The Shadow of Tyr Page 2

  ‘What are these places?’ he asked.

  ‘The treasuries. Erected by other cities to store their votive offerings and sacred vessels and stuff like that. You’ve never been to the temple before?’

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  Of course not. Silly question. He didn’t worship any of the gods of the pantheon, for all that he often swore by parts of Ocrastes’ anatomy.

  ‘I might start really soon, though,’ he added, ‘with a prayer for protection against ravening dogs…’

  The hounds flowed out of the dark, silent and swift. She felt Brand’s fear thicken. ‘I have a ward in place!’ she reassured.

  ‘I just wish I could see it.’ He gripped his sword in a two-handed grasp. And then the dogs were upon them.

  The leader of the pack, a large brindled beast, launched itself with jowls drawn back into a teeth-baring growl. And slammed hard into the invisible wall of the ward. Brand flinched. Every other dog in the pack suffered the same fate an instant later, until the area in front of them was a mass of snarling, yelping animals nursing bruised snouts and forepaws.

  ‘I think my hair just went grey,’ Brand said from between clenched teeth. ‘Why is living in your vicinity always so damned dangerous?’

  She tried to wrap the ward around the confused animals, but they scattered and re-formed a short distance away. When she moved the ward in their direction, they scattered again, breaking up to approach in a semicircle. Slowly this time. Silent. Bellies low to the ground. Eyes fixed on prey.

  The pack after the bear.

  She was forced to bring the ward in closer to block them off on all sides.

  ‘Ligea, um, what are you doing? This is nerve-racking!’

  Worried, she said, ‘They seem able to sense the ward now.’

  ‘No wonder, after breaking their noses on the wretched thing! Where the hell is it anyway?’

  ‘In an arc around us.’

  ‘Ah. So, in effect, we are imprisoned, rather than the dogs. Great.’ Brand, as usual, putting his finger on her errors.

  She sighed. ‘I thought I could just curl the edges of the ward around to corral them, but they wouldn’t stay still long enough.’

  She didn’t get any further. The pack leader hurled itself at the ward. This time it didn’t leap into it, but up. She had a bare second to think, Goddess, he’s going over the top—before the hound slammed into her chest.

  Her sword went flying. The weight of the animal sent her crashing to the ground. All the air in her lungs whooshed out. The dog somersaulted over her to land awkwardly somewhere behind.

  Winded, she was helpless. She doubled up, desperately fighting for breath. She could only watch as the other dogs tried to follow. Fortunately, they lacked the pack leader’s powerful haunches and failed to clear the ward in a single leap. Their feet scrabbled at the top of the ward. Brand beat them off with his sword as they grappled for purchase on the invisible. Even hampered by his inability to see the warding, he managed to block their attempts to heave themselves over the top.

  She groped desperately for clarity. Where was the leader of the pack? Shit! It must be somewhere inside the ward…

  She wanted to tell Brand she was in trouble, but her body, focused on inhaling, wouldn’t cooperate. Still rolling on the ground in breathless pain, she grabbed at the power already in her cabochon and raised the warding higher.

  Limping, the pack leader circled into her view. She aimed her cabochon at it, but wasn’t fast enough. The dog sprang at her throat; the beam of power went astray to gouge a hole in the treasury wall.

  She expected to die. Knew she was going to have her throat ripped out. Had time only to think: How ridiculous. A Magoroth dying because she was winded.

  And the hound jerked to a stop a hand span from her face. Its jowls dripped saliva on her chest. She could smell its dog breath. The growl in the back of its throat was pure animal fury. Its yellowed teeth meshed together, aching to close on her throat.

  Brand, feet planted on either side of her body, hauled frantically on its collar. The hound strained as it leaned into her, its bulk and the powerful muscles of its shoulders pitted against a man with a withered arm.

  Finally recovering control, she aimed her cabochon and sank the gleam of its power into the beast’s chest. It collapsed onto her, dead, driving more breath out of her lungs. Brand, suddenly relieved of its pull, sat down with a thump, hauling the corpse away as he fell.

