to find the person he required, but nothing more precise than whispers and vague descriptions. He sniffed the air for the smell of filth, a scent so rare in this place, and found the weakest hint of it upon a breeze from his left. Morghiad turned, and followed the odour into the darkness.
The tunnel was much longer than the others ever could have been, and it sloped steeply downwards into the earth. Whatever lay at the end of it had clearly been buried as far from prying eyes and curious explorers as possible. It was a thing either feared, or severely reviled, or both. The smell
was becoming stronger now, but he had experienced worse environments during his punishments. Nothing could ever be so foul as the stench of his own, rotting flesh. Not even a cess pit smelled as rank as that.
There was no light to indicate that he had reached the final chamber at the end of the tunnel, only the sound of the air that stirred gently around him. He called out to its occupant. “Mirel?”
A scraping sound was made only yards to his right, and Morghiad could not help but tense at the suddenness of
“I know that mouth,” a coarse, rasp of a woman’s voice said. “I never forget...”
“Our mutual friend told me you would say that. And he told me to say that your dedication has not gone unnoticed. No weaknesses visible, Ice
Kill.”
“No weaknesses visible,” she echoed. “Ah, how comforting it is to hear those words after so long.” A few short breaths came from her before she spoke again. “Now show me your face, kind messenger.”
It was safe enough to wield here, now that he was so far from other
people. Morghiad reached in his pocket to touch the ghar-ten his father had given him, and used the fires locked within it to build a light. The creature he saw before him was a wretched, sad thing; a shadow of an assassin. Her hair was matted into a large, dark mass about her filthy face, and spindle-like arms dangled from between the narrow gaps of her white cage. Layers of filth were stacked upon the floor within her cell. Clearly no one had dared to enter to clean it up. A more surprising sight, though, was the brilliant flash of her two bright blue eyes. They stared at him with unbridled astonishment.
“No... that is not possible...” she whispered, “Or could it be...?”
He folded his arms. “Make up whatever story you wish, I have need of you.”
A crooked, black smile spread across her lips. “He raised you, didn’t he?”
“He did. Now, I can return your freedom to you if you agree to help me.”
“Oh, this is too perfect. I know what you’re here to do... Ahh, my handsome Morghiad, when this is over we shall be united.”
The thought turned his stomach
somewhat, and he tried as best he could to ignore it. “Then you’ll know that I must make her suffer. And you’ll know that there is one, clear way for me to do that. I have decided which one should go, but I do not know the best way to do it. In such matters I am informed that you are the expert.”
“Kill both of them if you want!” Mirel spat. “Freaks!” She kicked at her prison bars, and some moments passed before she regained enough composure to speak again. “You must do it in front of her. Be sure to gag her though; she will try to twist your mind with her soft words. She must see it happen. Or, at
the very least, she should see the body and the blood on your hands. Make them scream as they die. Let her hear it. Let her smell it. Use the blue-silver dagger she carries at her thigh. That is important. And forget pinh – it is useless.”
No pinh? Curious. “Anything else?”
“Take the general, too. He is wise though. Be wary of that one... Better still, give him to me. I’ll turn him into one of my pets-”
“I’m afraid that will not be an option. As part of your conditions for release, you must not make another
eisiel. Our friend has asked that you make that promise. Do you understand?”
“It is my business! That man is not right in all things, my sweet. Brilliant he may be, but sometimes even he is wrong. I will not agree to become soldier-less!”
Morghiad took a step closer. “Then you shall stay here.”
“I have helped you.”
In truth, he wasn’t sure that she had helped him a great deal. “I do not make the rules.”
“Unite with me and you shall.”
“No.”
She growled and gritted her teeth, but stopped as soon as a sound became apparent from the hallway beyond.
Morghiad snuffed out his Blaze lamp. “I must go. I will return to you when this is over.”
“Be sure that you do, pretty,” she cooed in the darkness. But Morghiad was already loping back down the hallway. He could hear a number of footsteps ahead now; people running toward him. They were too close for him to form another accessway without being seen or heard. He would have to hide. Carefully, he
shimmied up the rough-cut rock and pressed his body against the upper reaches of the tunnel wall. It was a precarious stance. His toes balanced upon miniature ledges and his fingers gripped onto mere scores in the stone’s face. It worked, though. A small team of soldiers sprinted straight past him with torches bobbing and near-silent feet. He waited a moment for them to disappear around a bend in the tunnel’s form, and dropped onto the gritty floor. He broke into a sprint then, and hurtled down the corridor in pitch blackness. Only the sensations of the way the air moved around him were his guides, and several times he came perilously close to knocking himself out on unseen promontories or jagged corners. But, at length, he arrived at the base of the grand tower and another tunnel. He followed it into further darkness. Accessways could be noisy things to form, and he did not want to risk being heard in his mischief. But Morghiad found himself tumbling toward the floor before he could reach for the Blaze bundle in his pocket. He hit the ground with an ungraceful thump, his feet wrapped around something large, angular and hard. Blast it! He gritted his teeth through the pain while his freshly broken ankle took its time in healing up.
