The Inquisitives [2] Night of Long Shadows

by Crilley, Paul

  One of the jars knocked his head back and made his eyes stream with tears. “Here,” he gasped, handing the jar to Col. “Wave this under his nose—don’t sniff it!”

  Col froze, the jar halfway to his nose, then carefully lowered it. “What is it?”

  “Smelling salts, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Well … no, no I’m sure. It’s smelling salts.”

  Col moved it toward Diadus, then paused and glanced back at Wren, who tried to look confident.

  “What are you waiting for, man? Do it.”

  Col shook his head and waved it under Diadus’s nose. The man jerked his head away, then opened his eyes and tried to focus on Col. He saw Wren standing over Col’s shoulder and sat up, scrabbling back against the wall. “Who are you?” he asked in a frightened voice.

  “Just a couple of concerned citizens,” said Col.

  Diadus frowned. “Concerned cit—? What?”

  Wren leaned over. “I remember you, Diadus.”

  At the mention of his name, Diadus let out a cry of fear and scrambled to his feet. He tried to push past Col, but the man was skinny to the point of sickliness. Wren reckoned a strong breeze could knock him over, so a shove from Col nearly sent him flying through the air. He fell onto his backside, then scrabbled quickly beneath a table, whimpering in fear.

  “Why did you say that?” demanded Col, rounding on Wren.

  “Say what?”

  “You called him by his name!”

  “Oh, excuse me, Master Professional Interrogator. What was I supposed to call him?”

  “Nothing. Not until we assessed the situation.”

  Wren glanced across at Diadus. “I think the situation’s assessed,” he said. “And in my humble opinion—and understand, I’m not a professional like you obviously are—I think we’ve got a slightly unbalanced individual on our hands.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Col. “He’s involved in all of this. He helped put the Shadow elemental inside the dragonshard.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  Col and Wren turned to Diadus, who had poked his head out from beneath the table.

  “What?” said Wren.

  “I said, ‘No. I didn’t.’”

  “But Xavien said—”

  “Xavien knows nothing. It doesn’t matter, anyway. He’ll be dead soon. Just like all the rest.”

  “What are you babbling about?” snapped Col.

  Diadus shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing does.”

  Col strode forward and grabbed hold of Diadus, dragging him out from beneath the table. He squealed and tried to slap Col’s hands away.

  “Let me go! You’ll regret it. I promise you.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Not me.”

  “Then who?”

  Wren stepped forward. “The warforged?”

  Diadus stared at him with bulging eyes.

  “Yes,” said Wren. “I told you I knew who you were. You created that warforged a few years ago. The one who was destroyed for killing all those people. You’ve done it again, haven’t you? You’ve created another one.”

  Diadus smiled, a slow grin that made his thin face look like a skull. “Not another one. He was never destroyed in the first place.”

  “What?”

  “He decided to stop killing. For the time being. He said he had grander things to plan. He brought me here.” Diadus looked around the tower room. “I’ve been here ever since.”

  “For four years?”

  “No choice. He wouldn’t let me leave.” Diadus seemed to reach a decision. He sighed. “Please put me down. I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

  Col released his grip.

  Diadus smoothed down his clothing and looked at them. “There’s nothing you can do, you know. I meant what I said. It’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  Diadus took a shaky breath. “Everything that’s been happening. All this stuff about Tiel killing the council and pinning the blame on Daask. It’s not real. It’s a cover for what’s really going to happen. When Tiel activates the shard—”

  “If he activates the shard,” said Wren. “Someone’s already tracked him down to stop him.”

  “Then I wish him well. Because if Tiel manages to activate it …” Diadus shook his head sorrowfully. “I had to do it. Do you understand? I had no choice.”

  Wren looked at Col. The Dark Lantern looked worried.

  “Had no choice about what? What did you do, Diadus?”

  Wren sniffed the air. “Col,” he said. “Do you smell smoke?”

