A flood of energy washed through him. The black, puddle-filled ally before him disappeared as the Mistress took control of his sight. Aether stirred through and around him as he swept his gaze across the city. While he could still perceive solid objects like walls and buildings, they were no longer obstructions for him. He wafted across Taig like an ethereal mist, and with the Mistress’s guidance he was soon focused on a building in the south of the city. There he could sense a massive pulse of energy so brilliant he could barely stand to look upon it. He had only seen such raw and primal power once before, and that was in the presence of the Mistress herself.
See to it they do not escape, she ordered. Be discreet.
Yes, my lady.
The Mistress’s touch vanished, and the dark figure was once again staring at the walls of run-down stone buildings. But now he knew exactly where to go. It would take him the better part of an hour to make the journey on foot, but he could not afford to travel another way, especially with the huntress after him. He had to be careful. He had to be swift.
And so he was. He flit from alley to alley, building to building, an invisible specter of thought and mind and power.
A Shadow.
Chapter Eight
“The scariest thing about the Zarul Shadows it that you could have told one your life story five minutes ago and you wouldn’t even know it.”
—A Crell citizen who told a Shadow his life story five minutes ago and didn’t know it
“Dream,” Jason said, struggling in vain to rub the fatigue from his eyes.
“Dream?” Selvhara echoed from beside him.
“That’s what this symbol means. I think, anyway; it’s hard to be absolutely certain.” He sighed. “One word in what, an hour? This is going to take a while.”
She reached out and plucked the book from his lap. “It can wait until tomorrow. You’ve barely slept since we found the dig site. You need to rest.”
Jason shook his head. “No, there won’t be any time tomorrow, not if we decide to hit the road.”
“We aren’t, not yet. Gor and Tam will be so drunk tonight they’ll sleep until midday or more. We can set out the day after just as easily. Besides, I’ll see what I can do while you rest. Maybe I’ll translate another word or two.”
He cocked his head. “If I’m going to sleep, so are you. You’re the one who had her hand burned.”
“I require very little rest,” Selvhara reminded him, snatching away the rest of the books and piling them out of his reach. “I am going to get something to drink from downstairs, though.”
“There’s half a bottle of 2006 over there,” he said, leaning back on the bed. “That stuff isn’t cheap, you know.”
“Yes, well, I’d rather not have to rinse my mouth out afterwards,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Izarian wine might have been considered a delicacy in many human societies, but it was so sweet it almost made her sick. “I’m sure they have something drinkable I won’t have to break up a gold brick for.”
“I’ll try not to be offended,” Jason grumbled.
Selvhara could see the fatigue in his body, and despite his verbal protestations she could tell he didn’t actually want to argue. He flopped backwards on the bed, clothes and boots still on, and let out a long, deep breath.
She couldn’t help but grin. She had met plenty of nobles who would faint at the site of someone so boorish lying atop Talishite silk sheets that cost more than the rest of the bed. Of course, Jason was smarter than any of them; he had just never bothered to pick up on the social graces his father had tried to impart to him.
“Do you need anything while I’m downstairs?” she asked.
He shook his head, eyes still closed. “I’m fine.”
“Very well,” she said, standing and sliding over to the door. Her eyes latched onto the cube as she passed by, and she reflexively reached down to touch her burned palm. At this point her healing magic had almost completely mended the wound, but the memory of the pain was still fresh enough to make her wince. She had never felt anything like it before, and she had been stabbed, impaled, and even burned plenty of times over the years.
Shaking her head, Selvhara flicked off the glow-lamps on the far side of the room, and by the time she turned around Jason was already asleep. Smiling, she slipped out of the room and into the long, narrow corridor. The main hall below was quiet—most of the guests who stayed at a place like the Riverpeak were too “refined” to stay up so late—and the only person she expected to see was the barkeep.
