Concealed: The Taellaneth - Book 1

by Vanessa Nelson

  The archers needed no orders. More bright arrows flew, anchoring into crates around the darkness, providing a clear target, ordinary, lethal, arrows whipping through the air with them, striking the darkness. The thing moved, rising with a howl that made Arrow glad she was on her knees. Rage and pain. Something else to add to her nightmares. A faint, inky, shimmer traced the defensive wards around it, the taint of unclean magic or surjusi, she was not sure which yet. Another dark blot of mage fire gathered within the shadows.

  Still kneeling, panting with the effort of maintaining the ward, Arrow gathered her own power and threw mage fire back. Brilliant silver sprayed across the inky shields. The magic user howled again, more pain than rage this time, and his wards fell.

  The White Guard needed no instruction, another volley of arrows pinning the magician to the ground before a pair of swordsmen rushed forward, one slicing into the dark with an amber-bright blade, the steel’s wards flaring as they met the dark. The single, clean stroke severed the thing’s head. A lucky stroke, or experience, Arrow could not tell.

  As soon as the head was cut the camouflage faded, revealing a pale human form, wispy strands of dark hair thin across a distorted skull, too long and appearing almost twisted, tatters of dark clothing scattered across limbs that seemed too long for a human.

  “Not Hessman,” the nearest warrior reported, then promptly ducked as something non-magical shot out of the darkness near him, personal wars flaring amber. A strike thudded against the crate where his head had been. A crossbow bolt. Plain, ordinary, and deadly.

  The warriors quickly returned to Arrow’s wards as more crossbow bolts followed. Arrow winced. The bolts were easier to deal with yet still took energy and concentration.

  More shuffling sounds, this time above. The warriors were focused on seeking the crossbow wielder, archers standing with their bows ready, ‘kin with their weapons raised. Arrow glanced up, blinking to make sense of what she was seeing.

  There was a metal pulley system of some sort on the roof, high above, faintly traced by the light from her chalk, with chains and wrapped bundles dangling haphazardly from a roof-mounted beam, something moving among the chains. As she watched it grew larger, made more sense to her eyes. Two arms, two legs, shimmering yellow eyes, long, brown, fur and teeth bigger than her hand.

  “Surrimok.” Her voice came out weak. She had never seen one before. Mountain dwellers in the Erith heartlands. Cunning. Deadly. Vicious. And here in an underground cavern. In Lix. She would rather face baelthras.

  “Xeveran, above,” Kallish snapped.

  Her cadre moved, focused on the threat descending rapidly along the chains. The creature, with its adapted hands and feet, was not hampered at all by unfamiliar metal rather than tree bark.

  As Xeveran’s three archers loosed more arrows, Zachary swore.

  “What in hell?”

  “Surrimok. Mountain predator.”

  “How do we kill it?”

  “Keep shooting,” she answered, grim, pouring more effort into her wards as the crossbow bolts continued. Non-magical, still draining.

  The flat crack of gunfire, sounds muted by the earth all around, joined the slice of arrows through the air. The creature let out a bass roar that shook the earth, making Arrow huddle down and every ‘kin apart from Zachary and Matthias pause for a moment, arrows and bullets mostly bouncing off its thickened, fur-covered hide. A few struck home, one arrow poking out of a joint as the creature hung a few feet above the Erith, warriors now armed with spears.

  It dropped off the chains in an impossible leap, avoiding the waiting Erith, landing instead on a pair of ‘kin, clawed hands tearing, roaring again when the ‘kin’s body armour denied it purchase. Out of the darkness the two wolf-form ‘kin leapt, dragging the creature off their wounded, snarling as the surrimok shook itself free.

  A ring of Erith warriors and ‘kin closed in.

  Arrow watched closely, mage fire sparking in her hand, waiting for a clear shot, not sure the warriors needed her help as the surrimok roared again. Lowering her hand, she began to breathe again when a dark shadow at the corner of her sight snapped her head around.

