Herald of the Nine

by Tiger Hebert

  Deek and Crel left the kitchen as abruptly as they’d entered it. The wooden door slammed shut behind them, casting the room into darkness once more. Vacinne and Renlar exhaled. Her heart was pounding

  “That was close,” said Renlar as he climbed out from underneath one of the counters.

  Vacinne stepped out from the pantry, where Deek had nearly dropped the potatoes on her foot.

  “Too close,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow.

  “You got any better ideas?” he asked.

  “The temple is much bigger than it looks, given its shape. There are passages all through this place. If we stick to the maintenance passages, we are likely to encounter others, but at least there would be far fewer.”

  “How do we get there from here?” asked Renlar.

  “Follow me,” said Vacinne as she scurried through the dark, further into the kitchen.

  She led him through the dark kitchen to another wooden doorway in the very back. She slowly lifted the door’s latch, careful not to make much sound. Once the latch was lifted free, she cracked the door just enough to check the hallway for people. The coast was clear in one direction, but she put her ear to the opening and listened for footfall in the corridor.

  Nothing.

  She pulled the door open enough to slide her head out into the hall to make sure she checked both directions. The passage was a narrow stairwell that climbed to their right. Sconces on the wall held flaming torches, and occasionally small openings were cut into the exterior wall, creating some small windows.

  Vacinne stepped out into the empty maintenance hallway, and gestured for Renlar to follow her. Once in the hallway, Renlar drew wind into the passageway with them, and sent gusts to extinguish the burning torches. The wind roared as they were cast into darkness.

  “Much better,” said Renlar.

  Vacinne nodded as she made her way up the stairwell. She did her best to not stumble about blindly, but her eyes took longer to adjust to the absence of light than she’d expected. Her foot caught the lip of one of the steps. Her hand shot out and found the stone wall at her side. She steadied herself, and managed to not fall.

  “You okay,” he whispered.

  “I’m fine,” she snapped with equal hints of anger and embarrassment.

  With her feet squarely under her and her vision restored, Vacinne climbed the stairs quickly. Though these halls were not traveled by many Wardens, she knew them like the back of her hand from her early years in the temple, serving on kitchen duty. She was mostly a runner and errand girl for the cooks, and many miles did she log in these halls. Up and down the stairs every day. She hated it once, then grew to almost enjoy it as these back halls gave her a respite from the rest of the Wardens.

  The stairwell was reserved mainly for the servants. It led to all the kitchens and storerooms, as well as at least one appointed exit at each level. The stairs did not wrap around the tower in a spiraling manner as many towers and castles would. Instead these stairs simply switched back at the top and bottom of every flight, keeping the entire stairwell on the same side of the tower. That meant that windows, or any other form of external exit from the tower would only be found on every other stairwell. That was important, considering they were now behind enemy lines, and would be granted no quarter should they be caught.

  Vacinne slowed as she reached the top of the stairwell. She stopped and craned her neck around the corner to see if anyone was in the passage ahead. The next flight of stairs was still lit with the warm light of torches, which allowed her to see a man up ahead. He looked to be older and wore the drab worn clothes of a servant. He was walking up the stairs away from them and hadn’t seen her.

  Vacinne turned back toward Renlar. She held up one finger and pointed toward the hallway ahead. Renlar nodded. His hands flew in a quick gesture.

  Whoosh!

  The wind swept past them, and around the corner before shooting up the stairwell. The light was extinguished in seconds, the warmth of the flames gone and the old man began to mutter in the distance ahead.

  Vacinne led Renlar around the corner into the newly darkened hallway. Slowly they crept up the stairs one step at a time, careful as to not make a sound. With each step their eyes adjusting to the dark once more. The only light ahead was that at the top of the flight of stairs, where the light from the above passage spilled down. The older servant’s silhouette was now coming into focus. They could hear his grumbling combined with his footfall. The sounds were growing fainter with each passing breath.

