Helmar led the way along the opulent hallways. She noticed Marron was right—the palace seemed deserted. No one tried to stop them as they trotted the horses through the corridors.
Tassilio’s directions proved accurate, and the women found themselves out in the bright sunlight on a broad, grassy esplanade. In front of them the towering bastion of stone soared high into the blue sky. On its top, like a red and green crown, sat the temple of the prophet Sargun.
Built originally as a citadel, the redstone buildings had been consecrated as a monastery and a temple a few generations after the death of the holy prophet. It housed a magnificent library, gardens, the royal crypt for the Turic shar-jas and a population of perhaps one hundred contemplative monks and active priests. It was used by the Turics only in times of the most sacred rites. A narrow road rimmed by a stone fence zigzagged its way up the steep face to the top. There was no sign of Zukhara or Kelene anywhere, and nothing moved in the sky but a few wisps of clouds.
Marron and Nara hurried off the esplanade and found the beginning of the temple road at the end of a long courtyard. Together they trotted up the steep way.
Kelene was too groggy to understand what was happening. All her whirling mind could recognize was the pain in her chest and stomach and the difficulty of breathing. She concentrated on her lungs and the effort of pulling in the air. Her chest seemed so sluggish, even heavy, as if something were pressing it down. Her stomach hurt from something that pushed into it, making her nauseated. She seemed to be moving by some outer volition, certainly not on her own feet, and her head felt strangely heavy and “swollen.
She opened her eyes and looked at something fuzzy and dark brown. Her vision rocked sickeningly, so she closed her eyes, took a slow breath, and tried again. This time her eyes focused a little better, and the brown, fuzzy blur became clearly a horse’s belly. With that understanding came full realization. Zukhara had thrown her over a saddled horse and was leading it somewhere uphill.
Struggling did little good because he had tied her to the saddle. Those same Hunnuli hair ropes, Kelene thought sourly. She lay still and tried to sooth the pounding in her head while she waited to see what he would do. It wasn’t easy. Zukhara seemed to be in a desperate hurry. He rode a second horse and cantered the mounts as often as he dared up the steep grade. By the time they reached the top of the incline, both horses were blowing and lathered in sweat. He urged them through a strong-looking gate and brought them to a rough stop in the cloistered courtyard at the main entrance to the citadel buildings.
Leaving the horses where they stood, he ran back to close the gates. Kelene could not see what he was doing, because he had his back to her, yet he seemed to take an inordinate amount of time just to lock a gate. Finally he came back, tugged Kelene off her mount, and carried her over his shoulder into the forecourt of the front entrance. Several priests ran to meet him.
“Where is the Tobba?” he roared at them. “Bring him to the Chamber of Unity.”
Kelene’s mind whirled. What did he intend to do? Didn’t he realize his cause was lost? The Shar-Ja was still alive. Cangora was falling into the hands of the loyalists, and his fanatics were being defeated. “What are you doing?” she said aloud.
The Gryphon heaved her over onto her feet and held her bound arms in an iron grip. “I failed to kill the Shar-Ja today, but without the antidote, he will die shortly anyway. The throne will still be mine. I am Fel Karak, the Gryphon, the anointed servant of the Living God!” he ranted. “And you are still my chosen wife.” He wrenched her forward and dragged her with him through the corridors of the outlying buildings toward the inner sanctum of the temple grounds.
The sorceress struggled to bring her thoughts under control. It was time to act, to fight back, but her head and chest hurt so much from the earlier arcane blow that her wits felt addled and her vision was still blurry. She could hardly form a single coherent thought, let alone a strategy to defeat a sorcerer with a functioning ward. She staggered after Zukhara, paying little attention to where they were going.
After what seemed a very long time to Kelene, Zukhara pushed open a door adorned with vines and wooden roses and tugged her into the Chamber of Unity, the chapel used by members of the royal family for marriages and betrothals. Zukhara did not bother to explain anything to his captive, he simply placed her in front of a tiny, wizened old man and wrapped his fingers around her wrist.
The old man, the Tobba, was the spiritual leader of the community of priests and monks at the temple. He was very familiar with the Gryphon and his methods, and he did not even murmur a complaint at the hasty and unorthodox arrival of the man and his intended bride. He stretched out his skinny arms and lifted his voice in supplication to Shahr as set forth in the ancient texts of Turic matrimony.
Kelene did not need a translator to tell her what the priest was doing, nor a witness to interpret the self-satisfied smirk on Zukhara’s face. She had to get away from him now, before she became married to him in the eyes of Turic law. She glanced around the room, hoping for some bit of inspiration. She knew she was not strong enough to fight Zukhara physically. He was a powerful, athletic man who could overpower her all too easily. Nor could she use spells against his body as long as he wore the ivory ward. Perhaps, she thought, she could manipulate something around him that would give her a chance to slip away. She knew him well enough by now to know he would come after her, and she hoped he would. She still wanted the antidote hanging around his neck. She needed time only to untie her hands, clear her mind, and perhaps get some help.
The Chamber of Unity, she noticed, was more like a garden than a room. The walls were hung with pink silk handpainted with delicate white roses. Living roses grew in pots in every corner, along a small ornate altar, and in hanging baskets around the ceiling. To the right, wide doors sat open to the sunny warmth of a magnificent rose garden where rosebushes of every color filled the air with a sweet, heady fragrance. In the quiet of the afternoon, Kelene heard the gentle hum of bees.
A slow smile tickled the corners of Kelene’s mouth. A spell came to mind, a simple, ordinary, everyday spell from Lady Jeneve’s book: a spell to attract bees to a new hive. She breathed the words to herself and worked the magic into a gentle spell; then she shifted just enough to let her fingers touch the edge of Zukhara’s ceremonial robes.
The magic worked faster than she thought it would. The Tobba had just finished his first set of prayers and was laying a strip of linen over their joined wrists when a bee whizzed into the room and settled on the Gryphon’s cheek. He brushed it away only to have ten more suddenly buzz about his head. All at once the room was filled with honey bees whirling in a cloud around Zukhara.
The Tobba fell back in a panic. The usurper yelled, waving frantically with his free hand at the determined insects. His flailing arm angered them, and they flew at him aggressively. He pulled his hand off Kelene to slap at several bees crawling down his neck, and she hoisted her long skirts and bolted into the garden.
Zukhara’s furious shout rang out behind her, but he was too occupied with the bees to give immediate chase. She raced down the grassy paths between the raised beds of roses until she was completely out of sight of the chamber before she slowed a little to take stock of her position. She had entered not just one garden but an entire complex of landscaped gardens of every variety, lovingly tended by the monks of the monastery. The rose garden was but a small part of a natural labyrinth that covered a large area of the temple grounds. The temple itself was not far away.
18
At the top of the road leading up to the citadel, Marron and Nara came to a stop in front of the closed gates. Helmar grunted her exasperation and slid off her mare. Two heavy wooden gates barred with iron hung from high stone pillars attached to very solid walls. There was no way around the gates or over them. Helmar stalked to the middle and yanked on them. The gates didn’t budge.