Rhune Shadow Read online

  “Tell it to me,” Mab ordered Thirmida.

  A flare of rebellion appeared in the young Prophetess’s face. Then, she seemed to reconsider and told the dream to Mab, with the five warriors listening.

  “She dreamt of the Rhune,” Mab told Himilco. “The Rhune has nothing to do with the Prophetess. You sly jackal, I could almost believe you’re in league with the Rhune. We must send word to Ert. He hunts this unnatural she-donkey.”

  “I don’t understand,” Thirmida said.

  “That’s because you’ve never been to sea,” Mab said. “I was captured in my youth. In those days, I was a proud maiden, a desert beauty like you. The captain thought he could tame me and feared using the whip to brand my skin. He ordered his men to stash me in the bilge and he bragged about the rats down there. He said they would devour my beauty. He did it to frighten me. Ha! On the rocks and sand in the bilge, I killed and ate one of the sleek rats. The rest kept far from me after that.”

  “It wasn’t a coffin I saw?” Thirmida asked.

  “Coffins don’t have sand,” said Mab. “The Rhune is hiding in a galley, down in the bilge.”

  With accusation on her face, Thirmida turned to Himilco.

  Sweat pooled under Himilco’s arms. Curse the old crone. “You state the obvious, Mab,” he scoffed. “It’s Bel Ruk’s meaning that I’m after.”

  “A Karchedonian looks up at night and tries to decipher the Moon’s phases,” Mab said. “We of the desert use the same Moon to light our path. With this dream, Bel Ruk says nothing about the Prophetess, but instead helps us catch the night-stalker.”

  Himilco stared at the ceiling and shook his head. When no reaction was forthcoming, he turned away with a sigh.

  “Did you know the Rhune was hiding in the galley?” Thirmida asked him.

  “Mab has missed the critical detail,” Himilco said. “But I’m only a Karchedonian. What do I know?”

  “Your games mean nothing to me,” Mab said.

  “Games?” Himilco asked in feigned outrage. “To me this is life and death.”

  “What is the critical detail?” Thirmida asked.

  “Go back to bed,” Mab told her. “I’ll send a messenger to Ert. He’s in the Tyrant’s camp. After that, I’m going back to sleep.”

  “The knife!” Himilco said, as he snapped his fingers.

  Lines creased Thirmida’s forehead.

  Mab stared balefully at Himilco.

  “Why did Bel Ruk show her the knife?” Himilco asked Mab.

  “The Rhune is an assassin,” Mab said. “Assassins are in the habit of carrying knives.”

  “I’m surprised you can’t see it,” Himilco said.

  “Am I to use the Rhune’s knife on the Prophetess?” Thirmida asked.

  “Ah,” Himilco said, the way a proud teacher might to his prized pupil.

  Mab muttered angrily, yet she rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

  “By all means,” Himilco told Mab, “send word to Ert. We need the knife.”

  “We want the Rhune even more,” Mab said.

  “Time is more important than either the Rhune or her knife,” Himilco said cryptically.

  Both Mab and Thirmida looked at him perplexed.

  “Bel Ruk obviously sent Thirmida a vision in order to confirm his choice,” Himilco said. “I know you understand that.”

  “I understand even better that I command these warriors,” Mab said with an edge to her voice.

  Himilco made a wry gesture, believing feigned indifference to Mab’s threats protected him better than begging for his life. “A first vision always reveals much. In the vision, Bel Ruk showed Thirmida a young woman just like her, but one in a coffin.”

  “What does that mean?” Thirmida asked.

  “It means that a young woman lies in a galley hiding,” Mab said.

  “In reality, that is so,” Himilco said. “But to Thirmida it was a coffin. The coffin clearly represents the old Prophetess on the verge of death. She shivers and lies on sand. That is how we know it’s the old Prophetess.”

  “How do we possibly know that?” Mab challenged.

  “By the sand,” Himilco said. “The sand represents you, the Nasamons, the children of the desert.” He gave them a superior smile. “Now the knife, the magical knife, is the tool Thirmida must use to bring about the Prophetess’s marriage. Why a magical knife, you wonder? Because it is a magical transformation from old to new, just as our worship of Bel Ruk is about to be transformed.”