  Diadus looked at Wren in alarm, then sniffed the air. “You’re right,” he said, and hurried over to the shattered doorway.

  “Where are you going?” snapped Col, stepping forward to pull him away.

  He didn’t make it in time. A warforged stood at the top of the stairs. Its body was so black that it was almost invisible, melding with the darkness around it. Wren could see it only because its eyes were bright white, flaring and dimming as if in time to someone’s breathing.

  The scene seemed to freeze for a heartbeat. Wren saw the fear in Diadus’s eyes. The warforged reached out, almost hesitantly.

  “I am sorry, father,” it whispered.

  Then the warforged ran Diadus through with a blade, pushing so hard that it lifted the skinny man off the floor.

  Diadus screamed in pain and the warforged yanked the sword free. Diadus staggered back and collapsed at Wren’s feet, curling up around the wound and sobbing in pain. The warforged looked at Wren, and the half-elf realized that the construct was probably standing there when he said Cutter was going to stop Tiel. The warforged’s eyes flared white, but didn’t dim. It turned and ran down the stairs. Col chased after the warforged.

  Wren grabbed Diadus under his arms and dragged him across the floor, leaving a smeared trail of blood in his wake. He just managed to manhandle Diadus onto the bed when a terrific explosion ripped through the lower half of the tower. It was followed by the sounds of rending wood and collapsing beams.

  Wren hurried to the doorway. As he reached it, Col staggered into the room, coughing and waving at the smoke that billowed up the stairs behind him.

  “It had some sort of explosive. Everything’s on fire down there.”

  “Wonderful,” said Wren. He returned to Diadus, rolling the wounded man onto his back. “Diadus! Diadus, is there another way out of here?”

  “He … he has killed me,” the man whispered, and Wren thought he could hear outrage in his voice. “I … I created him, and this is how he repays me.”

  “Diadus, what will the shard do? You have to tell us.”

  Diadus looked into Wren’s eyes and grinned. Blood trickled from his mouth. “Everyone must die,” he whispered.

  “The smoke’s getting thicker,” said Col from the other side of the room.

  Wren looked over his shoulder and could see orange light flickering from the staircase. He could already feel the heat at his feet.

  “Diadus, tell me! If Tiel activates the dragonshard, what will happen? What has the warforged done?”

  “He has brought the end upon us,” gasped the skinny man, grabbing Wren’s wrist. He doubled over in pain, and a moment later he relaxed with a long sigh. Wren checked for a pulse. The man was dead.

  “Wren,” said Col, standing near the hole in the wall, “you’d better get over here. We’ve got a problem.”

  The third day of Long Shadows

  Sar, the 28th day of Vult, 998

  Wren looked up. “Another one?” he said, getting up to join him.

  “Afraid so. See, I have one charm to feather fall. I could float down there, bring the skycoach up, and rescue you.”

  “I fail to see the problem. That’s a very sound plan.”

  Col looked over his shoulder as Wren approached. “It would be. Except for that.”

  He pointed toward the ground. Wren gr
abbed the edges of the hole and looked down.

  “Ah,” was all he said.

  Milling around the clearing outside of the tower were about sixty feral creatures. They stood upright on two legs, but their resemblance to anything human ended there. They prowled around the skycoach, sniffing it suspiciously. As Wren and Col watched, one of the creatures leaped into the air and landed inside the vehicle, smelling the seats.

  “Ravers,” whispered Wren.

  As they watched, another raver jumped into the skycoach. The creature inside whirled around with a snarl and slashed at the interloper’s throat. Blood sprayed out and the creature toppled over backward. The other ravers fell onto the body, snarling as they ripped it apart and devoured it.

  Wren stepped back. “I feel ill.”

  Col stayed where he was, assessing the situation. He turned to Wren. “You got any more of those wands?”

  “Only one that’s charged.”

  Col nodded. “Good. We use the same plan. I’ll float down and secure the skycoach. You use the wand to cover me. Then I pick you up.”

