Tyrant Trouble

CHAPTER 19

  Erlan clamped my elbow, his rough fingers digging through my cloak. He marched out of the temple, dragging me behind him as though I had no more weight than an empty cape. His sword swung freely in his other hand, the blade edged blood red in the last rays of the sun.

  He stopped and the gate, held me at arm's length and stared into the fiery west.

  The arc of the setting sun rested on the ridge, streaking the sky scarlet. From the base of a hillside beyond the huts at the city's edge, in deep shadow, flames shot upward, hundreds of scrub trees burning like giant bonfires.

  Lor and Nance. As we had planned, they had succeeded in soaking dry branches with oil, then stuffing them into the small scrub trees. Better yet, they had succeeded in hiding from Erlan's army, and had now returned to start the fires.

  Next line in the script was mine. My throat was dry and hot from vomiting and lacked the deep dramatic tones I had practiced, but I managed to make my rasping really loud.

  I shouted, “Funeral pyres!”

  “Who lights them?”

  I shrugged within his grasp. “Those who have not yet died. They burn the bodies to prevent the lifedrainers from stealing the souls.”

  “What of Tarvik? Is he with them?” he shouted at me.

  “I do not know if he is with the living or the dead.”

  “He was dying?”

  I was perfectly willing to lie to save the others, but I was unable to look at him and keep my voice steady. The problem wasn't honesty, it was my screaming nerves. His face was so close to mine, the furious eyes small glittering dots in the maze of scars, I couldn't think. What a time to forget my lines.

  I fell back on chanting. “I pray the Daughter of the Sun chooses to spare him. And may the Sun guide the dying to his eternal home. May the Daughter gather their ghosts before the lifedrainers can steal them.”

  The sun disappeared behind the ridge.

  The last ray cut through a gap in the peaks, a single gold pathway on the hilltop. I caught my breath and glanced at Erlan.

  He stared where I pointed, his face drawn into ridges of thick flesh, tense with anger and confusion.

  There was no reason to think my scheme would work, that Erlan would believe the city was destroyed by fever on my word alone, but it was my best shot. He might still follow Tarvik, determined to see for himself the extent of destruction and the number of survivors.

  All I could hope for now was to buy them traveling time. They were the warriors, not me, so part of the game was up to them.

  The fires meant Nance and Lor had returned. Were they still there, on the far side of the hill? What if the flames spread out of control and caught them?

  Erlan shook me. “You have seen lifedrainers?”

  “Oh yes. Hovering above the funeral fires.”

  What I really wanted to do was shout, “Run! Keep going!”

  If Nance stumbled or faltered or Erlan discovered there were only two humans on that far hill, she and Lor would be trapped. Shaking with fear, I stared at the western hills. Because we had planned one more trick and now I hoped she’d skip it and escape.

  And then I saw her.

  And then Erlan saw what I saw except that I knew the script and he saw the performance.

  His hand dropped from my arm. I heard his indrawn breath.

  “There, you see! One of the lifedrainers, gathering the spirits of the dead,” I cried. “Daughter of the Sun, save them!”

  Drifting out from a cliff's edge and down through the light shaft, huge and black with tattered edges outlined against the last sun rays, was Nance's latest version of a hang glider, a triangular span of wings as wide as a tent. She slowly circled low in the sky, through the rift between the smoking hills.

  The effect was greater than Nance or I had hoped it would be.

  The play of fading sun streaks behind the thick screen of smoke from the burning trees made the wings appear both terrifying and ghostly, black as evil and tinged blood red.

  The guards around us fell to their knees and covered their heads with their arms.

  Sure he was stunned to silence, but I didn't dare let Erlan think too long about what he saw, in case he noticed a small figure dangling below the wingspan.

  As the glider drifted, I began to chant, “Daughter of the Sun, take our spirits. Do not let the evil ones have us, for the sake of your loyal servant Kovat and his brave brother Erlan, do not let them capture us.”

  Erlan's mouth hung slack. His sword hung loose in his hand, its point touching the ground.

  I backed slowly away.

  His guards cowered on the ground, their hands over their faces.

  When I reached the temple gates, I turned and ran. I raced across the courtyard, through Nance's rooms, through the secret door to the stable. I slid it open, stepped out, shut it behind me, ran out of the empty stable and hurried to the building's corner.

  The sun had dropped and the sky darkened. Now hidden by the thick screen of smoke, Nance and Lor would toss the wings into the closest fire. Then they would head down the far side of the hills to where they had tethered their horses and get out of there. From some distant point they would stop to watch.

  If Erlan remained in the city, Nance and Lor would leave forever. We had agreed. Nance had promised. She had done all she could. And Lor would see to it that she kept her promise, no matter how much she might beg to return for me or to join Tarvik.

  “You must save yourselves,” I had told her and she had wept and stormed, but in the end she had promised.

  I did not completely trust her but I trusted Lor to take her away to safety.

  Now I needed to try to save myself. I stared into the shadows and saw no one between me and the castle. Creeping between the protective scrub trees, I tried not to touch their brittle, rustling twigs. With each step my robe caught at some small branch. I clutched it around me. The cracking of dry wood seemed huge, louder than his shout.

