Promise of Wrath (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 6)

by Steve McHugh

  “Mara,” I said softly. “She’s got to be involved in this.”

  “Chloe’s mum?” Diane asked. “I remember her. I wanted to punt her head off.”

  “She’s such a sparkling human being,” I admitted. “I hope I’m wrong, but it doesn’t feel that way.”

  “How many witches are in your realm?” Udthulo asked.

  I shared a look with Diane and Irkalla. “I have no idea.”

  “A metric shitload?” Remy guessed. “I remember taking a census for Elaine a few decades ago. She wanted to know exactly how much support Hera was getting from the witches. I can’t remember the exact figure, but it was around a hundred thousand. And forty thousand of those are in a coven that is very pro-Hera. Hera might not trust all of those who help her, but that still gives Hera a sizable figure to work with. In theory they could be sending a lot of innocent people here every year. That also means we have a lot of witches murdering people. Shit, if that gets out, Avalon will want a cull.”

  Diane stopped walking. “That would be dangerous. Tarring all witches with the same brush and going after them for what a few are doing would prove that Hera was right all along. Witches will be killed: a lot of them.”

  “It could start a war,” Irkalla said. “And at the very least, it would drive a lot more witches into Hera’s arms. I guarantee she’s thought about that. If anyone ever finds out the witches are behind sending people here, she’d probably start the purge herself, and then claim the witches could come to her for sanctuary.”

  “This is still that hypothetical situation you were talking about?” Remy asked. “Because it sounds pretty close to what could actually be happening.”

  We went back to silence as we continued down the levels until Zamek stopped us one floor above where we needed to be.

  “This is it. Brigg should be down these stairs, and about two hundred feet north of here.” He removed the tracker again and tapped it before nodding to himself. “Let’s go.”

  We walked slowly down the stairwell until we’d reached our target level, then hurried along the corridor until we came to a room at the far end. Zamek tried to push the door—there was no handle, and didn’t look like there ever had been—but found that it wouldn’t move. Runes had been carved into the frame, spelling out locked over and over again. In smaller runes along the top of the frame was the word blaze. Brigg had set a rather unpleasant trap for anyone trying to get in.

  “We’re not getting in through that door,” I said. “How about the wall?”

  “If Brigg booby-trapped the door, then the wall will be too,” Birik told everyone. “He’s . . . careful like that.”

  “He has to have a way in and out,” Diane said.

  “His own alchemy, I imagine,” Birik said. “Anyone else tries it and they get a nasty surprise.”

  Zamek hammered on the door. “Brigg, it’s me, Zamek. Open the damn door.” He hammered a second time.

  “Prove it,” a voice said from inside the room.

  “Open the fucking door, you lunatic!” Zamek snapped.

  The door slid out toward us and then to one side, revealing an elderly dwarf with a long red beard and a nasty cut across his forehead. The cut was recent, and would leave an equally nasty scar.

  “Get in, you fools,” he snapped, and he ushered us all into the room before closing the door and resetting the trap.

  The room looked like every other room in the building, full of books and shelves, although this one curved around to the side. A small fireplace sat off in a corner, and it appeared to be in good use. Three dwarves lay on a pile of old clothes and cloth, using them as makeshift mattresses, weapons close to hand even as they slept.

  “Why are you here?” he asked once he was done with the door.

  “We came for you,” Zamek said.

  “Bollocks,” Brigg said. “I sent someone back expressly telling you to stay away. I can’t go back to the city and leave all of this in elven hands. I’ll die first. And seeing how the elders have sent exactly zero people to help, I assume that’s exactly the way they like it. You didn’t come here to help, my old pupil. So, why are you here?”

  “Our friend was poisoned,” I said. “She needs a spirit scroll or she’ll die.”

  “And who are you?” Brigg asked.

  The others introduced themselves first, and when I said my name, Brigg’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Brynhildr’s boy?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you since you were . . . well, that doesn’t matter.”

  I finally recognized his face. “You were the dwarf at the temple. The one who performed the ritual.” I hadn’t meant to let my anger infect my tone.

  “You want to save your friend, or give me shit about something I did sixteen hundred years ago?” he snapped.

  “Both,” I snapped back.

  Brigg and I glared at one another for several seconds while no one else spoke. Eventually, he sighed. “Fine. Let’s just make sure the last of my team is back here, and then we’ll talk. I promise.”

  There was another bang on the door. “Wait,” Brigg said, and he went to open the door.

  “Nate, calm yourself,” Zamek whispered. “Brigg is not a man to be forced into answering questions. If you want to help your friend, do not anger him. We will never get back in time to save her.”

  I nodded. I understood how important saving Chloe was. But Brigg was my chance at getting answers, and the fact that he’d told me we would talk meant that we would talk. Whether he wanted to or not.

  Two more dwarves rushed into the room, followed by a human. “Ambush on the sixteenth floor,” the human said. “We lost Yami.”

  “Fucking bastards!” Brigg shouted. He closed the door once again. “At this rate, we’ll lose too many to keep them back.”

  The human walked over to us, while Zamek and Brigg spoke in hushed tones. “You’re from the earth realm?” he asked.

