by R J Hanson
The mage, having watched Silas most of the morning, was stunned when he watched the young herbalist quaff the poison from the vial. The act was so unexpected that, for a moment, his concentration on the conjured weapon faltered. For a moment, a single moment, the collection of sharp stones and lava-glass lost its shape and drifted apart.
Silas rushed forward, diving headfirst to trigger the ring of protective fire. As his face crossed the vertical plane of protection, the air was magically transformed into bursts of flame all around him. His flesh was instantly alight with a pain that sought to steal all his concentration. However, Silas, no longer of House Morosse, was disciplined in the halls of torture. He spewed the poison, poison he’d managed to hold in his mouth ‘til now, forth. He sprayed a mist of the flower-based fluid, a natural oil, into the face of the mage.
The conjured sword slammed together with resounding force and slapped Silas far to the side. Silas struck the ground with a thud. He was up on his knees immediately, running his fingers down his own throat. The vomiting was a hacking, unsatisfying act that left his stomach cramping, and his eyes bleary with tears. Yet, he could still see well enough to watch the oil of the poison catch fire and set the mage’s face ablaze, forcing poisoned smoke into the spell caster’s nostrils.
Shezmu was free! He was sailing through the clouds of the night skyrocketing toward a gleaming mountaintop of green jewels. But why had he chosen this way? Shezmu tried to turn, but horrible realization seized his heart. He was not flying of his own accord. He was falling. Wingless, flightless, he was falling toward that green glow. He focused his considerable will and, with all his effort, managed a sharp turn at a right angle to the side. His pleased smile fell away when he saw that the green jewel was lexxmar and had moved into his path. It was as if he were trapped in a maze with walls and turns that he could not see. He was being herded inexorably to his doom.
Yet, if he’d escaped… The fog of deception cleared before Shezmu at once, and he found himself yet again on the stone table of Silas’s mind-room. The lexxmar manacles shifted to slithering snakes of green that writhed over his body with every move he attempted, every shapeshift he tried.
I want information, echoed from everywhere around him with the roar of terrible command.
Silas summoned the scimitar, Dreg Zylche. The absolute cold of the cursed blade pushed away the lesser flames of the weaker magic with ease. Silas stepped through the final wardings of protection to look upon the two mages that had been concealed within. One was clearly dead. Whether it was from having his face set on fire or from inhaling the poisonous smoke, Silas couldn’t be sure. Not without a complete autopsy, anyway. The other, the female, still struggled against Dru’s hold and was slumped on the ground next to her fallen companion.
Silas smiled a warm, caring smile and extended a hand to help her up from the ground.
“I want information,” Silas said.
It might have been the desperation of her circumstances or just the reflexive act of someone raised in a civil society, but she accepted Silas’s offered hand. He jerked her from the ground while at the same time forcing his head forward sharply. He struck her nose with his iron-hard forehead and smiled as blood from her nose sprayed down over his face.
Chapter IV
The Symbol of Life
Posing as something he was not had never come easily or naturally to Dunewell. He had worked with inquisitors and watchmen who had the talent for it. Jonas had arranged things so that Dunewell’s part would be easy to play. The public display of disrespect set the tone. Dunewell’s genuine anger, even if it stemmed from something else entirely, completed the ruse.
Dunewell had been in the tavern for little more than an hour when a man, a blacksmith by the look of him, approached his table. He was of common blood and appeared to be in his late thirties with dirty blond hair and brown eyes. He didn’t wear his blacksmith’s apron, but Dunewell could easily discern its outline and pattern where the man’s clothes were less dirty. He was thin, but Dunewell could see the strength of his hands and forearms.
He walked with a distinct limp. It could have been from a number of injuries, but Dunewell intuited it to be the result of long years of wearing leg irons. There were privately held salt mines north and west of Ivantis, but Dunewell knew there was a prison labor camp at a salt mine to the southeast as well. Lethanor was stretched thin for soldiers, and the labor camps relied on terrain and leg irons to compensate for the lack of guards and keymen.
“May I sit?” the man asked.
Dunewell, working hard to play the part of the spoiled aristocrat, shrugged indifferently.
