Guards marched us back to the same drab building of our previous incarceration, but locked us into a different cell. This one was empty and seemed somewhat cleaner. With nothing else to do, we sat upon the straw-covered floor to converse. I was eager to catch up on Izzy and Brilna’s recent adventures, but first there were questions about what had just happened.
“What was that all about?” asked Izzy, looking over to me. “The woman seemed frightened after examining your hand.”
“It’s the mark, isn’t it San?” Lillatta spoke up. “The spear burn?”
“It appears so,” I confirmed. I gestured over toward Lillatta and said to Izzy, “This is Lil, by the way.”
“Pleasure to finally meet you,” Izzy said. She smiled and held out her lone hand.
Lillatta grasped it and replied, “Same here.” Then she chuckled and said, “Though I don’t exactly know who you are.”
Izzy laughed and formally introduced herself. Afterward, I addressed her question concerning the Spood interest in me.
“Remember what Smerkas said about the ‘mark of the spear’?”
Izzy nodded in affirmation and I showed her my burn scar.
She let out a low whistle. “That indeed appears to be a spearhead. But why are the Spood so concerned about it?”
“That I have no answer for. But it is curious.”
I then took the time to tell Lillatta all that had happened to me since my banishment. Afterward, the conversation turned to Izzy and Brilna, and to what had transpired since our separation. Izzy assured me Brilna was safe, and told me she would discuss the girl’s situation in a bit. First, she wanted to tell what had happened to the two of them since our parting.
After extinguishing her torch, Izzy and Brilna had reunited, then both watched from the darkness—in the pouring rain, Izzy emphasized—as I spoke to the boy, Javen. When dawn arrived and the caravan moved out, the two of them followed at a discreet distance all the way to the hills overlooking Grell.
They saw me enter the fortress tunnel and both prayed they hadn’t lost me for good. They hid in a grove of kansers up in the hills and watched for any hint of a way to get inside that massive compound. Within half an hour, the sun began to strike the fortress wall at a particular angle, and both noticed something glinting.
The river that flowed from the hills and then disappeared beneath the fortress walls did so very near this reflection point. They took advantage of the concealment offered by the riverbank to make their way down toward the mystery. The wall angled away from direct sight of the main gate tunnel, well before the section Izzy and Brilna wanted to examine, so detection from those guards was impossible. In addition, the several fields in view from that angle had no workers that day. They noticed, as I had, that there were no sentries posted on the high battlements.
This allowed the two to walk unseen right up to the wall and to the reflecting object, which happened to be a round, clear-looking “eye,” countersunk into the wall surface. The eye was oddly only knee high, so the girls had to kneel down to examine it.
Not knowing what this eye was or what it was for, Brilna, naturally, touched it. Nothing happened, so Brilna poked it. Nothing. Izzy bent down to look into the eye. She jumped when a small, rectangular section of the fortress wall in front of them began to slide to one side. It churned the packed soil built up against it as it moved.
The movement reminded Izzy of her experience with the back of the cave wall. This fortress section had a similar disguise. In appearance, it seemed like all the other sections, massive stone bricks. However, this narrow portion, barely two people wide, was in reality a thin wall that somehow could push itself out and slide across the face of the main wall. This occurred by some mechanical process when the eye was activated. When back in place the section was invisible, blending in perfectly with the stone wall.
When the panel opened, Izzy and a frightened Brilna found themselves peering into what seemed a dimly lighted compartment. There was a slight drop off to a solid floor, and the top of the doorway seemed rather low. Izzy quickly realized that many years of soil buildup along the outer fortress wall had covered the lower part of the door, so they were standing much higher up than someone would if entering years ago. That meant this door had been unused for a very long time.
Izzy wanted to explore the empty and mysterious room revealed by the open panel, but Brilna insisted they return to the hilltop. Izzy had to persuade her they could do nothing to help me from up there, and at last Brilna relented.
The top of the door opening was about shoulder high, so they ducked under that and entered the cubicle, jumping down to the solid floor less than an arm’s length below. A portion of the soil churned up by the opening door had fallen inside the room near the entrance. Brilna kicked at it, and when she did the fake wall startled them by sliding back into place, as if the dirt had prevented it closing.
The compartment floor was in reality a landing at the base of a long, gently sloping double staircase that appeared to extend all the way to the top of the fortress. The double stairway had metal handrails to assist climbing. Looking up, they saw the source of illumination for the compartment and stairway was the open sky. Stone walls formed three sides of the small room they stood in, with the only exit the double staircase leading up to the heights of fortress Grell. Izzy quickly realized that they were standing inside the walls, literally inside the thick walls that made up the fortress.
