A Khur landed a stunning hit across Kerian’s shoulders. She whirled, driving him back with knife thrusts but received a nasty whack on the thigh from another quarter. The Khur who struck the blow got a deep cut across the forearm for his temerity.
The room was filling with smoke. The long table was alight, and flames were spreading to a dusty wall hanging. The Nerakan had fled. Coughing heavily, his Torghanist hirelings who could still move were abandoning the fight as well.
Sa’ida still slumped in her chair, unconscious. Kerian cut her bonds and carried her to the door. It was a perfect place for an ambush, but the Nerakan and the Khurs were gone. Kerian paused at the mouth of the narrow alley.
The street was empty and dark and little wider than the alley in which she stood. The fire was not yet visible out here, but smoke was seeping from beneath the eaves. The second-story dwelling above was abandoned. The roof was gone and the shutterless windows showed sky beyond. No one was going to notice the fire until a neighboring structure caught.
The priestess’s weight pulled on her injured arm. She shifted the unconscious woman to her other shoulder. Taking a deep breath, she left the deeper shadows of the alley and hurried away from the house. She prayed she wasn’t following in the footsteps of the fleeing Torghanists.
Her chosen route was north, opposite the way she’d been brought. Heading uphill past a line of tightly shuttered houses, her luck held. She paused several times to listen for sounds of pursuit, but other than the sound of a dog barking, the quarter was calm.
The narrow alleys of Arembeg gave way at last to a wider street. Kerian’s progress was slow, hampered as she was by the unconscious priestess and her own injuries. She had to halt and catch her breath several times. Each time, she tried to rouse Sa’ida, but the human remained senseless. Kerian wished for a fountain with water to revive the priestess, but Khuri-Khan had few public water sources.
After what seemed an endless hike, she came to a small souk. Half a dozen soukats were just beginning to set up for the day’s market. When they realized the elf woman sought water not for herself but for the unconscious priestess of Elir-Sana, a water bottle was promptly produced. Sa’ida commanded the highest respect, and the soukats seemed inclined to think Kerian was to blame for her current state. The Lioness didn’t bother enlightening them. For all she knew, some of them were followers of Torghan. She poured water into her cupped hand and applied it to Sa’ida’s face, all the while urging the priestess to wake.
Sa’ida’s eyelids fluttered and opened. She sat bolt upright exclaiming in shock.
“Calm yourself, Holy Mistress. You are safe.” Kerian said, glancing up at the soukats ringing them. None wore a particularly kind expression. “Much has happened, and we should not remain here.”
Sa’ida offered the water to Kerian. The owner of the bottle was displeased, but when Sa’ida thanked him for his generosity, he did not demand its return. Kerian’s throat was dry as the desert. She drank deeply.
When Sa’ida had recovered sufficiently, she blessed the soukats in the name of Elir-Sana, and the two women left the little square. From various landmarks, Sa’ida judged them to be more than two miles from the Temple of Elir-Sana.
Kerian began to relate the events that had occurred while Sa’ida was unconscious. She hadn’t gotten far in the tale when a clangor of bronze gongs sounded. A column of smoke was rising from the Arembeg district behind them. Its base was painted red by flames. The gongs were summoning able-bodied Khurs to fight the blaze. Kerian urged the priestess to a quicker pace and finished telling of their capture and escape. Sa’ida confirmed what Kerian suspected: there was no Torghanist temple in Arembeg.
The smoke was no longer a single column, but a wide curtain. The fire was spreading. Sa’ida pitied the poor folk who would lose their homes. Kerian was not so forgiving. Those were the same folk who had bolted their doors and done nothing when Torghanists dragged two prisoners, one of them a holy priestess, down their street.
“Our attackers may worship the desert god, but they take their pay from Neraka,” Kerian said. She described the bald man she’d seen in the empty house.
“Lord Condortal!” Sa’ida exclaimed.
She identified him as the official emissary of his Order in Khur, holding the rank of ambassador.
Kerian was not surprised. Wherever the Dark Knights went, subversion and violence followed. She described the pan of branding irons Condortal was preparing for them.
“How dare he!” The priestess’s usually calm countenance was flushed with outrage. “When Sahim-Khan learns of this blasphemy, he’ll have the foreigner’s head!”
“Calm yourself. It’s all part of the game. I’ve had brushes with his kind before.”
“Such insults cannot be borne!” Sa’ida insisted.
“Really? Is that the doctrine of your divine healer, or the creed of Torghan?”
Sa’ida halted in mid-diatribe, ashamed. Her steps faltered and she put a hand on the wall of a house to steady herself. She was not a young woman. Her long hair was tangled. Many of the ribbons and tiny bells woven through it had been lost. Her white gown was torn and dirty. When they were thrown from Eagle Eye, she sustained a hard knock, and a sizable bruise darkened her forehead over her left eye.
Recovering her equanimity, she apologized for her outburst and they resumed walking. More calmly, Sa’ida thanked Kerian for saving her.
Kerian asked, “By the way, what was it that knocked us off Eagle Eye and put you out for so long?”
“A powerful spell.”
“Condortal didn’t look like a spellcaster,” Kerian mused. “Do the worshipers of Torghan have magic like that?”
Sa’ida exclaimed, “They do not! There must have been a Nerakan sorcerer at our temple!”
The possibility upset her deeply. She grew more and more agitated at the idea of a foreigner practicing illicit magic in her city. Kerian comforted her with the thought that the Nerakan and his hirelings hadn’t been after Sa’ida. They could have struck at the Temple of Elir-Sana anytime. They attacked only after seeing Kerian’s arrival. Condortal’s hirelings probably had orders to seize any elves who showed up in Khuri-Khan.
“It was simply their misfortune that the elf who showed up was you,” murmured Sa’ida.
When they reached the Temple of Elir-Sana, Sa’ida was astonished to see the khan’s armored horsemen drawn up in the avenue. They surrounded the blue-domed temple like a wall of glittering steel. Kerian was all for slipping away unseen, but Sa’ida had had enough skulking. Dirty, exhausted, and injured, the priestess stormed into the square. Fearing more treachery, the elf woman followed reluctantly in her wake.
“Marak Mali, is that you? What’s going on here?” Sa’ida demanded.
The commander of the troop, a handsome young man with an elegant mustache, looked past the line of horsemen. Shock bloomed on his face.
“Holy Lady, you are well! Bless the goddess!”
Reassured Sa’ida was indeed whole, he explained that he and his men had been sent by the khan to guard the temple from further attacks. The activities of the night had not gone unnoticed. Unlike the cowed folk of Arembeg, those living near the temple had not turned a blind eye. They ran to alert the city garrison. Sahim-Khan ordered a company of his elite horsemen to protect the ancient shrine and crush the Torghanists if they dared show their faces.
“The old rogue did well!”
Captain Mali chose to ignore the priestess’s disrespectful remark. His gaze fell upon Kerian, standing nearby, and he asked the holy lady who she was.