  The heat of the fire was growing stronger. Wren turned and saw naked flames licking at the doorframe. Smoke was pouring through the opening and piling against the ceiling like a cloud bank. “You’d better hurry. I don’t know how long this tower is going to hold.”

  Col nodded and removed the feather fall charm from his pocket. “Ready?”

  Wren took out the wand and steadied himself at the hole. “Ready.”

  Col stepped off the tower and disappeared from view. Wren leaned over and saw him float gently to the ground, drawing his sword as he landed. The ravers hadn’t seen him. They were all gathered around the fight over the corpse.

  A huge crash behind Wren brought him whirling around. The staircase and part of the floor had collapsed. Flames flickered through gaps in what remained of the wooden flooring. The whole place was about to go down.

  He turned his attention to the scene outside. His heart leaped into his throat. Col was busy fighting off five ravers. As the halfelf watched, the human decapitated one of the creatures, then brought his sword down in a diagonal slash that cleaved another from shoulder to hip. He kicked the thing in the stomach, pushing it off his blade, and parried a clumsy swipe by another, sending its hand sailing through the air. The others looked up from their gory feast and saw Col battling two of their kind. They raised their faces to the sky and shrieked with excitement, then ran toward Col, fighting and snapping at each other as they tried to get to him first. Col threw a look over his shoulder to glare at Wren.

  “Sorry,” muttered Wren, and pointed the wand at the closest raver. He released a charge of electricity. It arced to the ground and wreathed the creature in a spider web of blue light. It threw its head back and howled in pain, trying to pull the threads of electricity from its body. A second later, it dropped to the ground, smoke rising from its corpse.

  Wren let loose with another burst from the wand. This time, the electricity jumped between the jostling ravers. The front line went down, writhing and shrieking. Wren kept the charge going, and every creature that touched those on the ground was immediately caught up in the arc. Col finished off the two he was fighting and darted around the side of the skycoach, slashing backhand at a raver who reached out to grab him. Its arm sailed through the air and slapped another one in the face. The victim looked down at the arm twitching on the ground, then leaped with a snarl onto the back of the one-armed creature.

  Col reached the skycoach and laid about with his sword, stabbing and yanking at the creatures who had stayed close to it. Wren aimed and let loose with the remaining charge in the wand, shielding Col with a wall of electricity. Ravers ran straight into it.

  It distracted the beasts enough for Col to reach the controls. The skycoach rose jerkily into the air and turned in Wren’s direction. He dropped the wand and readied himself to jump aboard.

  The skycoach was still a few floors below him when a resounding crash in the room sent him spinning around. The entire floor caved in, taking everything with it. Flames roared up through the gaping hole, licking hungrily at the rafters. Wren shielded his face from the heat and tried to balance on the ragged hole in the tower wall. Col was looking up at him as he guided the coach as close as he dared. Flames licked out of arrow slits in the stone base of the building.

  As Wren watched, trying to judge the distance to the sky-coach, two ravers jumped from a room somewhere in the tower and landed in the vehicle. One of them was on fire. The skycoach dropped with the unexpected weight and tipped to one side. Col struggled with the controls, fighting to right it before he crashed into the tower wall. The burning raver rolled around in the back seat, slapping its burning rags.

  The other one, however, had spotted Col and was climbing over the seat toward him.

  Wren sighed and took his dagger from his belt. He couldn’t believe his luck. He was about to do an incredibly heroic thing and Torin wasn’t even around to witness it. He’d never believe it when Wren told him.

  He muttered a prayer to the nonexistent god of inquisitives and jumped from the tower.

  As he fell, he saw Col look up at him, his eyes widening in shock. Wren had the smallest moment to grin at the stupefied human before he landed in the skycoach, one leg on the seat and the other jarring painfully against the floor. His breath exploded from his body and he struggled to pull himself to his feet.

  He looked up and saw the raver’s face not inches from his own, mouth open to reveal serrated teeth. It lunged in to take a chunk out of Wren’s neck.

