Ran hugged him, and Sarn returned the embrace until no more tears fell.
“Why does Shade get to climb on her?” Ran slid off his lap and his knee broke the circle and shut off the projection.
“Because Shade’s gone.” Sarn wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Knowing Shade was with the Queen of All Trees made him feel better. The hurt remained, but at least his friend was at peace now.
A yawn caught Sarn off guard, reminding him it had been a long night. Gathering up his son, and Ran’s blanket and Bear too, Sarn stepped to the mattress. Surprise made him pause. There lay Miren still asleep and ignorant of the deal he'd struck or its price. But that could all wait. When the time was right, he would tell his brother about the university thing.
Ran fiddled with the catch at his throat, and Sarn’s cloak fell off his shoulders. But he dragged it over them as he laid down holding his son.
“Uncle Miren won’t unner—udder—” Ran whispered into Sarn’s right ear.
“Understand?”
“Yes, I mean no. He won't get it. So, it’s a secret,” Ran smiled, “our secret.”
Yes, it was, like so many others involving the magic. Guilt gnawed on Sarn as he stretched out, and his son pillowed his head on his chest. He had to stop adding to his collection of secrets before they crushed him.
As he lay there staring at a ceiling, Sarn realized he’d forgotten to ask the blind man how many demons had they summoned. Were there others walking around wearing human skins? He recalled the vision he’d had before Jerlo dismissed him. He should make sure nothing untoward stirred, for his son’s sake.
Sarn slid a hand off the mattress and lowered it until it touched the stone floor. Magic spread through the mountain in concentric green spheres. His map changed into a three-dimensional wire-frame as it plotted the icons of every person he scanned.
Still, there was no sign of Shade’s two remaining constructs. Both must have fled the mountain. Tomorrow he could figure out what to do about that.
Magic flowed in two directions. One streamed out of his hand enlarging and detailing his map while more magic welled up from the ground replenishing what he spent. The net cost of his reconnoiter was a piercing pain between his eyes. But Sarn had received his answer. Only human icons littered head map.
The monster had been nothing more than a hallucination brought on by stress. Sarn reeled in his tingling arm and rubbed it.
“Papa?” Ran’s head came into view. The boy had forgotten to ask his usual question.
“Mmm?”
“When you wake up—we’ll have an ad-ven-ture?”
“Yes, but I have to sleep for a while first."
Sarn froze as his magic confirmed he’d get more danger, more worry, more of what had driven him crazy for the last three days.
“Okay,” Ran grinned, then snuggled down hugging his bear. All was right in his son's little world.
But not for Sarn nor would it be for some time to come. Sleep finally gave him the Queen of All Trees’ last gift—sweet dreams filled with her light.
Chapter 34
Plying the River Nirthal’s waters, a longship bore the orange and gold sail of the Seekers. Aralore stood on its deck, quill in hand. Her rust-colored robes billowed in the freshening breeze. Above her veiled head, night collected its stars and furled its velvet darkness.
An acolyte held the map steady as she drew an orange star over Mount Eredren. She tapped the spot with her finger and smiled as she replayed the column of white magic shooting up into the stratosphere. The preceptor would commend her when he heard the news. A white mage was a rarity indeed. When she severed the mage’s head from his shoulders, she'd be one of a select few to take down such a powerhouse.
Excitement made her sword hand tingle as she laid it over the hilt protruding from her belt. She nodded for acolytes to remove the map and writing implements. They whisked them away so she could rest her hand on a crate three feet on a side. Inside it pulsed the answer to Shayari’s magical problem.
Movement drew her eye to the east, but she saw no sun sparkle presaging dawn. No, her gaze snagged on the Queen of All Trees as the repulsive creature ascended a mountainside. Its eyeless gaze fixed on Aralore in disapproval. She fought the urge to break open the crate and give the bitch plant queen a taste of the cure for magic. Instead, she patted the box. Soon she'd depose magic’s queen and lead the charge in the last war against magic.
