“I’ve found it!” Arudan shouted, and his face broke into a beatific smile. He raised his eyes from the dagger, then startled as if surprised to see Taiana and the Hunter. “Oh, hello. Who are you?” He gave a dismissive wave and turned to Taiana. “It is good you are here, Taiana! You will never believe what I have just uncovered. The stone set into this dagger seems to be the very thing we are looking for.”
“Is that so?” Taiana’s gentle tone held the tolerance of a parent speaking to an infant. “You’re certain?”
“You heard the humming, did you not?” As if to emphasize his point, the pale-skinned man tapped the two-pronged steel bar on the table and set it against the stone once more, producing the loud, vibrating sound. “See? This tuning fork is tuned to the specific pitch and resonance of the stones that the Serenii used to lock the Keeps.” He bounced back and forth on his heels, as if barely able to restrain his excitement.
“So the gemstone should open the locks?” Excitement edged Taiana’s voice. “All of them?”
“All of them!” Arudan laughed, a childish sound filled with wonder and merriment. “Any stone that resonates to this frequency should open every locked door in the Keeps. All we need to do is find such a stone, and you will have your key to access the Chambers of Sustenance.”
The Hunter struggled to conceal his surprise. The man had forgotten about Soulhunger mid-conversation, even though he held the dagger in his hand.
“Thank you, Arudan.” Taiana smiled. “May I see that dagger?”
Arudan seemed surprised to find Soulhunger in his left hand, and he flinched back. “O-Of course.” He handed the weapon to Taiana without hesitation. “A beautiful piece of work, crafted by the finest Serenii artisans, it seems. And that stone set into the pommel.” His eyes narrowed as he stared at the gemstone. “Hmmmmm. It bears a strong resemblance to the gemstones locking the doors to the Keeps. Could it be that—”
“I will bring it to you for examination later,” Taiana cut him off quickly. “For now, perhaps it’s best you continue with your research.”
“Research?” Confusion twisted the man’s pale face, then his expression brightened. “Ah, yes, of course. I must find a way to speed up the harvest if we are to bring in the crops before the autumn fall. Perhaps there is something in…” His voice trailed off as he turned and began digging among the stone tablets piled on the floor.
The Hunter turned to Taiana. “The Illusionist’s touch?”
Taiana shook her head, and sorrow filled her eyes. “The burden of a long life.”
“What does that mean?” the Hunter asked, raising an eyebrow.
Taiana hesitated a long moment before speaking. “It has been said that we are the sum of our memories. Every experience shapes us, defines who we are. Every man, woman, and child in the world is unique because they have lived something different, their minds are filled with memories particular to them alone. But for those like Arudan, like us”—she searched his eyes, as if seeking something within him—“the weight of memories can grow too great for the mind to bear.”
The Hunter had heard something similar from Imperius, the insane Illusionist Cleric that had tried to erase his memories in Al Hani.
“There comes a time,” Taiana continued, “when the mind is filled and cannot retain any more. As water flows out of an over-filled bucket, so, too, memories are lost. The greater the burden grows, the greater the strain.” She motioned to the pale-skinned man who sat in a stuffed armchair poring over a stone tablet. “There are always consequences to our long lives.”
In Al Hani, the Illusionist Cleric had spoken of other Bucelarii going mad, turning feral. He had called the ritual a kindness. The removal of memories served as a rebirth for the long-lived Bucelarii, a clean slate. A chance to make new, better creatures.
The Hunter stared at Arudan, and horror roiled in his gut. He’d believed the erasure of his past a curse, the act of fearful men afraid of what he would do if he remembered who he truly was. Yet perhaps, as Imperius had said, it had been a kindness, in a way. He, too, could have ended up like Arudan, or something far worse. The loss of his memories had kept him away from Taiana and his child, but in the end, it had kept him alive for thousands of years.
The Hunter turned to Taiana and searched her eyes. She held his gaze unflinchingly, and he saw no sign of the same madness or mental decay that gripped Arudan. So what was different about her? She had lived as long as he, but she clearly hadn’t lost her memories or her mind. The question was: why not?
