Me, Wik hissed again in Daghahen’s head, reminding him who was the one with the ability to kill Lamrhath. But Wik wanted a favor in return: to get out. When Daghahen had looked to the stars, he’d discovered Wik had told half the truth. Pixies couldn’t lie, but they could hold back. The stars knew of the one who could kill Lamrhath.
“Get that sphere!” Lamrhath yelled.
As the sorcerers dove at him again, Daghahen hurled the thing, the real sphere, and it arced across the room.
Clash! It smashed beside Dorhen. Daghahen’s aim was true.
A gasp filled Lamrhath until he froze, golden eyes bulging, jaw trembling, as if the comforting demonic aura he’d bought with his years of sacrifice had suddenly left him standing alone after flying off into oblivion. Daghahen had never seen him so full of shock or fright. The room fell silent.
From the opened glass, an oil-like fog spilled and spread, engulfing Dorhen’s hands as they held him up. He tried to pull them off the floor but couldn’t. The oily smoke, black as a night underground, spiraled up his arms and smothered his face until he wore a mask of it over his mouth and nose. Then it passed away, freeing his face again after it seeped inside him.
Dorhen’s eyes shifted around wildly. He batted at the rest of the smoke as it clung to his arms and moved to wrap around his chest, soon becoming a screaming, convulsing mess on the floor.
Daghahen’s heart ached as he stood and gawked with the other fools. What’ve I done?
The rest of the black smoke disappeared, invading Dorhen’s body until he appeared clean again. Tensing all his muscles, he growled and gnashed his teeth, trying to control one of his arms with the other. His fingers tensed like claws at the end of a stiff arm, grasping the wrist as if it were someone else’s.
The tensed hand trembled before splitting open with an outpouring of blood. A small, sharp object shot out. A blade. It flew straight, slicing the throat of one of the sorcerers before dissipating into a light, glittery dust that floated to the floor before reaching the wall.
Dorhen cradled his mangled hand for a moment. His whole body lifted into the air—levitating, screaming.
The sorcerers launched into a frenzy, darting here and there, yelling and cursing, stepping over the dead man as if he were a rock or a twig.
“A fox in a henhouse,” Daghahen recited.
Lamrhath stood gaping.
Dorhen flew as if thrown until he slammed against the wall. He dropped and crumpled, no longer able to thrash. He jerked and seized, out of control of his twitching limbs. Blood gushed out of his mouth as though he had bitten his tongue.
The fear made one man brazen enough to take Lamrhath by the shoulders. “What do we do, my lord?”
Lamrhath shook out of his trance and responded to the man, “We have to control him! Tie him up! Bind him tightly—his whole body—hurry!”
The sorcerers forgot all about Daghahen. He couldn’t watch anymore. And it appeared his chance to slip away before being killed in the impending rampage had arrived. With luck, Lamrhath would be dead by the morning. This whole place would be in shambles.
“I’m sorry, son.”
Chapter 23
Her Monster
Daghahen lay in the tall grass, somewhere in a prairie outside Norr. The stars spun above him in a purple sky before the onset of dawn. He had vomited twice and couldn’t find the strength to continue walking. All the places where he’d been beaten with the poker throbbed. Besides the spinning stars, the pulsing pain dominated his senses during the intervals when he spaced out. The grass waved over him in the breeze.
He’d released Wik. In the Lightlands. Wikshen would be walking around soon. Tremors worked up his throat until another sob escaped, and he curled over into the fetal position to bawl his anguish out.
He hadn’t had the luxury of choice back there. If Orinleah still drew breath, some chance for her peace existed now, wherever Lamrhath had hidden her. Though he’d just succeeded in killing Lamrhath and crippling a prominent sorcery outpost, the war against Ilbith would go on. Although they’d choose a new kingsorcerer, Daghahen might be able to rescue her now.
And Dorhen.
His sobs escalated to uncontrollable dry heaves.
Dorhen had made a great sacrifice tonight. Though he didn’t know it, he’d done a great service to his mother. Such was the duty of the saehgahn. Many of them died young. Many Norrian families lost sons and continued on without regret because they kept in their hearts the deep honor the dead did their lineage.
