26. Damon

26

DAMON

O ne night is all Damon can bear to wait. He should take another day, but he knows Lyr is rotting in the dungeons of the Rose Palace.

In the morning Opeth gives him a dose of salix. He wants more sofi but she shakes her head. "No. It will make you slow."

Opeth and Trysta have a small boat. He doesn't ask how they got it. He has other questions. More important questions. They're standing in the ground floor room of the keep, organising supplies. "We need to talk about how we will get inside the Rose Palace. If I am seen in Attar I can be killed on sight."

Opeth says confidently. "I have arranged something with one of my contacts. I have made many useful connections in the Rose Palace during my time there. There will be a door left open for us on Tack Street, where the servants come and go."

Damon shakes his head. "You made your contacts when you were with Atticul. We cannot trust them. I know another way. "

Opeth looks surprised. "You have a secret route into the palace?"

Damon nods. "Someone told me about it. A long time ago."

Opeth looks unsure. Trysta puts a hand on her shoulder. "You mean Lukas? The route Lukas used?" She says it carefully. Always careful with things Damon has told her in confidence. She is so loyal to Damon it makes his throat ache.

Damon nods.

"You left it open?" says Trysta.

"He promised me he would never use it again."

"And you trusted him?"

"Yes," says Damon. "Yes. I did. I still do."

The secret route begins in the caves on the banks of the Gleam, northwest of the city, where the cliffs rise up steeply to the high land the Rose Palace is built upon.

It's evening after two days at sea when they reach Attar and pull the boat up on the stones. Damon knows this place is patrolled, but not regularly. Between the caves and the Rose Palace are a warren of dangerous tunnels, prone to flooding and rock falls. But once he and Lukas explored them with the fearlessness of young boys.

Damon stands on the shore in the dark, huddled in his blanket cloak, and looks up at the lights of the Rose Palace, high on cliffs. He is thrumming, blood high like he is about to go into battle. He wishes he had the Amber Blade. He makes do with a plain dagger Opeth gave him.

He guides them into the caves, their way lit with torches made from wood taken from Sanvicta. Deep at the back, behind jagged rocks, Damon shows them a small passage leading down.

"Down?" says Trysta. "We go further down?"

"For a time," says Damon.

They scramble down through the hole and find themselves in a narrow tunnel that eventually becomes a flight of stone steps, slippery and unused. It's hard going. Damon feels all the new weaknesses in his body. The permanent damage from the lashing making him weak, making the muscles of his back shaky and loose in ways they never were before. His legs are weaker too, from his long recovery.

But he climbs. Determination, he tells himself, will make him stronger, strong enough. He thinks of Lyr, sweet Lyr, but his feelings for Lyr are a jumble. Pure lust, deep love, but mixed in with it now, suspicion, wariness. What will it be like seeing him again? He cannot imagine. His head pounds for the soft darkness of a dose of sofi.

After a long climb, the steps become another passageway. They follow it as it twists and turns, other passageways meet and merge, but Damon remembers the shortest route through the maze.

Perhaps, he wonders, this is the maze. The legendary maze at the heart of the Rose Palace. He hopes there is not truly a beast at the centre that eats the hearts of the unworthy. He would be consumed for certain if there is.

The first problem happens when Damon turns a corner in a passageway so low he has to hunch his shoulders to pass along it and finds the way blocked by rocks from a fall.

He turns to Trysta and Opeth behind him, faces lit orange and eerie by torches. "Are you lost?" says Opeth, who has been asking Damon if he knew the way for some time .

"I'm not lost, but the path is blocked." He looks at the rocks. Not impossible to clear, but even making a small path through would take some time. Time he doesn't want to spare. He scours his brain for an alternative. If they can't get through the Rose Palace, there is another route. But it's risky. Far more risky.

It's a risk they have to take. Damon takes the decision. A combat decision. He has taken many. "We will need to go another way. There is another route, but it will bring us through the Sarelik Temple."

Opeth shakes her head. "The temple? We'll be seen."

"We won't," says Damon. "And if we are, we will fight."

Trysta nods. She would take an order from Damon to leap into fire. Opeth looks warily from one of them to the other, then nods her agreement.

