The Ritual (39 page)

I gasped as a glow sprang up around me. For a few heartbeats I stared in awe at the colours – deep red, rich brown and warm gold, laced through with bright silver threads. Shani glowed too, but her colours were purple, green and blue, though with the same silver threads.

“Watch it, look at it!” Azerev exclaimed, sounding ecstatic. “Look at your soul! You!” He pointed at Shani. “Purple for magic, green for compassion, blue for optimism! And you!” Now he turned to me, and I saw the gleam of madness in his eyes. “Red for passion, brown for courage, gold for your clever wit! So beautiful, so perfect!” He gestured, and the colours started swirling as well, curling upwards and to the middle, where they joined the thick kaleidoscopic rope that was already twining towards the great skylight above us. A sharp, almost metallic smell began to permeate the air, reminding me of the tang in the air at the height of a vicious thunderstorm. And then I felt myself starting to weaken.

It was a curious sensation, like accelerated fatigue. I simply began to tire, sagging against the pillar with my eyes drifting closed, and with a distant sort of feeling I thought that if this was how it would all end, it wasn’t such a bad way to die. I would simply fall asleep and never wake up.

I opened my eyes with difficulty as Azerev began chanting again, now working towards a crescendo, and he closed his eyes in concentration as he moved his hands once more to the dagger that was the centrepoint in his entire ritual – the focus of his incantation and the link to his victim. I sensed that this was a pivotal point, but my entire experience had become detached, as if I was watching everything from outside my own body. I sagged further against the pillar and waited for the end to come.

Then the door opened with a crash and Mior stepped through, his hands already moving in a complicated spellcasting motion. He brought his palm forward with a quick thrust, and Azerev was knocked off his feet with such force that he slid out of the square and crashed against the wall.

Mior never even waited to see the result – he was already running towards my sister. Zash was behind him, his eyes focused on me as he pelted across the room.

“Stupid, insufferable, idiotic, foolish, exasperating woman!” he muttered as he reached me and started tugging at the shackles. “I ought to tie you up, ought to lock you away and never let you out again, ought to–”

“K…kiss me?” I suggested weakly, wanting to smile at him but lacking the strength to do so.

He gave a short laugh and yanked at the chains. “Oh, I will, believe me, but first I need to… get… you… out… of… Argh! Of all the
fucking
days not to bring my lockpicks!” He kicked at the pillar, then dragged a hand through his hair in frustration.

“Use… use mine,” I managed to say, and he stared at me for a few heartbeats, then at my belt.

“You brought yours,” he said, and then his face split into a grin. “Oh, Rin, you magnificent beauty, you brought yours!” He grabbed my face and kissed me, yanked my lockpick roll out of my belt, selected a pick and inserted it into the shackles with trembling fingers.

I could not take my eyes off him as he struggled with the lock, his expression darkening with every heartbeat as it failed to open. “I’m glad you’re here,” I murmured. “I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not going to die. I won’t let you,” he replied, but his hands trembled even more now, and my heart sank when the pick suddenly broke and he uttered a sound between a sob and a curse. “No!”

I wanted to calm him down, but then I saw movement from the corner of my eyes and noticed that Azerev was beginning to scramble back up. The swirling, glowing colours were still twining around each other and moving upwards above the dagger, and it looked to me like he might still be able to continue the ritual if he returned to it.

I tried to find my voice again, tried to warn Zash, but he had started tugging at my shackles again and I did not have the strength. Despair welled back up inside me, because it would take mere moments for Azerev to remember to compel the men to go away again.

Then I heard Shani’s voice, as weak as mine but with an urgency that cut through anything either Mior or Zash was doing: “Break it!”

For a moment Zash merely looked at her with a baffled expression on his face, but Mior understood. With two quick strides he reached the pedestal with the dragon flame, and even as Azerev raised his hands he knocked it over, away from the metal strips and the swirling colours.

“No!” Azerev shrieked, lunging forward with his arm outstretched, and then the room exploded.

*   *   *   *   *

I must have lost consciousness, at least for a moment. It was curiously quiet when I opened my eyes again, except for an incessant ringing noise in my head, and I shook it a few times to try to get rid of it.

Zash’s face entered my field of vision, his eyes urgent and his mouth moving, though I still couldn’t hear anything. I shook my head again, this time to indicate that I didn’t understand, and he motioned for me to put my head down, then showed me the small axe he held in his hand.

