The Northern Approach (57 page)

“More than I care to admit to. I was there when you got many of them.”

Feanne nodded and tried to sit up, but her muscles would not work properly. Lying back down with a sigh, she stared up at the sky. “Estin, I may not really know you anymore…but this was more than I expected of anyone in the group. I heard some of what that man told you. You risked a lot for me, despite how clear I have been in disliking you.”

“I’m a fool like that.”

Blinking and obviously trying to focus her eyes, Feanne looked up at Estin and slowly reached up to touch the deep scars along the side of his muzzle. He had earned those fighting to keep Feanne and their children alive, before she had taken him as her life-mate. For years he had been proud of those scars, but now he flinched away at the touch.

“You have nearly as many as I do,” she said softly. “I would not expect a prey-breed to be still alive with such wounds.”

“We’ve been through a lot, Feanne. Some good, some bad. We both earned our scars. I wouldn’t give a single one of them up.”

Lowering her hand from Estin’s face, she touched the necklace he wore with its stark black feather. Then, reaching up to his collar, she pulled out the second necklace with her own fur and claws attached to it. Absently, she lifted one of the claws and laid it along her own finger, obviously making the connection. “Who were we?” she mumbled, sounding half asleep. “Before the undead? Many of the scars are years old…but I do not remember. I want to…”

“Before? You were your village’s protector, whether they wanted your help or not. You threw yourself in the way of anything that tried to hurt them. Most of your scars came from that.”

Feanne let go of the necklace and touched her ribs just below her left breast, where Estin knew she had an ugly scar there and a matching one on her back. “The wound over my heart. What is that from? It should have killed me.”

Estin smiled and pushed the necklaces back into his shirt. “That is from a sword,” he said, remembering tending to her after that fight. “You had to prove yourself to someone in the village. He put a sword through your chest.”

“I lost the fight?”

“No, you won. He never challenged you again.”

Feanne nodded, though Estin could see she did not understand. A brief fit of coughing shook her again, subsiding a few moments later. “I can barely stay awake,” Feanne managed to croak out, rubbing at her face.

“Then sleep.”

She looked up at him, appearing uncertain about replying. Finally, she said, “I do not have many memories, Estin. In the few I have, there have always been people with me when I slept, watching to be sure we were all safe. It is something I took for granted. Here, I do not feel safe. Promise that I will not be alone.”

After offering her more water, Estin told her, “I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise I won’t leave you.”

Weakly, Feanne patted his hand and thanked him. Closing her eyes, her breathing slowed within a minute and soon she relaxed into an exhausted sleep.

“I won’t ever leave you,” Estin added, once he was certain she was truly asleep. “I swear it.”

*

Morning broke over the temple, stinging Estin’s tired eyes and casting the place in long shadows that covered much of the area facing the altar and throne, while putting the throne itself in bright light. Given that Estin had settled in with Feanne right before the altar, the light was painfully bright, but a good reminder that they could not stay long.

Looking around, Estin saw the priests remained at the entrances, right where they had been at the start of the night. He dearly wished he had their stamina, as none had even sat down, let alone slept. Having lain awake beside Feanne the whole night, Estin felt as though his limbs were leaden and his eyes itched horribly. The stench of the sewers burned his nose, making him wish that he had a far less refined sense of smell.

“Feanne?” Estin asked softly. She had hardly moved at all the whole night, aside from the few times he had woken her to give her more water. Each time she had gotten too still, it had startled Estin, making him wonder if the poison had returned. “Wake up. We need to get moving.”

Groaning, Feanne rolled onto her side and put an arm across Estin’s chest. Almost immediately, her eyes snapped open and she looked at him with surprise and confusion. She sat up quickly, yanking her hand away as she looked about to figure out where she was.

“Poison,” she murmured. “I remember. We do need to leave. What is our plan?”

Estin hopped to his feet and headed toward the edge of the temple, walking up beside one of the priestesses. The woman looked over at him with curiosity but no malice as she sniffed the air, something Estin had never seen a human do before. Given how badly he stunk of sewage, he could not blame her.

The city was still waking up for the day, from what Estin could see. People were beginning to appear in the streets, while small squads of armored soldiers marched to and fro. Nowhere could Estin see a single undead, giving him some confidence in the things Rishad had said.

Then, at the limit of his vision, Estin spotted Liris, leaning against a building staring back at him. The Turessian woman raised a hand in salute but remained where she was.

“The plan is to find a way out of here without being run down by someone who’s trying to kill us,” Estin announced, getting an amused glance from the priestess. “I’m guessing she’s found the sewer route we took to get here by now.”

The priestess kept her eyes on the street, but said quietly, “She has. Returning that way would be unwise. I should mention…you two are filthy from the sewers. You leave that filth everywhere you walk in the temple. I would be remiss if I did not ask you both to bathe before continuing to traipse around here. The bathing chambers are down a flight of steps near the far wall. You will find whatever you need down there.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m telling you that someone’s going to murder us as soon as we leave and you tell me to take a bath?” Estin asked, looking at the woman, but she smiled and did not meet his eyes.

