Seeing those fangs, the slavering mouth, Godwyn knew he had done the right thing, ending it like this. He tore his gaze away from the oghul, looked down at Liz Hen and Dokie. They stared up at him, horrified. But there was nothing he could do to give them comfort. Leif cinched the noose tight under his chin. The slack in the hangman’s rope would make for a long hard drop. A quick snap of the neck. An instant death.
’Twas a life well-lived. Few make it to my age. . . .
With that thought, Bishop Hugh Godwyn looked up. How beautiful the sky appeared. How blue. How calm. How vast and deep.
With a creak and a clank the trapdoor under his feet was released, and the breath was sucked from his lungs. He dropped.
There was a loud snap. No pain. Just darkness. Peace.
And then nothing. . . .
* * *
Love of god is not always equal to the love of good.
—THE ANGEL STONE CODEX
* * *
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
LINDHOLF LE GRAVEN
5TH DAY OF THE FIRE MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
AMADON, GUL KANA
If it please m’lady”—Delia’s voice echoed against the chipped stone walls of the decrepit old abbey—“could you give me word of my father?”
“Your father is dead,” Seita answered sharply. The Vallè princess wore leather breeches laced up the sides, black boiled-leather armor under a pale-gray sleeveless tunic, and a black belt studded with links of mail. As Lindholf watched her move about the abbey, he admired how fine her silken hair was, her skin pale in the wan light, luminous and beautiful. “He is no longer at the saloon. The Silver Guard told him you were hung in the arena. He died a few days ago,” she said with finality.
“He died?” The color drained from Delia’s face. The girl was still dressed in her prison garb, as was Lindholf. “He died believing I was a traitor? How can he be dead?”
Gault Aulbrek rose from the stone bench; his armor creaked and groaned as he placed a hand on Delia’s shoulder, glaring at Seita. At all times, the Sør Sevier knight strode hale and straight, and today was no different, but now there was also danger in his eyes. A singular sensation of sickening anxiety shot up Lindholf’s spine. They had been left on Rockliegh Isle for some time now, and Seita had just returned by boat with scant provisions. He sensed Gault’s impatience was at a boil.
Seita had rowed them ashore five days ago after their escape from the arena and after a quick journey to the Filthy Horse Saloon where they had picked up Ethic Shroud and the white angel stone Lindholf and Delia had hidden there. The Vallè princess had claimed Rockliegh Isle was the very place Hawkwood had disappeared to when he’d first escaped Purgatory. She claimed it was safe and secure from searching eyes. The three weapons of the Warrior Angels were all hidden within a large canvas potato sack under the stone bench behind Gault in the corner of the abbey’s entry room. The crescent-moon-shaped hilt of Afflicted Fire was visible, the sack not quite long enough to fit the weapon entirely. The abbey itself was a crumbled-down relic of moss and cobwebs situated in the middle of a stand of weather-torn trees. Brush and bramble guarded the doorless entrance. Rockliegh Isle was situated in Memory Bay a half mile east of Amadon, a small outcrop of jagged rocks and boulders, a tall, thin lighthouse at its northern end, an old wooden dock at the southern, a grassy slope and an old abbey in between.
“You’re shocked, I daresay.” Seita looked at the barmaid. “Remember, your father was a very ill man.”
“But I did all you said.” Tears crawled down Delia’s face. “You promised if I completed all of your tasks, he would be spared.”
“Well, unfortunate things often happen at the least opportune times.”
“Why don’t you tell the girl who you really are?” Gault’s voice was harsh. “Tell her that you are a Bloodwood assassin from Sør Sevier and that you merely used her and her father in your twisted Bloodwood games.”
“Strong accusations, Ser gladiator,” Seita commented. “What makes you so sure you know who I am? What makes you so sure of yourself?”
“I know a Bloodwood when I see one.”
“Very well.” Seita faced Delia. “I am a Bloodwood assassin from Sør Sevier.”
Lindholf’s spine froze. A Sør Sevier assassin? The Vallè princess? Is this who Tala warned me about, the cloaked figure in the secret ways?
“We’ve been five days on this Laijon-forsaken island,” Gault said. “And it’s time I took my leave of it.”
It seemed Seita was bracing for a challenge. “And pray tell, where will you go from here, Ser gladiator?” she asked, her green eyes now aglow in the dim light.
