Curse Breaker Omnibus

by Melinda Kucsera

  Thank Fate they only had five hundred more feet to cover before this gallery ended in a tangle of tunnels. Jersten’s icon still followed them, but he’d ditch the miner and his latest get rich quick scheme at the next intersection.

  “When did you play with magic?”

  Shouts of agreement from the growing crowd interrupted the silence. His magic shot warnings at him, but Sarn ignored them.

  “Ran, answer me.”

  Ran played coy as they wove through an increasing throng. “Why?”

  “Because it’s important,” and the idea of a four-year-old playing with magic was frightening. What if his son was prone to blackouts? Sarn still had no idea what caused them, other than the obvious, fooling around with magic.

  Ran trod on his boot, but the child weighed almost nothing so Sarn barely felt it. Though he felt his son’s shrug when Ran bumped his thigh again.

  “When you sleep, it wants to play. But only sometimes,” Ran finally admitted.

  Lovely, now I must cross sleep off my to-do list. Sarn shook his head, then stared at his map.

  Dirk’s icon was gone and so was the back half of this cavern. It ended in a gray blur on his map instead of the three-way intersection that should be there. What the hell was wrong with his map?

  Sarn slowed. Now more than ever, he wished he dared open his eyes, but there were still too many people around. He couldn't risk it.

  “Ran, what do you see?”

  “Lots of people, but none of them look bad. Are they bad? Did we miss the bad guys?”

  “I don't think we missed them. Do you see anything else?”

  A shoulder banged into Sarn’s sternum as a woman edged past him. Her trailing hand felt for a belt pouch until his magic zapped her hand away. She cried out then was swallowed by the crowd.

  “Just a lot of caves and some tunnels, why? Who was that guy you were talking to? He was rude. I don't like him.”

  “No one special,” and with luck, someone Sarn could avoid dealing with until Jersten forgot about his latest scheme. Let that be soon. “Did you say there's a tunnel?”

  “Yes, there’s three of them. All the people are taking the right one with the pretty green lights. But we’re not going that way, are we?” Ran sounded glum, but his report jived with what Sarn remembered about that junction.

  The rightmost tunnel led to another center of habitation, but it wasn’t as grand as the one they’d just left. The green lumir striping that tunnel called to him. It glowed the same green as his eyes, and he'd always had a special affinity for it.

  “What makes you say that?” Sarn asked as he fought its pull.

  “Because the magic's pointing to the middle one where all the shadows are.”

  “Make way! Fresh meat coming through. On the hoof, on the paw, whatever you prefer, I'll set it sizzling. Fresh meat. Make way for fresh meat carved right off the bone!”

  Ran bumped into Sarn’s leg as he scrambled out of the hawker's path. Before he could ask for some, Sarn shook his head.

  “No, rat meat makes you sick.” And his son couldn't be hungry already. Didn't they just raid that party?

  “Oh, I forgot. I hope those rats aren't Rat Woman’s.”

  “I don't think they are. You said the magic wants us to take the middle tunnel?”

  Sarn wrecked his brain but couldn't recall what was over there. This junction was so heavily trafficked, he usually went out of his way to avoid it. No doubt the orange arrow slicing through the gray blur obscuring his head map pointed to that middle tunnel. If I take it, will I live to regret it?

  “Is that where the bad people are?”

  “I think so. And the left one?”

  “I don't like that one either. It's too dark. Can we go home now? I don't want to follow bad people around anymore.” Ran tugged Sarn to the right. Perhaps the green lumir was calling to him too.

  Sarn paused in front of the middle tunnel. Fewer people were venturing down it. Was it wise to take his son beyond this point? What if they also disappeared? His gut said to take it.

  Uncertainty gripped Sarn with icy hands, and it tempted him to scout ahead with magic. One touch could quell the fear churning in his stomach and cut through whatever was obscuring his map. But did he dare let his magic run free?

  Dirk rounded the last bend in this rat’s warren. The planks creaked as he crossed a rail-less bridge spanning the yawning maw of a long-abandoned mine—one of dozens still waiting for those ancient miners to return. The Litherians had been determined to dig up Shayari’s bones and steal her treasures. Maybe they were still down there burrowing to the center of the world.

