Sentinelspire (35 page)

“My boots!” Lewan protested.

“No time,” said Sauk, and threw Lewan in front of him. When Lewan tried to stop, Sauk pushed him onward.

“Lewan!” Ulaan called. He looked back and saw her standing in the open doorway.

“Go inside and bar the door!” he said, then Sauk pushed him round the bend in the hallway. Even if the half-orc had not held two feet of naked steel in his hand, Lewan knew he
would be no match for Sauk, so he went along. “Where are you taking me?” he asked.

“Out,” said Sauk.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Someone made it inside the walls,” said Sauk as they walked down the stairs. Sauk took them two at a time and saw to it that Lewan did the same. “Got through the guardians on the mountain and inside the tunnels. Took out the guards we set—either killed ’em or hurt ’em so bad that they wished they were dead.” A feral smile lit the half-orc’s face. A wolf’s smile. “Only two people alive know the tricks of the tunnels and could do all that.”

“I don’t understand. Who—?”

“Me, for one.”

“And the other?”

“Kheil.”

“Kheil is dead.”

Sauk snorted. “Berun, then.”

“Berun died too. You saw it yourself.”

They reached the main floor and Sauk forced them into a slow run. “That man cheated death once already,” he said. “Looks like he’s back again. Damned if Talieth wasn’t right.”

The obvious question hit Lewan then. “Why drag me out?” He gave Sauk’s short sword a meaningful look.

Sauk stopped at the door. Hand on the lever, he turned and grinned at Lewan. “Kheil’s a killer, a hunter. You want to catch a hunter, you put out the thing he’s hunting.”

“You mean bait,” said Lewan.

“I mean you.” Sauk pulled open the door and dragged Lewan out into the storm.

They were not alone. A group of five, cloaked against the weather, waited for them at the bottom of the stairs.

Talieth stepped forward and eyed Lewan, but she spoke to Sauk. “Did you have to drag him out bootless?”

“You said hurry,” said Sauk. “I hurried.”

“No matter.” She looked to Lewan, her hood up against the rain. The lamps set to either side of the door gave off ample light, and he could see her face, could see the regal look she turned on him. It was not the look of a benevolent queen, but of a ruler ready and eager to pronounce judgment. “What happened on the mountainside today,” she said, “what you saw, what you were told. We will speak of it later. At length. For now, you’re with us.”

“I won’t help you capture him.” There. Lewan had said it, though it took all of his courage. He half expected to be slapped, maybe even beaten to submission and tossed over Sauk’s shoulder.

Instead, Talieth turned to face him and said, “I’m not out to capture your master, Lewan. I’m out to stop him from doing more foolishness. He’s already killed several of my men. I’m hoping that your presence will be a … calming influence upon him.”

“But,” said Sauk, and he laid the full weight of one hand on Lewan’s shoulder, “you
are
coming with us. One way or the other. Don’t make it the hard way.”

“Truly spoken,” said Talieth, and she turned away. Her men followed in her wake. Sauk pushed Lewan after her, and he followed. For now.

The first sight of the Tower of the Sun only increased Lewan’s fear. The physical layout of the Tower seemed unchanged since the last time he’d looked upon it. But something set Lewan’s teeth on edge, almost as if the Tower hummed at an octave just out of his range of hearing. It had a … 
presence
to it. Something inside that tower was watching him.

As they drew closer, Lewan saw the lights. Like bits of mist that glowed, the lights filled the garden in the courtyard below the Tower. Lewan had no gift for the arcane, but even he could
recognize magic of this magnitude. Some of the lights were no larger than fireflies, but some were big as faces, and they seemed all too watchful as they wafted soundlessly through the boughs and climbed the Tower like sparks lifted by the heat of a fire.

“I don’t like this,” one of the guards muttered.

“Be silent,” Talieth ordered him. She led the way round the wall to the main gate.

Six men stood before the entrance, and Lewan could see the eldritch lights reflecting off bare steel in their hands. Talieth walked up to them, and they bowed before her.

“Lady Talieth,” said one of them—a pale-haired man with a rapier. His bow deepened, but he did not put away the blade.

“Erluk, is it?” said Talieth.

“Yes, my lady. At your service.”

“Why are you here? Has the Old Man ordered you to stand watch?”

“No, my lady. When we heard the alarm—”

“You were to take your stations.” She cast her gaze over the other men.
“All
of you. So I ask you again: why are you here?”

Two of the men looked down at their feet, but the others only stiffened, and Lewan saw one of them flexing his hand around a thick dagger. This did not bode well.

“Forgive me, Lady Talieth,” said Erluk. “We thought it best to see to the Old Man’s safety.”

“You thought it best?” said Talieth.

“Yes. I did.”

Erluk held her gaze, and by the looks her guards gave, Lewan knew he was not the only one to notice the omitted
my lady
.

“The Old Man rules the Fortress,” said Talieth, “and the Tower is his inviolate domain. But
I
order the blades of Sentinelspire. As you can see, I have brought men to guard the Tower. You men will go to your stations. Now.”

“Our place is here,” said one of the men behind Erluk.

“Is it?” said Talieth.

Erluk opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Sauk struck. The half-orc thrust Lewan aside and brought his short sword down into the space where Erluk’s neck joined his shoulder. The sheer force of the blow slammed Erluk to the ground. His comrades were so stunned that Sauk’s follow-through, a backhand strike, beheaded the man stepping away from Erluk before the others had even raised their weapons.

