Sensational Six: Action and Adventure in Sci Fi, Fantasy and Paranormal Romance

by Sasha White

  Now, however, after the never-quiet of the swamp and the brutal racket of killing, he thought silence would be a welcome change. To sit undisturbed for hours and read from one of Murdis’s texts—even if it was the Moulten instead of, for instance, his boyhood favorite, The Lives of The Warriors.

  As he neared it, the landscape became more familiar. The trees were taller than they had been, and seemed to grow closer together. But the walkway wending between them had not changed, nor had the surprising way the scriptorium appeared after he passed the last bend. He knew it was close; he had seen it peeking through the trees. But there was still a startling moment when he saw a massive edifice of stone that looked like it would surely sink, sitting on a grassy hillock that rose from the soupy flats like a red welt on a maiden’s cheek, something that shouldn’t be there. The hillock almost seemed to defy the laws of nature, but as Murdis never tired of pointing out, there it was, so it had to be real.

  The last time he had been here, Kord had been too young to appreciate the graceful intricacies of the scriptorium’s construction. His eyes picked out some as he neared it: the way it was built on a platform of stone that held it just above the high water mark on the hillock’s shore, the precise joining of stone to stone that kept out the rain, the arched doorway and windows that lent the walls strength to hold back the wind. He realized that Murdis had, in building this place, designed it not just as a place of learning but as a fortress. Reading, he’d said, strengthened the mind against whatever the world might hurl at it. Just as surely, this place stood as a bulwark, dedicated to preserving his intellectual ideals against the world’s unlettered hordes.

  It was as quiet as ever. Even the birds had gone still. Kord stopped outside the doorway—open, as always—and raised his voice, albeit reluctantly. “Ho the scriptorium!” he called. “If Murdis be present, let him greet one he may have forgotten!”

  He stood, waiting. The silence seemed suddenly oppressive, unnatural, and he felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck rise up. Was he being observed? As much as he wanted to look over his shoulder, he did not care to betray any weakness, so he kept his eyes locked on the dark doorway. After several moments he heard something from inside, a sound that revealed itself to be the shuffling of sandaled feet, and then a guard appeared, blinking away sleep.

  “Did I disturb your nap?” Kord asked.

  The guard held his spear diagonally, from his left knee to just above his right shoulder. Although Kord didn’t recognize him, he might have been old enough to have been serving when Kord had studied here. His neck was thick, his belly ample. Chances were his duties consisted of little more than eating and sleeping and checking the door from time to time. Murdis had never been overly concerned about security, and time had demonstrated the wisdom of that. Thieves went after treasure, and most didn’t know the value of ideas. Some even thought of Murdis as a kind of sorcerer, and superstitious terror kept those from his door.

  “Never you mind,” the guard said. “State your business.”

  “I already did.”

  “Again, then!”

  “Enough, Beril,” a familiar voice said from inside. The guard kept his spear at the ready, but his attention was split between Kord and someone approaching him from behind. A moment later, Murdis himself appeared in the doorway, and it appeared that Carna may have had the right of it.

  Murdis’s coppery hair had gone mostly white, with threads of pale orange here and there. He was leaner than Kord recalled, his stubbled cheeks gaunt, his eyes hollow. A gown hung off bony shoulders; Kord thought that in a high wind, his limbs might clack together like a skeleton’s. But in those deep-set eyes a glimmer of intelligence remained, and more—recognition. A mouth with very few teeth in it opened in an unexpected grin.

  “So you remember me, old man?”

  “Forget that impertinent air? The careless disregard for cleanliness? The slovenly posture? Never, Kordell!”

  Murdis started forward, his stride ungainly, his left leg dragging. He broke into a coughing fit, covering his mouth as his cheeks flushed, a ghostly shadow of the hale man Kord had known in his youth. When he was finished, he hawked and spat off the trail, then threw open his arms. “Come here, boy!” he said, his voice even more gravelly than it once was. “Let’s have a proper look at you.”