  Torchlight picked out the remains of crushed miners forcing Dirk to slow. Some of those skeletons looked chillingly human. Of course, the Litherians had left no representations of what they had looked like in life, and no ancient bard had bothered to record their physical characteristics in song. They must have been truly hideous.

  More than likely the owners of these bones were opportunistic fellows like him, and the thought made Dirk's blood run cold. Rats must have picked their gleaming bones clean. God knew there were enough of that vermin down here.

  The bridge creaked and swayed, throwing off his balance. The bridge will hold me up. Just one more man-length—you can do it. The bridge will—

  Dirk stepped onto solid ground. But his relief was short-lived as a breath of foul air blasted past him, and he rocked back on his heels. The ground raced away under his feet as the lumir stone dropped from his hand and shattered. Shards mushroomed out in slow motion, their glow dying as they fell. Darkness blanketed Dirk, cold, fetid, and reeking of death.

  The ground stilled, and the air turned sharp as a winter morn and icy. Voices broke the silence. Dirk headed for them, and the orange glow flickering amid a sea of black, at a dead run.

  “Have you got it yet?” Dirk stared at Villar as he skidded to a halt. Dirk waited, but Villar didn't reply.

  A vein throbbed in his forehead. He had done all this for them, but could they do the one thing he’d tasked them with? In fact, where were the rest of his friends? Had Rags, Cris and Gore knocked off for a drink? Why weren’t they chipping away at—

  Why was the floor so shiny? Dirk toed it disconcerted by the reflected torchlight. The discarded brand lay somewhere inside that pit. Dirk extended a hand toward its cheery glow but stopped when Villar barked a harsh laugh.

  Anger rescued Villar from fear. He was at the end of his rope and maybe his sanity too. Whispers urged Villar to ignore all that had happened before. But how could he when deep in the marrow of his bones, he knew what he’d seen—evidence of the occult at work. It had taken his friends, and now it would take him and Dirk too.

  Because this is how all cons end, not in a bloodbath, but in darkness and madness. Would he have to face all those he’d helped wrong?

  Oh, God, please no, I can’t bear to see their faces. But he might have to. Wasn’t penance one of the tenants of that triune God the new clerics were all afire for? Lord, get me out of here, and I will atone in my own away. Just don’t send me to hell.

  Villar knew that’s what he was staring at—Hell was the Ægeldar, the place that had swallowed the Litherians. Even their vaunted magic couldn’t save them. What hope did he have of escaping?

  Dirk was shouting at him. When was their conniving leader not? But Villar had to focus. If he lost his grip on reality, he would fall into that endless darkness and never come out.

  “Of course, I haven’t got it. What do you think I am a miracle worker?” Villar spun to face Dirk. Fear and anger chased themselves around his face. Anger won. “Do you even know what that is?” Villar pointed to a hole that was at least a half mile across.

  As Dirk’s eyes followed his shaking finger, his friend fell under the same spell that had addled Ragnes and Gore. At least they were with Cris, the most level-headed of their crew. If anyone could save them, Cris could.

  Well, he wasn’t going to add to Cris’ burden—no way.
So Villar backed away from the pit. Dirk passed him, and all his hopes fell with his friend’s calculating gaze.

  At least a hundred jagged stones ringed the mandible-shaped aperture. It exerted a fell pull on Dirk as he approached its edge. Stygian darkness cloaked its depths, and not even the fitful torchlight shining from within the pit shed any light on that terrible hole. His imagination insisted that shaft drilled down to the center of the earth. And it might. By all accounts, the Litherians were crazy enough to attempt such a thing.

  But that didn’t explain why Villar was up here and the rest of their crew was down there where the so-called ‘black lumir’ waited. “What are you doing up here? Why aren’t you chipping away at the rock down there? There’s got to be some black rocks we can pass off as black lumir and sell, but it’s not up here.”

  “Are you crazy? That’s the fecking nadir. No way in hell am I going down there! There might be dragons. What? There might be.” Villar shuddered and backed further away from that disturbing abyss.