Before he could speak, Cerran bustled into the room. He carried a plate of dried fruit, nuts, and what looked like bread, with a shred of some dried meat beside it.
“So? What’d he say?” the red-haired man asked, not bothering to close his mouth as he gnawed on the meat. “Anything useful?”
Taiana motioned for them to follow her from the room and leave Arudan in peace. “He confirmed the gemstone is the resonator stone we seek,” she said when they stood in the hall outside.
“Good.” Cerran turned to the Hunter. “Looks like pissing off the purple-eyes to save your life wasn’t such a stupid idea, after all.”
The Hunter growled, but that only made Cerran’s grin broaden.
“Then as soon as Kalil returns from the dead drop, we get back to it.” Taiana fixed the Hunter with a firm gaze. “We’ll need Thanal Eth’ Athaur if we’re to get into the Keeps and search the Chambers. One more pair of eyes to watch our backs will come in handy.”
The Hunter’s jaw clenched. “And what of the boy?”
“Garnos ought to have the information we seek,” Taiana said. “He’ll be the first stop, then we’ll figure out what to do with what he brings us. But we must keep searching the Chambers of Sustenance. There is nothing more important than that.”
“Why?” The Hunter cocked an eyebrow. “From what I saw, that body had been there for centuries before we arrived. What difference could a few days make?”
“Because in a few days, the Withering will be upon us.” Her voice held an ominous note. “When it comes, the Elivasti and their master will seek to use the power stored within the Keeps. The moment the Keeps are activated, any of our kind still enclosed in those Chambers of Sustenance will die.”
Chapter Six
The Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, activated?”
“In the uppermost chamber of each Keep, the Serenii placed a control system that allows them to harness the power collected by the towers over the millennia that they have stood. Somehow, the towers absorb the light of the sun and turn it into magical energy, energy like that produced by the Scorchslayers.” She lifted the crossbow-looking weapon for emphasis. “Imagine that, but multiplied a hundred hundred times over.”
The Hunter didn’t need to imagine; he’d seen the effects of Serenii magick first-hand.
“But the Chambers of Sustenance are also linked to the tower, somehow.” Taiana frowned. “I do not fully understand the magick or science of it, but I do know that those locked in the Chambers serve as the housing for the power. The power flows through our bodies, sustaining us and, at the same time, feeding off of us.”
“So when these towers are activated, however that happens,” the Hunter reasoned, “the power is sucked from the bodies in the Chambers.”
“The small amount of power required to sustain life within the city does no harm to those locked in the Chambers, but on such a massive scale? Like a fire consumes kindling, the moment the Keeps are activated, their power will be consumed. That is why we need to free our brothers trapped there.” She shook her head. “The fate of that drained, withered husk we found would be a kindness by comparison.”
“But if the Chambers are, as you say, meant to sustain life, why did we find a corpse instead of a living, breathing person?”
“Because not all in the Chambers of Sustenance are Bucelarii,” Taiana replied in a heavy voice. “Many were once human, locked away centuries or millennia ago to serve as sustenance. Thei
r bodies could not heal as ours did, and thus they succumbed to the force of the power coursing through them.”
The Hunter grimaced at the thought. Every time he changed his shape, it felt like lightning crackling through his flesh. That had paled in comparison to the enormous amount of power generated by the Elivasti Scorchslayers. The thought of that on a city-wide scale sent a shiver of fear down his spine.
A thought struck him. “But if there is so much power stored in these Keeps, why have they not been activated before now?” Everything he’d learned about the Sage and the Warmaster had led him to believe they both would have harnessed the power of Enarium to meet their own ends.
“Because the power can only be activated during the Er’hato Tashat,” Taiana explained. “The towers house the power, but it is the light of the Blood Sun that converts it into a form that can be utilized.” She hesitated. “And, because only those of Serenii blood can activate it.”
Dread sat like a stone in the Hunter’s gut. “The Elivasti?”
