Betrayer's Bane

by Michael G. Manning

  The most frustrating thing was the lack of information.

  She interrogated those she held sway over and picked at the surface thoughts of those she didn’t, and yet she still found nothing noteworthy. Almost everyone in Albamarl was clueless as to what Tyrion’s intentions were.

  There were interesting details, though. Some of the slaves had been involved in crafting numerous stasis boxes, she felt sure that was important, but she had no idea how. The construction of the empty city was curious, but mundane.

  Tyrion’s children knew more, but she dared not reveal herself by attempting to inspect them directly.

  Serrelia waited, reporting what she found and nothing more.

  ***

  Tyrion has done nothing since his return. He appears to be waiting for something, said Ceylendor.

  His youngest children are still there? asked one of the elders.

  Yes.

  We should act while we still can.

  Agreed, said the First among the Centyr Elders. You will begin rolling the dice Ceylendor. When the result is nine you must act without delay.

  As you wish, Elders, responded the lore-warden.

  The dice in question were a set of two decahedrons grown by one of the elders. Various numbers covered each face and when rolled they could be added together to produce a random number. Ceylendor rolled them as soon as he got back to his platform.

  “Eleven,” he murmured in disappointment. It would have to wait for another day.

  ***

  The possibilities have begun diverging rapidly, warned one of the Illeniel Elders. The Centyr will move soon but it is impossible to know when.

  How is this possible? questioned one of the younger ones.

  They use blind chance to confuse us.

  Clever, responded another. We should post guards.

  They would be noticed and if the Centyr know of them they will plan for them.

  Bring the child here then, they would not dare attack it within the grove itself.

  They might discover which child is critical to our plan if we do that.

  Bring them all then.

  Tyrion will not allow that, we have tested the possibility already. We can bring only one, and it must be done in secret or they will discover our deception, stated the First Elder.

  They have a spy there, how can it be done?

  The Prathions will assist. Lyralliantha must be given instruction.

  I am afraid.

  Of what? asked the First.

  Death.

  We all must die, but by our actions our race will survive, someday.

  ***

  Lyralliantha had been gone a week and when she returned she had Thillmarius with her. She asked to speak to Tyrion and Kate privately. The three of them gathered in the bedroom that they shared.

  “The elders want to meet your daughter,” she began without preamble, looking at Kate.

  “Why?” asked Kate, suddenly suspicious. “Why not your son? Layla has nothing to do with them.”

  Tyrion understood the reason immediately. “Layla is different. She may have inherited the loshti from me.”

  “So could Garlin,” argued Kate. “Why do they want to see my daughter?”

  He shook his head, “I believe they created it to pass only to the first child. Layla was conceived before Garlin.”

  “Garlin is the one that might have the special Illeniel gift of theirs, they should be more interested in him,” she countered.

  Lyra’s brows went up, she had not expected Kate to be aware of that detail. It wasn’t something she had tried to hide, but neither had she made a habit of discussing it. “They tell me that they wish to examine Layla’s mind, to make sure the transfer of knowledge worked as intended. In adults…” she nodded toward Tyrion, “… there are sometimes problems.”

  “Then they can come here to see her,” insisted Kate.

  “They cannot travel,” reminded Lyra. “I assure you that they mean no harm to your child.”

  Kate changed tactics, “Then they won’t mind me coming with her.”

  “You would be able to do nothing,” said Lyra. “Let me go. I can commune with them during the process. You can trust that I will not allow them to do anything more than observe her.”

  Tyrion remained silent.

  “Don’t you have anything to say in this?” Kate challenged him.

  “They know the consequences if they betray me,” he said simply.

  “I will be leaving Garlin with you, Kate,” said Lyra sincerely. “I trust no one in this world to love and care for him more than you. Layla means as much to me as he does. I will let no harm come to either of our children.”

  Kate bit her lip, “Fine. I don’t like it, but I’ll trust you, Lyra.”

  They let Thillmarius enter after that and when the door opened again only Kate emerged. The Prathion lore-warden used his gift to spirit Lyra, Tyrion, and little Layla away without anyone noticing.

  They didn’t intend to make the trip public knowledge. Some of his children might notice Lyra’s absence, but it might be a while before they realized that Kate’s daughter was gone too, especially if Kate kept to herself for a while. Ironically, Brigid was the most likely to wonder, since she came to play with the children almost daily.

  Tyrion had no worries about her talking. Brigid was the least talkative of them all.

  Chapter 38

  Seven days after Lyra left with Layla, Ceylendor looked down at the dice and smiled. The sum showing was nine.

  He immediately notified the Mordan krytek that was waiting for his message, and it vanished. It made two stops, one to the Mordan Grove, and the second to Serrelia’s hidden position, several miles from Albamarl.

  And then things began to happen.

  ***

  Sarah looked askance at the men and women who entered through the main door to Tyrion’s house. They were all slaves, but there was no reason for them to enter the house.

  “What are you doing in here?” she asked.

  Their response was immediate, powerful, and completely unexpected. Two of them, Prathions, vanished. The other six attacked her.

