, a body hurtles through and crashes to the ground.
“Quick,” hisses Marikez, tearing out onto the street.
They careen around the corner, drawing a weakening barrage of arrows, and slip into the adjacent structure. Three young warriors stand flat against the wall, out of arrows, gripping their machetes with sinewy arms. One slashes at Marikez, the blade grazing along his arm. He parries and beats the blade away, then lunges in for his own attack. The warrior counters with a flash of swordplay and the clanging of metal on metal erupts in the confined space, Marikez beating his sword down repeatedly on his stiff-armed opponent, driving the man’s blade lower and lower until Marikez lands a blow to his forehead and cracks a seam into his skull. He falls limp, and Marikez spins to his back and sees two fallen Nezra, draining blood into the dry ground. One of his own lies next to them, with a rough slit open at the base of his sternum.
Marikez steps to the open frontage. Quiet. He signals and they bolt around to the next building, nearly collapsed, with no point of entry. They keep moving down the way, expecting a hail of arrows that does not come.
“Is that all?”
Pounding hooves drone louder and Taket flashes past in a blur, making straight for Lia’s little hideaway. He rides with a knife between his teeth, gripping the reins taut with his only hand.
Marikez drops his blade and unfastens his bow, fumbling for an arrow. Two of his men flank him and loft an arrow apiece, both missing. Marikez finally gets off his shot and it goes off-kilter, wobbling through the air and bouncing off Taket’s back.
Lia perches behind Rosa and feeds her an arrow. Taket rumbles toward them, releasing the reins and gripping the knife out of his clenched teeth. He leaps onto the wall and jolts toward Rosa and she pierces him in the hip joint with a quick arrowshot and he falters and skids to a halt. Lia reels backwards as he swings his blade through the air, prone on the ground and shoving forward with his legs, missing her face by a hair’s breadth. Rosa draws on him, narrowing in for the kill.
“Hold,” shouts Marikez from down the way. “Don’t kill him.”
They skulk back along the fallen trusses and look around at the body-strewn street. Marikez waits, watching for more warriors, then slowly steps out and makes his way toward them, his men countering behind, sweeping their bows across the rows of jagged window openings.
“I want to see what he knows,” says Marikez, drawing near.
They stand in a loose semi-circle around the struggling Taket. He sits up, facing them, maimed, and with only his knife to defend himself. He leers at Lia with pure contempt in his eyes, then raises his blade and opens a thin red slash along his throat.
Marikez throws up his hands, then turns sorrowfully to take stock of his injured and dead. Rosa limps down the street, joining the others, and they move from one recess to another, collecting the fallen arrows and rounding up the horses.
Lia steps gingerly away, patting her hands on her hips. “Balazir,” she calls out sweetly.
He comes to her at once.
Night falls on the Temple. Solemn commoners retire early to their cottages, awaiting good tidings from the field. Long days these have been, anxious for their brave Sons to return. One by one, their candles snuffed, the humble little cottages blink out and join the peaceful darkness and the provinces fall to slumber.
Alone on the high terrace, Arana watches over them. He glimpses the quarry road, winding off to the north, where a younger Arana once walked with his father to see the unearthing of the great stones that would become his Temple. Simpler days, to be sure, but he can no longer remember if they were better. He tilts his mug and drinks bitter wine.
A golden aurora lights up behind him and he turns starkly to the south.
The mug slips from his hands and shatters on the terrace floor.
Down in the valley, the ruins burst alive with Fire.
Soot-black and crouching, Jack watches from the trees above the provinces as the black powder charges light the liquor-wet tinder ablaze, erupting in a series of loud cracks that streak across the base of the cliff and combust in a wall of flames. The fires coalesce and grow stronger as the ocean wind feeds them. It burns slowly up the steep hill and flashes out through the decrepit ruins, where it lights dry vines like fuses and spreads warmly through the haunted streets, spewing out a column of smoke that glows amber in the night.
It takes long moments for the terror to set in.
The men who line the Temple’s perimeter stagger backwards hypnotically, enraptured by the blaze, expecting a fuller onslaught to ignite them where they stand, then they break for the Temple, beating their legs faster as they near the grand staircase.
A scream sirens from the provinces, drawing out sleepy neighbors from their beds, and havoc ensues. They collect their families and stream from their cottages, headlong toward the refuge of the Temple.