  Wren jerked backward and plunged the dagger up in an instinctive movement. The blade caught the raver under the chin and thrust up into its brain. The creature’s mouth snapped shut on its tongue, cutting the tip clean off. One of its eyes closed. The other opened wide, the eyelid fluttering as if it had a tick. Wren wrenched the dagger out and the raver collapsed onto the side of the coach. The half-elf helped it on its way, kicking it over the edge.

  The other raver still burned. The fire had spread up its legs and across one arm. Wren leaned over and stabbed whatever was in reach, hitting the upper arm that wasn’t on fire. The raver screeched and whipped around to glare at Wren, then it stood up and leaped over the side. Wren grabbed the side of the skycoach and watched the creature plummet directly into a huge shard of glass. The spire punched through the raver’s stomach and the creature slid down the shaft, the width at the spike’s base ripping the creature apart.

  Wren collapsed into the seat, gasping for breath. Col had righted the skycoach and was guiding it straight up into the air. Col looked over his shoulder, and Wren was astounded to see the man grinning.

  “Now was that an escape, or was that an escape?” he shouted.

  “Yes. Well, something like that, certainly,” said Wren.

  Col let out a whoop of delight. “Where to?” he called.

  Wren struggled to pull himself up and climbed over the seats to the front. “To Skyway. All we can do now is find Cutter and hope he got the shard from Tiel.”

  “We’re on our way.”

  The third day of Long Shadows

  Sar, the 28th day of Vult, 998

  The first thing Cutter did when he left Tiel’s place was find a House Jorasco healer, using some of the money he had picked up at Silvermist to pay. He wanted to be in top condition when he took on the halfling. He was confident he could take Tiel, but he wasn’t sure about Bren. He still had to figure out what to do about him.

  As he was leaving the healer, he stole an expensive thigh-length coat with intricate embroidering around the cuffs. It belonged to a nobleman visiting one of the other healers for a broken arm. Cutter buttoned it up over his bloody shirt, trying to look halfway respectable. Halfway—because no matter how expensive the outfit, he always looked like he was wearing someone else’s clothes.

  The House Lyrandar skycoach carried Cutter up into the late afternoon sky. The summer day had turned humid. Black clouds piled up on the hor
izon over the Dagger River. Thunderheads climbed high into the sky, lit golden on one side by the lowering sun. As the coach took him to his destination, the heavy clouds slowly moved across the sun. Golden streamers punched through the dense curtain to dance across the water below.

  The storm would hit before the day was out.

  A shadow fell across the coach as the driver took them beneath the massive floating district of Skyway. From this angle, it looked like a massive white cloud, the layers of magical cloud-stuff the floating island rested on obscuring everything else from view.

  They glided out from under the shadow and rose above the lip of the island. From this height, it was abundantly clear to Cutter the kind of money needed to live here. Mansions ten times the size of Tiel’s dotted the landscape. Their gardens were so large they could have been parks. Cutter watched as a griffon padded sedately along a wide boulevard, the rider sitting tall in his seat. He nodded at a carriage that trundled past, pulled by a pair of hippogriffs.

  Skyway was separated into two halves—Brilliant to the north, and Azure to the south, with Cloudpool Park cutting through the middle. Cutter had heard people speak about the park, but he’d never expected to see it for himself.

  Cloudpool Park was formed of clouds—or at least, a magical version of clouds that had been teased into the shapes of trees and bushes, statues, and animals. As the coach drifted slowly over the park, Cutter could see people walking along the pathways, tiny splashes of color amidst the whiteness. The scene appeared as if a blanket of snow had fallen over everything, so fresh it still held its lightness and color.

  The hotel he had heard Tiel mention was not far from the park. The skycoach circled the hotel a few times, waiting for another coach to land on the roof and deliver its passengers. His driver followed suit and Cutter disembarked. The skycoach lifted back into the air, banked to the right, and soared away over the palatial estates.