Chapter 19
Raiya stumbled out onto the road and blinked in the thin morning light, still coughing from the dust. The temple was still mostly intact, showing no sign that it would continue to crumble, but it would take a great deal of money and labor to patch the enormous hole in the roof.
“There!” someone shouted, drawing her attention back to the door. A group of cultists were running through the doorway after her. All of them carried knives. They did not look like they meant to take prisoners.
She spun and ran down the road past bewildered bystanders. The cultists quickly gained on her. She hiked up her robe as she sprinted, slipping and nearly falling in a puddle of mud. Normally, she might have called for a Paladin. But in this case, she didn’t trust them not to immediately turn her over to Nirlan.
Her heart was beating out of her chest as she zigzagged through narrow, winding pathways and boardwalks. She heard the cultists fall farther behind after she took several sharp turns, but then one of them appeared in front of her, having circled around to cut her off. She skidded to a stop and turned to run the other way down another side street.
A figure appeared out of thin air in front of her. She gasped, juddering to a stop. It was Madira. His brows came together as he looked her up and down, probably noting the mud and dust and blood.
“Hide me,” she begged, gasping for breath. “Please.”
Madira raised his eyebrows. But then he took Raiya’s arm. Magic ran down her body, shrouding her in darkness. Madira pulled her to the side of the alley, and they stood motionless against the wall, two shadows. Raiya pressed her sleeve to her mouth to muffle her ragged breathing.
A few moments later, she heard footsteps coming near. The cultists ran by, coming within feet of them but never looking in their direction.
She and Madira waited until the footsteps had gone far down the road. Finally, Madira dropped his spell.
“I told you,” he said, crossing his arms.
Raiya bent over, her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. The seriousness of the situation was beginning to sink in.
She looked up at Madira. Suddenly her throat was sticky with emotion. They would have caught her and killed her if he hadn’t stepped in. “Thank you,” she said hoarsely. “Thank you.”
His smug demeanor softened a bit. “What happened?”
“They have Azreth. They imprisoned him in a rune circle.”She scraped her fingers through her mussed hair. They would make him a slave again. With him imprisoned and helpless behind that barrier, they could restrain him and bind him again and force him to do everything Gereg had demanded.
“Gods damn them,” she hissed, shoving her inert baton into her belt.
“I told you,” Madira said again, looking unimpressed.
He was right. Azreth had wanted to leave the very day they’d arrived in that place. He had stayed because Raiya wanted to. He’d trusted her judgment, and now he was paying for it.
This was her fault.
“I have to get him out,” she said.
“You say that as if it’ll be easy.”
“It won’t be. I can’t do it myself. I’ll need help.” She glanced over at him.
He scoffed. “Why are you looking at me?” He leaned against the wall, crossing one ankle over the other.
She could go to the town guards, but they wouldn’t help her set a demon loose. And if they were anything like the lawmen in other parts of Uulantaava, they would not be inclined to investigate anything involving the cult of Moratha. The cult held a lot of social and political sway lately.
“Can you take me to the Roamer camp?” she asked.
“We can’t help you,”the shepherd said. Raiya wilted.
It was the same stout woman Raiya had bargained with when she’d first encountered the caravan. It turned out that the woman was not only a shepherd, but the clan matron as well, named Fu-lon. Raiya had just given her a summary of everything that had happened since she’d met Azreth.
Fu-lon gave her a weary smile, puffing on a long pipe. She was seated on a plush pillow on the floor while Raiya paced anxiously. The smoke was filling the tent and making Raiya slightly dizzy. “I like you, girl, but your problems are not ours. What do you expect us to do about it?”
“I know there are warriors among you. Ex-soldiers and…” Deserters, pirates, rogue mages, ex-bandits. “…others. If I could just ask them—”
“If they would be willing to fight the entire cult of Moratha with you?” Fu-lon broke in, chuckling.