  Before she could make sense of what she had seen another blast of unclean mage fire spun out of the dark. Her wards sparked, flexing dangerously under the pressure. Her own mage fire died as she focused on her wards. Hands pressed onto the earth to keep her kneeling, she poured strength into the wards, quivering with effort as the assault continued. Blow after blow of sticky, corrosive mage fire. Scratching against her wards, drawing weals across her body in the second world as she fought to keep her wards up. Sweat coated her.

  Not one but two other magicians, one was considerably stronger than the other.

  “Can you do something about the mage fire?” Zachary asked.

  “Not while I hold the ward.” Her words came out faint, with pauses between. The great well of power inside was fully open, nowhere near drained. There was only so much she could focus on at once.

  She could not follow what happened next, concentrating on holding the wards, gritting her teeth as the mage fire bit. It was not eating into her skin, she told herself. It just felt like it.

  Moments later the pressure on her wards eased, the familiar amber weave of White Guard wards rising over the group. Lifting her head, she saw Kallish’s third kneeling in a group, faces tight with concentration and effort and the remaining third descending the ropes left by the ‘kin, amber shimmering about them already. They slid into position alongside Kallish’s third the moment they touched the earth, sheen of wards visible in first sight as the two thirds focused. Xeveran’s third were still battling the surrimok, which was fighting to the last.

  With ten Erith warriors taking over the burden of warding the group she rose, lips forming the spell for mage fire, pulling more power, mage fire blinding silver in her hand, and cast the fire in the direction of the stronger magician, immediately followed by another cast at the other magician. Unseen in the dark her second strike hit, sending a shower of sparks over a standing figure who screamed, twisted, and fell, huddling on the ground, silver consuming his unclean wards.

  Ignoring the crossbow bolts still shimmering against the warriors’ wards, she moved forward, another bolt of mage fire coating the weaker, huddled magician. The stronger magician’s focus turned to her. He threw a larger mass of mage fire, the lethal magic blending with the shadows as it hurtled towards her. With only her own person to protect her wards shimmered and held, the effort not enough to make her pause, even if her skin felt raw under her clothing. Another bolt of mage fire at the weaker magician and he gave a final, awful, gurgling sound before going still, camouflage sliding away. Dead. Another emaciated human male, hair almost gone, body just as distorted as the first, clothes in tatters around him. Also dark haired. Not Hessman either.

  “Hugh.” A low moan from Lucy, still huddled on the ground where Zachary had left her. One question answered.

  In the time it had taken to defeat the weaker magician, the third of White Guard had finished the surrimok and were now focused on hunting down the stronger magician, ‘kin interspersed with Erith as they moved soundlessly across the floor through the dank air. The amber shimmer of the wards was shot through with dark from the tainted mage fire.

  The magician’s shape moved, a sinuous twist, in the first and second worlds. Watching. Waiting. Patient with the experience of age. Arrow hissed at the chalk on blackboard sensation of the thing pressing against her wards. Senses open, mouth full of the taste of rot, she registered the infinite black of surjusi awareness. And a smaller spark of human intelligence in the middle of it.

  Not tied together by an anchor as she had assumed, with the surjusi following the human, under the human’s command as long as the spells held.

  The fool human had not tethered the surjusi, she realised. He had swallowed it down. Nausea rose, and she swallowed, mouth and throat dry. No time now.

  She moved forward after the warriors, flung
sideways as something quick and enormous thumped into her, barrelling her aside, slamming her into one of the crates. Blinking, she caught herself on one of the rims of the boxes, exposed metal nails cutting into her skin, gaping up at the unfamiliar two-legged, furred shape standing over her, clawed hand raking towards her head.

  Surrimok. Her mind caught up with her eyes. Adults lived in mated pairs. Stupid oversight.

  Ribs broken. Again. Lungs aching. Punctured again. Wards flared, bright, biting.

  The surrimok, far larger than the other, the female, then, and deadlier, hissed, eyes blinding. So much hate. Claws swept down and raked at her wards, invisible weals rising on her skin as the creature’s magic cut into her own.

  Move, move, move.