They double back and take a different route. This passage is more well-kept. Which worries Damon a little. They are close to the lower levels of the temple here. He leads the way, dagger in his hand. He is not so sure of himself now. This route is unfamiliar and as the passageway grows wider he feels more and more uneasy.

They reach a point where the passageway ends, joining with another, even wider and well swept. This passage is lit by candles, set into sconces in the wall.

The sight of the candles makes Damon even more uneasy. Who came this way and lit these candles? How recently and for whom? He needs to find another route onwards and fast.

A little way along the candlelit passage, they pass a wide iron gate set into the wall. Locked. Damon looks through it. Through the gates, he can see shelves packed with books and papers.

The library .

The library under the Sarelik Temple.

As he looks he remembers the Hare telling him about it. The writings of Batraeous. Written in secret in Old Magaar. Does the Hare know Ur-Ambolk too? If Damon had shown the Hare Lyr's chest when they were alone in that small room off the Hall of Twelve, would he have read those runes and told Damon what they said. Would Lyr then have had the chance to explain?

And then, almost as if Damon's thoughts had summoned him, there is the Hare. A whisper of grey fabric moving amongst the shelves. Damon draws back, out of sight and gestures to Opeth and Trysta to stay behind him.

The Hare. Would the Hare help them? He's one of the Order of the Enforcer. He works for Gelen the Green. But Damon trusts him with his gut. He protected them, warned them about Atticul. He helped him during the Justice. He's all Damon has.

Damon moves back in front of the gate and calls out, as loudly as he dares, " Hare! " the Hare turns around, expression hidden behind his veil.

Trysta says, "Damon?"

Damon turns to her, "I trust him," he says.

And when he turns back the Hare is on the other side of the iron gates saying, "You can. Trust me, that is. Quickly, Damon Darekul, come this way. It is safe for you in here." He's unlocking the gates with an ornate key.

Damon hangs back, watching the empty passageway as he sends Opeth and Trysta inside first.

The library is even bigger than it looked through the gate. The Hare leads them past dozens of shelves, some heavy with dust, untouched for years. They are deep in the paper maze when the Hare shows them to a spot where a table is set with chairs around it, candles burning on piles of paper .

"Please," says the Hare, "sit down. You are as safe here as you can be anywhere in the Rose Palace."

"We don't have time," says Damon. "We are bound for the dungeons."

"Yes," says the Hare. "For your lover?"

Damon nods. "Does he live? Do you know how he has been treated?" His heart beats harder as he asks, fearing an answer he dreads.

"He lives. He has not been tortured although it has been spoken of, but he is delicate. He wants death, they say. He pines and eats little. The fear is that if the enforcers were allowed to use their sharp methods on him, he would not survive it."

Damon feels himself bristle."If they had, every one of them would meet death on my blade." He pauses to glance at Trysta who is watching him calmly, sitting close to Opeth. Then he looks back to the Hare. "Why are they so keen that he be kept alive? He is sly. He has confessed to sins of the body and he was discovered assisting me in exile. Why has he not been ripped apart in the square?"

The Hare says, "Prince Atticul has boasted that you were found making love to the slave unaware he had your name branded on his chest."

"Yes," says Damon, emotionless, "The runes on his chest are my name in Ur-Ambolk"

"Ur-Ambolk is a rare language even among the people of the Amber Forest. Very few people in Azuria can read Ur-Ambolk. One of those people was Pershel the Moon Truth. She is a scholar of heathen magic. Chancellor Vindar brought her to your slave, before he escaped, to discover what rites Jareleezi had performed with him. She was the one who read the runes on your slave. She demanded he not be sent with you to Sanvicta so she could study him further, but the following morning, she was dead. She had taken snap adder venom after she saw what was written on your slave's body."

Damon lifts an eyebrow. "She took snap adder venom because she read my name on Lyr's chest?"

The Hare shakes his head. "She read those runes. She told Vindar what they said and he reported that to the Rose Court. But that was not what made her take the venom. She took that venom because of what she read on his back."

His back. Damon had forgotten all those tiny symbols. "Is that Ur-Ambolk too?"