“I can pay. I’m an enchanter. I could make something for you. For the clan,” she said quickly. Never mind that she could only carve an inert enchantment. “Anything you want.”
At that, the woman tapped the end of her pipe to her lips, considering. But then she shook her head. “There is little that would be worth getting on the cult’s bad side,” she said. “We don’t get involved in things like this. If we did, we would never have survived as long as we have. You understand. We have to protect our own.”
Raiya clasped her hands nervously. “My mother was a Roamer,” she said, her voice soft with embarrassment over her obvious desperation. “We’re kin.”
The woman nodded. “I guessed as much when we last met.”
“You did?”
“I can see Roamer bones in your face. And not many outsiders would walk into camp so comfortably, the way you did.”
“And?”
Fu-lon gave her another smile. “You know that doesn’t change anything, don’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose I do.”
“Good.” Putting out her pipe, she picked up her cane and held out her other hand. Raiya helped pull her to her feet. “If there’s anything our people excel at, it’s adapting. So, adapt. Move on.”
Raiya frowned. “Move on?”
“Your alliance with a demon didn’t work out. You can’t pretend to be surprised. A partnership with a demonic entity is bound to end in tears one way or another. I suggest you pick yourself up and start anew. The caravan will be around if you need us, and your bastard of an ex-husband won’t be able to touch you here if you wish to stay. My own husband was a bit of a bastard himself, before he died. I can sympathize.”
Raiya pulled away from her. She couldn’t just move on. Perhaps a week ago, she might have taken the shepherd’s advice. But now?
She already felt Azreth’s absence like a shadow over her heart. She missed having someone who understood everything she’d been through. She missed his tentative way of asking her questions or looking to her for guidance, the way he studied the world so curiously, and the hungry, oddly gentle way he touched her.
And gods, these were not things a mortal should feel about a demon. Of that, she was certain. The matron was right. A partnership with a demon was doomed to fail.
Tongue-tied, Raiya just shook her head. She bade the woman goodbye and stepped out of the tent into the bright midday sun. Madira and Jai awaited her, both squinting in the daylight.
“What’d she say?” Jai asked.
“She said no,” Madira informed her. “Why do you think she looks so upset?”
Raiya was too frustrated to speak. She turned and started toward the road out of the camp. She heard Jai’s quick footsteps behind her, and after a moment, Madira’s softer ones followed.
“What are you going to do?” Jai asked.
“I honestly don’t know.”
Jai ran around to stand in front of her. “We’ll help you.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” Raiya said. “I appreciate the thought.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Madira asked. “You don’t think we can do it?”
“I can’t ask you to come with me to fight through the cult of Moratha. Even if you weren’t children—”
Madira’s jaw dropped. “I’m not a child! The irony of a human calling us children. Everyone knows humans are the children of Heilune. I’m probably older than you.”
“You look like a child to me.”
“I’m twenty-five!”
Raiya thought he looked—and behaved, for that matter—about sixteen. She narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t that still quite young for an elf?”
“That’s irrelevant!”
Raiya considered them both.
“You’ll never succeed without us. Those cultists would have killed you if I hadn’t been there to save you,” Madira reminded her.
“I didn’t think you would be so eager to help,” Raiya said.
Jai smirked. “Madira thinks he’s a warrior, and he wants everyone to know it. He loves having a quest.”
He gave her an irritated shove, which only made her grin wider.
Jai took Raiya’s arm. “Let’s go get something to eat, okay? You look like you need to catch your breath and consider your options. Your demon won’t be going anywhere.”
Within the hour,they were plotting Azreth’s rescue. Once they had formulated a plan, they agreed to carry it out that very evening. Despite Jai’s assumption otherwise, there was no guarantee that Azreth would be safe for even that long. Raiya was adamant that they needed to act as soon as possible.