  “The templekeeper,” I heard Erlan scream. “The dark one! Where is she?”

  His voice cut the silence. I heard his men moving and calling to each other.

  “Search the courtyard!”

  “Search the temple!”

  “Go in! I command it!”

  Well that sucked. Had I underestimated their superstition? Were they really going to stick around?

  “There is fever here,” a voice protested.

  Good for you. Stick by your convictions, whoever you are.

  “There may be dead inside.”

  Whether or not they feared lifedrainers, they all knew fever, remembered plagues. There must have been some really grim outbreaks in the past to make them argue now with Erlan.

  While they hesitated outside the temple, I ran beneath the shadows of the trees to the castle wall and touched the latch stone. Behind me voices rose. I expected them to rush around the wall and see me. But in the dusk they hesitated, arguing at the temple gate, not yet thinking to separate and search the grounds. When they worked up the nerve they would run through the temple with its many archways and cupboards and passages behind the altar, thinking I might hide in a small space.

  “She carries the fever,” I heard someone mutter, not far away from me.

  Ah. Clever of me to vomit on their feet.

  I hurried inside the secret passageway. My hands pressed against the stones and I slid the door back into place. In darkness I closed out the shouts of Erlan's army.

  The stale air was as cold as sleet. It seeped through my temple robe. The darkness pressed against my face and filled my ears with silence. I stood in terrifying blackness, pulled my cloak tighter around me, and would have traded just about anything for a flashlight.

  Okay, so I wasn't worried about lifedrainers or fever but there were worse fates. Had others come here to hide in times past, only to be trapped, maybe later found dead from cold or hunger or terror? If I had a light, would I see gleaming bones on the dark floor?

  Gran had known that
bit of magic where she could open her hand and shine a light from her palm. The light only lasted thirty seconds. Maybe not much use, still, I’d feel a lot better if I could light the passage for half a minute and be absolutely certain what was there. Then I could feel my way along the walls without unpleasant surprises.

  I had stashed a small sack of food and a jug of water for myself while I waited for Erlan's army to arrive. My supplies wouldn’t last long. If Erlan stayed, what could I do? And how could I know when he left?

  What if their supplies were more than we'd guessed? What if Erlan decided to stay around, move into the castle, get a start on stealing Kovat's lands? What if I opened the secret door and found myself staring into the face of a guard? What if the latch stones stuck and I couldn’t open the doors?

  My panic went into high gear.

  This could be my tomb.

  I felt my way along the walls in a darkness heavier than I remembered. I couldn't see my own hands. Some light must have filtered into the secret passage from the rug-covered doorways the other times I had been here. Now all the openings were sealed with stone and I had only touch to guide me.

  When my foot bumped into my food pack, I sank down beside it and hugged it to my chest. Fear drove hunger away, or maybe it was the nausea thing left over from too much close up with Erlan. Why hadn't I thought to grab a temple lamp? If I had, what use would it be? I knew what my prison looked like, a long stone corridor.

  All right, so I now lived in a narrow prison. A few torches to cast shadows around the stones might have made the prison bearable, unless light revealed grinning skulls. What is it about darkness that is so much more horrifying than cold or hunger or even pain?

  By now the night outside would be as black as the corridor, nothing but the stars to break the dark. Yeah, I could use a few stars in here.

  When the sun rose and its light touched the castle walls, would that warm them? I had never been in the passage at daytime. Maybe in the summer it might be warm, but in winter, day and night were pretty much the same. How would I know when the night ended? And even if I knew, what should I do? The original plan was for me to wait until Erlan was frightened away. Then the door would open and Nance would call.

  Dumb me, Erlan would decide to hang around, count on it, maybe for a couple of months. I should figure a way out, maybe sneak out at night and head down the mountainside and find the place where I had entered this nightmare because, oh yeah, I knew a few survival tricks. True, they all required a car or phone or an all-night deli, and none of them would be much help if I ran into a bear. Or ran out of food or water. Or had to spend a night in the forest alone.

  Maybe I should throw myself on Erlan's mercy. Death by beheading was sounding better and better.

  I slid slowly down to the floor and drew the temple robe across my face to close out my fears. Huddled in thick velvet, I hoped to hold my own warmth in around me. A brighter bulb would have stashed her wool cloak here to give herself another layer. If hunger did not drive me to open the door, the cold would. I couldn't remain here for very long.

  My bones stiffened until it seemed to me that winter's frost lined my clothing. Slowly I sat up, pulled open my backpack with numb fingers, and found the cheese.

  I could imagine Nance saying, “That's you, Stargazer, living on cheese and bread because you don't know how to cook.”

  While I nibbled at the cheese like a demented mouse, I tried to decide what to do next.

  Would Erlan have the courage to sleep in Kovat's castle? Or would he be torn between greed and fear? He might camp outside the walls tonight, not knowing how fever spread. But if his ragtag army was down to the last supplies, they would be driven by hunger to search the castle for food. If I was going to escape I should probably act quickly, find the latch stone to Tarvik's room and pray no one in Erlan's army decided to bed down there on the bare floor. With the night to hide me, I might find an unguarded doorway and somehow sneak past Erlan's sleeping men.