Jack holds his breath steady and watches the scores of people cross the grounds, running for their lives. Temple children shriek across the bridgeways toward the main structure. Sajiress and his men hold up next to him, black and sinister in the limbs of the surrounding trees.
The crowd rushes past the amphitheatre, shoving their way in through the wide entrance, armed men ushering them in. When the last have passed, they roll shut the heavy door and batten it down.
The riot ceases and the blaze roars low in the valley. Inside they will be congregating in the foyer, the warriors branching off to man the narrow windows with their bows. Just like the drills Jack ran in training.
Numb to the core, he shifts his weight on the crooked limb. Thick smoke from the valley makes the air acrid and bitter, hazing over the grounds and dampening his view. He watches the door. Soon they will emerge, and there will be no turning back when they do.
Three men, led by Denit, arc through the cluster of cottages and launch a volley of arrows at the Temple’s east tower, then shirk back into the forest, drawing fire.
The voice is telling Jack not to move. The voice tells him death awaits. He tries to block it out and it speaks back louder, without form or syntax. He thinks about precious Lia, her silly laugh and her crooked smile, and the voice presses deeper and threatens to unwind him. A quiver spasms his hand and he tightens it to a fist. He turns to his left—Sajiress is looking at him, full of concern. Back to the door, wishing both for it to open and stay closed, his mind a cyclone of conflicting thoughts.
It opens.
Thirty men slip through, hastily cloaked with soot, and break for the line of cottages. They meld into the smoky shadows and vanish.
There is a clash down below and Jack doesn’t know if they lost one of their own or scored a kill. He stares into the shadows and sees something move. He waits for the form to emerge, sees the banded strap of weapons slung over its shoulder, and fires down upon it. The arrow strikes high on his left shoulder and the warrior falls. He draws back slickly and finishes him.
An arrow flies wild into the trees. They are shooting back. Jack slides down to another limb and looks behind him and spots two more, harboring around a cottage wall. He lines up a shot and lets it go as the forward warrior creeps out. It misses and thunks firmly into the redwood siding. They shoot back toward Jack’s location and he flattens himself on the limb, nearly dropping his bow, arrows splitting into the bark below him. From the next tree over, Sajiress checks one of the warriors in the neck with a near-perfect shot and his partner withdraws.
Sounds of violence fill the woods. Jack clutches onto the limb and slides down, hanging with his fingers laced, then drops to the ground and presses his back against the trunk of the tree. Sajiress pads to the ground beside him, and soon the rest of his men.
Sajiress nods up the wooded hillside and they jog toward the sound of painful cries. They find one of their tribesmen twisting on the ground with an arrow in his spine. Sajiress places his hand on the back of his neck and whispers something to him, then lights off deeper into the woods. An arrow hisses by Jack’s head and he dives to the ground—the others scatter for cover.
Jack elbows forward into the underbrush and situates a fresh arrow, one of his last. A dry sprig snaps behind him and as he pivots, he sees a flash of metal catch the dim light. The warrior barrels toward him. Jack fires and the shadowy form swerves, then pounces and chops his blade down. In a furious blur Jack drops the bow and sweeps his own blade out of its sheath and they clash into the scrub, the warrior’s momentum throwing him back. Jack pushes with all his might, locked up in a stalemate.
“Jack…” the man whispers hoarsely, and bears down with newfound vigor to kill him.
His arms strain to fend him off. He brings his knee up and glances it off the man’s side to little effect—the warrior throws his leg over Jack’s midsection to pin him, and Jack lets out a ragged choke as the air is squeezed out of him, their blades crisscrossed between their coal black faces.
He shoulders his elbow forward, edging their blades off to the side, and tries to gain leverage. One of Sajiress’s men runs to help him and is shot down mid-sprint. Jack bucks on the ground to shake the warrior loose, and affords himself a narrow gap to slip through. Their blades screech edge to edge as Jack rolls to the side, and he springs to his feet and swings, cutting into his arm. The warrior rebounds and raises his machete and Jack slices across his face, and again into the back of his neck as he falls.
Across the way, Sajiress spies out the shooter’s roost and circles around behind. With quiet grace, Sajiress runs his sword into the archer’s back and lets the body fall limply off his blade.
They hear behind them tentative footsteps and whirl around to see their own tribesmen step into the smoldering moonlight. Together, they perform a rough sweep of the surrounding woods, then drag the bodies of the fallen warriors back to the clearing and commence removing their weapons, boots, belts, and the cloths from around their waists, leaving them naked and dead on the dry brush floor.