She spent the hours before nightfall frantically flipping through pages in her notebook and carving runes as fast as she could, until her fingers went numb from gripping her stylus and her back got sore from hunching over her work. She’d carved the runes into a round, smooth stone she’d found in camp. The object chosen for the enchantment wasn’t important in this case—it was just a canvas for the spell.
She didn’t notice Jai watching over her shoulder until the girl spoke. She had a remarkable talent for sneaking up on people.
“Why do you keep wincing like that?” Jai asked.
Raiya tried to smooth the grimace out of her face. The runes she’d made were thick and jagged and ugly. In two cases, she’d even had to scratch them out and start over. There was no artistry to it, only function. Maybe not even that.
“It’s not my best work,” she said.
Jai looked worried. “You don’t think it’ll work?”
“Hopefully it will work well enough for our purposes.” Finished, she tucked her stylus carefully into its small pocket in her bag. The stylus was specially made for enchanting, magically hardened to be able to carve into almost any material. It would be difficult to replace if she lost it.
There happened to be a mage in camp who had agreed to charge her baton and her new enchantment for a steep fee. The man took everything left in her coin purse, and it would take another hour for him to complete the charging. Raiya had to stifle the urge to complain. She’d been spoiled by the intense levels of raw power Azreth was capable of channeling. He could have charged them in seconds.
She looked up at Jai, wrinkling her brow. The girl’s curious, jade-colored eyes met hers, crinkling as she smiled.
“Are you certain you want to do this, Jai?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It will be dangerous. And you have no need to help us. You owe us nothing.”
Jai pushed her dark eyebrows together. “Maybe we don’t owe you anything, but we have plenty of reason to help.”
“Not long ago, you were planning to kill Azreth.”
“That was before we knew he was your friend. In a way, that makes it even more important to help him, doesn’t it? No one else is going to help a demon. I know what that’s like. Before Madira and I found the Roamers, no one helped us, either. We had to fight our way through half the continent because of it. People were always either frightened of us, or just hated us. It must be the same for him.”
Raiya smiled. Jai trusted easily. It was sweet. Madira was much more wary, but he was easily enticed by the promise of adventure and subterfuge.
“It will go perfectly,” Jai assured her, taking on a self-satisfied tone. “If you’d seen night elves in action before, you wouldn’t be worried. There’s a reason the mere mention of us terrifies you humans.”
They returnedto the temple just after sunset. Jai’s hand was on Raiya’s, the girl’s magic shrouding them, while Madira walked ahead. He was only just visible if you waited for him to walk near a light and knew exactly where to look. Both of them were adept at blending in with shadows, avoiding the circles of light that dotted paths and shone from windows. The townspeople ignored them completely, too busy to notice a stray shadow or two.
“This is easier than I thought it’d be,” Raiya whispered.
“I told you,” said Jai and Madira in unison.
They came to a stop in the mouth of an alley. Across the road was the Temple of Moratha, a dark monolith rising above the rest of Ontag-ul. Raiya was surprised to see a group of steel-clad figures standing in front of it.
Paladins. They were speaking to the cultists standing guard at the front door. Above them, even more guards watched surreptitiously from windows above. Gereg hadn’t been exaggerating the extent of their defenses.
Raiya heard a familiar voice, and her blood ran cold. And then she saw him.
“That’s my husband,” she murmured. There was a pause as the elves got their first look at him.
He was with the Paladins, animatedly arguing with the guard in front of the door. Just the sound of his voice filled her with dread. She hated that he had such an effect on her.
Could he know that they had taken Azreth? Was he trying to buy him? Would the cultists allow that?
Jai gripped her hand tighter.
“That’s him?” Madira said. “What a priss. He looks like he’s never touched a sword in his life.”
“He probably hasn’t. He’ll never need to lift a weapon as long as he can get others to do it for him.”
It seemed that the guard at the door had grown tired of the Paladins, because he raised his voice and waved them off. The Paladins backed down, and Raiya was relieved when Nirlan strode away furiously. His anger meant that he hadn’t gotten whatever he wanted.
