Sanctuary

The officer cut the air with his hand. Plates jangling, his soldiers ran at the elves. They trampled the already broken stalls, drawing protesting wails from the soukats and their kin.

“How many are there, do you reckon?” Hytanthas asked.

“Forty, fifty.”

“No shame running from odds like that.”

“None at all,” Planchet said and dropped his borrowed halberd.

The two belted back the way they’d come, the shortest route to Khurinost. It would have been easy enough for two elves to outdistance a pack of burdened humans, but when Planchet and Hytanthas reached the street above the city gate they found that the portal was no longer abandoned. Worse, the iron portcullises were down, and the timber gates shut and barred.

The sounds of martial pursuit were growing closer. There was no time to bluff their way past the guards. Planchet, who knew Khuri-Khan best because of his frequent trips to buy supplies for the Speaker’s household, led Hytanthas away from the gate to Har-Kufti Street, the paved lane that encircled the city just inside the wall.

“Where are we going?” asked Hytanthas.

Planchet panted, “Temple Walk. We might find sanctuary in the Temple of Elir-Sana!”

The captain had no better idea, so they turned off Har-Kufti onto a narrow lane that led to the center of the city.

They might have evaded the soldiers, laboring under the twin handicaps of desert heat and bulky armor, but street urchins and doorway idlers obligingly shouted directions to the troops. Hytanthas cursed them in broken but effective Khurish.

The street suddenly ended on a square lined with ruined houses, destruction wrought by Malystryx and still not repaired. it wasn’t the holy sanctuary, but at least it offered possibilities for concealment. Hytanthas tore the boards off an open doorway, and they squeezed inside. Flattened against the wall, they tried to calm their labored breathing. The ruined house bore no roof. All the palm wood beams had fallen in, and half the upper floor’s tiles and bricks had tumbled to ground level. The place stank of fire and the peculiarly rank odor of the Red Marauder’s breath.

The Khurish troops entered the square at a walking pace. They must have known the street was a dead end, and their quarry was trapped. Quietly, they fanned out, checking every ruin. It was only a matter of time before they reached the one in which Planchet and Hytanthas were hiding.

The Speaker’s valet searched the rubble and drew out a reasonably stout length of timber, a crude weapon to supplement the sword he wore. When he straightened, he realized he was alone. Hytanthas was gone. A tap on his shoulder caused him to look up. Hytanthas was climbing the pyramid of charred rafters toward the nonexistent roof. He gestured urgently for Planchet to follow him; the searching soldiers were only yards away.

There was no way of knowing how much the beams had been weakened by fire. But they had no other options. Frowning mightily, feeling much too old for this sport, Planchet began to climb.

He was little more than six feet off the floor when a Khurish soldier shoved his head in the empty window opening below.

“Excellency!” he yelled. “Some of the boards are off the door here, but I don’t see anyone!”

From a distance came the reply: “Look twice, fool! Our orders are to bring any laddad before the Khan! I have no desire to explain your failure in that duty!”

The Khur poked his head in again, looking left and right and cursing his commander with whispered eloquence. The two elves hardly dared breathe, so close was he. At last, he withdrew.

“No, Excellency. No one here!”

Planchet’s legs shook with the release of tension. His foot had been a scant six inches above the soldier’s helmet spike.

The valet hauled himself up beside Hytanthas, at the top of the crumbling wall. A forest of rooftops and brass flues greeted their eyes, spreading uphill to the center of the city. The Khuri yl Nor was clearly visible to their right, the palace rising beyond the heights of Temple Walk. Gleaming in the morning sun like a pale blue beacon was the dome of the Temple of Elir-Sana.

“Do you see it?” Hytanthas demanded. “We can reach the temple over the rooftops!”

Planchet grunted. To him it looked like a very long way to go, the terrain more than a little uncertain. Still, as with the climb itself, they had no choice.

The jump to the intact roof of the house next door was easy enough. Two more jumps, and they were out of the ruined district. Hytanthas would’ve discarded his thick black wig then, but Planchet cautioned against it. The captain’s human guise might come in handy.

Wherever possible, they kept to the roof edges, creeping alongside the low parapets that rose up from the brick outer walls. Khurish roofs were made of palm fronds, plastered with mud, and wouldn’t taken much weight. Although lighter than humans, the elves didn’t want to risk breaking through.