Nenfari: an Assassin's Flower novella

  Chapter Four

  The mouth of the tunnel to Below gaped dark before me.

  Caching the dust-colored cape which I'd used to slip past the guards, I plunged into the gloom. Behind me the copper sky was harsh as a curse.

  I pressed forward blindly until my eyes adjusted to the oily blackness. Edible fungi grew in trenches along the walls.

  Undimmed by torchlight, the phosphorescent glow of the mushrooms allowed me to make my way with ease. Without the torch, the air was not unbreathable, but the weight of the earth pressed on me. The air held the Dark season's chill.

  Faint knocking echoed far off. I could not help picturing the Storyteller's pudgy face, her eyes round as she told of the kolbaniis, evil, stunted creatures. They were said to capture and enslave or eat children who wandered too far from the inhabited areas of the twisting tunnels Below. I shook myself. A tale to fright small children, only. Even so, I gripped my staff tighter.

  Presently, I came to a passage where the glowing fungi had been scraped from the walls, rendering the passage invisible to any who were not seeking it. I entered, hoping I had marked it correctly. I followed the passage, staff testing the floor, my other hand hovering over the knife in my belt.

  Dark thoughts flitted through my mind like insects before a lamp. Argath take Sulios for having brought me to this desecration I planned. If the gods cursed me, I prayed they would curse him as well.

  Sulios had not needed to choose Aldrar's child. Why had he? Was it revenge for his spy? I should have expected it. Did not Shagul's clergy always attempt to create mischief for we assassins? Were they not responsible for the original betrayal of the Ru'al Harani's throne to the Men From Beyond the Mountains?

  Now Sulios had turned the loving, vibrant Aldrar to a listless wraith. Even the death of her lover had not been able to accomplish that.

  I saw again the hand-shaped slap mark on Aldrar's face. Shame turned my stomach queasy.

  Sulios' fault.

  I did not hear the voices until they were nearly upon me.

  "...watch that one. His Eminence fears she is up to something."

  I searched for a hiding place. The wall was smooth glass, devoid of crevice or alcove. My head rang with silent oaths. How could I have allowed my anger to overcome vigilance? Dispassion was the first lesson taught a harani. Already the light of their torch flickered around the next bend.

  "Did Sulios say what he expects?"

  I could turn back, but I did not recall passing a likely spot. And I would lose precious time. Aldrar must be far gone by waking. The passage was wide and I wore shadow colors. What chance that those approaching would see me?

  "Only that she is plotting. Shagul gave him a sign in the ashes. A sign for watchfulness."

  Dark-robed priests turned the corner. I pressed myself flat against the wall, melding with shadows, willing myself to be part of the glass.

  "It is ill that she evaded the sacrifices."

  I filled my awareness with the glass, its cold hardness against my cheek, the soot-stench that clung to its surface in a greasy film.

  It was not enough.

  "Who's that?" the lead priest asked.

  His eyes had barely lit with comprehension when my bronze shod staff crushed his windpipe.

  Heat singed my cheek. I blocked the second priest's torch with my staff. He swiped at me again, and I sent the brand clattering to the floor. It guttered and went out. Ducking under his arm, I drove the knife up through his ribs.

  The robes of the first priest were less bloody. I pulled them on. They reeked of smoke, sweat, fear. I ignored the smell, grateful for the disguise. I would need it now. Dragging the bodies until I found a place to hide them would slow me down.

  A sudden thought made me snort laughter. I shredded the second's robe, scattering cloth. It would not do to let them know one robe was missing. Taking my knife I raked a series of four deep furrows on the bodies. "Let them wonder," I muttered, and continued on.

  The bridge was, as my guide of the previous two wakings had promised, now bereft of handholds. I removed my sandals and looped a rope about the arch, tying either end about my waist. I was glad for the murky light shed by the altar pit. It and the shadows of the robe would hide my use of the rope. I was more grateful that in the dark, I could not see the abyss below.