To piss off the symbol of all that was wrong with Shayari, she belted out the Seeker’s anthem:
“Magic lies, on truth we rely.
In brotherhood, we survive.
For our sisters, we thrive.
For Shayari, we fight,
seek truth with our might,
protect humanity,
and destroy magery.
In truth, we’re born
To death, we’re sworn
to seek the truth.”
Aralore laughed as the radiant tyrant shook her branches in protest.
CURSE BREAKER: DARKENS
~
Into Darkness
Hello darkness my old friend,
I’ve come to speak to you again.
Under your cover, I bend,
a light-loving boy to your end.
My lord’s throne he’ll then ascend
and force the world to descend
into madness, my old friend—
so the maggots can attend
the putrid feast we will send.
—Prayer to the Dark One
“Will it keep until tomorrow? There were some troubling elements in his tale.”
Nolo’s question repeated like heartburn as Jerlo turned the page and stared at it. That conversation, which happened two weeks ago, kept playing in the back of Jerlo’s mind despite his best efforts to shut it out.
Some troubling elements in his tale, heh. When aren’t there? Jerlo scribbled his name on another form and set it aside. Sarn could only speak the truth as he knew it, but not all of it. That boy had been tailoring his speech since way before he’d become Jerlo’s problem. So that wild tale about a dark creature from another realm wreaking all manner of trouble was likely just the tip of an even larger, nastier problem. One the Kid would never reveal.
Jerlo sighed and turned the page. His eyes skimmed the courtesy report sent from Mount Racine’s head Ranger, but not a single word registered.
“Will it keep until tomorrow?” Nolo’s disembodied voice asked from the shadowed corners of his office.
Jerlo dropped his head into his hands and gave in. “It has to. A body and a book are unaccounted for,” he said, supplying the next line to his mute audience. Dragon statues ringed his desk. Their glowing crystal eyes reminded him of Sarn.
“I don’t know who helped Shade pick up a passenger. Or what that creature was or how they summoned it,” Sarn said two weeks ago on that goddamned bluff while staring into the rising dawn—a clear sign he was editing his tale for his superiors.
Jerlo rubbed his aching eyes as the conversation looped back to the beginning again.
“Will it keep until tomorrow?” Nolo’s voice echoed in the windowless office.
“You’re not here.” Jerlo laid his head down on a pile of papers in defeat. Maybe it was his conscience replaying the conversation to prod him into action. A body and a book are unaccounted for. A body and a book.
The body had belonged to a demon-ridden youngster named Shade, and the book likely contained spells for summoning Shade’s vanquished rider. Neither were found despite a thorough search of the enchanted forest. What did his conscience expect him to do about that? Commanding Mount Eredren’s contingent of Rangers was his job not finding lost articles, even if they were magically significant.
“Are you certain it can wait?”
Jerlo started. This time the voice spoke not from memory but the doorway. His second in command, Nolo, regarded him with worried eyes.
“Which problem are we talking about? Please tell me Sarn’s staying ou
t of trouble.”
“He is.” Nolo didn’t say ‘for now,’ but his tone implied it. His second shifted his weight from foot to foot, and for a moment, he doubled.
Jerlo blinked. Two Nolos now crowded the doorway. One was a man of middle-thirties with skin the color of rich earth wearing the forest green uniform of the Rangers and the other was a black smudge holding a bow and a full quiver. Death’s Marksman gave Jerlo a nod then faded into Nolo’s shadow. Nolo shook himself, and the beads at the ends of his braids clicked together.
“You creep me out when you go all Black Ranger like that.” Jerlo suppressed a shudder.
“I don’t know why it keeps coming out. For years I’ve barely felt its touch, but lately, the black quiver is always at my back, waiting.”
“I bring out the best in everyone,” Jerlo muttered as he leaned back in his chair.
“Very funny, but off topic.”
“How is it out there? All quiet on the enchanted forest front?”
“Yes, too quiet after the mayhem of two weeks’ ago.” Nolo searched for a chair then gave up.
