The Dark Queen

Chapter 17

A third day had passed, and a fourth, while the glyphs lay unchanged in the rena garden. Always before, they had vanished on their own, a sign that their message had been received by the rebels.

But now Fordus was far afield, and Vaananen's concern deepened with the passing hours. Had the fifth sign not called him back? Perhaps the Prophet refused to return to the kanaji, to the intelligence that might save him and his small army.

Vaananen's own time had run out. He knew Takhi-sis was coming for him. It was only a matter of when and how.

As he sat on the red stone in the rena garden, Vaananen composed his last message. He picked gingerly at a black silken hair caught on the.inch-long needles of the large barrel cactus near his foot. The strand caught on a ripple of his breath and settled back upon the spines, this time well entan shy;gled. Vaananen stared abstractedly at it for a moment, and then caught a tiny, odd vibration from the life-current in the plant. He noticed the cactus had also swelled somewhat over the last few hours, as if there had been a sudden rain the afternoon before.

"Just like the new commander's power," he mut shy;tered. "Swelled full-blown overnight."

The priests of Istar had reveled as the new com shy;mander assumed the reins of the army. The scattered Twelfth and Ninth Legions recombined within a day and were renamed the Fifteenth, joining the First, Second, Fourth and Eighth in the defense of the city.

With the current size of the city's garrison, three legions could at any time march out the gates and still leave a sizeable guard at home. The town now knew that the fabled Sixth had arrived-the hexa shy;gons drawn in charcoal on the stone walls of alleys, scratched on doors and hung on tattered banners from the windows of abandoned houses, bore omi shy;nous witness that at last the legion was showing itself.

Soon they would all join together. Tamex would have his army, and the goddess within him would have her foothold in the world.

Vaananen shifted on the red stone. "But it isn't over yet," he said firmly, quietly.

Outside the window, almost in mockery, the dis shy;tant sounds of the shabby festival reached him from the Marketplace, and the druid stood, stepped away from the garden, and walked to the lectern, where he scrawled a hasty note on a scrap of parchment. He stepped into the corridor, handed the note to a passing linkboy, and ordered the child to the library.

"I want this book from the dark young man, the silent one," he whispered, and the linkboy hurried off.

Of course, it was no book Vaananen awaited.

Vincus arrived minutes later, his hands ink stained and sandy from Balandar's copying tasks. He found Vaananen somber and crouched above the rena gar shy;den as usual, but this time circled by lanterns as though he awaited a deeper darkness, as though all of that light was meant to ward him from something deadly and close.

Instantly, Vincus knew that this time was differ shy;ent. This time was special.

Vaananen beckoned him, and cautiously Vincus approached. He knew there was a magic in this gar shy;den, but it was quiet and meditative magic-far from the fire and thunder of the festival illusionists.

And yet, best be alert.

Solemnly, the druid showed him four symbols drawn in the sand. "You're a copyist, Vincus," he whispered, "and a good one, I hear. How is your memory?"

Vincus stared at the symbols in puzzlement. His memory was sharp and searching. Though he had seen them just once, he could have told of each booth in the Marketplace, the merchant's name and his wares, his home country and the color of the pennants on his tents.

No, there were no clouds in Vincus's recollection.

But the druid was asking for more than memory. And what he was asking for …

Well, Vincus was not sure.

So he shrugged, his right hand flickering with three tentative signs.

I remember as well as some, he told the druid.

Vaananen raised an eyebrow and smiled grimly. "You'll have to do better than that," he whispered. "You're the only one I can trust."

Vincus averted his eyes.

"No, look!" Vaananen urged, clutching the young servant's arm, pointing at the row of glyphs. "Could you remember these?"

Vincus looked. The lines were simple, bold. He already knew them. And yet..

Slowly, reluctantly, Vincus nodded.

Vaananen erased the glyphs. "Show me," he said.

Vincus drew again the four simple signs: Desert's Edge, Sixth Day of Lunitari, No Wind, the Leopard. And then the fifth symbol-the elaborate interlacing of two ancient letters.

"The last is the most important one," Vaananen said quietly. "The one that must reach Fordus Fire-soul-and he is far away, beyond the city walls, in the desert. Go."

Vincus looked up sharply in disbelief. The mythi shy;cal rebel commander!

"Yes, you must go to him," Vaananen said, smil shy;ing, trying to ease the young man's mind.

I will, Vincus signed. His gestures were confident, perhaps a little too bold. He would go. But he would never come back. Vincus did not believe in Fordus, nor in the world outside the city, for that matter.

