by James Davis
Quinsareth rolled backward as the chain struck the stone floor in a shower of sparks. Standing again, he caught a brief glimpse of a man within the shadows as they shifted, revealing a masked face and thin shoulders. Learning that his opponent was corporeal gave him new confidence. Bedlam struggled in his hand like a wild dog on a leash. The sword’s desire for battle was palpable, and Quinsareth allowed himself to be drawn into its raw emotions.
Rolling forward, he caught the end of the chain before it could be pulled back to strike again. He felt a tug on the other end and leaped into the shadows, now blind but fully in the thrall of Bedlam’s rage. His weight slammed into the body within the darkness, knocking them both to the floor. They rolled as they struggled against one another. Quinsareth felt his opponent’s hands around his throat, cold and clammy.
He reached up and felt the assassin’s shoulder, judged the distance, and swung Bedlam’s pommel into the dark where his foe’s masked face should be. He was rewarded by the sounds of the mask cracking, a grunt of pain, and crunching bone. As the fingers around his throat loosened, he looped the end of the chain, still in his right hand, around the assassin’s neck. The cold hands drew back and he heard a muffled cry of alarm from beneath the mask.
Quinsareth freed his leg and planted a boot on the shadowed man’s torso, pushing hard while pulling on the looped chain. All resistance quickly went slack as the bladed chain tore through flesh and sinew. The shadows dispersed, exposing the damp, translucent skin of the man beneath. A crack in the white mask offered a glimpse of the disfigured face within.
Quinsareth swiftly abandoned any thought of the horrors that could have inflicted such injury and looked up to the balcony. Vesk stood there waiting, drawing his arm back to throw knives as the darkness disappeared. The assassin’s wrist flicked like lightning, loosing three blades in the space of a heartbeat.
Bedlam danced upward to block the first knife as Quinsareth rolled sideways, dodging the second. The third opened a ragged gash across his collarbone. He winced at the pain of the wound, but jumped forward, tumbling as he ran for the stone column at the base of the stairs. The last of Vesk’s knives sang against the floor as he moved.
Putting his back to the column, Quinsareth caught his breath. He reached up to the bleeding wound on his collarbone with his right hand, which also bled from many small cuts inflicted by the bladed chain. Bedlam seemed to feel these pains and its handle twitched in Quinsareth’s left hand, a sibilant hum emanating along its length.
Quinsareth looked to the front door. It was still covered by the tanglefoot mass, but he knew he didn’t have much time left. The exposed liquid could last only so long before it would grow brittle and flake away. He’d tracked the Fallen Few’s assassins for too long to allow these last two to escape.
He turned and ran up the stairs, Bedlam raised defensively and prepared to strike. Blue-Eyes awaited him at the top, smiling ominously with purple gums and inhaling a deep breath, mist curling at the edges of his mouth.
As the yellow mist belched from the maw of the assassin, Quinsareth charged through, heedless of the sulfurous smell and disorienting nature of the vapor. He threw his weight and momentum into a punch. The blow landed squarely on the pale man’s chest, knocking the breath from his lungs. Quin held his own breath, but his eyes still burned in the yellow mist. He followed the punch with another, slamming Blue-Eyes against the wall. Bedlam immediately followed the strike, thrusting into the heaving chest of the deformed man. Blood and mist flowed freely from the wound once Quinsareth withdrew the blade.
When he turned around, Vesk was gone. Quinsareth cautiously sidestepped along the rail, peering into the shadows near the balcony.
He caught a flash of bright eyes watching him in the darkness, tucked in a corner between a stone column and the wall. Then they disappeared on a sudden breeze, causing the torches nearby to flicker and wave. A strange sensation passed through him, a kindred chill that he both loathed and recognized at the same time. He shook the feeling off quickly as Vesk’s silhouette appeared on the balcony near the top of the ancient altar.