  Sarah didn’t have her enchanted shield up, none of them did that, but she did have a small, more ordinary shield around herself. If their attacks had reached it before she reinforced it she still would have died, though.

  She wasn’t the fastest or most powerful of Tyrion’s children, but she was no slouch either. Sarah saw their aythar flare and in that instant she threw her power into the shield. Their combined assault struck her defense, and just barely, it held. With a word she activated her tattoos and their enchantments sprang to life.

  A broad stroke of pure force sent her flying through the air. It wasn’t an attempt to break her shield, merely to disorient her.

  Sarah still remembered the two that had vanished and even as she hurtled toward the wall she summoned an aythar filled mist to obscure the room. If she couldn’t see all of them, then neither would they see her. She struck the wall hard, but her shield kept the impact from doing more than rattling her teeth. If one of her siblings had done that to her it would have probably been strong enough to knock her senseless. Her enemies were weaklings.

  She snarled as adrenaline made her heart quicken. She would kill them all.

  Regaining her feet, Sarah stalked forward through the mist, following the wall to her right. She bumped into one of them almost immediately. The woman’s reflexes were fast and her armblade made contact with Sarah’s shield first. It didn’t have the power necessary to penetrate, however.

  Sarah’s return strike cut the woman neatly in two.

  Sounds on either side of her let her know that her scuffle had been noticed. They were trying to get to her before she could move again. With a brief effort of will she lifted one of the heavy wooden chairs nearby and sent it sweeping sideways. It made contact with someone as she darted in the other direction.

  The man whose chest she ran into was much larger tha
n she was. Ordinarily that wasn’t a factor in a battle between mages, but he managed to get his arms inside hers and force her back, against the wall. With her arms forced outward she had no way to attack him and his physical strength was much greater than her own.

  He was pressing the point of his own armblade into her chest, but so far the shield had resisted it.

  A number of options passed through her mind in an instant. The instinctive one was to use a blast of raw aythar to send him flying backward, but then she’d still have to find and kill him afterward. A second possibility was to use her will to strengthen her muscles, she could probably overpower him then.

  But then her eyes fell on the tattoo at his neck.

  Uttering the command word, she watched him slump and fall dead at her feet. It wasn’t a satisfactory way to win, but she was outnumbered, and she still had no idea what they were after. Stepping over the body she moved forward, seeking her next opponent.

  ***

  It was too cold to have small children outside. That’s what Brigid would have been told when she was little, but she had certain advantages her parents had never had.

  There was snow on the ground, but Inara and Eldin never felt the chill of the air. She kept an envelope of warm air around each of them while they giggled and played with the snow. Of course, the warmth melted the snow much faster than simple gloves would have, but that was alright.

  Eldin delighted in watching it melt away almost as soon as he could grab it up.

  Even if he could have held it, he and his sister were far too small and uncoordinated to make it into anything recognizable, so Brigid took that task on for them. Using her aythar she scooped the snow up and formed it into fantastic shapes. She didn’t have Violet’s artistic skill, but she satisfied them with crude snow horses and other simple animals before switching to geometric shapes, cubes, squares and ellipsoids.

  Inara was particularly entranced, watching raptly while Eldin spent half his time trying to grab the snow with his own hands.

  The man that walked toward them was big, larger than most, standing almost six and a half feet tall. Like many from the slave camps he was covered with scars, a testament to the battles he had endured before becoming a warden.

  Because of his height, Brigid had noticed him before; she even remembered his name, Bolger. She nodded faintly at him as he walked closer, intent on her snow inspired games.

  He seemed inclined to watch them, and she was willing to ignore him, until he stepped too close to Eldin. He was just beside the little boy, and that was too close for her taste.

  “You need to move on, Bolger. Tyrion won’t like you getting too close to his children,” she warned.

  He glanced at her calmly, “Never got a chance to see many kids when I was in Baratrea. I don’t mean him no harm.” Leaning over he patted Eldin gently, feeling the boy’s soft hair.

  Two more strangers approached from the other direction and Brigid turned her attention to them for a second, identifying them as more of the slaves that worked in and around Albamarl. The cracking sound that found her ears sent a shiver of cold horror down her spine.

  Bolger’s hand was around Eldin’s neck and the toddler’s head hung loosely, drool falling from his lips as his eyes fluttered.

  Brigid was stunned, unable to believe her eyes, but that didn’t stop her from reacting. An inarticulate howl rose from her throat, the cry of an animal that has lost something dear to it. Bolger activated his tattoos, shielding himself and stalking toward Inara with one armblade extended.

  Brigid’s will lifted him from the ground, smashing him against the stone wall that formed the back of Tyrion’s house. His shield held, but the force of the impact was so great that Bolger lost consciousness, blood running from his nose and ears. The shield vanished then, and the second time she slammed him against the wall broke his skull and most of the other large bones in his body.

  A lance of power shot forth from one of the two newcomers, aimed not at her, but at Inara. It was deflected at the last moment by the enchanted chain that interposed itself.

  The shock and surprise that had slowed her initially was gone now as Brigid faced them, two women with crude features and brown hair. She didn’t recognize these two, they looked much like most of the women that came from Ellentrea, their noses bent and flattened from repeated breaks in the past. They were already shielded as they approached her.