None of those rubbish thoughts comforted Daghahen this morning. Dorhen was dead. Just as Daghahen had known would happen. It had happened sooner than expected.
“Orinleah won’t like it one bit,” he whispered. She was more Norrian than Daghahen, as a matter of fact. She would eventually accept it after he told her how her son had died for her.
Shakily, he worked his way to his feet. He wasn’t finished yet.
Kalea pushed away from the man who dragged her through the portal and darted. She stopped short with her head jerked backward and fell flat on her back. He’d grabbed her hair. In attempt to get to her feet again, she rolled to her hands and knees.
The man twisted her hair around his fist and yanked her upward. She wriggled, caught like an animal, and batted at his face. Anything to make him let go. A hard hand came down along her face, delivering an earthshaking swipe. She screamed.
“Shut up!” he yelled.
The sound of leather squeaking preceded a cold metal blade against her throat. She stopped struggling. It grazed her skin toward her artery and pressed down. Even her weeping stopped, although the tears continued. Sweating from the struggle, she strained her exhausted eyes to see him.
“Did you hear me?” he asked. “I said, I want the sword. If you care to live, you’ll cooperate.”
Perhaps this was meant to be. This man wanted the sword. If he wanted her too… If he was meant to obtain the sword, she could follow him—as much as she disdained this alternative escort. As long as Dorhen was somewhere along the path.
He sat on the grass, dragging her down with him, and held her close with the dagger pressed to her jugular vein. He sighed and rubbed his face, most likely feeling the effect of the poisoned dart she had stabbed him with, and returned the knife to her neck.
She opened her mouth and found her throat dry and croaky. “You said you want the sword. I’m following the sword too,” she managed to say.
He stopped rubbing his face and sniffed. “Why do you want it?”
“It’s not that I want it. I need to be with the man who carries it. Which could be him…or you. I’ll do anything to keep following it if…if you let me live.”
He used her hair to turn her head, squinting as he studied her face. He loosened the knife’s press.
“It’s a deal, love. But right now you’re on probation. I’ll be putting you through a program. When you pass the program, you’ll earn yourself the right to walk freely and serve me. One bad move, and I’ll kill you. I’ll do it slow if you annoy me enough. Your death’ll summon at least four or five—ah, forget it. If you do as I say, we might establish a relationship.”
Kalea closed her eyes to swallow, working out the tightness in her throat.
He removed the dagger, leaving a sharp irritation line across her skin. “My name’s Chandran, but you’ll call me ‘master.’ In my faction, we can take personal thralls, and that’s you. You’ll learn what it means in good time.”
He opened his mouth wide and pushed his tongue out far to slide against her cheek, leaving a long, moist slug trail behind. A freezing chill pierced the back of her neck. He fetched a rope to bind her wrists.
After lighting a lantern waiting amongst his stash of belongings, he tied her rope to a tree and murmured while touching his index finger to the knot. A lavender glow within the rope’s fibers flared and died. He repeated the process with the knot at her wrists. The glow flared again—she hadn’t been seeing things due to her delirious exhau
stion and hunger.
He stumbled and sat down with a sigh, rubbing his temples, and pulled a mushroom from his pack.
“Enjoy your supper,” he said, tossing it to her. “In the more convenient future, you’ll be cooking my supper. Tonight you’ll eat like me.”
Kalea scarfed the skunky, dirt-sprinkled mushroom. He didn’t toss her a second one, and she abstained from asking even though her stomach ached. She’d only eaten that one piece of jerky at Bowaen’s camp prior to this. She hugged herself and shivered as Chandran proceeded to eat the rest of the bunch in front of her. The air felt warmer tonight, as spring had set in, but she shivered for a different reason. The trees, mostly poplar, appeared similar to the ones around Bowaen’s camp. How far could they have come from there? Had Bowaen seen her get abducted through the magic hole in the air? Would he find and rescue her?
She put the thoughts away as Chandran’s hateful eyes met hers. She would have to pretend to be loyal to him, or else he might kill her.
