The Last Warrior Read online

  “HAVE YOU HAD CONTACT with your brother, Aza? Tell me!” Xim pressed his fists to his throbbing temples, trying not to rant, but he was so angry he could self-combust. He’d sent out the assassins and they’d turned up dead. Only Uhr-Tao had the expertise to fend them off. Rumors flying all over the capital spoke of a new hero, a Kurel warrior. One who looked and sounded suspiciously like Uhr-Tao.

  Tao shook his fist at Aza. “Have you? Tell me!” His shout echoed off the walls of the luxurious bedchamber.

  Only Aza’s pale face and rapid breaths hinted at her upset. She otherwise stood silent, her hands folded over her distended belly, their unborn child.

  “You, of all people, making me look a fool,” he said.

  “Tao and I have not spoken since the night of the banquet. I miss him so.” Her eyes filled with tears. He hated when she cried. It made him feel even more a failure. “I have not spoken with him, Xim. It’s the truth.”

  “I don’t believe you!” He swept a row of priceless perfume bottles off her vanity.

  She startled at the smashing glass. “Stop it!” She grimaced, clutching her belly. “You’re scaring the children.”

  He became aware of the muffled wails of the children, locked in the nursery next door. Aza was so petite, her chest heaving, but with her fierce maternal protectiveness, she suddenly loomed bigger and stronger than he was.

  Protecting her children from their own father.

  “You and Tao are too close,” Xim argued. “He wouldn’t have gone away without leaving word as to his welfare.”

  She reacted to that, the tiniest of twitches of the corners of her lips.

  “I knew it. You’re lying. My own wife.” He closed the few feet separating them, almost slipping on the spilled perfume, his hands raised like claws to squeeze the truth from her traitorous lips once and for all.

  His own shadow stopped him. He saw it loom over her fragile frame. She hadn’t flinched, but waited with her head turned to the side, as if she didn’t want to watch him kill her.

  He couldn’t. He’d never. Didn’t she know that?

  Or, could he? The curve of her throat was vulnerability incarnate—slender and white, the pulse visible. Beautiful. He wanted to touch her there, caress her… Yet, sometimes the darkness inside him welled up so powerfully it blotted out all reason. He’d been angry for as long as he could remember. So much injustice, so much unfairness. His father’s doubts. Now this, betrayed again by those he loved the most.

  He pulled his hands away from her. His entire body shook. He’d let Gorr loose on the city, and all four had been killed—by Kurel, no less—two on each side of the ghetto gates. Hundreds of Tassagons had seen the body of the slaughtered guard, and those of the Gorr, too, before Beck’s men had removed the stinking corpses and disposed of them. Everyone was terrified.

  They were looking to their king for guidance.

  For leadership. As they’d once looked to his father.

  He grabbed anguished fistfuls of his hair to keep from screaming in frustration. No one must know he was behind the Gorr attacks. His actions, his weakness, sickened him. But he’d been afraid, and he’d trusted Beck. “What to do now?” he cried out. “What to do, Aza?”

  He choked on a sob. He’d failed her as he’d failed his father, Orion. “How did it all go so wrong, Aza? I didn’t mean for him to die. It just…happened.” He was shaking so hard; he couldn’t help it.

  As if in pain, she was standing slightly hunched over. “What happened? Xim, tell me.” The smell of the spilled perfume was thick in the air. Distantly, his children were crying, calling for their mother. For his Aza.

  He sensed he’d reached the end of his rope with her. She was the last one in the world who loved him. No one else did. If he didn’t have her, he’d have nobody. Filled with remorse, he knew there was no choice but to come clean. To have a second chance and redeem himself.

  He crouched down at her feet, his shoes crunching on glass. “I want to start over, Aza.” He glanced up, trembling. “Do you think we can?”

  He was afraid—afraid to tell her.

  Afraid not to.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She stood there, waiting. So patient. So beautiful. Her eyes so kind, even looking at him now, a wreck of a man. A man willing to start anew.

  “I never told you what happened the morning Orion died. We argued, and he had an attack. He sent me to summon help. But I was so angry, Aza. You don’t know. In that moment I hated him.”