"I believe so. That is why they are keeping him alive. To decipher what it says there. Although without Pershel the task proves difficult."

"Are you the one translating it now?" Damon says.

"No," says the Hare. "They have not allowed me to see it. I am not the most trusted person in the Temple of Zai." He smiles as if this is a small point of pride.

"Do you know a way out of the temple? A secret way. We need to get to him."

"I can give you a route to the dungeons. You will have to go through the palace, but I can get you there. Then there are tunnels that lead into the dungeons. The enforcers have a private entrance just beyond Selim's temple. Although you will still have to get past the guards when you get there."

"We have a way into the dungeons," says Opeth. "Razelii has arranged for us to meet one of the dungeon guards. If we can get into the Palace, we can make our connection with her. She will get us inside."

"I see," says the Hare with a nod. "The same route that would have taken you to the dungeons has a staircase that will lead you discreetly to the lower floors of the palace. I will show you the way there. "

Damon nods. "Very well."

The Hare leads them in silence out of the library through another locked iron gate along another passage and down a long flight of steps. "This," he says quietly, "is an old route to the palace, long forgotten." He stops at what seems like a blank piece of stone wall, but when he presses on it, it moves. It's not a wall, it's a door, and behind it, more steps, leading even further down.

They emerge in yet another passageway. This one dank, deep under the palace. It leads to a spiral staircase, old and rusty. Damon glances further down the passage. That way must lead to the dungeons. They climb up a long way and emerge behind a statue of Princess Ferra in a wide, quiet marble hall of the Rose Palace.

"Where is the meeting point with Razelii?" Damon whispers.

"Beyond the north terrace. There is a servants' corridor there with a small storeroom."

Damon nods. "I know it," he says and leads the way.

When they reach the storeroom, Trysta opens the door and gasps. Razelii is inside, bound and gagged. Her face is bruised. Trysta rushes forward, she cuts Razelii free with her sword. At the same moment, Opeth hisses, "No. Fall back. It's a trap."

But too late. Damon spins around at a slight noise at his back and is faced with five armed palace guards.

One of the guards takes a half step forward. His sword is drawn and he points it at Damon's throat. "Damon Darekul. It is death for you to be in Azuria."

What Damon does next feels like falling from a high cliff into darkness. Natural, inevitable and terrifying. The One Man Army wakes and Damon surges forward, the guard's sword means nothing. He's too fast, too strong, too unstoppable. He's inside the reach of the long blade in a heartbeat. He sinks his dagger into the guard's neck.

Another sword, coming from his left side, finds his arm. Just a slash. He grabs the sword from the hand of the dead guard, turns and rises and takes down the man who cut him with a vicious two-handed slash that almost slices the guard clean in half.

This has to be quick. Quiet if possible. No showboating. No tricks. He fights two more guards at once. Delivering fatal blows and taking only shallow cuts from frantic blades.

As he fights, he can sense Trysta behind him, holding his line, covering his weak side. It's too easy. Breath and breathing. His body is weak and protests at moments, but every skill he ever had flows back into him with a simple inevitability.

The guards lie dead in blurring, bloody moments. One from his dagger, three from his borrowed blade and one from Trysta's sword.

Damon turns, panting, to find Opeth crouching next to Razelii, holding a knife to her throat.

Trysta turns her sword to Opeth. "What are you doing?" she says in a low tone, a warning.

"She knew," Opeth says plainly. "She set this up."

"No," Razelii squeaks. "No, they surprised me."

"How did they know we were coming?" Opeth says, low. A threat.

"No. They jumped me. I don't know how they knew," Razelii wails.

Opeth pricks Razelii's throat with the blade. Next to him, Damon hears Trysta growl. This is dangerous. He forces himself to breathe evenly. "Trysta," he says, quietly. "Stay in control."

Trysta flashes a glance at him .

"Sheath your sword, soldier. Right now."

Trysta obeys, with a look at Damon he hasn't seen from her since he bested her on Pluma-Ferris.

"I'm sorry," Razelii says, a fat tear rolls down her cheek.

"The truth," Opeth snaps. "The truth now, or you go the way of your friends."