“I shall go anyplace I please, any place but here.”
“Best get rid of that armor you wear, then, for it clearly marks you as Ser Gault Aulbrek of Sør Sevier, the man who chopped Jondralyn Bronachell’s face and the Prince of Saint Only’s head.”
“I’m scarcely worried about my armor,” Gault growled. “I’m more concerned that you’ve marooned us on this dreary island with scant amounts of food and nothing to do but watch over strange weapons and stones. I already know how Lindholf found the shield. But you’ve yet to tell us anything of how you came to possess the sword and crossbow? And now you row back to the isle full of advice about how I’m dressed. I want your boat. And I aim to have it. I aim to leave this place today.”
“Impatience does not suit you.”
“Make no mistake, I also aim to take the weapons and stones with me.”
“You do not want to make such threats.” Seita’s eyes were now shards of ice, unforgiving. “The weapons are not for you, Ser gladiator. Not all of them. Not yet anyway.”
“Why do you keep calling me gladiator?”
“It is who you are.”
“Well then, this gladiator is taking his spoils.” Two quick strides and Gault was at the stone bench. He reached underneath and snatched up the large potato sack, the hilt of Afflicted Fire jutting from it.
“No.” Delia rushed to him. “You mustn’t go.” She grabbed the sack with one hand, the hilt of the white sword with the other, tugging on both. “Who will protect me if not you?”
She really loves him? Lindholf’s heart quailed at her words.
Delia tried to wrestle the potato sack from Gault. The sword’s icy-sharp blade sliced open the canvas, spilling the contents at her feet; Blackest Heart, Ethic Shroud, the small leather pouch containing the three angel stones, all clattered against the stone bench and floor.
The barmaid stumbled back, Afflicted Fire still in her grip. In the pallid gloom of the abbey, the sword appeared like a pure stream of light, as if made of stardust and fire. Her eyes widened, marveling at the weapon in her hands. Afflicted Fire!
“You’re behaving like spoiled children.” Seita picked up the shield. “Hand me the sword, girl.”
“No, Delia.” Gault tossed the ruined canvas against the paint-chipped wall. “Give it to me.”
Hands trembling, Delia looked from the Vallè to Gault and back, not knowing who to obey. There was a moment of strained silence. The knight’s eyes tightened.
“I wouldn’t do it, gladiator,” Seita said casually.
“Why?” Gault’s reply was just as casual. “Because you’re a Bloodwood?”
And in one fluid motion he snatched the sword from Delia, swinging it at the Vallè princess, long white blade cutting through the air swift and merciless.
Seita ducked the arcing blow, shield upraised. Afflicted Fire rang against Ethic Shroud, lightning and thunder, deafening and bright, sparks illuminating the room. Seita was flung to the ground, shield tumbling from her grasp. Gault staggered back against the stone bench, sword reverberating with a keening hum in his hands.
The scar on the back of Lindholf’s hand flared in sudden pain. The slave brand too. The marks of the mermaid. They all burned as sparks showered down around him.
The bald knight gathered himself and charged. Seita rose to meet him, two black daggers
drawn. The bulk of Gault’s heavy shoulder crashed hard into the Vallè’s chest, knocking her reeling into the wall. The knight was on her quick, strong hands and iron grip clamping around each of her thin wrists, the crown of his head smashing into her forehead with a sickening thud. Both daggers dropped from the Vallè’s limp hands.
Gault head-butted her a second time, hard.
Lindholf watched the light radiating from the Vallè’s luminous eyes fade. She slid down the wall, blood welling down her face.
“She may be a Bloodwood,” Gault said, his cold hard eyes roaming the abbey’s brush-clogged entry, “but bulk and strength always prevail in a hand-to-hand.” Blood trickled from his own forehead too.
Blessed Mother Mia. Lindholf did the three-fingered sign of the Laijon Cross over his heart. He knew Gault was no slouch when it came to bravery and combat. He had seen the man stab a slave in the neck with the bone from a severed arm in Riven Rock Quarry. But the cruel efficiency with which he dispatched Seita had been brutal and gruesome and hard to stomach.
The Vallè princess folded over onto her side against the abbey’s stone wall, lifeless. “Is she dead?” Delia held one hand over her own mouth in shock.