  She grew even paler, her eyes almost sunken in her fragile face, her mouth tight with pain—from what he was telling her, or from the child growing in her womb? “I know you hated him, Xim. But Orion loved you—”

  “Not like he should have! You know it as well as I do.” He clenched his fists. “I didn’t go for help, Aza. I didn’t.” A wrenching sob welled up. “I stood there and watched him die, and, Aza, it was the first time in my entire life I felt as if I had any power, any control over my destiny.” He let his face fall into his hands and wept. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  After a while, he realized he heard nothing. Fearfully, he lifted his head. He took in the sight of her gemlike eyes, the piles of glossy brown hair, a face shaped like a heart. Slender limbs. Rounded with child, his child. My wife. He’d never really, truly appreciated that fact until that moment. He’d never realized just what Uhrth had granted him, all his blessings. His family.

  He reached for her with a trembling hand. “You’re so beautiful, Aza.” But those ever-forgiving green eyes were in retreat, horrified. Worst of all, disappointed. Like father was disappointed with me.

  Panic exploded inside him and he shot to his feet. “No. Don’t, Aza. Don’t stop loving me, Aza. Please.” His voice cracked. “I don’t know what I’d do. I couldn’t bear it.”

  Tears falling slowly down her cheeks, she shook her head and opened her arms. He walked into them. Stroking his back, she comforted him like a child as he wept.

  “Love me Aza. Love me. Everything will be better, you’ll see. You’ll see. I won’t keep you and the children under lock and key for long. I promise. Just until I get everything sorted out. You understand why, yes?”

  “Yes. I understand, Xim.”

  “You always did understand me. You’re the only one.”

  Determined to prove his competence as king—to her and to his subjects—he fled the chamber, ordering the guard to lock the doors behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE ELDERS VIEWED THE two Gorr corpses that had been killed in the ghetto. The musky odor had faded some, but it was still pungent enough to wrinkle the noses of the uninitiated.

  Farouk was solemn. “So they are what severed our ties with our mother world. Stranding us here. Leaving us all on the edge of extinction forevermore.”

  “We came back from the edge,” Tao argued. “We survived.” By Uhrth, if anyone knew it, he did. He’d dedicated his heart and soul to preventing the destruction of their race.

  “Alive but alone.” The elder’s voice was tremulous, from emotion or age Tao couldn’t tell. “We told them not to come after us, you see,” the elder continued. “Not to attempt a rescue. We lied, making it seem as if there were no survivors, sending a final message that this world was destroyed.” Farouk’s eyes were hooded, veiling a mysterious, meaningful glint. “So it is written.”

  “Always written,” Tao complained. “I want to see where.”

  “The Log is not here, young Tassagon. It is protected in the Barrier Peaks. It recounts our origins, and tells of the days of the Old Colony, the decision to cut ourselves off from our home. We did not want these Gorr finding the human birth world, and doing to it what they had done here.”

  “I never heard this,” Elsabeth almost whispered. “We were not lost? We were not abandoned?”

  “It has been kept secret to all but the elders,” Farouk said, nodding. “Perhaps we were mistaken in doing so.” His lips thinned. “Now that we’ve seen a real Gorr, I kno
w so. The consequences of inaction and of leaving Xim in power are clear. The Kurel are fully committed to working with your rebellion.”

  “Our rebellion,” Elsabeth corrected her elder firmly but with respect. “All the human tribes are at great risk if this king continues on his path of destruction.”

  “Yes, yes. If humans turn on each other, darkness will consume us and we will be lost to Uhrth forever. So says the final verse of the Log of Uhrth,” Farouk said crisply.

  Elsabeth remembered what the elder had said about lying to Uhrth about the Old Colony’s fate, and the significance of the darkness passage hit her for the first time. “‘Lost to Uhrth forever.’ That means no chance of our mother-world learning what happened to us. Because we’ll all be gone. Extinct.”

  She felt Tao’s intense, suddenly curious gaze on her. Farouk nodded. “That is correct.”

  “I always believed the purpose of the Log of Uhrth was for us to learn about our origins, but it’s not really that, is it, Elder Farouk?”