  It was not the bridge's narrowness which frightened me, but its length. Long enough for twenty hands of men to stand upon at once. A long distance to fight the vertigo caused by watching the ribbon of stone beneath my feet.

  The air stank of broiled flesh. My throat knotted. Using my staff for balance, I concentrated on putting one foot before the other.

  Barefoot, I found the stone had been scored and roughened to make almost negligible toeholds. With handrope removed, the chasm tugged at my vision. The darkness was eerie, insistent. I fought the urge to test its substance with an extended foot.

  At last I stepped from the bridge to the floor of the cavern.

  I slashed the safety rope with a swift motion that I prayed would not seem unnatural to the priest who kept vigil over Shagul's altar. He did not challenge me, giving me a sleepy nod and turning to lay burnrock on the fire.

  Pulling the cowl of my stolen robe about my face, I passed him and entered the corridor beyond.

  The first doors I came to held a series of small rooms, prayer cells, perhaps. Next were a a dining area and a deserted kitchen, rank with stale grease. Then a dormitory full of snoring priests. Just beyond the dormitory a small rodent scuttled out of a crevice an across my toes. I kicked the thing away.

  I passed countless darkened rooms, conscious of the time I wasted. The corridor split in two soon after the dormitory. I had taken one tunnel at random, but nothing convinced me that I headed in the right direction.

  Would it be wiser to return and explore the other corridor? Just as I was debating this, I stepped onto a section of flooring that sank beneath my weight.

  I hurled myself backward. Not fast enough to avoid the bolt that slammed into my calf muscle. A trio more whizzed past my head, glancing off the wall beyond me.

  Sinking down, I took a deep breath and called on the pain-block as I ripped a swath of cloth from my skirt. Poisoned?

  I would know soon enough. With my knife, I worked the barbed shaft from my leg.

  Tucking the bolt into my belt, I staunched the bleeding, wrapped the wound and rose. I gathered the other bolts and wiped a few drops of blood from the stone floor. A harani never leaves sign of her presence--save for the bodies of her victims.

  Surely the trap meant that I was searching in the right direction. I made my way with more caution now. Testing the floor before me with the metal butt of my war-staff, I listened at every door I passed.

  Around a corner I came to a dead stop.

  The corridor ended.

  At the end of the corridor a mirror covered most of the wall, throwing my reflection back at me. Mocking me.

  I approached it, scowling at the girl reflected in the glass.

  The girl in the mirror scowled back.

  I lifted a hand to trace the swirling pattern carved into the wood frame, which stretched from floor to ceiling. I would have to turn back. There was little time to search the other corridor.

  How long had it taken to get this far? How many winds till waking? One? Two? Less? The priests of Shagul would be rising soon. I might be able to evade them. If not, my rank and the fact that Aldrar knew where I was would save me from torture.

  Perhaps.

  But the sacrifice would go on.

  The D'hara in the mirror's shoulders slumped. I glared at her, hating her. Hating the deep blue of eyes blazing raptor-like beneath narrowed brows. Bronze skin stretched over sharp cheekbones by the angry twist of mouth. The long black braid, at least, was like Illistanirda's. I would have loved to use I to garrote Sulios and every one of his followers. But the mirror showed that even the hair failed perfection, snarling from its braid in a spidery halo.

&nbs
p; I could no longer contain myself. I drove my fist into the contemptuous reflection.

  My fist passed though the mirror without so much as rippling the glass.

  I pulled my fist back, examined my hand. Whole. The D'hara in the mirror stared at me in shock.

  I felt the surface of the mirror with trembling fingertips.

  The fingers joined their reflection. Passed through each other.

  I pushed my staff through, prodding the unseen walls, floor and ceiling. No traps that I could find, and when I pulled the staff back, it remained whole.

  With a snarl of triumph, I stepped through and into the other. The third door past the mirror was lit by lamps on either side. I listened, heard a small shuffling. Taking a deep breath, I knocked.

  The priest who opened the door froze when he saw my face beneath the cowl. My knife was at his throat before he had a moment to consider raising alarm. I kicked open the door. The cell was empty save for a pallet and an ewer of water.

