Wit'ch Storm

by James Clemens

  Terrified and unable to answer, Mogweed fell to his knees. Bile filled his throat. What had he invoked with the wit’ch’s hair? As he shuffled back, flames suddenly lanced forth from the d’warf’s mouth, curling and twisting like some fiery tongue. Mogweed screamed, but once the flames brushed his chest, his breath froze in his lungs. His fingers rose to rip at his stricken throat.

  Then the flames were gone, and he could breathe again. Gasping and choking, he fell to his hands on the marble tiles.

  The d’warf leaned closer to Mogweed. The black lips parted to smile without warmth. Flames blazed like breath as it spoke. “I know your craven heart, shape-shifter.”

  Mogweed cringed. He knew nothing could be hidden from this black spirit. Games of sly tongues and misdirection would be laid bare by searing flames. Mogweed bowed his head to the tiles, showing his fealty to one so dark.

  “Through your deceit, you have delivered to me the scent of my most prized prey. For that we will let you live. But the boon you came begging after—the return of your si’luran heritage—that we deny you.”

  Tears of despair ran down the shape-shifter’s face.

  “Only the wit’ch at my feet will free you,” the Black Heart grated.

  Mogweed dared to raise his face. “But I can lead you—”

  The flaming eyes settled on Mogweed, sickening the shape-shifter’s stomach and numbing his tongue. “We’ve forged this vessel of ours, this d’warf, into a blood hunter. It has no need for your guidance, shape-shifter. Once the hunter scents a magick, he can follow its trail anywhere.”

  Mogweed bowed his head, despairing. “Then what do you ask of me? You will have your wit’ch without me.”

  Flames tickled his neck, freezing his flesh, as the d’warf leaned closer. “Trails sometimes grow cold. So for now, stay with those who aid the wit’ch. A time may come when I will ask more of you.”

  Suddenly a thunderous boom echoed from somewhere deeper in the Keep. Dust and smoke washed through the open door into the hall. The floor shook, knocking Mogweed flat. He covered his head with his arms as debris rattled down from the ceiling. Deeper in the hall, a bronze sconce clattered to the floor. When the rumbling subsided, Mogweed pushed up.

  Nearby, the d’warf still stood as if nothing had happened. The flames had faded from his skin, and Mogweed sensed the d’warf was once again in possession of his black body. The black figure simply squinted at the clouds of debris. “You’d best leave the Keep,” the d’warf rumbled. “What is built on a poor foundation seldom stands for long.”

  “What?”

  The d’warf ignored him and strode for the main doors of the hall. As it neared the barred doorway, an arm raised and black flames leapt out to strike the thick planks. The fanciful doors exploded outward in a storm of splinters and smoke. Without a glance back, the d’warf vanished out of the hall.

  Mogweed pushed to his feet just as a new eruption arose from the back of the Musician’s Hall. He swung around in time to see Kral burst into the chamber with Tol’chuk at his heels, Meric in Tol’chuk’s arms.

  “You found him!” Mogweed enthused, trying his best to fake his relief past the icy numbness from the touch of the Dark Lord.

  Kral glanced to the bodies of Ryman and Mycof. “How did you manage this feat?”

  Mogweed used his toe to shift the amulet resting on Ryman’s chest. “Remind me to thank your mother, Tol’chuk. Her gift of poisons proved of substantial merit.”

  Kral clapped Mogweed on the shoulder, almost knocking him to his knees. “You continue to surprise me, shape-shifter.”

  As Kral grabbed a box under each arm, Mogweed stared dully at his back. “If you only knew . . .” he mumbled.

  THE BLOOD HUNTER had been on the trail now for two days, tireless, needing no sleep. Only the occasional stray trapper or farmer alone near the river sustained him: The meat of a fresh heart kept his inner fires burning for a day and a night. So he ran, keeping near the river’s edge, slogging through the mud and reeds of the south bank. The scent of his prey was strongest in the delta breezes of the river, so he kept close to its source. He must not lose her scent.