  The old man’s gaze observed her with the patience born of being alive for more than a century. She forged ahead. “It’s to teach us how to survive. No—more than that. It’s to teach us how to be victorious, so we can ultimately reunite with our human family, our ancestors. And go home.”

  All the elders gaped at her. The silence stretched out, and began to cramp her stomach with worry. Had she insulted them, or the holy Log? Then, finally, Gwendolyn turned to Marina and said smugly, “Of my blood, that girl is. Do not ever dismiss her as a halfie again.”

  “So, I’m right.”

  Farouk’s nearly invisible lips receded, baring his teeth. It was a rare smile. “Yes, Elsabeth. You are right.”

  Her heart leaped. She thought of her dream of sailing the stars in an ark. “If the Log teaches us that we must defeat the Gorr so we can safely reestablish contact with Uhrth, then why is it all such a secret?”

  “Because of ignorance. Because of fear. And because this cursed war is not yet over.” He turned to Tao. “Show us what we need to do to ensure peace between our human tribes.” Then he tapped the floor with his cane as if impatient to begin.

  “YOU’RE A GOOD, BRAVE warrior.” Elsabeth brought Prometheus to her lips, pressing a light kiss to his feathered, warm body as she prepared to send the pigeon out with news of what had transpired that day.

  “I’m jealous,” Tao said.

  “I’d do the same for you if you were headed out on a dangerous mission.”

  “In that case, I’d want more than a kiss.”

  The promise in his voice made her grow warm with anticipation. Despite the danger and the sometimes choking fright, she knew that at the end of the day his kisses, his caresses, his body, would be hers. She came up on her toes and whispered in Tao’s ear, “Believe me, you’d get more than a kiss.”

  His husky chuckle told her he was pleased with that promise. She carried Prometheus to the hatch on the side of the aviary where he’d been trained to fly to the Barrier Peaks. There, she set him down and waited. It was important that the pigeon take off on its own accord.

  It would seem logical that a bird would want to stay close to the safety and security of home, but with much cooing and strutting, Prometheus made it clear he was anxious to be off.

  “Warn the Kurel who live in the mountains,” she said. “Tell them what has happened.”

  The pigeon cocked its head to look at her with its black bead of an eye. Then it hopped onto the perch and, with a loud drumming of wings, took off on its long flight.

  “GUARD! GUARD!” The warning cries stopped the departing Kurel militia cold. A horseman had galloped through the ghetto gates and was making his way through the warren of homes.

  Dressed in blue and white, the helmeted guard demanded, “Uhr-Tao! Where is the general? Show him to me.”

  When not a single Kurel cooperated, the rider pulled to a halt and jumped to the ground, then tugged off his helmet, his demeanor infinitely less arrogant. “Tell him it’s Markam. His friend.”

  MARKAM TROMPED INSIDE Elsabeth’s house. The sight of the broken furniture, the shattered picture frame sitting on the floor propped against the wall, the bloodstains that would need to be scrubbed clean seemed to barely register with him. His sharp features were made even more so with his facial muscles hard with tension. His lanky frame was as tight as the string on Tao’s bow. “Aza is in danger.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ELSABETH SERVED THE MEN tea as Markam briefed Tao.

  “We’re going to get her out.” Tao’s simple, firm statement set the tone of what was to come. Xim had imprisoned the queen and the children in her chambers. Given Xim’s erratic behavior, there was every reason to believe Aza’s life was in jeopardy.

  “Xim never stopped believing the priest’s reading of the bones. Even after we searched high and low for you, Tao, he wouldn’t give it up. Beck got him alone, and talked him into sending a Gorr out to find you. There were four of them locked up in the old wing.”

  “You had Furs at the palace?” Tao bellowed.

  “It was news to me, too.” Markam was seething. “Beck’s plan was to release only the alpha as an assassin, and he did. Then Xim had second thoughts about keeping any Gorr around, and wanted all of them gone.”

  “The alpha followed my scent here,” Tao said tersely. “Then the lessers followed his. It all makes sense now. They made a pact with our Tassagon king.” His bitterness and disbelief was evident in every word.