The Paladins lingered in the street. Raiya realized there was another civilian among them, a young man with ash blonde hair tucked behind his ears. It was Adamus, the Paladin she and Azreth had encountered on the road.
Strangely, he wasn’t wearing his uniform. He wore no armor at all, and he seemed to be having a debate with a few of the others.
“I know that one,” she said. “He’s one of the Paladins. We saw him with them a few days ago.”
“What’s he doing?” asked Jai.
“I’m not sure.”
Madira turned to Raiya. She could just barely make out the features of his face. “We’ll wait for them to leave, and when the coast is clear, we can move in,” he said.
Jai and Raiya nodded. Raiya reached into her pocket and closed her hand around the stone she’d enchanted. The enchantment was the key to her escape from the temple. All they needed was to get in and find Azreth. That alone would be a challenge. There were no doors other than the ones in the front, and the windows were tall and narrow, too small for a person to fit through. There were more guards than they’d anticipated, too, and Raiya’s confidence was shaken by the ones lurking in the windows above the door, who were probably armed with arrows or spells.
The Paladins drew her attention again as the volume of their argument increased. Finally, the one arguing with Adamus waved his hand dismissively and walked away. Adamus looked dejected. The others left to follow Nirlan down the road the other way.
Raiya pressed herself closer to the wall as Adamus came toward their alley. He was going to pass right by them. Madira and Jai were silent and motionless as they watched him approach, like trained assassins. At times like this, it was hard to remember that they were actually still children.
As Adamus passed within arm’s reach, Raiya held her breath. But to Madira, it appeared it was like dangling a mouse in front of a cat—he pounced. He revealed himself suddenly, grabbing Adamus by the collar and pinning him to the wall. Madira drew his sword, resting it just below his chin.
“Keep your mouth shut or I’ll put my sword in it, Paladin,” Madira said, a little too gleefully. Raiya put a hand on his arm, fearing he’d run the man through. Jai released the spell shrouding them, and Adamus looked around at them all. His eyes focused on Raiya.
“You!” he said, and seemed more surprised than angry. “Strange company you keep. First demons, now night elves?”
“I said keep quiet.” Madira jerked the blade against his neck, making him wince. “What business do the Paladins have at the temple? Tell us what they’re planning.”
“Do you want me to keep quiet, or do you want me to answer questions?”
“Don’t get smart.”
“I’m not a Paladin any longer,” Adamus said. “I’ve hung up my sword.”
Madira glanced pointedly down at Adamus’s hip, where his sword still rested.
“I mean that I don’t fight for the Paladins,” Adamus amended. “What they’re doing has nothing to do with what Paladius wants. I want no part of it.” Raiya raised her eyebrows, and Adamus shrugged at her. “My father always wanted me to join the family trade and become a lawyer. I’m starting to think I should have listened to him.” He studied her, and Raiya could sense him piecing together what he knew of herself, Nirlan, and Azreth. “Where is your demon?”
Madira and Jai were looking cautiously between Raiya and Adamus. Suddenly, Adamus punched Madira in the stomach. Madira gasped and doubled over as Adamus shoved him away. Madira clutched his side, struggling to breathe. Raiya jumped back, pointing her baton at Adamus, but he hadn’t drawn his sword.
“You’re trying to get into the temple, too, aren’t you?” he asked her, eyes wide. “I want to help you.”
Raiya was dumbfounded. “What?”
“The demon is with the cultists, isn’t he? If there’s a choice between having him with you and having him working for the cultists, I’d prefer the former.”
“F-fuck you, Pa-aladin,”Madira wheezed. Jai was at his side, trying to comfort him. Adamus gave him an almost-but-not-quite-sympathetic look.
“You seemed to have the demon under control, at least,” Adamus said. “I would rather he returned to the hells where he belongs, but I cannot abide having him in the hands of the cult. Gods know what they’ll have him do.”
