Chapter 11: The Courtyard of Lilies

They strode down the corridors away from Prince Arash’s apartments, all the while, with every step that he took, surrounded by guards and servants, his chest pained him, which emanated like a dull ache that even made his throat hurt.

He breathed in deeply, keeping most of the air inside his lungs as he exhaled so that that stitch in his heart didn’t come back.

Of course it did, and when he slowed, his guards grasped him by the forearms and helped him along. Despite the score of others striding quickly down carpeted corridors, they made little sound, save for the patter of their feet and the movement of the cloth on their bodies.

Arash glanced toward the wall in the direction that his balconies had been. Princess Tamu… she was gone. Even though he was in danger, Arash felt that he had lost something precious.

She came back for me.

He wanted to grind his teeth.

At the head of their procession of blades and servants, Sahar kept pace, leading them down out of the royal apartments. These apartments were not the same as the royal apartments on the other side of the palace where the sultan and the queen resided.

Those were on the other side.

And Sahar could not take Arash there. If my brother is in danger—I cannot bring his only heir to him, where he might be killed. I must take him far away from here, where he will be safe.

They chose the stairs, Sahar allowing some of the guards to precede him down the way as Usharad came up beside him. “Where are we going, high vizier?” he asked softly, though his tone was deep and powerful.

Usharad was no man to trifle with. He had slain many a foe in his adventures and battles and his loyalty to the royal family was absolute. He would die this night rather than to see any of them killed.

He was the perfect man to bring along.

“We must get to the river,” said Sahar. “It is the only way to be certain to achieve safety.”

“Outside of the palace?”

There was no surprise or intonation that betrayed any dissembling inclination from the Royal Protector. Sahar nodded. “Yes.”

“You know these hashashins better than I do,” he said quietly. Then he added, without looking to the high vizier, “Viper of Dar Shaq.”

Sahar reacted very little to the Royal Protector using his old name—the name he had gained during the Hamdu’Ra Revolt—the revolt that had cost him dearly.

Suddenly the loud and carrying tones of the guard bells began to ring, and Sahar stopped upon the steps, along with everyone behind him. “They have done it. Captain Tamaz and his men have rung the bells and alerted the palace.”

“Should we not then stay?”

Sahar looked at him. “No,” he said. “The palace is large. There are many ways for the vipers to hide themselves here, and should we be lulled into a false believe in our own security, they will strike.”

They moved, Sahar allowing no dissent or for anyone they came across to slow them down. At once, a some of the scribes came to them, and asking what they were doing, Sahar snapped at them, told them to go back to their rooms, or to follow at the back of the train as they wished.

Most of them did not follow, but some of them did.

Knowing the palace well, the high vizier led them in the direction of the under docks, also known as Zehr Skale, where the palace abutted the river Urmia. It was often used as a tributary to deliver supplies and good to the palace from across the empire. Should one follow the Urmia it would eventually lead to the Abassir empire and beyond to unexplored territories.

That was where they needed to go—to the water, to get away from this enclosed pit of vipers slithering about for the pulsing necks of the House of Al Hamiroon.

They came into a large intersection, the anteroom being an area where there were sofas of blue and red fabric trimmed in gold thread where footstools accompanied the lounge furniture along with hookahs in every corner. Plants in large pots reached up toward the light shafts cut high above in the walls.

In the distance a man called out to someone down the corridor, his voice echoing through the tiled halls. Arash glanced about, but saw very little among all the men standing around him, guarding him at the center of them all.

Where were the going? Where was the high vizier taking him? I don’t understand. The barracks warning bells have been tolled. Are we not safe?

“Uncle,” he called, but his voice didn’t work the way it normally did and barely a whisper came out. “Uncle!”

No one heard him. Even though he could barely raise his voice, he could speak and even the stitch in his heart had almost vanished entirely.

The man ahead in the corridor cried out and something fell to the floor—something heavy, and wet.

The man gasped, their heads swiveling about as they raised their blades. The servants and other members of the palace huddled together light frightened sheep. Arash, his heart beating fast, gripped his scimitar.

The stitch was gone, but his chest still hurt. The prince winced and brought his hand there.

“My prince?” asked one of his guards. “Are you all right?”

He nodded. “I am fine.”

The guard nodded, his eyes lingering upon him for only a moment more before he began to glance about. Up head Sahar and Usharad spoke in hushed tones of extreme import.

What is happening?

The corridor ahead was completely back, and a man there had just been killed. Sahar knew the sound of blades passing through flesh all too well to understand what had just happened as anything else, and with the added sound of the dead flesh and blood falling across the tiles, his certainty could not be questioned.

“They may be surrounding us,” he muttered. “Be ready!” he called more loudly. “They are here!”