  My hands slid along the rough stone, feeling for the indentation of a latch stone or any other sign to tell me exactly where I was in the corridor. The stones were ice cold and sharp with chipped edges that caught at my skin.

  My fingers felt numb. I couldn't even tell where one stone met another.

  How far was I from the outer entrance, how near Tarvik's room? Or had I gone well past it? And how long was the passage? I thought I must be close to the end, but did it end or did it wind back and forth between the walls?

  I leaned against the wall and almost gave way to sobbing. If I did, I might never make it back to sanity. To lie down in snow and rest was to freeze to death, right? I suspected the same would happen now if I stopped walking. Shuffling away from the wall, my hands outstretched, I reached forward to find the corner.

  My fingers touched warm flesh.

  I screamed. The sound tore from my throat. My mind did not direct it. There was no one to hear me or help me, no one who would, nothing a scream could gain. But all the fear that tightened my muscles and blinded my mind now ripped out of me, my throat so tight and raw I could almost taste blood in my shrieks. Worse, I could not stop.

  My voice echoed off the narrow walls.

  I was caught in a strong grasp and pulled forward into a circle of arms. I tried to struggle free, twisted helplessly, kept on screaming, tried to scratch and bite, tried to move my leg and get enough room to jab with my knee.

  A hand slid up my back and forced my head forward, pushing my face down into a shoulder covered by thick fur. With my mouth full of animal hair and my ear warmed by his face pressing against it, my screams were muffled enough that I heard his voice.

  “Stargazer! Stargazer! It's me.”

  Tarvik. I let my body go limp. He loosened his hold.

  A whole bunch of insults crowded my thoughts. Couldn’t say a one. All I could do was stand with his arms holding me up and pick away at the animal hairs stuck to my wet tongue.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. He could not see me but he could feel me moving.

  I spit out the last hair. My throat ached from screaming. My eyes were hot with tears.

  Through my fury I managed to gasp, “Tarvik, I am trying to decide whether to hug you or kick you.”

  He snickered and said, “Let me choose.”

  “Why are you here?”

  I thought about smacking him but decided it wasn't worth the effort.

  “When we reached the valley we found we could secure the pass. And so I came back to see how it was with you.”

  “You dummy, Erlan will see your horse and know you're here.”

  I wanted to push him away, beat him with my fists, punch whatever I could reach, I was so angry. But in the darkness, I also wanted him near enough to touch. I wasn't sure which of us was clinging to the other. I simply lacked the courage to let go of him.

  “Calm down, girl. I left the valley with Artur. This sunrise I sent him back with my horse and came the rest of the way on foot. When I reached the castle gate I saw Erlan's men searching the hilltop and so I came in here to hide.”

  “And then stood silent so you could shock the hell out of me?”

  “I did not know you were here until you touched me.”

  “But you didn't holler!”

  “Stargazer, I had no time to fear. You screamed so soon. I knew your voice.”

  “You knew my voice screaming?”

  He hesitated. If he hadn't done that, I might have bought his line.

  “You rat, you knew I was here before I touched you.”

  “No. Yes. I was not sure. I heard you moving along the wall. I have stood often enough in this place to know it has no sounds. And as no one but you knows this way, I thought it must be you.”

  “You could have said something.”

  “How could I be sure it was you?”

  I said slowly, “You win. I'll admit I'm happier now you're here. But why did you come back? You've risked your life for what? You can
't help me, not if Erlan sticks around.”

  “I can take you out of here before you fall ill,” he said, his arms still around me. “You are shaking with chill. Erlan's men did a quick search of the castle and now they have their cook fires set up outside. None are inside.”

  He turned me around and led me through the blackness that terrified me but was home to him. We left through the secret door to his room. The room was dark shadows with an odd streak of moonlight coming in through the narrow window opening at the ceiling's edge.

  “That painting of me on the wall,” I said, although the room was so dark I couldn't see it now. “When did you paint it?”

  He ignored my question. “Listen. Do you hear anyone?”

  I stopped and listened. The shadows sang with a low steady layer of sound that had no source.

  “I hear my blood pounding in my ears,” I whispered, and then I heard it, a distant murmur of voices. “Some of them are in the castle.”

  He nodded and drew me back across the room, opened the secret door and slipped back into the passageway, then closed the door. We stood in the darkness, motionless.

  “Guess they decided not to believe my story of fever. They must plan to stay. We could be trapped here until we die.”

  “I can't think of a nicer person to die with. But I have to consider my people.”

  I did wish I could see his face. His tone was light, teasing, and I didn't believe it. I reached toward his voice until my fingers touched his face and I traced the heavy frown line between his brows. I finished his thought.

  “If Erlan stays, he will track them down and eventually figure out how to get past your guards.”

  “Yes.”

  He reached up and caught my outstretched fingers and I clung to his hands. I wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor and wrap my cloak over my head and pretend I was anywhere but in that black prison. As long as I could touch him and know he was there, I could stay sort of sane.