  Too much pain. Blood choked her throat, frothing. She gathered power, pushed, and screamed, pink foam bubbling at her mouth, ribs snapping back into place again. Mage fire was a mere thought away, the spell already cast, and coated the fur above her, sliding into the creature’s mouth. The surrimok burned above her, raining sticky, molten ash on her exposed skin and hair. Burning flesh. Stomach churned. So much death.

  Surrimok dead, she kept herself upright by one hand clutching the box she had been thrown against, bleeding fingers staining the wood, and looked for the others.

  The warriors had finally remembered the containment spells she had made. The stench of the air was cut with the clean scent of her magic as powders and potions slammed into the magician’s wards. The warriors’ accuracy was excellent. So were the magician’s defences, the surjusi rearing up in the second world.

  In the first world the magician writhed under the containment. The silver flickers of Arrow’s power were building a net around it. Slowly. Inside the gradually tightening net the magician twisted, sending out more mage fire, assault carrying surjusi taint, the fire finally fracturing the warrior’s defences, more than one falling back with a cry as the unclean stuff touched their skin. The rest of the warriors, ‘kin and Erith together, did not pause, pressing forward, showering the magician with spells. And still he did not go down.

  His camouflage was failing, bits and pieces of shadow falling away to reveal what might be glimpses of an arm or a leg underneath, more showing as the disguise fell away. Pale human skin, limbs lengthened and distorted, a face that looked melted, features twisted in malice, and pale hair. Hessman. Finally.

  A mass of something dark and unholy spiralled out from him, coating the nearby warriors, Erith and ‘kin alike, visible in both the first and second worlds. The surjusi unleashed.

  Arrow felt herself sliding down the crate, that well of energy she had thought bottomless beginning to fail as she forced her body to heal enough to move. Getting her legs to support her she took a few shaky steps forward, unseen, so that when the magician made another break for freedom, the thick coat of containment spells not enough to hold him, she was there.

  The capture was inelegant. She simply fell forward, hand reaching out, fingers closing around and holding onto what she thought was an arm. It was bony and too hot under her hand, what should have been human skin feeling rough against her palm. The momentum of her fall pulled the magician down and they tumbled to the earth together.

  “Containment,” she said. Her voice was raspy, throat still clogged. She made it back to her knees, gripping as tightly as she could, the magician pulling against her grip.

  Another shower of spells rained down on the magician, far shorter than the last.

  “That’s the last of it,” Zachary told her, coming to crouch beside her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  It was, finally, enough. The magician was held firm, snarling, silver net encasing him, the final bits of his camouflage falling away to reveal an emaciated human male, bits of blond hair sticking out in tufts around a misshapen head. His body was too long, limbs knotted and moving oddly as he crouched, knees to his chin, hands twisted into claws digging into the ground beside him, trapped by the spells coating the scraps of clothing he wore and his mottled skin, bruised and discoloured. Satisfied he was confined, Arrow released his arm, wiping her hand on the earth in reflex.

  “What in hell?” Matthias was at his father’s shoulder.

  “Surjusi.” Arrow’s voice was weak. “He took it into him.”

  “Demon ridden.” Zachary supplied the human term.

  “The others were bad. But this.” Matthias shook his head, revulsion clear.

  “Too much power for a body not meant to contain it.”

  “I have questions.” Zachary’s voice was dangerous.

  “Ask. We do not have long.”

  Even as she spoke, another volley of crossbow bolts fired out of the dark, held by the warriors’ wards, so thin the amber was barely there in places.

  “Find him,” Zachary snarled to his people. The ‘kin melted into darkness without a word, not one remaining as he stayed among the Erith by the broken human body.

  One of the thirds raised a stronger battle ward, amber shimmer streaked with the darkness that marked surjusi taint. Cleansing was needed, and soon. Yet every warrior held, outwardly calm, firm against the dark. Arrow wished, one day, she could display that courage, too. She wanted to run away, screaming.

  Instead she stayed with the broken body, watching the demon-tainted human struggling to breathe with a rib cage that looked as though it had snapped and reformed more than once. The man had gained the power of a surjusi, flicker of a too-old intelligence behind his unseeing human eyes. Arrow wondered if he thought the price had been worth it.