  “There aren’t any dragons down there or anywhere in Shayari.” Dirk shook his head in disgust. “You’re a fool if you believe that.”

  “He’s right,” a male voice said. Was that Cris’ steady voice offering a shred of calm in this insanity? “The age of the gods fell to the age of dragons and that age fell to the age of the magic kind which in turn—”

  Dirk chopped a hand through the gloom cutting the man off. “—Fell to mankind, which is the age we are living in. Thanks for the history lesson, but it’s irrelevant.”

  The hooded man strolling along the edge of the pit smiled at the interruption. When did Cris start wearing a hood?

  “We still need that damned gem. Someone must go down there and pry it loose. Probably more than one of us since you spent so much time lollygagging. Time you should have spent finding a damned rock we can sell that witch.” Dirk glared at the hooded man, but he was gone. So, Dirk turned his glare on Villar. “And where are Ragnes, Cris, and Gore?”

  Villar pointed to the pit and his eyes sparkled with incipient madness. “Down there. They went down into the pit.”

  “Well, that’s progress. How long have they been down there?”

  “I don’t know. This place is queer. Time doesn’t pass here. It just sits and waits and calcifies. And something slagged this place. You noticed that, right?” Villar’s voice rose a full octave as he squatted and hammered a meaty fist against the ground. A thin silver band around his wrist clicked on the clear stone.

  A chime reverberated sending stars caroming through the crystal against a backdrop of reflective silver. As the echoes died away, the lights flickered out leaving a deeper gloom in their absence.

  “It’s clear lumir, but it won't stay lit. I think something's draining its light.”

  “That's crazy talk,” Dirk snapped.

  “Not if there’s really black lumir down there.” Villar pointed at the pit and broke into hysterical laughter. “And you want to give it to a psycho zealot. Do you know what she’ll do with it?”

  “No, nor do I care, and you shouldn’t either.”

  “Why not? Oh, wait, I forgot. Because everything's always someone else’s problem never yours even if you caused it.” Villar glared at Dirk and Beku's name hung between them. So, did a twenty-six-year-old mistake that had led to her demise.

  Dirk cleared his throat and let that painful subject lie. “What's gotten into you? We’re here to do one thing. Let's get on with it and leave the philosophizing for another day. How thick do you think this is?” Dirk tapped his foot on the crystal eliciting a smaller cascade of twinkling lights than before. They faded the instant he stopped tapping.

  But the brief light show illuminated the edge of the pit, and Dirk shuffled away from that terrible maw. “Well? Did you try chiseling through it? There might be some of those black rocks underneath.”

  When he’d put several man-lengths between him and the chasm, Dirk squatted and ran his hand over the cold slab of crystal. “This wasn’t here when Gore and I visited last week.”

  “That’s what Gore said before he got all funny. He didn’t think this was the same place.”

  “What do you mean?” Sweat trickled down Dirk’s neck, but it was quickly dried by the cool, arid air here. Everywhere else under Mount Eredren was damp but not here. This place sucked up moisture. A momentary fear flashed through Dirk, but he squashed it. Just focus on the con, and just the con, nothing else matters.

  “What I said before. This is the fecking nadir—the goddamned Ægeldar!” Villar shuddered.

  The Ægeldar, the word struck Dirk rattling him with its cruel sound, and the associations its name recalled. A whole lot of childish nonsense spouted inside his skull until a voice silenced his jabbering inner child.

  “Don’t be afraid. Think of gold,” whispered a voice in his ear, and those lovely coins slid down Dirk’s sleeve into the palm he cupped to catch them. Their weight comforted him.

  Another coin fell, bypassing Dirk’s hand. It thudded on the ground. He bent to retrieve it, but it rolled toward the rim of that endless chasm. He chased it, but it shot off the edge and disappeared.

  “Why are we working for that psycho bitch?”

  “Because her gold spends the same as everyone else’s.”

  Dirk removed a coin from the orange purse the Seeker had given him for the last stone. After examining it, he tossed it to Villar. It caught the guttering torchlight and shined silver.