  Sweet Melete, all that lasted only a moment. Less time than it takes to light a votive lamp, and I almost died.

  She sat up, gasping, and stared at Brand, at the dog lying between them. A leather collar. That—and Brand’s strength and speed—were all that had saved her. Brand stared back, breathing heavily.

  ‘What the hell just happened?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I didn’t build the ward high enough. The dog landed on me. I was winded. Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Words failed him.

  She groped for her sword with shaking fingers and stood up. The other hounds still milled around outside the ward. ‘They’ll want to come and sniff their leader’s body. Move away, Brand. I’ll make two holes in the ward, one for them to come in on this side and one for us to leave on the other.’

  This time nothing went wrong, and within minutes she had the leaderless hounds corralled into a tight group against the treasury wall. Some whimpered, others began to howl.

  ‘The howling will bring the guards,’ Brand said. He was still pale with shock.

  ‘Head towards the temple steps.’

  He grabbed her arm as they ran. ‘Ever thought of an alternative career as a gladiator? Or perhaps a job in charge of the Exaltarch’s circus lions? It would be safer.’ His shock had manifested itself in anger and he didn’t bother to hide it.

  She ran up the steps past the caryatids into the temple proper without answering, and he followed.

  Oil lamps were lit on all the altars and in front of the main statue of Melete at the end of the stoa. She stood still for a moment, cocking her head. ‘The attendant is in one of the rooms of the sanctum.’ Then, to forestall his next question, added, ‘That’s the walled area behind the statue, not open to the public. We need to be quiet.’

  She headed to the sanctum door behind the main sacrificial altar, but the door was latched on the inside. She knocked.

  ‘What—?’ Brand remonstrated, sotto voce. ‘You just told me to be quiet and now you want to go knocking on the door? Would you like a horn fanfare as well?’

  Ligea drew her sword. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said.

  He looked as if he were about to argue, then thought better of it and not only shut his eyes, but turned his face away.

  A male voice from inside asked, ‘Who is it?’

  Pitching her answer to sound childlike, she said, ‘I have a message…the Priestess Antonia.’

  A youth opened the door, and had to fling up his arms to protect his eyes from the overwhelming brilliance of a fully lit Magor sword pulsing with power. He staggered back.

  She stepped into the sanctum and Brand, following, shut the door behind them. She turned light to pain, a sudden stab to pierce the young acolyte through the stomach.

  Vortex, I hate doing that.

  While the acolyte was still doubled up, Brand grabbed a robe from a hook and flung it over him so he would not see them.

  ‘Behave yourself,’ she said in the youth’s ear as she banished his pain, ‘or there will be more agony like that. Not a word out of you, understand?’ The lad shivered under her grip. When he didn’t reply, she shook him. ‘Understand?’

  He nodded, his fear swamping her. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen or so.

  Damn it all, I feel like a school bully…

  She warded him where he stood, enclosing him in walls that were less than a hand span from his body. He wouldn’t even be able to raise a hand to take off the enveloping robe. ‘If you don’t make a sound, the Goddess will release you before dawn’s
rising,’ she said. ‘Fear not, for you are favoured by Melete herself.’

  Behind her Brand snorted. She grabbed his arm and hauled him through a series of connecting rooms to the back of the sanctum. He was broadcasting his emotions and she knew he wanted it so. She was disconcerted; his turmoil formed a background to all she sensed. Frustrated anger, thwarted desire, deeprooted distaste for—what? All she was doing? But most of all, an overriding fear. For her. She had almost died, and he couldn’t forget it.

  ‘Brand,’ she said, quelling her exasperation, ‘you have to hide your sentiments. I can’t deal with all you are feeling right now. If you can’t stop, then I’ll go on alone.’

  His emotions blanked out, as suddenly as a snuffed lamp. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. His face was stony.

  No explanation. No excuses. She nodded to indicate her satisfaction with his emotional silence, and changed the subject. ‘Last time I was here, I had the mother of all headaches thanks to that bitch Antonia and her drugs, but I think I remember the way.’ She pointed to a nearby door. ‘That’s the room where the passage to the Oracle starts.’

