The Silver Sorceress (The Raveling Book 2)

by Alec Hutson

  A wavering glow to his left. Not a witchlight—those could be just as dangerous as the distant voices, and had led careless kith’ketan too deep into the shadows—but a portal from this place. He moved in that direction and thrust himself back into the living world. Demian emerged in the shadow of a gnarled banyan tree, sending an iridescent bird with a glimmering tail crashing through a bed of velvet nightblossoms, shrieking in aggrieved surprise.

  He needed information. What had happened here?

  Demian glimpsed a slice of pastel fabric through the tangled branches. Low voices, the chime of a young girl’s laughter. He glanced down at his travel-stained clothes and the jutting hilt of his long sword. Could he risk showing himself? Surely the concubines in these gardens would report him. Demian gritted his teeth. What weakness. Let them tell the Pure or the emperor. There was no way they could know who he was, or what he was capable of.

  Demian pulled aside the pavilion’s flap and stepped inside. Dreamsmoke hazed the room, the spent lamp perched on a mound of folded silks, its flame long having guttered out. The rest of the space was filled with piled cushions and pillows, and three beautiful women, who turned to regard him curiously with heavy-lidded eyes. They were deep in the clutches of the drug—likely they imagined him to be some apparition summoned forth from the smoke.

  “Hello,” one of the concubines murmured, stretching out like a cat and giving him a sleepy smile. “Welcome to paradise.”

  Another woman, a raven-haired beauty with the dusky skin of an Eversummer Islander, laughed at this and buried her face in a pillow.

  But the last concubine blinked uncertainly at him, a flicker of recognition in her eyes. She was from Dymoria, he guessed, with fiery red curls and skin white as milk. He knew her.

  “I am searching for one of the emperor’s courtesans,” he said, addressing the red-haired girl.

  “Well, you’ve found three,” said the dark-skinned concubine, giggling. “Luck turns towards you today, stranger.”

  The Dymorian girl’s face had turned even paler, if that was possible.

  “Where is Alyanna?” he asked her, holding her frightened gaze.

  The mirth in the pavilion instantly vanished. Demian could see that the concubines were trying to surface from the dreamsmoke, very aware that something important was happening.

  “I don’t know any Alyanna,” the red-headed girl whispered.

  Demian stepped closer to the concubines and sat, settling himself cross-legged on a cushion with his hands resting on his knees. The lingering remnants of the dreamsmoke were making his head swim.

  All three of the girls were now staring at him fearfully, and he forced an empty smile. “Come, I remember you,” he said, addressing the red-haired concubine. “You were in Alyanna’s pavilion the last time I visited these gardens. I have just returned from a long journey, and I find her vanished. Where is she?”

  The girl swallowed hard, her fingers kneading the silken cushions. She shook her head slightly.

  Demian sighed. She knew something, that was obvious. But how best to draw it out of her? He could threaten. Hurt her until she talked.

  Cut her! Kill her!

  With a slight grimace, Demian pushed aside those thoughts. They were not his own. It had been too long since Malazinischel had fed, and the sword thirsted.

  There was a better tact, one where she could be convinced to keep his presence in these gardens secret.

  “If she is in trouble, I can help her.”

  The dusky concubine glanced at the red-head, who was still staring at Demian like he was some predator that would leap at her if she looked away. “Bex,” she said softly. “Perhaps we should… ”

  “No,” said the other girl. “What can he do? He’s just one man.”

  “He’s not,” whispered Bex. “He’s… like her. Special. I remember him.”

  “Is she alive?” pressed Demian, leaning forward. The other two concubines drew back, but the red-haired girl didn’t flinch.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She was… taken.”

  “By whom? The paladins of Ama?”

  The girl shook her head curtly. “No. It was dark, very late at night. I was woken by sounds outside in the garden. I pulled aside the flaps to see if it was Alyanna returning—she had been gone since the early evening. Sometimes she did this, vanished for days at a time, and who else could it have been, at that hour?”