  “We have to find a way to stop Erlan,” I said.

  “I can stop Erlan. I can search the castle until I find him and I can kill him. And then his men will outnumber me. But after they kill me, will they stay?”

  “After they kill you?”

  “Yes. I think that might work. With Erlan dead, his army will turn homeward. Their rations must be very low. Without Erlan to push them, they won't want to waste time searching further.”

  “After they kill you?” I said again. “What do you mean, after they kill you?”

  His hands tightened around mine. “Stargazer, we must go along the passage until we find where they are. Then I will go after my uncle. You may have to hide here for a day or two until they are gone. Then find my guards.”

  “No!” I screamed, and he pressed his open palm over my mouth for a brief moment.

  I bit my lip to hold back my voice.

  Tears burned and I reached into my pocket for my handkerchief. No time for crying, not with this delusional guy on a hero kick. Somehow I had to find another way out. My fingers touched the vial.

  “Oh. Tarvik. Wait, let me tell you,” I whispered.

  My words tumbled and slurred, almost beyond my control, because I thought I had an answer, I simply did not know how to use it. I explained about the vial, which maybe contained a drug, and about the box of powder I was sure was the stuff Alakar had given him. Not fatal, but it had done the job of knocking out Tarvik.

  “Yes, that sounds right, she used a powder. But what use is it to us?”

  “First we have to find out where your uncle’s men are. Then we can decide what to do. And that means no big brave combat challenge from you. This isn't a tournament and nobody will award your dead body a prize.”

  He laughed and it was such a normal sound. We felt our way along the silent passage, stopping several times when we reached doorways known to Tarvik. At each, he found the hidden catch and inched the door open, peering through to darkness. We listened. We heard nothing.

  Leaving the passage, we crept across empty rooms and cold courtyards, looking for reflected light from lamps or fires, listening for sounds beyond the night wind.

  I smelled it before I saw it, vegetarian that I am, that nauseating odor of roasting meat. We stood behind a door that opened to one of the many courtyards. I whispered, “Mutton cooking.”

  The fire was around a corner. It cast a moving shadow on the far wall. It was a low fire, probably banked coals beneath a roasting spit.

  We crept forward into the winter night. At the corner we both peered around the wall. A lone guard squatted by the fire. There was a shapeless hunk of meat on the spit. Pushed into the coals was a pot filled with something that did not bubble but gave off a thin curl of steam.

  Closer to the wall and to us were several tall jars.

  From somewhere past the guard and the courtyard's outer gate, we heard the low buzz of talk.

  “What's in the pan?” I whispered.

  “Drippings, probably. To dip bread.”

  “And in the jars?”

  “Mead, I should guess.”

  I yanked him back around the corner and out of sight of the guard. “I don't know what heat will do to the powder. Will they heat the mead?”

  “Shouldn't think so. That mutton is about ready. They'll want to eat.”

  “All right. I'll empty the box into the mead. Might not be enough to knock out anyone, but if it makes them at all ill, that'll do.”

  “Ill? Why?”

  “I told Erlan there'd been a plague. Everyone left to avoid the spread.”

  “He believed that?”

  “Also told him the fires were funeral pyres. Nance and Lor torched the far hillsides.”

  “We saw the smoke last night. You must be magic if he believed you.”

  I didn't explain about Nance's glider. That was her secret. And I certainly wasn't going to tell him that I had puked on his uncle's feet.

  “Give me the box,” he whispered.

  “No, I'm darker than you. Less apt to be seen in the shadows.” He opened his mouth to argue and I pressed my fingertips against his lips. “Tarvik, listen. They know I am here. If they catch me, they won't look for you.”

  “No, I won't let you.”

  “I'm not playing hero, honestly. They think I'm sick and have a deadly fever. None of them want to get near me. You need to go back to your camp so you can lead the fight against your uncle, in case this doesn't work.”

  And while he stared at me, trying to come up with an argument, I ducked away from him and slipped around the wall.

  The guard was half asleep, squatted on his heels by the fire. I watched him breathe in that slow rhythm, his eyes almost closed, his soldier body used to grabbing rest without quite losing consciousness. His clothes were shabby, battle-worn. In the dim light I could see raw scrapes on his face and hands.

  I moved silently a half step at a time, barely lifting my feet, one hand against the wall to steady myself. Nearby voices mixed with the low whistle of wind. With that thin background of sound, I took the little metal box out of my pocket. If it held nothing more than face powder, I'd made a bum choice.

  When I reached the first jar, I emptied the contents of the box into it. So that was done. It either had an effect or it didn't. For a moment I thought about the vial of liquid. Should I add it also? I put my hand back into my pocket, dropped the box and felt around for the vial.

  “Ho! You!”

  I froze. I could not even turn my head to look at him.

  Flattening myself to the wall, I pressed my hands against it. My feet wouldn't move, but what of it? There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and I had to hope Tarvik had the sense to get back to the secret passageway and close the door. I could perhaps stay alive for a while with chants and lies and who knew what. I could froth at the mouth and fall at their feet and pretend to be dying of fever.