They rush out of their own breeches and outfit themselves in their newly acquired apparel, fastening the cloths and draping the belts over their shoulders, and in a quick instant they stand decorated as the men they just killed.
Cold fear edges back into Jack’s mind as he stands circled around with the tribesmen, their white eyes wide and boring deep into each other. They abscond down to the cluster of cottages and wait in the darkness, surveying the grounds. The rear door of the Temple is boarded and shut. Jack fixates on it, frozen.
Sajiress places a hand on his back. “Jack… Go.”
There is no more voice and no more fear. Only the ground and his feet. Each step carries their small coalition closer to the amphitheatre, closer to the Temple door
“Is it them?”
“I can’t tell from here,” says Hargrove, his voice sick with worry.
He sits mounted on his horse, far back from the Temple, with his scope held out long before him. Through the eyepiece he watches the ink-black figures sprint across the grounds, cutting through the thick smokescreen that now blankets everything, the orange glow dying low as the fire burns itself out through the spent valley.
As the band of men draws near the amphitheatre, a crack opens along the heavy door by the stage.
A sentry steps through the narrow opening, waving them in. Sajiress lowers his head and charges. The sentry beckons them once more, oblivious, and Sajiress clutches his machete and jabs it into his stomach and rips the blade out roughly. He grabs the sentry’s arm and flings him out onto the sandstone walk, then rushes through the door with Jack and his men close behind.
The men inside flinch, stupefied by the shock of it. Sajiress and his brood descend upon them, drawing out their primitive blades with cold precision and ripping into their flesh before they have a chance to fire back. The old sentries scatter from their post, retreating down the corridor, and the black-sooted tribesmen give vicious pursuit. One hard old warrior reaches the bend in the corridor and shouts out for reinforcements. Jack sights him and lodges an arrow in his side and he screams out in agony.
Panicked voices ring through the Temple, emanating from the masses huddled in the foyer and echoing through the varied corridors. Above the frenzy, Jack can hear Nisaq’s deep voice thundering over the crowd, urging them to hold still and keep calm.
Sajiress strikes a final blow to the man he’s locked with and the melee is over in a flash. The rear corridor is strewn with the bodies of the door watch, some still alive and clutching themselves while the sandstone under their twisting forms darkens with broadening pools of red. The repercussions of terrified sobs from the foyer fill the sconcelit hall.
Sajiress helps one of his men to his feet then hustles over to Jack, an expectant light in his eyes.
“This way,” says Jack.
He runs toward the corner stairs, a tight formation of shadowy figures crouched behind him. A solitary warrior rounds the bend ahead of them, a young man of Jack’s age. They said their pledge together on the Temple apex while Arana gazed at them proudly. His eyes fly wide when he sees the counterfeit Sons barreling toward him, and he tensely withdraws his machete to strike. Jack hacks his blade down into the crook of his neck, carving a bloody V in his flesh.
They mount the stairs—curve after curve, up the winding spiral, past landings with empty corridors that recede away toward the darkened chambers where the Temple’s archers have stationed themselves. Thin shouts ring off the walls. They ascend further and hear footsteps clicking down the stairs ahead of them.
“Danaak,” hisses Sajiress, and throws his arms across the pass.
They flatten themselves against the walls of the landing, waiting for the source of the footsteps to appear. A bevy of the old and retired, drawn to the commotion. They look sad and almost comical in their warriors attire, and when they see Jack and the tribesmen they make no move to raise their weapons, mistaking them as their own. Sajiress moves on them and they backpedal, confusion spreading on their faces.
“What—”
He cuts one and their predicament dawns on them. Two of the eldest turn and bolt immediately back up the stairs, the rest stiffen up and bear their arms, severely outnumbered by the tribesmen.
“Run,” Jack tells them. “Lock yourselves in a room and don’t come out.”
“Jack?”
“Get out now or we’ll kill you. Run.”
The proud men wait for someone to break, and when one finally does the others follow suit, hightailing back up the way they came, then veering off the next landing and running toward safer confines.
They charge upwards.
Around the next corner, an ambush is awaiting them.
Sajiress falls, struck through the ribs with a shivering arrow. Jack loops an arm across his torso and drags him up the stairs.
“Enah,” he says, and pulls himself to his feet.
