The City by Stella Gemmell Page B

sighed, his heart cramped with regret.
    Then he forgot his pain as the little girl came running out of thedarkness. She ran straight to him, cannoning into him, and he bent down and picked her up. He held her close, relief flooding through him. He felt faint and leaned against the tunnel wall, the girl still in his arms.
    ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her. ‘Not hurt?’ She stared at him, and he said again, ‘You’re not hurt?’ She shook her head reassuringly. After a while he put her down and walked over to the semi-conscious wounded boy. He sat with him for a long while until he died.
    He thought back to that sunlit day when he rode from home for the last time. Companionably, it had seemed, the two men travelled slowly, talking occasionally. Astinor Redfall seemed subdued, Bartellus now believed with the unreliable clarity of hindsight. What was he thinking, this old comrade of his, as he escorted him unknowing to his trial?
    The general’s home was in the far eastern outskirts of the City, in the farming country. As they rode, most of the land they traversed belonged to him. Who owns that land now, he wondered to the darkness? My old friend, as payment for treachery? Even as he thought it, despite everything that had happened, he could not believe it.
    It took them most of the day to reach the palace, riding through bustling Burman Far, the ratruns of Lindo, wealthy Otaro and finally the palace precincts. They had been in no hurry, and even now he liked to think the man was reluctant to bring him speedily to his fate. When they reached the broad avenue called Clarion, he paused, as he always did, to gaze up at the palace. He had first seen it as a child, yet he never failed to be awed by its beauty. Carved from rosy-red rock, its source now unknown, the emperor’s palace entranced the eye and dazzled the comprehension. Men argued about how many spires and turrets there were. There was no answer. A man could walk round the palace and count them, of course, but that would be merely the number seen from outside. Within the palace, each window looked out on minarets, each internal courtyard was surrounded by spires, each narrow stairway climbed another tower. There was no internal plan anyone knew of. A man would go mad trying to make one. There were sixty-seven domes, he had been told. He had no reason to think this was true or untrue. He was not a man with a mathematical bent. Mathematicians and philosophers, astronomers and prophesiers attended the emperor in droves. They were learnedmen, each in their way. They could speak on the harmony of the stars, the movement of the planets, the wisdom of the seasons and the majesty of the tides. Yet only the uncaring birds knew how many towers there were in the emperor’s palace.
    And deep within the vast building were the emperor’s quarters, a fortress within a fortress, for the Red Palace was nothing if not a stronghold. For all its beauty, for all its flowered courtyards and gardens and fishponds and carvings, it was designed to keep out an invading enemy. The Immortal’s residence was walled with green marble, cladding the ancient stone of the mighty fort built on the site more than a thousand years before. It was called simply the Keep. There were few portals between the Red Palace and the Keep at its heart, and even the general had never set foot in there.
    The riders trotted their mounts into the outer courtyard at the Gate of Peace. Here wide shade trees welcomed the tired traveller, and there were cool fountains to slake his thirst. The palace guards, knowing them well, stood aside, letting them through to an inner courtyard, called Northmen, its alabaster walls covered with carvings of wolves and the fierce werewomen who were their companions.
    ‘I must leave you here, my friend,’ said Astinor Redfall, black-bearded and powerful, as they climbed from their mounts. ‘I have supply business with a lord lieutenant.’
    The general grasped his friend by the