  “Phew,” whispered Vacinne with relief.

  They knew he wouldn’t be able to see them looking back into the pitch black. They sped their ascent up the interior stairwell. The old servant reached the top of the stairs, now fully in the light from the next passage. He was standing there with what appeared to be a large sack of what was probably linens. They could see his wrinkled face sourly looking back appraisingly upon the dark hallway. The old man cursed several times at the darkness as if it had done him some great injustice, before he turned and reached out to the doorway at the top of the stairs. He grabbed at the handle roughly and yanked the door open. He spouted off several foul curses, then he exited the stairwell.

  “Quick,” said Vacinne as she dashed up the stairs.

  Vacinne was nearly to the top of the stairs when a shadow danced on the just recently closed door. Vacinne’s breath caught in her throat and her chest began to pound even harder as the sound of footfall echoed down the corridor. Vacinne hugged the wall at the top of the stairs.

  The shadow grew larger.

  Vacinne’s heart raced. The sound of footsteps was just a few feet away. The servant reached the landing at the bottom of the flight of stairs. Her gloved fist slammed into the side of his head before he could even turn. The servant, a gangly youth, never saw it coming. The blow caught him right in the side of the head and sent him crashing into the opposite wall. His head thunked against the wall, before he toppled to the floor.

  “Hell of a shot,” said Renlar as he stepped over the lad’s sleeping body.

  “He’ll survive, just needs a little nap first,” said Vacinne as Renlar grabbed the boy’s body and rolled him over and moved the boy’s arms and legs out into awkward positions.

  “What in the Nine are you doing?” she hissed.

  Renlar’s nimble fingers untied the laces on the young man’s boot, and pulled the boot halfway off his foot. “Making it look like an accident.”

  “Smart. We need to move though,” said Vacinne, her voice betraying her urgency and fear.

  Renlar was already moving though. His hands shot outward and the gusts of wind blew out any torches in the passage leading up. Once again, the darkness engulfed them, and they climbed higher into the tower.

  Several flights of stairs and the constant surge of adrenaline was taking its toll on them. Their breathing became heavy and labored and they’d only just reached the fifth floor of the massive tower.

  She didn’t even have to look at Renlar or speak into his mind to know his thoughts.

  She thought to herself, At this pace we will be dead before we even get to the top. We can’t keep this up. Think, Vacinne. Where do we go?

  An idea hit her.

  “There is a store room on the sixth floor. It’s very large. We should be able to find a place to stowaway for a while,” she whispered.

  Renlar nodded, following her lead.

  Vacinne, somehow invigorated with a desire to find the storehouse, attacked the stairs with vigor. Renlar fought to keep up with the strength of her young legs. She checked the next hallway, and Renlar’s magic blew out the lights, as they charged hard for the sixth floor.

  “There it is,” rasped Vacinne, pointing to a door halfway down the long hallway.

  Renlar extended his hand to blow out the lights just as a Warden turned the corner.

  “Who goes there!” shouted the Warden.

  Renlar cursed and the lights went out. The Warden began shouting and th
e sound of a blade being pulled from a sheath could be heard from one end to the other. A violent blast of wind raced down the hallway. The Warden was thrown backwards into the stone wall behind him. The back of his skull slammed against the stones with a sickening thud, and his cries were silenced.

  “Damn the Nine,” growled Vacinne as she sprinted toward the fallen Warden.

  Renlar chased after her.

  Vacinne and Renlar checked the adjoining hallway that twisted back out of sight. No one was coming, yet. Renlar knocked out the torchlight. Then they each grabbed the man and dragged him toward the storehouse.

  Vacinne peeked into the storeroom. The lights were off, the coast was clear. They hurried inside and closed the door behind themselves.

  “Where to?”

  “There’s a wine cellar in here. That should give us a spot to hide,” said Vacinne as she gestured with her head toward the left side of the dark room.

