The cracked stone walls offered no escape, so I quickly turned my attention to the ceiling. My captors had used no ladder or stair to deposit me here, but dropped me through a hole in the floor. The rusty hinges and the outline of the square trapdoor were easily visible. A man of average height stretched on his toes could have touched them.
I dragged the sacks of moldy grain into a pile underneath the door, climbed up, and stretched high. The tips of my fingers brushed the hinges. Then one of the sacks gave way. I lost my footing and crashed facedown on the disgusting floor. Three times I restacked the stinking mound, but the rotted sacks disintegrated underneath me. I never even touched the door again.
"May holy Vasrin unshape your, balls, arrigh scheiden ," I yelled, kicking the pile until the blighted grain became a putrid muck on the seeping floor.
Trampling footsteps overhead sent me cowering to the corner. But the door didn't open. Instead, as if the contents of my skull had been excised to make room, an explosion of images slammed into my head one after another: a vast chamber … a dome of light . . . soaring columns of pearl gray and rose … a towering beast of bronze … a curtain of blinding white fire with a woman—D'Sanya—standing inside it. No sooner had these resolved themselves into a coherent whole than came the holocaust—fire and death, the columns cracked and fallen, the white fire quenched in blood, the glory shattered. The walls crumbled and fell in a deafening thunder and beyond I saw Avonar a reeking ruin. Trailers of smoke rose from charred rubble into a sooty sky. In all this vast expanse of horror only the bronze beast remained whole.
In moments, the vision was gone, winked out as if it had never been. The footsteps died away; the enchantment that had made my teeth hurt evaporated; and I sagged to the fouled floor, sobbing in the empty silence. The world was going to end because I was a wretched runt.
I might have fallen asleep again. It was difficult to tell in the endless dark. But a soft scrabbling noise above my head prompted me to my feet, as much so I wouldn't feel a rat scutter across me as with any further pretense of being prepared to defend myself. Though I saw no light, a soft infusion of fresh air set my heart racing.
A muffled grunt, a slow sliding of wood on wood, and a dark shape invaded my prison and came to rest on the pile of grain sacks. A ladder. Even if the stealthy approach had not signaled an ally, I would not have hesitated to scurry up. Better to die in the open than in such a foul hole.
Lungfuls of clean, damp air and a firm hand were waiting for me when I emerged from the hole and crawled onto a wooden floor. The hands indicated I should help pull the ladder up. Once we had the heavy thing up, my shadowy companion took it away. I carefully closed and latched the hinged trap that had held me prisoner. The room was large, long and narrow, and at one end thin strips of gray light outlined shutters. Before I could determine what were the dark columnar shapes that filled most of the place like crude statuary, my rescuer returned.
"Who—?"
"Shhh." The hand gripped mine, and we sped through a maze of stacked boxes and crates toward the end of the room away from the shutters. My companion cracked open the door and peered out, then pulled it open a little further. Outlined in the lingering gleam of a rainy twilight, dressed in a man's breeches and shirt that were too big for her, was the Lady Seriana.
She closed the door carefully behind us and motioned me to follow. We sped across a muddy flat to a set of wooden steps, half buried in mud and the soggy debris of a riverbank. As I followed her down the steps toward the rush and slurp of the dark ribbon of water, I glanced back and saw the front of the low, block-like building we had just abandoned. It was tucked between two thick stone pillars that supported an arched bridge. Exactly as I had seen in my vision. And though the evening was eerily quiet and no starlike lights adorned the trees and buildings outlined against the night, we were most certainly in Avonar.
An armed man, strolling around the building, paused and turned his head our way. I ducked.
Lady Seriana led me a short way upriver to a spot where the swirling water had undercut the high riverbank. "I think we can talk here," she said, keeping her voice low as she crouched under the bank. "I'd hoped to get you out hours ago, but only in the last hour did they leave the place to just the one guard. You're uninjured? They had to carry you. . . ." Her words poured out as if she couldn't get them out fast enough.
"I'm not injured, but very confused," I said. "How ever did you come to be here? And how did you know where I was? Aimee told us you'd been arrested and confined to the hospice."
"I followed you from the hospice to the Zhid camp, and slipped through the portal in the dust storm. When I came through, Gerick was having them take you off the horse and put you down the hole. None of the Zhid saw me."
"My lady, do you know what he's doing? Were you able to see those who came here today?"
To make out details in the failing light was difficult; Lady Seriana's eyes were like dark blots. But the strain in her voice told me a great deal. "Twenty or thirty different people came here by ones and twos, most of them men. All of them armed. I couldn't see their eyes, but they gave me the feeling … so cold . . . I'm sure they were Zhid. They left the same way in ones and twos. When I thought all of them were gone, I peeked through the window. Ten or twelve men remained, bent over a bronze thing the size of a table top—"
"An avantir." Of course, that was the enchantment I'd felt. Here in Avonar. And I had thought I couldn't feel sicker. "The red-haired man wearing a gensei strap across his chest. He was there?"
"Gensei?" She pushed her wet hair out of her face. "Gods, yes. That's what the belt was. I couldn't remember. Yes, the red-haired man was there. And two more with the same kind of belt. Almost all of the others wore the oval badges. . . ."
"Wargreves, then." So many officers. Not just Zhid rabble.
"I couldn't watch," she said. "Every moment I stayed close, I felt sick. Those men—and Gerick, I suppose— must have left by way of the portal, as I didn't see anyone else ride out."
Lady Seriana's hands were long and slender. Though scars and rough patches evidenced her years of hard work, age had not yet coarsened their shape or withered the skin. But as we spoke she twined her fingers into such a knot that the blood completely deserted them, leaving them little more than fleshless bones.
"Jen, I've found out something dreadfully important about the Lady, and I've not been able to tell anyone. Last night, when we realized what had happened to the oculus, Karon and I assumed . . . hoped, I suppose . . . that Gerick was responsible, that he was alive and close by and doing what he thought was necessary to remove her threat. Karon insisted I find him and tell him this information, no matter what I had to do. But before I could go, we heard the commotion, and Karon felt the violence coming and knew he had to intervene, while I found Gerick. But Gerick went off with these Zhid.. .."
"You say no Zhid saw you. Did Gerick see you, my lady? Could he possibly have known you were here?"
"I believed so at first. I thought he raised the dust storm so I could follow. Now, I just don't know."
A damp wind gusted along the river, making me wish for my long-lost cloak. The rills and curls as the water raced around the rocks to join the slower main current shone white against the dark water. "Tell me, my lady, did your son touch your mind today?"
"Mind-speak?" She shook her head wearily as she rested her forehead on the knot of her hands. "No. I didn't hear him."
"Not speech. I don't think he dares mind-speak, not if he's determined to deceive the Zhid. They bend to his power, but they don't trust him completely as yet. Listen, my lady. While I sat in that cellar, I saw several vivid images: this building and another one where, I think, the Zhid have a portal to infiltrate the city; a section of the wall where Avonar's defenses are dangerously weak; and an ancient tower where Ven'Dar might be imprisoned. I think Gerick wants me to free Ven'Dar. Ven'Dar could call in people to block the portals, if I tell him where the Zhid assault will come. Then, if Paulo and Aimee can bring Je'Reint and reinforcements …"