  Inside, it was dark, and smelled fusty. She used her sword, considerably dimmed, instead of a lamp. She closed the door behind them as they entered, and built a ward across it to keep it that way. They looked around in silence. The floor was of intricately patterned mosaics. A few cupboards were lined up against the walls. There was no other visible door. The walls, made of dressed stone, had a frieze of carved lion heads at waist height.

  Brand raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘It’s the right place,’ she said. She swung her sword around to illuminate her investigation of the corners and the floor.

  ‘Shine it here,’ Brand said suddenly, indicating one corner. ‘The floor is scraped.’ An arc had been scored across the mosaics, as if an ill-fitted door had been repeatedly opened and closed across the tiles. Yet there was no door immediately adjacent. Brand reached out and touched the stones of the wall, then rubbed his fingers along the line of mortar. ‘It’s not real! Except for the frieze,’ he said. ‘The rest is just painted wood. It must be a door. No handle, though.’

  ‘Try turning the lion’s head,’ she suggested.

  Brand fumbled at the closest carving in the frieze and, with an unpleasant grinding sound, part of the wall shifted to reveal the outline of a door—which then caught on the floor. He yanked it open, to reveal a stone stairway leading downwards.

  A blast of foetid air swept out. Brimstone, mould, musty damp. The noxious smells of alchemist shops and stagnant bogs. She quelled a shudder. It brought back too many memories of the last time she was here.

  ‘Vortexdamn, that stinks,’ Brand muttered.

  Together, they looked down the long flight of steps into darkness as black as coal tar. Nothing moved. A faint murmur of sound, muffled and obscure, came out of the blackness.

  ‘Let’s go down,’ she said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rathrox fumed. He sat in the anteroom to the Exaltarch’s audience hall, a picture of cool patience, but that was just an overlay to the inner scowl of his rage. Bator Korbus was keeping him waiting. After all he had done for the man, he was left waiting in the anteroom like a lackey with a petition.

  The saying ‘Trust no word from the mouth that sits below the crown’ had the truth of it, he reflected. The bastard wasn’t always emperor. It’s time he remembered that.

  Bator Korbus had once been just another youth in the legionnaires’ training camp, along with Rathrox, and a Legate’s son, Gayed Lucius. Three youths with little in common, companions simply because they were billeted together. Rathrox had not forgotten one iota of it.

  Gayed Lucius had come from a military background, his family following his Legate father on his provincial postings. As a successful officer’s offspring, Gayed had been both moderately prosperous and well used to a military life.

  Bator Korbus, on the other hand, had been much wealthier than a mere Legate’s son. His grandfather had been a senator. His was a highborn political family, and the wiliness of a political animal was in his blood. However, Bator had an older brother destined for a political career, so he was packed off to the legions. Bator and Gayed had forged a close friendship from the very beginning. Bator needed someone to help him acquire the arts and knowledge of a military man; Gayed had grown up in the provinces and needed someone to impart to him the polish and the knowledge of a young man of Tyr. Where Rathrox Ligatan fitted in was less obvious.

  Rathrox was the son of a farm controller. As a child, he’d discovered how easy it was to manipulate the farm slaves; all he had to do was threaten to make trouble for them with his father. Before he was ten years old, he was glorying in the power he had over people who could not retaliate.

  His five older brothers, however, had been the bane of his life. Although unimaginative in their teasing and taunting, they could still make life a misery for their scrawny, undersized brother. In self-defence, Rathrox learned other strategies. Knowledge, he realised, was the source of true power. With knowledge you could preempt, or blackmail. With knowledge, you could earn yourself respect. With knowledge, you became a thing of value.

  By the time he was sixteen, he’d become an indispensable part of the farm management and dreamed of becoming somebody to be reckoned with in the wider world. A farm, no matter how large and prosperous, was not sufficient arena, not even when he was in charge of the delivery and sale of farm produce to the markets of Tyr and had numerous contacts in the capital. Not even when he was beginning to develop a network of informants.