  Kord stepped into his feeble embrace, and tried not to break any of Murdis’s ribs when he returned it. When it was over he stepped back.

  “What of Kenaris?”

  “Dead,” Murdis said. “Years, now.”

  “Kenaris gone, and you not well,” Kord said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nine hells!” Murdis replied. “I’m well enough for a dying man.”

  “You don’t look so near death to me,” Kord lied.

  “I thought that’s why you’d come.”

  It had been, but Kord would be damned by the Lords of the Underworld before he’d admit to it.

  “I was nearby, in the swamps, fighting battles that were not my own. I remembered you were close, and wanted to pay my respects.”

  Murdis coughed again, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Some spittle remained at the corners, white and foamy but flecked with red. “You never could lie for shit.”

  “Truth!” Kord said. “I was reminded of you, so here I am.”

  “Reminded by what? A bad case of the runs?”

  “You sell yourself short, old man.”

  “Last time I saw you, Kordell, you compared me to a weeping sore. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

  “I was young, foolish, and rude.” Kord left it at that. Murdis had taken something from him, something it hurt to give up. He had been furious and in pain, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he had forgiven the old man yet. Or that he ever would. “I’d had enough of reading about adventures and wanted to live some. What did I know?”

  “Did? You’ve learned something since?”

  “Not everything worth learning comes from books.”

  “Prove it.” Murdis started to laugh, but his laughter turned into a wet, racking cough that doubled him over. He beckoned with a gnarled hand. “Inside,” he managed, between coughs. “Come, boy.”

  I’m no boy, Kord almost said. Not anymore. But as he followed the old man into the cool of the scriptorium, he knew that by comparison to Murdis, he always would be.

  Inside, memory lay thicker.

  The place might have been a frieze, cast from Kord’s recollection. Stone walls were lined with thick plank shelves, shelves stacked two deep with books. Scrolls were stacked on other shelves like logs beside a fireplace. The same chairs were scattered throughout, worn and threadbare now but holding together, as Murdis seemed to be, through willpower and stubborn resistance to change. Tables were thick with candle wax in places, worn smooth in others by arms sliding across their edges as books were painstakingly copied. A few people filled the big chairs, reading books. One ancient sat hunched over a table, copying the text from one volume into another.

  “By the Thirteen,” Kord said. “Has nothing changed here in the years I’ve been gone? I think he was working on that volume even then.”

  Murdis had brought his cough under control. He looked at Kord with glistening eyes, and clapped his palms together thrice. “Oh, some things have,” he said. “Some have changed quite a bit.”

  The echo of his claps had scarcely died when she entered the room. Kord wondered if his eyes were playing tricks. He had seen plenty of women here—Murdis had always liked women—but none had looked like this one. She was young, older than Kord had been when he left, but younger than he was now, by several years. And she was beautiful.

  “Your daughter?” Kord asked, though he doubted that could be possible. Murdis had never claimed any children that Kord had heard about, and it had only been fifteen—no, seventeen—years since he had left the scriptorium behind. “A niece?”

  “Elinore, my companion,” Murdis said. “Meet Kordell. One of my less successful efforts, which I
attribute more to his dull nature than to my inability to teach. But a reasonably pleasant lad, just the same.”

  “I’m sure.” Elinore took a half-step in Kord’s direction, as was traditional, then stopped and extended her left hand. Kord closed the gap, went to one knee, grasped the proffered hand and brought it briefly to his lips.

  “Elinore,” he said as he released it. “Lovely.”

  And she was. She was dressed like Murdis, in the fashion he preferred at the scriptorium: a loose gown of some flimsy material, with nothing on beneath it. Murdis hated false modesty, but allowed that absolute nudity might distract from the place’s mission; therefore, he settled on simple garb that left little to the imagination but at least covered the basics. The form this gown both revealed and hid was lush, as feminine as could be, but also strong. Her bare arms were muscular, her neck taut. Kord could tell from her hands and feet that she’d led an active life, a physical one. She was no pampered scholar, that he knew.

