“Goddess!” he gasped, looking around for the deity’s unseen presence. “What…where…?”
“Go to her!” the Goddess repeated, and then she was gone.
Galvanized into action at last, Roke rushed from the room and ran through the palace as fast as he could. He knew without asking where his little priestess was—she would be down at the stables, saying her last goodbyes to Demon.
Has he attacked her? Roke thought, his heart in his mouth. He had always felt uneasy about Ellilah getting so close to the monstrous, vicious beast. Had he turned on her and flamed her as he had his favorite groom the first time they saw him? Would Roke see her shrieking and wreathed in flames when he finally got to the stables?
Fear spurred him on as he rushed through the courtyards, heading for the stables. Would he get there in time? He knew now that the uneasy feeling he’d had must have been sent by the Goddess. And yet, like a fool, he had ignored it. Would he be too late to save Ellilah?
As he burst out into the open space before the stables, his heart leapt into his throat. There was, indeed, a figure screaming and burning right out in front of the stables. Like a human torch it shrieked and writhed as it staggered to and fro, drunk on pain and fear.
“Ellilah! No!” Roke roared.
Putting on another burst of speed, he reached the flaming figure and grabbed it around the middle. Heedless of the flames licking at his own arms, he heaved it into the water trough, extinguishing the fire with a great hiss of steam and smoke.
“Roke! Roke, in here!” a voice called from behind him.
Spinning around, Roke squinted to see who was shouting from the dimness of the stables.
“Roke, it’s me—I’m here.” Ellilah came out from behind the pawing, snorting Demon, who was guarding her protectively. “It’s all right, Demon,” she told him, stroking his neck. “It’s just Roke—you know him, right? He won’t hurt me.”
Her words felt like a knife in Roke’s heart, but he tried not to show it.
“If you’re safe in here then who did I just throw in the water trough?” he demanded roughly. “And who hit you?” he asked, seeing the red mark forming on her swelling cheek.
“You ungrateful foreign bastards! You’ll pay for this! You’ll pay!” A high, angry shriek followed by a splashing sound answered his questions.
Turning, Roke saw the Crown Prince himself climbing out of the water trough. His fine clothes were mostly burned away, though it was clear they must have saved him from the worst of the flames. At least, he didn’t look burned…though his skin did have a strange, melted look about it. Also, it had turned from pale, delicate blue to a blotchy, mottled purple.
“Look at me!” The Crown Prince shrieked, holding out his now disfigured arms. “Look what you’ve done to me! You threw me in the poison and now my beauty is ruined—ruined!”
“You were never much to look at in the first place, you frog-faced bastard,” Roke growled. “What happened? You hit Ellilah and Demon flamed you for it?”
“He did more than hit me.” Ellilah’s voice was shaky. “He…he tried to…to…rape me.” She seemed to be struggling to get the words out and when Roke looked at her, he saw that she was hanging onto Demon for dear life, her arms wrapped as far as they could go around the big zorel’s neck.
Demon had one forelimb curled protectively around his little mistress and he was glaring at the screaming Crown Prince with red eyes, as though he might be thinking of flaming him again.
“I’ll have the lot of you executed!” the Tenebrian monarch was shouting, his voice a high-pitched, angry whine. “And I’ll have that big brute drawn and quartered while he’s still alive! Oh, my beautiful skin! My perfect complexion! Ruined! Guards—guards!”
Roke looked around reflexively and saw that the distressed monarch’s wailing was having some effect. The grooms who usually worked in the stables were coming back and one or two royal guards were beginning to come from the palace.
“Quick!” He turned to Ellilah. “We have to get out of here!”
“But I never got a piece of the Lattice!” she protested. “And I won’t leave Demon for him to kill,” she added, glaring at the Crown Prince, who was looking worse every moment. Most of his luxuriant hair had been burned away, Roke saw, and his newly bald scalp, which was an angry shade of purple, was peeling and melting at the same time.
“We’ll bring Demon with us,” he told Ellilah. “There’s room for him in my cargo hold. But we have to go now! If the guards catch us, we’ll never leave the palace alive.”
“Kill you! I’ll kill you all!” the Crown Prince was shrieking, as though to make Roke’s point for him. “Guards, guards—execute them at once!”