Please, he thought, let me be wrong.
Taiana nodded. “The blood of the Serenii runs in their veins. But it has been watered down by the ages, until only a fraction of their ancestors’ true power remains. To activate even a single control tower would require the blood of three or four Elivasti.”
Relief surged within the Hunter.
“But,” Taiana continued, “if the Sage were to find a Melechha, one of the purest Serenii blood, it would require only a few drops to activate the Serenii magick.”
The Hunter’s blood ran cold. Hailen. He felt the urge to vomit and the desire to hack his way through an army of Elivasti at once.
Hailen was Melechha, and the boy’s blood would provide the Sage everything he needed to harness the Serenii magick. And the Hunter had brought the boy right to the Sage’s doorstep. In trying to save Hailen from the Stone Guardians, he’d doomed the entire world. There was no doubt in the Hunter’s mind: the Sage would use Hailen’s blood to turn the power of Enarium to free Kharna from his prison.
“We need to find that boy, now.” His voice went hard, flat. “If we don’t…”
Taiana’s eyes narrowed. “What aren’t you telling me, Drayvin?”
The Hunter hesitated. He wanted to trust her—he needed to know he could trust someone, and who better than the woman that had been his wife? At the same time, the fact that she was hiding something from him made him reluctant to tell her everything. And he couldn’t shake what he’d seen in his memories.
She’d put a dagger through his heart and turned him over to the Illusionist Clerics to have his memories erased. He could understand her reasoning—she’d done it to protect their child—but would she betray him again? Could he trust her with the truth of Hailen’s heritage?
He searched her gaze for any remnant of the woman he’d loved. A trace of her remained, buried down deep, somewhere behind the commanding, driven, hard-edged Taiana before him. Every instinct he’d developed over his decades as an assassin screamed at him not to trust her. He half-expected to hear the demon’s voice shrieking at him to kill her before she betrayed him again, yet only silence filled his head. Even Soulhunger had fallen quiet since killing the Elivasti.
The decision was his alone.
He glanced at Cerran, then back at Taiana. She seemed to understand his thought, for she turned to the red-bearded Bucelarii and held out the Scorchslayer. “Cerran, see if Arudan can tell you anything about this.”
“Like what?” Cerran cocked a bushy, fiery-colored eyebrow. “That it’s bloody powerful and can turn us into crispy little piles of dead?”
Taiana scowled. “These are Serenii runes.” She ran her finger along the marks carved into the weapon’s stock. “See if Arudan can figure out what they mean.”
“If it’s a bedtime story you’re wanting—” Cerran began.
“Enough.” Taiana cut him off with a slash of her hand. “Just do it. Maybe he can find something to shut off their power, disconnect them from whatever’s generating such terrible energy.” She thrust the weapon into the man’s hands with enough force to stagger him backward. “If nothing else, something we can use to shatter them. The battle with the purple-eyes would be much easier if we could even the odds.”
Cerran’s lips pressed into a pensive frown. After a moment, he nodded. “I’ll see what Baldie can do.”
Taiana scowled. “Don’t call him that.”
“What?” Cerran shrugged. “It’s as good a name as any.” With a mocking grin, he turned and strode into the room where Arudan sat staring with a vacant expression at the stone tablet that lay upside down in his lap.
“Come.” Taiana said, motioning for the Hunter to follow.
She led him up four flights of stairs and into the only room on the sixth floor. The chamber was spacious, yet had little in the way of decoration. Aside from the simple bed—little more than a full-sized straw tick mattress on a wooden box frame—the room held only a table with two chairs. The fading afternoon sunlight streamed through the three walls made of the transparent Serenii glass. The fourth wall had a door, which stood ajar to reveal a bathing chamber.
The Hunter had a strange feeling of déjà vu, of spending time in a room much like this one with the woman that stood before him. It brought a lump to his throat. So much had changed since that time. Would they ever have that life again?
Taiana closed the door behind them. “Now, Drayvin, what aren’t you telling me? Why are you so desperate to find this boy?”
