Reawakening (30 page)

“True,” she agreed. “I could kick some flunky in the balls and steal his while he’s screaming.”

Esen giggled, a little nervously, and reached out to seize Zeki’s hand. Gard narrowed his eyes at Zeki but then moved forward to stand beside Tarn. He looked up at the doors, drawing a breath, and said softly, “I never knew him well, the Dual God. I wonder if I could have helped him.”

“The Shadow would simply have come for you sooner,” Tarn said. “Before I was awake to save you.”

“Is there anyone in the world you trust to look after himself?” Gard asked, but his shoulder brushed Tarn’s.

Tarn considered it. “No one waking.” He turned to the officer. “Let this be done. Open the doors.”

The hall beyond was not what he had expected. The Shadow’s courts of old had been great cavernous shells of gleaming black marble and ice-slicked floors, lit by towering and twisted metal torches.

This court was broken. There were no tiers of stone seats reaching toward the roof. The room was empty of all save a dais and a throne at the far end. The windows were high and blacked out, but the roof was shattered. The moon shone in, casting the shadows of the burnt and twisted rafters down onto the pale tiles of the floor like a mass of serpents.

The throne was empty.

The doors fell shut behind them with an echoing clang.

Tarn gestured the others still. There was a gallery above them, and he listened carefully, trying to sense if there was any human life up there.

It too was empty.

“No one,” he said and moved forward carefully, picking his way across the floor, alert for any shift of the ground or air that might warn of a trap. The Shadow could be petty, and it would not hesitate to sacrifice his hoard simply to plague him. This great silent space felt wrong to him, and he wished now he’d been able to leave them all with Raif, even if it was under Savattin guard.

Aline’s steps were just as soft and cautious, but she spoke as she shuffled forward, her voice fading to a thin and fragile thread under the pressing silence. “I’ve been here too. It was the Hall of Judgment, and the Dual God sat on the throne there.”

“He’s gone now,” Gard pointed out. It hadn’t needed saying, but a voice helped a little, and Tarn hoped they would keep talking.

They fell silent, though, and nothing sounded but their feet as they moved forward through the hall, fanning out carefully. Tarn kept his eyes on the throne, wondering if the Shadow was planning a surprise appearance or whether this was all some bizarre diversion.

“Is there space for me to transform?” he asked, squinting around to judge the width of the room. “If this is a trap….”

“That could be the trigger,” Cayl said. “Keep your maneuverability, as long as it’s safe.”

Tarn stopped in the center of the hall anyway. His temper was rising. He had been ready for this battle.

“Hoy, Shadow!” he bellowed, making everyone jump. “Are you still afraid to face me? Show yourself!”

Everyone froze, waiting, but only his words echoed around the empty hall.

“Well, isn’t this an anticlimax?” Gard remarked, folding his arms and scowling. “If we’re done here, I suggest we leave. Perhaps we could track down the Dual God and let him know he’s free to come home.”

“Nothing’s supposed to be this easy,” Cayl muttered, hunching his shoulders.

“Can we get out?” Aline asked thoughtfully. “Is this just a very large cell?”

Gard snorted. “Tarn has wings. They’d have to be pretty stupid to put him in a cell without a roof.”

“They are fanatics,” Aline said. “They’re not known for their intellects.”

Esen was still wandering forward, drifting toward the dais, meandering around heaps of fallen masonry.

Gard noticed her and called, “Behind us, Esen. It’s not safe.”

She did not respond, and he repeated his words in Selar, stepping after her.

A thread of cold ran down Tarn’s spine, and he suddenly realized he could see his breath steaming in the air. He called for fire, sending it arching up from his open palm to light up the whole room, as both Cayl and Aline tensed beside him.

“
Esen!
” Gard called, more sharply. “Here!”

She had reached the foot of the dais and was looking up at the throne, a slim frail figure under its vast shadow, her dark hair streaming down her back. Then, step by step, she mounted the dais. At the top, she reached out and brushed her fingers lightly across the arm of the throne.

Then she turned and seated herself, leaning back and crossing her legs before she smiled.

And the shadows came running out of her eyes, streaming down her cheeks and arms like torrents of black blood.