  "The nenfaron? Where?"

  His eyes widened, darted to the side as though he contemplated escape. His larynx bobbed.

  Spinning him around, I bent him back, off balance, and let the knife bite his neck. "Where?"

  "Th--this way."

  I pushed him down the corridor and into the room he indicated. Nine empty cradles and one full one were centered on the floor. I slit the man's throat and let him slide into a pool of his own blood.

  The walls of the room were pocked with niches. In each niche was set a tiny human skull. Polished bone gleamed in the light from the corridor.

  In a corner a woman scrambled up from her pallet, eyes round with fright, arms shielding heavy breasts. She was the wet-nurse I had seen at the sacrifices. Weeping stained her face. Our eyes clashed.

  We dove for the cradle. I was faster. The infant sneezed as I tore him from it.

  The wet-nurse fumbled in her bodice, pulled out a dagger the length of my forearm. It glinted in the light from the corridor.

  A matching glint came into the woman's eye. I stepped back a pace, turned sidewise to shield the infant with my body.

  "Please don't harm him," she whispered.

  "Harm? Think you I came all this way to harm him? Who are you?"

  "They--I couldn't save my son. Please...they ripped the guts from his belly. Please...take him away." She stroked the blade. It sliced into her finger. Blood streaked the razor-edged bronze. She did not appear to notice. "I stole this from the priest," she said, "after the sacrifice last waking. So slow.... But I could not...."

  "I will not let them sacrifice this babe," I said. "I cannot take you with me."

  She shrugged.

  "You have seen my face. You could identify me." I knew what I had to do, yet something in me balked, as it never had before. "You will break under torture."

  "My son...dead--I have been tortured already."

  Her arm swung up, the blade gleaming. I ducked, expecting the knife to arc above me.

  She plunged the blade into her own breast.

  "Did you think I would betray you, my lady?" The words burbled from her mouth in a froth of blood. With the end of her strength she flailed at the wall, knocking a tiny skull from its niche. She cradled it as she slumped to the floor.

  I pulled the infant tight to my chest and rushed from the ghastly nursery.

  He was small. Small and very perfect. He stared up at me with uncanny calm, as though he had expected his rescue. Dark hair curled atop his head. His hands were strong as they twisted around my finger. Enspelled, I forced myself from a cataloging of his beauty and thrust him into the harness on my back, where he made a lump beneath my robes.

  The trip back to the central cavern was accomplished in swift silence. Thankfully, the child did not cry.

  The priest tending the altar fire was a different one now. Alert. He watched me, head cocked to the side. I feared that he was listing Shagul's clergy to himself, trying to recall if there were one with a hunchback. Praying that there was, I tried to walk as though the burden was natural.

  I stepped onto the bridge again. I did not dare fasten a safety rope this time. I was still within the circle of light shed by the fire pit.

  Feeling dampness beneath my foot, I looked down to see that my wound had seeped through the bandage, leaving a trail of bloody footprints.

  Merciful Eltanii, let the priest not notice!

  I fixed my mind on Aldrar, as she had been when I left the tower. Dark eyes glowing with hope, tears drying on the puffy moon-oval of a face that had been beautiful three wakings before.

  Unthinkable that Sulios should have consigned her child to grisly death just to prophesy the life of some spoiled princess or future harani.

  The memory of the sacrifices rushed at me. The hooked knife flashing firelight. The look of rapture on Sulios' face as his god entered him and he brought the blade slashing down.

  I stopped on the bridge, panting. My stomach churned with the memory. I glanced back at the altar. The priest was small in the distance. He was not watching me, likely could not in this failed light, did he care to.

  The bridge gleamed a pale, slippery white that seemed to slide away from my vision. Blood pooled beneath my feet and runneled from the stone into the chasm below. I wiped sweat from my forehead. My hand was shaking. I took a cautious step forward. Another.

  And suddenly the world was spinning. I was falling into the void that gyrated beneath me.

  I jerked to a stop.

