The Warrior King (Book 4) (13 page)

“What are you doing?” the girl blurted. “Why would you sleep with the sultan’s son?”

“I’m trying to get closer to his father, and this is the only way.”

“So you don’t love that man?”

Marialla laughed, but there was a bitter edge to it. “Love has nothing to do with it, child. I am not so fortunate as my sister to have a handsome barbarian king to marry. I must take what fortune I can find.”

Fortunate? Kallia Saffa was also carrying the dark wizard’s child and had suffered terribly during the enemy occupation of Balsalom. Sofiana didn’t think Princess Marialla’s sister was particularly fortunate, even if she had ended up marrying King Whelan.

“I still don’t understand. How is this going to help?”

“I need to marry the sultan,” Marialla explained in a patient tone. “But he refuses to meet with me. He has his eye on . . . someone else.”

“I know all about that,” Sofiana said, dismissively. “What do you think I’m doing here? I’m trying to escape from the palace.”

“But if I can get to him, he’ll be mine,” the princess added. “Chantmer the Tall has seen to that.”

“Don’t trust anything that wizard says. Ask Daniel if you don’t believe me.”

“Believe me, I don’t trust him. To be honest, I don’t trust anyone, not even you. For all I know, someone sent you to spy on me.”

“That’s a lie!”

Marialla put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “Calm yourself, Sofiana. You know what I mean. Now where are you going?”

Tears of frustration welled in Sofiana’s eyes. “I’m trying to reach the upper gardens so I can meet with Narud, but I can’t seem to get past the guards. And I can’t spend another day in the tower, I just can’t.”

“Oh, is that all? Come with me, then.”

Marialla took her by the hand and led her into the apartments. The sultan’s son lay on his back, mouth agape, his hand still clutching the wine glass. It tilted at an angle, the rest of the wine spilled onto the pillows.

“He looks dead,” Sofiana said.

“Alas, no. It will give him a terrible headache, but he’s very much alive.” She pointed down the hallway. “Go to the end of the passageway and turn right. That will take you outside again toward the stables. After the stables take the . . . let me see . . . the second left, I believe it is. It’s the door that’s missing the handle. Push it open and follow the covered passageway up the hill. By the time you come up top you’ll be in the slave quarters where there won’t be as many guards. You can find your way up from there.”

Sofiana turned to go, but Marialla took her arm. “Wait. The sultan’s son has two guards of his own. You can’t be seen leaving the apartments from that direction. They’re young and alert—you’ll never get past them without help.”

The girl bit her lip. “Then what do I do?”

“Give me a moment—I’ll coax them away.”

“How will you do that?”

The princess smiled, but there was something sad in her expression, Sofiana thought. “The only tools I have. Count to fifty before you come.”

The princess disappeared. Sofiana waited in the hallway, glancing back toward the sleeping prince while she counted softly under her breath. Her heart counted its own furious time. When at last she reached fifty, she entered the hallway. Torches lit the passage at infrequent intervals, and she kept to the shadows. Giggles and men’s laughter came from beyond an archway to her left.

“Come on now, give me one kiss,” one of the men said.

“What would your master say?” Marialla asked in a tone of false outrage. “He’d have your head!”

“You don’t know our master,” a second man said. “He’d ask to watch!”

Sofiana didn’t want to linger and make the princess suffer any more of this outrage, so she hurried past, following Marialla’s directions. Moments later she was outside and facing the stables with no guards to be seen.

She’d have to cross an open stretch to get to the stables, where she could hear horses nickering and camels grumbling. She scanned the intervening courtyard for movement, saw none, and bolted across the flagstones. She half expected to hear a voice shout for her to stop, but she reached the stables without incident. She found the door without the handle.

A cobbled alley led both up and down the hill, and for a moment she was tempted to follow it down toward the outer wall of the palace and try to slip past the guards by herself, but she knew the palace gates would be crawling with guards, all looking for her.

Instead, she took the covered passageway higher and deeper into the palace. She spotted two more guards at one of the covered archways leading from one courtyard into another and backed up to scale a tree so she could climb over another wall. She was reaching for the wall to swing herself over when she caught a gray shape sitting atop it, staring down at her. It was a cat.

“Is that you?” she whispered. “Narud?”

Of course it didn’t speak, but when she made to swing herself up, it hissed and swiped at her hand with its paw.

“Ow.” She yanked back her hand. “What’s wrong with you? I need to get up there.”

The cat stared hard at the opposite wall of the courtyard. Then it sprang down from the wall and disappeared into the darkness with a meow. What? Did it want her to follow?

She remembered the weasel-like creature and decided that this was only another animal, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to check it out just in case. Vines climbed the wall on the opposite side, and she scaled them only to find the cat sitting up top of this side too. But instead of stopping her when she reached over the wall, it looked down into the darkness on the other side and meowed.

“It had better be you, Narud,” she said. “If you’re lying to me, I swear I’ll take you to the sultan’s kennels and feed you to his hunting hounds.”

Sofiana didn’t know if Mufashe
had
hunting hounds. Now that she thought of it, she couldn’t remember seeing a single dog since she entered Marrabat. But the threat made her feel better. When the cat jumped down, she followed. 

She followed the cat straight up the hillside through one empty courtyard after another. At one point, she heard voices on the other side of a wall but didn’t see anyone. A few minutes later, she found herself near the highest point of the palace, in a shabby, overgrown garden with a dry fountain and split cobblestones and toppled marble columns.

A figure stood at the fountain, strapping on his sword. He turned when she entered, and she saw it was Darik.

“Were you followed?” he asked.