“Oh, Lord of Tarn Amel,” she said, her voice echoing with ancient mockery. “Did you really think it was Raif who had betrayed you?”

Chapter 30: Losing

B
ESIDE
HIM
,
Gard drew in a harsh breath, but Tarn didn’t look at him. Instead, he said to the frail figure on the throne, “How long have you been riding the girl?”

She giggled, the same lightly mocking sound he had heard from Esen as they traveled. “Oh, not long. Only since her father died.”

“You know what she is to Alagard,” Tarn said, a thousand tiny clues falling neatly into place. “You could not reach him directly, not once he was under my protection, but you could take the girl, knowing he would come for her. Was that why the Savattin marched into Istel?”

“Oh, well done,” she said, clapping lightly. “I was beginning to think you had turned stupid in your sleep. You never once suspected poor broken little Esen, even when she was fighting so hard to break out of my grasp.”

“The tower,” Tarn said flatly.

“Wasn’t it funny? She actually hoped you would understand and then, oh!” She threw out her hands in exaggerated surprise. “Right back under my control.”

“What do you want?” Gard asked.

She waved a hand easily. “Oh, what will you give me, Alagard, to have your little girl safe again? Your desert and your mortal body to wear?”

Tarn wanted to warn Gard, who had not been around last time to see what came of bargaining with the Shadow, but Gard spoke before he could. “If that was your best offer, you wouldn’t have started with it.”

She yawned. “Well, you’re cleverer than his last slut. All that slavish duty and infatuation made for a dull general. Even dutiful Killan grew bored in the end, though. Did you know he had a pretty boy warming his bed by the time he died?”

“Good,” Tarn said, feeling a little weight lift off his conscience at the idea. “He was worthy of love.”

She sneered a little and swung her gaze back to Gard. The shadows were pooling around her feet now, spreading down the dais, but her eyes were still hidden by their wet spillage. “My next offer? Come back to me, Alagard.”

There were people filing into the gallery over the doors—the audience Tarn had expected, here at last.

Gard laughed, throwing back his head. “And be your slave again?”

“Not this time,” she said, leaning forward, her voice coaxing. “Stand beside me willingly, and you will share my power. I will not lock you into that weak and mortal shape as the dragon does. Come back to me, and be your true self once again.”

“As my true self,” Gard said, lifting his chin, “I am my own lord. I will not ally myself with the things that skulk in the shadows and feed on the fears of good men.”

Her mouth tightened, the anger obvious even under the masking shadows. “Don’t forget that you were mine, you strutting little nature spirit. What I held, I can take back.”

“No,” Tarn said, and began to move toward her. “You cannot.” Arguing with the Shadow never changed anything, whatever shape it wore. He needed to find a way to strike without destroying what was left of Esen.

“I will raise every dead Selar who ever rode your sands,” she hissed. “All the spirit creatures that dwelled here before you rose—the kraken and the shark gods and the cold lords—will reawaken to tear apart the minds of your last followers, driving them to destruction. Your cities shall crumble into dust, and your oases fill with sand. By the time I am done, you will beg to join me.”

“The desert is beyond your reach,” Gard said quietly. “Only I may drive it to its own destruction.”

“Really?” she asked and giggled again. She lifted her hand, clenching it slowly into a closed fist.

Gard screamed, doubling over.

Tarn felt it shudder up their connection like lightning, Gard’s own strength suddenly twisting against him.

“I shattered you long before he tried to mend you,” the Shadow said. “Did you really think I wouldn’t keep the broken pieces you left behind?”

If Gard had been truly his, Tarn could have stopped it, but the bond between them was too crude and clumsy. Nonetheless, he stepped in front of Gard, bringing the little happy memory of the desert back into mind and letting it slide quietly over Gard.

Gard gasped, and went to his knees, but there was a note of relief in the sound as well.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tarn saw Aline moving, sliding from the shelter of one fall of masonry to another, approaching the dais from the side. To keep the Shadow’s eyes away from her, he said, “This is just petty torture. The greater part of him is under my protection. You cannot force him into your control again. Enough of this game, before I burn you into ash.”