  Mab scowled as she searched Himilco’s face. “I still don’t understand why any of this means that you should see the Prophetess.”

  “It’s difficult for the untrained,” Himilco conceded. “The reason is because the Prophetess is gravely ill. We must keep her from dying to ensure that Thirmida sacrifices her to Bel Ruk. That’s why the god sent the urgent dream.”

  Mab and Thirmida traded glances with each other.

  Himilco attempted to appear serene. Before he’d become a priest, he’d served a half-year’s apprenticeship under an astrologer of Utica. He’d left the old man because he’d discovered the astrologer was too blind to use his charts anymore. The charlatan had made everything up on the spot. The only thing Himilco had learned was how to talk shop and how to weave elephant dung into something that smelled believable.

  “We must hurry,” Thirmida said.

  “It would appear so,” Mab muttered. “But the suffete still remains here.”

  “Please, Mab,” Thirmida said. “Let him join me. I need his wisdom.”

  “Your uncle—”

  “Call more warriors if you must,” Thirmida said.

  Mab scowled.

  “I am the new Prophetess,” Thirmida said, and there was triumph in her voice.

  Himilco believed that Mab’s earlier comment still rankled, when she had called Thirmida a “silly girl.”

  “You are the new Prophetess,” Mab agreed. “You,” she told a warrior. “Gather another twenty warriors. We’ll surround the suffete with guards so nobody will even know he’s there.”

  Himilco shrugged as if none of that mattered to him. Inwardly, he plotted how to send a message to the Gray Wolf, to tell him and his Gepids to be ready.

  -6-

  “Well?” Tyrant Alexon snapped.

  “We’re still searching, my lord,” a grizzled commander said.

  The two stood in a tent held up by a single pole. There was a brazier, a table with a map of Karchedon and its surrounding seas pinned to it and three campaign chests in lieu of chairs. Alexon had moved out of his spacious tent with its rugs, scented silks, pay chests and courtesans. He’d grown wary after escaping Zarius’s assassins three weeks ago. When Ert had galloped into camp with news of a Rhune assassin aloft on a Sivishean skay, Alexon had sounded the alarm and switched tents.

  Since then, the Tyrant had done some thinking. Through a sorcerous practice begun many years ago, Alexon had maintained his youthfulness and handsome features. Unlike the hulking commander with his bronze cuirass, gnarled limbs and beard, Alexon shaved every day. He wanted to expose his stunning features, not hide them under a mat of hair. He loved the feel of a woman’s hand running across his face. He had blond curls and he’d long ago affected the manner of cocking his head leftward, with a wry smile for all to see. Former enemies had considered him foppish, right to the end of their misguided and shortened lives. Alexon was ruthless and cunning, with a flair for battle.

  He wore a sleeveless tunic that didn’t quite reach his knees. He was proud of his muscular legs. He had a secret wish of going about in a barbarian’s loincloth and perhaps a pair of sandals. Let the world sun themselves upon his beauty. He knew, however, that his soldiers were too unsophisticated for that. He only indulged himself in his palace and in the spacious tent, where he often went about nude as if at the gymnasium. His highest-ranked commanders understood. Those who had been visibly shocked by his actions were no longer among the living.

  The Tyrant approached the table. With a man
icured finger, he tapped the map of Karchedon. “Why did we sail here?”

  “To break Karchedon’s sea power,” the grizzled veteran said.

  “Why did we stay?”

  “To reap tens of thousands of cheap captives,” the commander said.

  “No,” Alexon said. “To ensure the Nasamons broke through. The desert people were helpless before the city walls. We gave them the tools they lacked. They had poured their blood against Karchedon. Before they smashed in, they would have poured much more. These desert barbarians are a scourge. Now that they’ve taken the city, they might disrupt vast swaths of the southern coast. They will disrupt our trade and hurt us by stealing our silver.”

  “Then why are we here, Lord?” the commander asked.

  Alexon glanced at the hulking brute. The regular soldiers trusted the commander, who was brave, looked the part and was completely unimaginative on the battlefield. His other asset was that he was just imaginative enough to understand that this self-loving youth was also an unbeatable conqueror and therefore worthy of loyalty.