  “I had no way of getting here in time to warn you.” His dark, troubled eyes scanned the mess in the living room. “Xim’s grown wary of me. Perhaps he suspects my actions even now. He may know I’ve been protecting you, that I’m plotting Aza’s rescue.”

  Elsabeth shivered with a sudden chill, picturing Tao captured and killed, the ghetto burned as punishment for the Kurel role in Tao’s escape. There was a time she might have called all that a necessary risk in order to rid Tassagonia of its cruel ruler. Her vow of vengeance had been the only thing important to her. But ousting Xim wasn’t her sole priority anymore. Preventing Tao’s capture had become just as important to her heart.

  Perhaps even more so.

  Somehow she sensed her parents would have approved.

  She moved next to Tao, and he stroked a reassuring hand down her back. Markam’s sharp gaze didn’t miss the interaction. He can see how it is with us. A flicker of warmth in those reserved eyes. He approves. He was gradually calming, becoming more the Markam she knew. “Xim has no intention of admitting he released the Gorr on his subjects.”

  “To do so would be suicidal,” Tao said. “The Tassagons would turn on him in panic.”

  “Luckily, the Gorr deaths will take attention off finding you and put it on protecting the capital and the palace. We need the king to be focused on reassuring his terrified subjects—and not on what we’re orchestrating.”

  Getting Aza and her two young children out from under Xim’s paranoid nose. Butterflies took flight in Elsabeth’s stomach. With his identities as a rebel and the king’s confidante in danger of colliding, Markam’s existence had become truly precarious.

  They hunched around the table and their cooling cups of tea, hashing out the details of how Aza’s rescue would be accomplished. The best way into the palace was the same as the best way out—through the spill-ways and the dungeon.

  “Xim didn’t order the loading dock grates sealed?” she asked.

  “I took charge of seeing that the repairs were done,” Markam said with faint, dry humor.

  With the palace guards essentially neutralized under Markam’s command, the one complication was Beck. “We’ll need a diversion,” Tao suggested.

  “I’ll make sure he’s distracted,” Markam said.

  Tao downed his tea, looking to Elsabeth as if he longed for something stronger. She went to fetch the spirits that the Riders had given them, pouring a finger’s width in each of the men’s cups and a little less in hers. Markam sniffed at the liqu
id and broke into a tired smile. “Have the Kurel been trading with our friends from the Plains?”

  “No. But Tao and I crossed paths with some. The night you searched the ghetto, we slept out in the countryside.”

  “Pax and two Riders from the Blue Hills band were sizing up our herds.” Tao’s hint of a smile hardened. “I warned him about Xim. And none too soon.” He emptied his cup, tapping a finger against the rim. “Markam, before we part and commence our plans, I have to know something. I wasn’t particularly fond of Elsabeth’s people until I came to live amongst them, and know them. But how did you come to be such a great champion and protector of the Kurel?”

  Elsabeth leaned forward in eagerness. “I often wondered the same thing myself.”

  Markam’s jaw compressed. “I supposed it’s time you knew. Both of you.” With a glance around for listening ears, a habit engrained after years living where it often seemed even the walls could hear, he confided, “The crown prince became sick with fever as an infant. Maxim was only a few months old, and he weakened quickly. The palace healers tried but could do nothing for him. Aza could see her babe was dying. She was desperate. Xim said if it was Uhrth’s will, his son would live. That wasn’t good enough for the queen. Without Xim’s knowledge, I accompanied her to see a Kurel healer. He treated Prince Max, and cured him.” Markam glanced over to Elsabeth, his eyes crinkling with warmth, and something more: gratitude. “That was your father.”

  “Mercy,” she whispered.

  “It changed everything. After that I was motivated to learn to read. The palace accountant, Navi’s predecessor, taught me.”

  “Mikhail?” Elsabeth asked with a smile. The jovial accountant was retired now.

  “Indeed. Because of that visit to your father, I discovered books, and the whole world opened up. And,” his voice gentled, “Aza and I…” He cleared his throat then sat up straighter. “We fell in love. We’ve never acknowledged it, never spoken of it—not once. I respect her marriage, and so does she. I am a rebel, yes, but those aims can be—and will be—accomplished without murder. I could not live with myself with Xim’s blood on my hands.”