“I’d best get it over with,” she muttered as she rolled one sinewy shoulder and then the other.
Ax-Wed stared at the challenge before her and the incantation rose in her mind unbidden. Her heart twisted violently inside her chest as she felt the layers of sign and signifier pile upon each other, almost eager to be drawn from the bound depths of her memory. The pressure began to build but she slowed its gathering as she raised her voice.
“Swear it!” she shouted as her body trembled with the choked flow of sorcerous power that eddied inside her. “Swear to her safety according to the Edicts of Contract.”
After a moment of agonizing pause, the Voice, impressed and rippling with pleasure, answered her.
“By my name, this child will be safeguarded should you come to me.”
She nodded in acknowledgment, a pained and jerky movement, as the energies approached their zenith.
“Now do it,” Atlacothix demanded.
With a scream torn from her very soul, Ax-Wed enunciated the incantation in a rush of crimson motes that scattered from her lips.
Burning with the light of infernal stars in an alien sky, the sorcerous exhalation rolled across the blackness, which receded before the red lights. Recoiling like a living thing, the darkness slithered back, the excrescence of noisome realms held at bay by her blood infused with will and blasphemous rites. Papyrus-thin hands stretched toward the blood-born fireflies but when they neared the glow, blue flame kindled and they wilted away like burning straw.
Ax-Wed wiped her mouth with one hand and followed in the wake of the dancing lights, careful to stay in the center of the path they’d created. Her firm, armored steps were a steady cadence she leaned into like a weary soldier reliant upon the marching tune to keep in line and in time. She didn’t dare to look behind her but felt the darkness closing in, although the thought of her standing in the midst of a sea of black oblivion was something not easily shaken.
From atop the Gatehouse walls, Atlacothix watched her progress through borrowed eyes.
The warrior woman was halfway across the expanse before the first of her lights flickered and was snatched out of the air by shadowy hands. There was a blue spark but it vanished so quickly that the only evidence of its existence was the afterimage that lingered for a heartbeat longer. Fighting the rising panic in her chest, she tried to gauge the power left in the spell and the ground she had still to cover.
She should have had the power to ford the plain of unlight but when she let her mind feel the flow of energy, she realized that the darkness was pressing harder against her spell the farther she went. Ax-Wed wasn’t certain if this was a function of the unliving blackness responding to her, some kind of blind defensive reaction, or if it was something more sinister.
Her gaze wandered to the one watching her from the wall but in the same moment, she saw another of the lights wink out at the edge of her vision.
Doubtful that she had the strength and focus for another incantation and certain that she didn’t have the time, she knew she only had one choice—run.
Driving the sorcerous wisps before her through sheer will, her pace quickened as the path narrowed. The darkness seemed to sense the change and pressed harder on her mind and soon, tendrils of darkness twisted up. Almost all of them ignited and shriveled in a flash of cerulean flame but here and there, the stretched fingers pressed through and another red mote was snuffed out.
Three-quarters of the way across, her incantation was reduced to only a handful of lights. For the last dozen strides, she had three left and her heart pounded in time with her boots upon the stone.
By the time she set foot on the ground before the Gatehouse walls, the very last of the incantation hovered for a second over the dark before it was snatched into nothingness.
Her limbs trembled with more than only exertion but Ax-Wed forced herself to straighten and look atop the wall with her head high and shoulders square.
“Here I am,” she called and wished she could have said something cleverer. She wasn’t sure she had the breath yet, however, much less the nerve.
So you are, declared the Voice in her mind, a pleased purr behind the mental roar.
The Thulian watched, too breathless to scream, as the unhallowed who held Zoria took a step back and flung itself from the walls.
Still cradling the girl in its arms, it landed on the stone floor before the warrior woman. There were several sharp cracks that could only be bones snapping but despite this, the creature rose from its crouch as though it had hopped from the back of a wagon.
“I keep my promises,” the Voice declared as it held the girl out.
Ax-Wed took her like a babe in arms but held her ax in one hand. No sooner had the possessed degenerate’s claws released Zoria than she began to stir.
“W-what? Huh?” the girl murmured, her lids still heavy and her movements slow. “M-Momma?”
On an instinct so long buried it was almost foreign to her, she rocked Zoria in a firm but gentle embrace. As she stared into the oblivion-thick hood of the unhallowed, soft shushing sounds came from her tightening throat.
“Shh, I’ve got you,” she whispered softly. “It’ll be all right. I’ve got you.”
As the girl roused slowly, Ax-Wed could feel Atlacothix’s attention bearing down on her and with that pressure, the softness slipped from her voice and she glared in response.
“So what’s next?” she demanded as her rocking motion stilled and her hand tightened around her ax.
“Now,” the Voice declared with a flourish as one hand became a cluster of black hooks, “we see if we can help each other.”
With serpentine alacrity, the nest of barbs raked across the degenerate’s throat and blood spilled across its chest in a bubbling rush. The hook became fingers again and with those blood-drenched digits, it turned and stepped closer to the walls. With horror-numbed wonder, the Thulian watched the dying creature daub sorcerous sigils upon the walls using its lifeblood as ink. Blood still ran freely from its torn throat and dribbled down sodden robes and legs until it began to spatter and splash on the floor.