And what had he tripped over? This dark hole, surely, was not the famed Chamber of Light in which he had been born. He crawled back to the object in question and felt along its edge. It was polished glass-smooth on the surface, cold and almost certainly made of marble. Writing had been etched into it. Morghiad traced his fingers over the letters. The first ones were too small or stylised to make out, but the next row was much clearer. In memory for eternity... he felt the line below: K-I-N-Q – no – G... M-O-R-GH. He stopped there, knowing the rest of the inscription. It was a tombstone, a marker for Calidell’s king. A peculiar sort of shiver made its protracted journey along his spine. He ought to have sensed a kind of connection with this dead man, but he did not. He only felt... odd.
He sighed and pushed himself to his feet. There was no more time for fondling the memorials of dead kings. Morghiad reached inside his pocket and found the second bundle of Blaze, but his father’s ghar-ten was gone. No, no, no! Morghiad scrabbled around in the darkness looking for it, but could not
find any sign of the stone. The soldiers would return soon. No time. He would have to make his way back and find a new one. At least he still had his way out of here.
The blaze bundle tickled his fingers with a soft, pulsating heat. He held it out before him, and began to parse the tiny strands that made it. It was a clever little form really, designed to compress and conceal the true amount of Energy it contained. As always, withdrawing the power from it was a struggle against the creeping ice, but he succeeded in extracting enough to make his accessway. He pictured a
particular tree within the woodland of Gialdin, one that he had specifically memorised for his escape, and drew his way to it. Stepping through the exit was even more freezing, biting and painful than the first time. Perhaps it was only possible to survive so many accessways in a day. It was not something he wanted to find out.
Both hands were frozen up to the knuckles this time, and he shook them gently to encourage the thaw.
Th
e accessway snapped shut behind him with a heavy thunk. Its sound always made him jump. Gialdin was just visible between the bare branches
of the surrounding forest, and so he made his way rapidly back towards it. He’d just been for a relaxing walk in the Gialdin countryside; that was all. Nothing suspicious about that. Morghiad smiled to himself as he stomped clumsily through the trees, snapping as many twigs and branches as he dared.
A dark shadow to his left caught his eye; it moved smoothly behind the undergrowth, black furred and wary. It was some sort of animal. He quietened his feet immediately, and sidestepped into the nearby clearing. Another movement came from his right this
time, and he flicked his eyes toward it for as brief a time as possible. But a second was all he required to recognise that it was the king’s sister, Medea. She had the same, strong and defiant features of her mother, even if her bearing was altogether more... introverted. She was armed and dressed to fight.
“Are you alright?” he whispered, reaching for his blade.
“Fine. She won’t hurt you.”
The creature, evidently a panther, padded into the clearing. Another entered from the left, and a third dropped from a tree to the right.
Three panthers.
Morghiad gripped the hilt of his sword. “Are you sure of that?”
“Yes.” Medea strode past him – well, less strode than tiptoed, and held her hand out to the nearest animal. Oddly, it crept up to her and nuzzled her hand. The other two sat on their haunches, watching him. What sort of madness was this?
“My family has an affinity with these animals,” she said as she teased one velvet ear, “and if you don’t mind me saying, you look like you’re one of the family, Morghiad.” She motioned for him to join her, but he was less
than inclined. “I won’t let them harm you.” She smiled this time.
He took two steps forward, and another... and another. Both panthers sprang to their feet in unison, and began to rub against his legs like overgrown cats. This was beyond strange. “Have you ever considered forming an army with these things?”
Medea laughed. “I don’t think they would appreciate that. They are quite happy living out here, it seems. You see now? They like you.”
One of the animals appeared to be purring at him, its green eyes almost closing through pleasure. Morghiad
tilted his head to look at the panther more closely. “Is this inherited from your mother, or-?”
“No. It is because of our father.”
“I see.” And it could only mean one thing.
“Speaking of my mother, I must get back to the castle and report to her. Our queen likes to hear how her patrols are doing.” Medea gave her pet a final pat on the head, and made her way to the edge of the clearing. “Will you come with me?”
He nodded. “You should know she is no longer the queen.”
“Really?”
“She stepped down two days ago. Your brother is in charge now.”
“I see.” Her posture, which had hitherto been quite upright, began to sink.
“Are you upset?”
She stared only at the dead leaves as she walked, and fiddled with a silver bracelet at her wrist. “I am a small spoke in a very large, very powerful wheel... and it is moving faster than any of us can understand it. My mother always knows what to do. I do not.”