They scramble up the next flight and divert from the stairs, breaking off down a side hall, one level below the highest floor, underneath the kitchen. They kneel in an arc, facing the entry to the landing, their bows drawn, waiting for the warriors to show themselves. Raji drops his satchel to the ground and removes a tightly packed bundle with a powdered stem protruding from its side. He touches the stem to one of the torches mounted along the wall and crooks his arm back.
Six warriors tear up the stairs and emerge in the dark corridor. Jack and the others fire off quick shots, dropping the first two and stinging a third. Raji lofts his bundle and it bounces off the sandstone wall and rebounds into the staircase. The blast is deafening against the stone walls, and thick black smoke pours from the entrance.
They race away, several tribesmen running backwards with their bows still leveled at the stairway entrance. Sajiress reaches to his side and extracts the bloody arrow and pitches it to the floor, glossy wetness spreading over his charcoal skin. They slink past open doors where the archers are firing out the narrow windows onto the grounds, bundles of arrows stacked next to them.
Jack peers around the corner. Empty. They pad softly across the stone floor. Cool night air filters in from the open bridgeway, leading to his old dormitory. Jack is ready with a shot and he picks off the bridge sentry as they glide past. Up ahead, they are met with another staircase, leading to the entrance of the King’s rooms. An enormous portrait hangs at the top of the landing, and the tribesmen look quizzically at the bright sapphire eyes that twinkle down at them.
“Wait,” says Jack, and he kneels down on the stairs.
Distressed voices shout orders at the top of the rise. Jack creeps up like a spider and peers over the top step. Five warriors move slickly down one side of the L-shaped corridor, and an entire detachment stands guard outside Arana’s parlor.
“This is it,” he says. “The King.”
Sajiress nods and fixes his eyes on his men, ready to lead the charge.
“Anyone missing?” asks Hargrove, quick counting their heads. The last few men who laid the charges in the ruins only just shambled back over the slope to join them.
“This is everyone,” says Denit, stepping forward.
“Tyler up there on the hill spotted smoke from our camp. I need someone to ride back with me—this might be our friends from the south.”
Denit circles around and addresses them. “Landon, you’re with Hargrove. The rest of you, come with me.”
Hargrove passes his scope over to Denit, then joins up with the saddlemaker, Landon, and they gallop off toward the camp.
“The others are already inside,” says Denit. “When we get down there, if the shooting’s too heavy and we can’t get through, pull back to the grove behind the theatre. Otherwise, we’re riding straight to that door and we’re going to blow it open. Understand?”
Reserved nods from the men and they sally forward.
Holding fast on the lower landing, Raji doles out the contents of his satchel. He snatches up the tight bundles and passes them around, anxious to hear them crack. Sajiress takes a clutch of pitched arrows in his hand and the rest follow suit. A torch is passed around and they light their armaments ablaze. Raji holds the powdered stems of his bundles to the flames and passes two off to Jack.
They spark and sizzle in his hand. Time seems to slow, if only in his mind, and suddenly they are climbing. A blitz of warriors accelerates toward them from down the corridor and the King’s sentries draw out their blades. Raji throws his bundles against the redwood doors and scatters the detachment, suffocating smoke filling the air.
Jack steps into the corridor. Pitched arrows whiz past his head, dreamlike, and he winds back his arm and lobs his charges into the midst of the advancing warriors. They flinch at the fireballs spiraling toward them, falling to the ground with molten tar seeping into raw wounds, and Jack watches mesmerized as the charges explode in a burst of yellow light and black smoke. The warriors fall to the ground, pawing at their faces and screaming.
He runs.
More charges blast against the doors. Arrows fly through the thick cloak of roiling smoke and click off the sandstone walls. They flatten themselves against the walls of the corridor and fire off blindly in both directions. Arrowfire is coming in a constant barrage and the tribesmen are falling to the ground, stuck through with quilled shafts. Sajiress grabs Jack and jerks him roughly behind, shielding him, and pushes into the onslaught headlong. They reach the corner of the L-shaped corridor, just a few paces from the doors leading to the parlor.
Raji is shot through the leg. He crawls across the floor and fetches his satchel. He lights another charge and throws it into the warriors approaching through the swirl of fog to their rear, choking the corridor with more opaque smoke.
Jack and Sajiress hold up along the corner, straining to breathe. The King’s sentries are down the hall, fighting their way back to their posts. The remaining tribesmen flatten themselves in a line along the wall, awaiting their orders.
