This Red Sky

Chapter Thirteen

The summer solstice came five months after they arrived in Palasotarr, and it felt like a foreign custom to Sonia, not the familiar holiday she'd helped Elna organize ever since she could walk. Colourful banners hung from the windows of the city's homes and the streets exploded with travellers coming for the midday festival. A fire was built in the courtyard outside the temple of Gamorax, and dances were performed by veiled women in swirling yellow robes. The blood of sacrificial animals trickled through the streets and down the bricks of the ancient buildings, the people reaching out to wet their fingers for good luck. Nakt followed Sonia up to a high enough roof to see out over the walls. Fire lit up the camp outside, and the sound of drums faded over the waving planes. Sonia could not tell if Elna or Frida led the procession of the people of Blackhost, or if they celebrated at all. She sat with Nakt near the peak of a stone roof, the blazing sun above them, and lit a fire in a jar using crumpled parchment as kindling.

Six months after Nakt and Sonia passed through the tall gates, the days were still long, the sun rising massive beyond the crimson mountains and filling the sky with its fire. Sometimes the reptilian silhouette of a dragon would soar over the horizon. Sonia climbed to the battlements to watch, skirts fluttering in the hot, dusty breeze. The dragon was always too far away to tell if it was Syralth.

The sun reflected with an almost blinding light off the limestone of Lady Sin's temple, and the wooden stairs, platforms and ramshackle buildings of Palasotarr's slums that surrounded it reeked in the heat. Sewage and butchered animals festered in the open, and fights broke out on the steps of the desecrated temple. Rats and cockroaches scurried over the broken cobblestones.

The Order of Knights would occasionally raid this part of town to clear the opium and its red smoke from the old stone building, only to have the sellers and addicts slink back once the coast was clear.

But on one particularly hot day, the hulking figures that moved through the narrow streets and alleys were clad in leather and iron armour, not steel, and their hair was long and matted under their cloaks, their weapons heavy and crude. People shrank inside as they passed, nervous brown eyes watching from windows and the cracks of doors.

The men reached the half-hidden hole in the city's wall, and one by one hoisted themselves through, disappearing into the abandoned garrison.

+++

Blood splattered the wall. Karl staggered backwards, a hand to his throat, red running out over his fingers.

He lunged forward, swinging an iron sword near the head of the nearest man, who blocked it easily with the handle of his axe. The next blow connected with the skull of the one-eyed thief, and he thudded to the ground.

Three cultists surrounded the lovers who had leapt out of their hammock at the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. Beirand rushed ahead, a quarterstaff spinning in his hands, and the rune-carved wood cracked across the skull of a cultist, throwing him off balance. But the stick was no match for the ram's-skull club another wielded, and it snapped in half in his hands.

Tessa whirled and struck, a thin sword gripped in each hand. She backed up one of the cultists, who crouched behind his shield, deflecting each strike. The female thief's boot slipped on the red puddle on the floor, and her eyes landed on Karl's motionless body, her heart stopping.

Gritting her teeth, Tessa spun around again, past Beirand, who stabbed wildly with one broken half of his staff, and drove one sword into the side of a cultist, pulling it out immediately. He fell to his knees. As Tessa dodged his fellows Beirand's knee collided with his face, knocking him to the ground and wrenching away his broadsword.

The three remaining cultists turned, snarling, to keep both young thieves in sight at once. Tessa ducked under the falling club, her weapons glancing off the iron armour of its wielder. The shock ran through her arms, and she staggered backwards just in time to see an armoured fist collide with Beirand's cheek, and then the blood-slick axe with a sickening crunch.

Tessa screamed, lunging desperately at the cultist with the axe, but he stepped to the side, its heavy wooden handle colliding with her stomach, knocking her breath away. Another cultist came from behind, trapping her arms at her sides, and the two swords were wrest away.

Gasping for breath, Tessa kicked and thrashed wildly in the cultist's arms to no avail. He turned her around, where a red-cloaked figure had appeared in the opening of the tunnel, leaning against the stone wall.

"You fought bravely, for thieves," the figure said in a female voice, straightening up and stepping into the lamplight. She addressed the burly cultists left standing. "She is not the one I seek. But wait."

Her heart pounding, Tessa's eyes followed the red-cloaked figure as she stepped over the blood puddle to one of the sheepskin mats with its crumpled blanket. A folded colourful dance costume lay on top, next to a leather-bound book.

"I know this book," she said. Her fingers brushed the violet skirt of the dance costume. She stood, turning back to Tessa and the cultists, holding up the book. "Where did you get this?"

"S-stole it." It hurt to talk.

The woman came closer. Now Tessa could see under her hood, to a pair of narrowed green eyes framed by black hair.

"Sonia Groth?" the strange woman asked.

Tessa said nothing, but the answer was clear in the widening of her eyes. The woman moved suddenly, and a dragon's claw fixed to a hilt flashed in the light. Blood burst forth from the young thief's throat, and Tessa collapsed in the cultist's arms.

"Sonia will be back," Syralth slid the dragon-claw dagger back inside her cloak. She turned to speak to the cultists, raising her voice. "We'll be here when she comes. The Solkern is the last artifact needed to complete the ritual.

Her hand remained inside her cloak. A thumb brushed across the embroidered sash, folded beneath her breastplate.

"Soon all of our efforts will be rewarded."