That was not what concerned Rhayn most, however. Dhojakt stood in the doorway of the balcony, pointing a slender finger in their direction. He held his other hand turned palm down, and Sadira could barely make out the shimmer of magical energy rising into his body.
“No!” she cried. “Don’t tell me he’s a sorcerer!”
Rhayn had no chance to reply. Dhojakt uttered his incantation, then the magic Sadira had used to levitate Magnus failed. The windsinger plunged to the street below, with Sadira and Rhayn still clinging desperately to his arms.
Magnus crashed into the charred body of a dead half-giant. The sorceress heard the staccato cracking of the guard’s ribs, then a brutal jolt rocked every bone in her body. The air left her lungs in an agonized scream, and her mind went numb with shock. She felt herself bounce off the windsinger, but barely noticed as she dropped back to the cobblestones at his side. There was a sick, mordant smell, a spray of black ash, and an explosion of unimaginable agony.
Sadira did not lose consciousness. She remained alert enough to see a pair of fleeing elves stoop to gather up Rhayn’s form. Several more paused to grab Magnus and drag the heavy windsinger to safety. The task of helping the sorceress fell to one of the last stragglers, a pregnant elf with green eyes.
As she tried to lift Sadira, the woman gasped in pain and clutched at her swollen abdomen. “I can’t lift you,” she said, grasping the sorceress’s wrists. “Maybe I can drag-”
“Go on,” Sadira said, shaking her head. The sorceress knew that if she could not stand by herself, the pregnant elf would be risking her life with little chance of saving Sadira’s. “I’ll be fine.”
The woman did not need to be told twice. Without saying anything more, she turned and ran out of sight.
Sadira pushed herself up to her knees. Her entire body protested in torment, but she did not stop. The sorceress gathered her legs beneath herself and rose to her feet. For a moment, Sadira actually remained upright.
Then a terrible burning ran through her legs, as though her veins were filled with fire instead of blood. She lost control of her muscles and collapsed back to the cobblestones.
Sadira did not allow herself even a moment of self-pity. Instead, she immediately resorted to pulling herself across the street with her hands alone. She did not dare look back, for fear that she would see Dhojakt swooping down like some bird of prey to snatch her away.
A few feet later, it was clear to the sorceress that she would never escape this way. Her only hope was to cast another enchantment and hope Dhojakt did not dispel it, too. The sorceress reached for her bag.
A sandaled foot pinned her arm to the street. “There’s no time for that,” said a familiar voice.
The sorceress looked up and saw Raka’s boyish face bending over her. Though one side of his jaw was mottled with scabs from a day-old burn, he looked more or less the same as he had when she last saw him.
“You escaped!” Sadira gasped, delighted.
“Yesterday, at least,” the youth said, grabbing her under the arms. “Today, we may not be so lucky.”
Sadira followed his gaze to the tower. Dhojakt was coming down the wall headfirst, easily clinging to the rocky cracks with the sharp claws of his two dozen legs.
The sight brought new vigor to the sorceress’s legs. She managed to push herself up high enough to slip an arm over Raka’s shoulder. The youth led her into one of the narrow lanes down which the Sun Runners had fled. Instead of following the elves deeper into the city, however, he ducked into a doorway of a half-collapsed hovel.
“What are you doing?” the sorceress asked.
“My master sent something along to hide us from the prince,” he answered, pulling a small ceramic plate from his purse. “This will put him off our scent for a while and give us a chance to escape.”
“Then you were looking for me,” Sadira surmised. “I guess it makes sense that this is no chance meeting.”
“Correct,” Raka answered, laying the plate on the floor. “After you disappeared from the Sage’s Square, we set a watch on the gates of the Forbidden Palace. When Dhojakt left this morning with a company of templars and another of half-giants, we knew we’d find you by following him.”
“Then the Alliance will help me?” Sadira asked hopefully.
“As much as we are able,” Raka answered. He passed his hand over the plate and whispered a command word. The disk melted into the ground and faded from sight. “But not as much as you would like. We cannot take you to the Pristine Tower.”
“Why not?” Sadira asked.
Raka took her arm and guided her through the ruins of the hovel. “Because we don’t know where it is,” he answered. “From what my master can learn, only the elves have visited it-and even then, just the most courageous have dared to attempt journey. There might be no more than a dozen warriors in the Elven Market who know where to go. We’ll try to help you find one, but time is running short. We’ve learned that the northern cities sent their levies to the Dragon many weeks ago, while the Oba of Gulg is gathering her slaves even as we speak. My master believes this means-”
“That the Dragon is going from north to south,” Sadira surmised. “Tyr is after Gulg, leaving Balic for last.”
Raka nodded, then helped the sorceress climb through the hovel’s back wall. “You have perhaps three weeks left to stop him.”
“Then I can’t waste time searching for a guide,” Sadira said, looking toward the tower where her father had been captured. “But I do know someone who can take me there-provided you’ll help me get him back from the prince.”
“We’ll do our best,” Raka promised.
The muffled rattle of Dhojakt’s feet echoed through the hovel. Raka smiled and held his hands to his lips. An instant later, an enormous hiss sounded from the other side of the shack and a spray of green sparkles shot into the sky. Dhojakt roared in anger, then such a terrible stench filled the air that Sadira could not keep from retching.
“There,” said Raka. “Now you’ll be safe-at least long enough to leave this part of the city.”
TWELVE
TILE EMPORIUM
They found Faenaeyon crammed into a stall at the back of the emporium. He sat with his knees pulled to his chest, staring blankly at the cracked flagstones of the floor. One hand incessantly searched along his belt for his missing purses, and his haggard face was twisted into a scowl. With a long line of drool dripping from his pointed chin, he mumbled incoherent phrases and seemed completely oblivious to what was happening around him.
Clearly, the elf was in no shape to attempt escape, but the emporium agents had restrained him the same way as every other slave in the market. Around his neck, the chief wore a collar of coarse black rope. Spliced into this was a cord running a few feet back to the wall, where the other end was attached to a bone ring set between the stone blocks. From her own days in bondage, when she had slept with a similar rope around her neck, Sadira knew that even Magnus could not have snapped it. Nor could the line be easily cut, for it was braided from the hair of giants. The resulting cord was so tough and resilient that even steel blades would, be dulled on it.
“I hope you’re alert enough to know how being tethered feels,” Sadira whispered, looking away from her father’s pen.
Even had he been lucid, the sorceress doubted that her father would have recognized her. She had used henna root to dye her hair swarthy red, the bark of an ashbush to darken her skin, and black kohl to decorate her eyelids. She had also exchanged her customary blue smock for a green sarami.
As Sadira and Raka moved down the aisle, she paused several times in front of other slaves, as though evaluating their suitability for her home. The Slave Emporium of the Shom Merchant House was larger and more crowded than any Sadira had ever seen. It was a single cavernous gallery, lit by huge windows and buzzing with the drone of hundreds of bickering buyers and sales agents. The chamber’s ceiling was high and shadowy, supported by hundreds of double-stacked arches and marble columns. These pillars were almost hidden beneath the lush climbing vines loaded with aromatic blossoms.