But to her surprise, someone else was making his way up the staircase. He was dressed in a black, hooded overcoat, and while he didn’t appear to be armed, she immediately felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in warning. Taking a deep breath, she surreptitiously channeled Aether into her palm and stopped until she could get a closer look at him—
Selvhara blinked. She caught the nearby railing and glanced around, but no one was there.
“What?” she muttered under her breath. She was suddenly so woozy it was like she had taken up Jason on his wine offer after all. Had she just imagined seeing someone? It seemed so—there was no one else on the stairs or in the hallways.
Apparently she was sleepier than she had wanted to admit—or perhaps she was simply thirsty. Yes, that was probably it. She was just thirsty and maybe even hungry too. Jason could use some time alone, and she would be nearby if he needed her for something.
Nodding to herself, Selvhara continued down the stairs.
***
A loud pop shattered Jason’s brief slumber, and a strained creak caused him to reflexively drop his hand down to his belt in search of the sword that wasn’t there. Grimacing, he cracked open his eyes and glanced to his left, and even in the relative darkness he could make out a tall, slender figure hunching over the mystery cube. He nearly leapt off the bed, but then he belatedly realized that neither the pop nor the creak had come from that direction. Whirling his head about in confusion, he glanced back to the suite’s only window—
And then suddenly the glass shattered and a second dark figure tumbled gracefully inside the room. A sleek repeating crossbow appeared in his hand, but instead of taking aim at Jason, the figure pointed his weapon squarely at the other intruder and fired. Three bolts streaked across the room in rapid succession, each burying themselves inside the target’s chest. The man yelped in shock. There was a blood-choked gurgle, a loud thump, and then nothing. He was dead right in the center of the room.
Jason tried to move, but nothing happened. His mind reeled in shock as it tried to piece together what in the hell had just happened, and his muscles had apparently frozen up along with it. He should have been moving, he knew; he should have been diving for cover before the mysterious assassin swung his weapon about and killed him too. But just as he finally managed to vault himself up and out of the bed, his eyes adjusted well enough that he got his first good look at the marksman…at which point his mouth gaped open.
For one, it wasn’t a “he” at all. She was adorned in form-fitting leather armor and a thick black cloak, and her belt and bandolier were loaded with throwing knives, lockpicks, and a pair of savage-looking axes—in other words, just the accessories he would have expected from someone who crashed through windows and shot men in cold blood. She was tall and athletic, with enough curves to be a woman and enough muscle to snap a man’s neck. Her wild shock of auburn hair peeked out from within the cowl of her cloak, and when she turned to face him Jason finally got a look at the piercing green eyes he knew so well.
“Sarina?” he stammered. “What in the bloody hell are you doing here?”
“Quiet,” she ordered, slowly rising from her crouch. Her weapon, notably, was still pointed directly at the corpse.
Rubbing at his eyes in disbelief, Jason let out a deep breath and forced his brain to think. Other than the new intruders, he was alone. He vaguely remembered Selvhara heading downstairs a few minutes ago—or was it even a few minutes? He had no idea how lo
ng he had been asleep.
Before he could figure it out, Sarina strode over to the corpse and fired a point-blank shot into its torso. She then kicked it in the side and fired one last time.
“I’m pretty sure he’s dead,” Jason told her. “Now please tell me what the hell is going on. What are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass, what does it look like?” she snapped. Her eyes remained fixated on the body even as she grabbed a fresh cartridge of bolts and reloaded her crossbow.
“But what…” He licked at his lips and again struggled to make his brain work. “Who is this guy? And where did you come from? I had no idea you were even trying to find me.”
Once her weapon was reloaded, Sarina let out a deep breath. “I wasn’t. But I did happen to be nearby, and when I heard the Crell were looking for you, I decided to stop in Taig and see what I could learn. I just spent the last day tracking this guy across the whole damn town.”