Long ago, the stone building had been a temple to a dark deity, a fiendish lord demanding sacrifice and blood. In recent years, the remote location of the temple and the ruins that surrounded it had become a prime location for secret and unscrupulous meetings, catering to those with no wish to be found or heard. Much of the temple’s macabre elements had been stolen or carted off as building materials, but the large sacrificial bowl and the twisted statue that supported it remained. Stained by years of spilled blood and now filled with a deep red wine called erskilye, or the oathwater, it was a reminder of the nature of the Border Kingdoms, a symbol of false permanence and ruin.
The unlit ground between the two attackers drew them forth. For Vesk, the darkness was a familiar field of killing and revelry, a place to contact the Lower Planes and bargain for the lives of those his masters wished dead. For Quinsareth, the darkness echoed a familiarity with the hunt, conjured a home for the part of him that called Bedlam brother, and played a dirge for the man he might have been.
The men ran to meet in the middle, Vesk’s crawling tattoos glowing a faint green to mirror the turquoise glimmer of Quinsareth’s shrieking bastard sword. Their blades clashed in a blur of slicing steel and sparks. Though he’d charged to meet the assassin, Quinsareth focused on defending himself, destroying those few moments in which Vesk was most effective. Assassins struck to kill, exploiting immediate weaknesses and imbalance. Quinsareth knew a prolonged fight would wear his opponent down. He could see frustration in Vesk’s face already, the assassin’s tattoos writhing and twitching.
Bedlam’s magic tingled along Quinsareth’s arm, infecting his senses with its voice and drawing forth his hidden emotions. He swayed forward as he pressed the attack back to Vesk, swinging his sword faster and more precisely. Vesk cursed as he was pushed back, backpedaling to avoid the shrill voice of Bedlam and its master’s well-trained arm.
With two sudden strokes, Quinsareth disarmed the assassin leader. The first knocked his sword to the ground, which slid to rest in a corner. The second opened a deep wound in Vesk’s arm as it swung wide without the weight of a blade. Bedlam halted before the middle of Vesk’s chest, humming ominously and lying uncharacteristically still in Quinsareth’s hand. Slowly he pushed the assassin back the few remaining feet to the wine-filled altar.
Quinsareth was reminded of the nobles in some of the larger cities to the north who trained hunting dogs to sit unmoving while small morsels were placed on top of their muzzles. The dogs would sit still until given permission to eat the tempting treats. He had needed several years to teach Bedlam the same trick, and even longer before that to teach himself.
Vesk took a breath, but found no words waiting to save his life. No bargain, no blackmail, nothing came to mind to sway the intent behind those pale, white eyes that stared at him.
Quin could smell the stink of the Lower Planes on Vesk, that faint aura of the fiendish. He did not begrudge the assassin for making unwholesome choices, but neither would he spare him. No quarter, no surrender, and no mercy would be offered. He imagined Vesk had never considered begging for his own life before that moment.
Bedlam scraped along the edge of the altar’s bowl as it pushed through Vesk’s chest with lightning speed. Quinsareth watched as the assassin’s eyes faded and his head slumped. The strange living tattoos tried to crawl along the now-quieting blade of their master’s killer, but they faded and turned black as they dripped to the floor, mingling with Vesk’s blood.
Quinsareth pulled Bedlam free, cleaned and sheathed the sword, and let the assassin fall to the ground. He stood, smelling the horrible scent of the dying tattoos with grim satisfaction. They had provided the link between the Fallen Few and their fiendish lords, infesting the body of Vesk and making a once small-time cutthroat into an ambassador to the dark courts. His nature, like that of those who followed him, was a twisted, perverse mockery of the man he ha
d once been.
As the long-held chill in his body faded, Quinsareth felt his stomach turn. Fatigue claimed him, and he collapsed into a chair, breathing heavily and squeezing his eyes shut, his pulse pounding behind them. Sweat beaded on his forehead as the trapped heat of the underground temple-turned-tavern returned in a wave, and he rested, quiet in the knowledge that this long work was over.
He feared opening his eyes again, feared the hush, wind, and swirling darkness that would come soon, calling him elsewhere. The will of Hoar, a poetry of anger and sorrow burning in his heart like a dark prayer, telling him where he had to go, what he had to do, and who he had to kill next.