  Torwren forged across a small tributary that left the Shadowbrook River to wind its way south. Once free of the small stream, he hastened along the Shadowbrook. Nothing would block his chase. Running along the bank, trampling through a nest of crane eggs, he had traveled another half a league before he realized the scent was gone from the river winds. He stopped and raised his nose to the breeze. Clean.

  He stared back up the river. Why had she left the river? It was the fastest means to reach the coast. Suddenly questioning his new ability, Torwren again lifted his nose. Still nothing. He backtracked up the bank until again he stood in the nest of the crane, amid broken shells. He tested the air. Still nothing.

  Panic began to fuel his foul heart. Where had she gone?

  He continued up the river until he reached the shallow tributary and splashed his way across again. The sun was almost gone; the shadows from the forest south of the river crept from the woods.

  If the Dark Lord should learn of his error . . .

  Then he sensed it, a scent like lightning from a summer storm. It was her! He swung around. Where had she gone?

  Then he spotted it. The mud by the bank of the stream showed a single hoofprint. The blood hunter knelt by the print and sniffed. A grin split his black lips.

  He stared south along the narrow tributary. “I smell you,” he mumbled as darkness descended. “You cannot escape me. I will chase you to the coast if I must.”

  He stood up and began to lope along the stream into the forest.

  “Even if you reach the coast,” he said with glee, “I have a surprise waiting for you.” Torwren pictured the two elementals pinned by his black magicks to the wall of the tower cellar. He had been interrupted in the forging of them into ill’guard soldiers—but he had not totally failed.

  While one had escaped unscathed, his other elemental captive had not.

  A most potent and black ill’guard had been forged in the cellar that night. None would suspect the evil now cloaked behind the face of one of the wit’ch’s trusted guardsmen.

  Upon stone lips, Torwren tested this traitor’s new name, his ill’guard name.

  Legion.

  Book Four

  DRAGON’S ROAR

  21

  THE MORNING AFTER encountering the pair of strange brothers on the tower stair, Joach lay awake on his thin pallet, staring up at the wood rafters. The sun was near rising, and he had not slept the entire night. The words of the two men still whispered in his ears, especially one word: Ragnar’k. Why did the word hold such an odd fascination to him? Was it a name? A place? He could not seem to loosen the word from his mind. He glanced across the room, searching for any distraction.

  On the far side of the cell, Greshym lay on his back atop the blankets, hands folded across his chest like a corpse laid out for viewing. Unlike Joach, the darkmage slept soundly, a coarse snore marking each breath; but like Joach, his eyes were open, too. His milky globes glowed red throughout the night, and not just from the reflection of the embers of the hearth. Somehow Joach sensed the mage’s eyes watched throughout the night while his body rested.

  Yet as strange as this was, Joach had grown accustomed to it. He had learned Greshym’s habits and patterns. The darkmage would continue to sleep until the sun’s light reached the slitted window of their room. Then, like the dead rising, he would awaken and order Joach to fetch him his morning meal.

  This day Joach did not have the patience to wait for the sun. He was anxious to return to the staircase in the east tower, to search for clues of the two men. Yet, he knew he could not move from the bed until ordered. The darkmage’s eyes would see him.

  Trapped, he stared back up at the ceiling. Silently, his lips formed the word that nagged his slumber.

  Rag . . . nar’k.

  When he shaped the last syllable, Greshym snapped upright on his bed,
as if somehow the silent word had stabbed through his slumber. To reinforce this impression, his ancient face twisted toward Joach. For the first time, he saw confusion and fear in the wrinkled features.

  Joach continued his blank-eyed stare, praying for the mage’s gaze to leave him. He needed something to convince the mage of his continued enslavement, something to distract those prying eyes. A burning in Joach’s belly reminded him of one way to perhaps accomplish this, a way to debase himself in such a way that the darkmage would not question his lack of will. As he lay on his pallet, Joach loosened his bladder, soaking his clothes and bed. An acrid smell swelled in the tiny cell from the soiled bedsheets. Joach continued to lie still, unmoving in the spreading wetness.

  The odor must have reached the darkmage. “Curse you, boy!” Greshym swore. “You grow more like a babe each day! Now get out of bed and clean yourself up.”