Vincus stepped to the windowsill, searching the dark expanses of vallenwood below, the walls and the city beyond. Vaananen moved to him and touched his silver collar. A sharp blaze of blue crackled in the air at Vincus's ear, and he jerked away, dazed.

Vaananen looked him in the eye and said, "For years I have been striving to pay your debt-your father's debt-legitimately and legally. I have wrestled the Kingpriest, losing under his self-serving rules. But all the rules are broken now. Go in peace. Your collar will tell Fordus who you are."

The druid produced two books from beneath his cot. He handed them to Vincus, who turned the vol shy;umes over in his hands, then opened one.

On the frail, brittle pages was a story in the elusive Lucanesti script, of gods and goddesses, of Istar and inheritances and the rightful ruler. Vincus could read little of it. The other was a copy, but still written in Lucanesti.

"The one is too fragile to travel," the druid observed. "Here is a copy. Old words upon new parchment, as much as is legible. Take it with you. One will ask for it soon, and you will know it is right to give the book to that person."

Vaananen placed the book and some food, along with a dagger and some odd seeds, in a small hide bag, and pressed it into Vincus's hand.

"You have served well, Vincus," the druid con shy;cluded, as Vincus moved away, still puzzled. An odd note of finality crept into Vaananen's voice. "Well done."

Vincus descended through the spreading branches, climbing away from the words.

He stood at the edge of the Marketplace as the fes shy;tival closed for the night. One of the merchants-an enormous wine seller from Balifor-walked wearily from lantern to lantern, slowly darkening his brightly lit booth.

Vincus stepped into the shadows as the merchant passed. Uneasily, he fingered his silver collar. The druid's magic still stung.

It was too much, this task Vaananen had set before him. Until now, his work for the druid had been easy and intriguing-find this, listen to that, carry rumor and gossip and the whispers of officers back to Vaananen's quarters. And in return, Vaananen made sure Vincus received the best food and lightest duties.

What the druid did with the information could be anything, and it could be nothing. Whatever hap shy;pened had been none of Vincus's business or care, until now. This thing fretted at him.

He leaned against a marble wall that formed the southernmost edge of the Slave Market. On the day the Temple had bought him-a lone boy of eleven, he had stood in the square between two auctioned Que-Kiri warriors and been sold for the debts of a larcenous father-nobody had supposed him a spy in the making.

If they had only known! The strange, bright-eyed boy in their midst, inexplicably mute, had come to be trusted with the keys to a dozen chambers, to the library and the upper room of the Tower, where the Kingpriest spoke to his counsel. They had given him books and scrolls to carry and sort and store.

They never knew when he had learned to read.

Vincus's smile was veiled by the dark of the alley. They had always underestimated him-all except Vaananen, that is, whose bidding he had followed over the last year. He scooped up a fistful of sand from the base of the wall, scattered it into the shad shy;ows, covering his tracks. Out in the lamplit square, the vintner stored the last of the wine barrels in his rickety oxcart and, with a soft, guttural command to the huge animal, steered the vehicle into the dark.

Vincus rose slowly. The square was empty now. But tomorrow the vendors would return, and the day after, and for five days after that, unless the impossible actually happened. Unless the mythical rebels, who were scarcely more than a fleeting, unpleasant dream amid the chanting and ritual of the Tower nights, stepped into the waking world, closed down the festival, captured the Tower, and liberated Istar.

Liberate. It made Vincus smile again-that confi shy;dent, foolish word. Oh, he had heard talk from the other servants that, if Fordus seized the city, there would be freedom for many who now were enslaved. Each would receive a handful of silver, a cart, or a tun of ale-depending on the version of the rumor.

But the elder slaves, the ones who remembered the old Kingpriest and the times before the Siege on Sor shy;cery, said that freedom talk always arose, drifting like smoke into the corners of the city, when a new leader threatened old power. The grayheads did not believe in Fordus, did not believe in a coming freedom.

After all, they had seen the years, seen Kingpriest and liberator come and go. And they still wore the collars-brass, copper, or silver-and the slave trade continued to boom in Istar.

Now the square was empty, the lanterns shut and darkened. With a cautious glance toward the torchlit Tower, the young man crossed the open Market shy;place, headed toward the School of the Games and the ramshackle houses that lay in the western slums of the city.

There he had grown up, his friends and compan shy;ions the child thieves and pickpockets of Istar. They would receive him back, and he could lose himself in the narrow streets and alleys, where neither Istar-ian Guard nor clergy nor the Kingpriest himself would bother to look.