Jerlo sat on the largest, most comfortable chair and the spare boasted a pile of books about an order of magic-hating monks called the Seekers. Always best to know your enemy before he comes a-knocking. That was Jerlo’s motto even if legends and rumors made up most of his intel.
Nolo leaned against the lintel and yawned. “Still no sign of the body or the book, though the former must have decomposed or been buried by now. Nothing discarded in the enchanted forest lasts for long.”
“I’d feel better if we had proof one way or the other.”
“What if there are more of those things running around out there? Shouldn’t we look for them?”
“That’s what I’ve been doing.” Jerlo lifted a book from the top of the stack and tossed it to his second.
“What’s this?” Nolo caught the book and cracked it open, grimacing at the smell and the grotesque imagery.
“A book about demons written by a monk five hundred years ago. It’s the closest match I can find to the horned thing the Kid described.”
“Are there more of them running around?”
“I don’t know.” Jerlo threw up his hands, but he intended to find out. His continued sanity might depend on it. “Is there anything else I need to deal with?”
“No, tonight’s watch was a quiet one. I had the Kid straighten up the training room. He wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t argue. It’s not like him to acquiesce like that. He’s been different since that thing went down.”
“Different how?” Jerlo sat up straight in his chair.
“Less argumentative and more distracted—it’s like the bulk of his attention is focused elsewhere on something I can’t see. I don’t like it.” Nolo’s grip on the book tightened until his knuckles paled.
Neither did Jerlo, but the conversation died, and the ‘M-word’ echoed in the silence. It was a subject neither would broach because the Kid might be the only living mage left thanks to the Seekers. What a frightening thought that was and one he and his second tried hard to ignore.
Nolo backed away from the dreaded ‘M-word’ until his back touched the door. He was god-touched by an aspect of Death, but not a mage. What he did wasn’t magic. It was a skill with deadly consequences.
“We all grieve in our own ways. Maybe that’s all it is. He said he knew Shade for years before that worthy’s death.” Nolo scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Go rest. I need you sharp tonight. And I should finish some paperwork.” Jerlo gave the never-ending pile a glum look. It would take an ocean of ink and years to make a dent in it.
“May I hold onto this?” Nolo held up the book on demonology, and the moaning face etched into its cover stared at Jerlo with hollow, eyeless pits.
“If you’re seeking a little light reading try the Shayarin legal code. I guarantee you’ll pass out before the end of chapter one. But that tome in your hands is likely to induce nightmares.”
“If you don’t need it, I’d like to give it a read to see what we’re up against. There could be more of those things.”
“Go for it, just don’t blame me if you wake up screaming from night terrors.”
“I won’t. You should try to get some rest too.”
Jerlo waved off his second’s concern, and his gaze landed on a half-finished letter. What had he meant to write? Not anything important or he’d remember.
“Have a good morning.” Nolo went out and closed the door.
Heh, a good morning would bring answers. So far this one’s brought only questions. Jerlo set the letter aside and leaned back in his chair. Outside his windowless office, the sun was preparing to ascend to its throne. Even though he couldn’t see it, he felt its rise and imagined its first pink rays striking Mount Eredren’s craggy face. Through its thick stone walls, that light pushed into his body warming his bones. Jerlo laced his fingers together over his flat stomach and closed his eyes.
Something had niggled at Jerlo before Nolo entered. Now he groped after it, but the thought fled through the holes in his mind. He gave chase. As he wrestled it into submission, his vision grew wavy, shading to gray then green as the view steadied. He now peered out of the eyes of a fourteen-year-old mage-gifted child. It was Sarn’s memory, stolen during a strange interview—by accident, of course, Jerlo was no thief. It had become part of the flotsam and jetsam cluttering his mind until something had reminded him of it.
Every element was the same as the last time he’d viewed this memory. Hadrovel's miserable eye looked through a chink in a stone wall—not a welcome sight.
