“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“Nonsense, man! No gomlens for you if you don’t bring it out.”
Corinna tensed. “Austin?”
“We won’t trade it.”
“Just wants a look I do, just a look! Only a theory. It’s got its grips in you, man. Show old Fefferman and he’ll tell you.”
When Austin unslung his pack, Corinna abandoned trying to caution him and instead watched Fefferman for sudden movements. “How do you know about the crystal?” she asked. Fefferman dismissed her suspicion with a “Feh!”
Austin brought the crystal only halfway out of the bag, his fingers locked around it to give only a glimpse. The thiesm’s hand shot forward. Corinna started, then relaxed.
The thiesm merely pointed at the crystal. “Knew it! Knew it! You see! Got its claws into him it does! They’re linked, plain as a fart in a ghost I can see it!”
Corinna’s heart stopped. “Linked how?”
“Oy, that’s the question isn’t it? How, yes . . .” He crept close to Austin, squinting in one ear and then the other. The thiesm’s nostrils twitched. “Anchor!” He crept back a few paces. “Going to cause some troubles, that. Not my bother, but he’s going to be cranky, you can bet.” Fefferman spat again. “Never easy! Never!”
“What do you mean, ‘anchor?’“ Austin demanded. “Is that bad?”
“No idea!” Fefferman cackled. “Big joke on Maeron if it is! Don’t concern ol’ Fefferman. Bound by agreements, chains and all! Aye, buggers, I see the look in your eyes, unspoken questions, clamoring!” He stopped, sucked his teeth once, and nodded. “I know Maeron,” he whispered.
Corinna drew back. “As friend or an enemy?”
“It’s so cut and dried, is it?” Fefferman spat. “I hate the bugger! Rotten Kish and their rotten secrets!”
“He’s the reason we need the gomlens.”
“Right,” Austin added. “We’re all on the same side here, so let’s just go back to the bit about an anchor and you can tell us everything about what’s going on.”
Fefferman stared at each of them. He reached into his bag. “Found me before you did. Long before. Says he’s another exile, spat through the rift. Kish accent! Then he gets me watching for you. ‘Look for an Austin!’ he said. ‘Comin’ your way!’ Makes his orders, gets his claws in me! Makes me jump! But old Fefferman didn’t turn you in that night. Didn’t follow you. You did your stupid selfless favor. Wouldn’t be right.” He drew a gomlen, already glowing, from the satchel at his side. “‘Cept now you’ve got the crystal, and I’ve got no more debt to you. Old Fefferman, bound to his course!”
With a wail, he pitched the gomlen at Corinna and charged at Austin. She dodged. Its heat seared across her shoulder before the gomlen struck the keep wall behind her and exploded. She pitched forward amid a blast of light and stone.
FIFTEEN
Austin yelled for help. With splinters in her hands from where she hit the wooden rooftop, she turned and saw Austin fighting with the thiesm. The latter had him pinned against the wall, snarling like a feral badger. Both clutched the daypack.
She shot to her feet as Austin struggled to force Fefferman off. They spun in an instant, reversing positions, and Fefferman threw himself to one side. At once Austin gave a yank in the other direction. It wasn’t enough. Fefferman’s body turned to stone in a wink’s time, still falling to the side, and his now-rock hard grip on the pack ripped it from Austin’s hands.
Corinna rushed forward as the thiesm crashed to the rooftop beside the hole in the wall the gomlen had blasted. Momentum threatened to pitch him over the edge. Her fingertips scraped on the pack, but Fefferman returned to life before she could get a grip, kicking furiously and clutching it to his chest. The blow shoved her back. She stumbled on the rubble and landed again on her bum.
“How often can he do that?” Austin demanded. He started after Fefferman but stopped short as the latter, yet on his knees, pulled out another gomlen.
“Sorry, no idea! First thiesm I’ve actually met, you know!”
“Don’t have to kill you!” Fefferman cried. “He just wants the crystal! No choice in that!”
“You don’t have to do this!” Austin yelled. “We can help each other!”
