Gali bobbed her head, her eyes shining in the moonlight.
“To the right of the archway is where I saw movement. It might be an animal, although I’ve seen none here. Look and then come back and report. Do nothing else. In a haunted place like this, a life can end in a moment.”
“In any place, death hides,” Gali whispered.
She tensed to move, but Kora gripped her wrist, stopping her. Then she slipped a long knife into the young Hishtari woman’s hand. Gali stared at the weapon and then squeezed the haft. Without another word, she slipped over the wall, silently dropping down on the other side like a cat. In moments, she was just another shadow, darting from stone to stone. Danika quickly lost sight of her.
“Wodor’s balls,” whispered Kora. “She is a quiet little mouse. Maybe she could take Iron Beard back for us.”
Then, remembering she still had Sight-Bringer’s magic to help her, Danika drew the broken sword, bringing the ruined compound into stark relief against the star-filled sky. But, despite the sword’s magic, she still saw no sign of the young woman. “Should we—”
Kora shook her head. “To lead is to trust. We wait.”
The minutes stretched, becoming unbearable. Sweat ran down Danika’s back as her anxiety mounted. It’s taking too long. Something must have—
Then Gali appeared once again, stepping out from behind the archway, waving enthusiastically at them, motioning them to come forward. Kora and Danika stared at one another in confusion. “I don’t see anything, anyone else,” said Danika.
“The little mouse has found some cheese, I think,” said Kora softly, rising and dropping down over the side of the wall. Danika dropped down beside her and then heard the noise of the rest of the crew following behind them. Kora was the first to reach Gali, whose teeth flashed in a grin. Danika stared in confusion at the young woman, and then sudden fear as two shapes stepped out of the shadows behind her.
Her fear transformed into breathless joy when she recognized Owen and Fioni.
“You’re alive!” she cried as she threw herself into Owen, almost knocking him down. Tears welled in her eyes as she squeezed him through his ring-mail coat. Owen stiffened in surprise but then wrapped his arms around her, hugging her back. “I told you I’d see you home yet,” he said softly, his voice breaking with emotion.
Fioni stood nearby, her hip cocked jauntily to the side, a wry smile on her face. “I’m alive, too, my lady of Wolfrey.”
Chapter 43
Dilan
Dilan bolted upright, a pain-filled emptiness burning within him. He was always thirsty upon awakening, but this was far worse. Now, his bloodlust made his head spin. His vision flared in bright hues of red and gray. Serina had warned him it would be so. We can stay awake during the day, she had told him, but it is draining. The fog will protect us from the sun, but the lack of sleep comes at a cost. He felt that cost now, his hunger a sharp spike that threatened to cut him in half. Then he saw Serina, and his heart surged with love, despite the pain. She stood before him, naked, as he was, and covered in filth and congealing blood. He reached for her but fell. “Mother…”
She caught him, held him in her arms, and whispered into the top of his head. “I know, my childe. I know. I feel it, too. You must drink—as much as you can hold. The pain will pass.”
She lifted him, held him in her arms like a babe, and carried him up the steps of the hold to the moonlit deck above. As the cool night air swept over his naked form, he stared in confusion at the angry open gash in his right palm. The skin around the cut was black and flaking, like charred wood. He made a fist, and his entire hand throbbed with pain. The other wounds, the two crossbow bolts that had impaled him, had healed completely. The other day, he had even regrown missing fingers, but this small cut remained. “Mother,” he whispered, staring at his palm.
She carried him to the last of the bound prisoners. “Sight-Bringer,” she said. “During the war, the small folk named it Blood Fiends’ Bane, because it was so lethal to our kind. The wound will heal… after you have gorged yourself. And after tonight, it will never threaten us again.”
“It… I…”
She carefully set him down before the prisoners, a handful of young women. Normally catatonic, the women tried to draw away now, perhaps sensing their doom. They trembled and wailed, eyes wild, fouling themselves in their terror. “Drink, my brave hero. Be strong again.”