  Does that sound brave? Hope so, because it's noble to go out like a hero, but the truth was, I had no choice. I coul
d not possibly outrun the guard and if I did, there was an army of them in the outer yard.

  I felt him and smelled him as he leaned closer. I tried to roll my eyes, to look ill and contagious, and let my head fall sideways. I made some really disgusting sounds and if he came closer, fear and nausea would empty what was left in my stomach and the sounds would be real.

  He looked like every soldier, dirty, weary, frightened, his face slick with nervous sweat. He held his dagger a breath away from my throat. Questions slid across his face as he stared at me.

  “You,” he mumbled, his eyes unfocused. “Templekeeper.”

  The guard threw his weight against me, crashing me against the stone wall. My body screamed while I managed to choke back sound. I tried to break the impact, threw my arms behind me, felt a sharp pain slightly dulled by shock. He caught my hair and pulled it up until I thought my neck would snap, then swung me away from the wall toward the fire. My vision blurred.

  He opened his mouth to shout to his fellow guards and I knew my luck was over. Erlan was stupid, but not mindless. He would search my pockets and guess what I had done.

  The man's voice broke in a ragged gurgle of sound that died on the edge of a cry.

  I struggled to focus and saw an arm snaked around his neck from in back of him, the elbow forcing up his chin. A hand wearing a lot of gold rings clamped over his mouth.

  The man let go of me and I almost stumbled into the coals.

  Blood ran from my torn elbows, trailing down both arms. I bit back sobs, held in tears. This sort of rough stuff, it looks good in TV action shows and maybe people who tramp the wilderness expect some bruises, but it's not part of normal city living, at least not for me. Whimpering was my normal reaction and I knew that wasn't a choice. Not whimpering. Not howling.

  Tarvik hauled him toward the back wall and I saw the tracks the guard's heels made in the dirt.

  Diving at his feet, I grabbed his ankles, lifted them. It seemed like hours but could only have been seconds. We carried him between us, Tarvik's arms sliding around the shoulders to take most of the weight.

  “Where is he?” a voice shouted. “He's supposed to be here, watching the fire.”

  I froze and stared into Tarvik's widened eyes.

  We were dead. They would capture both of us and take us to Erlan. He would find the vials in my pocket, see his live and healthy nephew, and no matter how thick and stupid his brain, he would know I'd tricked him. That would be the end of us and the beginning of Erlan's pursuit of the missing residents of the city.

  “Looks about done,” another voice said, and I thought he was right, we were done.

  Tarvik's mouth clamped shut and I did likewise. He jerked the shoulders of our prisoner, lifting most of the man's weight by himself and still kept his one elbow wedged so tightly beneath the chin that the man could only make low choking sounds. I stumbled after, clinging to his ankles to prevent his feet from dragging.

  “I'll look around, he can't be far,” the first voice said.

  His companion said, “Gives me the creeps, fixing our food here, all those people dead. Ever see fever spread?”

  We pulled the guard into the passageway, dropped him on the floor and closed the door. I heard Tarvik drag the man across the floor, heard the body bumping against the stones, and didn’t want to guess why the man made no sound.

  When Tarvik reached a doorway, he opened it, pulled his prisoner into a dim room. I had lost any sense of direction and didn’t know where we were, other than in one of the many bedrooms.

  The guard moaned.

  “He'll come around unless I kill him,” Tarvik said. I tried to pretend I had not heard him.

  “Could you tie him up or something?”

  “And have him found?”

  “Maybe we could drug him. Oh. All I have left is the vial.”

  “Use it.”

  “But what if it is a poison?”

  “You can give him the vial or I can break his neck.” Tarvik smiled his wide toothy smile at me. I must have been crazy thinking I could read his face. He could not possibly be having smiley thoughts.

  The best I could do was hope the liquid was a sleeping potion.

  The guard's eyes opened and he struggled, half-conscious, against Tarvik's grip. He was larger and heavier than Tarvik, his skin slick with sweat, his body twisting. He wrenched his head sideways, gasped, went still.

  Tarvik knew exactly how to hold him. I wondered if it was one of those lessons taught to barbarian sons along with sword fighting, how to disable and control large smelly opponents.

  Tarvik kept his elbow under the man's chin and with his other hand, he held his nose.

  I opened the vial and poured its contents into the open mouth.

  Tarvik held him until he passed out, either from the grip on his neck or from the drug. He went limp and slid to the floor.

  Tarvik said, “He is breathing, Stargazer, so stop worrying.”

  He caught my hand and led me into the castle hallway, which looked like every hall I had seen and so I didn't know where we were. We ducked in and out of rooms until we reached the one Tarvik wanted, went through it to another hidden entrance to the passageway, felt our way through the black, exited again, this time into a small inner courtyard with only one gate. The gate was bolted from the inside.

  “No one comes here,” he said.

  Like all the courtyards it was depressingly bare except for a long low bench. But there was a bit of light from the starry sky and it was warmer outdoors than inside the stone walls.

  My teeth were chattering and I must have looked about to pass out, because Tarvik suddenly wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a warm hug, stroked the side of my face. Could he do that all at once? It seemed to me like he had a couple of extra hands.