His hair was more of a dark auburn than red, and his eyes were outlined with black paint or soot. He sported a ratty bandana tied around his neck with a white, blood-stained cloth peeking out from underneath it. The fingerless gloves he wore were black, not red with jewels, but he had indeed created a hole in the air. If he wasn’t in league with the raiders of the novice dorm, he still knew their magic.
After eating the last mushroom, he trudged into the dark forest, his movements sloppy under the effect of the poison she’d stuck him with. He took the lantern with him. His footsteps trod the leaves for a long way until the sound faded. Whatever he had done to the ropes, he must’ve trusted they’d hold her.
She worked her wrists to try and loosen the knot. As she did so, a vibration ran along the rope with another lavender flicker and went straight into her ears as a stabbing whistle. She flailed over, falling on her side. It only lasted a second or two, but long enough. She stayed on the ground for a few moments. He had cast a spell on the rope!
She tried the knot on the tree. She could’ve easily untied this one with her bound hands if not for the spell. When that pretty little glow started traveling across the rope again, she choked on a scream and tried to run away, forgetting the rope would yank her to a sudden stop. The whistle lasted a few seconds longer than the last one. Apparently, its duration increased with each escape attempt.
Hold on! Kalea tested a scream. A different pulsing vibration moved down the rope, and when it connected with her wrists, her throat tightened up and squeezed off her oxygen.
She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t call for help. And for a moment, she couldn’t breathe. For this round, her throat closed longer than before. By that logic, if she tried to scream enough times, she’d die of suffocation.
Kalea shuddered. What kind of bastard was that man? Sword or no sword, she was stuck with him.
“The cellar, it’s… Please, my lord, see it for yourself.”
Lamrhath followed the pale-faced man through the manor outpost all the way to the deepest cellar. They had lost track of Daghahen last night after the old lizard caused a huge stir, wasting the most valuable relic on the continent, and then escaping somehow. He’d left Lamrhath and the pitiful handful of sorcerers who manned the outpost to deal with the damage.
“Calm down!” Lamrhath said after a string of incoherent stammering from Harn’s mouth. The man held a lantern with a fatty candle inside, its flame beaming through magnifying pieces of faceted glass. Its trembling light gave away his stirred nerves. “Tell me what you saw in there.”
“Well, nothing, in fact. But it’s changed. The whole room. I don’t think the boy-o is in there anymore. But something’s in there.”
Lamrhath should be back in the Ilbith tower by now with his new heir. It looked like he’d be delayed for a while, picking up his nephew’s limbs from the cellar floor.
Lovely. He grunted. “How far into the cellar did you go?”
“Not far, my lord. I didn’t dare. The shakes overcame me. I’ve never seen such a…a dark stain on a room before. On the walls. Clotting the air.”
Other, lower-level sorcerers joined their group along the way. They squeezed into a tight corridor packed with sorcerers, each peering over the shoulder of the man in front. A chorus of whispers echoed in the small space. At the end of the narrow, sloping passage, two men at the door took turns with the peephole. They all pressed hard against the wall to make way for the kingsorcerer’s passage. Curious servants packed themselves in too, looking for a turn to peek at the alleged monster.
“Cuanth, Kaskill, accompany me,” Lamrhath said to two young rising red robes. “And Harn, bring your lantern.”
The crowd shifted to let them into the center flow. An elderly sorcerer stood by the door, holding a ring of keys. The peephole showed a stone floor at the bottom of the stairs, faintly aglow with light from one of the small windows. Harn hadn’t exaggerated about the strange shadow; the cellar should’ve been flooded by more morning light than it was.
At Lamrhath’s signal, the old man worked the lock, the keys jingling in his shaking hands. The door’s groaning hinges became the only sound in the whole wing. The old man flattened against the wall and edged away. Lamrhath entered first, followed by Harn, Cuanth, and Kaskill. The rest clogged the doorway. All the whispering stopped.
The air hung thick, like a gelatinous smoke. It pressed on his shoulders. Whatever dwelled down here had confiscated the space. Leading the way, Lamrhath edged down the stairs, often checking to make sure his companions didn’t lose their nerve and retreat. One step at a time, he pushed himself through the darkness.
