She stayed silent, peering into the darkness in an attempt to ascertain where they were. The wind sang a soft lullaby while insects serenaded the night. Her Kai companion guided his mount along a narrow path that hugged the border where foothills met great swaths of pastureland. At some point they’d exited the forest. Ildiko listened for another set of horse hooves following them, but it was only the one she rode that set a quick, steady rhythm in the darkness. What had happened to the second Kai?
While she still suffered the effects of whatever elixir her newest captor had forced down her throat, they weren’t as severe as the first time when she woke in the wagon. Her senses were sharper sooner, and she didn’t struggle as hard to comprehend details as they rode toward an unknown destination for some grim purpose.
The silent rider coaxed his mount into a steady trot as they came upon a fork in the path, one side still bordering the foothills while the other meandered right and up into the hills themselves. They took the second, their path dimly lit by the watchful moon. Ildiko tried to find her bearings, searching for anything familiar in a terrain made even more alien by the darkness even the moon couldn’t dispel. Never before had she wished so fervently that she was Kai instead of human. A few times the path opened up to reveal a broader view of the landscape falling ever farther away from them. Other times, the path sliced through wedges of rock that closed in other either side, creating a corridor where the only things to see were the carved ripples in rock and the black sky directly above. They continued to climb, the horse slowing to a walk as they navigated the narrowest corridors until they reached the peak of one of thehills. The opening from which they emerged revealed a sleeping village previously hidden by a towering wedge of rock.
Despite the night’s oppressive heat, gooseflesh rose on Ildiko’s skin the closer they rode to the cluster of houses crowning the hill’s top. They stood quiet and dark, not a soul about. If this were a human population, she understood the lack of lamp or torchlight. Based on the moon’s position, it was very late; people would have found their beds hours earlier. There was, however, no livestock to be seen or heard, nor a dog or two to sound an alarm with a round of barking. The silence was absolute except for the horse’s hooves as they struck a rhythm on the hardpacked ground.
Each house was a mirror of its neighbor in height, breadth, and design. Rounded walls topped with domed roofs and a single door in each by which to enter and exit. As they rode closer, Ildiko made out other details. None of the houses had windows or even holes carved out of the walls to let in fresh air. Many of the doors hung askew on their hinges, and a few of the houses were missing them altogether, giving any passerby a glimpse into interiors as black as a cave. Above each doorway, a different sigil had been carved into the plaster. They weren’t unique. Many households carved protection runes above their doorways, buried prayer bowls at the corners of their homes, and hung mirrors above thresholds to keep out malevolent spirits. These sigils looked familiar. More human than Kai in their design.
“What is this place?” she asked in a low voice, not expecting an answer.
Her captor surprised her. “I’m told you humans once called it Orshulgyn, before the Kai took this territory as theirs. The ashes of your dead sorcerers are stored in these houses with wards placed above the doors to keep their spirits from escaping.” Hepointed to a few of the sigils. “The doors keep things out. Those keep things in.”
Orshulgyn. Ildiko knew of it through children’s tales, ones told to her by a few of her spiteful cousins when she was small. They had enjoyed frightening her with stories of dead necromancers rising from their cremated remains to escape their urns and suck the souls from the unwary. They nicknamed it the Ash Heap. Not a town built for the living but a necropolis whose houses were columbaria to store the questionable remains of questionable mages. Even with the more prosaic title in mind, Ildiko still found the place, and this Kai’s description of it, ominous.
Seemingly unconcerned by the notion of being surrounded by dead sorcerers, her captor guided his mount along weed-choked paths that twisted around the structures in a labyrinthine design. He finally halted the horse at the necropolis’s perimeter where the view once more opened to a panoramic scene of farmland supplicant below a field of stars. The part of the peak on which they stood dropped off sharply on one side as if sliced away by a giant knife, concealing the steep slope from any but the most reckless viewer who wished to risk life and limb to peer over the edge for a better look. In daylight, Ildiko might have recognized the lay of the land or a geographical feature that acted as a familiar place marker. The night, however, with its multitude of shadows turning everything into strange silhouettes, left her feeling adrift in these surroundings.
A sharp pain in her abdomen reminded her she hadn’t emptied her bladder since before the treacherous maid had brought her that fateful cup of tea. She shifted in the saddle to relieve the pressure as the Kai guided his mount along the perimeter as if searching for a particular spot to halt.
“Stop squirming,” he ordered as she continued to move.
“I can’t help it,” she snapped back. “I have to relieve myself. If you don’t stop and let me down, I’ll do so in the saddle and get both of us and your horse wet.”
A disgusted huff blew across the top of her head. “Lover of thorns,” he snapped, mercifully reining the horse to a stop. “Humans are vile.” He dismounted and not so gently, helped her down.
This was her second good look at him. He was close to Brishen’s height but with a heavier build and coarser, older features. His yellow eyes glowed softly in the darkness as he gestured to a spot not far from where they stood.