  I nodded. “We got sent here by someone who wants us out of the way.”

  “Join the club,” he said, offering his hand. “You’re not human, though.”

  “Sorcerer.” I pointed over to my companions as I introduced them. “Trying to find spirit scrolls.”

  “Well, that could be a problem,” the human said. “The spirit scrolls are on the eighteenth floor, in a hidden room in the west wing.”

  “Of course they are,” Remy said.

  “So apart from a bit of a walk, what’s the problem?” Irkalla asked.

  “The blood elves took the eighteenth floor about twelve months ago. We’re trying to drive them back, but not having a lot of luck. They have a new commander, someone who wears a hood. He’s got some serious power; he tore the front gates off the wall by himself. That’s why the blood elves were able to swarm this place.”

  “Well, this sounds like a problem.”

  “It could be, yes,” the human agreed. “Oh, I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Adam. Adam Range.”

  “You’re Chloe’s dad?” I asked.

  His face lit up at hearing Chloe’s name, confirming my suspicion, but his expression was quickly replaced with fear and worry. “Yes. You know Chloe? How is she?”

  I wasn’t really sure how to start the sentence that needed to be said. “She’s the reason we’re here. She needs the scroll.”

  For a second I thought Chloe’s dad was going to break down, but he held it together. “Brigg, we’re getting these people to those spirit scrolls if I have to blow up half of this building to do it.”

  “Don’t even think—” Brigg began, and then he turned back to Adam. Something in the human’s face made him pause. “We’ll help her.”

  “Or I’ll die trying,” Adam said with utter conviction.

  CHAPTER 30

  The meeting that followed the revelation of Adam’s identity was short and to the point. We needed to get to the eighteenth floor, and do so without attracting the hundreds of blood elves that lived inside the building from floor twenty down.

  The b
lood elves were slowly encroaching floor by floor. Whoever this new person in charge was, he’d certainly given them the incentive they needed to dominate the library. Brigg, Adam, and his people had tried their best, but it was like trying to push back the ocean with a spoon.

  Adam left at the end of the meeting, and I went to find him, hoping to give him some comfort that Chloe would be okay. I found him sitting next to a pile of books with his eyes closed.

  “My wife, Mara, sent me here,” he said. “Used a tablet she was working on for months. Always told me it was witch stuff and none of my business. Turns out, I really should have been more interested in whatever witch stuff was.”

  “I think she sent us here too. She coated one of the tablets in the venom of a creature called an ekimmu. My friend was meant to be the person to touch it; Chloe was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “To your knowledge, has my wife put Chloe’s life in danger before?”

  “A few times, yes. Chloe lives with her friend, Kasey, who is the daughter of my best friend. Chloe and Mara haven’t talked since . . . well, they had a row.” It was Chloe’s job to tell her dad about her sexuality, not mine.

  “I’m going to kill Mara if I ever get out of here. I never thought I was capable of murdering anyone until the first day I turned up here and a blood elf grabbed me. I fought back, killed one, and escaped into the city. Six months I lived in this city, with no idea where I should go, until the dwarves found me. That was, I assume, many years ago. Time is funny under the mountain.”

  “Probably about three or four years ago, I think. Chloe mentioned that you vanished.”

  “Yep, that’s one way of putting it. We’re going to save my daughter. You know that, right?”

  I nodded. “How have you survived out here for so long?”

  “I found one of the scrolls. Turns out bonding with a bunch of spirits will give you some serious power. In my case, it’s the ability to track an item. I think about the item I want and it lets me hone in on it—a bit like using GPS in my head. It doesn’t always work, though; I need to have the exact item in mind. It’s hard to explain.”

  “So the scroll’s power is random?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. When I came here, I wanted more than anything to get home. And when I found a scroll, all I could think of was getting back to Chloe. To be honest, I’m not sure; I would have thought it would have just let me create realm-gate portals so I could go home, but the scrolls don’t work like that. They don’t let you just pick what you want; they sort of look deep down into you and pick an ability based on your own soul. So maybe in my soul, being able to find anything I wanted was what I needed the most. I don’t really know, and I’ve spent almost the entire time I’ve been here either trying to find a way home, or trying to help the dwarves stay alive.”

  “Is that why you came here? To try and find a way home?”

  Adam nodded. “I wanted an item that would help me get home, but I need to know the exact item for my power to work. So I came here hoping to find something useful.”

  “Would location addresses to use on a tablet so we can get home help?”

  “What?”

  “The blood elves have allies who used a portable realm gate.” I explained more about the tablets. “We need to find the addresses for the earth realm. Once we’ve got them, maybe we can figure out how to create our own tablet and get home.”

  Adam’s face lit up with genuine hope. “Tell me more about these tablets.”

  I told him everything I knew.

  He listened attentively, not speaking until I’d finished. “When the dwarves found me, I told them about the tablet that had sent me here, and for the most part, they had no idea what I was talking about. Jinayca suggested that I come on this expedition so that I might be able to find some sort of Rosetta Stone and figure out how to create my own, but no matter how much I want to find it, it doesn’t seem to exist. I’ve tried thinking of every permutation the dwarves here have suggested—nothing. Those addresses are gone.” Adam sounded defeated.