He thought of offering her some words of consolation, but could not
think of anything appropriate. Instead he accompanied her to the city gates in silence, and thence to the hallways of the palace. Innumerable pairs of narrowed eyes met his arrival. Evidently his temporary absence had not gone unnoticed.
“Zennar!” Sergeant D’Avrohan sprang from the mists of a courtyard entrance, and placed himself before the pair. “You have some explaining to do.”
“I just went for a walk in the woods, sergeant.” Morghiad kept his voice calm, innocent.
“Did you indeed? Fly out of
your window to get there, or melt through the floor?” The sergeant placed his hands on hips.
“He was with me, grandfather,” Medea said softly.
Toryn seemed ready to chew his own face off, but ceased his interrogations there. “It is good to have you back, Medi.” He gave the girl a brief embrace, and then allowed his brow to darken once more as his eyes returned to Morghiad. “Fine, if that is to be your story. But this is the end of your little sojourn. Come with me.” He spun, harrumphed and marched forward into the white abyss.
The former queen, her general and The Hunter were waiting in the grand throne room when he arrived. Apparently Lady D’Avrohan had quite recovered from her dire medical straits in his absence.
Sergeant D’Avrohan spoke before anyone else had a chance to. “Wandering about in the woods, apparently,” he sneered to his audience before bidding his goodbyes and stomping from the chamber.
The general leaned towards a somewhat bewildered-looking exqueen, and whispered in her ear, “Are you sure you’re ready?”
Something flickered across her eyes, a sort of shadow that Morghiad half thought he recognised, and she sighed heavily. “No, Silar. It’s all coming back to me now, every bloody moment of it. Oh... fires.” She moved her gaze rapidly to her daughter, and smiled broadly before moving to hug her. “Not so much as a scuff on your clothing. I hope that means you fought well rather than not at all.”
Medea shrugged with apparent embarrassment. “Southern Calidell is fairly quiet. There were a few skirmishes, but nothing of note. There was something else, however... an
imbalance.”
“Oh?” Her mother brushed a lock of hair flames off one shoulder, causing them to tumble down her back.
“Every village we went through had a ratio of approximately one child to twenty-two-and-seven-eighths adults, with the obvious exception of Kalna, where there’s an orphanage. But in Sernaer there was only one child to every sixty-six adults. That is strange, don’t you think?”
Expressions around the room varied between surprise and thoughtfulness, Morghiad’s included. The only difference was in The
Hunter’s. He wore a small, but not undetectable, smile.
“Missing children, then? Well, that sounds like a problem for your mother to see to. Very well, I’m sure you’re keen to see your brother and report all of this to him. I’ll see you again this evening, Med.”
The kahriss grinned and very nearly sprinted from the throne room, her movements swift and graceful.
“I’lljust... ah, I need to find out more about this village.” The Hunter’s words were babbled, barely formed. He dashed out of the room after her like a wolf that had found a rabbit.
“Is there something between those two?” Morghiad said aloud.
General Forllan’s guffaw was harsh and loud, very nearly a chuckle. “She’s too attached to her brother for anything else. Heart belongs to the wrong Tallyn, it seems... ah, in a different way, of course.” He cleared his throat.
Lady D’Avrohan rolled her eyes. “You’ll start unnecessary rumours with comments like those, Master Zennar. Say what you will about me, but do not create gossip around my children – do you understand?”
He nodded with contrition.
“Good. Now, if my somewhat holy memory serves correctly, I have a new team to inspect around now, and I must say I am very excited about them. Come with me, Morghiad, and tell me precisely what you have been up to over the last few hours.”
“I went for a walk,” he said, falling into step with her and the general.
“Why?”
“I wanted to see the woodland again. It reminds me of home.”
“And yet you managed to do so without alerting our guards. You know they watch you, Master Zennar. You
are very important – more so than perhaps you realise – and it is our duty to see that you are safe.”
General Forllan grunted in agreement.
“There are ways of doing what you did,” she continued, “– that much I know. But
please, if you want to leave again, tell one of us so that we don’t launch an entire army to search for you.”
Morghiad could not help but feel a slight pang of guilt at her words. Quite why, he could not have explained. “As you command, my lady.” It was good of her to finally
admit that he was important, though. He was glad for that.
Evidently satisfied with the exchange, the general moved ahead a few paces, and left them in a pairing. The hallway here was completely level, though Morghiad observed that they were moving through sun-dappled cloud. How could walls be so thin, and yet so strong?
“Watch this,” his mistress whispered. The air shimmered around her as she filled herself with Blaze, and then she constructed something very basic. It looked like a form of hard air. With only the slightest of visible
movements, she placed the form ten yards ahead in the general’s path. A grin, a very bad sort of grin, spread across her lips.
Lord Forllan strode quite easily for a moment, but came to an abrupt halt mere inches from the obstacle. He turned, and gave his former queen a withering look.
The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Page 134