“Too powerful! No hope! Get back!” Fefferman clutched the gomlen in one hand and dangled the pack over the edge with the other.
Corinna regained her feet, then backed off a few steps. Her blood pounded in her ears. There was no telling how many golmens Fefferman had to throw at them, and no guarantee he would miss again even if the one he held were his last. The pack swung out over the drop-off. She had no idea what was below. Grass, or more stone that might shatter the crystal? Even if they both rushed him and got past the gomlen, he might very well drop it before they could get it back.
“Fefferman!” she tried. “If you drop that crystal, if it breaks — we’re all dead!”
“Fefferman’s dead either way, pretty one, unless you stink off and leave me alone! Give it to me, leave me be, Maeron leaves you be! Eh? Eh?”
“Do you even know what that is?” Austin asked. “What’s at stake?”
“Hah! Do you? Because she told you? All pretty and trustable? Leave me be! Biggest gomlen! Not so easy to dodge!” He raised the gomlen higher, threatening to throw it her way. Corinna tensed to defend herself.
Austin took a step back and asked her, “Can you get the pack?” She was ten feet away; he had to know the only way she could was with magic.
“I don’t want to do that, Austin!”
“Eh, see? She agrees with Fefferman! Back off says I!”
“We don’t have much choice!”
She swallowed and took her gaze from the gomlen to the satchel, measuring, reluctant. “Fefferman,” she tried, “there might be a way we could — ”
“NO!”
Everything seemed to slow down as the thiesm screamed it. She saw his arm draw back, unstoppable, the throw imminent. So much time to watch it happen, yet her feet refused to move. She heard Austin’s yell, saw him launch at Fefferman as the latter’s arm came forward, his body twisting to target Austin.
“Austin!” she yelled. Her arms raised, coming to life again. She let the shout carry into her mind, calling the magic to life. She thrust it into the space in front of Austin as Fefferman loosed the gomlen straight at him.
Panic marred her aim. A magic-sent drum of air thrust outward. It knocked the gomlen harmlessly out into the courtyard, but caught a piece of the two men as well.
Spun from the blow, Austin slammed his stomach against a jutting crenellation atop the wall. Fefferman shrieked and fell backward. Arms windmilling, his foot caught on an unsteady stone at the broken wall’s edge. For half a breath’s time he seemed to right himself. Then the stone gave under his weight. He pitched out over the edge, cursing, flailing at the air, and still clutching the pack.
Corinna dashed after him. Fixed on the pack, she could do nothing but try to snatch either it or Fefferman before they were lost completely. Her fingers caught a strap. She gripped it in momentary elation before her stomach screamed at the loss of balance and the open air in front of her. She had overshot. Solid floor lay under only one of her feet.
Fefferman screamed beneath her, his own grip still tight on the strap, his purple eyes frantic. She made a desperate grab at the side of the broken wall with her free arm. Her fingertips scraped stone before it passed out of reach. The drop loomed — fifty feet down a rough stone wall to rocks and grass — when something wrenched her backward by the shoulders.
Austin had a fistful of the back of her jumper. “Hang on!”
To what?
Fefferman’s weight tore the pack away. Her foot slipped off the wall and she dropped against Austin’s grip. They hollered together as he tried to pull her back. It was only enough to give her time to make a grab for the wall. The effort wrenched her shoulder. Her grip failed and she dropped further, her chin then slamming into the stone.
/>
Amid a haze of stars she found she still hung against the wall. Toes clawed instinctively for purchase while Austin clutched her wrist and forearm in his struggle to pull her to safety. Groaning with the effort as much as her throbbing jaw and arm, she crawled her way up and lay, gasping, on the edge.
Austin’s hand remained locked on her wrist. “Are you okay?”
The absurdity of the question forced a laugh before she could stop it. She regained herself immediately and scrambled around to peer below, expecting to see a dragon rising up toward them out of the crystal. There was, thankfully, nothing of the sort occurring.
Fefferman lay atop a rock beside the keep’s moat.
“Bollocks! Do you see the crystal anywhere?”
Austin hurried to see. “It’s too dark. It must be still in the pack. Can you make some light or something?”