It was over in moments. Talieth’s guards struck down three others, almost with ease, while a sole survivor fled for the open gate. He made it no more than a half-dozen steps before a dusky shadow hit him from behind. Taaki bore the man to the ground with her claws. Her jaws grabbed the screaming man by the back of his neck. Lewan heard the bone snap and the man went limp.

Talieth had barely moved through the entire confrontation. She looked at the six corpses lying in pools of blood and said, “Throw them in the foliage and take your positions. Lewan, you are with me.”

T
he Fortress had changed since Berun had last seen it nine years ago. The buildings, statues, and canals were much the same. The interior had always been verdant—cultivated gardens, fountains, flowers, and fruit in every street—but the greenery inside the walls was lush to the point of choking out the stone. Some structures were completely encased in vines. The building that had once been used to house prisoners was now roofless, one wall fallen, and trees grew in the midst of the floor. Even the youngest of them stood well above the building’s walls.

In that crumbling, brush-infested building, Berun hid, huddled with his back against the wall, the branches of an oak keeping the worst of the rain off him. Perch clung to his forearm beneath his cloak. The treeclaw lizard was shivering, partially from the wet and cold and partially from the excitement. When the last tunnel guard had made it past Berun and fled, Perch had gone after him. The lizard hadn’t been able to stop the man, but barring a particularly talented healer or cleric, the man would be no threat to anyone for many days to come.

The alarm horns had stopped some time ago, but the streets were thick with patrols. Berun had already been forced to kill three more people since entering the walls. They’d been cloaked against the rain, and in the dark he hadn’t been
able to see any of their features, but the last one Berun had taken down … in the instant before the hammer cracked the skull, Berun could have sworn that the voice crying out was a woman’s. He could still hear that final desperate shriek ringing out in his mind, then cut short. His arm still felt the shock that had rattled through the hammer and up to his shoulder.

Berun took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. Part of him wanted to throw the hammer into the brush and sneak out of the Fortress again. Killing all those people with the hammer and the blade Lebeth had given him, it had felt … 
good
. And that scared him. Scared him more than anything had ever scared him. Kheil had reveled in blood. Seeing the last light of life leave his victims’ eyes had once brought a pleasure beyond any spiritual bliss or sexual delight. It had been the closest he had ever known to defining true ecstasy. But Kheil was dead. Dead and gone. Executed.
Justly
executed, he told himself. Stabbed and sliced and bled out on the Tree of Dhaerow.

But life had brought him back. No, not life. That didn’t quite describe it. The sheer power of
Livingness
, of all living things, had pulled him back, had put breath into his lungs and hot blood pumping through his veins. Berun—and Berun alone, not Kheil—knew one thing more than he had ever known anything: the absolute preciousness of life. He knew it, though he doubted he could put words to it.
Love
was the closest word he could find—the love for life had been imprinted on his consciousness. Death was cheap. Worse, it was easy. Life … there was no price for it. That his heart now beat fast and his breath came quick at the thought of killing, of taking the lives of others …

All your life you have dealt death. Now the god of life calls you. Time to answer
. The words spoken so long ago. Master Chereth’s low voice, just beginning to rasp with the onset of old age.

Then another voice, softer and warmer and more recent—
Beware, son of the Oak Father. Even truth can deceive, when the seeker walks darkened paths
.

Crouched in a crumbling building in the night, listening to the storm and the cries of the patrols looking for him, smelling the blood of dead men mixing with the sweat and rain on his skin and cloak, Berun felt as if he were on a very dark path indeed. He felt … lost.

The temptation to flee was strong. The assassins knew he was inside the Fortress. They were hunting him inside the walls. It would be all too easy to make it back through the tunnels where they wouldn’t be looking for him, to find his way down the mountain and disappear into the Endless Wastes.

But there was Lewan. Somewhere in this Fortress, Lewan was still a prisoner. If there was even a sliver of hope that the boy was alive, Berun knew he had to find him and help him.

Never had Berun felt so confused. So frightened. Finding Lewan and fleeing would change nothing. He had died to the life of an assassin. Had he been raised to life, tried so hard to make a new life, only to find himself being used to kill again? Whether it was the Old Man, paying him in pleasure and profit for his skills, or the Oak Father, cloaking his actions in terms like justice and vengeance and the Balance … it all amounted to the same thing: he was here to kill. The fact that he found himself enjoying it only frightened him all the more. In his heart of hearts, he had hoped for more, wanted to believe that there was more purpose to his life than killing.

Sauk would have laughed at that notion. Life was struggle, death the ultimate reward for everyone. To balk at killing only meant that you stood a good chance of getting your reward a lot sooner than most. To hunt and kill the strong only made you stronger.

It was true, Berun knew, but as his master had been so fond of telling him, it was only one leaf on a branch on a tree whose roots ran very deep. And so, Berun sat in the dark, listening
and trying his best to see the rest of the tree—maybe even glimpse the forest—and so find the Balance.

Berun, you must help me
. Chereth’s words, sent to him in a vision.
Come to me, my son
.

And the words of Lebeth.
To see the light, child of the Oak Father, to protect light for us all, you must bring vengeance to the Tower of the Sun
.