I obediently ducked my head and felt the blows reverberate through the pillar as he hacked away at my chains, and at the third blow I even heard a faint clanging noise to accompany it. The noise grew louder with every hit, and when the metal finally gave way at the seventh blow and I dropped bonelessly to the floor I could even hear Zash panting for breath. He shoved the axe across the floor towards Mior, then dropped down next to me, picking me up and cradling me against him with my head on his shoulder.

“Please, Rin, don’t die on me,” he pleaded frantically, “please tell me I got to you in time, please stay with me.” He rained kisses on my face, rocking me in his arms, and to my surprise I found that I had enough strength to wrap an arm around his neck and pull myself tightly against him.

“You came back for me,” I murmured, and he gave another short laugh.

“Of course I did, you idiotic woman,” he said, sounding insulted and fond in equal measures. “If you thought for even one moment that I wouldn’t, then I ought to… ought to…” He trailed off, and I took advantage of the moment to kiss him deeply, seeking his tongue with my own. It was bliss, and for several moments there was nothing but him, nothing but his solid body against mine.

Then I heard a noise, a strangled groan, and I held on tighter to Zash in fear, for the voice was Azerev’s. I could see him over Zash’s shoulder, face down on the floor and only a few inches away from the toppled-over pedestal with t
he dagger lying next to it, and gasped as he moved his arm.

The dagger was still glowing, still had a few residual colours swirling above it. I watched in horror as Azerev stretched out his hand and something like a small lightning bolt leapt across from his straining fingers to the dagger. Then he slumped back to the floor and the glow disappeared.

“Ow!” Zash exclaimed, then let go of me and crawled over to the sorcerer before rolling him over. His grey eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling, and Zash pressed the fingers of one hand against Azerev’s neck while squeezing at his own shoulder with the other.

“Dead,” he said after a few moments, and I went weak with relief. Then I put two and two together and scrambled over, yanking Zash’s shirt open at the neck and pulling it aside so that I nearly choked him. I just about managed to bare his shoulderblade, the one he had been rubbing, and I sagged back to the floor in gratitude.

“It’s gone,” I said. “Your mark is gone.”

He turned to me, and his smile was so radiant that I could do nothing but throw my arms around him and kiss him again. He kissed me back with equal fervour, and I suddenly realised that now there were no more secrets to be kept, no more plans to keep hidden.

I twined my fingers in his hair and pulled his head away, forcing him to look at me. “I love you, Zashter,” I said, grinning widely at him. “You came back for me, and I love you.”

“I told you, Little Firelocks, of course I came back for you. I can’t believe that you thought I might not,” he said, shaking his head at me.

“And?”

“And what?” His eyes were twinkling, and he yelped when I yanked at his hair, though his grin was as wide as mine now.

“Say it.”

“Say what? Ow! Rin!”

“Just the once, I know you can do it,” I murmured, moving my hands to stroke his ears with my thumbs. “Please, Zash, it’s not so hard, and I need to hear it.”

He locked his gaze with mine, and my breath caught at the emotions I saw in those jet black depths. He kissed me once, a featherlight touch of lips on lips, then cupped his hand around my face. “I love you, my Little Firelocks,” he said. “More than I could ever express in words.”

“Thank you,” I breathed, wrapping my arms around his neck, and the next kiss he gave me left me dizzy.

“Now, I feel I need to make a few things crystal clear to you,” he said in between nibbling at my lips and running his fingers through my hair. “First of all, I’ve had it up to here with you sacrificing yourself for me, so no more of that,
hmm?”

I giggled. “Only if you stop getting yourself into trouble, Black Eyes.”

“If that’s what it takes, then fine,” he said with a smile, then kissed me yet again.

“Anything else?” I asked breathlessly when he let go.

“Yes. I’ll have none of this ‘you don’t need me’ nonsense, understood?”

“So you’re saying that you
do
need me?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Gods, yes, I need you. You’re not just a warm body in my bed, Rin, you’re a friend, a lover and a soul mate all rolled into one. I tried to imagine walking the roads without you next to me, or burgling a house on my own again, or waking up without your legs wrapped around mine, and it made me want to die. So yes, I do need you.”

It was everything I had ever wanted to hear from him, and I thought my heart would explode in my chest when he locked his lips to mine again and I could feel his tongue slide against mine. “I would never have put you down as a romantic sap, Black Eyes,” I teased him, but he just gave me a fond smile.

“Only with you, Chiarin. Only with you.”

“So was there anyth–”

A shadow darted past us, and I startled violently. The shape never stopped until it reached the dagger, and I recognised Siander as he snatched it up and dashed away again, giving us a wide berth and casting a fearful look at us.