“Welcome to my home.” Atlacothix sighed as the last sigil was completed and the body crumpled.
The spiral of symbols glistened with a profane twinkle and the luminescent stones of the Gatehouse wall ran like wax.
Ax-Wed took a steadying breath as she stared through the fresh portal.
Beyond lay a courtyard and within it would lie their only hope of escaping.
Still bearing the lethargic Zoria, she stepped over the melted stone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“You can’t be serious!” Numi cried as she ambled after Vahrem and her staff chimed discordantly.
He clambered onto the bed of a wagon and began to rifle through its contents.
“With Iyshan’s help, you should reach Carnyxia without a problem,” he continued as though he hadn’t heard her. “If I don’t reach the steppes by the time your business with the beast-riders is done, carry on to Arukahm. We’ll eventually catch up.”
“We?” The dwarfess groaned as she shook her head in bewilderment. “Please tell me this is some kind of gallows humor.”
“I wish,” Iyshan muttered as he stood to one side with folded arms and a seething scowl. “But he explained it all on the way from the barracks and won’t be moved.”
The merchant dragged a trunk from the bed of the wagon, threw it open, and removed a jingling pouch and a curved jile dagger of Scadish design.
“Take this,” he instructed and tossed the bag to his manservant. “Govad will be finicky about sealing the deal for the mares without me there. Start laying down coin until he takes his hands off his belt and puts one on the table, then wait a moment and add one more. Can you remember that?”
The man didn’t bother to hide the glare he directed at his master.
“I know how you conduct your affairs, master,” he replied as he tucked the bag forcefully into his belt.
Vahrem lo
oked up from the chest, a wounded expression stamped across his bruised face. He looked ready to gather himself for an argument but he let the words go with a deflated sigh and snatched another pouch from the trunk. The container was shut, latched, and shoved into the depths of the wagon before he clambered down to stand before the man.
“That’s good,” the caravan master said and looked directly into Iyshan’s angry eyes. “If you complete the run and we still haven’t arrived in Scadish, then you are unbound and the new master of the caravan.”
Iyshan gaped as the merchant took his hand and pressed the other pouch into his numb grasp.
“You’ll need to deliver this to the Scribe of Trade to confirm the transfer of mantle,” he said. “Don’t lose it.”
The other man’s fingers closed around the balding velvet bag which held Vahrem’s seal. Beside him, heavy tears began their slow roll down Numi’s weathered face.
“I…I can’t run this caravan,” the manservant protested in a choked voice. “You can’t ask me to do this.”
A smile hitched one side of Vahrem’s face, the other side too swollen to comply.
“Yes, you can,” the merchant said softly. “And I’m not asking. You aren’t unbound yet.”
Iyshan’s hand clenched around the pouch until his fingers ached and his dark eyes roiled like a storm about to break.
“No…you can’t… I won’t…I—”
The caravan master raised a hand and settled it on his hard shoulder.
“If this is the last time we speak in this world,” he said and paused to draw a steadying breath. “Then I would have it be as friends bidding farewell, not as a master commanding his servant.”
Iyshan looked around for a moment but only saw Numi weeping openly. Blinking back tears, he straightened and gave several long sniffs before he met Vahrem’s eye and nodded stiffly.
“Very well,” he said with a gulp that clicked in his throat. “Shepherd keep you until we embrace again, b…brother.”
“Until that or the Glorious Day,” the merchant said and pulled his dearest friend into a crushing embrace. “Shepherd keep you, brother.”
The man’s arms moved like they were made of wood but they embraced the caravan master and he pressed his face into a broad shoulder. He drew small comfort that his tears might be hidden and the single sob which escaped his throat was muffled.
Vahrem didn’t bother to hide his tears, even when they drew apart to an arm’s length.
“All is as the Shepherd wills,” he said with a sad smile.
“And I…” Iyshan began but was forced to pause to gather himself. “We must go where he calls.”
Vahrem wished he could have seen them through the gate but he knew he couldn’t run the risk of the prince’s forces seeing him.
So, after making sure preparations were made with Julo and Jalen’s father, he scrambled over the stockyard wall and hurried into the city a few hours before sundown, then meandered down alleys and side streets to make certain that he wasn’t being followed. Twice, he was sure that someone was dogging his steps but each time he’d whirled around to try to catch sight of them, he’d been rewarded with nothing but an empty alley.
“Shepherd guard me,” he whispered before he decided it was time to set off for his actual destination. The sun was burning low in the bruising sky and he didn’t expect that he’d want to spend much longer in the Tin Quarter after dark. A lone man almost limping as he was in his current condition would probably seem like ripe picking to the snatchers.
The thought of the human fiends made him settle his hand on the dagger inside his cloak and a deep fury trembled in his chest.
“All things in their time,” he said through gritted teeth.