She glared at the suggestion and launched toward the stairs. She had used too much magic already, foolishly led them to find Fefferman. Of course Maeron sought out any exiles from Rhyll! If the werespider, then why not the thiesm? She should have known!
Corinna all but flew down the stairs, heedless of darkness save for one cautious hand held out before her. The landing at the bottom surprised her feet; she stumbled but carried on, first to the internal courtyard at the keep’s center, and then out its open gateway where centuries-old steps descended the motte. The city’s light pollution let her spot faint outlines enough to keep from falling. She ran halfway down the steps, scrambled over the low stone wall that separated them from the grass of the hill, and stopped.
Austin called to her from the top of the steps. She ignored his question and crept more carefully now down the slope to where the thiesm lay wrecked across a large, angular rock. Blood pooled beneath his head. It dripped from the rock and stained the grass below as his vacant, purple eyes stared skyward. One arm lay trapped under him, the other stretched out to one side. He did not breathe. Corinna saw neither pack nor crystal.
Fefferman shuddered.
Austin caught up to where she stood a few paces from the body, unsure what to do. “Is he dead?”
A gurgle sputtered from the thiesm’s throat. His fingers writhed against the mud at the moat’s edge.
“Not dead — ” he gasped. “Broken. Curse the bunch of ya . . .” He huffed a rasping sound that might’ve once been laughter. “Not so helpful now . . . are ya — Mister Austin? Broke me. You and the buggering piss-pot ground . . .”
Austin took a step closer. Corinna grabbed his arm to bar him from getting too close.
“You attacked us,” he answered.
Fefferman gurgled again, eyes closing. “Didn’t . . . want to . . . much.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Austin whispered aside to her. “Anything you can do?”
“You said it yourself,” she whispered back. “He attacked us!”
“But look at him!”
Focused on watching for a glimpse of the crystal and keeping a sad eye on Fefferman for any tricks, she only spared Austin a glance to shake her head. “I know. I’m sorry.” She wished it were otherwise. Betrayer or not, it hurt to look at him. Were it in her power, she would have tried, just for the chance of easing his pain and gaining another ally. What had he done to be exiled? What had Maeron done to co-opt him?
The mental image of Tragen lying just as broken, breathing his last, came unbidden. Were healing in her power, they might none of them be in this mess to begin with.
“Too pissing late,” Fefferman coughed, managing a nod. Austin crept closer, and she didn’t have the heart to stop him. It was as if the life leaked from the thiesm’s body like a deflating balloon, sagging its last. “Nothing you can do . . . Not in this scab-clustering land.”
Austin crouched down and froze. “Then — is there anything you can do for us? Something to help us stop Maeron, anything?”
Fefferman coughed up a laugh, and then groaned. “Fefferman’s more help to him than to you now, Mister Austin.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s prepared me for him to use, he has! My death . . . stored . . . Wood for the fire. He knows how . . .” The thiesm’s eyes went wide. He clutched at Austin’s arm, tugging. “He knows where! Don’t you linger! Don’t . . . you . . .”
The word slid from the thiesm’s lips on his final breath. Fefferman released Austin’s arm. His hand fell as his eyes fixed skyward. His body went still.
“That went badly,” Corinna whispered. It struck her as foolish even as it passed her lips, but she had needed to say something. Their problems, if anything, had gotten worse. “I still can’t see the crystal.”
“Maybe it’s under him,” Austin muttered.
“Aye, with any luck.”
Neither moved. Then, as one, they each reached tentatively for the body.
“Wait.” Austin grabbed her wrist instead. “You hear that?”
She shook her head before she noticed it: a hissing, coming from Fefferman’s body. Quiet at first, it grew louder. She stood and stepped back. Austin let her go but stayed crouched.
“Austin!”
“It’s okay. I think. What’s happening?” He remained close. Studying. Intent. “This happened before.”
“Before when? Austin, get back. Please.”
He only raised a hand and watched as the hiss grew louder. It became a sizzling, and she was done waiting. She grabbed Austin by his shirt neck and yanked him backward, forcing him to either back away or land on his bum. He scrambled to his feet, obliging.