“Mior, stop him!” Zash shouted when the elf was halfway to the door, but nothing happened. “Mior!” he called again as Siander reached the door and bolted outside.

Zash let go of me and scrambled upright before holding out his hand to pull me up as well. I was still shaky on my
legs and had to cling to him, and he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close before turning to his brother. “Godsdamnit, Mior, what…” he began, then faltered.

I couldn’t help it, I sniggered. Mior was on his back on the floor, his tongue buried in Shani’s mouth and her hand buried down the front of his trousers. It occurred to me that I had heard their moans for a while now, but I had been too engrossed in Zash to pay it any heed.

“Oh for…” Zash muttered, then walked over and gently shook Shani by the shoulder. She looked up at him, her eyes glazed and uncomprehending, and he sighed. “Look, I sympathise with the sentiment, but this really is neither the time nor the place.”

“Hmm? Oh,” she said, and Mior made a sound of protest when she removed her hand from his trousers.

“Up, you rutting fuck,” Zash snapped, yanking at his hair. “We’re not in the clear yet.”

“Ow! What? We’re not? Why?” Mior said, his eyes focusing as he sat up.

“Because Siander just nabbed that dagger, and is probably on his way to the king to tell him that there’s a conspiracy to assassinate him.”

“So? The conspirator is there, and he’s as dead as a doorknob. All we need to do is get out of here before the guards arrive,” Mior said, standing up a little stiffly. He pulled Shani up and into his arms in one fluid movement, and she moulded herself against him.

“No,” Zash said after a moment. “I’ve had it with that weaselly little maggot. I want this over with, once and for all. I want to find him and kill him, or he’ll follow us forever.” Then he raised a threatening finger at my sister and added, “And this time, Shani, no amount of pleading will save his life.”

She nodded. “I understand, and I agree. He…” Her voice caught and she had to swallow a few times before she could continue, “He needs to die.”

“Good,” Zash said. “Let’s go get him.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I’m sure Zash’s intention had been for us to run after Siander and catch up to him, but unfortunately neither Shani nor I had the strength to do more than stumble along as he and Mior dragged us with them.

“You two go ahead,” I panted after a few streets. “We’ll catch up with you.”

“Ah, well, here we come to the third thing I feel I need to make clear to you,” Zash said, a little out of breath himself as he pulled me around a corner. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again, ever. All you do is get into trouble if I leave you on your own.”

“Excuse me?” I said indignantly.

“I left you for two measures and you got caught in a raid. I left you for two heartbeats with a dragon and you nearly got yourself killed. And I’m not even going to mention the time when I left you alone with an elf and you nearly got yourself fucked.”

“What?” I spluttered, then met his twinkling eyes and had to giggle. “Ow, dammit Zash, don’t make me laugh,” I gasped, stumbling and pressing my hand to my side. “I haven’t got the breath to spare. Anyway, I was never alone with Haster! You were there all the time!”

“I was a slave. Slaves don’t count.” Before I could pull him up on his twisted logic he squeezed me for a moment and added, “Also, if he really had tried to fuck you, I’d probably have killed him.”

I stared at him, unsure whether he was joking or not, and met his blazing eyes for a moment before he looked ahead again. It was enough to tell me that he had been deadly serious, and it dumbfounded me.

“Why?” I asked after a little while. “You didn’t love me then, did you?”

“No.
Maybe. I don’t know. I just knew I was jealous, and that I didn’t want him to touch you.”

The knowledge was ridiculously pleasing, but we had reached the main road now, which still had a trickle of people moving towards the royal arena, and I was distracted when Mior pointed ahead. “There,” he said, and I squinted along the smooth, straight paving until I saw a running figure, way up in the distance. Siander appeared to be tiring too, because as I looked at him he stumbled, but he was well ahead of us and I doubted that we could catch up with him. The arena was a looming presence at the end of the long avenue, and he had almost reached it.

“Can you bind him from here?” Zash asked.

Mior shook his head. “No. Too far. I can’t aim at that distance.”

“Fuck. Come on then.” He put on a fresh burst of speed, all but carrying me, and I was glad to feel my strength coming back, even if I could still do little more than limp along with him.

By the time we reached the arena he was panting like a bellows, and I looked around while he caught his breath. I felt stronger every moment now, but my heart sank into my boots when I saw the crowd that had gathered. Even if we could find Siander in this mass of people, getting him away from there without raising any suspicion would be impossible, never mind killing him.

