Free The Fortress of Glass by Drake David Page B

both had a yellowish hue, but the pupils were feverish and bright; they focused on Ilna.
    Cervoran's lips were violet under the smear of the undertaker's rouge; the tongue between them was black. He repeated, "Help... me...."
    Peasants aren't squeamish. Ilna took Cervoran's left wrist in her hand and wrapped his arm over her shoulders. It was like handling warm wax which smelled of decay. She wondered if the arm would pull out at the shoulder; it didn't, at least not just now.
    Heat hammered her as the fire roared to full life. A ball of flame flared at Ilna's side and vanished, an outrider of the main blaze. Before she started down, she pulled Cervoran along the tier to put the bulk of the pyramid between them and the fire. She could feel the back of her tunics searing and shrinking. The cloth would be brown and brittle after this, no use even for wiping rags.
    Of course that assumed there was an after....
    Cervoran didn't fight her, but he was barely able to keep his feet under him. She dragged him along. "Yes...," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it pierced like a bradawl.
    They reached the staircase down the north side, opposite where the boy'd lighted the fire which was now waving like a banner over the bier. Ilna was beginning to feel Cervoran's weight in her knees.
    Because this was a formal event she wore sandals, which she wouldn't normally do in weather so warm. She caught her left heel stepping down and had to throw her right leg out to keep from pitching onto her face with the former corpse on top of her. Cervoran twisted, trying to help but unable to move his legs quickly enough. It was like carrying a desperately sick man.
    They were midway down the middle tier, some twenty feet about the ground, when Ilna felt the pyre collapse with a roar behind them. A column of sparks shot skyward, then mushroomed and rained back.
    The pyramid was a stack of hurdles with no internal structure. When the flames ate away the bundled brushwood on the south, the whole thing fell toward the bleachers.
    Ilna felt the staircase tilting backward. The stringers were lifting from the ground, threatening to catapult her and Cervoran back into the flames.
    Ilna leaped off at an angle, pulling Cervoran along with a strength that'd have surprised anyone who hadn't seen her work a heavy double loom with the regularity of a windmill turning. Her right shoulder brushed the top of the lowest stage. The impact rolled her and her burden so that the late king hit the ground sideways an instant before she did.
    There was a shock and a smack like a bundle of wet cloth thrown onto stone. Ilna rolled reflexively and was up again before she knew whether she'd been hurt by the fall.
    She hadn't. The pyre was still tumbling into a state of repose, bales of brushwood rolling onto the blazing coals of those that'd ignited earlier. Men were shouting. A soldier tried to grab Ilna, but she slapped his hand away.
    The chamberlain and another palace official caught King Cervoran under the arms and began carrying him away from the fire. The fall didn't seem to have hurt him, but that was hard to tell. Cervoran's legs moved as well as they had before. Ilna walked along through eddies of soldiers and a scattering of local civilians, looking for someone she recognized.
    "I am...," the late king said shrilly. "I am...."
    "Your highness?" said the chamberlain, his own voice rising. "You're King Cervoran."
    "I am Cervoran!" the corpse cried. "I am Cervoran!"
    "Ilna!" Liane said, catching Ilna's wrists in her hands. Garric's fiancée was usually composed, but her features had a set, frightened look now. "Have you seen Garric? What's happened to Garric?"
    * * *
    Garric walked onward, certain only that he had to keep moving. He didn't feel his bare feet touch the gravel, but he supposed they must be doing so.
    He was walking toward a goal. He didn't know what it was or how far away it was, but he knew he had to go on. His head buzzed and his vision was blurry, and he