  “We’re here to destroy likely competitors,” Alexon said, “the Karchedonians first and the Nasamons through proxy, through the Karchedonians defending their walls. The plan was like a brilliant sapphire, full of sparkle and subtle angles. Now a traitor has opened a gate to let in the Nasamons. The desert horde thereby retains the majority of its numbers. As bad, the horde might win the use of many Karchedonian soldiers, those wise enough to surrender. If the two meld, the city could become as powerful as before. No. With the Nasamons as city allies, it could double or triple Karchedon’s deadliness.”

  “We must buy more slaves then,” the commander said, “particularly the ex-city soldiers.”

  Alexon tapped the map of Karchedon. “The Nasamons are primitives, but they’re not stupid. They might find a reason why they’re unable to sell us captives, and—”

  Alexon’s handsome features hardened. He shook his head and rubbed his face as if to rub out the lines revealed by the uncharacteristic expression.

  “Rouse everyone,” Alexon said. “Send the Master of Slaves to me.”

  “Lord?” the commander asked.

  Alexon said no more, just stared at the map.

  With the clank of his cuirass, the grizzled commander hastily backed out of the tent, turned and bellowed orders into the darkness.

  Alexon bit his lower lip in worry. The Nasamons might decide they wanted to cripple possible competitors. The Prophetess—it was impossible to know her mind. He believed Ert lied about the Prophetess’s falling into a deathlike slumber. It was time to drag the quinqueremes back into the water. He would do it tonight, before the Nasamons turned on him and swept his camp with thousands of screaming horsemen.

  He tapped the map. War was bizarre. Soldiers and men like his commander were hopeless romantics concerning swords and shields. They told each other lies about the glory of fighting and dying. They chanted songs as they marched toward mayhem and possible dismemberment or the disfigurement of their features. He, however, knew that war was money, good water and food. It was keeping your men healthy, happy and hardened. He’d dragged the quinqueremes ashore to save wear on the hulls and so the slave-rowers shat in latrines instead of on their feet on the benches. They kept away from the rowing hold’s foul odors. He kept everyone healthy, the galleys pristine and the soldiers well-fed and trained. Even so, there had been wastage these past weeks. An army in the field began to die in slow degrees as soon as it marched from home. His armies and fleets just died more slowly than his enemies’ did.

  Alexon reached under the tunic, lifting it as he rubbed his muscled pectoral. The traitor had changed everything, the coward. He would like to get his hands on that one. The things he would do to the traitor…

  Alexon shivered in delight at the prospect. He must find out that one’s name. Then, someday, he would pay back the traitor for wrecking a brilliant plan.

  Alexon had an inflexible rule. No matter how long it took, he found his enemies and slew them in the most gruesome manner he could imagine.

  He tapped the map again. He had to get the galleys into the water and then he would be safe from the Nasamons and from this dastardly assassin. As Alexon waited, he began to think of the tortures he would visit on the Karchedonian traitor. And upon the assassin… The Rhune thought of themselves as the beautiful people. Well, he would see about that.

  -7-

  Elissa’s exhaustion was nearly total. Due to her knife-cut, her bruises and wrung-out condition, and the miasma of the soiled sand, she developed a fever as she slept. She thus continued to sleep as one dead while soldiers and sailors attached ropes and chains to her quinquereme. Pipes wailed, whips snapped and hundreds of burly slaves grunted with effort. They dragged the two-hundred-foot vessel toward a quickly dug, watery trench.

  All around Elissa’s quinquereme similar activities took place. Tens of thousands of men labored like mules. Torches and lanterns blazed. If she’d been awake, she could have done little differently. As it was, her dreams took on a pell-mell atmosphere, with ghostly forms shouting and some swearing. She stirred on the sand, but her feverish exhaustion kept her more lethargic than an overdose of purple lotus would have done.

  For once, her half-Rhune heritage and trained senses failed her.

  -8-

  “She’s as cold as death.”

  Mab touched the Prophetess’s arm as she lay on an obsidian altar at the top of a small step-pyramid. Thirmida watched wide-eyed. Five warriors crowded near. Two of them raised torches. The flat top of the pyramid had as much space as an ordinary room. The obsidian altar stood in the center, with channels for blood. A large grill with a sunken pit for wood or charcoal was located nearby for burn-offering torn-out hearts.