Lindholf’s heart thumped in his chest as he dropped to his knees over Seita. Shallow breaths emanated from somewhere deep within her chest, coarse breaths that grew ponderous in their frequency. She lives. . . .
Gault grabbed Afflicted Fire from the floor. He snatched up the small leather pouch containing the three angel stones next. He jammed the crossbow Blackest Heart under the crook of his arm, then hefted the shield Ethic Shroud by the leather strap attached to its back, and marched from the abbey without a word.
“He means to leave us,” Delia gasped. “I actually think he means to go.” She rushed to the door, watching as the Sør Sevier knight made his way down the grassy slope toward the wooden quay and the small rowboat left there by the Vallè princess.
Seita moaned. Lindholf looked down. The Vallè was facedown on the stone floor now, trying to prop herself up on two elbows, blood dripping from her chin and the white locks of hair dangling over her groggy eyes.
“He just can’t leave us like this!” Delia stood at the door, looking out with an ardent, passionate gaze. She turned to Lindholf. “I’m going with him.” She dashed out the door.
Never before had Lindholf felt so suddenly crestfallen and alone, unable to move a muscle to follow her. Only heartache lies there. For her, I might as well not exist. For everyone, I may as well not exist. Not Delia. Nor Tala. Nor even Seita. Even his own mother had chosen to abandon him in the end. No. I cannot follow Delia.
Seita managed to roll back onto her side. She was propped on one elbow now, trying to position herself against the wall. Blood covered her face in thick wild streaks.
“Help me sit,” she muttered. Lindholf steadied her. “I cannot think straight. How long has Gault been gone? Did he take the weapons? The stones?”
“He’s heading for your boat now,” Lindholf answered.
“You must go with him.” She placed a small black dagger into the palm of his hand. “You must go with Gault. Bring the weapons and angel stones back to me.”
“I cannot steal from Gault. He is too strong.” Lindholf’s mind was a ball of confusion as he stared down at the dagger in his hand. Black as polished coal, it felt unnatural, wicked. Tala had carried just such a weapon. She had dropped it in the secret ways when Glade had slain Sterling Prentiss.
“This blade thirsts,” Seita said, her voice frail. “It is poisoned. Stick Gault with it, and he will die within moments. It’s a rare gift. So keep it safe. For a Bloodwood rarely parts with a blade. You needn’t kill him right away. Bide your time. But when you do, bring the weapons and stones back to me, Lindholf. You can do it. I’ve trained you. Val-Draekin has trained you. We have prepared you for this. You are the Thief, and this task has fallen to you.” She seemed to be losing consciousness again. “Now go.” She shoved him weakly away, eyes drooping closed.
He looked toward the door; the sunlight and freedom beyond the opening seemed so hollow, so full of hurt. Still, he stood on wobbly legs, rolling the dagger’s blade in a strip of potato sack. He tucked the weapon into the waistline of his prison garb, covering the hilt with his shirt, then exited the abbey, leaving Seita’s shallow breathing behind.
Gault and Delia where already situated in the small rowboat, the Sør Sevier knight pushing the tiny vessel away from the dock with the length of a long paddle.
Lindholf’s nervous pace carried him swiftly over the grass. He reached the wooden dock at a full sprint. Two long strides over the quay and he jumped. He landed on his chest in the center of the rowboat, right between the knight and the barmaid, Afflicted Fire and Ethic Shroud piled on the floorboards under him.
Blackest Heart rested on the surface of the shield, just inches from his startled gaze.
* * *
Oh worthy day, you too shall pass into night long and drear. Oh glorious song, how the ancient minstrels did strain. Oh beautiful lover, hear with delight these tales of blood and war so fondly revealed. The beggar begs. The soldier is bold. And dark angels of silver only live by nightmare. And oh, the glorious Pillars of Laijon. Five in all. But only one, unmovable and shrouded, holds the key and buried secrets to Absolution.
—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON
* * *
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
NAIL
6TH DAY OF THE FIRE MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
WROCLAW, GUL KANA
Bronwyn Allen claimed she would secure them a boat somewhere south of Wroclaw. Nail believed her. The girl seemed born of a fierce, unshakable determination, a grit and resolve bred purely for theft and piracy and cold-blooded murder. And Cromm Cru’x was devoted to her, deferring to her judgment in all things.