  Then a disaster undermined his future. A scheme of his to humiliate one of his brothers turned sour, and the youth—just eighteen—died. His father, enraged, discovered Rathrox had been the instigator of the stupid stunt his brother had tried to perform, and he was sent to the military officers’ training camp.

  Rathrox looked on it as an opportunity rather than a disgrace, but it wasn’t easy at first. He was patently not military material. He lacked the physical stature and the coordination. He had no interest in the physical feats of other recruits. What he did have by then was considerable knowledge of his fellow men and how to manipulate them. Gayed Lucius and Bator Korbus soon discovered that if you needed anything, from a clean woman on your cot to a small luxury, Rathrox was the man to supply it. A little later, they realised that the information Rathrox could offer them was far more valuable than the commodities he procured. Still later, they realised his true worth when they saw Rathrox Ligatan could actually make things happen.

  After the first all-too-convenient death that benefited them, the three young men were linked together for life.

  As soon as he was able to do so legally, Rathrox left the army and became Bator Korbus’s scribe, a euphemism for the work he actually did, which varied over the years from spying to assassination to information gathering. Bator’s steep rise through the ranks to General, closely followed by that of Gayed Lucius, was just as much due to Rathrox’s machinations to ensure the presence of the two men in the right place at the right time, as it was to Bator’s and Lucius’s skills on the battlefield.

  Until the invasion of Kardiastan. Conniving to have his two friends in charge of the invasion was the first major error of judgement Rathrox ever made, and it was a huge one. The invasion was a monumental failure, and the shoulders burdened with the shame of that defeat were those of Bator and Gayed. The careers of both might have ended there, in Kardiastan, if Rathrox had not arranged the kidnapping of the daughter of Mirager-solad, and used her as a lever to force her father into betrayal.

  Kardiastan had never again threatened the might of Tyrans; the land had been brutally subjugated, its elite slaughtered, its youth sold into slavery. Bator Korbus had usurped the credit for Solad’s act of betrayal, even though he’d been back in Tyr by then. Eventually, he’d overthrown the Exaltarch and taken his place.

  And the child they named Ligea was raised by Gayed Lucius to become a compeer of th
e Brotherhood, an agent of Tyrans, and the spare sword in the belt of the Exaltarch, ready to be used against the nation of her birth.

  Sitting there waiting to be called into the Exaltarch’s presence, Rathrox remembered.

  If not for me, you would never have become the Exaltarch, Bator.

  And fumed.

  Yet now you keep me waiting. Your head grows too big for the wreath crowning your brow. Have a care, Bator. I put you there and I can bring you down if it is in my interest to do so…

  ‘Magister?’

  His thoughts interrupted, he looked up, but it wasn’t his expected call into the Exaltarch’s presence. Instead, the High Priestess of the Cult of Melete had entered from the main hall. Dressed, as usual, in white, and wearing that preposterous piece of jewellery that was the symbol of her rank around her neck, she looked like a cross between a brothel madam and an older version of Melete herself.

  He rose to his feet. ‘Reverence.’ He inclined his head in respect of her office. He may have commanded the Brotherhood and the Exaltarch’s civil service, but he didn’t deliberately upset Antonia unless he had good reason. She possessed a nasty tongue, a long memory and many followers. ‘The Exaltarch has asked for your presence too?’

  ‘Apparently. I suspect it has to do with the annual prophecy for the city. That is a mere three weeks away, and I need time to write the poetry and prepare Esme.’

  He swallowed a smile. He wouldn’t have called her verse ‘poetry’, himself. ‘Ah, yes, of course.’

  She seated herself complacently, confident that the summons was routine.

  He said, ‘When I saw you, I wondered if it might concern the trouble at your temple last night.’

  She gave a quick frown. ‘Hardly serious enough to involve the Exaltarch, Magister. I don’t know what you heard, but a dead dog killed by lightning and an acolyte who breathed in too many orlyx fumes is all there was to it, with no connection between the two.’ Her hand moved up to play nervously with her pendant.