“Whatever you need,” the woman repeated. “You should leave me to my watching. Evil does not rest, and if I am not mistaken, that woman down there is the very evil that the so-called prophet Rishad warned us about. She cannot see the door from outside the temple, and if she tries to come for you, we can hold her for some time. You really should bathe.”

Estin began to understand and thanked the priestess, hurried back to Feanne, and offered her a hand up, which she took. She still seemed a little unsteady on her feet, but she managed to maintain her balance with some effort.

Leading the way, Estin headed to the back of the temple, where the open area ended at a wall similar to the front, but without the wide archways that led into the city streets. Instead, a staircase led down at the center of the wall, while a second wound its way up onto the wall, ending near one of the human archers, who stared down at Estin.

Estin hurried down the stairs, pausing occasionally to ensure Feanne did not fall too far behind. The stairs seemed to present a degree of difficulty for Feanne, forcing her to put a hand on the wall to steady herself as she descended. Her paws rocked dangerously with each step, as though her muscles refused to fully support her. When Estin tried to help her, she gave him a glare that warned him that she needed to do this on her own.

The staircase continued well under the wall, without any turns. Flickering torches every twenty feet gave off only a minimum of light—enough to ruin Estin’s night vision but not enough to clearly light the steps.  Eventually Estin saw the last step in the dim light and stopped Feanne, motioning that he would continue on and take a look.

Easing his paws down as quietly as he could on the rough stone stairs, Estin inched toward the chambers below, from which warm air billowed out toward him. As he neared the bottom, he lowered himself almost flat on the stairs to look into the room without going any closer.

The next room was not what Estin had expected, though he was not honestly sure what he did expect anymore. The large round room was mostly filled by a steaming pool of water in its center, and he could see open rooms to either side that appeared to be dressing chambers for the priests. Another hall continued opposite the stairs.

Estin waved Feanne on and continued down the last few steps into the warm steam-filled room. From what he could see down the hall that left the room with the pool, the passage continued on for some distance without any turns.

“That might take us out well past the temple, where they won’t be looking for us,” Estin noted, circling the pool on his way to the hall. “If we hurry they’ll still think we’re inside the temple walls.”

A splash behind him made Estin stop and look back. Sitting on the side of the pool, Feanne had one of her feet in the water experimentally, circling her paw in the water. After a moment, she put both legs in, smiling happily as she rubbed a week’s worth of dust and dirt from her paws, as well as dried sewage.

“Undead army looking for us,” Estin reminded her.

“When was the last time either of us had a warm bath?” she asked, smiling up at him. “I have not in the whole of my memories. My feet were filthy and I would enjoy one minute of this before we have to run for our lives again. If we are to die, let me do it feeling whole again.”

Estin could not help laughing at her. For all her willingness to get dirty and fight through battles that would have reduced an ogre to tears, Feanne had always hated having her feet get too mud-caked. It was a quirk of hers that had somehow survived death, and one that had always amused him. Watching her struggle to scrub the mud and sewer filth off of her toes only deepened his memories of other times.

“If you are going to continue to watch me bathe, you may as well clean yourself too. We do not have time for modesty and may never get another chance at this,” she told him a second before she pulled off her clothing and slid into the pool, which came up past her waist.

Estin could not help but stare, having forgotten how beautiful his mate was after so long trying to let her have her space. He had already stripped down and was in the water before he realized he was going to take her up on her offer, though he knew it could not be anything more than a bath until she had her memories back…assuming that ever happened.

A minute later, Feanne hopped out of the pool without having given him so much as a glance and set about searching for towels or anything else she could dry her fur with. That left Estin to finish cleaning away the road dirt and sewage that coated him, much of which was stubbornly refusing to come out of his fur.

“You are about my height, correct?” Feanne called out from one of the side rooms, where Estin could see her standing naked in front of what appeared to be shelving or cabinets, her white-tipped tail wagging.

“Yes, pretty close.”

Coming back into the room, Feanne threw him a brown robe that Estin caught before it could land in the water. She quickly put on a matching robe, pulling up its hood as far as she could in an attempt to hide her ears and long muzzle. “Not a perfect disguise, but it may buy us some time if we are only seen at a distance,” she noted, looking back and frowning at the large lump in the robe where her tail could not be easily hidden. “You will have more difficulty hiding than I do.”

Wading to the edge of the pool, Estin started to climb out when Feanne stepped in front of him. She reached down and pulled him onto the edge of the pool, her eyes never leaving his shoulder. It took Estin a moment to figure out what she was looking at, but then he realized she was looking at the dozens of deep scars that crisscrossed his arm, where dogs had mauled him years earlier. Through healing those wounds with magic not intended for such a purpose, Feanne had a matching set of scars on her own arm. Estin opened his mouth to answer the question he figured was coming, but could not think of an excuse she might believe.

“We need to hurry,” she said, shuddering and turning away abruptly, going over to the far hallway and waiting with her back to him.

Confused and frustrated, Estin threw on his own robe, not particularly caring about how wet his fur was under the heavy cloth. Feanne had been right: hiding his tail was an impossibility without a large cloak or something else beyond the robe. As an afterthought, he grabbed his belt and swords from the floor and wrapped them in his old clothing, then tucked them under his arm.