  Sure enough they were able to find the ramp that led down into the wine cellar. The passage was a smooth and winding walkway that corkscrewed into the small chamber below. Vacinne channeled some of her power into the air around her. The small sphere of light illuminated the dark room.

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” hissed Renlar.

  Vacinne shrugged, “Me either, but my hands were full and we needed light.”

  Renlar chuckled. The cellar wasn’t much to write home about. Barrels stacked on top of barrels stacked on top of more barrels. That was pretty much the entire cellar. Fortunately, it was at least a fairly large room, with a few rows of barrels.

  Renlar asked, “How do you manage a cellar on the sixth floor of a tower?”

  Vacinne replied, “Well as you’ll quickly see, the distance between each of the floors is not the same. That’s because many of the levels have subfloors for storage.”

  “No wonder we’re exhausted after six stories,” said Renlar.

  Vacinne nodded and then pointed to the other side of the cellar, “Over there, that side. That’s where they keep the expensive stuff. It rarely gets brought out, so it’s probably the safest spot.”

  Renlar helped her drag the man to the cellar’s far corner. They laid him down. Renlar knelt down at the man’s side and touched his neck in search of a pulse.

  Nothing.

  “Dammit,” cursed Renlar.

  Renlar turned away from the body and began moving a handful of the barrels away from the wall just enough to create a place to hide the dead Warden. He turned back to the body. Vacinne hadn’t moved, she was still standing there staring at the body.

  She gazed upon the dead man’s face. It was a face she recognized. Guilt and shame and doubt all crashed down upon her at once. The force was devastating, sending her to her knees.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Renlar.

  “I know him... knew him,” she said, the emotion nearly choking her voice. “Warden Gedron Denuvant. He wasn’t the cheerful type, he was always very businesslike, but he was always kind.”

  “I’m sorry, Vacinne,” said Renlar, his hand reaching out for hers.

  Vacinne blankly rambled on, “He was in charge of the armory. He didn’t have any family; he’d lost them all to a demonic attack some ten or twelve years ago. He’d never said much about it, but everyone knew the story. He had two small children, two boys I believe, and his wife was expecting another. The rift opened right in his village. There was no time for them to escape. Demons killed them all.”

  Renlar squeezed her hand. “He became a Warden to make the demons pay for what they’d stolen from him?”

  Vacinne shook her head. “No. He just wanted to keep other families from being destroyed like his.”

  Renlar expression soured. “I’m sorry, Vacinne. I... I don’t know how we can pull off this mission without anyone else getting hurt. Hell, I’m not sure how we can pull it off at all, even without being careful.”

  “I don’t blame you. Just... seeing his face up close... it made it real. And the reality is, good men and women are going to die before this is over.”

  Renlar met her eyes. “We will do everything we can to minimize the casualties.”

  “How? How can we possibly do that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know just yet, but we will find a way,” replied Renlar.

  Vacinne’s confidence wavered, then faltered. “I... I don’t know, Renny. It’s not like we’re going to be able to sneak through the entire tower like this. We’ve only gotten to the sixth floor, there’s still another nineteen floors to go.”

  Renlar didn’t say anything for a long moment, but she could see that his mind was racing. She realized that by now she should know to trust him, and if he said they’d figure something out, then that’s what they would do. She just couldn’t see it.

  Renlar nodded to her, then he reached down and dragged Gedron Denuvant’s body from the floor, and dropped him behind the wall of stacked wine barrels. With the body out of sight, Renlar turned to her and nodded that it was time to move.

  Vacinne nodded and said, “We can keep taking our chances with the service stairs or we can hit the main halls.”

  “Doesn’t anyone ever sleep around here?” asked Renlar.

  “The guards all take shifts and the patrols all overlap,” she replied.

  “What if we create some sort of diversion, to draw them out?”