  He smoothed my hair, pressed his mouth against my ear, whispered, “He will not die. We did not kill him. He will be fine. Please, don't cry.”

  I wasn't crying. Or I didn't know I was until he started brushing tears from my face. It wasn't so much fear as exhaustion, I think.

  With his hand under my chin, he turned me and pressed his forehead against mine, our eyes so close, all I could see was a blur.

  “Have you slept at all these last few nights?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Blinked your eyes a few times, yes?”

  I was so tired I leaned into his hug, clung to him, felt his body heat radiate through me until I stopped shivering.

  “It must be that I am warm that you like. I'm not sticky or black or even very soft,” he said.

  I moved far enough back from him to be able to see his face. “No. Who said you were?”

  “You did. You called me Tarbaby once and then you said that is what a tarbaby is. You also said a tarbaby is cute. Am I cute?”

  “Good grief!” I put my head back on his shoulder. “Do you memorize every word I say?”

  “I try to. Come on, I think you need to sleep.”

  He led me over to the bench, sat down, then pulled me down beside him. He wrapped my robe tightly around me and even arranged the hood up over my head. If I hadn't been so exhausted I might have argued.

  Somewhere on the trip through the passage he had snagged a jar of mead.

  Now he opened his robe and tugged out the hem of the short linen tunic he wore above his wool pants and boots. I was too tired to think, but the sound of ripping cloth made me watch. He tore off a strip, then dipped it in the mead.

  I couldn't even get up the strength to question him.

  Next he carefully rolled up a sleeve of my robe. My elbow was a bloody mess from its collision with the stone wall.

  He studied it, studied me, said, “Take a drink,” and held the jar to my lips. “Now.”

  Bossy, bossy, but I did it, drank a gulp, stared at him wondering what was next.

  He lifted my other arm, put it in front of my face, said, “Bite down on your sleeve. No, do not bite yourself, just the
sleeve,” and he all but stuffed a wad of velvet sleeve into my mouth.

  “Try not to scream.”

  I wondered why and then he washed my elbow and I knew what he meant because, oh God, did I want to scream. Maybe it was the mead that burned, maybe just the cloth rubbing over the scrape.

  That fun experience was over in a minute or two and then, damned if the guy didn't switch arms, stuff my other sleeve in my mouth and clean up the opposite elbow.

  Huh. So whether or not they knew the names for bacteria, the barbarians did know about infection. I tried to keep my mind on all these puzzles. Better than decking him, which I would have enjoyed doing.

  When he was satisfied with his first aid project, he pulled me into a hug, kissed my forehead and cheeks, smoothed my hair, did a whole lot of soft murmuring about how brave I was and kind of reminded me of my grandmother. I didn't bother to tell him that.

  “Done torturing me?” I managed to ask.

  “Hush up,” he said and he sounded angry but I somehow got the impression he was angry with himself, not me.

  He pushed me down until I was lying on the bench with my head pillowed on his thigh, reached the length of me to tuck the hem of my robe in around my feet, then leaned his back against the wall. He kept one hand on my shoulder and it might as well have been his sword.

  Ah, not really, the sword had been heavy, sharp, threatening. The pressure of his hand was firm and somehow comforting.

  “Get some sleep now,” he said.

  “Are you going to sleep sitting up?”

  “Yes.”

  With no hope at all of sleeping, I closed my eyes, listened to his soft breathing, tried to relax.

  I woke hours later when the sky began to gray. I was alone on the bench, my head pillowed on something soft. When I sat up I heard myself moaning. Every surface of my body felt bruised. The scrapes on my arms burned. I spread open the rolled pillow and saw it was Tarvik's fur cloak.

  He was wandering around in the cold winter morning with nothing more than a sleeveless tunic over his pants and boots.

  Above the courtyard wall the open sky turned light, and there were faint drifts of smoke, probably from cook fires. The smell of roast meat lingered. There were no sounds other than those of any morning, rising wind, something creaking somewhere, chattering flocks of birds.

  I peered through the narrow crack at the edge of the gate and saw an empty outer courtyard. The gate bolt was still in place on the inside.

  Okay, time to head back the way we came, through empty rooms and down the lightless passageway until I saw the silhouetted form of Tarvik in an open doorway. I moved quietly up behind him.

  Without turning his head, he reached back, curled his arm around me and held me pressed against his back. Over his shoulder I could see across an open grassy expanse that stretched from the castle to the edge of the hilltop, far enough away that the men standing there didn't notice us. We were within sight, but we were in shadow. Erlan's army seemed to be gathering, sorting themselves into a ragged order, tying on their packs.

  Some were roping blankets to the few horses. Others collected weapons and piled them into carts. All of them stumbled with exhaustion, their hands shaking as they lifted and secured supplies.

  They looked like men who had not slept much, and as we watched I saw several rub their eyes and shake their heads.

  Tarvik stepped back with me glued to him, and quietly closed the passage door. My eyes had adjusted to the light and now I could see nothing in the corridor. I felt him turn, lean toward me.

  With his breath warm on my face, he said softly, “They are packing up and leaving.”

  “Are they? Why?”

