Page 27 of Silver & Gold
“I know.”
Raider let out a shuddering breath, dizzied as half the fear left him, as though he’d only needed to say it. Not just say it. Say it to Seth. Who took those words and held them—held him—until he believed that maybe, just maybe, everything would be okay.
But it wasn’t, of course. Nothing was okay.
“Um,” Julian said from the bottom of the steps. “I hate to interrupt, but I think we have a problem.”
Seth and Raider drew apart, both following the direction of Julian’s gaze.
“Shit,” Seth muttered.
Four of Rahim’s men, identifiable by their pointed bronze helmets and leather breastplates, were hustling down the main street toward the temple. Raider spotted two more moving along another avenue. How the hell had they been found so quickly?
With Seth on his heels, Raider raced to where he’d left his pack and scimitar on the steps. “Follow me!” he shouted then darted back up the steps and into the temple.
Their pounding footsteps echoed in the vast, vaulted chamber. Startled supplicants looked up from their prayers before the laden offering table, where pink lotus flowers made a garden amid the offerings of fruit and gold and tiny clay figurines.
A statue of Atri astride a maned lion towered above these riches. She wore her crown of golden bovine horns and a necklace of snakes. Robes of sultry purple draped her otherwise nude figure.
The red-robed priestess who had been playing the barboud leaped from her cushion to shout angrily at Raider and the others. Raider shouted his apologies as he raced past the shrine.
Whipping aside the curtain that separated a storage room from the main chamber, Raider hurried past a rich clutter of past offerings and two more red-robed priestesses who were no more pleased than the barboud player had been.
Raider flung open the back door—and skidded to a stop.
Seth, not expecting this, slammed into him from behind and sent him flying down the back steps. Raider tumbled straight into the path of a gleaming scimitar that kissed his throat. He froze.
His eyes lifted from muscled female thighs to a skirt of gold-studded leather strips, a quicksilver whip coiled at the hip, and a breastplate of intricate, filigreed gold over one of articulated leather. A muscled female arm, banded with gold rings, held the gleaming scimitar steady.
Raider took in the face that he hadn’t paid enough attention to when he’d been with Seth on the temple’s front steps. That face, strong and proud and enjoying his recognition, was framed now by a golden helmet worn only by the empress’s personal guard. The Hammer. Four more golden-armored figures, all male, flanked her.
Seth’s chakram came whizzing through the air. The scimitar lifted from Raider’s neck to deflect the razor-sharp weapon. Raider scrambled back as Seth’s sword shinnnged from its scabbard.
Seth leaped down the steps to Raider’s side, catching the chakram on its return and wielding his sword with his left hand. Seth parried several strikes from the female warrior and whipped his chakram across a man’s golden breastplate, slicing it open.
Quicksilver cascaded down Raider’s left arm to his fingertips. He caught the female warrior’s scimitar in his quicksilver grip as he yanked his own scimitar from its scabbard. The woman made an expert twist to attempt freeing her blade, but he clamped his fist. Her sword snapped.
As she staggered back, Raider made a quick scan of the scene. More guards ranged up the street behind the five members of the imperial Hammer, and Rahim’s men came pouring through the temple’s back door. One of them grabbed Julian and threw him to the ground—but then had to contend with Adavasti. In his true form, the ifrit clapped his tiny hands together. A gout of flame sprang up between them. Raider saw no more. He spun to find Seth.
Eyes blazing with fury and determination, the Curator kicked one of the Hammer full in the chest and sent the man flying back. Then a whip, quicksilver bright, flashed toward Seth and coiled fast and tight around his neck.
As the female warrior yanked Seth off his feet, Raider tackled her. He wrenched the whip from her hand—and she flipped him over her head. Raider slammed to the ground on his back. He was halfway up when something stung his neck. It was so small a sting he barely noticed it. Then the sky spun and flipped. The ground came slamming up into him.
Raider swiped at his neck, dislodging a thin dart. He rolled his head, searching for Seth. His hearing had already gone out, but he saw Seth’s mouth open in a shout. He saw the silvery arcane net spin through the air. Seth’s head whipped toward it, but he had no time to react before it swallowed him.
On the temple steps, Julian was pinned to the ground, and Adavasti was trapped in a globe of glass.
Then darkness took him.
CHAPTER 9
SETH REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS in a blurry, piecemeal fashion. Light bled through his eyelids. Voices hummed around him. He was cold. He was lying on a hard, flat surface. His head throbbed. His chest and left shoulder ached.
When he opened his bleary eyes, he discerned a bare stone ceiling high above him. It was washed with bands of arcane light as though the light was passing through bars. The voices surrounding him cut off, but not before he heard a refined female voice say in Kastalan, “… whether he’s useful.”
Seth registered straps around his wrists and ankles, one even across his forehead—and that was when it all came back. The fight outside Atri’s temple. Raider collapsing. The net that had taken Seth down. He’d fought as hard as he could to get free, to get to Raider, but he’d eventually lost consciousness as the blows had rained down upon him.
Now, bound to a table, bare chested and bare footed, wearing only his pants, he tried not to panic. He had to stay calm and figure out what was happening.