He ducked his head and passed through the gate that separated the Tin Quarter from the causeways that crossed the royal canals. His heart hammered as he passed beneath the eyes of the royal guards who manned the gate but the traffic through it was brisk and he was one of many. Those who tended the palatial estates in the Gold Quarter during the day slid wearily past those bound to attend the city’s elite through the evening. Servants and laborers shuffled past entertainers, courtesans, and nightwatchmen, and each offered grudging respect to the drudgery of the other, however spare it was. In such a rolling, flowing assembly, he was merely another soul shuffling to attend to the needs of his betters.
As he moved across the causeway with the swift waters of the canal murmuring beneath him, the caravan master remembered when he’d first dreamed of selling his mantle to an aspiring entrepreneur and settling amongst the wealthy of Jehadim.
For years, he’d tended his profits and investments carefully, his mind set upon making certain that when he finally retired from his wandering ways, he would have fortunes such that he and his children and even his children’s children would know nothing but comfort amongst the perfumed and alabaster halls of the ancient city’s premier families.
He’d since come to the Shepherd and knew the warnings of material prosperity that snared a man in the world that was but he’d told himself there was nothing wrong with being frugal and wise as he’d counted coin and plotted new ventures.
Still deep in thought, he stepped off the causeway and eased away from a group of entertainers he’d been walking beside. Looking about as surreptitiously as he could, Vahrem checked to make sure he hadn’t garnered any particular attention before he ducked down a lane that ran between two iron-fenced gardens. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine and lavender, while the nightly trill of songbirds rose from the manicured bushes and curated trees.
The caravan master didn’t know exactly when he’d shrugged off his deep longing for a garden to sip tea in as he watched the sunset but now, it seemed almost perverse that it had been his objective. The Shepherd had set him on a road and given him a people and a responsibility, and he’d learned that it did not end in an estate with scarlet ibises striding around a decorative pond. If he was honest, he wasn’t sure if his road was very soon about to end hanging from the palace walls but moving among these monuments to wealth and power and position, he would have traded a score of them for the caravan at his side, a fine horse beneath him, and the Shepherd leading him on.
“Let’s hope I haven’t traded all that on a fool’s errand,” he mumbled softly as he saw the Citadel looming before him. It was one part palace and one part fortress and without a doubt, the bastioned heart of the city where his friend and last hope for a certain Thulian lay.
Vahrem reached the edge of the gardens and leaned his head out to look up and down the avenue that stretched toward the Citadel like an arrow.
“I’m not sure if this is anything but foolish.” The merchant sighed and tried to remember exactly what he thought he could accomplish. He’d been forbidden to see Alborz but perhaps if he could talk to his friend, he could determine what he could do.
The briefest rustle of cloth was followed by a sharp hoot like an overeager, not a float. He had managed a quarter turn when he felt a sharp sting in the back of his neck. Halfway through the motion, his muscles began to cramp and burn. By the time he completed it, he was listing to one side and a moment later, his whole body gave out beneath him.
He caught a vague impression of two men advancing on him as he fell on the paving stones, his body in utter rebellion. He landed hard enough to compel a cry of pain but his venom-locked throat only permitted him a constricted whine. The pain of the impact was soon utterly consumed by the utter burning agony that closed his mind inside his skull. Helpless and struggling to even draw breath through his grinding teeth, he watched as the two men approached with cruel grins stretching the width of their faces.
“Oh, I think you were more than foolish, friend.” The sibilant chuckle of the smaller of the two men was chilling. “It was downright suicidal.”
“You should have left when you could,” the bigger of the two rumbled as he bent and gave Vahrem’s cheek a few sharp slaps. “But Crim said he knew you wouldn’t. Y
ou’re not smart enough for something like that.”
The merchant watched impotently as a hand was thrust into his robes to yank the jile blade roughly from his waist. After inspecting it for a moment, the brute shoved the weapon into his belt and then drew out leather cords.
“You’ve been looking to get your friend back.” The smaller man tittered as his gaze darted around the deepening dark. “That’s the word about why you’re such a special acquisition.”
The bigger man cinched the cords tightly enough that they cut into his flesh even through the wracking pain of the venom. Another strangled hiss of breath escaped his lips but this only provoked more stinging slaps.
“Don’t you worry now,” the big man said and punctuated each word with a slap. “You’ll get to see where we put her soon enough.”
Chapter Thirty
The smell of salt, blood, ash, and rot were all heavy on the air as she moved into the courtyard. Her stomach twisted into spirals and her heart beat a mad drummer’s tattoo.
“Come in,” the oceanic voice called to her. “Come and take your ease in my home.”
The air rippled and the smell vanished as she emerged from the darkness of the molten tunnel and stood not in a courtyard but an exquisitely furnished solarium similar to what her family had possessed overlooking the Bay of the Broken. Through open doors, she could hear the sea rolling as the setting sun painted the floor in shades of scarlet and crimson.
A rush of memories threatened to overwhelm Ax-Wed but Zoria stirred in her arms with a groan.
“You’re crushing me.” The girl grunted as she twisted in her grasp. “Put me down.”
She forced her hold to loosen with more effort than it should have taken and lowered her slowly to the floor.
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