“I’m Lincon,” the man, likely the contact he was looking for, said. “If I may ask, what does a wealthy young man like yourself have to be so down-trodden about?”
Young man? Dunewell found it interesting how those of common blood always assumed age based on appearance. Great Men were rare, and rarer still in this part of Lethanor, yet Dunewell had the size and build that should have made his race obvious. It was likely Dunewell was at least a decade older than Lincon.
“That man I came to town with, he’s a Steward,” Dunewell said. “I don’t know if you’ve dealt with many Stewards in your time, but they have almost the same clout as nobility. I am wealthy, yet I wear the unseen chains of a slave because of my oath.”
So far, no lies told. Yet, Dunewell knew he would have to be careful.
“My dear old Pa’ used to say coin could solve any problem,” Lincon said as his eye drifted to the large purse on Dunewell’s belt.
“If there were a way, I’d pay a large sum to be able to marry the woman I love,” Dunewell said, still managing to tell the absolute truth. “If there were a way.”
“I know someone who could make that happen for you,” Lincon said. “If you have five hundred gold coins, he could make it happen.”
“Five hundred coins in gold?” Dunewell asked.
“Keep your voice down, lad,” Lincon admonished. “Yes, solving a problem like yours, a problem with a Steward, is costly.”
“I could pay you three hundred now, and two hundred when… when the problem is solved,” Dunewell said.
“If there’s to be risk in payment, then it would have to be three hundred now and three hundred once it’s done.”
“You have a deal,” Dunewell said.
Dunewell reached for his coin purse but was stopped by a quick jerk of Lincon’s head.
“Not here,” Lincon said. “I have a shop that’s across the square. You’ll know it by the orange brick of the kiln. After I leave, you wait here one hour and then come to the shop.”
Dunewell nodded, and Lincon rose and went to the bar. He ordered another ale, quaffed it, and walked out of the tavern and into the night air of the street.
Dunewell’s first instinct was to relay a message to Jonas, but he resisted that urge. A message passed now might be seen and disrupt all their plans. So, he waited. The hour slid past slowly. Dunewell had spent much time like this, waiting for the danger. He had waited at the head of a cavalry column for the signal to charge into battle. He had waited in the dark corner of an alley for an assassin to make his move. He had waited in the rocks of a vampire’s lair watching for the creature to return from feeding. He had waited in a glade for a witch to come and gather herbs by the moonlight. Now, Dunewell the Silver Helm, Dunewell the Sword Bearer and no longer Dunewell the King’s Inquisitor, waited to hire an assassin.
When he judged that the hour had passed, Dunewell rose, paid for his drink that still sat on the table untouched, and left. He spotted the smith’s shop easily enough. Even in the chancy torchlight of Ivantis, he could see the orange bricks of the kiln.
The only light from within was the glow of the coals in the kiln. Dunewell found the door to the wooden plank shop unlocked. As Dunewell closed the door behind him, the light from a lantern was turned up in a back room. Dunewell stepped carefully through the main room, navigating by the light from the kiln. When he arrived at the d
oor, he saw Lincon sitting at a table on the other side of the room facing him with the lantern in the center of the table. Lincon gestured to a chair that was positioned with its back to the door.
This was another act that went against Dunewell’s training, yet this must be done. Dunewell swept the inner room with his eyes and sat down.
“You have the coin?” Lincon asked.
“Yes,” Dunewell said and pulled his purse from his waist.
Dunewell counted out three hundred gold coins. As Dunewell counted them out, Lincon began taking coins from the stacks to make his own count. Lincon had a habit of dropping the coins one on top of another that made irritatingly loud clinking sounds. Dunewell recognized the camouflage for what it was, but too late.
The sounds of the coins were designed to cover the sound of the assassin’s approach. It was perhaps a signal as well. Dunewell sprang from his seat but not before a blade slipped between the ribs of his back and into his right lung. Whitburn cried out in pain from within his mind, and Dunewell could feel his strength flowing out of his limbs and into the blade. It was only an instant before Dunewell had risen and turned to face his attacker, but in that instant, the blade, a cursed weapon of some sort, had nearly killed him and Whitburn.