  It was a mistake to give them tattoos, thought Brigid, but it never occurred to her to use the lethal ones inscribed on their necks.

  She stood between them and Inara, her own shield active and her chain moving closely around the girl to protect her. She wouldn’t need it to kill them. Brigid glared at them, her eyes carrying a hatred so intense if seemed to make the air smolder, “Burn!”

  With that, the air around them ignited into incandescent flames. Their shields kept it out, but the heat was so intense it hardly mattered. Brigid was howling and the fires she had created burned hotter with each passing second. She kept it up long after they collapsed, until they lost consciousness and their shields vanished. Then she incinerated the bodies. A greasy black cloud rose into the air and there was nothing left but ash when she stopped.

  The blast of fire that caught her from behind was much weaker than hers had been, it washed over her shield and did little to her, other than surprise her. There had been no one there.

  A Prathion, stood ten feet away now, revealed by the failed ambush.

  Brigid snarled, sending her chain outward, she cut the upstart into five pieces in less than a second.

  Then she bent down to retrieve Inara, and saw what the fire had done. Unshielded, the girl had been blackened by the fire that had passed between the lengths of chain around her. Most of her skin was charred and the damage to her lungs had left her unable to breathe. She writhed silently on the ground, dying even as Brigid watched, helpless.

  Brigid’s cry of anguish was a small thing, too small to contain the horror and despair. It was limited by the constraints of her mortal frame, but the fury in her soul would not be bound by such things. She stood motionless for several minutes, while the ground beneath her vibrated with the intensity of her barely contained aythar.

  And then, she began to hunt, her chain following her like a hungry serpent.

  ***

  Kate was nursing Garlin when she heard a noise outside the bedroom. She didn’t think much of it until she felt the heavy thump against the wall. The house was constructed of thick stone, only blows that would be felt like that were powerful ones.

  Worried, but not yet fearful she pulled Garlin from her breast and laid him in his crib. The crossbow Tyrion had given her years before still hung on the wall, along with the quarrel she had once used to kill one of the She’Har. Taking it down she tried to cock it but the strength in her arms wasn’t enough. There was a stirrup on the front end of the bow to allow the user to brace it with a foot while drawing the string, but she knew that wouldn’t be enough.

  A belt hung on the wall, next to where the weapon had been. A hook attached to it was meant to attach to the string, allowing someone like herself to bend at the knees and then straighten up, using the strength of the legs to arm the bow.

  Lock the door first, she told herself.

  Still holding the crossbow, she marched toward the door, but she stopped before reaching it. It began to move as someone drew the latch from the other side. Calm down, it’s probably just Sarah, come to explain the noise.

  As the door opened, however, she saw no one, and a strange mist billowed in from the other room.

  Adrenaline hit her like a bolt of lightning as the more primitive portion of her brain recognized an unnatural threat. Kate slammed the weapon against the floor and in one fluid motion set her foot in the stirrup and drew it back easily, fear had given her the strength she lacked before. Setting the bolt in place she leveled it at the doorway and fired at the vaguely human outline revealed by the mist.

  A man appeared, t
he quarrel buried deep in his chest. Gasping he toppled over, dying rapidly.

  Close the door! she thought. Taking two steps she moved to shove the stranger out of the way so she could close the entry, but a faint draft made her aware of the second invader a second later. Kate’s head turned to look back toward the crib when the woman appeared behind her and then she felt a blinding pain as the stranger’s armblade pushed through her lower back. It went through her kidney and emerged from her lower abdomen.

  She was falling.

  She never felt the impact. Time had become distorted and desperation had narrowed her focus to one all important goal, the baby. The woman’s boots walked toward the crib, she was ignoring her now. Kate was dying.

  Her legs weren’t working, but Kate pulled herself across the floor with her arms. The dead man was close, and she managed to get her hand on the bolt standing out from his chest. It didn’t move at her first tug, but the second ripped it free. Her heart was pounding, giving her strength.

  The quarrel was ruined, the wooden shaft had splintered from the impact when it struck her target and Kate knew she couldn’t have cocked the crossbow again anyway. Lifting the heavy wooden weapon she threw it across the room at the woman who had stabbed her.

  It flew low, hitting the woman in the legs and causing her to fall backward. She landed close, just within Kate’s reach and she slammed her fist, still holding the damaged crossbow bolt like a dagger, into the woman’s shoulder.

  The blow was poorly placed, however. The enchanted point went through her enemy’s shield, but it failed to penetrate deeply. She was bleeding, but the wound wasn’t serious.

  The crib had been overturned, though. The invader had grabbed at it as she fell, sending poor Garlin tumbling across the floor, wailing in fear. He was near the bed.

  Kate pushed him under it as she rolled, trying to put her body between him and the stranger. Pain blossomed in her back as the woman’s armblade went through her once, twice, and then a third time. The world dimmed as Kate’s eyesight failed, but her ears could still hear Garlin screaming as other woman dragged him roughly from under the bed by one leg.