The Seascape Tattoo (32 page)

Aros sprinted up the steep incline of the narrow path carved into the rock face of the cave leading up to the narrow tunnel, crawled back through, and rejoined the others. Jade and Mijista smothered him with kisses and hugs when he told them all was well, and on hands and knees led them through the low passage until they emerged in the cavern.

They walked almost to the cavern mouth and stopped. Eyes went wide as they saw what abutted the mouth of the cave: an artificial wall, a building of some kind backing into it. At the edge of the wall was a mound of bones.

The mound was as tall as two men. Hundreds, perhaps over a thousand, corpses' worth of bones. Aros had never seen such a thing and had been so focused on fighting that he hadn't noticed it even though it had been in plain sight. Human bones.

And coming out of the building, led by the general, were dozens of captives, shivering and terrified, in chains. Slaves, he supposed, most of them. And captives of war—a third of them had the manner of fighting men. Even in the shadow of this horror, they still carried themselves with what he recognized as pride.

And then, coming last from the building … You had to look at her. She was calm in the midst of chaos. Bright, alert, ready. Her clothing was filthy, tattered, and hardly regal, but as he came closer he could see that they had been fashioned from excellent cloth. Her bearing was royal, and even though he could see the fear in her face, in her eyes, the set of her lips was strong and determined.

Jade Silith's eyes went from the princess to her husband and back again. And it actually pained Aros to see the changes her face went through: from curiosity to astonishment to comprehension and then … to grief.

“What is this?” she asked her husband. “What is all of this? Where have you brought us?” Before he could answer, she turned to the princess.

“Are you Tahlia?” she asked. “I believe I saw a drawing of Your Highness once, and I have heard that you had been captured.”

“I am Tahlia, princess of Quillia. And if you can return me to my … my … country, my mother…”

“We can do that,” Jade said.

Trembling, Tahlia gathered herself to search Madam Silith's eyes, seeking treachery.

Aros spoke. “I am with Neoloth-Pteor,” he said. “Princess Tahlia, I—”

“You?” An Azteca warrior? She wasn't quite buying it. “But where is Neoloth? Wait. What of Drasilljah? My—”

Aros didn't look at Silith. “Neoloth must be trying to rescue you. He'll get Drasilljah, if she's still in the Tower. I hope to meet him later.”

She collapsed. All of the strength that had sustained her had drained out at the first kind word or ray of hope.

“Husband,” Jade said, and there was something in her voice that Aros had never heard before, from anyone, some combination of emotions that were painful to hear. “The people who tried to kill us. The … the Hundred? They kidnapped the princess for their … sacrifices. And … you rescued her?”

There it was. She knew. Somehow, drawing on things said over the years of their marriage, she'd guessed at more deaths than an Aztec royal could face.

The others, including Mijista, were hovering around the princess or trying to succor the freed victims …

Jade knew. But she was asking him to lie to her.

And he would not. Could not. He took her hands in his and stroked her smooth skin with his thumbs. “I was part of this thing.”

Her face looked like it was about to crack or melt, and suddenly in the cold and alien light of the crystal tube, she looked old in a way she never had before. Her lip trembled.

“Our son—” he began.

She slapped him, hard.

His face did not turn away. “I was so filled with hate and anger from what happened to our son—”

She slapped him again.

He continued. “I wanted revenge.”

“You…,” she said, voice swollen with indignation and disbelief. “You would know the pain that I suffered at the loss of our child and give that exact same pain to another woman? And to other children. This is how you honor me? Honor our dead?”

Aros felt more embarrassed than anything else. This was not a discussion he wanted to be a part of, in any way.

“But Kasha made me realize what I did. Made me see. I have been wrong.”

“Wrong? Is that how you describe the destruction of everything we've ever been to each other, to the world? Wrong?”

“I'm sorry,” he said, and cast his eyes down.

Jade Silith looked around them. At the mountain of bones. The wretched victims. Her anger faded, and with it her strength, and she collapsed against Mijista.

Mijista held her, glancing from the sagging woman to her husband, to the wall of bones and the stunned and newly freed victims to General Silith and back again.

“What do you plan to do now?” she asked.

Silith paused, thinking. Aros thought that he might have remained silent forever had Madam Silith not come out of her trance and looked at him. Their surviving guests. The rescued victims.

“What the hell,” he whispered. “They tried to kill me twice. I've slaughtered the men who guarded this tunnel.”

“Why?” Jade asked. Aros could tell that she was hoping for an answer that would let her love this man … and, more important, trust him.

“They would kill any of you who knew of this. I intended to sneak you out and let them wonder. It won't work. They'll know it was me once they know I survived. I have no allies there. All I have is my family, and I don't even know if I have that.”

Princess Tahlia was trying to follow. She asked, looking first at Aros and then the general, “What was this all about?”

Silith said, “To use their magic to open a door to the future and, from that future, to bring weapons that would control the present. Destroy any army that stood against us. And … destroy magic itself.”

“That's what we were dying for?” Tahlia demanded.

Silith tried to meet his wife's gaze and could not, but he spoke to her. “Yes. Princess, you were a twofold target. Your mother could be controlled with threats, and your royal blood would open the aperture much further. I was insane with grief and rage, and my soul is lost.” When he looked at them, there was a pain in his eyes that Aros had rarely seen. “Then I saw you, Kasha. My son, come to life.”

Aros started to speak, and the general shushed him. “Neoloth? Your servant? Never mind, I don't want to know more. I ask you for one thing: if I do all I can to undo the hell I have wrought, will you do what you can to protect my wife and guests…?” He smiled at Mijista. “I believe I can trust you to protect my son's would-be bride.” The smile hardened. “Do I have your word you will protect the princess?”

Aros fumbled for words. “General, Princess, that word is already given. I … she will need to be returned home.”