  It was a tough blow to take, but I refused to just give in. “Any chance there could be something here blocking your power?”

  Adam thought for a second. “It’s possible.”

  “Can you search for power blockers instead? Maybe we can figure out how to find these addresses if they’re hidden from view. The dwarves didn’t want anyone finding them. Maybe they’re in a rune-scribed vault or something.”

  “That’s possible,” Adam admitted, brightening up. “So if we can get the scrolls and the addresses before the blood elves, we can save Chloe and stop these assholes from creating super-powered monsters. The dwarves might actually have a chance to win. Then I can go home. It’s a long game, but there’s no other choice.

  “Unfortunately, most of the librarians were killed during the war,” he continued, “and the thing about the dwarves back then was that they really didn’t like sharing their knowledge with one another. It’s different now—it’s a matter of survival—but back then the librarians who lived here either died here, or fled, and there are none left—no one they taught the language to. So, even if we find the addresses, how do we create the tablet?”

  “One of the people back at Sanctuary said that if we can rune-scribe the knowledge of the languages onto a human, then they could create the tablet.”

  There was a sparkle in his eyes. “That could work.”

  “I’ll leave you alone to work on it.”

  “Thank you.”

  I went back to the others and explained what Adam was trying to accomplish. The three dwarves who I’d seen asleep when I’d arrived were now up, preparing their gear for a fight.

  “I don’t think he’ll find anything,” Brigg said sadly. “All he’s wanted to do since the day I met him is get back to his daughter. I can’t imagine anything worse than knowing she needs you and knowing there’s nothing you can do.”

  “We can find her those scrolls,” I told him.

  Brigg nodded, and pointed to a part on a map that had been laid out on the huge table next to one wall. “The blood elves are looking for the scrolls, but they have no idea where to look. We do. Unfortunately, it’s right under their noses. Before the blood elves defiled this place, I found where they’re hidden. Unfortunately, they’re in a room that’s completely sealed, and I have no idea how to get in. I found nothing that would suggest an entrance or exit. Whoever created it was very keen to keep it locked. I saw no runes or markings, but when I tried to use alchemy, it blew me back forty feet.”

  “That where you got the cut?” Zamek asked.

  “No, this was from a blood-elf sword. I didn’t duck quickly enough. Still killed it, though, so it’s not all bad.”

  The whole situation was beginning to sound worse and worse. “So we have a room that we can’t get into, and there’s a whole lot of really nasty elves between us and it? That sound about right?”

  There were several nods from people around the table.

  “In that case, how do we get into the room?” Irkalla asked. “Because otherwise, this whole thing is a giant waste of time.”

  “We tried going through the floor above, but that’s rune-marked, so it’s out. We tried from the floor below, but the same problem. The only way into that room would be if you could get outside the library and go through the outside wall. I’ve checked; there are no rune marks. The problem with that is the huge number of blood elves in the yard below.”

  “So one of us has to make some sort of mad dash outside, or distract thousands of blood elves so that we can get in without them being there.”

  “Or teleport into it,” Diane said.

  Several eyes looked at me.

  “Shadow magic,” I said. “I’m not exactly practiced with it.”

  “It could work, although I have no idea how it would work. I also have no idea if you’d be able to bring all of the scrolls back. There are several hundred.”

  “Can I take s
omeone with me into the room?”

  “I could go,” Brigg said. “It would give me a chance to see if I could unlock it from the inside.”

  “A few hundred scrolls can’t be that heavy,” Remy said. “Can they?”

  “Depends on the scroll,” Brigg countered. “I have no idea what condition they’ll be in. A thousand years is a long time to be locked in a room, but in theory it’s a sealed room, so they should be fine. Besides, they’re impervious to most things that would destroy a scroll, so as likely as not they’ll be in one piece. The main thing is, they cannot fall into enemy hands. The elves already have too many of these scrolls, and there are enough in the earth realm without adding to them.”

  “Wait: these things are already in our realm?” Remy asked. “I think this is something we should have been told more about.”

  “They’ve been there for millennia. We know that people stole the scrolls in the past, especially before the blood elves came. We know that scrolls were given as gifts to earth-realm dignitaries: a token of the pact that we made with Avalon to supply them with dwarven weapons. That was before we realized how dangerous they were, but it was long enough to put more than a few scrolls out there. Combine that with those that were stolen and there are probably five or six hundred in your realm already.”

  “There could be five hundred super-powered scroll-users in our world right now?” Diane asked. “How do we not know about this?”

  “Well, apparently Avalon knows,” Remy said. “Or at least some of the people working for them do. I wonder how many of those scrolls actually were given to Avalon, and how many fell off the back of the first cart they were put on?”

  “That sounds like Avalon,” I said. I thought about it for a moment. Over the years I’d fought a lot of people whose power I couldn’t put into one species category or another, and I’ve fought people who turned into monsters more than I care to remember. “I’ll just add it to the list of things Merlin kept from me.”