  My right arm lay across the arch of the bridge, numb with the pendulum weight of my body. Hooked on the other side of the arch was my staff, held in the deathless grip to which I had been trained. I vomited into the chasm.

  It was a while before I could move my left arm to clutch the other end of the staff. I hung there a second longer and then pulled myself up.

  I lay on the bridge for a long time. My arms were sore and my skin scratched and abraded from the rough footholds. The leg wound began to throb, the pain-block trance broken by the scare.

  My stomach twisted and heaved again. My whole body felt fuzzy.

  Blurred.

  I saw Sulios as he had been at his altar. Sulios, the cause of this all.

  I vowed to murder him once I was on safe ground. The thought gave me the strength I needed to edge the rest of the way across the bridge on hands and knees.

  Crawling from the bridge, I braced myself to a standing position with my staff. Not since my earliest years of battle practice had jagged rocks made such an inviting pallet. But now was no time to relax. The Chant of Waking might be less than a half-wind away. I had little time to get the child to Aldrar.

  Not "the child," but Majir. He would grow tall and prosper had I my way.

  Majir--! He had made no sound since my fall. Had he been crushed? Was he even now dying? I shrugged out of the harness.

  Unharmed. His golden eyes blinked at me. He whimpered softly.

  "Thank the gods. Back into the harness, now, Majir. We must..."

  A clutch of dark-robed priests poured from the passage before me.

  Sixteen by a quick count. Armed with staves and knives.

  More than I alone could handle. Not with the babe in my arms. I eased into fighting stance, wondering if it would be wiser to lay Majir down, where he might be trampled or roll off the precipice, or to replace him in the harness. The contortions required for that would give the priests a chance to rush me while I was powerless, and on my back Majir might be endangered by staff blows.

  One of the priests advanced on me. "My lord Sulios! We have been seeking you."

  Only stiff pride kept me upright. How had he--a mere priest--followed without my noticing?

  "Eminence," said the man, "there is trouble."

  "Trouble," I said, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

  I looked behind me to see what Sulios' reaction might be.

  Sulios was nowhere to be seen.

  The priest continued, "A brother sent to spell the guards at the cave
rn entrance found two bodies in the passage. Kauros and Vasst. The wounds were grievous. Some sort of taloned beast. How could it get past the guards?"

  Once more, it was an effort to keep my knees from buckling.

  The priest was speaking to me! With a strange detachment I heard myself answer him, the deception coming easily. Yet it was not my voice which answered him. It was deeper, harsher, though it came from my own throat. "Undoubtedly the work of that witch who holds the Khalji's ear. Did not Shagul himself give me a sign?

  The priests beyond the first nodded and muttered confirmation.

  "I am taking this nenfaron to a safe place. A deep cavern known only to myself. You," I chose a priest at random. The hand which pointed him out was pale, gnarled and age-spotted, the fingernails yellowed claws. Shock tied a cold knot in my belly.

  "Guard the tunnel," I barked. "The rest of you raise the alarm. Search the temple complex. Doubtless the Ru'al Harani or one of her invidious minions are still there."

  "Eminence, you are bleeding!" one of the priests gasped.

  "Indeed. Something struck from the darkness. Shagul warned me. I managed to escape. Hurry! The witch must be captured!"

  The first priest hesitated, then gathered courage. "Eminence...your Eminence, should not one of us accompany you? If the haraniis--"

  I drew myself up with a hauteur I had not know I possessed.

  "Shagul is with me. I need no other companion." I commandeered a torch and stepped toward the passage mouth. The priests parted from my path like smoke.

  Then I was past them and moving through the tunnels. Beyond their sight I stopped and examined my hands in the torchlight.

  "Trust that you would know the Change when it comes," Illistanirda had said. I put the hands that were not mine to my face. The nose beneath my fingers was hooked, birdlike. The chin was pendulous with loose skin.

  There was no time for this. Re-binding my wound, I strapped Majir back into the harness and hurried on. My stomach turned. I was forced to stop again. The fuzzy feeling took me. My body blurred and twisted, but I dragged myself forward.