“I don’t like them,” Nail said, his voice nearly a whisper above the clomping hooves of his bay gelding. “She is unpredictable. The oghul, too. We should leave them both. Make our own way back to Amadon.”
“That oghul practically worships you,” Val-Draekin said, eyeing the backs of Bronwyn Allen and Cromm Cru’x riding the trail about thirty paces ahead, the tails of their dun-colored stallions swatting at flies. “Cromm believes his destiny is tied to yours. Easiest and safest way back to Amadon is with them.”
“But Bronwyn murdered that man in Tevlydog. I do not trust her. What if she turns on us?”
“She will not.” The Vallè patted the neck of his own steed. “We are clothed now because of that girl, we ride good mounts because of that girl, we’ve food because of her. I am not complaining.” He clicked his tongue, urging the horse forward at a trot.
As Nail watched Val-Draekin ride ahead to join Bronwyn and Cromm, he knew what the Vallè said was true. I am in fresh clothes. The patchwork leather armor he wore was not the best, but better than nothing. And he sat astride a spry bay gelding, a sword tied to the saddle.
With all four of them mounted, they had made good time since Tevlydog. They followed the roadway along the southern outskirts of Wroclaw now, Bronwyn leading them toward the ocean that lay just beyond the town’s keep. Nail cast his gaze north toward the gray shape of the city—Wroclaw sat proud atop a slanting ridgeline of green elm, limbs bent and stretched from years in the wind.
Like most villages and cities in Gul Kana, Wroclaw had a decrepit old castle clinging to its outer edge. The road they followed led them up to the keep, then veered around it. Though the bulky stone fortress was a gaunt shadow of its former splendor, it was still ten times the size of the keep in Gallows Haven. The ungainly wreck was surrounded by a shallow mossy moat of sinewy dark water, a reeking wallow of sludge and weeds. Clumps of sodden grass and lily pads lay flat and lifeless around the moat’s rippling edges, whilst dandelions reluctantly poked their yellow heads between briar and nettle. Several dead trees, bare of leaf, stood spindly and crooked in the keep’s sparse entry ground along with five cloaked knights, dark hoods obscuring
their faces. But each of the five knights wore a different and distinct color of armor under their open cloaks: red, blue, green, white, and black. It was not plate armor per se, but rather scaled, and of an odd, curious make.
Nail’s heart twisted with ice at the sudden sight of these strange knights in the courtyard, for under their shadowy cowls they looked like five faceless Bloodwood assassins. One of the knights—the white-armored one—lifted his head briefly to the sun, and Nail thought he saw a flash of bright silver under the fellow’s hood. And then a saber-toothed lion stepped from behind the knight in white armor. The beast was black of mane, majestic, head large and shoulders heavy. It had two long silver teeth like daggers and glowing silver eyes.
The road carried him onward, and the lion and five cloaked knights were lost from sight behind the courtyard’s stone columns and heavy walls. Nail set heels to flanks and trotted his bay gelding forward, drawing even with Val-Draekin, Bronwyn, and Cromm. “What did you make of those strange men in the castle yard?” he asked.
“What strange men?” Val-Draekin asked.
“I saw no one,” Bronwyn added.
“Cromm saw them.” The oghul dug the charcoal-black rock he’d been sucking on from his lower lip, held between his burly thumb and forefinger, saliva dripping. “The silver-faced knights in bright colors are an omen.”
Nail waited, but the oghul didn’t explain himself any further than that. He looked at Bronwyn; her face was typically obscured under the hood of her own forest green cloak, and she certainly hid behind her tattoos.
He cast his gaze again toward the ocean in the distance. From under the hooves of his horse clear to where the southern horizon met the blue sea were fields softly asway, golden motes of rye swimming in the lazy breeze.
It was a pristine view, and Nail soaked it in.
They crested a gentle rise, and he spotted a slender black-haired girl in a white dress with a white handkerchief tied about her head skipping merrily through the rye. Why she was so carefree and joyful, Nail couldn’t guess. Perhaps she too was just enjoying the beauty of nature. The scene reminded him of the charcoal sketch he had made of a bright-haired girl in a simple dress carrying a pail of water through a meadow of flowers. He’d always imagined the girl in the sketch to be Ava Shay and the flowers to be daisies. But Jenko Bruk had crumpled the drawing in his fist and tossed it to the floor of the Grayken Spear Inn.
The Blackest Heart Page 90