“I believe you are a man of resource,” the general said.
No more lies.

“I will. I so swear, by the Feathered Serpent.”

The general nodded. He turned to the captives, who were no longer quite so dazed. “Men!” he called. “Many of you were captured in war. You may not see your homes again. But if you are fighting men, then you can die as warriors instead of sheep. You can fight beside me, and if we win this day, I swear you will be returned to your homes and compensated for the wrongs done to you. And that effort will help the helpless among you, those who cannot fight but were caught up in this terrible thing. So I ask you … who fights with me?”

The former captives looked from one to the other, and, one at a time, their arms rose with hands clenched into fists.

“You know what it was like to fight against me,” he said. “Now, let us learn what it is to fight together!”

They drummed their chests with their fists, perhaps wary of making too much noise.

“Kasha. The army on this side of the wall is loyal to the Hundred, I'm afraid,” he said. “If I can reach my men in the royal barracks, we are saved. But that will require a distraction.”

“What do you have in mind?” Aros said, beginning to guess.

“There is the abomination I helped to create,” Silith said, waving into the cavern mouth. “And there”—he pointed to wooden crates—“are some of the marvels that were sent back to us. Come.”

With the general's help, Aros pried open one of the boxes. It was filled with sawdust and paper-wrapped tubes that looked like candles. He reached out for one.

“Be careful,” the general cautioned him. “They have great power.”

“What are they?”

“Some sort of strange magic,” the general replied. “Little volcanoes. We take a little silver stick—” There was a smaller bundle within the box, and it contained multiple metallic sticks the length of his thumb and not much wider than a nail. The general pushed one into the top of one of the candles. Coiled at the side of the box was a reel of red cord. The general used his knife to cut off a length of it and stuck it down the hole made by the silver stick.

“When I light this, the stick goes ‘bang'; then the candle goes ‘bang.' You can bundle these together to make a larger ‘bang.'”

“I think that might be a very good idea,” Aros said.

They worked together for a half hour, grouping boxes of the candles around the base of the main tunnel, then setting several sticks into candles and cords to the sticks.

Long
cords.

“These are our lifelines,” Silith said. “We must be out of the compound by the time the fuse burns down, or we die. Listen to me!” He raised his voice to a scream.

“There are women and children here. And those who cannot fight. We will have to make our way through the barrier before the candles explode.”

“Through the gates? Are they not heavily guarded?” Jade asked.

“There is another way,” Silith said.

*   *   *

The prisoners had been held in the rear of the Octagon, and Silith had had to kill only two guards to free them. Aros followed his lead, the fighting men they had freed before and behind, scavenging weapons from the dead as they went.

They encountered scant resistance, and Silith and Aros met it stride for stride. In the moments they had been together, testing each other's skills or fighting in tandem, Aros was learning something different, something new about the art of the sword and combat itself.

Aros's sword was like his arm, obeying his commands instantly. But Silith seemed to be
one
with his sword. His mind and heart were within it, transforming it into an intelligent thing that seemed to have a mind of its own, such that the men who came against him were like cattle presenting themselves for the slaughter. He blended with them, found openings, as water flows through an open hand, leaving death in his wake.

How had such a man made himself a part of such evil? Aros tried not to wonder what some other person would think of the less savory parts of his own past.

Not only had Aros never seen its like, but Silith seemed to inspire him to find that place within himself, such that by the time they reached the outer door, a trail of gashed corpses behind them, both men panting now, he realized he had been transformed by the experience.

“What now?” he asked. “What do we do?”

Silith looked down the hill at the barracks. It had not awakened: their butcher's work had been sufficiently quiet. It seemed that a building constructed to stifle the screams of the damned could also serve to suppress those of the dying.

“Follow me,” he said.

Moving from shadow to shadow, Silith led the captives to a section of the wall and probed to find a hidden door. “Through here,” he whispered. “You take the front.”

“And on the other side?”

“Make your way to my home,” Silith said. “Get Jade and Mijista there, and the Quillian princess. It is secure. And get the princess back to her home, whatever it takes.”

Aros knew exactly what he needed to do to accomplish that. But what of the others who had accompanied them?

“On the other side of the Great Wall will be those who try to kill you.” The fighting men among the prisoners were bloodied now, their stolen swords slicked with gore, their eyes those of rabid wolves. They had no love for the man who had captured them, did not know why he had suddenly become their benefactor, and in time they might very well turn against him. But for now, they were his.

“You will fight through the city,” he told them, the call of command still in his voice. “And cut your way to the harbor. Take a ship. Some of you are sailors?”

They nodded.

“Then, good luck.” He opened the passageway, and they began to crawl through.

Jade threw her arms around her husband's neck. “What of you?” she asked. “What is your intention?”

“I have business,” he said, “with the wizard who tried to kill you. And I will have satisfaction.”

Her eyes widened with alarm. “No! Please! Come with us!”

She kissed him, and he drank deeply of her lips. “Know, my darling, that for all my sins, I have loved you more than anything in this life.”

He gripped Aros's hand, locking eyes with him. “Fight beside a man, and you know him,” he said. “You may or may not be my son … but you are my brother. Take care of her. See the princess home.”

“That I will do.”

And now, at last, a smile curled Silith's lips. “And Mijista would make a good wife—”

Behind them, the sky lit with blue flame, and the earth shook with a ghastly roar. Flame and smoke gushed from the cave, laced with lightning, and then the mountainside collapsed.

“Go!” he whispered fiercely as the entire compound awakened, men crying alarum.

Aros ushered the last of them into the tunnel and closed the door behind him.

 

THIRTY-FIVE

Changing Faces

General Sinjin Silith was in a killing mood. He flowed from shadow to shadow like a wraith and watched with savage satisfaction as the compound boiled with screaming, running men.