The two had nowhere to go but up, so a cautious Izzy placed a foot upon the first stone step of the right hand staircase. It seemed stable enough, but then she heard a low hum and swore she saw and felt the step move slightly upward. Jumping back off the step, she eyed the stairway with suspicion, apprehending the thought that it might be a living creature with designs on eating her.
The steps remained immobile as the hum grew fainter and soon ceased. After a short while, they judged the stairs guiltless of nefarious intent, and having no other choice, Izzy again pressed a foot upon the first step. This time there was no hum and no movement, so they began to climb. Izzy said it was a long way up and that the stairs ended at the very summit of the fortress. Izzy had her blade ready as they exited the stairwell next to a small tower.
They stepped out onto a walkway of smooth, flat stone. This walkway appeared to extend the entire length of the top of the fortress wall as far as the eye could see in either direction, no doubt following its contours all the way around. Lining both the north and south sides of the walkway were chest high parapets, with short towers planted every one hundred fifty paces along only the north side. The width of the walkway, including the parapets, appeared to be about twenty paces across, the same as the length of the tunnel entrance into the fortress. There was no sign of any human presence.
After verifying that they were indeed alone, Izzy examined her surroundings. She found the view over the north side parapet breathtaking. With a warm, robust wind stroking her face, she had gazed out across the fields to endless hills, plains, and verdant valleys, out to where clarity was lost to a distant haze. Over the south side parapet, she had surveyed the luscious greenery of the fortress interior, extended her view to the almost imperceptible battlements on the remote far wall, and then looked beyond them to the sea. Drawn, as I had been, to the sea’s powerful, sensuous motion, she had pondered its vastness as it opened up on its way to touch the hem of the sky. She said she had felt like Mim herself, looking out over the entire world.
Her intuition told her that the design of this construction had to be from an advanced people, or even from the fertile minds of the gods themselves. She told me she believed the Spood were incapable of engineering something this sophisticated. The height alone was unfathomable.
“Do you think it could have been your cave-builders who constructed it?” I asked her.
“I have no idea, but I’m sure the Spood are not the ones. I doubt they are the original inhabitants of this place. The walls
are too perfect, and the stone is nothing like that used in their sperza buildings. In fact, I believe the Spood have never set foot on the walkway on top of those walls. There was no sign of anyone having been up there for a very long time.”
So that explained the lack of sentries! The Spood had no access to the top of the wall. The fortress walls were sheer and smooth, and that would make them difficult to scale. In addition, nothing I had seen indicated they possessed anything that could reach that high. The only access must be through those sliding panels, and apparently the Spood knew nothing about them!
Izzy continued her story, saying the two of them began exploring. They walked the high stone pathway down to the next tower and saw the same design as the first. Each tower was a round, roofed enclosure, with square-cut openings to allow viewing outside the fortress walls. Izzy guessed that they were for sentries to use if it rained. They found another double stairway, this one along the south side parapet directly across the walkway from this second tower. The stairway was identical to the first one. They tested the stairs for movement, and when nothing happened, they took the stairs down.
At this point I interrupted with another question.
“Why do you think that first stairway moved? Did you ever figure that out?”
“I’m sure it was simply the act of stepping on it that caused it to shift, but why I couldn’t say. It moved only a slight bit, and then nothing after that. And I know it hummed when I first set foot on it, but then that also quit. Honestly, I think we broke it. Whatever happened must have affected all of them, because every stairway we checked after that did nothing. That first one was the only one that had any reaction to us.”
Izzy went on to say that at the bottom of the second stairway, they searched around for another eye on the wall. They found one.
Interrupting again, I asked, “When you were at the bottom of the first stairway, did you see an eye on the inside wall there, too?”
“Sorry, Sanyel, we didn’t even think to look, but there probably was. Because, as I mentioned, we checked out several more stairways. There’s one located near every tower, along either the north or south side parapets, and every one of them had an eye on a wall near the stairway bottom. It seems there are eyes at these locations so someone can open the sliding walls from either outside the fortress or from inside the cubicles.
“Which leads me to tell you what happened when we tried to make the one at the bottom of the second stairwell work. Brilna put her eye to it, just as I had with the other, but nothing happened.
“She tried everything. Poking it, pounding it, even breathing on it, but nothing worked. Then I happened to wave my hand past it and it opened. But it opened to the interior of the fortress!”
To the interior! This was getting even more interesting. So every tower had a stairway near it, some adjacent to them and some directly across the walkway from them. These stairways led down to sliding walls that either opened to the outside of the fortress or to the interior. I figured it out.
“So does every other stairway lead to a wall that opens out and the rest to ones that open in?” I asked.
Izzy seemed a bit irritated I had spoiled her forthcoming revelation, but let it pass.