Sajiress grits his teeth and grimaces. “Sikelern King…”
Jack nods.
Sajiress launches himself around the corner with his men charging after. He rips one of the blown doors from its hinges and holds it before him like an enormous shield, and they press down the corridor toward the sentries, still firing heavily from down the way. The tribesmen shoot swiftly around the wooden barricade and advance with much difficulty.
Jack levels on the door, his heart pounding. He sprints across the hall and slips through the ruined doorway and bursts into the parlor, sweeping his machete around before him.
The parlor is hazy and sullen from the dwindling hearth—and it is empty. He courses along the wall, throwing chairs and tables out of his way. At the far end, he reaches the closed door to Arana’s bedchamber and kicks it roughly open. A frightened woman cowers on the opulent bedspread, clutching the sheets. Jack runs through, pulling back closet doors and peering into the darkened corners. Nothing.
Back in the parlor, he wheels around in frantic terror, searching for the man he came to kill.
He eyes the stairs.
He pumps his legs across the length of the chamber, and as he reaches the bottom step a fierce scream rings out from the corridor. Sajiress.
Jack bolts up the tight spiral, hitching to a stop before he reaches the top. He creeps up the last few steps and peeks over the top of the rise. Two archers are firing off toward the amphitheatre, with their backs to him. Standing at the far corner of the terrace is Arana, his arms folded tightly around him, his face stunned free of all emotion.
He takes quick stock of himself—he has no arrows, only his blade. He traces it before him slowly, rounding the last steps and cowering behind the divan. The archers are only three paces away—they’ll cut him down before he ever reaches the King. He peers at them through the smothering cloud and recognizes them. They’ve sparred together. Jack performs a quick calculation in his head, trying to remember which is the fleeter of the two. He will kill that one first.
He springs forward silently and drives the blade deep into the man’s back. He gurgles and threshes and Jack drives his boot into his spine and slips his blade out. The other archer startles back with his bow raised and lights off a frenzied shot. It misses by an inch and Jack swats the bow out of his hands with the machete. The voice that seemed fit to doom him earlier now guides him, and he listens to it, and it drives him forward, his blade blurred in the moonlit smoke, opening a stream of blood along his assailant’s throat.
“No!” Jack wheezes, lurching back toward the stairs where Arana just fled. He bounds down after, three steps at a time, and sees the finely-attired figure of his former King rush through to the parlor toward the door. The fighting has moved further down the corridor as the tribesmen advance, and Arana would have clear passage to the side stairs.
Jack streaks across the length of the parlor and throws himself in front of the door. Arana staggers backwards and flashes out blindly with his short knife, slicing a mean cut along Jack’s forearm as he tumbles to the floor. His arm webs over with blood and it makes his grip slippery on the hilt. Arana risks a move past him and Jack sweeps the blade through the air and drives him back, then pulls himself to his feet.
They stop in place and behold one another. Horror spreads across Arana’s face as he looks at Jack, smeared with fine soot and outfitted from the Temple’s armory, looking an exact replica of the men he has sent to massacre so many unnamed villages. Arana throws his knife to the ground and steps numbly backwards and falls against the sideboard, clutching at it with white knuckles.
“Jack…”
He slumps back, looking pathetic and defeated. “It’s not me, Jack… It was never me.”
Jack says nothing.
“They used me… They lied to me about everything.”
Blood leaks from Jack’s arm and makes him lightheaded. The glorious King is crying, staring into his eyes with such child-like innocence, so adept at begging sympathy. The innocence looks so real, so fresh and genuine. He remembers what Thomas had told him—a gentle way about him, signs of being a bright young boy. They stare across the parlor, transfixed, each seeing in the other some parcel of himself. With sickening dread, Jack realizes that he does not hate this man. He sees the loneliness in his eyes, the eyes of a child with a hopelessly broken and recast mind. The eyes of a victim. The machete in his hand feels heavy and his mind fills with thoughts of the guilt and troubled sleep he suffered at having killed Braylon and Feiyan, and the blood he only just spilled on the terrace. Blood loss clouds his mind, and the machete begins to lower.
Arana traces his hand along the sideboard, wrapping his fingers around something, then lunges forward and swings the new blade at Jack’s face.