Fefferman’s body crumpled, then began to dissolve like a melting snowman.
“The werespider did this,” Austin said. “The exact same thing.”
“After it was dead?” If he meant it was some sort of regenerative cycle, she wanted to be ready. Austin nodded as violet glimmers, barely visible even in the dim light, encircled what was left of Fefferman. They spiraled into a slender trail, being drawn away elsewhere, carrying off his dissolving body until only a thin ichor remained.
“You don’t know what that was?”
“Never seen it before.”
“Any theories?”
She crept forward again. The process appeared complete. “Let’s find the crystal, first, Austin. We may not have much time.”
The thiesm was dead. Maeron felt the hum of the arcane reservoir hanging about his neck as death siphoned into it from across the long distance. In his mind sounded the echo of Fefferman’s rasp.
He lifted the chain on which the icicle-shaped reservoir dangled, unfastened the finger-length silver casing that protected the slender glass bulb inside, and waved the bulb languidly across his palm. Violet flickers surfaced from the blackness within. They glimmered across the lines of his skin before winking out again.
Knowing he had only seconds, Maeron willed his power back along the fading path from where the siphon had come and searched, eyes closed. This idea had come to him too late when the werespider had died and its body, prepared with a ritual Maeron had perfected on a Parisian woman the previous spring, had relinquished its death to his keeping. The siphon might, possibly, be made to work both ways, Maeron had thought. Now, he tested the concept.
He felt the vision rather than saw it: the base of a crumbling stone keep upon a hill where the thiesm lay dying on a rock, Austin and the woman Corinna standing over him. The death had been in self-defense, Maeron guessed. Or an accident. He could feel their location, and would puzzle out the specifics soon enough. Yet the connection already had begun to slip his grasp, to push him away.
Maeron pushed back. The woman had masked herself and Austin from his tracing, as Rhianon had done before hiding the Draig Crystal. With that mask now bypassed via the siphon’s dissolving link, Maeron concentrated, felt the mask’s contours from within, and made a crack.
Though small enough to go unnoticed, it would render the mask useless against him.
SIXTEEN
“Someone’s coming.”
Austin pointed ac
ross the lawn in front of the keep, toward the outer wall gate. A flashlight shone from a figure near the squat, modern building that sold tickets in the daytime.
“They saw the gomlen light,” Corinna said.
“Or heard the yelling.” Austin cast about the long reeds around where Fefferman had fallen, still unable to find the crystal. “We’d better hurry.”
“Oh, really, you think we should hurry? They’re not friendly security keen to loan two trespassers a torch?” She crouched at the edge of the one-foot drop-off to the moat and dredged an arm through the water.
“How deep is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Boden?” Austin whispered. “Where are you?”
The dragon didn’t answer. The flashlight-bearer started toward them. Austin looked back toward the top of the keep in an effort to trace Fefferman’s fall and approximate how far his pack might have gone. He dashed to the side to look behind rocks and clusters of grass. Though the caliginous light fogged his vision, he soon surrendered to the idea that it was indeed in the water.
“If it broke and he’d gotten out, we’d know it, right?”
“Likely.” Corinna slipped into the water and grimaced as she crouched to fish. “Bloody hell this is cold! Are they close? Get in here and help me.”
Austin braced himself and waded into the moat up to his stomach. It soaked through his jeans to wrap his body in a shiver. He was too low to see the flashlight bearer. They couldn’t have more than a minute. Austin reached in up to his shoulders but felt at his fingertips only reeds, stone, and muck. Corinna whispered a curse nearby, having similar luck.
“Boden?” he tried again.
“I am here.”
Austin let go of a breath. “Where’s here? Can you tell?”
“Here is somewhere dark and murky. I believe I am in the moat. Beyond that, I do not know.”
Austin relayed it to Corinna. “He’s well hidden, anyway. We could leave, wait for the watchman or whoever to go away, then come back and keep looking.”
“Assuming it’s only a watchman. If it’s — Get down!”
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