She ignored the question. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m taking you out of the city.”

“No, you’re not. Narud is going to help me, and then I—”

She glanced at the cat, only to see the wizard standing there, hands clasped in front of him. There was something about the way he looked at her that still seemed animal-like, almost feline.

“You won’t be crossing hundreds of miles of desert alone,” Narud said.

She thrust out her chin. “Why not? I can take care of myself. Anyway, why does it have to be him?”

“Because I must stay to keep an eye on the Betrayer, and Markal flew away with the griffin rider. There’s no one else.”

“It isn’t my idea,” Darik said. “But it must be done, so let’s get a start.”

“Why didn’t you fly off with the girl? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

It was dark, and so she couldn’t see the anger on his face before he looked away, but she knew it must be there. In fact, he must be fuming. A few months ago, he’d have snapped some childish thing at her, and right now she’d welcome it so she’d have a chance in turn to rail against the injustice of the situation. It was deflating that he refused to engage her.

Sofiana knew what her father would say. Probably Markal too. Whelan and Markal would say that Darik was maturing and that she could learn something from his silence.

“We’re going to travel together up the Spice Highway,” Darik said. “After we reach Balsalom, I’m going to rejoin the war.”

“So am I. If you think I’m going to stay cooped up in the khalifa’s palace—”

“I won’t decide that. But will you stay with me until then without running off?”

Sofiana stomped her foot. “I can take care of myself.”

“Sofiana,” Narud said in a voice that was equal parts exasperation and warning.

“Darik can stay with
me,
if he’d like, but if either of you think I need protection, you’re wrong. I have a dagger, I have money for food and a donkey, and I know how to take care of myself.” 

“Fine, I can travel with you, if that’s what you want to call it,” Darik said. “So long as you promise not to try to lose me.”

“If I wanted to, I’d do more than try.” She turned to Narud. “Now what? We’re way up here and the palace gates are way down there. And then there’s the city itself to escape. Meanwhile,” she added, hooking her thumb at Darik. “You’ve saddled me with this clumsy oaf. I’ll bet he can’t even climb a tree.”

“He can if he’s a cat,” Narud said.

“Wait!” she said, her heart thrilling. “Can I be a cat too?”

“I’d turn you into a bird,” Narud said, “but you’d forget who you were. Next thing you know, you’d be changing back into a human, but you’d be a hundred feet in the air. That never ends well.”

“I don’t care about that. Just change me into a cat. Oh, please!”

Narud began to rub his hands together as if to restore circulation. They were both pink and tender looking, as if he’d recently caused himself pain to enact some powerful magic or other.

“A quick warning,” he said. “If you get hungry, I would advise not eating the rats in the sultan’s sewers. You will feel ill when you change back. That’s a lesson I learned from personal experience. Now stand still both of you and try to think furry thoughts.” 

Chapter Thirteen

Markal and Daria flew all night. The golden griffin was a massive, powerful beast that would have had no trouble carrying them if not for its exhaustion from the heat. Even high above the desert floor, a relentless warm breeze drove in from the southeast. Markal was discouraged to see by the gray light of pre-dawn that they were still crossing the endless sandy wasteland. He’d hoped they would be above the rocky plains south of the khalifates by now.

And then daybreak arrived, and with it the flaming sun that rose above the desert plain. Perspiration began to run down Markal’s face, and thirst took hold of him. The poor girl was quickly drenched with sweat, and he let her drain the waterskins one after another.

Talon drooped lower and lower as they fought their way north. He let out a feeble cry that sounded to Markal’s ears like a plea for help. Daria whispered encouragement, but she looked discouraged and worried.

“We must find a place to stop,” Markal said.

She turned, her damp hair sticking to her skin, which was turning red. “There’s nowhere to stop,” she said. “We looked before. We have to fight through it.”

He knew she was right. Even the holes in the ground would be infested with giant centipedes and lizards big enough to attack a camel. And the whiff of something that smelled like charred wood caught his nose. He thought about the dragon Daria had driven out of the mountains and imagined it was lurking around here somewhere, recovering from its wounds. If it spotted them, they were in no shape to fight it or even to flee.

If Markal could smell the dragon, then no doubt Daria, with her sensitive nose, had done so as well.

On and on they flew, crawling sluggishly across the burning sky, until at last the air began to cool with the coming of afternoon and their gradual arrival in northern lands. The sands ended in a final sea of dunes and then turned to shrubs and savanna. After passing a seemingly endless number of dry ravines and gulches, they finally came upon a stream flowing out of the mountains. Here they rested briefly to bathe and refill their waterskins.

By nightfall they were in the grasslands south of Balsalom, still some twenty miles from the city. They stopped in the highest hills Daria could find. There, they found a dry cave, the interior cooler than the surrounding, scrub-covered hillside.

Daria took a sniff and grew wary, claiming that the cave smelled of a lion or some other large cat, but it didn’t seem to bother Talon. A lion would have to be both very hungry and very foolish to tackle a thousand pounds of beak, claw, and talon. Maybe one of the great saber-toothed cats of the north would try it, but even then Markal had his doubts.

The comet that Markal had spotted the previous night had grown until it was almost as bright as the waning crescent moon, and its tail stretched the width of his hand across the sky. He went outside for several minutes to puzzle over what it portended before returning to bed down with the griffin and its rider.

Autumn had come to the khalifates, and while the days were hot, the night was chilly enough that Markal almost wished he were brave enough to tuck himself under one of the griffin’s wings as Daria did. In the morning, both the girl and her mount were fresh and bursting with energy.

“Do you need to rest in Balsalom?” Markal asked as they took to the air again.