  “Bex,” murmured one of the other concubines urgently, shaking her arm. “Don’t say any more. If he hears you told this stranger these things, we will all be strangled.”

  The red-haired girl twisted her arm free. “He won’t say anything. He is Alyanna’s friend.”

  “The birds have ears,” the girl insisted. “They’ll fly back and tell him whatever you say.”

  “Him?”

  “The black vizier,” said the Dymorian concubine. “He took her. When I looked outside the pavilion, I saw him striding through the gardens with Alyanna slung over his shoulder like a sack of grain. She looked dead.” The girl couldn’t hold back a sob, and she rubbed quickly at her eyes. “I don’t think she was, though. She couldn’t be. She was too strong.”

  Demian watched her face closely, searching for any hint of falseness. Nothing. And no wonder she had been so hesitant to tell him what she’d seen—informing on the empire’s spymaster was certainly taking a huge risk. She must have truly loved Alyanna. The Weaver did have that effect on others.

  Demian rose from the cushion. “Then you haven’t seen her since? And you have no idea where he could have taken her?”

  The girl shook her head again. “I don’t know. Do you think she’s alive?” Her voice cracked on these last words, her face twisted in fear and sorrow.

  Demian attempted a comforting smile. “Alyanna is alive, and I will find her.”

  He slipped from the gardens as easily as he had arrived, by way of the shadowy paths only a kith’ketan could walk. Briefly, he was tempted to explore the halls of the Selthari Palace, perhaps even to hunt down this black vizier who had kidnapped Alyanna from these grounds, but in the end he decided he should not be so rash. This was a dangerous place, even for Demian. The Pure were immune to his sorcery, and he had crossed blades with enough of the paladins of Ama to hold a wary respect for their skill and strength. A few even had the ability to summon a blazing radiance that would banish the shadows that were his greatest advantage in any fight. No, better to find a refuge where he could contemplate his next move.

  And he knew where he should be able to find the perfect place.

  Demian stepped from the darkness, into the shadow of the palace’s soaring marmoreal walls. Drawing his cowl up he walked the tiled streets of the imperial district, ignoring the petty bureaucrats with their tonsured scalps and flowing robes. His travel-worn clothes attracted a few curious stares, but since no soldiers were summoned or questions asked Demian assumed they had decided he was a messenger on official business.

  He followed the roads that sloped downward. It was his experience that in every city built on a hill, the powerful perched themselves at the peak while the poor clustered at the base. Sure enough, the mansions with their ornamented porticos and balconies gradually shrunk in size, then gave way to buildings of baked mud several stories high. Women in jokkas clustered at the entrances to these soaring structures, chatting as they washed vegetables in the large communal basins fed by stone channels from the great aqueduct that carried water from lake Asterppa throughout the city. These were the homes of tradespeople and merchants and the families of the soldiers and bureaucrats who served higher up the hill.

  Demian continued on, until at last the ground leveled off and he walked among the slums of Menekar. The clay bricks of the apartments here were crumbling, and a few of the structures had even partially collapsed, spilling d
ebris into the streets that no one had bothered to clean. Lurid images were drawn in colored chalk and charcoal on the walls, white figures that looked suspiciously like the Pure having their glowing members attended to by naked women. Wolves with the heads of men—the details so pronounced Demian could only assume that they were actual leaders in the city—were tearing apart a young woman, the word ‘the Empire’ arching over her halo of golden hair. One of the wolves had a plump face and the uptilted eyes of a Shan—wasn’t the black vizier a refugee from the Empire of Swords and Flowers? Apparently, he was not popular down here in the city’s depths.