“We cannot stay in this intersection,” said Usharad.

“No,” he said the high vizier, narrowing his eyes. He sensed the Vipers head, their dark magicks and their slithering baleful intent. Turning, he sensed them also in the next corridor.

It was either of those two corridors they would have to take. They could turn, retreat the way they had come or take the west corridor, but those paths would lead them in directions circuitous to their destination—giving the Dar Shaq hashashins many opportunities to attack them. To whittle away at us, one by one.

Sahar was a calm man, a thing not altogether natural to him, but rather a learned skill that he had attained within those dark halls of Dar Shaq.

Something came out of the darkness, and Sahar flicked his scimitar upward, deflecting the small knife in a metallic chink of noise. The weapon clattered across the tiles away from him.

Someone screamed.

Then multiple swords men growled and pushed forward toward the other corridor—the one where the second poisoned knife had come, inflicting a casualty among their number.

“We cannot waste time here!” hissed Usharad.

“You are… not wrong,” breathed Sahar. “But they may be trying to entrap us—to lure us where they can strike. I do not think we can take the longer paths. I fear they will encircle us.”

“Then let us move forward,” said Usharad, “that we may push through them.”

Sahar nodded.

We are going to lose many men.

“Protect the prince!” he called.

“We obey!” a palace guard called, and together as one they rose a shout into the ante-chamber.

“Forward!” called Sahar as he lifted his blade into the air.

He strode forward toward that dark corridor, the torches and glowing crystals held by the men behind him lighting the way.

As the corridor brightened, the body of the man he had heard slain just a little time past appeared before him. The corpse lay in a puddle of blood and the skin was covered in puncture wounds, black and surrounded with tendrils of poison. Stabbed and poisoned. The deep seated malice these hashashins bring to the palace is unnatural.

He glanced head into the corridor. It was quiet---far too quit, but what was he to do, turn back? No, by the gods of the good religious, they would see his actions through, for they were just.

Glancing down, Sahair looked at his toes and wiggled them about in his thronged sandals. They were noisy, slapped about as he walked. He slipped them off, and ran forward into the dark.

Through his Dar Shaw Viper training, the high vizier could attune his eyes to see within the dark. He needed no torches, no glowing crystals.

He could fight upon the turf of the Vipers, among them, as one of them, for he was of them.

Something came forward and he slowed as the aura approached.

And then he saw it.

While Usharad came up on the rear, the slithering form of two Vipers came forward, whipping about with such speed as to make the skills of a normal fighter seem like that of a child.

The assassins materialized, in midair, flipped and landed, their blades coming at Sahar before their feet even touched the tiles.

But the high vizier knew well their fighting skill and style. He turned his body and deflected the first blade strike, his movements perfectly matching the undulating attack and withdraw of the other two Vipers as they struck, pirouetted back, and struck out again.

When they came forward, Sahar recoiled, then struck forth, like that of a fanged serpent with poisoned intention for the beating pulses in their necks, their surprise invisible within their eyes, for he knew that they were aware of who he was.

Usharad came forward, his blade skirling forward in quick attacks.

The sudden distraction forced Sahar’s opponent to respond and he cut the hashashin down in a spray of blood, the Dar Shaq warrior not uttering even a cry of pain as he fell dead to the tiles.

The second Viper recoiled, melting away into a shadow, whereupon the hashashin slithered  away from them through the dark.

A cry of went up, causing Sahair to whirl as his palace guards defended themselves from the rear. Men screamed and a storm of metal-on-metal as blades clashing filled the corridor.

“We are being outflanked!” bellowed Usharad.

Sahar’s heart leapt. “Prince!” He ran forward. “Young prince!”

Someone died right next to Arash and his hot blood sprayed over him. He cried out and fell back as the palace guards crushed against each other to defend the rear while the servants and other followers screamed  and shrieked for their lives.

Falling to his back, he screamed again, kicking his legs as he tried to get out of the press of bodies.

“Young prince!”

It was his uncle calling.

“Uncle!”

The bodies separated and Usharad came into the prince’s view as he threw men out of his way, palace guards and followers of the train alike. Without wasting time, he bent and grabbed Prince Arash by the forearm and pulled him out of the morass.

“Come!” Sahar shouted as he beckoned Usharad to move faster. “Hurry—we must go from here!”

His world shook as Usharad practically tossed Arash into the air whereupon he landed on his bare feet, his sandals lost to the screaming, snarling front of soldiers doing battle with the assassins.

“Move!” Usharad urged, pushing Arash from behind. He nearly fell upon his face, but managed to kick his feet fast enough to stay upright. But he still had his sword.

The servants crowded past him, running after Sahar who was now leading the way down the corridor, the whites of his bare feet flashing against the lights of the torches and crystals being held up.