"They're not my friends. He came back to the pillow house. The bodyman. He wanted Opeth and when he found out she was gone, he realised what he'd done. He took me to Prince Atticul. He made me tell him everything. I didn't want to but he said he'd have you killed." Razelii looks at Trysta with eyes full of tears. She looks at Opeth next. "And you. He said he'd kill you both. I'm sorry."

"Opeth," Trysta says, calmly, calm as Damon ordered her to be. "Take your blade away. She had no choice."

"No choice?" Opeth growls. "That was an empty threat. We were gone. Atticul had no way of hurting us until she turned traitor. She should have kept quiet. She should die for this."

"No," says Trysta. Her hand is on her sword hilt and Damon doesn't have the will to make her stand down again.

"Then what?" says Opeth. "We take her with us and she betrays us the first chance we get? Or we leave her and she runs to warn Atticul and his bodymen?"

"I wouldn't," Razelii says. "I swear. Trysta, please. I love you."

"Put your knife down, Opeth," says Trysta. "Please. It's safe. She's safe."

Opeth obeys with a dark look at Trysta. She moves her knife from Razelii's throat and as she does, Razelii moves. She snatches the knife Opeth holds and barrels forward, sinking the blade into Trysta's shoulder as she races past. Trysta cries out in pain and rage, stumbling back. Damon catches her in his arms.

"Fuck," Trysta groans, pulling the dagger from her shoulder. Damon claps a hand over the wound.

"I'll get her," Opeth says.

But Damon grabs her wrist. "No. I need you." He looks her in the eyes. Her eyes are dark grey, mesmerising. "Lyr needs you."

Damon lifts his hand and checks Trysta's wound. It doesn't look bad. Not as deep as it could have been. He looks at Trysta. "You go. Find her."

Trysta nods. "Sire."

Opeth looks warily at Damon, but he says, "And you, come with me."

Damon watches Trysta race off along the passage after Razelii, then leads Opeth back to the statue that hides the spiral staircase. Most of the Rose Palace is still deserted in the early hours long before dawn.

As they begin to descend the staircase, Opeth says, "Why did you want me with you and not your soldier?"

"I wanted to ask you something," Damon says simply.

"What?"

"Promise me you are certain Jareleezi did not curse me?"

From above him, Opeth says, "Curse you?"

"Those runes on Lyr's chest? You are certain they were not some magic meant to bewitch me into wanting him."

"Damon, I am from Voluptue," Opeth says. "An island where sex and magic intertwine. And where we know no magic can truly change a man's heart. The brands could have some lust magic in them. Perhaps something that enhances things when you couple, but anything else you feel is real. It couldn't be anything else. A magic that powerful could never exist. "

"Then why do I feel the way I do? Why did I do such things for him?"

"For the oldest and simplest of reasons, Damon Darekul. For love. Did Jareleezi use magic to make you feel so? No. Such a thing would be impossible. Did she select Lyr because her dark Gods knew you would fall for him and it would change the course of your life? Yes. Perhaps. It cannot be denied that it has."

"Changed my life in a way that would lead me to her? For her dark ends?"

"Who can say?" Opeth says lightly. "I will tell you what I told Lyr. The future is not written."

Damon reaches the bottom of the staircase. He feels strange. His throat aches like he is holding back a wave of emotion that would drown him. "And I forsook him. I let Atticul take him to what I was sure meant his death and lost myself in sofi."

"Damon." Opeth reaches the bottom of the staircase herself and faces him. She puts her palm on his face. "You are here now. He lives and you will be with him."

"He should spit in my face," Damon says.

Opeth says nothing. They walk along the damp tunnel, eventually reaching a wider, candlelit passage. The route to the dungeons. They have not gone far when the passage brings them to a small room. A doorway from it leads into a larger space, light spills from the doorway and sounds of good-natured argument.

"The guards' room," Opeth whispers. "The Hare said we would need to get past it."

There is no way onwards that does not involve passing in front of its open door.

Damon looks around. "There are too many. We'll have to find another way in," he says.

Opeth shakes her head. "No. There's a faster way. Hit me," she says pointing to her left cheek. "Hard. Make a mark."