The machete is so swift it appears invisible as it slices through the air and splits Arana’s knife hand to the base of his palm. He falls to the floor, clutching his mangled appendage back together, and Jack lands on top of his hinging body and presses him down flat and slides the blade against his throat.
“Jack…” gasps Arana, “what have I done?”
He bears down on the blade and whispers two words he never thought he would hear himself speak to this man.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says, and slashes his throat. His eyes are calm and placid as they gaze through their sooted camouflage, and they are the last thing Arana Nezra the Second ever sees.
Denit retreats back behind the amphitheatre with those that remain alive, and he stares bleakly at the Temple apex, fearing all to be lost. The arrowfire from the Temple’s narrow windows is too thick to press through, and he drops down off his horse and paces frenetically, trying to suss out their options.
“Trevor…”
“Here.
“Think we could run along top of the theatre and crawl down the far side?”
“Let’s try it.”
“Denit!”
“What?”
“Denit—they’re here.”
The thunder of hooves beats down the quarry road, and Denit turns to see Hargrove and Marikez leading the cavalry at breakneck speed toward the Temple.
The tribesmen have reached the extent of their advance. Footsteps thunder up the stairs from all directions as reinforcements arrive to defend their King. Sajiress lay sprawled across the floor, pierced through in several places. More bodies slumped against the walls. The burnt redwood door is spiked so thoroughly with arrowshafts it is ready to fall to pieces. They turn to run back toward the stairs, but more forces are blitzing toward the top.
Jack steps into the corridor, carrying the dead King in his arms, and the hail of arrowfire ceases abruptly. He steps over the fallen bodies and wends between the slack warriors like a phantom. They falter back and let him pass, the whole crush of them, regarding him like some supernatural thing, as if me might vaporize before their eyes and light back to the Beyond from whence he came.
He descends the stairs, blood leaking down his arm, his and Arana’s entwined. He is dead weight. Cold comfort. It means nothing to Jack, but he must do it, because they must see him dead.
Harried voices ricochet off the tapering interior of the sandstone foyer. Jack crosses the balcony. The Temple’s entire citizenry is huddled below, sobbing and clutching at one another. He steps to the rail and a hush falls over them as they behold the limp body of the man sworn to protect them from the Rain of Fire.
He lets the body roll from his arms. It spirals through the air with droplets of blood streaming along behind it like a comet’s tail, and it lands with a dull crack and a splash of red.
As if exerting a repulsive force it drives them back, a widening circle of clear sandstone, at the center of which lay the broken King.
Madness shatters the astounding calm.
Nisaq throws his hands high and shouts to pacify them, but he is overtaken by the wrenching and tearing crowd. Desperate to escape, they press forward against the door and throw its bar and burst through. The crush of people spills onto the stairs, with Nisaq there in the midst of it all, jittering on the ground as their feet pass over him, and the crowd screams from the Temple, bleating to the impassive skies their sorrowful pleas.
Jack stands at the balcony, feet firmly planted, and watches them run.
Marikez and Hargrove lead their charge against the endless stream of arrows bolting down from the Temple’s high windows. The Nezra are sharp marksmen, picking them off easily as they draw near. Marikez signals them to cut wide and ride toward the cottages for cover. As they gallop around the side of the Temple they see the flood of terrified people, hundreds of them, fanning out in wild directions across the grounds, their thinking minds lost and gone.
“Here!” calls Hargrove. “Back here, get out of their way!”
The battleworn group retreats to the narrow walkways between the cottages, lurking just out of the Temple’s range. Horrified families run back to their homes, shrieking as they see the horsemen rifling through the provinces. Some run ahead anyway, slamming their cottage doors and trembling in the darkness. A huge swath of them cuts away and arcs back toward the amphitheatre, darting away in a mad frenzy, unsure of where to find sanctuary, and the grounds are a complete jumble of running bodies.
Hargrove spurs his horse.
The riders burst from the provinces and blaze their horses through the rush of wild-eyed people, barreling in a straight line toward the rear doors. The frantic stampede arrests the Temple’s archers mid-shot, straining to aim against the swell of confusion. A few of their shots kill their own and they hesitate on the draw. Sad and bloody shapes of the fallen innocent litter the gardens and lower tiers of the amphitheatre.
Marikez reaches the door just as swarms of people burst it open and pour through. They ride against the current, single file into the Temple. There are more masses of people climbing the stairs, running to the upper quarters, tears streaking down their faces.
