Phoenix Unbound
Page 32

The silence remained unbroken outside until a second set of steps reached the doorway, followed by a third, then a fourth. Azarion recalculated. Either the man with the drawn bow had defied an order and joined his companion at the doorway, or there were more than three Nunari searching the barrows.
This last kill had been by ambush. These would be by combat. Three entered the barrow, one at a time, on cautious feet. They spotted the body of their fallen comrade the moment they straightened inside the barrow’s interior.
Azarion rushed out of the darkness, and chaos erupted. The scouts were adept fighters but no match for a Pit gladiator.
He dispatched one of the men with a thrust under the ribs that pierced his heart, and was in the middle of killing another when a howl rent the air. He spun, blade slick with blood, to discover the last to enter the barrow staggering toward him and clutching the gashed ruin of his face. Azarion made quick work of killing him before searching frantically for Gilene.
She no longer stood in the shadows but closer to the barrow’s center, her hand curled in a fist around something that oozed blood between her fingers. Her eyes were huge and bright with terror. They rounded even more, and she gasped out a word, pointing to something at the barrow’s far side with a shaking finger. “Wight.” Her breath steamed in front of her in the suddenly icy grave.
Azarion pivoted and confronted a visage out of a demon’s nightmare. A mottled, twisted thing scuttled down the earthen steps, scattering bones and grave goods in its path. It hurtled toward him and Gilene, fanged mouth open wide on an unearthly screech meant to freeze its prey in place from terror.
Azarion lunged for Gilene, hauling her toward the barrow’s opening at a dead run. He cleared the short flight of steps with a leap, lifting the agacin behind him off her feet as he went. He managed to raise the buckler just before an arrow struck its metal face and bounced off. Cleared of the barrow and the howling wight, he dropped Gilene’s arm and charged the lone archer frantically nocking his next arrow.
Azarion plowed into him just as the arrow loosed from the bow. The two men skidded across the grass in a tumble of limbs. A hard fist smashed into the side of Azarion’s head, and he saw stars before managing to get a grip under his opponent’s chin and one behind his head. He used the leverage of his body and, with one quick yank, broke the scout’s neck. He leapt to his feet, dreading the last arrow had found its mark in Gilene’s body.
She stood, uninjured, next to where the arrow had planted itself in the ground by her foot, and watched the shrieking wight claw at them from the barrow’s entrance. Her hair haloed her head in a frazzle of strands that had come loose from her braid, and she still clutched the thing in her fist that bloodied her fingers and spilled an occasional crimson drop on the ground.
Once assured she was well and that the wight couldn’t leave the confines of the barrow, he quickly scouted the rest of the necropolis for the enemy. Only their horses stood at the perimeter, their ears laid back at the sounds coming from the grave guardian.
Battle fury still coursed through him, leaving him in a momentary fog. He shook it off. He had to keep his wits about him. These Nunari were from the camp whose fires he’d spotted earlier. The five who came looking were dead, but that only meant others would search for them when they didn’t return to their clans.
He found the agacin farther away from the barrow but still eyeing the wight lingering in the doorway. The creature stared back, no longer shrieking, but snapping its jaws as if eager to gnaw on their flesh. Gilene’s frightened gaze settled on Azarion. “Will it be able to come out?”
The wight whined at the sound of her voice, as if starved. “No,” he said. “Its purpose is to guard the grave and its sanctity.”
Her expression changed, became baffled. “Its sanctity? That barrow has been looted several times, and I’m sure others besides us have slept in there for whatever reason. Surely, there’s nothing left which is sacred.”
He looked to the wight, who looked back from crimson eyes that burned with malevolence. “Different acts awaken wights. Sometimes it’s the looting, which is what makes it so dangerous. I think this time it was the spilling of blood. I desecrated the barrow when I spilled Nunari blood in there.”
Gilene stared at him for a moment before striding to the dead archer. She knelt beside him. “I spilled blood in there too,” she said. She rose and approached Azarion, opening her hand to show him what she clutched in her bloodied fist—a pottery shard. Its edge, darkened with blood, was sharp as any knife in some spots. “The last man to enter the barrow saw me.” Her fingers played over the shard’s surface and the broken lines of lost engravings etched into the clay. “For now I am a captive. I refuse to be a slave.”
Azarion stared at her with new respect. At some point during their time in the barrow, she had found the shard, recognized it as a possible weapon, and hidden it. “I’ve underestimated you, Agacin. You’re as dangerous without your fire as you are with it.”
She dropped the shard and kicked it aside with her foot before using her skirt hem to wipe her hand clean. “If you tell me again it’s a blessing, I will find a way to feed you to that wight.”
He believed her. “When will the fire return?”
She shrugged, tucking a windblown strand of hair behind her ear with a bloodied hand. “It usually takes weeks, though after my first time, it was longer.” She tilted her head to one side. “You believe me when I say I can’t use it yet?” He nodded. “Why?”
Gilene wielded her power with skill; he’d seen that with his own eyes, and if she still had any left to summon, the perfect opportunity to exploit it had just presented itself.
He coaxed her toward the spot where their own horses huddled with those belonging to the dead Nunari. “Because if your power were fully returned, you’d be on one of those horses and riding for home. The barrow is as much a trap as it is a defense. You could have burned me and the men I killed and walked out untouched.”
She halted, her expression dark. “I don’t like being so predictable. Nor am I a murderer.”
If that pottery shard in her hand, and the Nunari she had disfigured with it, were anything to judge by, she was anything but predictable. “You aren’t, but you’re driven and as intent as I am on surviving.”
The sour look was back, along with the shadow of sorrow. “This is why I hate the Empire most of all,” she said. “Because it’s twisted us into people we despise.”
The wind whipped her tattered skirts around her long legs and bent the grass to her feet in supplication. Moonlight silvered her hair, and those dark, dark eyes watched him, bleak and despairing.
CHAPTER NINE
After five more days of hard riding and sleepless hours worrying over pursuit by more Nunari, they topped a low rise whose sweeping views encompassed more of the swaying plume grass and a shimmering orange line in the distance.
Azarion pointed to it. “There. That’s what we ride toward.”
Gilene stared at him, bleary-eyed and exhausted. “Will they know you when you return?” Ten years was a long time of separation, and the boy taken had changed into a man she suspected none of his clan would recognize now.
“Maybe.” His voice was muted, thoughtful. “Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. The Sky Below is the land of my spirit. It’s where I belong.”