  The streets here were far more crowded than in the wealthier districts higher up the hill. Costermongers leaned against ancient carts filled with vegetables, and butchers had laid out strips of unrecognizable meat on ragged blankets, constantly lashing the air above their wares with leather flails to keep the flies from settling. A ragman draped in layers of colorful cloth called out the virtues of his wares, while a crowd of children had gathered around a seller of skewered locusts glazed with honey. Other urchins dashed about in tattered clothes, laughing as they tried to send their friends tumbling into those passing by. One little girl was shoved hard and collided with Demian, her thin arms flailing as she tried to catch herself. His hand flashed out and grabbed her wrist as she tried to slip her fingers inside his cloak to get to his coin pouch. She glanced up, startled, and he shook his head. When he released her, she vanished into the crowds without looking back, quick as a mouse darting into a chink in a wall. The children scattered, abandoning their game, a few pausing to shout curses quite inappropriate for their ages.

  Finally, Demian found what he was looking for: a black crescent burned into a wall beside an alley’s mouth, barely larger than a splayed hand. It looked like it could have been a natural blemish, some remnant of a long-ago fire, but Demian knew better. He turned down the alley, stepping over the sprawled corpse of a dog, its face a festering mass of maggots.

  Deeper in the alley, shadows shuffled away from him as he strode into the darkness. He paid them no heed. They would not be so foolish as to assault him, and if they were then Malazinischel would feast. At the thought a tingle of anticipation crept from the sword at his side. Patience, Demian urged. He suspected blood would be shed soon enough.

  There. Another crescent daubed in black paint above a small wooden door. Demian pushed at the rotten wood and the door swung open on rusty hinges, revealing a set of chipped stone stairs descending into blackness. Sour air billowed up from the depths as he started on the steps—apparently other denizens of the slums had used this space for refuge also. He smelled urine and blood and dead moldering flesh.

  When he reached the bottom of the stairs he summoned a silver ball of wizardlight, and the darkness fled before him. He stood in a cellar that must have stretched under much of the large tenement building above him, the wan light flitting among a forest of structural pillars. He saw a blackened space where someone had recently set a fire, and hunched across the far wall was the slumped shape of a man. Demian’s hand strayed to his sword’s hilt but then he realized the body was missing its head.

  His boots scraped upon the stone floor as he explored the deeper reaches of the cellar, looking for another sign. He found the final black crescent painted on the far wall, above a rent in the plaster and brick that would be barely large enough for a small child to squeeze through. Demian extinguished his wizardlight, and the darkness rushed in to embrace him.

  But it was not complete. Through the crack in the wall he could faintly see a ghostly glow. Good.

  Demian conjured up his wizardlight again and moved the shimmering sphere behind one of the cellar’s pillars. Then he strode forward, into the puddle of shadow his light had formed on the floor.

  The dark place again. He turned around, back towards where he knew the other light to be. There it was, hovering a dozen paces from him. This radiance was different than a normal flame: a smear of light danced above it, vaguely man-shaped. It watched him as he approached, and Demian nodded. The soul did not acknowledge his greeting. Demian stepped into the light and reappeared on the other side of the wall, in a new chamber. The fetid stench was fainter here, replaced by a staleness that suggested dust and ages long past. He stood over a corpsetallow candle set in a stand of twisted black metal, its pale flame writhing as if there was a strong wind gusting through the cellar. Which of course there was not. These candles were used by the kith’ketan to create permanent doorways from the shadow paths, since the bound spirits would never consume the tallow upon which they were trapped.

  This chamber was older and grander. The pale light played upon an elaborate mosaic set into the ceiling, and several arched exits led from the room. Demian pulled his wizardlight through the crack in the wall and sent it floating down one of the passageways. He followed it, trying to move quietly. He didn’t want to alarm anyone who might be here.

  Demian explored the ruins, moving through several rooms of what looked like an abandoned villa. He had been beneath a few of the world’s oldest cities, and they were all much the same, built over the bones of the past. If he dug deeper, he was sure he’d find the homes of an earlier people, all the way back until Menekar was just a sprawl of stone huts.

  Rubble and collapsed stone blocked off many of the passageways, and he followed the ones that remained clear until finally he found himself in a large room dominated by a great stone altar—this would have been the house’s center, where sacrifices were made in the name of Ama. Statues representing the various Aspects of the god lined the walls, casting strange shadows as his wizardlight came to hover over the altar.