He stood lazily, stretching and flexing his sore muscles. The wound across his collarbone ached, and the blood was sticky beneath his breastplate. He winced and pressed down on the gash as he walked away from the gruesome altar. Though the remaining inebriated had not awoken and innkeeper was nowhere to be seen, he tossed several coins onto the table.
The tanglefoot on the front door had turned gray, and it crumbled to a flaky dust as he pulled on the door’s handle. The temporary seal had been unnecessary. The Fallen Few had been more confident than he’d expected, apparently not having heard of the fate of their brethren in Theymarsh only a tenday earlier, but Quinsareth had been prepared. He’d spent long enough tracking them down and had no wish for them to escape and be aware of what pursued them.
Outside, at the top of the deep stairwell that served as the Red Cup’s entrance, Quinsareth inhaled deeply, smelling the fresh night air. He could hear the crashing waves of the Lake of Steam from the abandoned town’s north side, the water swaying the wrecks of the formerly swift boats that littered the small harbor. Those rotten hulls, bumping one another in the tide, were the only sounds that disturbed the peace of the ruins.
The town was one of many that dotted the lands of the Border Kingdoms, overthrown, forgotten, and left to collect dust and fall apart—home only intermittently to those seeking solace between fell deeds. Quinsareth had come to enjoy them since arriving in the region and felt he might miss their emptiness when called away by the will of Hoar.
As if listening to his thoughts, the wind picked up, whistling through the broken windows of hollow buildings and rustling the tall brown grass that grew through cracks in the cobbled streets. He sighed as the eastern horizon caught his eye, distant shadows leaping to life and flickering like black flames. All he could see became wavy and insubstantial as the familiar call, visible only to him, whispered in the wind and shadows.
Something seemed different this time, more substantial, even slightly painful. His head ached as he felt himself almost physically pulled toward the east and the shadow road that awaited him. He spotted a strange red star on the horizon, bright and staining the night sky in a crimson glow. A tingling sensation covered his scalp, like the legs of a hundred spiders crawling and seeking entrance to his mind, to some weak spot in his will.
Gritting his teeth, he resisted, and the strange compulsion slowly disappeared, leaving him confused and curious. The red star remained in the far eastern sky, but it seemed translucent and dimmer than before, unreal and fabricated. He raised an eyebrow, interested in this little break from tradition, and focused on the tendrils of shadow that swirled before him. Recalling a prayer resting within him, he stepped forward, shifting himself into the Shadow Fringe and disappearing on a road of darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
Thin tendrils of jasmine-scented smoke rose lazily to the ceiling above Sameska as she fell to the floor, exhausted. The dark-veined marble floor was cool on her forehead as she clenched her jaw and flexed her long fingers, pressing down as frustration passed like a tremor through her prone form. She did not open her eyes—she wouldn’t, afraid of seeing only the simple walls of the temple’s sanctuary, unchanged, unmoved, with no sign or vision from her absent god.
She ground her knuckles into the floor, causing her aged joints to ache with the strain of her barely-contained rage.
“It would not do for the high oracle to give in to such emotion,” she told herself.
The thought did little to quiet her growing anger. If anything, it reminded her even more of her sacred duty and devotion to the All-Seeing Savras, who remained silent and withheld his prophecies from her.
Keeping his secrets to himself, she thought, then quickly admonished herself for such heresy. Her lip trembled as the horror of it all came crashing down on her. Her eyes widened and rolled as vertigo overtook her senses.
Quickly she whispered an incantation, tracing her finger on the marble in a complex symbol as the spell was completed. All sound in the chamber evaporated. The nearby candles and torches ceased their popping and guttering, and the chimes were silenced, though they still swung in a breeze from the small shuttered windows above. Rising to her knees, Sameska threw herself backward, bending back over her ankles, her arms spread to her sides, and her hands clenched into claws. She screamed in the spell’s silence, giving unheard voice to the turmoil within her, venting it into the sky or whatever hellish place it had come from.