“Yes, that is what we found. Half the stairways are located along the north edge parapet and the other half the south, all of them near a tower. The north ones, of course, lead down to panels that open to the outside of the fortress and the south ones to the inside. We also found out that the doors close on their own, like the first one did, when nothing is blocking the doorway. That was fortunate for us, for when we opened that second door there were people standing a few hundred paces away. Lucky for us, they were facing south and didn’t see or hear us. The door closed back shut within moments, and I thank Mim none of them realized we were there.
“And a couple of other things. I figured out it was my rings that opened the doors. When I tried looking into the first door eye, my nose ring must have passed in front of it, causing it to open. The second door opened when my finger ring passed in front of the eye. I think maybe the singing from the metal makes them open.
“And something I really found strange was that there was very little debris in the stairwells or on the walkway on top of the walls. There should have been years of soil buildup, being as it’s all exposed to the elements. The amount that was there could not have been there for more than a few years. Someone must have cleaned those stairs and that walkway in years past, but haven’t for a while. I’m sure it wasn’t the Spood, or they would certainly still have people up there now.”
A Creet guard interrupted us by cracking open the cell door, placing food and water on the floor, and then departing. We satiated our hunger by devouring the mush in the wooden bowls and then shared the skin of water. We had been in this cell since late afternoon and now the shadows of early evening were eroding what light remained.
None of us had yet spoken of what we expected to happen to us in the coming hours. I did not know what the others felt, but I was still upbeat. For strange as it might seem, I was beginning to believe what my father had believed. I had come into the heart of danger and I remained unscathed. Was Ra-ta guiding my hand? Was it my destiny to lead my people through these troubled times, as my father had insisted?
I glanced over at Lil and caught her yawning. Izzy rubbed her one hand over the inked side of her face. They were both bone tired and I knew how they felt. It had been a rough day for all of us, and as I contemplated my weary companions, I felt pride. I had witnessed their makeup this day. Izzy with her blazing sword and Lillatta showing all the lethal skills she had learned at the hands of my father. We were so young, so innocent back then, playing warrior in the woods. Now, we had killed—and to what end? Only Ra-ta knew.
Despite her fatigue, Izzy concluded her tale before we settled in to sleep. After discovering the secrets of the sliding panels, the two girls had continued walking the high walls, unnoticed by those below. Not knowing where the Spood had taken me, they scoured the roads and fields from the south side parapet.
When the city of Grell appeared in their sights, they decided what to do.
It had been logical to assume the city was where the Spood took me, so the two found a south side stairway that opened to the fortress interior. They made sure the panel was in a remote area, so no one would spot the door’s movement. Brilna stayed behind so she could re-open the door for me in case I showed up without Izzy. Izzy gave Brilna her finger ring for that purpose. It was fortunate Brilna had thought to bring along their only skin of water, so at least she would not die of thirst while waiting.
Izzy had looked back as she departed for the city. She wanted to imprint the landmarks in her mind so she could find the proper wall on her return. Once on the outskirts of the city, she had employed care in making her way down dangerous back streets. Izzy knew a spike-haired, tattooed, nose-ringed, sword-carrying figure in gray would be rather easy to spot, even by the most myopic of Spood. She had no idea where to find me, but Brilna had informed her that slave orientations regularly took place in the city’s central plaza (Brilna’s escaped fellow tribesman had told her this), so that was Izzy’s destination. With luck, she discovered a part of the city devoid of people, a part undergoing construction. Her progress toward the plaza went unimpeded and soon she reached an area of droove stables, which happened to be across the street from the plaza stage.
She had been watching what was unfolding through cracks in the stable walls when she realized I was in trouble. She grabbed a droove, crossed the street, and jumped onto the platform.
The rest I knew.
Guards woke us in the morning, shackled our wrists with metal rings and chains, and then marched us outdoors and across the plaza. The temporary grandstand rimming the square had vanished, taken down during the night. A gruesome reminder of yesterday’s revolt and its tragic outcome remained, as numerous bloodstains s
till spattered the stone plaza floor. I found out later that a third of the slaves gathered that day had died. The Spood had used the revolt as an excuse to make even more blood offerings to their god, Gor-jar—a safeguard, it seems, against a repeat of these troubling evils.
Their bodies remained—dozens of them—hanging on grottis frames at the edge of the plaza. I did not know if any were Sakita, for their features were unrecognizable, the result of the brutal battering they had suffered.
Was I to blame for this? Is it because I chose to fight that so many died? Would it have been better for all if I had let the Spood kill me?
Honestly, I did not know. Is it acceptable to live as a slave, give up your freedom and toil in bondage, always in fear, always in pain? I could not. I would not. I had expected to either die yesterday or again know the protection of Ra-ta’s hand. Since I was not dead, I felt my destiny was still unfolding.