It would be like it was before.

Vincus slipped past the Welcoming Tower, past the great Banquet Hall to where the streets nar shy;rowed and darkened, the older wooden buildings leaning in on each other like wind-felled trees, the faint scent of the harbor lost in the sharp stink of tan shy;nery and midden.

Pale faces peered out of the darkened windows. An old woman in an upper story lifted her hand in a warding sign. Someone in the mouth of an alley, cloaked and bent, hissed at him as he passed.

He knew better than to stop or even look back. This was a part of the city untouched by the festival, by the priests or the merchants or the guards.

These were the ones whom Fordus would liberate.

Vincus quickened his steps. He was south of the arena now, somewhere south of the School of the Games. At a decent hour, he could have located hinv self by the sound of the crowd at the gladiatorial combats, could have told the street name and the nearest alley by the echoing roar. But it was far past a decent hour now, and dark.

He was not exactly sure where he was. It had been longer than he remembered. Things had changed.

He found himself on a commercial street-a shabby line of storefronts on the slum's edge. A dozen or so darkened buildings, boarded and barred, lined a road that led to a small, circular court, in the center of which stood a broken foun shy;tain, littered with ashes and refuse and crawling with rats. No doubt the night had turned toward morning, for every shop hung in uneasy quiet except a small pub, the Sign of the Basilisk, outside of which three torches sputtered and popped, casting a blood-red light on the fountain square and streaking the storefronts with long shadows.

A solitary watchman, lantern in hand, passed from storefront to storefront. Vincus slipped back into the shadows until the lantern weaved into the darkness and vanished. Laughter from the Basilisk broke uneasily in the close, humid air, and from somewhere in the vaulted shadows of the buildings there came the unmistakable sound of wingbeat, the harsh cry of a bird.

Cautiously, Vincus stepped into the torchlight. The Basilisk was as good a place as any to start-a run-down pub, not far from his childhood haunts. There might be someone here who would remember him-certainly someone would remember his father. And once he had made the connection, had touched on old friendships and older memories …

There would be a safe place for him somewhere in the city's intricate, anonymous alleys. This was his big chance.

As he watched the door of the pub, it swung open. Four young men walked out of the smoky light and into the square. One of them, a lean, wiry type dressed in a tattered gray tunic, shielded his eyes against the torchlight and returned Vincus's stare.

"Y'got an eyeful, pup?" he shouted. He was well into his cups, and the wine blurred his thick street accent.

Vincus was not sure what the man said next. Something about "feast" and "come on over," but his gestures were large and violent-waving his arms and beckoning dramatically-and it could have been greeting or challenge. The other three brushed by the drunkard, headed up the street between the storefronts, and when Vincus stepped uncertainly toward the gesturing man, one of them turned and regarded him.

"Vincus?" the man asked, his tight face breaking into a grin. " "Us you, old post? Old cat-tongued barnacle?"

He recognized the taunts, the pet names. Pugio, who used to tease him when the gang of boys stole loaves from the bakery by the Welcoming Tower. Vincus walked toward the young man, smiling sheepishly.

Sure enough, it was Pugio.

Vincus gestured. It has been a long time, his hands said.

Pugio laughed and shrugged. "I don't remember none of that hand-jabber. No use for it in Bywall."

Bywall. Vincus had forgotten the name.

The worn, crowded settlement pitched in the shadow of Istar's original fortifications was known as Bywall. When the city had expanded beyond its original boundaries, wealthy Istarians had moved north of the Tower, or south into outlying country villas, leaving the older buildings to the itinerant, the unhoused, the poor.

The buildings had collapsed and burned in a fire two years before Vincus was born. In the midst of the rubble and ashes, the destitute survivors had built a city of tents and lean-tos, of capsized wagons and abandoned vendors' booths, carried from the festival grounds and the Marketplace to the filthy, shadowy strip at the foot of the ancient walls. While Vincus was growing up, he and his friends had avoided that part of the city where the plentiful and average dangers turned large and unmanageable.

Vincus approached reluctantly, already misgiving his hopes of renewing old friendships.

Pugio was hard, almost stringy, and there was an ashy sallowness about his skin. He was scarcely a year older than Vincus, yet his hair was wispy and matted, and a long purple scar laced jaggedly across his right forearm. No more than twenty, Pugio looked three times his age, and the men with him were even worse for wear-toothless and scarred, but not past menace and danger. Vincus watched warily as the three men spread out, walking slowly toward him across the torch-haunted square.

