Read Hammer Of God for Free Online Page B

floor. No windows. No fresh air. No light, except for a burning lamp hung on a hook outside the bars where his fingers could not reach it. A bucket for piss and shit which his guards did not empty as often as they could. A wooden bench for sleeping. They gaye him one blanket, but only because they had to. The guards of this castle did not like him, it was in their silent stares and their fingers on their clubs how much they longed to beat him. Hurt him. Avenge the wrong he had done their queen.
    Aieee, god. A dog in this Ethrea lives better. When I was Vortka's prisoner I was treated like a man. Will I rot down here, will I die in this dark?
    He had been in his cell twelve highsuns. The guards did not tell him that, he counted time in his head. He visited Mijak in his memory, laughed with Lilit, rode with Dimmi, danced the hotas with his mother.
    Sometimes he dreamed of her, of Hekat. He dreamed she had found him, dreamed that she loved him, dreamed there never was blood and pain and misery between them.
    Stupid dreams, Zandakar. Zandakar, you are stupid.
    His knuckles on both hands were scraped raw where he had struck his stone prison walls trying to dance his hotas. His blood was on the walls of this place, in the rank air his hisses of pain. Once he would never have noticed such small hurts, now he felt as though his body was flayed. Everything hurt him. The world was a scorpion wheel, he could not escape. Crippled, he danced his crippled hotas, remembering Mijak and its wide open skies. The chanting of his warhost. The power in his blade.
    Along the prison corridor he heard a door open. His gambling guards scrambled to their feet, small coins clinking to the flagstones.
    “Majesty!”
    “Your Majesty!”
    Rhian.
    He stumbled sideways out of his hota, one shoulder striking the nearest stone wall.
    Rhian.
    She stared at him through his cell's iron bars, her blue eyes shining like chips of ice. Her lips were straight and thinly pressed, no smile to see Zandakar, no pleasure to be here.
    “Open the cell door, Evley,” she said to the older of his two guards.
    Both men gaped at her. “Majesty?” said Evley. He had enough years to be her father. Like a father, he was concerned. “Majesty, I—”
    “Evley.”
    The guard Evley fumbled a key into the lock and turned it. Then he hauled the heavy iron-barred door open.
    Rhian's chin came up, her eyes so blue, so cold. “Zandakar. With me.”
    He followed her out of his lightless stone prison, down the corridor, through the door at its end, up stone stairs and more stone stairs into the light.
    It hurt his eyes, he welcomed the pain. Sun on his underground skin, hot like the god's wrath. Grass beneath his bare feet, birdsong in his empty ears. Breathing was hard. Believing was harder.
    I do not think I will be free for long.
    She had brought him to a garden beside the tall stone castle. There was salt in the breeze blowing into his face, the sweet scent of flowers, the ache of regrets. They were alone.
    Hands fisted on her slender hips, sheathed in leather like the finest snakeblade, Rhian looked at him. “Why is your hair blue?”
    Bemused, he stared back at her. Why was his hair blue? Why did it matter?
    “We're told your brother's hair is blood red,” she said impatiently. “And your warriors' hair is black. Why are they different, Zandakar? What does it mean?”
    “Ask chalava,” he said. “I wei know.”
    “Were you born with blue hair? Was your brother born with red?”
    He folded his arms. “You free me to talk hair, Rhian?”
    “I haven't freed you.”
    Aieee, the god see him. She was still so angry. He could not tell her his truth, that the colour of his hair changed the first time he killed with the god's power. She feared him too much as it was. But he could not lie to her, not outright. Lies were poison. He could stand between the truth and a lie, that would keep him in her company for now, for a little while.
    “My hair born black,” he said.