“Make it quick,” he said. “And don’t bother trying to run. I’ll catch you before your first step hits the ground.”
At the moment, Ildiko couldn’t imagine the agony of trying to run with a bladder ready to burst. She limped to the spot he’d indicated, wincing as small, sharp rocks dug into her bare feet. At least with her hands tied in front of her, she could still lift her shift out of the way without too much effort. “Pretentious arse,” she muttered under her breath as she put her back to her guard. “As if the Kai don’t piss.”
When she returned to him, he stared at her for a long, silent moment. His upper lip curled, and his nostrils flared. “I should have sent you further away. I can smell your piss from here.”
Ildiko rolled her eyes in the most exaggerated fashion she could muster, smiling a little as the Kai gasped and took an involuntary step away from her. “So sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities, my lady. You might remember to bring a chamber pot with you at the next abduction.”
His disgust at her eyeroll instantly changed to outrage at her mockery, one clawed hand curling at his side as if ready to strike. If he did, he’d kill her. A Kai’s claws, kept long, were lethal weapons.
Ildiko stiffened but didn’t cringe as she braced for physical retribution. Reason and practicality had always been her strongest traits and both were screaming at her now to keep her mouth shut. Exhaustion, thirst, cut feet, hands and legs embedded with splinters, and a sore face, however, made her reckless. And she had no intention of cowering away or apologizing.
Relief almost made her dizzy when his hand relaxed, even though his expression remained murderous. He didn’t retaliate for her jibe, only gripped her hard around the waist and tossed her back in the saddle before mounting behind her and putting the horse in motion once more. Wherever they were going, she was too valuable or too useful to kill just yet. She had no doubt this was a temporary state.
They rode a short distance, keeping to the edge of the necropolis until the hill on which it stood gentled from a sharp drop to a slope. A clearing behind three of the largest columbaria opened up, a space dotted with large upright stones embedded partway in the ground in a semicircle. The weathered rocks had withstood wind and time to reveal fronts carved in a myriad of sigils and runes, the vague outlines of strange, chimeric animals and the maps of stars that looked nothing like the celestial vault above her. Some of the menhirs cast angular shadows across the semicircle’s center, laddering a large, flat slab of rock resting on a foundation of more stone. Where the menhirs cast their shadows, the slab was a smooth, dull black. Where the moonlight struck, it gleamed a more polished onyx, marred only by splashes of ruddier discoloration that made Ildiko’s heart hammer and her blood rush cold through her veins. She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering when the horse stopped within the semicircle.
Sacrifice. There was no question or room for interpretation regarding the slab’s purpose or that she was destined to be laidacross it. Ildiko no longer pondered why she was here. Her focus now was escape. The terror of imminent death hummed a low-voiced dirge throughout her body, but her resolve was greater. If she had to die, it wouldn’t be by this Kai’s hands on a bloodstained rock.
Her thoughts raced with scenarios as her abductor dismounted and pulled her from the saddle. She didn’t struggle, pretending confusion or numbness. If she struggled now, he’d drug her, rendering her helpless. The grip he had on her arm promised to leave an ugly bruise as he marched her toward the sacrificial slab. The windswept quiet seemed a creature itself, squatting over them, waiting to pounce at a word or movement.
After several interminable moments, a shadow separated itself from the back of one of the menhirs most brightly lit by moonlight. It glided toward them, cloaked and hooded like the Kai holding Ildiko, but slimmer and not as tall. As it drew closer, Ildiko finally made out a pair of glowing yellow eyes. Another Kai. That didn’t surprise her. The revelation of whom those eyes belonged to did. The Kai raised a hand and slid back the hood.
Ildiko gasped, all half-formed plans for how to escape her captors paused as she gaped at the woman standing before her. A woman she’d once considered her perfect replacement as Brishen’s wife had he remained king of Bast-Haradis. A woman beautiful, clever, charming, and from a family who’d sacrificed much to help save the Kai kingdom. The child of one of Brishen’s most trusted advisors.
Ildiko, still reeling, barely managed to push the name past her lips. “Ineni?”
Ineni Emelyin, beloved daughter of Cephren Emelyin, offered Ildiko a shallow bow and a sweet smile tinged with a touch of darkness. “Hercegesé, you’ve arrived at last. It’s been too long since we last met.”
Ildiko could only stare at her, bewildered. Surely, this woman whom Ildiko had thought a friendly acquaintance, was not part of this scheme? She took a breath, ready to ask the question that had burned in her gut since she’d been dragged away from Saggara: why?
Ineni didn’t give her a chance. She raised an arm and carefully peeled back the cloak’s edge where it covered her other arm, revealing a sleeping Tarawin resting in the crook of her elbow. All thoughts of escape died a swift death as Ildiko nearly fell to her knees in horror.