“And burn your lover’s sweet daughter with me? I won’t leave this body until it is too damaged to survive.” Then she smiled again, curling her feet up underneath her comfortably. “And I don’t need power over him. I can reach every spell he’s ever cast.”

“And what good is that supposed to do you?” Gard demanded, breathless but defiant.

She held up her hand, and dark dust began to gather around her fingertips in tiny swirls like the dust devils Gard had thrown at Tarn when he had first flown into the desert. The swirls grew longer and darker, reaching out from her fingers like ribbons stretching into the night sky above them.

“What I can reach,” she said, her voice soft and clear in the cavernous hall, “I can undo.” Without turning her head, she added, “As you will prove, swordmaid. I am so sick of your kind, always tramping my borders, loud and uncouth and ugly, every one of you.”

Aline left cover and broke into a run toward the dais, bellowing a war cry and hoisting a twist of broken brazier in her sword hand. At the same moment, Cayl moved on Tarn’s other side, rolling into another line of shadows and dashing forward softly under the cover of Aline’s charge.

The Shadow curled a finger forward, sending one of her streams of darkness down to strike Aline as she roared forward between strips of light and shadow. For a moment, nothing seemed to have changed, but Tarn felt it, a sudden sickly drain on Aline’s link to him. He poured himself down the link, fighting back against the Shadow’s spell.

As Aline crossed the next line of moonlight, her hair gleamed, paler than before. On the next step, she stumbled, coughing suddenly.

“The trouble with love,” the Shadow remarked, as Aline staggered, “is how much of it you need to give away. Look at everyone you’ve ever given life to, Alagard—all those sick children and wounded beasts and lost travelers. All their lives would have come to nothing without your love. All their long, long lives.”

Aline pushed herself up, her elbow bowing, and the moonlight struck her face. There were lines around her eyes and mouth that had not been there an hour ago, her cheeks losing their bloom. As Tarn watched, she grew old before his eyes.

“Over nine hundred years they’ve been skulking in the desert,” the Shadow said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “It’s just not natural. Mortal things shouldn’t live so long, Alagard. It’s disgusting.” She lifted her hand again, reaching up and out.

One by one, the threads that bound Tarn to his hoard began to go cold. The links to all the women who had fought for him in another age suddenly crumbled and vanished from the world, each death a crippling blow: Acantha, Evadne, Klio.

Myrtilis.

It blinded him, blotting out the moonlight and ripping the breath from his lungs. Dimly, through the agony, he heard the Shadow say, voice sweet and confiding, “And this, Alagard, is how you free yourself from a dragon’s tyranny. There is only one way to truly wound them.”

Gard’s arm was round his waist, holding him up, his voice shrill as he shouted, “What are you doing to him?”

“I’m killing his hoard,” the Shadow said, throwing her head back to laugh and laugh.

Tarn felt the shift in the air even through the searing loss, even before Gard stood up, the winds gathering in the folds of his robes.

“You stole my daughter’s body,” Gard said, his voice shaking a little. “You’re torturing my lover and killing my friends. I’m not a dragon, Shadow, and I’m not a compassionate god. My Esen is brave enough to die to stop you.”

And the winds lifted over them, spearing straight at the Shadow on her throne.

There was movement behind them from the watchers in the balcony, and Tarn only understood that they were no mere watchers when he heard the bows sing. He flung himself forward to knock Gard down, sending a sheet of flame back to consume every arrow and archer. He saw Cayl lunge for where Aline was still struggling forward, before Tarn’s fires met Gard’s wind, and the whole hall erupted into light, wind, fire, and dust twisting together in a shining, directionless explosion.

Some of the arrows still got through, and he felt them thud into his back as Gard squirmed furiously beneath him. They could only scratch him, though, and when their bruising onslaught stopped, he rolled back to his feet and tugged them from his flesh with slow disdain.

The Shadow wasn’t looking at him. Instead, it stared past him, its face slack with honest surprise.

Tarn reached past the fading echoes of the oldest members of his hoard, testing the newest threads, drawn by the sense that something was horribly wrong. They were all still there: Dit, Ia, Barrett, and the rest, all save Cayl.

There was still something there, cold and wrong and solid as stone, but it was not living. Cayl was gone.