Damon shakes his head. "My Lady, I cannot."

Opeth takes hold of the neckline of her chiton and pulls at it, ripping the fabric so her right breast is exposed.

Damon looks at her in shock. "My Lady?"

"Now, Damon," she says, sharply. "There's no time for nobility. Hit me."

Damon, half-stunned by her behaviour, hits Opeth with enough force to mark her face savagely. She stumbles back, crying out, then turns and runs into the guards' room, screaming, "Help me, help me. A savage has escaped. He tried to take me. Help."

Damon presses himself into a dark corner of the small room. Heart pounding. A moment later the guards come racing out. Opeth behind them, pointing towards the passageway that she and Damon came through and wailing, "Oh. Zai. I think he means to get into the palace. I think he was a Mortingale Outlaw."

She collapses, sobbing into the arms of one of the guards as another comforts her, leading her back into the now-empty guards' room. As she feigns hysterics. Damon slips past them towards the cells.

When he finds himself, finally, in the dungeons and so close, he cannot control himself. He cannot even think about the stealth that would be wise here. He storms down a passageway lined with narrow doors, each with a small covered window, yelling out for Lyr. He should be careful. But he is not. Not quiet.

Behind the doors, prisoners yell back, "Help me," "Please," "Please, help." He ignores them all until he hears the voice he is desperate for, calling back, sounding hopeless in the face of hope, unable to believe, "Damon?"

"Lyr!" He finds the door. He rips open the cover on the window. Through iron bars he sees him. Lyr, blinking in the dark.

He does not pause for a second. He cannot. He steps back and breaks the door open with a slam of his shoulder. The door shatters and something under Damon's skin does too. He doesn't care. He doesn't feel it. He doesn't feel anything but Lyr. Lyr's body. Lyr in his arms.

Finally.

Lyr's lips urgent on his. He presses Lyr up against the wall he is chained to and kisses him.

Chained.

The wall Lyr is chained to.

He is chained. Damon's heart sinks. He didn't expect this. Didn't even think of it. Lyr wears manacles around his wrists and ankles, all attached to bolts in the cell wall.

"You came," Lyr murmurs, kissing and kissing him. "You came back for me."

Damon tugs at the chains. They are fixed securely. "I can't free you. I…I'm sorry," Damon is sobbing. "I'm sorry I let him take you." He kisses Lyr's face between words. "I'll find the keys for these. I'll go back." He wants to cry. Another obstacle. Another problem.

"No," Lyr whines. "Don't go. Please, Damon, please, don't leave me."

Damon takes Lyr's mouth in a long kiss, pressing him hard to the cell wall.

When Damon breaks the kiss, pulling back, Lyr breathes, "Master."

"Slave," Damon replies, feeling hot pleasure roll through him as Lyr shivers in his arms.

"Your slave," Lyr breathes. "Always."

"I want to fuck you right here," Damon says, wild with it. He shouldn't. He should go now. He needs the keys. He needs the keys to these chains .

"Command it, Master," Lyr pants into his mouth. "Put me on my knees."

He pulls back and looks at Lyr's face. There's a scar on it. A new mark on Lyr's skin. Flesh split by a blow and poorly healed. "Who did this?" he snarls, trailing a finger over the mark. Hoping, somewhat foolishly, the answer will be someone he can kill right now.

Lyr says, "That was you. You hit me when Atticul took me."

When he remembers that moment Damon feels like he will break apart. He hit Lyr. He hit him. It's too much to bear.

Exhausted, he is the one who kneels, falling to the floor at Lyr's feet. Breath coming fast. He takes Lyr's hand and presses it to his own heart.

"Forgive me," he says. "Forgive me." He looks down at the floor. His whole body aches. He wants to stay here. Just here, at Lyr's feet. Maybe he should forget the keys. Just stay here. He's not thinking rationally. He can't.

And he's still there, on his knees, with Lyr's chained wrist in his hand, Lyr's hand on his heart. When someone behind him speaks. "On your knees for your whore, I see." It's a drawl. A familiar voice. "Please, don't let me interrupt whatever you're planning to do, Bastard."

Damon looks over his shoulder to see Atticul in the cell doorway.