Even Usharad had a crystal.

“Prince!” called the Royal Protector.

Blood pumping in his ears, a sudden anger struck him and he whirled, snarled, “What!? Do you want me to go or to stay, man?”

“Take this,” he said, pushing the crystal into his hand. “This will light your weight.” He breathed in deeply between words. “It will also help to blind the assassins who wish to strike at you from close by.”

Unable to argue or lash out at the Royal Protector for that, he nodded, turned and ran after his uncle the high vizier.

They descended a long set of stone steps covered with expensive rugs decorated with floral patterns and exited the hall through a magnificent arch decorated with gilded entablature that normally stole the breath away, and came out into a massive courtyard with ponds and arched bridges.

Scores of people milled about in fear without any idea of what to do as they waited, thinking the palace guards would come to protect them.

“Come!” barked Sahar.

They went directly for the bridge crossing the pond. In the water, four structures in perfect symmetry topped with beautiful domes enclosed the bridge on both sides.

“Do not be slow, young prince,” said Sahar. “It is not safe.”

“I am here, Uncle,” said Arash. He gripped his blade tight so as not to drop it from his intense shaking. “Should we…” he said, trailing off as he turned to look back at the arch. “Should we not wait for the guards?”

His uncle stopped and looked at him. “No,” he said. “They are protecting our escape. They will rejoin us, Prince.”

“It’s the high vizier!” a woman shouted, and pointed a finger. She was wearing fine robes and accompanying here was a small group of people. They came forward.

“Stop,” he commanded, “in the name of the Commander of the Faithful—you must get to safety. It is not safe here!”

They looked at each other in startlement when suddenly a shadow appeared atop the structure looming over the bridge on their right, revealing the form of a man.

“Uncle!” shouted Arash. He pointed. “Look!”

It was clear to Sahar that the silhouetted form limned in pale moonlight could be no other than one of the hashashins of Dar Shaq.

The assassin pulled his arm back—

“Young prince!” bellowed Shair

Then the assassin flung something forward. Arash gasped, but from nowhere Usharad lurched forward and hit the missile.

It exploded into a field of dust, and the Royal Protector coughed.

Suddenly more of the missiles came down onto the bridge and exploded, filling the space with scattered and intermittent fields of black smoke.

Everyone screamed and ran in separate directions, many of the panicked palace guests trampled each other in their haste to get away. One man fell into one of the floor pools on the edges of a statue fountain and was stepped on by no less than three of the fools behind him.

“Watch out!” called Usharad.

Arash narrowed his eyes, trying to get a view of what was happening as he crouched slightly, his heart pounding and his chest aching.

Sahar made it to him, and with his wild eyes, big white beard and his flapping red-silk robes, a sword held in his right hand, he looked like a smoke-addled madman come to take him away. He grabbed Arash by the forarm. “Come, young prince!”

While his uncle pulled him forward, seemingly toward the danger, Arash turned his head as the guards from behind began pour out of the gilded archway. One of them fell with something sticking out of his neck.

Arash gasped and glanced all around, his fear so close he must have looked like a wild animal himself, because his indignation at being pulled along like a child was nowhere to be found within him as the assassins lobbed smoke bombs and projectiles into the crowds of people.

With a series of clinks and chinks, it was only then that Arash realized most of those projectiles were coming toward him and his uncle.

He screamed, raising his scimitar as he tried to reveal the flat of the blade to his enemies in the hopes that he might use his sword as a shield should his uncle fail to deflect one of those deadly knives raining down upon and around them.

They moved up the arched bridge with plenty of light to see by, as Arash had the crystal in his hand given to him by Usharad, and the bridge was also lined with flickering lanterns.

“Uncle! Where are you taking me!”

“Away!”

Sahar deflected several more projectiles into the air as he finally let go of Arash’s wrist. But the young prince needed no instruction to keep up and to keep close as he stayed as close to his uncle’s back as he could.

“Go!” called Usharad as he came up on their read. “I will hold them here! Go!”

When they got off the bridge, Sahar led Arash to the next beautiful archway. The prince knew not where his uncle was taking him, but suddenly the high vizier came up short as a figure landed in front of him.

It was a woman, her face covered by a sheer cloth and her eyes burning with a glint of luminous green as she moved like a dancer, and in each of her hands was a thin scimitar.

Sahar seemed to almost slump at the sight of her, or rather, that was what Arash thought when his uncle turned his face halfway in his direction. “Go, young prince. I will handle this one.”

“But uncle!”

“Do not argue with me, boy.”

He had never been called that in his life—and certainly not by his uncle. The very word filled his soul with dread as his feet seemed to begin carrying him backward of his own volition.