“I’ll pull you out when they’re gone. Be silent as sleeping stone,” said the psycho Orphan Master as he pushed a hand through the hole. But he and Sarn—they dodged it. And the sudden movement made them dizzy, so they slid down the wall into a puddle of elbows and knees.
Jerlo froze the memory and stepped outside of Sarn’s body and the windowless cell imprisoning the Kid. There were the thirteen cairns. Inside their ring, a forest of white candles formed a thirteen-pointed star circumscribed by a circle. The white-clad sacrifice—Shade, was it? —bent to light their wicks.
Jerlo turned, scanning the candle-lit cave. Where are you Hadrovel? What part did you play in this monstrous endeavor?
But this had already happened, and the viewpoint was fixed on what Sarn could see through a chink in his cell. All else was flickering shadows on stone.
Thirteen black-robed people chanted as they marched in. Deep cowls swallowed their faces leaving their identities a mystery he could not probe. Was one of them Hadrovel? Was the psycho Orphan Master their ringleader? Was Shade the recipient of the first demon this group of nutcases summoned or the thirteenth?
Jerlo rewound the memory. Hadrovel’s black eye peered in. Was there a wicked gleam in its depths? Was the psycho’s voice saccharine against the grating chant? Or was constantly replaying the scene somehow changing it? Jerlo pressed his thumbs into his eyes. Could his perceptions color someone else’s memory?
It was possible. Jerlo had excised this memory two weeks ago through an accident. One he had not dared to repeat.
“I’ll pull you out when they’re gone. Be silent as sleeping stone,” said the psycho Orphan Master in the memory.
‘Be as silent as sleeping stone.’ The phrase looped through Jerlo’s mind as he leaned over and rifled through the books stacked on the chair beside his desk. One of them had referenced ‘sleeping stones.’ But which one?
Twelve tomes stared back at him. Most were histories he’d skimmed for accounts of the Seekers and anything that might be demonic activity. The thirteenth, he’d lent to Nolo. Discomfited by the eerie repetition of the number thirteen, Jerlo pushed up from his chair. There was one way to find out what role Hadrovel had played in the demon summoning thing.
Jerlo strode through half-deserted tunnels as the bells of Mount Eredren struck five. Servants hustled by carrying trays of food and ewers of water. St
eam curled up from a passing server pushing a cart. Its covered dishes reflected the sprawling lumir mosaic overhead that lit their way.
I was a fool to put off this meeting. Jerlo rapped his fist against the wide banister of the Grand Stair looping between ornate levels. His hands were small for a man of exactly five-feet but proportional to his small stature and quite capable of dealing damage when needed.
A dozen stave-wielding statues turned their heads as he strode by. Each gleaming crystal eye hurled an accusation at him. Jerlo blinked, and they faced forward again. He rubbed his eyes, and his bushy brows tickled his fingers. Exhaustion mauled him. Lights twinkled in the black spangled tide reaching out for him, but he shoved the need to sleep down. I won’t rest until I’ve faced that monster and extracted some much-needed answers. Stepping off the stairs, he hurried to an office and knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” asked a woman.
Jerlo didn’t recognize her voice. Where was Lord Olav? This was his office. Maybe he’d hired a secretary since his last visit. Nobles did such things all the time. Their staff tended to change with their moods.
“Jerlo, the commander of the Rangers.”
The door swung in framing a middle-aged woman clad in purple.
“Is Lord Olav Nalshira in?” Jerlo tried to see past the handsome woman, but her curvy body blocked the door. In her heeled sandals, she stood a half-foot taller than him, putting her ample bust at eye level.
She shook her head. Wisps of black hair escaped her chignon and stirred in the Mountain’s quiet breathing. “No, he’s in the capital with his cousin, the Lord of the Mountain. They’re not due back until the summer session closes. Is there something I can help you with?”
“That depends on whether you have a key to the oubliette.”
Her face blanched and she clutched her throat. “Why would you want to go to that godforsaken place?”
“There’s someone there I need to talk to.”
Curse Breaker Omnibus Page 47