  He was not alone.

  “Come out,” he spoke into the stillness, his voice echoing.

  Something uncoiled within the darkness, emerging from behind the Aspect of Grief. Demian’s wizardlight played upon shimmering black cloth but could not penetrate the penumbra that swaddled the sword at the figure’s side. Large blue eyes watched him from above a silken veil; the smoothness of his skin suggested to Demian that this kith’ketan was very young to carry a shadowblade.

  “Welcome, brother,” said the assassin softly. “The Paths are dark and cold. Rest here for a while, before the shadow calls again.”

  Demian inclined his head at the ritual greeting. “You know who I am?”

  A long pause. When the kith’ketan finally spoke again, there was an edge to his voice. Good, he felt fear. “Yes. You are the Undying One. In the mountain, stories are whispered.”

  Demian wondered what those stories could be. The rest of the world spoke in hushed tones about the assassins under the mountain, and they in turn told tales about him. Even legends had legends, it appeared.

  “Are you alone?”

  The kith’ketan nodded. “We traveled here from many places when we received the summons and gathered in these catacombs to wait for the sorceress’s signal. I was left behind for any stragglers who arrived late.”

  “And none came?”

  “Several did. I told them the rest had already left, and so they departed, back to where they had come from. But the last arrived more than a fortnight ago. Until you. Did you also come because of the daymo’s message? Or do you know what happened to those who went with the sorceress?”

  “Most are dead.”

  The kith’ketan shifted nervously. He really was very young—no wonder he had been the one left behind. He must have been given his shadowblade less than a year ago. “Dead? More than twenty brothers had gathered here. Some of the older ones… they told us such a number had never come together before. That this was no normal pilgrimage. They said we must have been doing the will of our lord directly.”

  Demian shrugged. “I suspect you were. I was there when the bargain was struck between the sorceress and your master. But the daymo underestimated the Crimson Queen and her school of wizards.”

  The blue eyes blinked rap
idly above the veil. He looked shaken, Demian thought. It is always unsettling when illusions are stripped away and the truth revealed. No doubt the boy had been raised on stories of his order’s holy mission, and how through their master’s will they would remake this world in his image. Finding out the kith’ketan were just one great power among many would certainly be jarring.

  “You saw them die?”

  “I saw their bodies. Perhaps some escaped, but we failed in the task we were given.”

  Composure was creeping back into the assassin’s voice again. “And the sorceress?”

  “That is why I have returned.”

  The kith’ketan’s eyes narrowed. “She survived?”

  “She did, and she fled back to Menekar. But she was taken prisoner. I do not know how they discovered she was not a simple concubine, but apparently they did.”

  “If that is the case, they must have killed her.”

  “Perhaps, or perhaps not.”

  “You mean to try and find her?”

  “Yes. And you are going to help me.”

  A harsh wind tumbled down from the red hills rearing to the west, stinging Keilan’s skin and filling his mouth with grit. He spat out sand and lifted the cloth around his neck to cover the lower half of his face, thankful that Senacus had suggested they buy the desert veils before departing the last trading post. They weren’t in the desert proper–the red waste of Kesh lapped the other side of those hills–but the low bulwark of ragged stone could not completely hold back the sand and searing wind.

  “I’d prefer not to sleep out in this,” Nel said, shielding her eyes from the swirling grit.

  Keilan glanced up at the darkening sky. “We may not have a choice. That rock might have cost us a comfortable bed and a hot meal.”

  Nel rubbed her horse’s neck affectionately. “At least she’s walking all right now. I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to continue on.”

  Keilan nodded his agreement. A sharp stone had become wedged in a hoof earlier, and it had taken all the trust that had developed between Nel and her horse—and her skill with a dagger—to extricate it without further injury to anyone. Still, they had lost a good part of the day, and this segment of the Iron Road was the last place Keilan wanted to be caught between rest houses. There was little refuge from the winds blowing off the waste, and the merchants at the last market town had warned them of bandits that laired in the red hills.