  Joach did as he was ordered. He slid from his pallet and slipped out of his dripping underclothes. Slack jawed and naked, he dragged his feet in a slow shuffle to the washing basin. Using a rag soaked in the cold water, he wiped himself clean.

  “Get dressed and fetch my morning supper,” Greshym ordered as he stared up at the still-dark window. He grumbled sourly under his breath and lay back down. “Wake me when you return.”

  Still damp, Joach had to keep from hurrying when he donned a dry set of underclothes and pulled into his breeches and brown shirt. It was early, and the halls would be nearly deserted: a perfect chance to explore. As his heart raced, he kept his movements dull and fumbling. With his shirt buttoned wrong and only half tucked in his breeches, he shambled toward the door.

  As his hand reached for the latch, Greshym mumbled something to himself. “Frozen in stone and thrice cursed . . . Ragnar’k will not . . . cannot move . . . Just dead prophecies.”

  Joach’s hand froze on the iron latch at the mention of Ragnar’k. Had the mage somehow sensed his thoughts? His ears strained for meaning in the darkmage’s rumblings. What did it mean and—

  Greshym suddenly barked, obviously noticing his pause. “Get going, boy! Before you foul yourself again!”

  Joach jerked and almost gasped at the sudden eruption. He fought to maintain his dull attitude, but Greshym had already dismissed him and stared again at the rafters. Joach yanked on the latch and hauled himself from the room on legs that trembled for real. He closed the door and leaned upon it, sighing softly in relief.

  It took him a few deep breaths to calm his laboring heart. Stretching a kink from his neck, he followed a familiar path among the twisting halls of the Edifice. Few others were awake this early, so he kept his pace mostly hurried, only stopping briefly to collect the scrap of parchment and sliver of charcoal from a cubby hidden in a crumbing section of wall. His mapping tools vanished quickly into his pockets, and he continued toward his destination, the tower named the Broken Spear.

  The mystery of Ragnar’k nagged at him, and though he knew not why, he somehow sensed that great importance lay in solving this riddle.

  Without any significant delays, he reached the stairs that wound up the easternmost tower. He listened for voices or footsteps. Nothing. Satisfied that he was alone, he clambered up the stairs, taking two steps with each stride, and climbed to the landing where the two mysterious brothers had spoken the night before.

  Joach again glanced into the halls that led out onto this level. Had the men gone this way? In the early-morning gloom, the halls were murky and the dust thick on the floor. Dust! Joach bent closer to the floor. If the men had gone this way, there should be tracks on the stone. He cocked his head and squinted. The dust lay undisturbed for as far as he could see. The two brothers had not left the staircase. He straightened, scratching his head. He knew they hadn’t come down, so that left only up.

  Joach stared at the winding staircase and fingered the map in his pocket. There was only one level above this one. It was the floor he had explored and mapped yesterday. That level, like this whole wing of the Edifice, was just crumbling stones and lonely spiders. What manner of business did these two have above?

  There was only one way to find out. Joach climbed the remainder of the stairs to the last level. He started out into the halls but stopped as his eyes scanned the floor. He saw one set of footprints leading out and one set heading in. Joach placed his shoe onto one of these tracks. They were his own prints from yesterday. No other steps marred the pristine layer of dust.

  “They didn’t come this way,” he murmured to himself, his brow furrowed.

  Stepping back into the stairwell, he frowned. Where had they gone? He crept down the stairs more slowly, his mind grinding on the riddle: not up, not down, not into the halls. So where? His mind came up with only one answer. They went in between.

  Reaching a finger to the outer wall of the stairwell, he pondered the possibilities. Among the servants, he had heard rumors about secret passages and chambers long bricked closed. He had overheard maids whispering about hearing voices in the walls. Ghosts, the women had feared. But were there perhaps other secrets buried deep within the stones of the Edifice?

  He continued down the steps, dragging a finger along the wall. The bricks seemed to be fitted snugly together. He reached the landing again and laid both palms upon the wall of the staircase. He felt only smooth stone. Studying the floor of the landing, he knelt closer but saw nothing. Even rubbing his palms and fingers along the floor, he almost missed it. If not for his dogged search and his certainty that the men had left the stairwell via a hidden door, Joach would never have discovered the fine scratch in the stone’s surface. He traced his finger along the arc of etched rock as it led to the wall again.