After crossing the plaza, we stepped up to the walkway where the tiered grandstand had been, kept moving toward a building featuring a grotesque facade and climbed its stone steps. The figures carved into the face of the dwelling depicted scenes of violence, animal and human, and some too bizarre to even categorize.
Our guards, ten Creet soldiers, waited outside the building after instructing us to enter. We crossed the threshold into a short hallway, and at the end encountered more Creet, who escorted us into a large, torchlit waiting area.
The room was high ceilinged and pillar-supported, with a floor of polished stone. Statues appeared to guard artwork that crowded every wall. The majority of paintings depicted animals and nature scenes, while the statues showed sculpted images of priests holding grottis amulets or armed Creet soldiers in warlike poses. Three new guards approached and directed us to enter a side chamber. There we came face-to-face with Smerkas and his pompous wife.
The guards ordered us to stand in a row before the two. They both sat in high-backed, comfortable-looking chairs and were eyeing us as predators would their next meal. The Creet escorts moved away to go stand against and blend in with the walls.
The room was small and low and had a magnificent view of the plaza through its wide sental. The walls had no decoration but for a few modest tapestries. Other than the chairs in which the two sat, the room was empty of furnishings.
Smerkas opened the meeting.
“Of course you know why you are here.” He was holding his jeweled scepter in one hand and idly caressing it with the other. “We have been waiting a long time for these events to unfold.”
I stared at him with a blank expression, having no idea what he was talking about.
Smerkas’ excited wife jumped from her seat and strode closer to us.
“I still cannot believe it! I really did not expect to find anything when my husband wisely told me to check your palms. Yet it is true. The Disrupter is a mere girl. And the Blades of Sorrow as well!”
What was she babbling about? Disrupter? Blades of Sorrow?
“Tell me,” Smerkas’ wife asked me, still in that almost giddy manner. “How did you become the Disrupter?”
“I have no clue what you are talking about.”
The priest’s wife was having none of it.
“Oh, come now, don’t be coy, we know who you are.”
Well, I should know my identity best, and it was obvious they were talking about someone else.
“You must have me confused with another.”
She was getting impatient and her tone turned brusque.
“You have the mark of the spear,” she pointed out, as if that explained anything.
“It’s a burn mark.”
That perked her up.
“So they burned the mark into you? Who are they? Who sent you to Grell?”
We were back to getting nowhere.
“It was an accident, when I was a child. I touched a hot spear tip.”
She did not believe me.
“You expect us to believe you were not purposely chosen for this role? And these two,” she added, sweeping a hand gesture past Izzy and Lillatta. “I suppose they have not been training for years to fulfill their parts as your chosen companions in bringing agony and destruction to our people? These are not the Blades of Sorrow?”
Smerkas’ wife made a huffing noise, a dismissive sound that indicated she still felt we were not being forthcoming.
“We know you are the one who killed Kobar, the Creet soldier at the sperza. Your description has reached us. We know the story, how you flew, not even touching the ground to reach and slay him. We also know you came here on your own. Despite being free, you came purposely to Grell. Why do that if you are not the Disrupter?”
Wow, I hadn’t remembered I had flown when I killed the Creet. I seemed to recall running and jumping, flying not so much.
“I came here to free my friend,” I told the woman, nodding over to Lillatta.
She glanced at Lil, but my truthful words meant nothing to her.
“We are not fools! You came to join her and this other one to carry out your vile mission.”
I turned my face to Izzy and Lillatta and they looked back with as little comprehension as I had. Smerkas’ wife would not let it go.
“Where are your armies? We have not detected their presence yet. You cannot defeat our forces by yourselves. Are they waiting for your signal?”
I decided to play along.
“Of course they are waiting, but you must be aware they are invisible.”
Shock replaced the confident air with which the priest’s wife had been speaking.
“Invisible?” With a frightened look, she turned to her husband for the first time.
Smerkas had been calmly sitting, letting his wife take the lead, and now he smiled and spoke.
“Invisible armies? When they attack with their invisible swords, will they leave invisible cuts?” The high priest laughed. “I am guessing there are no armies. I believe your plan was to instigate a slave revolt, but you have failed. The Spood are still in control. And now we have you.”
Smerkas’ wife seemed embarrassed for having fallen for my deception, but her mood brightened with her husband’s grounded assessment.
“Of course there are no armies,” she concurred. “I knew when we captured these three in the stable they were nothing to fear. I knew then that Gor-jar had made his decision. He chose us, didn’t he?”
“He did,” Smerkas agreed. The priest gave a short laugh. “He did, indeed.”
**
~~EIGHTEEN~~