Thirty years earlier, the High Oracle of the Hidden Circle had been Sameska’s grandmother, an ancestor she held in high esteem. Always, her family had been favored by Savras’s visions and sight, allowing them to guide their followers and grow the faith in the communities that gathered around them. The Church of the Hidden Circle had become the foundation of each new town that sprang up near the Qurth Forest. Its leaders had been the oracles of tomorrow, the seers of what was to be, and the high oracle guided them all with confidence into the unknown realm of yet-to-come. The necessity of the Qurth’s resources, and the dangers that guarded them, demanded the vigilance of the church.
After a long morning of magical castings and prayers, Sameska found herself lying on her back, staring helplessly at the ceiling and out of breath, without vision or prophecy. She had only silence to comfort her damaged pride. Her heart hammered in her chest and pounded in her ears, but she could not hear it. She could only feel her body succumbing to fatigue and slumber. Lazily, she rolled her head sideways, looking to the large, barred doors on her left.
She could imagine the lesser oracles there, praying and meditating, waiting for her to appear. She had nothing for them, and inwardly she hated them for it. She loathed the looks on their faces, still young and full of faith and immortality. She could see the disrespect in their eyes, the jealousy in their hearts, and she knew their secret desires, their whispered offenses. They despised her and wished failure upon her at every chance. Yet they smiled and played at kindness in her presence, for each wished to be her favored as they waited for the old bat to wither and die so they might take her place within the Hidden Circle.
None of them carried her blood, the blood of a Setha’Mir. She was the last, the end of a bloodline that had built the six towns of the Qurth Forest as surely as any farmer, woodsman, or carpenter who had settled there. Her true successor had died many years ago, her daughter, Ilyasa, who had been born sickly and weak. She’d barely lived a year before passing away while Sameska could only watch, helpless.
A candle sizzled as it burnt itself out behind her, and she realized she could hear her own breathing again. The chimes above sang anew, their silvered designs reflecting the early glow of dawn on the horizon.
Slowly she pushed herself up and stood in the center of the rune circle, staring at the age-old designs and symbols surrounding her, carved by her grandmother’s grandmother when the sanctuary had first been built. She looked to her own hands, full of lines and wrinkles carved by time and experience. Both had dug furrows into her brow, the reminders of years spent in thankless service. Looking to the double doors at the chamber’s entrance, she once again dreaded opening them, allowing those young upstarts within to snicker and point at her failure behind smiles and seeming pieties.
She reached into a pocket of her pale yellow robes, pulling forth a handful of golden flower petals from a plant called the fethra, or “de
stiny,” unique to the Qurth Forest and the western edge of Shandolphyn’s Reach. These she squeezed between her palms, releasing their heady fragrance, then touched the small tattoo of the eye of Savras on her forehead with each forefinger. She began to speak the spell of sight, though her throat was raw and sore from earlier attempts.
Iron-gray hair lay matted to her scalp. Her eyes were puffy and dry, and her skin was chilled with sweat, but she would try, one last time before dawn, to contact her god. Weaving magic and prayer together, she sought his attention, his voice that granted her the truths and secrets of tomorrows to come. The spell hovered around her, a whirling translucent cloud sent spinning by her beseeching prayer and enhanced by the faintly glowing runes of the circle.
Her muscles ached as the magic grew, but she continued concentrating for as long as she could. Waiting and praying, she fought the slow return of frustrated rage. Nothing. Silence. She began to draw a breath, abandoning her prayer, preparing to scream and curse the fading, shimmering cloud around her.
But then it intensified.
The circle of magic flared brightly and closed on her, the force of its power hitting her full in the chest and sending her reeling to the steps of the altar behind her. She felt constricted and couldn’t breathe as the vision rushed into her weary mind. Once again her heart hammered inside the frail cage of her chest. Blood rushed through her body as though attempting to escape, filling her with warmth and cold all at once.
She gasped for air as images formed before her eyes. Accompanied by tiny stars at their edges, she could faintly feel the pain they heralded, having hit her head on one of the dais steps when she fell. Visions forced themselves upon her mind, violent and powerful. Reeling, she watched, overwhelmed by this sudden return of the sight but unable to look away.