Black Hellebore (Wraith Kings)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

I ldiko slammed back into consciousness when the side of her face smacked against an unforgiving surface. Her eyes snapped open and took in the dusty gloaming spattered with sunlight. She lay on her belly, feeling the hard lurch of the ground beneath her. As her awareness sharpened, so did her fear. Her cry was muffled behind the gag tied firmly across her mouth and behind her head, and she struggled in vain against the ropes that bound her hands behind her back, tethered by a stretch of rope to her equally bound ankles. It bent her back in a way that sent fire licking up her shoulder blades.

The position prevented her from rolling over and put a crick in her neck when she lifted it for a better view of her surroundings. The pungent scent of horse manure and hay filled her nostrils, and the ground she lay on was instead a floor of weathered boards that creaked beneath her with every rotation of wheels on a rutted road. A wagon. She was bound and gagged in a wagon with a cover stretched over it, hiding her presence. The confined space was a sweltering box. The thin shift she wore offered little protection from the splinters that found their way through the fabric to pierce her skin.

How did she end up here and in this wretched state?

Her mind grasped at memories, coming away at first with only cobwebs, then a flickering line of images. Her bedchamber, waiting for Brishen to finish with the difficult sejm. She’d just downed her second cup of a well-brewed tea. It had made her sleepy, and she worried she’d doze off before she could keep her promise to Brishen to be awake when he returned. A series of strange thumps from the nursery had pulled her from her somnolence. There had been something menacing about the sounds, something that put her senses on alert and made her bolt from her chair, ready to race for the door connecting her bedroom to the nursery.

A dizzying fog rolled across her mind, and she struggled to recollect the rest. The door had opened before she reached it, and two figures rushed toward her. Ildiko frowned, her efforts to claw back more of her memories failing. She remembered nothing else, but it didn’t take recall to recognize the obvious. She’d been abducted.

The ropes binding her and the position she lay in rendered her nearly immobile. The gag around her face wasn’t much better, but if she could pull that down enough, she could breathe easier and call for help if the opportunity presented itself.

She bent her head to rub her cheek hard against her shoulder, trying to scrape the gag down on one side. It moved a fraction but not enough to make a difference. She continued the effort, switching to the other cheek when the first grew sore. Her face felt as if it were on fire when she finally stopped, and the gag remained firmly against her mouth, though it had moved a hair’s breadth lower toward her jawline. At this rate, she’d rub her skin off before the cloth ever dropped below her upper lip. Ildiko snarled her frustration into the gag.

What she wouldn’t give at this moment to be Anhuset. The Kai woman would have already chewed her way through the gag with those formidable Kai teeth, broken the knots in her ropes, kicked her way out of the wagon, killed the driver, and driven the wagon back home by herself. That was if someone even managed to capture her in the first place. They’d have to drug her into a deathless stupor beforehand. But Ildiko wasn’t Anhuset, and she’d have to find her own way out of this debacle using the strengths given to her.

She continued rubbing at the gag, feeling it creep down by minuscule increments as she sought explanations for how she’d ended up here. The spin of conjecture halted as abruptly as the wagon, sending her sliding forward hard enough to embed a few more splinters into her legs and midriff and tighten her shift so that the fabric cut into her shoulders. She yelped at the sharp stings.

Heavy footsteps sounded along one side of the wagon, pausing at intervals to move something that scraped along its high sides. They finally stopped at the wagon’s end, before a blast of fresh air buffeted Ildiko. Tears blurred her vision, seeping between her lashes as she squinted against the sudden onslaught of sunlight. She slowly opened one eye to see the edge of the wagon’s sides, bearded in tufts of hay lodged in the spaces between the boards, and above the sideboards, a wall of trees and a blue sky festooned with clouds.

She struggled to turn onto her side, groaning softly at the fire in her shoulders and the ache in her back. Whoever stood at the wagon’s end watched her thrashing without comment. Ildiko stilled, fear suffocating her as her captor remained silent and let the weight of a stare send gooseflesh over her entire body. She was so very vulnerable, tied up and unable to defend herself, dressed in nothing more than a shift now torn in several places and her legs exposed to mid-thigh. Her breath gusted fast through her nostrils, the sweat of terror pouring down her sides.

Her protesting cry was nothing more than a garbled squawk behind the gag as the unseen abductor grabbed her with rough hands and lifted her out of the wagon. She squirmed in their relentless grip, panic suppressing any pain and lending her a strength she didn’t know she possessed. Rough hands scrabbled over her shoulders, pausing at her neck. Ildiko fought even harder, fury combining with terror as the man grabbed the chain of her prized necklace and yanked it free. A sharp cuff to the head exploded dark stars across her vision that bounced and scattered she was dropped and struck the ground. More stars. She gagged on the droplets of mud she inhaled through one nostril, feeling the blood surge into her face as she tried to sneeze it out. She might have vomited had her captor not finally shown some small mercy and crouched to yank the gag down. She inhaled a deep breath, instantly regretting it as bile hurtled up her throat from her stomach. Ildiko closed her eyes and clenched her jaw shut, forcing back the bitter surge.

Once she exhaled hard enough to clear her nose, she risked another inhalation, albeit a shallower one, and opened her eyes again for a first good look at her tormentor.

He was human, with grizzled features and flat gray eyes devoid of any emotion—even lust—and he stank worse than a privy in high summer. Her eyes watered at the stench. He said nothing to her, but she didn’t mistake the warning gleam in his gaze. If she tried to cry out, he’d either hit her, gag her, or both.