“How did you hear about the Crell?” Jason asked, shaking his head. “And how—”
He barely caught the fractional movement out of the corner of his eye, and by then it was too late to do anything about it. A black blur materialized behind Sarina, and a second later she was yanked backwards as a gloved hand abruptly clenched around her throat. Suddenly, the corpse was very much alive—and in the span of a heartbeat he had managed to disarm and totally immobilize her from behind. She choked and tried to buck free of his grip, but the man didn’t even flinch.
This time Jason finally moved. Diving to his left, he swept up his small, hand-sized crossbow from off the nearby nightstand and rolled into a tight crouch.
“Let her go!” he warned. Not that he had much of a shot with the man using her like a body shield, of course; he had as good a chance of hitting Sarina as anything else. But the color in her face was already draining away, and Jason knew he didn’t have much time.
The mysterious assailant looked at him. Despite the room’s thick shadows, Jason could make out a pair of black eyes—completely black eyes, actually, with no visible white sclera. The man was clearly human, but he was just as clearly corrupted by some type of magic. His expression was devoid of feeling and perhaps even thought, and Jason immediately knew there would be no bargaining with this person, whoever or whatever he was. He would kill Sarina, and then he would kill Jason. And then he would steal the cube and disappear.
Jason fired. The small bolt ripped through the mystery man’s shoulder, staggering him. His grip faltered ever-so-slightly, and Sarina managed to wriggle away just enough to give Jason a bigger target. He fired a second time, and the bolt lodged into the man’s upper torso. This particular crossbow didn’t have a great deal of stopping power, unfortunately, and Jason hadn’t actually expected it to kill his target. But he had expected it to allow Sarina to finally wrestle free and tumble clear.
The problem was that the mystery assailant was no longer there…and neither was Sarina.
Jason’s mouth fell open in disbelief an instant before a fist connected with the right side of his jaw. He lurched sideways, smashing into the couch arm and flipping over it uncontrollably. He finally landed straight on his rear, but not after knocking over the table and scattering its contents across the room.
A dozen tiny torturous needles pricked at Jason’s body from head to toe, but he could barely feel them over the raw agony searing in his jaw. It was definitely broken—he wasn’t even sure he could speak—but somehow he managed to ignore the pain and focus his vision. Sarina was folded into a ball several feet from where Jason had thought she had been, and at a glance he couldn’t tell if she was unconscious or dead. His own crossbow had flipped away somewhere during his tumble, and his sword was still on the floor by the bed. He was prone and unarmed, and the mysterious dark figure was now striding over to finish him off.
Jason was out of tricks. In desperation, he reached out for the only object nearby. His hand clasped around the cube, and he hefted it up in front of him like a hostage, praying to the gods he didn’t even believe in that the man would pause before potentially harming his prize…
He didn’t…but as it turned out, he didn’t have to. The moment Jason lifted the cube, time itself seemed to slow to a crawl. A strange, translucent blue smoke abruptly filled the air, and it was as if the room had suddenly been shrouded in a haze of gray. Objects lost their normal colors and were replaced by translucent, hollow blots. The only things left with any vibrancy at all were the bodies of the three people in the room; his own hands began to glow a strange blue, and out of the corner of his eye he could see that Sarina’s crumpled body was glowing faintly as well. So was the mysterious man in front of him, but just like Jason hoped, he had stopped in his tracks at the sight of the cube.
Glancing back down, Jason realized that the Nephilese engravings along the sides of the cube were now crackling with energy. He almost chucked it across the room for fear it might sear off his hand like it had done to Selvhara, but then time abruptly returned to normal. Suddenly the mystery attacker was lunging forward, one hand reaching for the cube and the other for Jason’s throat…
And then the world exploded. It was as if the sun had risen over a pitch-black field. A single beam of searing white light shot out from the cube and burned a hole through the attacker’s chest. He gasped once—a haunting, morbid sound—and then collapsed backwards. By the time the light faded, all that remained was a charred, blackened heap.