The assassin held the weapon, a broad-bladed shortsword, low to his side, and smiled. Dunewell could barely see the features of his face through the concealment of the assassin’s hood but could make out that he was a small man with a cleanly shaved jawline.
“You’re a strong one,” the assassin said. “Every man I’ve stabbed with this blade was dead almost instantly, and that wound got clean into your lung.”
Dunewell slouched against the wall struggling to keep his feet under him. He had grunted his way through many wounds, even one or two as severe as this, but nothing in his life had weakened him, had drained him, as this one had. The blade was out of him and across the room, yet it still seemed to be leaching away his strength, his very essence, and will. In his last battle with Silas, Dunewell had been able to call upon the power of Whitburn to achieve great feats. Now that power waned and was taxed to its limits just to keep him standing.
“How come he’s not dead yet, Cyril?” Lincon whispered from the corner of the room where he’d sought refuge.
“This one’s strong,” Cyril said, still smiling. “I told you he was a Kingsman. I can smell ‘em. I can smell the self-righteousness on ‘em.”
Dunewell struggled to speak, struggled to stand, struggled to escape the pain that flushed throughout his body unabated.
“What are we gonna do?” Lincon asked. “If he’s a Kingsman, that means they’re on to us.”
This drew Cyril’s attention away from Dunewell. As he turned toward his accomplice, Dunewell could see a sickly light pulsing within red veins that traced throughout the cursed sword the assassin carried. Dunewell noticed that it pulsed in time with his own heart.
“On to us, you say?” Cyril asked Lincon. “Not us, good friend. On to you.”
Lincon’s face screwed up into a look of complete confusion. He was still wearing the expression when Cyril plunged his dark blade into Lincon’s belly. Dunewell watched as the cursed weapon appeared to drink in all Lincon’s life-force. In seconds Lincon’s body collapsed in on itself, his eyes sank into his skull, and the skin of his face was drawn taut over his narrow cheekbones.
Cyril turned to Dunewell and smiled.
“You really are making a fight of it, aren’t you,” Cyril observed. “Between your strength and the little bit from Lincon here, I could strike down a dragon with my next blow.”
“Why…” Dunewell began but found his throat viciously dry.
“Sorry,” Cyril said, still smiling. “You’ll have to speak up.”
Cyril walked closer to Dunewell; each of his steps carried a light spring as though he could barely contain his excitement. He was clearly enjoying his moment of complete superiority over this Kingsman.
“Why the templar?” Dunewell finally managed.
“You’re dying, and still, your mind is on your mission,” Cyril said. “You are a determined one, aren’t you? Very well. You’ll be disappointed, though. No political intrigue in this sad tale. Just the usual. You see, that particular templar had a habit of forgetting his vows of chastity when it came to Lord Clavess’s pretty wife. Sad tale, but a common one.”
Dunewell, his knees bent and head and body propped against the wall, tried to push himself up from his crouch. As he did so, splinters from the wooden planks of the wall tore into the flesh of his face. Cyril crept closer and leaned down so that their noses were nearly touching. He did, however, keep his short black blade pointed at Dunewell and close.
“You keep fighting,” Cyril said. “You’re a good soldier, you are. You keep fighting and feeding my sword here.”
But he wasn’t a soldier anymore. He wasn’t anything anymore. He wasn’t a respected captain on the front. He wasn’t an inquisitor. He wasn’t his brother’s keeper.
I did not claw my way from the place of souls into Bolvii’s service to listen to you whimper! Whitburn yelled from within him. You are a Silver Helm! You are a Lord of Order!
“I am Lord…,” Dunewell breathed. “I am…”
“Sorry, lad,” Cyril said. “Didn’t catch that. You tellin’ me you’re a lord?”
Cyril began to laugh. Dunewell, the product of decades of training and countless battles, summoned his will. It fled from him, drained from him, almost as fast as he called it forth. Almost.
Dunewell’s hand shot forth and caught Cyril’s right wrist. With a quick twist and pull, the flat of the cursed blade was against his forearm. Dunewell dropped his considerable weight upon it and forced it, Cyril’s hand still gripping the pommel, down and into the assassin’s foot.