  Villar, the distrustful lout, bit the coin before nodding his thanks and pocketing it. As if Dirk would short him. They were brothers with different mothers, united by their orphaned upbringing as wards of Mount Eredren. There was no firmer bond than that save blood. Since none of them had any relatives, they were spared that stipulation.

  “We should tell her where to find Sarn—for a fee of course—and be done with her and her psychodrama.” Villar nodded in the general direction of the Foundlings.

  “Oh, no, I have plans for Sarn, and they don’t involve the Seekers. Besides, I doubt those zealots would pay for that kind of information when they could torture it out of us for free.”

  “I bet that bitch would enjoy it too. She’s probably got the perfect knife for carving answers out of decent folk.” Villar shuddered again.

  Dirk bounced a coin on his hand and caught it. “Oh, no, he’s worth more alive. We’ll take him when I’ve found the right buyer.”

  “So, he stays free until then?”

  “Mmm-hmm, he couldn’t fight his way out of a burlap sack. We won’t have any trouble subduing him. He won’t even see us coming.”

  Dirk missed the toss and the coin plinked onto the ground. It landed edge on again and rolled, picking up speed as he chased it. It smacked into one of the teeth-like rock formations. Nearly translucent crystal covered it, but chip that away, and he might just have a facsimile of black lumir.

  Dirk touched the smooth, cold panes of what might be the light-stealer if he believed in such things. Since he didn’t, Dirk drank in the matte black facets of a rock that would convince even a fanatic it was the genuine article.

  “Vill, bring the pickax over here. We just struck black gold.”

  “So, we’re giving her this—stuff? You don’t know what she’s going to do with it after we haul it out of here.” Villar pointed at the knee-high chunk of black rock. The torch’s nimbus bent around it as if afraid to get too near.

  “And I don’t care. It’s worthless anyway. What can you do with a stone that doesn’t glow? Nothing.” Dirk toed the striated rock. Only the top third was all black. “It’s not a black diamond in the rough. Now stop lollygagging and grab that torch for me.”

  “I’m not going down there.”

  Well, neither was Dirk. He glowered at Villar, but the lazy son of a bitch refused to acquiesce.

  “Hit me and win a prize,” begged the black stone towering over Dirk. He ran his hand down its flank entranced by the voice whispering in his ear.

  “L
et your dark desires rise, my allies, strike me high. ‘Cause everybody dies. Yes, everybody dies, and the flies are waiting for their prize.” A cadaverous hand reached past Dirk’s shoulder and tapped the gem that psycho bitch coveted.

  No chime resounded, but shadows erupted from the stone. It reached into Dirk and strummed the bond between his hopes and dreams and that crystal. “Hit me here for the prize.”

  “Yes, I’ll strike it here.” Dirk touched the cold rock mesmerized by the black substance swirling inside it. He smiled at the reflection of a man in his early forties and rubbed the swell cleft in his chin.

  “How do you know this is the spot.”

  “Oh, I know.” He gave Villar a rueful smile and took the pickax from him.

  Dirk raised the pickax. “Stand back, I don’t think it’ll take too many hits to free it. It looks like it’ll cleave right at that spot.” Dirk gave the rock a probing whack. The outer crystal shattered releasing a torrent of darkness and shrieking nightmares.

  They swirled around Dirk, driving him toward the edge as more horrors poured out of that expanding crack.

  Oh, God, what have I done? Dirk swatted at the circling wraiths as if they were insects, not something only whispered about in old tales. But they kept making passes at his head with their claws extended.

  While he struggled to avoid them, cracks proliferated. They sped down into the pit, racing toward a beast long ago calcified by time. Its one exposed eye opened emitting a bolt a pure hate. It struck the rim and showered Dirk with stinging pebbles. The stone he'd struck toppled sending the pickax flying.

  “Lookout!” Dirk shouted as he dove aside. But Villar didn't answer. “Vill? Are you there?”

  A chill wind snuffed out the torch Dirk still clutched, and darkness punched Dirk in the chest. He screamed, and his boots slid on the crystal ceding ground. A loose stone rolled past his foot. Above, a pale shape bobbed on the crest of the stygian wave rising over them. Villar screamed.