"Y'member Anguis," Pugio said, nodding at the man to his left. "And Ultion. Ultion done the games at the School under Angard."

Vincus nodded and lifted his hand to both men. He remembered neither of them, though Anguis looked faintly familiar-a face recalled in the red light of Lunitari… something about knives.

"Y'member us all, don'ya, Vincus?" Pugio asked, his street talk thickening the nearer he drew to Vin shy;cus. "Y'member us well enough for the handlin'?"

The- handling. Vincus raced through his memory for the word.

He remembered, shook his head.

"Livin' high put you out o' thievin', Vincus?" Ultion drew back mockingly and asked with a faint, pleasant smile. "I hear of it happenin' when you got three square an' all. Nice clothes they give ya."

Pugio and Anguis murmured in assent. "A one-timer?" Pugio asked. "Just an old-times handle on the rug merchant over to the Marketplace?"

Vincus shook his head. The three drew nearer.

"No?" Pugio asked, his voice filling with a steely coldness. "Then you'll be givin' us your food, I'm certain. You don't starve an old friend, Vincus."

Suddenly chilled, Vincus looked into their eyes. They returned his gaze steadily, calmly, almost inno shy;cently, and then, when his guard descended slowly, when he thought that perhaps his suspicions had all been wrong, that they had been the good and loyal friends he remembered …

Anguis glanced over Vincus's shoulder, a quick, flickering movement to his narrow eyes. Vincus saw it, and spun about…

In time to catch the drunkard's club, as it descended with swift ferocity.

For a moment Vincus stared his attacker face-to-face, saw the man's eyes widen, smelled the stale wine…

Then, with a strength born of life and health, of steady sleep and three squares, he pushed the man aside and, spinning with a fierce, desperate lunge, brought his fist crashing into the face of Ultion.

Ultion fell back with a cry, but the others leapt greedily onto Vincus. Strong fingers probed his throat, and a blinding punch, hurtling out of nowhere, struck him firmly on the side of the head.

He turned toward Anguis, but the air itself seemed to resist him, and one man hit him, and then another. The silver collar snapped and dropped from his neck, and Vincus fell to his knees on the cobbled square, the drunkard stalking toward him, club raised.

Suddenly, his assailants scattered. Shouts fol shy;lowed them from an alley, a rushing column of torches.

The Istarian Guard, Vincus thought. I am safe.

He looked down at the collar, the heavy silver bro shy;ken in two neat crescents at his knees. If the Guard caught him here even Vaananen could not help him.

Vincus crouched on the roof of the building, peering down like a bruised gargoyle onto the milling soldiers.

He had snatched up the collar and run, only steps» ahead of the torches and shouting into the nearest alley. The window into the adjoining brewer's shop was boarded, but not well. In less than a minute, his strength doubled in the desire to escape, Vincus had pulled down the boards and scrambled into the darkened brewery. Dropping into a stack of empty barrels, he clattered and rolled into the warm, yeast-smelling darkness, lying still until the torches and shouting passed.

Then he ascended the stairs to the attic, and, stack shy;ing barrel on barrel, he clambered through cobweb and rafter to the trapdoor in the ceiling, firmly bolted from the inside against acrobatic trespassers. Vincus threw back the rusty bolt and climbed to the roof, where he could see by starlight the dark maze of streets beyond the receding torchlight of the guardsmen, as far as the Old Wall, the settlements on the shore of a great lake, and on into the black foothills of a distant mountain range.

He had never ventured outside the walls, not even in thought or imagination.

Gaping, marveling, still shaking, Vincus lay down upon the roof and looked into the wheeling constel shy;lations.

There was a place where the city ended. Vaananen had told him so, talked about the way past those far shy;away mountains and into the desert. In the towers, all you could see was the city, and Vincus had always believed that Istar extended to the end of sight, and that the end of sight was the end of the world.

The collar, now two slivers of silver moon, lay cold in his dark hand. The breaks were clean, like they had been cut. Right through the letters of his name.

Dabbing at the cut over his right eye, Vincus held the pieces up before the lightening sky, so that his name was whole again upon them. The metal was deeply notched but for a hair-thin edge at both breaks. Let alone, the collar would have dropped off by morning, long before he could have made his way to the gates. Now he understood the druid's parting words.

"The rules are broken. . You have served well, Vincus. Well done."

Vincus smiled slowly and looked through the sil shy;ver circle to the wide country beyond the city. Here was a freedom and a country greater than any of his imaginings.

He would see if Fordus was real, too.