  “You killed my mate.” Zachary’s voice was soft. Almost disinterested. It made Arrow want to run even more.

  “Killed many.” The voice was broken, too, rasping.

  “Marianne Stillwater.” Arrow shifted a little, closer to the Prime, lacing power into her own voice. “Shifkin female. She found your house in Hallveran. You chased her.”

  “Good hunt.” A gleam of pitch in the human’s blue eyes, the demon twisting. “Little wolf. Tasted sweet.” The low whimper a short distance away was Lucy, all but forgotten.

  “He is lying,” Arrow said, disgusted.

  “Yes. Can you bind him to truth?”

  “I can try.”

  She fetched chalk from her bag, spoke the necessary words and cast chalk dust over the figure. He writhed, screaming, the sound too deep to be coming from his hollow chest.

  “Why did you kill my mate?” Zachary asked again.

  “Got in the way. Silly little wolf. Sneaking into places. Seeing things. Questions. Questions. Questions.”

  “What did she see?”

  “Saw us.” The darkness swirled again. “Knew us.”

  It was a sorry explanation for a sad death, Arrow thought, resting her arms on her knees, taking as deep a breath as her sore ribs would allow. Marianne had been too curious for her own good. It seemed Zachary agreed as he stepped back, lip curling.

  “Are there more?” she asked.

  “Always more. Tasty.”

  “Are there more surjusi on this plane,” she clarified, power in her words.

  “Plenty waiting. Brother. Sister. Little children. All hungry. So hungry.” The voice deepened, shaded to something otherworldly and Arrow’s hand moved instinctively to her sword hilt. The thing was stronger than it looked. Far stronger than the fragile human body it had ridden and ruined.

  “Who is us?” Her attention snagged.

  “No us. No us. Us. No. Us.”

  “Who is us?” she demanded, fingers tightening on the hilt.

  “No. Us. No.” The demon was to the fore now, human blue gone from his eyes and he surged up, pushing against the containment, the strands of the spells creaking in the second world, some fracturing. The physical body it was using was weak, but the spells were weaker. Freedom was a mere moment away.

  Erith amber blazed, the warriors recognised how close the thing was to freedom, weapons drawn, the cadre moving to form a circle around the creature, each warrior’s face set and
determined. Zachary rose to his feet, eyes blazing brilliant green, unable to see the breaking of the containment, sensing something wrong.

  In the centre of the ring, watching the containment failing, the Preceptor’s commands ringing through her, Arrow drew her sword and thrust it forward, words of the banishment spell pouring out of her as her sword held the thing to the ground. It writhed under the spirit blade, shrieking in an awful mix of human and demon pitches.

  Three repetitions this time and the body finally went limp, all darkness fading, leaving a heap of skin and bone, face turned to the earthen ceiling above, fading blue eyes clouded.

  “Definitely dead?”

  “Yes, Prime.” Arrow’s voice was faint, shoulders slumped, taking two attempts to get the sword back in its scabbard. “Most definitely dead.”

  With the monster defeated and the danger passed, the enormity of more death pressed on her, edges of her vision blurring. Too many dead around her. And too many by her hand. There had been no choice, but the stain of it corroded her inside. Will alone kept her up. The draw of the dead filled the second world, a too-familiar grey, the weight of their wants and unfulfilled lives pressing on her. There was a price to pay for death. She wondered if the White Guard felt it too and had no words to ask that.

  The ‘kin were coming back into the light, dragging a human corpse with them, one of the ‘kin carrying a modified crossbow and quiver of bolts. Mathias gave his father a brief nod signalling all clear. The body this time was recognisably human, no indication of any taint, an unfamiliar face. Lucy glanced at the body, bit her lip, glanced away. She was pale and visibly trembling.

  “Michael Hessman,” Kallish observed, eyes on the heap in front of Arrow and Zachary. “Hard to tell but the colouring is the same.”

  “Demon ridden.” Zachary’s voice was heavy with what sounded like sorrow. He shook his head. “Idiot.”