“He’ll have gone that way,” Zash said, pointing, and grabbed my hand. Then he added, “We need to stick together, all of us,” and I felt Mior take my other hand.

“Zash, we’ll never catch him now,” I said, but he stubbornly shook his head.

“We have to. Come.” He tried to pull us further along, but then we found our path blocked by a burly human guard in a blue and green tabard.

“Come to watch your friends get killed?” he sneered. “Vermin stand’s that way.” He indicated behind us and grinned at Zash’s annoyed glare.

Zash squared his shoulders, but I quickly put my arms around him before he could do something stupid. “Leave it, Zash, please,” I said into his ear. “Don’t get yourself arrested and killed, not now that I’ve got you. Please.” I pulled him with me, and although I could feel his reluctance, he let me.

When we were far enough away from the guard that I felt comfortable we stopped. “Now what do we do?” Mior asked, and Zash threw up his hands.

“I don’t know,” he said, frustrated.

“Let’s go to where the guard told us to,” I suggested. “Maybe we can see something from there, do something.”

Zash nodded without much enthusiasm, and we began to push our way through the throng of people. I felt nearly back up to my usual strength now, and was confident that if we did see Siander and had to give chase, I could keep up, even if it seemed unlikely that we’d be able to run in this crowd.

When we reached the ‘vermin stand’ I got a better idea of what the arena looked like. From the outside it was just a tall, round wall with regular openings, but from the inside I could see the tiered seating that went up all the way to the top. The lowest seats were at about head height for a tall man, but between that and the arena proper there was an area sectioned off with a low wooden palisade, chest height for me. It spanned half the arena, with a similar palisade covering the other half but which left two gaps between them – one was the entrance to the arena, and opposite that was the king’s seat. The palisaded area acted as a buffer zone from which the action in the arena could be observed, even though it lacked the overview of the higher seats. At the same time, if there was anything dangerous in there which managed to escape, it would hit the people inside the palisade first.

There were few people there, since vermin meant half-elves and beggars only. Most of the beggars seemed to have decided that there was little profit in watching half-elves kill each other, and any other free half-elves apart from us were predictably absent.

I avoided looking into the arena, having no wish to see what the king had thought up to entertain him. The sound I could hear of weapons ringing off each other was bad enough. Shani made a sound of distress and I heard Mior murmur something soothing to her as Zash directed us to the right, toward where the king sat among his retinue.

“They’re bound, I’m sure of it,” Mior said after a few heartbeats. “Look, those two men standing either side of the king.”

I looked ahead of us and located the king’s golden blond head above his crimson garments. His seating area was shaded from the sun by a brightly coloured canopy, but the sides were open so he was visible from all directions. Beside him were indeed two men, by the look of it one elf and one human, and they gazed intently into the arena, their hands raised and poised for spellcasting.

“I bet they’ve bound one each,” Zash spat. “Make them fight each other so they can see which of the two of them is better.”

Despite my own better judgment I glanced at the two figures in the arena. One of them raised a sword overhead and I quickly looked away again before he brought it down. There was a metallic clang of sword on sword, but the sound that stood out most for me was the incessant, helpless sobbing of one of the two. I had only caught a glimpse of them both, but the one who was facing me looked like he was little more than a boy, and I swallowed hard to keep from throwing up.

“They can’t make them fight any better than what they can do themselves, surely?” I managed to say, and Zash snorted.

“Like that matters to them. They’ll have made a bet, I can guarantee you. Whichever of the two has the most victories at the end of the day, wins.”

“But it’ll have been the king’s idea,” Mior added. “It’d be just like him to do something like that.”

“It could have been us in there,” Shani said, her voice strangled.

“But it isn’t, and it won’t be,” Zash said. “Come on, we can’t get distracted.” He walked further, and we reached the end of the palisade.

“Sovander is warded,” Mior said, his eyes narrowed as he looked at the king. “There’s a third sorcerer, right behind him.”

Zash nodded. “Makes sense. I bet he’s always warded. He’s too cautious to let himself be…” He trailed off, his eyes riveted on the king’s seat.

I followed his gaze and saw a royal guard approach the king and kneel, before being beckoned closer. He said something, and the king looked up in surprise and turned his head to the side.

And there was Siander, waiting between two more guards and nervously hopping from one foot to the other.

“Can you bind him from here?” Zash asked.