“You’re not a member of the Paladins anymore?” Raiya asked skeptically.
“Not those ones,” he said, jerking his chin toward the others. “We are supposed to be holy seekers of justice, not mercenaries.”
Raiya was surprised she was considering his offer. She was even more surprised to find herself saying, “Okay. Come with us.”
“What?”Madira hissed.
“We could use the help,” she said. And she believed Adamus would protect the siblings if they needed it, even if they might not return the favor.
Adamus smiled and nodded. “You won’t regret it. What is your plan?”
“We barge in quickly and get out before they can stop us.”
His smile wilted slightly. “That’s… refreshingly simple, I guess.”
“As if you had a better idea?” Madira snarled.
“No, I don’t,” he admitted.
“Make nice, Madira,” Jai said under her breath. “I’ll go with the Paladin. You go with Raiya.”
“Absolutely not.” Madira strode forward to grab a wary Adamus’s hand. “I will go with him. You stay with Raiya, Jai.”
They moved toward the temple. The street was empty, and their path to the door was clear.
“He didn’t go with the cultists willingly. They abducted him,” Raiya whispered to the Paladin as they padded across the street—because she felt it was important he knew. She felt Adamus looking at her for a few moments before he replied.
“I understand.” He was probably humoring her, but it made her feel better anyway. She wanted them to understand that this wasn’t Azreth’s fault.
When they came close to the light of the torches at the front door, Madira turned to Raiya and Jai. “Are you ready?” he whispered. “There’s no backing down after this.”
Raiya felt a sharp pang of anxiety in her chest. She was not a fighter or a spy. She wasn’t made for things like this. But lately, she’d been doing a lot of things she had never thought herself capable of. She could do this, too.
“Ready,” she whispered before she could change her mind. She squeezed Jai with one hand and clutched the handle of her baton in the other.
There was a beat, and then Madira and Adamus rushed the cultists at the door. The guards didn’t even have time to draw their weapons. Madira and Adamus quickly and quietly beat them over the head one after another with the hilts of their swords, and they dropped. Raiya couldn’t tell whether they were still alive, but at this point, after getting a glimpse of the cultists’ true beliefs, she didn’t care. One of the guards in the windows above gave a shout, sounding an alarm.
Madira shoved open the door and slipped inside, and the rest of them followed. Madira scanned the entrance, then nodded to Raiya. “Go. We’ll delay them.”
Raiya pulled Jai down the corridor to the main hall. They peered through the doorway into the room. Azreth wasn’t there. The spot where they’d imprisoned him was empty, the carpet smoothed over the runes on the floorboards again.
And yet she was certain he was still inside the building. She could feel him. His misery was seeping through the walls like a bad odor. They were getting closer.
They continued down the hall. Nearby shouts rang out periodically and rushed footsteps pounded on the floor above them. Behind them, Raiya could hear the clashing of blades.
There were only so many places in the temple that would be adequate for securing a demon. She doubted they would keep him in the sleeping quarters or the kitchen. The attic, perhaps?
She closed her eyes and listened past the footsteps and voices. She listened to the fury and darkness that scented the air and thrummed across her skin like a pulse.
She opened her eyes. It was coming from the floor.
“Cellar,” she whispered to Jai. “There must be a cellar.”
“Through the kitchen?” Jai suggested. Raiya turned and pulled her back toward the kitchen. They ducked into a dark alcove when a pair of cultists ran by, then continued on until they reached the darkened kitchen.
Raiya scanned the room, looking past a smoldering hearth, worn table, and neatly stacked dishes.
In the back corner of the kitchen was a trap door.
Raiya turned to Jai. “This is far enough. Go back to Madira.”
“But—”
“You need to get out. I can’t take both you and Azreth when I leave. Go on.”
Jai hesitated, then nodded. As she let go of Raiya, her spell left Raiya’s body, rendering her visible again. Jai disappeared back down the hallway.