They approached the back of the room. Lamrhath waved his hand for the lantern, but there was no telling if Harn even saw his hand beyond the lantern’s glow. The warm, flickering orb of light fell over him as Harn approached. Lamrhath took his wrist and lowered the glow closer to the floor.
A pair of pale feet placed together peeked from the shadow. They didn’t move or bother to twitch in the light’s nearness. The dark, mist-like air beyond the light drifted like fog on a damp morning.
“What do you suppose happened to him?” Kaskill whispered at his other shoulder.
Lamrhath shushed him.
Harn responded in a quieter whisper, “We should have watched ‘im throughout the night.”
Lamrhath inched forward, eager to see what corruption of nature had replaced his nephew. The faint candle glow glided up the shins attached to the feet, covered over with a heavy black drapery, above which was a pale chest with wide shoulders and corded muscles. The light couldn’t manage to break the shadow veiling the creature’s head.
“That’s not the boy-o,” Harn whispered, the lantern in his hand trembling harder than before. “What is it, my lord?”
Lamrhath’s stare turned into squinting. “A real pixtagen, I suppose,” he said. “A rare mutation, the result of a pixie’s possession over the body of a mortal person. But this one is greater than most… It might’ve been me if things had gone different. If the sphere really did house Wik as Daghahen said, we’re in for an experience.”
“Will he harm us?” Cuanth asked.
“We’ll have to befriend this creature fast or try to restrain him.” He squinted his eyes to see into the supernatural shade. The creature stayed motionless and quiet.
“His…hair,” Cuanth said, leaning forward as if to see better without taking any steps.
Lamrhath nudged Harn’s begrudging lantern hand closer. The shadow over the creature’s face didn’t move or weaken, but a glint of colored reflection caught the light. Damp strands of long hair flowed over the creature’s chest, highlighting blue locks, deep blue like lapis lazuli.
“It changed color… That is, if this is what’s left of Dorhen,” Lamrhath said.
The hair hung longer too. The creature was larger with longer limbs. This wasn’t Dorhen, whoever it was. The figure in the shadow stirred and turned its head.
“What is he wearing?”
Harn’s face had paled and wore a sheen of sweat. “He didn’t get that from us, my lord.” The long black sheet wrapped around its waist and pooled on the floor around it.
“Look,” Kaskill whispered. He rejoined the light after a brief step to the side, holding Dorhen’s clothes, ripped to rags and discarded, shreds of white shirt as well as his mismatched leggings. Yet there were no pieces of the lad’s body to accompany the rags.
Lamrhath turned back to the new creature. “Speak,” he commanded. It didn’t respond. “Tell me, where did you come from and what became of Dorhen? Explain in great detail.”
The figure’s head shifted again, and its eyes caught the light and glowed like hot, bright turquoise. It made odd, sporadic head movements like an owl; otherwise, it kept motionless.
“Should we bring a torch?” Cuanth whispered, leaning in close to Lamrhath.
“Not yet. He might not like the light.” He turned to the sorcerer on his other side. “Kaskill, greet him. Offer him your hand.”
Kaskill’s eyes bulged, and he pointed to his chest.
“Don’t be afraid.”
Embracing its knees, the creature slowly turned its head in Kaskill’s direction to watch him approach. The young sorcerer reached his hand toward the creature. “G-greetings.” His hand breached the densest shade behind which the creature hid.
In the same moment, Kaskill screamed and lurched backward with the creature’s teeth locked around his fingers. He pulled and wriggled like an animal caught in a trap. The creature didn’t let go. As he worked his way backward, his screams ringing like a huge bell against the stone walls, the creature grabbed his arm to prevent his escape and pulled him into the shadow again.
“Bring light!” Lamrhath shouted, and more lanterns were passed into the cellar, revealing Kaskill’s struggle.
Blood ran down the creature’s chin. Calmly, it ground its teeth. As Kaskill used his entire body weight to pull away, he finally broke free and tumbled backward. Blood spurted from the remaining half of his finger.
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