  If a door swung open and rubbed slightly against its stone porch, it might leave just such a mark. He stood up and again studied the section of wall. Now he at least knew where the hidden door lay, but how did it open?

  Suddenly, from the lower stairway, he heard the slight rub of heel on stone. Joach swung around. Two figures stepped around the stairway’s curve. He froze, sure it was the two brothers come to capture him. But as the shadowy figures approached closer, their faces were revealed in the feeble light of the landing’s single lantern. It was not the brothers, but two others whose hard faces and cruel smiles nevertheless meant trouble.

  “See, I told you I saw that drooling idiot come this way.” It was Brunt, the mean-spirited urchin who had tormented Joach’s trips to the kitchens over the past seven moons. At his shoulder loomed a more muscular brute of a boy at least four winters older than Joach. This other boy was unknown to Joach, but the cruel set to his thick lips and the mischief that shone in his piggy eyes were a twin to Brunt’s expression. These two were looking for trouble, and unfortunately, they had found Joach, an easy target for their cruelties.

  They crept toward him like dogs upon a wounded fox.

  Joach kept his posture slack and his face expressionless. If he fought or tried to run, they would know his secret, and with Brunt’s tongue, it would only be a short time until word of his subterfuge reached Greshym.

  Joach stood on the landing. He would have to accept whatever torment was inflicted upon him. He had no other choice. In the kitchens, Joach had learned to keep a watchful eye on Brunt, suffering the occasional burn or knuckled punch from the boy. So far, vigilance had kept him from serious injury, but in his excitement this day, he had slipped; now he would have to pay the price.

  Brunt stepped up onto the landing beside Joach. “Look at this, Snell. He can’t even button his shirt.” The boy’s fingers lashed out and ripped a button from Joach’s shirt.

  The boy named Snell snickered. “Can’t he talk?” the other asked.

  Brunt leaned closer to Joach’s face. His breath stank, and Joach had to struggle not to cringe back. “He kin talk, but only like a dumb parrot. He keeps repeating the same words over and over.” He then stuttered in imitation of Joach. “M-m-master wants m-meal.”

  This earned more snickers from Snell.

  Brun
t’s chest puffed out with his audience’s approval. “I always wondered if I could git him to say something else, even if it is only to git him to cry out.” Brunt slipped a small carving knife, obviously stolen from the kitchen, from a pocket. “Maybe I’ll slice him up like a haunch of beef.”

  “Give him a poke, Brunt,” the other boy encouraged, a gleeful lust in his voice. “Go ahead and make him bleed a bit.”

  “Or maybe more than a bit,” Brunt added.

  Joach’s mind spun. He would be of no use to Elena dead, and from the feral gleam in Brunt’s eyes, Joach did not doubt the boy would go so far. Brunt liked causing pain, and in this abandoned section of the Edifice, the boy might try to see how far he could carry out his cruelties.

  Brunt raised the knife to Joach’s cheek and dug its tip into his skin with a twist of the blade. Joach held still, though his right fist clenched tight behind his back. Brunt pulled the knife away and studied its bloody tip with obvious fascination.

  “Let me try,” Snell said, reaching for the knife.

  Brunt yanked the blade away. “No, that was only a nick. I want to wet the entire knife with his blood.”

  “Then I’m next, right?” Snell asked huskily, his hands opening and closing with blood lust.

  Brunt’s voice had become throaty and low. “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll each take several turns.”

  Joach now knew that the two had no intention of ever allowing him to leave these stairs. Here in the sprawling Edifice, there were plenty of places to dispose of a body.

  Joach had no choice. He had to survive.

  Brunt came at Joach again with the blade.

  Joach straightened from his slouch and slammed his clenched fist into Brunt’s face. Bone crushed under his knuckles.

  Brunt squealed, dropping the knife and clasping his hands around his bloody nose. Snell, who had already fled two steps away, was stopped in a crouch, waiting to see if he should run or attack.