The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) - Grace Draven Page 0,70
joists. “Don't cross until I give the signal it's safe to do so,” he instructed the two men. More sure of the bridge now, he and Anhuset started a basket weave motion as they scouted the bridge, walking the sides, then crossing paths at the center to walk the opposite side, then do the same again and again, skirting tangled mats of ivy as they went.
Serovek eyed the statues as he traveled the deck pausing at one unlike those on either side of it. The difference lay not in the sculptor's hand but in the vandal's. Hammer and chisel wielded by an enraged hand had savaged this particular king, hacking away at the face, breaking the crown, and defacing the epigraph on the plinth until the mysterious words were obliterated.
“The others are mostly untouched,” Anhuset said as she crossed the bridge to reach him.
Serovek leaned toward the damaged statue despite his better instincts warning him against such an action. “Whoever he was, he was hated.” He stretched out a hand toward the plinth.
“Don't,” Anhuset warned.
“I've no intention of touching it,” he assured her. The words no sooner left his lips than a tiny bolt of lightning arced from the stone to jolt his fingertip. Serovek leaped back with a yelp, narrowly avoiding trampling Anhuset.
“I warned you not to touch it,” she snapped.
“And I didn't,” he snapped back.
He glared at her and she at him until a thought occurred to him. Something in his expression must have forewarned her of another one of his uncomfortable questions for the scowl disappeared behind that stoic mask she erected like a shield wall.
“The statue is warded,” Serovek said. “I'm guessing they all are. Human sorcery or not, I'd think a Kai possessing even a drop of Elder magic would sense it, yet you didn't. Again.”
He'd heard rumors in the months following the galla's defeat of Kai unable to capture the mortem lights of their dead. For a people whose history relied on the stored memories of the dead to record their history, such a calamity was catastrophic, unprecedented, and as far as he knew, unexplained.
“You've lost your magic, haven't you, firefly woman?”
Her lips thinned into a mulish line, while her yellow eyes lightened until they were almost white.
Annoyance, he thought. Anger. The hostile emotions paled a Kai's eyes while the benign ones turned them gold.
Her hand clenched on the knife she held before loosening, and her shoulders relaxed. When she spoke, her voice carried nothing of her momentary fury, only a faint thread of sadness. “I have.”
“Will you ever tell me why?”
“No.”
Serovek had expected such an answer. She'd maneuvered around his oblique questions until he'd asked her outright. Still, she only confirmed what he'd already ascertained and nothing more. Sha-Anhuset was a woman judicious with her words and possessive of her secrets. This one he sensed affected far more than a single Kai. “If there's a way I can help you regain it, I hope you'd tell me.”
Her posture slumped a little more, and the hard angles of her faced softened. “Ask me nothing else about it,” she said. “You know enough now to realize the galla was attracted to you, that while I can be an extra sword on the bridge, I can't sense sorcery. I inherited very little Elder magic to begin with, but my sword arm is strong, and I'm enduring. Let that be enough.”
“It's always been enough.” He wanted to gather her in his arms, stroke her silvery hair and apologize for his prying. He bowed to her instead. “No more intrusions,” he promised. “I was wrong to meddle and beg your forgiveness.”
“Done,” she said, eyes darkening once more to their citrine shade.
Quick to bristle and just as quick to pardon, she was a creature of dichotomies in character and appearance: dark and light, harsh and merciful, dour and humorous, secretive and forthright. And he lusted for her mightily, even now as they traveled across an ancient bridge toward a strange and empty city.
They continued methodically weaving toward the opposite side, reaching the deck's center Anhuset stopped to stare down its length. “What malice is this?”
The mists veiling the city suddenly thickened to a dense, roiling mass before spilling like a waterfall onto the bridge, rushing toward them in a gray tide.
A low-hanging cloud did no more damage than get someone wet, but this was far more than weather, and Serovek wanted nothing to do with a repeat of Haradis. “Run!”