  Her face, too, was both lovely and contradictory. Intelligence was evident in the slant of her brown eyes, in the set of her mouth and her firm jaw. Her features were as finely crafted as one of Murdis’s most prized books, and her auburn hair was loose, framing her face, hanging past her shoulders. She was not dolled up like one of Antrem’s favored whores, but wholly natural and prettier for it. Yet, in the slight upward tilt of her head and what was probably an unconscious compression of her full lips when she smiled at him, he read ambition, and perhaps a tinge of resentment, as if she knew why he had come, and disapproved.

  “Call me Kord,” he said. “I’m honored to meet you.”

  “Call me Elin,” she replied. “He talks about you all the time, Kord.”

  “Liar,” Murdis said.

  “Ignore him, Kord.”

  “I always have.”

  “Smart man.”

  “Not to hear him tell it.”

  “I’m certain,” Elin said, “that you’ll have plenty to tell me about our mutual friend Murdis. I trust you’ll share?”

  Kord ignored Murdis’s glare, tempered as it was by a grin he half-heartedly tried to conceal; the old man was clearly glad his former charge and his new friend were getting along. “Lady,” Kord said. “Once I start, you won’t be able to stop me.”

  ###

  Elin waited until Murdis’s breathing was as even as it ever got these days before slipping carefully from their shared bed. He’d been a virile man when she first met him, though many would have considered him well past his prime, even then. But the lung sickness he now fought took all his energy, and though she still lay with him, it was for comfort only. His days as generous lover were over; how much longer he would remain as generous patron remained to be seen.

  As she stood over him, gazing down at the unsteady rise and fall of his chest, she thought about how easy it would be to end it for him. A pillow, applying the strength of arms more used to swordwork than scribing, perhaps a brief, ineffectual scrabbling as he fought. But perhaps he wouldn’t fight, at that. He had to know he’d be greeting the Sixth Lord sooner rather than later. If he’d just been willing to leave the scriptorium, with its heat and humidity that hung in the air like the scent of decay, and gone somewhere cool and dry, the illness might not have progressed to the point it was now—the point of no return, no healing, no end other than a slow, painful loss of strength, and vitality, and hope.

  But Murdis was as stubborn as he was wealthy, and so they stayed, and she watched him waste away, and her opportunity to find the Hand of Uxlabal along with him.

  And now Kordell had shown up, complicating matters. Though the old man spoke of him roughly, it was the harshness of hurt that colored his words, not that of hatred. Murdis had wanted Kord to stay on at the scriptorium—maybe even run it after he himself had gone—but his foundling had had other goals in life. Goals that did not include fighting a never-ending and unwinnable battle trying to save old books and manuscripts from the ravages of time and the jungle, and from the arguably more deadly disregard and forgetfulness of men.

  That Kord had returned now, when Murdis was so ill and she was so close to finding what she’d spent years looking for was no coincidence, of that she was sure.

  The man was a study in contradictions. He was older than her by several years, though you’d never know it by the way he moved—trim and fit, he carried himself with the confidence of a trained swordsman who didn’t need to swagger to prove it. Dark hair and heavy stubble showing the occasional glint of silver gave some clue to his true age, as did the creases around his deep-set blue eyes, but were it not for the fact that she knew when he’d left the scriptorium and how old he’d been at the time, she would have pegged him as being much younger.

  It was his eyes, she decided. There was nothing of defeat in them, despite what could not have been an easy life once he’d left these walls. Instead, they shone with spirit, and humor, and intelligence. And given what Elin had already learned about his upbringing here, she knew that intelligence was formidable, perhaps even more so than his well-muscled right arm and the blade it wielded.

  There would be no middle ground with this man—he’d either be a valuable ally or a dangerous opponent when the time came. That Elin hoped he’d opt for the former was not simple mercenary efficiency on her part, though in truth, such considerations were never far from her thoughts—she couldn’t afford for them to be. But Kord’s lips on her hand had stirred something unexpected in her, something neither Murdis nor any of the multitude of men before ever had, and she was intrigued by it, and him.

