The Silver Sparrow

Premonition

The dark, narrow corridor echoed the sound of tortured ghosts and men as they walked down toward the main hall. Cut deep into the Djamahari mountain that had taken them three days of being led blindly in the maze of its canyons to get to, the lair of the Rishi resembled much of the Black Tower itself, only here it was deep and low with passages to underground chambers where prisoners and future slaves were kept. The evidence of it was rising up periodically from the dark staircases they passed; the smell of blood, of human waste, of something rotten or about to decay, intensified and underlined by the barely audible sounds of someone weeping and the clanging of chains. All there, in that small, dark corridor.

Lasura held his breath as he walked by, willing himself not to look deeper into what ever lay at the end of the stairs. Next to him, Deo appeared oblivious to it all. He seemed comfortable, even at ease, as if he'd frequented that corridor a dozen times.

That, or he knew something Lasura didn't.

Given that they both might never come back out of the chamber they were walking toward, and that there were just the two of them now, having been forced to leave the army and all their guards at the entrance three days ride away, Lasura found himself questioning the composure of his mentor. He knew the man, knew how well Deo could keep his concerns and discomfort hidden, but the way he looked that night wasn't about concealing his emotions.

No, this time it wasn't his power of observation at play. This time it was premonition.

He knew because he'd had his shares of them. Not in any way, shape or form, close to the visions one might imagine an oracle might have, no. It was more like a pressure or a weight in the pit of his stomach, an instinct that guided him to head in different directions without a concrete explanation why. It was the invisible tap on the shoulder that made him turn to the mountain where the eagle chicks had been, and the overhead reach toward a ledge on the cliff he hadn't known was there, leading him safely—and directly—to the nest he had yet to locate. There was, as much as he wanted to deny it, a power in his mother's blood that had been passed down to him along with her yellow eyes even if in small amount. And it was due to this, that he'd always suspected Deo of a similar gift he might have been keeping hidden. There were times, when his mentor's awareness of things had had no explanations. Too many times, in fact.

It was also due to this, that Lasura was certain—the same way he'd been certain about the birds—that he was walking down the exact corridor he was supposed to walk that was leading him to the exact chamber he was supposed to be in. He might even say, being acutely aware of the quickening of his pulse and the vomit inducing pressure in his stomach, that all the events that had happened in his life until now had been leading to this very moment, to what was there waiting for him behind the pair of those gigantic, weird looking metal doors.

The screeching of steel went through him like a blunt, serrated knife inserted between the ribs as two men pushed the doors open. Through the opening, a spacious, two-story high chamber greeted them with its rose-red polished walls and floors. Like the rooms in the Black Tower, the main hall had been cut out of the mountain, only back home the rocks were all black. In the Djamahari, the mountain range was made up of large varieties of rocks and stones, ranging from the jet-black obsidian, the intricately veined white, red, and green marbles, to the most brilliant turquoise in the peninsula.

This room, in particular, the marble swirled with layers of red, copper, purple, and what appeared to be fifty other shades in between, accented and made more stunning by the occasional streaks of white as elegant as a lady's fingers. Along the walls, several dozens of burning torches illuminated the chamber, each taking turns to light up their parts of the stage with flames that danced to the breeze coming down from—