Ildiko felt it worth the consequences. All she needed was one chance. One chance for someone to hear her and either come to investigate or mention it to the right person so that it traveled back to Brishen. Just as she opened her mouth to bellow for all she was worth, he jerked the gag back over her mouth. He didn’t cuff her a second time, but the yank he gave to her bonds hurt just as much. She screamed, and her shoulders screamed with her. She lay compliant at his feet after that, her thoughts and memories still murky as she planned her next attempt to get help. Questions heaped atop one another in her mind.

It was obvious why he’d stolen her necklace. The workmanship alone would garner a significant handful of coins, but why had he stopped and taken her out of the wagon to sit on the side of the road?

The sound of horses’ hooves crunching leaves, then gravel, alerted her they had company. Her captor didn’t move from where he stood beside her. From her contorted perspective, Ildiko couldn’t see more than equine legs and boots in stirrups as the new arrivals drew closer. She froze at the male voice that spoke above her, addressing the wagon driver in accented Common.

“She has blood on her. Is this your doing?”

Since her marriage to Brishen, Ildiko rarely saw humans. Her thorough immersion into Kai culture had given her the opportunity to learn and begin to understand her adopted people, and that included the language and accents. She couldn’t see the person speaking but she instantly recognized the accent. This was a Kai, and by the sound of it, not here to rescue her.

The driver responded, not with words, but with quick gestures of his hands and body movements.

The Kai spoke again. “Cut her bonds enough so she can stand. Leave the gag in place.”

Ildiko’s relieved groan thundered in her ears when the driver cut the length of rope securing her wrists to her ankles. The fire burning in her shoulder blades instantly faded to a dull ache, matching the one still throbbing in her lower back. She rolled to her side and curled into a fetal position, but not for long. Her captor grabbed her arm, wrenching upward so that she tottered to her feet. Tears rolled down her cheeks at the new pain shooting across her left shoulder. Her knees buckled, but she remained standing thanks to the grip on her arm and the fact her bare feet were stuck in mud made by the heavy rain that had fallen the day before.

Her view of the company before her was no longer limited to feet and legs. Two Kai, cloaked and hooded against the midday sun sat astride their horses, one carrying field satchels draped behind the saddle. Surely, she thought, they must be sweltering under those cloaks. She wore only a thin shift that offered little protection from the biting insects swarming around them, and the fabric stuck to her skin courtesy of the sweat streaming in rivulets down her body.

Yellow eyes glowed like lit lamps from the hoods’ shadows as the Kai regarded her. Ildiko couldn’t make out the details of their features, but she didn’t miss the gleam of a fang as the one closest to her and the driver curled his upper lip. “Stupid human,” he said in bast-Kai, and she wondered to which human he referred. He inclined his head to the other Kai. “Blood to cover blood. See to it.”

Her already queasy stomach somersaulted at the grim order, and she squirmed in her captor’s grip to break free, even as the sucking mud anchored her in place. He didn’t even have a chance to turn away before the second Kai was off their horse, sword flashing in the sun.

Ildiko screamed behind her gag as a splatter of hot blood struck her face. The wagon driver still held her arm in an unyielding clasp, his headless body canting hard against her until they both fell, and she lay pinned beneath him. His head lay not far away, eyes staring wide at the endless blue above.

His executioner pulled the body off her and yanked her to her feet once more to face the Kai who’d given the command to kill. That one dismounted and came to stand in front of her. This close, Ildiko had no trouble discerning his features and committing them to memory. If she made it out of this alive, she had something useful to relay to Brishen. A tiny scar cut through the line of his right eyebrow, and his upper lip was noticeably thinner than his lower one. It was all she had time to note before he seized her chin in one hand while the second Kai pinched her nostrils closed with thumb and forefinger.

Ildiko fought against their hold, struggling to open her mouth and take a life-saving breath. Her vision grayed at the edges, and the high whine in her ears drowned out any other sound. As she teetered on the edge of consciousness, the Kai holding her chin let go and jerked the gag down. Ildiko sucked in a great gasp of air only to choke when he pressed a vial hard against her bottom teeth and forced a bitter brew into her mouth. He held her jaw closed, forcing her to swallow. At her loud gulp, both Kai let go. Ildiko coughed and gasped while her lungs burned like hot coals in her chest, and a familiar taste lingered on her tongue. The black spots didn’t disappear. They merged instead with the grayness that didn’t recede. She blinked once. Twice. The world listed to one side and then the other, the two Kai tilting with it as they watched her with glowing eyes and inscrutable expressions. Soon there was more black than gray. Then nothing.

She awakened a second time from a drugged sleep, no longer trussed like a pig and hidden in a wagon but slumped in a saddle. Her first view was that of a horse’s coarse mane and the ridge of its neck that led to a pair of ears. They swiveled back briefly at her deep inhalation. That alone made her more alert. The gag was gone.

“You’re awake,” a voice said behind her. “Make too much noise, and I’ll dose you again, Hercegesé.

Were she not still so woozy, Ildiko might have been startled off the saddle. Her backrest was one of the Kai, and he held her in front of him with a heavy arm draped loosely around her waist while the other clasped the reins guiding the horse. They rode under moonlight, and his claws shone like black daggers under the silvery luminescence. She heeded his warning. Suffering from the effects of whatever poison they’d administered, she was worse than helpless; she was witless. No more, she thought. She’d bide her time, remain biddable, and plan how she might escape. It was a far easier thing to do conscious.

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 the hills. 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.” He pointed 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 laid across 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.

Ineni’s smile never changed, though her eyes glowed a little brighter at the distressed sound Ildiko made. “We’re glad you’re here. Her Majesty has missed you.”