The burst of action left Dunewell helpless, and he collapsed to the floor. Next to him, Cyril screamed.
The broad blade had entered the top of Cyril’s boot about an inch from the bend of the ankle and had all but severed the foot. Cyril threw himself back from the blade, which was driven firmly into the floorboards, tearing away the remainder of his foot in the process. He crashed into the table and the lantern that sat upon it, knocking both flying. Splashed with lamp oil, Cyril staggered from the room, trying to get away from the weapon, his weapon, that was stealing his life.
Dunewell couldn’t turn to watch him but could imagine what was happening in the main room of the shop. Dunewell saw the bright flash and heard the rush of flames as something caught fire. He heard Cyril’s screams reach even higher notes for a few moments and then stop altogether. Cyril had stumbled into the coals of the kiln and burned to death. As smoke began to fill the small shop, Dunewell closed his eyes, taking some comfort in knowing he had taken his ambushers with him.
“Thank you,” Jonas said. “My House owes you a great debt.”
“No thanks are necessary,” Lady Belyska said. She tried to give Dunewell a cursory glance, yet her eyes lingered on him. “I fear I may have only prolonged the inevitable.”
“How did you find him?” Jonas asked.
Jonas did not miss the subtle change in her expression when she looked upon Dunewell. Dunewell was handsome, even in his current condition. Yet, Jonas thought there was more to it. Jonas had spent decades hunting prey that camouflaged themselves not with colors and native foliage, but with lies and hidden thoughts. She was attracted to Dunewell, but she was curious about him… and somehow afraid of him as well.
“I saw the fire,” Lady Belyska said. “I ran inside and could hear him coughing from the back room. I found him on the floor, too weak to move on his own.”
Lady Belyska was a Great Woman and, judging by her armor and tunic, a Paladin of Silvor. She had chestnut hair and eyes the bright green of young wheat. Jonas decided she was beautiful, in her own way. She was not dainty nor demure. She was strong, confident, and a liar. Jonas didn’t know why she would lie to him about how she found Dunewell, but he was confident that s
he had.
“The bleeding hasn’t stopped,” she continued. “It’s slowed some, but it should have clotted by now. I’ve only ever seen this kind of wound once before.”
“Muerso blade,” Jonas said. “Forged of a black heart in the repugnance of the UnMaker. I’ve never seen anyone survive a scratch from one, much less a punctured lung.”
“I’ve prayed over him,” she said. “But it isn’t enough.”
“I hope you have a suggestion,” Jonas said.
“I do,” Lady Belyska said. “But Fate pulls me in two different directions. I was bound for the mountains to the south to support a group hunting a witch there. But I think he needs fresh, flowing water. The closest source like that is the river Whynne which is over two hundred and fifty leagues to the west and runs in the shadow of the plateau.”
“What about the Vessen to the east?” Jonas asked. “That river is much closer.”
“It dies out into a swamp at its southern end,” Lady Belyska said. “I don’t think it would serve.”
“I haven’t had much luck asking for help from the church,” Jonas said flatly. “However, I need yours now. Witches I can handle by the dozens. Wounds like this are beyond me. Do you have, or can you get an Ethylwayne?”
The surprise was easy to read on her face. Jonas didn’t know if she was taken aback by what she likely considered an unsubstantiated boast about the witches, he was posing as a Steward after all, or if it was his unexpected knowledge of the secret mounts of the churches.
Ethylwaynes were a breed of horse as rare as they were remarkable. Their origins owed to Ether, the stalking horse of Silvor, the Great Huntsman himself. Ages ago, Ether was allowed to run loose on the plains of Stratvs and, over time, gathered a herd of his own. The product of that herd was the Ethylwayne, a breed of horse capable of incredible feats of speed, strength, and short bursts of flight. They were also said to be just as intelligent as any sorcerer or dragon.
Ethylwaynes could not be bred in captivity, not that they could be captured anyway. On occasion one would separate from their herd, there were many speculations, but no one knew precisely why, and would choose a person to serve. Those chosen were, to Jonas’s knowledge, always paladins or templars of unshakable faith and virtue.