Elizabeth Haydon - Requiem for the Sun

“Get a healer!” Shaene screeched, the sweat of fear springing from his skin, leaving his hands trembling. Rhur disappeared; Shaene stumbled to the bedside table and, with shaking hands, poured water from the face-washing basin atop it onto the towel that was folding neatly next to it. He hurried back to Omet’s bedside and laid the wet cloth gently over the boy’s forehead; the towel turned quickly warm.

Shaene clutched the hot, limp hand atop the covers and began to rotely chant the prayers he could recall from youth, from the last time he had sat vigil by a young man’s beside. In the earliest days of his apprenticeship his old brother Siyeth had contracted scarlet fever, had wasted and died in his bed before Shaene’s eyes; the sights and smells never left his memory.

From what he could remember of Siyeth’s death, Omet looked worse.

He had no comprehension of how much time was passing now. Rhur returned with Krinsel, the midwife, who was the chief of the Bolg healers, and several of her assistants; they had ministered frantically to Omet, only to see him edge closer to death.

“Come on, lad, come on,” Shaene muttered, patting the young man’s forearm impotently. He turned to Krinsel, who shook her head, then to Rhur, who watched, as always, stone-faced, but with eyes that held deep worry.

Suddenly Shaene sat up straighter, as if struck.

“Rhur—the tower! We can take him to the tower!”

The Firbolg artisan’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Do you recall the wheel? Sandy said that the tower and the wheel worked together for healing, I think.”

Rhur shook his head. “We know not how it be used, Shaene,” he said quietly in the common tongue tinged with the harsh accent of the Bolg.

“It can’t come to harm, though, can it? We’ll put him below the glass ceiling and set up the wheel.” Desperation rose in Shaene’s voice. “We can’t just stand here while he burns to death from fever!” He gestured toward the healers. “Send them to the journeymen, the apprentices, and tell them to get take the wooden cover off the dome. You and I can make a litter out of his cot, and carry him.”

Krinsel and Rhur exchanged a silent glance, then a few words in their native tongue, and finally a nod.

Shaene exhaled deeply. “All right, then.” He patted Omet’s arm again. “Hold on, boy. Perhaps all your efforts are about to be repaid.”

Esten stared down into the dark passageway, struggling to decide what to do.

Something of grave import must lie at the bottom of this tunnel , she thought, patting the pocket of her shirt where the key was concealed. There is nothing in the king’s bedchamber itself that requires the level of guard he has posted, or the concealment of the door, or the traps. Any thief stealing his way into this place would be bitterly disappointed .

And yet there was a passageway hidden at the foot of the king’s own bed, a sign that when he was in the mountain, he himself was the last line of its defense.

It was tempting, difficult to resist.

And yet Esten’s time in the mountain had taught her that such passageways could go on for days, could misdirect, lead into other twisting hallways, designed to confuse, to cause the traveler to lose his way. It was possibly a journey for which she was not prepared. She just did not have the time to risk it.

A prickle ran over her skin, a shiver that she cursed, because it denoted a weakness in her she could not abide. The tunnel recalled the one she had been digging in Yarim beneath Entudenin, or, more accurately, her slave boys had been. While she was not averse to going to check their work, to correct their direction, there was a limit to the length of time she was comfortable remaining underground.

Living within the mountains of Ylorc had been difficult, but it was a difficulty she could abide. Esten was accustomed to back alleys, to dark buildings, to sewers beneath city streets, to the shadows in which all of her people lurked, hidden, waiting for the time to emerge, then blend quickly back into the darkness again. The tunnels, passageways, and rooms of Ylorc reminded her more of those alleys, those sewers; they had been built for men, after all, in the Cymrian era.

But this tunnel was different. If she was going to traverse it, she would need supplies and light.

She shut the chest and carefully reset the traps, meticulously following the order in which they had been originally laid.

Esten slipped out of the secret door and closed the entrance, when a great shadow appeared at the end of the hallway.

She glanced up, started, to see a giant there, a brutish man seven and a half feet tall, a cache of hilts and weapon handles jutting from a bandolier across his back. His skin was the color of old bruises; his horsehide-brown hair and beard dripped with rivulets of rainwater.

And his broad, tusked face was wreathed in a horrific scowl.

“ ’Oo are you?” he demanded, his thunderous voice echoing off the basalt hallway. “And what are you doing ’ere?”

Esten’s mind, finely honed from years of nefarious trade and knife’s-edge situations, focused quickly. She folded her arms across her chest and scowled back.

“My name is Theophila, Grunthor,” she said, taking a calculated risk that there could only be one fitting the description the Bolg king had given her. “And I am here because I sleep here now.”

The ferocious anger melted into a look of shock that resolved into mere surprise, dimming finally into embarrassment.

“Oi do beg yer pardon, miss,” the giant Sergeant said sheepishly, running an enormous paw through his dripping hair. “ ’Is Majesty did mention you to me, o’ course. I just didn’t realize you were, er—

“Knobbing him?” she said playfully, relaxing her stance visibly so as to mask the motion of drawing her blade. “Good. He promised to be discreet.”

Grunthor cleared his throat awkwardly.

“My apologies again,” he mumbled, then, seeing no anger or retribution in her eyes, broke into a wide grin. “ ’Is Majesty asked me ta make certain you got everythin’ you need. What say you we go to the mess hall and have some grub? We can get ta know each other better.” He gestured down the feeder tunnel toward the soldiers’ dining hall.

In return he received a glittering smile.

“That would be nice,” she said simply, walking to meet him as he turned away from the hall toward the feeder tunnel. She manipulated the blade into her palm.

Kidney , she decided. Such a large target, and he’s giving me a clean shot at it .

She increased her speed infinitesimally, holding her blade point-down, raising it just as she moved within range to strike, watching the movement of his soft leather jerkin over the vulnerable area of his back.

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she concentrated, aiming her blow between the moving muscles of his back.

Which continued to shift more than she expected as Grunthor swung fully around with the hand-and-a-half sword she had never seen him draw, separating her head cleanly from her shoulders with one beautiful, fluid motion.

Faster than anyone of that bulk should ever have been able to move.

Esten’s dark, bright eyes had just enough time to blink open in shock before her head fell away from her shoulders; her body pitched forward on the ground, shuddering, while the head tumbled end over end, dousing the black walls with spurting blood, to land, spinning, on the floor just past the Bolg king’s door.

The Sergeant-Major crouched down beside the body. He rolled it over onto its back; as he did, the blade fell from her lifeless fingers. Grunthor picked it up and shook his head, clucking in mock disapproval.