  Vacinne cocked her head. “It’s possible, but we’d have to have flawless timing. Getting all the way to the Grand Master, before the diversion was over could prove to be difficult.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Vacinne grimaced, “Though the top three floors of the temple belong to him, he is well protected and will be hard to reach. The twenty-third floor has the only access point to his chambers, and it is constantly guarded, day and night, by a pair of Wardens. They change shifts in the morning and the late afternoon, but it is never left unattended. To make matters worse, the War Masters are on the floor below that. I have no idea how we even reach the Grand Master’s chambers, no less pull off the assassination.”

  “It might have been good to know this before we decided to storm the castle,” quipped Renlar.

  Vacinne shrugged.

  “Well, we will figure out how to get past all that... somehow. Then we’ll get what information we need from him, and we’ll run him through,” said Renlar nonchalantly.

  “Okay, let’s say we somehow manage to miraculously get past all of his security measures, and—Hell, we pull off the trifecta—we actually get him to spill the dirty details on any accomplices he has before we kill him. How do we track those Warden’s down afterwards?”

  Renlar replied, “Good point. If we pull this off, the whole place could turn to chaos. It could be hard to find our marks.”

  “If any exist,” added Vacinne.

  Renlar nodded, “Yes, if any exist.”

  “Yeah, that’s my concern. It’s like a hydra right, you don’t want to cut off one head for another one or even two to just rise up and take its place,” said Vacinne.

  Renlar nodded. “You’ve got a great point. So, what do you suggest?”

  Vacinne grinned. “So, I’ve been thinking a lot about these vision stones. They are like your weapons. They are stones that have been enchanted, in their case, through the use of powerful magical runes.”

  “Okay.”

  “The ones that we are issued are all actually made right here in the temple. I wonder if we could get a pair of them custom made for us,” Vacinne said.

  “So, we can communicate?”

  “No. So we can spy.”

  “Oooh,” said Renlar as a smile formed on his face. “I like this.”

  5

  Sound Stones

  Vacinne left Renlar behind in the wine cellar as she made her way through the main halls of the temple. No more slinking and skulking for the time being, she walked through the halls as she had done so many times before with her head held high as a Warden in her home. The halls were not very
busy, to her relief, only passing a few fellow Wardens, most of which she didn’t know well. It made for a short trip to Arrett’s shop.

  “Please be there,” she muttered under her breath.

  She reached the inscriptionist’s shop and made her way inside. The shop was small had a large counter that also served as the man’s workbench. Behind the counter, wooden shelves lined the walls from the floor to the ceiling, and everyone one of them was utterly cluttered with a wide assortment of every type of stone she could imagine. The lamps still burned in the room, but Vacinne saw no one.

  “Hello? Arrett?”

  A voice came from behind her. “Vacinne LeDroux? Is that you?”

  She was still on high alert and her nerves were shot. Anxiousness surged with her as she spun nervously. Her heart began to pound in her chest.

  She fumbled her words, “It’s... that’s... who else would I be?”

  The short man with strangely long face and thick spectacles grinned back at her with horse sized teeth. He squinted, proving that even the spectacles did little for his sight. “Where have you been?”

  “Oh... I...,” stammered Vacinne. “I’ve been on a mission. Direct from the Grand Master, very sensitive matters.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Arrett as he continued to squint and scrunch up his face. “Well, I’m glad to have you back. This place isn’t quite the same without you.”

  Vacinne had long known of the man’s fondness for her. He was always going out of his way to strike up conversation with her. She’d often sought out ways to avoid it, or keep the conversations brief, but not tonight.

  Arrett slowly walked past her and came around the other side of his counter. “So, what brings you to my shop?”

  “I need your help.”

  “Obviously,” he said in his nasally voice. “I know you enjoy my company, but you came to the shop.”

  Vacinne leaned forward over the counter and in a hushed voice said, “Yes... well, see this mission that I am working on, well, the Grand Master fears that some of his allies have... well, let’s say questionable loyalty. I’m on a reconnaissance mission. I’m tasked with collecting information for him... to see if our allies can still be trusted.”