  But not so much that she’d let him stand in the way of acquiring the Hand. She’d come too far and worked too long and hard to allow that to happen, fascination or no.

  If she could get him to help her, so much the better. If she couldn’t, then she’d get rid of him, by whatever means necessary. What she worked toward was more important than any one person, after all. Or any two.

  She let herself out of the room, closing the heavy wooden door as quietly as she could behind her—no easy task, given the way it had swelled from years of exposure to moist air and so no longer fit well in its frame. The hallway she walked down was lined with more of the ubiquitous shelves, stuffed to overflowing with yet more books and scrolls and even clay tablets reminiscent of the homeland, inscribed with ciphers whose meanings Elin, for all her own education, could only guess at. In between some of the shelves hung tapestries, heavy curtains of fabric better suited for a northern keep than a jungle fortress. The scenes they depicted were equally out of place—thick-furred bears the likes of which she’d only seen in Murdis’s books, speckled wolves, snowy landscapes. Where the old man had acquired them was a mystery—why, a greater one still.

  The long corridor opened up onto a sunlit salon, full of more shelves and books, and many well-cushioned seats besides. Elin stopped short when she saw that one of those seats—moved up against the wall to give a clear view of the room’s exits and windows—was occupied.

  Though Kord had to be aware of her presence, he did not look up from the book he read. His feigned indifference gave her a chance to scrutinize him more closely.

  Unlike many so-called learned men, Kord did not move his lips as he read and his brow never furrowed in concentration or confusion. He scanned the text with an ease and confidence that reminded her, fittingly, of the man who had written it, for when he turned a page in the leather-bound book, the slight movement revealed a bit of its title. The Shared Essence of a Single Soul, by Murdis.

  “He postulates that soul essences are more easily shared with those whose totem animals are compatible,” Kord said, still not bothering to look up at her as he spoke. Deliberately refusing to accord her the respect he would an equal, she thought, though to what end, she wasn’t certain. “His is the serpent eagle. What’s yours?”

  Elin blinked at the question as much as at the challenging tone behind it. A person’s totem animal—or lack thereof—was an intensely personal matter, one that s
ome people did not even share with trusted lovers, or spouses, let alone with complete strangers. That he would dare to ask her such a thing so baldly spoke much of his arrogance. Or, just possibly, of his concern for his former mentor.

  “The black pantheress.” She strove to keep her own inflection neutral, but could not quite keep a slight tone of conceit from her voice. It was a rare totem for a woman, said to be reserved for queens and priestesses. That such a spirit had chosen her was a source of great pride, though normally she did a better job of hiding it.

  Kord did finally look up at that, his gaze sharp.

  “Panthers eat eagles,” he said after a moment, closing the book with a thump that echoed off the room’s stone walls.

  She pursed her lips at the implication, then countered with one of her own.

  “Only when there isn’t any easier prey available.” She smiled, her chin lifting to draw his eyes to the curve of her neck, and beyond. “And there is almost always…easier…prey available.”

  Kord surprised her by laughing out loud.

  “Truth, Lady. And I can see why Murdis chances being devoured by one such as you, in any case. The reward appears well worth the risk.”

  He stood and replaced the book on a nearby shelf, then crossed the room and held his arm out to her.

  “Speaking of devouring things, I’m starving. Care to accompany me on the hunt for some of that easier prey?”

  Elin’s smile widened and both it and her laugh when she took his arm were genuine.

  “Lead on, dear Kord. I shall be more than happy to follow.”

  ###

  The kitchen was the busiest room in the place. Pale, scrawny Galetha stirred a huge pot over a fire, tasting her spoon after every ingredient she tossed in. Cheerful Cael, as round as he was tall, shaped balls of dough into vague representations of jaguars, fish, and birds before sliding the trays holding them into an oven. The blended aromas struck Elin with an almost erotic force. She had gone along with Kord out of curiosity more than anything, but now she found that she was just as hungry as he claimed to be.