  Light burned from the tunnel entrance, tearing my eyes. I rubbed them, finding that my face was my own again. I whispered a brief but fervent prayer of gratitude.

  I discarded the priest's foul robes, found my cape and slipped past the guards. I could feel the wind changing, strengthening and turning to blow from the Waste. In the palace and the city, servants and priests would be rising, throwing latticed shutters aside. I raced towards the stables where I had told Aldrar to wait.

  Aldrar sat aside a dun cabris, linens billowing in the wind, her face fighting for composure. As I handed Majir up to her, Aldrar's smile lit her face like the sky in the Month of Sun's Return. Her hands and eyes played over the infant as she tried to re-memorize his every feature.

  "Haste now. You must be gone before the palace wakes. The token I gave you will get you past the gate." I ran my hands over the cabris, inspecting the antelope for any sign of imperfection. "Follow the edge of the Waste for at least three wakings before you turn towards high country. They won't expect that. There are rebels in the mountains. Perhaps they will give you sanctuary. You have sufficient water?"

  "My skins hold enough for a tenwake."

  "The cabris will know how to find more should you need."

  "D'hara...beloved mistress, will you not come with us? Should they learn that you have aided me--"

  "What will they do? I am daughter to the Ru'al Harani."

  Aldrar bit her lip. "I thought not. This is for you." She pulled a veil of shimmering goat silk from her saddlebags. The silk the young lord had gifted me with, but now moon-gray d'har flowers embroidered its edge. "It's not finished. It was to be your birthwake gift."

  I nodded, teeth gritted. "Go now!" I tapped the cabris' flank with my staff. The antelope tossed its horns in the air and bounded away.

  Veil crumpled in my fist, I watched Aldrar until she was but a distant blur, blending into the heat mirage and the garnet clouds. "I shall miss you, dearest nenfari."

  I turned to make my way back to my tower. A shape detached itself from the shadows of the stable wall.

  "Well done, daughter." Illistanirda took me in a reserved embrace, her cheek dry and musk scented against mine. She slipped something cold and heavy onto my finger.

  I looked down at the ring. Opals flashed blue-red-green from the skull's eyes. Every hair on the spider's legs was exquisitely detailed in silver.

  "Congratulations, Harani D'hara."

  "How did you know?"

  "It was necessary to make you feel. At first the Change comes only at times of stress. Times of deep feeling, whether the emotion be passion or anger or fear. Usually it happens when a girl becomes a woman, but for you it did not."

  "Make me feel?" Something clicked in my mind. A pattern began to arrange itself. Her visit to Aldrar. The signals exchanged between Illistanirda and my instructor the waking before Majir's birth. "Who was it that planted Sulios with the idea of choosing Aldrar's child to be born-for Faru's?"

  "Eventually you will learn to control the Change, now that it has finally come. Consider the power that may be yours. What better way to slip into a palace than to go as someone with permission to do so? What better assassin than one who can appear as a lover or adviser or childhood friend?"

  "You arranged this. All of it!"

  "It was necessary, daughter. There was so little that moved you. Not tortured spies. Not the sweet confusion caused by a young man's glance. You cared for none but your nenfari."

  "As is proper, revered mother. Who else might I trust?"

  Her face did not even register the barb. Looking upon her, cold and regal, I could see myself as I would be some turnings hence. Her features, though without the feral cast my father had gifted me with, were an older version of those I'd seen in the mirror in Shagul's temple. The eyes, if less slanted, were the same blue, her skin a trifle paler. The chin was set at the same imperious angle. One day I would be Ru'al Harani. One day I would be much as she.

  But the price was too high.

  Shaking my head, I backed away from her. "No."

  "D'hara?"

  "No. I will not accept this." I pulled the ring from my finger. The ring I had coveted for so long.

  "D'hara?"

  Illistanirda made to follow me, but I pushed her away, flinging the ring to the sands at my mother's feet. It winked in the light, catching the reddened glare of the dying sun.

  THE END

  (for now)