In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“You clumsy fools!” swore Lady Eudokia, her voice cracking with anger as one of her eunuchs lost his grip on the chest and it spilled to the ground.

The fog swept in. Between one breath and the next they drowned. Not in water, but in a veil of concealment so thick that she could no longer see the general or the exalted lady. Even the head of Bysantius’ horse swam in and out of view. A tinkling of bells teased her ears, then faded.

Once, years ago, in the custody of Bulkezu, she had seen an opening and bolted, but he had caught her, of course. Of course. Yet why be ruled by fear, as were those bawling and shouting around her?

She saw her chance.

She pushed back over the mare’s rump, slid down, and landed as Bysantius called out sharply.

“The prisoner! The Eagle!”

She dared not run for the sea, not knowing what had destroyed the city and what might still lurk under the waves or on the far shore. She ran south instead, knocked into soldiers before she saw them, shook loose and kept going before they realized what hit them. She tripped once, three times, ten, but her bruised shins and aching elbows goaded her on. This time she would escape. This time it would be different even if she died in the wilderness or was hacked to death by angry Arethousan farmers.

That thought gave her pause enough to come panting to a halt, adrift in the fog with a sparse grove of trees around her, gnarled and low like the ubiquitous olives. She heard the clamor of the army behind her, surging as would the ocean in a storm as waves strike higher rocks and disintegrate into spray.

“Form ranks! Form ranks!” cried Sergeant Bysantius, his voice ringing out of the fog. Yet she sensed no body near to hers. That he sounded close was a trick of the weather.

Maybe it wasn’t so wise to wander alone, chained, and foreign in a land so notoriously unforgiving to strangers. Beware Arethousans, so went the saying. They were treacherous and deceiving, liars and heretics. But they had fed her, and the sergeant and her guards had kept her safe from those who would have been happy to assault her. She stumbled forward until she lurched into a tree, and sagged there with leaves and twigs tracing the contours of her back as she tried to catch her breath. The damp air chilled her lungs. She heard a nagging chimelike sound, as though her ears were ringing. As though her mind and heart were overwhelmed and dazzled. The choice seemed impossible: give up her freedom and live, or run and die.

“Hanna!”

The voice startled her into action. Despite knowing it was the wiser course, she could not sit quietly and be recaptured. Not again. She bolted, and slammed right into a body, oversetting him.

“Ah! Ow! I pray you, don’t run, Hanna. Come with me.”

That the words were Wendish was all that stopped her from scrambling away into the fog.

“Quickly.” He grasped her arm with surprising strength. She could barely see his face, yet sound carried well in the fog by some trick of the wind. A horn belled. Men shouted, and she heard Bysantius’ voice raised above the rest.

“… the Eagle. I’ll cut off your cocks myself if she escapes….”

“Come,” said her rescuer. “We must hurry. This way.”

“Brother Breschius? How can it be?”

“Run now, answers later. Quiet. Easier for them to hear us than see us.”

He slipped his hand down her arm until he held her wrist, then set off briskly into the forest with her stumbling behind. She had so many questions she thought she might burst, but the speed of their retreat and the single-minded intensity of his silence as he wove his way through the fog-shrouded trees without ever smacking into one kept her silent. Behind, she heard shouting and curses, the thrash of men cutting through underbrush. A hazy flicker of light marked torches.

“They’re following us!”

“Hush. Do not fear. Listen to what is in your heart. If you do, you’ll see the way as well as I do.”

What was in her heart right now was a yammering like that of dogs racing after a terrified rabbit. Yet beneath the fear she listened for the sound of her feet slapping the ground, echoed by Breschius’ surer tread and the constant singing of delicate bells. She listened for the susurration of leaves as the wind blew the mist in from the distant shore. A man’s shout rose out of the background whispers, but faded as the frater took a sudden right-hand shift in direction. She had lost track of where they were going, knew only that they still jogged through the sparse forest she had observed from the road as they had walked this day. It was prickly; every shrub and tree stabbed at her. Thorns scraped her face, but they were softened by the weight of the fog, whose passage was silent. Fog could not be heard, only seen and tasted and smelled. Its clammy touch made her hands and face grow stiff with cold. Her tongue tasted the brine of the waters. Ghostly faces loomed out of the fog but were swept away before they touched her. She fell into them. She saw with their eyes what they had seen:

The sea rises without warning and inundates the coastlands and the shining city and its impregnable walls. A wall of water rages through the strait, pouring through to reach the Heretic’s Sea beyond, but in the city that wave washes all the way into the hills before dissipating and spilling back into the strait. As suddenly as the sea swelled, it now empties until long stretches of shoreline are left bare to the sky, revealing mud-slicked rocks and here and there the remains of boats and ships foundered close to land. Indeed, a brave man—or a foolhardy one—cries out that he can walk across to the far shore, and he sets out with walking staff and a bundle of cheese and bread slung over his shoulder. Of those who have not already drowned, and they are many because the first wave is not the deepest, some grab up what possessions and children they can easily lay hands on and hasten for the hills, but others forage through the flooded streets and down to the glistening shoreline, seeking treasure.

All those who had not fled drowned when the second wave came, and then the third. Only afterward did the disturbance subside.

All along the coastal plain, remnants of this flood tide pooled within the fallen ruins of the city and in hollows and declivities in the land. No sun dried them out, and the earth was so saturated by water that it could not drink all that had swamped it. It was from these waters that the fog was called. Its essence could almost be tasted. What had been left behind could be bound to the will of one trained in weather magic and condensed by means of the sorcery she had learned from her teacher into a fog that would bewilder her enemy, the ones who held her luck hostage. This tempestari had sent her slave into the heart of the camp and bound him with spells so no one would discover him. Now he followed the torch of her power back to the place where she and her companions waited.

On all sides the fog concealed the land, but where Breschius walked, he walked as on a skein of silk teased out of the fog, a silvery path that led around every obstacle and wove around the contours of the landscape in a labyrinth that would confuse their pursuers. Hanna saw it now as clearly as he did. She no longer stumbled. He let go of her wrist, and together they settled into a swift walk which tired them less than running but still moved them swiftly away from the army.

o;Hanna!”

The voice startled her into action. Despite knowing it was the wiser course, she could not sit quietly and be recaptured. Not again. She bolted, and slammed right into a body, oversetting him.

“Ah! Ow! I pray you, don’t run, Hanna. Come with me.”