  An out-of-breath Himilco hung back. The temple of Bel Ruk loomed above the pyramid. The marble stairs leading up to this pinnacle were steep.

  Thirty warriors guarded the bottom of the stairs at an asphalt plaza. Mab had given them orders to slay the suffete unless she or Thirmida accompanied him down.

  Karchedon reeked of smoke and despair. Flames still reflected their hellish light off the underbelly of a smoke cloud, although the fires had slackened. From the Temple Mount’s height, Himilco had caught sight of a mercenary banner flying over the Merchant Gate. The Karchedonian soldiers still held out there.

  Himilco eased weight onto his right foot. His left throbbed. The new shoes were too tight. Forget the fornicating shoes! They didn’t matter at a time like this.

  “Suffete!” Mab shouted.

  Himilco smoothed away his scowl and limped between two warriors. He should discard the shoes and go barefoot. But then he would be shorter than everyone but for Mab. His vanity refused the idea.

  “Are you deaf?” Mab asked him. “I’ve called you three times already.”

  “The glory of Bel Ruk consumed me,” he mumbled.

  Mab appeared skeptical.

  “Despite all obstructions,” Himilco said, “the Prophetess correctly foretold Karchedon’s fall. As I look over the city, I find the truth incredible.”

  “The Prophetess is nearly dead,” Mab said. “The fools who were supposed to guard her are gone. Bel Ruk help them because I’ll throw them into a cistern once I catch them.”

  Himilco examined the shivering body. The Prophetess wore the ancient skull-mask and hyena robe, while her paralyzed right hand clutched the skull-topped scepter.

  Himilco grasped the throat of his robe. A chilly breeze blew off the sea. He should have worn a cloak and a fur hat.

  “You two,” Mab said, pointing at the warriors, “rub her legs. You, rub her arm. Thirmida, rub the other arm. We must warm her.”

  “Perhaps Thirmida and I should fetch blankets,” Himilco said.

  “That’s a good idea.” Mab turned to the leader of the warriors. “Go get blankets and bring them up here.”

  The warrior rushed for the marble stairs.

  Under Mab’s direction, the warr
iors and Thirmida began to rub the Prophetess’s chilled limbs. The inert body moved, making the skull mask wobble. Then, the unconscious Prophetess moaned.

  Himilco’s heart stopped. When the beating began again, his heart thudded in his chest. He struggled for breath and willed the Prophetess to remain unconscious.

  Within her ugly mask, the Prophetess’s eyelids fluttered.

  Himilco couldn’t swallow he was so terrified. He reeled back toward the stairs. The warrior racing for blankets was halfway down already. The others milled about at the bottom. Several looked up. Many gawked at surrounding architecture, perhaps still awed at being in the great city of Karchedon. Other warriors crouched and diced. Farther away, Nasamon horsemen clopped between the temples, palaces and idols. The Temple Mount crawled with the desert killers.

  “Bless the Lord of Dragons,” Mab said excitedly, “she’s coming to. Prophetess, can you hear me?”

  Himilco approached the altar and peered over a rubbing warrior’s shoulder.

  Within the mask, the Prophetess’s eyes snapped open.

  Trembling with anticipation, Mab pried off the skull.

  The Prophetess’s skin was stark white. Lines in her face showed the poison’s corrosive strength. She stared at Mab and worked her lips.

  With terror coursing through him, Himilco hid behind a torch-holding warrior.

  “Mab,” the Prophetess whispered. It was a horrible rasping sound.

  Himilco steeled himself as he flexed his hands. He began mentally shuffling through spells.

  “Where are…?” The Prophetess worked her mouth in order to continue speaking.

  “The Karchedonian priest told us Bel Ruk wanted you here,” Mab said.

  The Prophetess emitted an odd sound.

  “He said Bel Ruk appeared in the inner sanctum and chose you as his bride,” Mab said.

  The Prophetess stared at Mab.

  “He said we are to sacrifice you on this very altar,” Mab said.

  The Prophetess’s mouth twisted into what might have been a snarl. Fury sparked from her vampire-like eyes.