  “I don't know yet. Come on, let's look.”

  I pushed his cloak against him and he took it and put it on.

  We moved methodically through the passageway, again going in and out of rooms, checking doorways, watching for moving shadows, listening for any sound at all from inside or outside. The castle seemed deserted. But each time we went into a walled courtyard, and the castle was edged with a maze of those empty little useless pockets that contained nothing more than a bench or fire pit, we could hear voices from the outer grounds.

  They spoke in low tones. Most of what we heard were instructions on how to carry or fasten something. It took them the better part of the morning.

  When we reached the courtyard with the mead-filled jars, they still stood against the far wall. The spit above the fire pit was empty, the ashes cold.

  Two warriors were in the courtyard. My breath caught and I almost turned and fled. I felt Tarvik stiffen at my side.

  They sat against a far wall, their eyes open and looking at us, their heads tilted and sagging toward their shoulders. I expected them to shout or jump up to chase us.

  Tarvik grabbed his dagger from his belt. I put out a hand to stop him.

  “You don't need that,” I whispered and walked over to them.

  Neither moved. They breathed through open mouths. They stared from unseeing eyes. They looked the way Tarvik had looked after Alakar drugged him.

  We hurried to the jars and peered into them. They were empty, the one into which I had dropped the powder as well as the other two.

  After that, we stayed out of sight behind walls and doorways. Out on the open grass we saw several more men lying unconscious, ignored by the others.

  “How long will they be like that?” Tarvik whispered.

  “If it is the same potion you drank, a day or two, maybe longer.”

  “Erlan must think they're sick.”

  “And is leaving them behind to die.”

  Tarvik sighed. “They won't die, Stargazer. You know they won't. I didn't.”

  I don't know why I was upset. The whole purpose of drugging the mead was to convince Erlan that the castle was infected with plague. That's what I had told him to make him want to leave and it appeared to be what was happening.

  For some reason, I'd assumed he would take his drugged warriors with him.

  “What will we do with them?”

  Tarvik shrugged. “As soon as the army leaves, we'll have to find all of those left behind and tie them up.”

  “You can't keep men tied up forever.”

  “When my blacksmith returns, we will chain their ankles.”

  “Like slaves?”

  “That's what they will be. Quite a haul of slaves you made with that powder.”

  “I don't want to enslave anyone,” I protested.

  “The alternative is to kill them, but if I do, you will be angry with me.”

  As happened too often when I talked to Tarvik, he was making my head hurt. I didn't like what he planned but I had no better suggestions. So I didn't bother arguing.

  We waited in the castle, out of sight, until midday when we saw Erlan mount his horse. A guard walked beside him holding a banner on a pole. At some word from Erlan, the guard handed him the pole.

  Erlan held the banner high above his head with the pole gripped in both hands and waved it in an arc several times. Then he handed it back to his guard. The long shabby procession began its slow winding journey down the path and across the valley.

  Tarvik caught my hand. We moved quietly through the dusky halls, stopped at each corner, strained to listen. Strips of daylight cut through the empty rooms, as pale as ghosts and as spooky. I saw light and shadow shapes move in the edges of my vision, but when I turned my head there was no one there.

  Sure there's ghosts, Gran always said so, but I'd never seen any. I hadn't believed in them, not before. But here, in this castle with its generations of warriors, believing in ghosts was a lot easier. The courtyards we crossed were full of unearthly light that seemed to shift as we passed. I was numb with cold by the time we reached the front gate. Tarvik grasped my icy hand with his warm fingers. Felt good. We saw and heard no one.

  We climbed to the wall top. While I waited on the last stair, Tarvik, who was as sure-footed as a cat, walk
ed on the ledge.

  To the west, a low black cloud of smoke dimmed the fading sunlight while the hillside turned dark behind the occasional flicker of a dying fire. Here the wind brushed my hair from my face and curled my robe around me. I felt warmer now that I was free of the passageway, felt like myself again standing beneath the familiar sky. I rubbed my arms and stamped my feet and concentrated on getting my blood circulating. I could see Tarvik moving against the gray sky as he circled the castle guard walk.

  When he returned, he said, “They travel east and south, far beyond our hills.”

  East and south. Away from the mountains, away from Lor and Nance and the fires that I had told Erlan were funeral pyres. And, more importantly, away from the valley where Tarvik's people hid.

  “We have won.” We grinned at each other.

  In the dying daylight we stood at the edge of the thicket's shadow and watched Erlan's army move slowly toward his homeland. So fear had done the trick and Erlan had been fooled by me, by Nance, and better still, by a drug mixed by his own wife.

  We returned to the western wall to build a fire to warm ourselves and to signal Nance and Lor to return. The sparks shot red and gold into the sky, a celebration, and I moved as close to them as I could.

  “You're shivering, girl. Here, put this on.” He started to pull off his fur cloak.

  “Keep it or you'll be the one who gets sick.”

  “It's big enough for both of us.”

  He stood behind me and wrapped his cloak around me and held me tightly so that I could feel his heat against my back, his chin on my shoulder. I felt too warm and safe to protest.

  “How are your elbows?”

