A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

as he used to do as a child. He would finish this. There was some secret here.

He suddenly noticed a shadow his torch could not chase away. Stepping closer, he perceived that the wall separating two alcoves was in fact two walls. Between them was a gap of some two or three feet. He held his torch closer. A narrow corridor ran all the way to the back wall. There was nothing there. No skulls, no shelves. A corridor to nowhere.

This puzzled him.

He edged down it and within moments he was face to face with a blank wall. His hand touched cold stone. Curious, he thought. Why this space? With no answer, he turned to go but as he did, the torch flame fluttered. He stopped. Held the torch close to the corner. The flame writhed in protest. That was when he noticed the long crack in the crook of the wall.

Not a wall, he smiled to himself, but a door.

In a fit of excitement, he put his shoulder into the corner and shoved. All at once, it shifted and swung smoothly inwards. He felt like a boy again, his blood prickling with the thrill of discovery.

He went inside. The walls were no longer brick-lined but chiselled out of the native rock. The flame revealed a pathway ahead, leading downwards, deeper into the hillside. He had to stoop now and hold the flame away from him to keep it from scorching his face. To his surprise though, the air was not stale. It had a freshness to it. And then he heard another sound over the crunch of his sandals.

Running water.

His heart beat faster as he drove downwards, the rushing sound getting louder with each step until all of a sudden the torchlight expanded. He took another step and his foot jarred heavily. A splash of water. He almost fell but just caught himself against the ceiling.

He paused, catching his quickening breath. The water wasn’t deep but it was piling up around his ankles. The bed underfoot was solid and smooth like pavings. Or tiles. It was a few seconds before he realized where he was. He was standing inside an aqueduct – one of the miracles of engineering that kept the city alive. The gradient was only slight, but the stream steady. He turned into it and started wading. . .

Pushing uphill, he felt his triumph surging within, not caring how far or how long it took him, hungry only to know where the tunnel would lead. If Justinian found his way in, he could find his way out.

The torch was half-burned through now, the young monk all but forgotten. His short, staccato breaths echoed off the damp walls. He was counting. A hundred steps – two, three, four hundred. Eight more and he saw what he was seeking. Another hole in the wall.

He dragged himself out of the stream, hauling the sodden hem of his robes behind him. He stumbled upwards, feeling like the first man fighting his way out of the womb of the Earth, thirsty for that first shard of daylight.

Suddenly there it was. He ran, the flame roaring behind him, till he burst out onto an open hillside. Below him he saw the two islands floating at the head of the Horn. Behind him the ground rose to a ridge. He hurried up it, sweating and stumbling his way to the crest.

And there laid out before him was a beautiful sight. The walls of the Great City stretched south like a banner of red and white against the pale dust of the plain; and to the west, the encampment of a hundred thousand men. The Armies of Allah, poised to swallow the city whole.

Katāros’s fist tightened. His long nails dug into his palm. For now he held the key.

CHAPTER TWENTY

If the scale of the city outside was bewildering, the interior of the Great Palace dazzled her senses.

Lilla’s scarlet slippers hurried over the cold marble to keep up with the gold-and-white figure gliding before her. She had followed Lord Katāros for what seemed like leagues through the long, lavish corridors and hallways, dressed in new robes generously provided by the grand chamberlain at his own expense. A gorgeous creation of patterned red silk with gold damask hems and cuffs, demurely covering her from chin to wrist. The girdle of woven gold silk provided the only hint of her figure beneath. Her head was covered with a veil of pure white gossamer through which her long flow of honey-gold hair shone with ease. ‘We don’t want to hide you entirely,’ Katāros had said mysteriously.

Gerutha had cast a more doubtful eye over Lilla’s new appearance. ‘Don’t you forget who you are,’ she said.

‘How could I?’

Indeed. How could she forget? This could be the first step on the long journey back to her home. And her revenge. Perhaps fate was already smiling on her. That very morning Einar had come to the palace bearing tidings.

Lilla had sent word to him from the palace, hoping it would reach him at their lodgings in the inn under the Sign of the Dolphin off the Grand Portico on the north side of the city. After two days of waiting, their new servant Yana had knocked at the door of Lilla’s chambers and announced that a ‘brute of a man’ was demanding to see her.

Einar’s news was both astonishing and alarming. Erlan was alive and in the city. But by her karl’s account, he was either imprisoned or enslaved or maybe worse. He had come not a moment too soon, since the summoning for her audience with the emperor followed hard on his heels.

They entered the Daphne palace – which Katāros told her was the imperial family’s private wing of the sprawling Great Palace complex. They passed over endless mosaics, each fashioned from a hundred thousand shards of glass and stone: an eagle swooping on a snake, a deer caught in the hunt, children playing with a hoop, so