The Hunter drew in a deep breath and pushed past his hesitation. If they were to have anything like what they once had together, he had to try to trust her.
“Hailen is…Melechha.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “What?” she snarled. “You brought a Melechha here, now?” Fire flashed in her eyes as she strode toward him and jabbed a finger into his chest for emphasis. “The Withering is just days away, and you thought that bringing a Serenii pureblood to Enarium was the smart way to go?”
“How was I supposed to know?” The Hunter met her anger with equal ferocity. “I had no idea what the twisted hell a Melechha was until a week ago, much less what in the Keeper’s name would happen if he ended up in the Lost bloody City of Enarium. Which, I might add, took a Watcher-damned lot of work to find, and nearly got me killed a dozen times in the process. Maybe, if I hadn’t had my fucking memory ripped away by the Illusionist Clerics, I might actually know a bit more of what’s going on here.”
The vitriol in those words surprised him almost as much as they shocked Taiana. He hadn’t realized how furious he was at her for her betrayal all those long centuries—millennia, perhaps—ago. Her face went white and the anger in her eyes intensified.
“And there it is!” She bared her teeth in a snarl. “I wondered how long it would take you to bring that up.”
“Not the sort of thing you get over in a minute,” the Hunter snapped. “What you did to me—”
“Was necessary!” Taiana didn’t retreat from his anger. “I did what I had to do to protect our child.”
“I remember that.” The Hunter slammed a fist into his chest. “I also remember what it felt like to have a Watcher-damned knife driven into my heart. You may think it was necessary, but was there no other way?”
“With a bull-headed fool like you?” Taiana’s voice rose to a shout. “Never! I tried for weeks to convince you, but you were so insistent on doing things your way.”
Fury burned like an inferno in the Hunter’s gut. “And look how your way turned out!”
“At least I tried,” Taiana snapped. “I tried to do what was best for our daughter, even if—”
“Daughter?” The Hunter’s voice went dead quiet. “We…had a daughter?”
The fire drained from Taiana’s eyes, face, and voice. “She was perfect,” she whispered. “The most beautiful thing I had ever seen.” Her lips pulled upward into a smile that melted the Hunter’s heart. “She had your eyes, you know. And your strength of will.”
The Hunter could barely breathe. He had a daughter. A little girl, like Farida.
“What I did to you…I…” She let out a long, slow breath, and she refused to meet his gaze for a long moment. “You have every right to be angry.” Her anger was replaced by sorrow mingled with a hint of something else. Something that almost looked like shame. When she finally lifted her eyes, tears glimmered there. “I’m…sorry, Drayvin.”
In that moment, her mask of the hard, commanding woman cracked and he caught a glimpse of the true woman beneath. The woman from his memories, the woman he had loved his entire life even if he couldn’t remember her.
He crossed the room to her in two strides and swept her into his arms. She gripped him with crushing strength, but he didn’t care. After all this time, after countless years spent apart, they had been reunited. By the gods, fate, destiny—the name didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were together.
His lips met hers in a passionate kiss, and fire blossomed through the Hunter’s veins at the familiar touch. A near-desperate frenzy consumed them as they tore at their clothing, aching to pull away anything that could get between them. The Hunter nearly ripped the straps of his leather armor in his effort to undress. An overwhelming, all-consuming need for her burned through every fiber of his being. It seemed an eternity before he finally stripped out of the armor, padding, tunic, and breeches, and turned to face her.
She stood before the bed, clad in nothing but her long, golden hair, which now hung free in curling tresses around her face. His eyes roamed every bit of her: her black eyes, so like his own, which reflected the passion burning within him; her delicate nose with its slight upturn at the end; her high cheekbones, full lips parted in anticipation; her long neck, muscled shoulders, and strong arms. His eyes dropped to her full breasts, firm stomach, and sleek hips, down to the small tuft of golden hair between her legs. His body responded with such force that it nearly brought him to his knees. He could wait no more.
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