Mior made a frustrated sound. “I don’t know, maybe. He’s close enough now, but it’s hard with other people that near to him. Besides, what good would it do? All that’d happen is that he couldn’t move, and they’d trace the magic to me soon enough.”

“Godsdamnit,” Zash swore, “there’s got to be something we can
do!
”

“I don’t think so,” I said morosely. “Look.”

Zash turned his eyes back to the scene above, and I saw Sovander stand up and stretch out his arm, palm facing outward, appealing to the crowd for silence. “Good citizens of Arlis,” he shouted when the susurration had died down. His voice carried, and the acoustics of the arena were such that all could hear what he said.

“Today you see before you a display of what happens to the evil elements in our fair society,” he said, gesturing down to the arena, where the two combatants had been allowed to cease their fighting
for the moment. “However, the Gods have seen fit to also provide you with an example of what a faithful, loyal citizen can achieve!” His next, expansive gesture indicated Siander, and the elf hunched down a little, his fearful gaze sweeping across the crowd.

Sovander turned to him and smiled magnanimously. “Approach, my faithful subject, and tell my people what you have for me.”

“M…my Lord,” Siander stammered, and received a none too gentle jab from one of the guards flanking him, as well as a hissed comment. “M…my Liege!” he amended, speaking louder this time. “Several months ago one of your much beloved possessions was stolen. I have, at considerable personal danger, managed to retrieve it for you!”

“I’ll give him considerable personal danger,” Zash growled, but I waved him into silence, intent on the scene before us.

“Approach then, good man,” Sovander replied, beckoning. “Approach and let me see.”

“Surely he’s not just going to hand that dagger back?” Shani wondered.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Mior replied. “He’s all about the profit, remember? I bet he’s hoping for a big, fat reward.”

“Shh,” I hissed, for when Siander stepped forward he began to speak again.

“My Liege,” he said, reaching into his jerkin and drawing out the dagger. “I believe this to be yours. It was stolen by dangerous criminals and–”

What he wanted to say next I never knew. He stepped closer to the king as he spoke, the dagger flat on his outstretched hands, but as soon as he came to within two feet of Sovander something extraordinary happened.

The first thing I saw was that he appeared to stumble. His hands clenched around the dagger and then they jerked forward as if some invisible hand had grabbed his wrists and yanked him toward the king. Sovander recoiled, but a flash of lightning leapt from the tip of the dagger to the king’s chest, its blaze so bright that for several heartbeats afterwards I had spots swimming in my vision. Sovander crumpled to the ground, and a collective gasp swept through the audience.

In the deathly silence that followed, the clatter of the dagger as it fell from Siander’s fingers was as loud as a thunderclap, and I saw the third sorcerer – the one who had been warding Sovander – kneel down and reach out to the king with an unsteady hand. He only took a few heartbeats before he rose and stretched out a trembling arm to Siander and bellowed, “Murder!”

Siander’s face was aghast, and he stared at his hands as if they didn’t belong to him. The guard next to him, however, matter-of-factly drew his sword and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. Siander only managed one last, terrified scream before the guard killed him with one quick stab to the throat.

Then pandemonium broke out. The entire audience swept to its feet, shouting, and the king’s retinue knelt by their fallen monarch, some of them beginning to wail loudly. The sorcerer was shouting at the guard who had killed Siander, saying it would now be virtually impossible to trace the magic which had been in the dagger, and he was joined by one of the courtiers, who began to admonish the guard for killing an elf without due trial. The guard in turn stubbornly defended himself, shouting that elf or no elf, Siander had killed the king and therefore deserved to die.

“We need to move,” Zash said in my ear. “This is not a good place to be.”

I turned to look at him and he took me by the shoulders, pushing me ahead of him. When I looked at the audience again I saw that many people were either milling about in confusion or moving towards the exits, but a good number were also climbing into the arena and running towards the contestant entrance, and I wondered whether their intentions were good or bad for the half-elves still locked away in there. Whichever it was, this was clearly the end of the Midsummer Magnificence.

Zash shoved his way through a bewildered group of humans who scuttled out of the way quickly when he scowled at them, and then we were out in the open and moving down the wide main avenue. People were running past us in abject panic, and the feel of the crowd was volatile. Zash yanked us into a side street, then began to weave down alleyways, and I was out of breath again by the time he finally stopped.

“What in Eternity did we just witness?” Mior asked, leaning on his knees and panting heavily.

Shani gave an almost hysterical giggle. “History, I’d say. We saw the king get killed by a fellow elf. They’ll have a hard time blaming
that
on us.”