  “Better,” I said, then added, “Thank you.”

  While we waited for a sign from Lor and Nance, he asked, “In your land, do you live in a castle?”

  “No. I live in a house.”

  “What is a house?” It was his tell-me-a-story voice and I knew he wanted to hear about anything that would take his mind off thoughts about his father and war and traitors, and perhaps he also wanted to forget, for a while, the responsibilities he would have to face tomorrow.

  So I described my house.

  “It's small, but the rooms all open onto a deck facing the back garden. Sometimes on warm nights I sleep outside on the deck and I can watch the stars.”

  “I have never seen a place like that. Tell me about it.”

  Tell him about my house? Tarvik didn't know anything about houses. He knew stone castles and wood huts, but not houses.

  My parents, if tested, would have flunked role-modeling. They wandered off, first one, then the other, daddy moving in with his longtime girlfriend who then tossed him out, mommy following a traveling somebody to the east coast. Who knows how many address changes they both collected. What it added up to was little Claire living with first one cranky aunt and then another. Not that they meant to be cranky, my aunts, they tried to do the mommy thing, but my mother's two sisters were both broke and underemployed and overextended and picked men who ran up debts before running out. Daddy's sister was a good egg married to a bad egg. So the three aunties took turns, a month here, six months there, for me.

  I was twelve when my maternal gran was diagnosed with so many illnesses she had more prescription bottles in her kitchen cabinets than she had food. She was in a wheelchair within the year and needed someone to live with her, so my aunts grabbed that as a solution. Not a bad one, really, because it moved me into a house where I had a permanent room of my own and didn't have to keep changing schools. And Gran knew bits and pieces of magic. She could do that thing of opening her hand and lighting up a room. A couple of times the trick scared off a prowler. And she could call things to her, very small things like popped buttons and dropped hairpins. That skill only seems unimportant to someone who is not in a wheelchair.

  We got along fine. She tried to teach me her tricks but I lacked that particular bit of magic. I did learn to take care of myself, help her, and stay out of the troll's way. We did okay until Gran died the year I turned eighteen. I still miss her.

  As her daughters never came to call or help out in any way, and because she had long since decided they were a lost cause, she left them each some cash and she left me the house.

  That could have caused a battle except the aunts didn't like the house and they needed the cash and the lawyer pointed out that the Will was legal, plus property in Mudflat was hard to sell, especially with a troll in the basement.

  So that's how I ended up with a little two-bedroom house, all on one floor, about a thousand feet square. Upstairs is a small attic. Downstairs is a basement apartment and the rent from it takes care of utilities and taxes. The renter works nights, sleeps days, so our paths don't cross much, but when I am out, the grass gets mowed, hinges oiled, leaky plumbing repaired.

  Should I tell Tarvik about the troll? Or would that require another long story to define troll? What the hell, he needed something else to think about than his uncle.

  “There's a troll in the basement,” I said and he laughed because of course he thought I was joking.

  “Do all the people in your village have houses and gardens?”

  I nodded. “Or apartments. I don't actually live in a village. I live in a large city.”

  “And do people live with their families and share meals and do you tell stories in the evenings?”

  I started to laugh, because it seemed like such an odd question, but then I thought about the castle with its endless cold and empty rooms, and guards standing in the hallways. He had no idea how anyone else lived, beyond knowing peasants lived in crowded huts and the rulers lived in lonely castles.

  And so I told him a bit about Mudflat. That's what he wanted, something to picture in his mind.

  “We go to our jobs during the day,” I said, and told him about a few of my friends.

  Okay, I did not mention the Decko brothers, who were not friends, and not Roman, who was a sleaze. There were a couple of fun people at the bank, where I presumed I was no longer employed, and quite a few friends at the Mudflat Neighborhood Center, which was solid Mudflat and peopled with assistants and counselors, all types who thought of forgiveness as a virtue and so I would be taken back like the prodigal daughter whenever I returned. If? No, not going there, not tonight.

  “And then at the end of the day we sometimes hang out together.”

  “Hang out?”

  “Watch TV, call out for pizza.”

  Skip trolls, it took the rest of the evening to explain about pizza and lights and heat and running water and I don't think he believed a word of it. He thought I was making up a story. As he liked anything that sounded like a story, he listened carefully and asked for explanations and descriptions, then repeated words like Seattle and Mudflat and freeway.

  The fire flamed hot enough to shoot sparks and I felt much warmer. I unwound his arms from around me and stepped free of his cloak. We leaned back against the wall and watched the distant hills for an answering fire from Nance and Lor.

  He kept one arm around my shoulders, holding me against his side, keeping me comfortably warm, and I gave up trying to explain electricity and switched to sports. He asked endless questions about soccer. He was as puzzled as Nance had been by the idea that the point of a game was to kick a ball past the opposing team without harming anyone.

  “But wouldn't it be quicker to knock them all down and run over them?”

  “If people get injured, that isn't much fun.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, and then he laughed at me. “All right, someday you'll have to teach me this game so I can find out what makes it fun.”

  For that one night, Tarvik and I were friends sharing a victory, trying to use happier memories to close out the horror of reality.