Jason breathed. His hands were trembling, and as he glanced back down to the cube he could almost feel its power receding. The energy crackling across its engravings faded, and a few seconds later it had returned to a simple, lifeless bauble.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there in silence, the only sound in the room the soft sizzling of the intruder’s body. When he finally returned to his senses, he carefully set the cube back down on its stand and dashed to Sarina.
She was alive. The man must have struck her unconscious somehow, though she didn’t have any obvious wounds. There was no way to know what had actually happened in the past minute, and he wondered if he even really wanted to. He took the half-bottle of 2006 and splashed it on her cheeks for lack of any viable alternative, and she gasped and inhaled sharply.
“What the…?” she breathed and coughed. Her eyes finally focused on him. “Jason.”
“It’s me,” he told her, forcing a smile. It wasn’t that difficult—just seeing her again suddenly made him feel a whole lot better. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” she murmured, glancing past his shoulder to the smoldering body of their assailant.
“This time I think he really is dead,” Jason said with a grunt.
“What the hell did you do to him?”
“That…will take some explaining,” he managed, clutching at his warped jaw. Now that the rush of the moment had faded, the pain had returned…and now he wanted to scream. He wasn’t even sure he would be able to talk coherently in another minute or two.
“Your jaw,” Sarina commented. “It looks pretty bad.”
“It’s broken,” he confirmed, his words coming out sluggish and mangled. “I’ll have to wait and—”
Before he could move—before he could even acknowledge what was happening—she reached out, grabbed onto his face, and popped his jaw back into place all in one smooth motion.
Jason screamed like a girl. Not a woman—definitely a little girl. Later, he knew he would be crippled by embarrassment, but right now he all he could think about was the pain. Sarina muffled the worst of his whimpers in her hand, and he thrashed in her arms for what felt like a small eternity before the agony finally dulled to something marginally less than overwhelming.
“Whaarg!” he blurted out incomprehensibly.
“Better now than later,” Sarina said with a shrug and a self-satisfied smile. She tossed back the cowl of her cloak, and an unkempt shock of dreadlocked auburn hair sprang free, and suddenly he was looking at the face of a friend he hadn’t seen in far too long.<
br />
And one that, right now, he wanted to punch more than anything in the world.
He vaguely recalled trying to slap her, but she easily caught his arm and flattened him against the ground. He tried to blink away the uncontrollable tears staining his eyes and took a moment to compose himself.
“You’ll be fine,” she told him, her smile widening.
Jason shook his head. “I’m going to kill you.”
“Is that a challenge?” Her eyes sparkled in anticipation, and Jason’s rage finally started to melt away. Suddenly his mind was flooded with memories of years passed; he imagined the two of them back in that Asgadian cave performing what he could only call a fight for dominance as they wrestled and made love at the same time. If Selvhara hadn’t been around to heal their wounds, he doubted that he and Sarina could have lasted more than a few days together.
“I missed you, too,” he managed after a moment. “Maybe we should figure out what the hell is going on first, though.”
“Yes,” she agreed, relaxing her grip. He could hear the subtle disappointment in her voice. “Where are the others?”
“Tam and Gor are at one of the brothels as far as I know. Sel should be downstairs.”
Sarina nodded distantly and glanced back over her shoulder to the still-smoldering corpse. “We should get moving as quickly as possible. He was a Shadow.”
Jason froze. “What?”
“A Zarul Shadow,” she explained. “The ones the people around here have nightmares about.”
“I know what they are, I just…” he trailed off and pursed his lips. Suddenly everything made a whole lot more sense. The illusions, the misdirection, the man’s creepy eyes and face. “Why in the hell is there a Shadow here in Taig?”
Sarina cocked a curious eyebrow. “I figured you would know. You’re obviously the one he was after.”
Jason slouched back in his seat. “So the Crell do know about the cube after all, Wonderful.”
“You mean that thing?” she asked, pointing at the stand on the table. “What the hell is it?”
The Godswar Saga (Omnibus) Page 15