Lia looks wildly for Jack. She sees the scullery girls from the kitchen, her old friends, fighting with each other about which way to run. She weaves between the dead bodies on the floor, looking under their sooted veils at the features beneath, ice chilling her veins as she encounters each new one and knows, just knows, that it will be Jack’s face she sees.
Weapons drawn severely, Marikez and his forces drive them out, rearing their steeds back and pressing them through the doors and out of the Temple. When the rear corridor is cleared, they slide the heavy door shut and barricade it. Trevor rallies a small unit together and they stand watch against intruders.
“What’s down this way?” Hargrove calls to Lia, looking off down the eerily painted corridor.
“The sanctum, and stairs to the balcony. Have you seen him?”
“No, Lia. I haven’t.”
She drops from her horse and breaks for the service stairs, calling out his name and inspecting every blackened corpse she passes.
Hargrove and Marikez ride down the macabre corridor, horses' hooves clacking on the sandstone, the frescoes around them turning from terrifying to peaceful as they advance toward the foyer. A colorful portraiture catches Hargrove's eye as he flies past, of a young man with slicked-back hair, a machine-tailored jacket, and a keen light in his eyes.
The enormous foyer stands deserted, calm and vacant, save for one.
Hargrove ambles up to the strangely garbed corpse. Dead eyes of a color he has rarely seen outside of pictures stare back at him.
“This must be him,” he says grimly.
“It is,” says Jack, peering down from the balcony.
“You’re alive.”
He smiles thinly, thrumming at the crest of an adrenaline crash. He moves toward the stairs to meet them in the foyer, a distant ringing in his ears. An old friend is waiting for him at the head of the stairs.
“I mean you no hurt,” says Karus, showing his empty hands.
Sajiress limps down the corridor behind him, arrows protruding from his leg and back. He slicks the blood off his sword and makes for Karus.
“Enah,” says Jack. “What do you want, Karus?”
“Your friends… I can take you to them.”
“Where?”
“The keep.”
“Everything okay up there?” yells Hargrove.
“Sajiress needs help. He's hurt bad.”
Marikez unhooks the kit from his saddle and runs up the steps and rushes back to see to him.
Karus takes off his shirt and wraps it around Jack’s arm, then cinches his belt around his bicep to slow the blood loss.
“That’s a bad one,” he says, and takes Jack’s weight against his side and they work their way down the stairs.
Hargrove takes hold of him at the bottom. The others race over and Karus leads the way down to the antechamber.
The sentries have abandoned their posts. A fat padlock braces the keep door and Jack hacks at it until it slips free and clunks to the floor. They enter the keep. The row of flat trapdoors is lined up before them, and a central corridor recedes away into the gloom, with many barred doors lining its course.
Hargrove and Sajiress go from one trapdoor to another, breaking off the latches and throwing them open.
“Renning!” cries Hargrove, lowering himself to the floor and reaching his hand down to the emaciated form of his compatriot. “Renning, what have they done to you?”
“Ryan…?” he says, rubbing his eyes.
He sprawls out on the floor and Hargrove kneels down and tends to him.
Denit splits the wood of the trapdoor next to them and a high-pitched scream drills through the keep. He looks up innocently and backs away.
“Ezbeth, is that you?” Karus says, shuffling forward to lift her out of the pit. She lies back on the dirty floor and looks wildly about the room at the band of bloody men.
Jack moves down the foreboding central corridor. There are no torches. He slides the bars out of their holders and lets them fall to the floor, one after another, until he stands in near-darkness at the end of the line. He goes door to door, searching for his friends. They scream when he enters. He forgot what he looks like.
“Jeneth? Lathan?”
The sallow forms huddle and slink back from him, mortified. He moves to the next, creaking the door back wide and stepping through. An atrophied body hurtles into him from the dingy interior and Jack startles. Several more join the fray and he backpedals away, knocking into the opposite wall as the feverish prisoners assail him, dirty fists beating on his chest.
“Stop!” he cries. “William… stop!”
“Jack? Is that you?”
William and the others fairly clobber him on the ground, gripping him in a tight embrace. They burst from their grimy cells and converge in the center of the keep, crying and holding fast to one another.
“What happened?”
“I killed the King,” says Jack, not quite believing it himself.
A soft voice calls out to him from the door, and the sight of her forces the tears he has been holding back to break free. Lia rushes to him and falls into his arms and kisses him until her lips are black with soot.