Dilan, his thirst a red fire, crawled atop the closest prisoner, slamming her onto her back. With her arms bound behind her, she was helpless as he drove his fangs into her soft neck. She screamed, arching her spine beneath his weight. Dilan drank, immediately feeling joy spread through him, abating his pain. When the first rush of hot blood began to slow, he gripped her chest and began squeezing her heart through her rib cage, forcing the blood to keep flowing. Her screams ceased, became soft moans of pleasure. And then she was dead.
Dilan rose on trembling legs, feeling so much better already.
Nearby, Serina had buried her face between one of the prisoners’ thighs, drinking from her femoral artery. The woman’s mouth opened and closed in ecstasy.
Dilan, still hungry, advanced on another prisoner.
Chapter 44
Owen
“I feared you dead for certain,” Lady Danika said, finally releasing Owen and stepping back to regard him.
“I’m fine, my lady,” he said, surprised at the emotions running through him. Before departing Castle Dain, he had never said more than two words to her, nor her to him; now he felt a powerful need to protect her.
Fioni frowned at Kora and the rest of the crew, standing around them in a circle. “What? No hug for me?”
Kora gripped Fioni’s arms and placed her forehead against Fioni’s. “How did you get away—”
Fioni snorted and glanced at Owen. “I learned how to fly.” She drew away from Kora, her eyes falling on the still-comatose Ekkie on her makeshift stretcher. “Is she any better?”
“The same,” said Kora sadly.
“Galas?”
“Still on our trail. I have Vadik and Kersta watching his men. Every two hours or so, one of the two will run forward and report.”
“The last report?”
Kora bit her lip. “A few hours ago.”
Fioni’s smile disappeared. “Do we have torches?”
“A few. I didn’t want to risk the light.”
“Risk it,” Owen said, stepping forward. “We need to move faster now. We’re running out of time.”
With the light of burning torches, they sped through the ruins, with Fioni explaining how she and Owen had cut through the crevice and the hot springs, entering the city before Kora and the others. Since then, he and Fioni had been moving toward the largest still-standing structure, the pyramid. They had had no idea Kora and the others were anywhere nearby until Gali had suddenly sprung up behind them, surprising them.
The pyramid rose before them, much closer now, surrounded by a half dozen smaller pyramids, all with flat tops. “What did your great-grandfather say in his journal about these ruins?” Lady Danika asked Fioni.
“He didn’t. His last entry of this island noted a mountain pass and a statue of a strange woman. He didn’t say this in his journal, but I suspect he thought it a likeness of Fenya, one of our gods.”
“He didn’t go any farther?”
Fioni shook her head. “His crew refused. Some… thing unnerved them. Denyr, a holy man, went on alone.”
“We found the statue,” said Lady Danika, “and another of those black tomb-like vaults. It unnerved me.”
“Really?” asked Fioni, surprise in her eyes. She glanced at Owen. “We found several as well.”
“I think,” said Owen, speaking for the first time, “they ring the mountain.”
“Why?” asked Lady Danika.
He shook his head.
They carried on in silence, soon arriving at the base of the pyramid. Stone carvings of snarling animal heads had been affixed
along its base: snakes, wolves, bats, and—most prominently—birds.
Lady Danika approached a large snake’s head, taller than she was, and ran her fingers over it. She turned to one of the crew standing nearby with a torch and asked him to let her have it. She held the flaming brand closer to the snake’s jaws and then turned to Owen. “The stone around the animals’ mouths looks discolored.”
“Discolored how?” he asked.
“I think that when it rains, the water must run down these funnels cut into the side of the pyramid and behind the heads.” She swept the torch along the ground where a dark, equally discolored stone trough ran to a ruined fountain.
Owen rubbed his fingers over the discoloration and then stared at the oily blackness on his fingertips. “Why’s it so filthy then?”
“It’s been centuries, Owen,” she answered.
“I guess,” he said as he peered intently at one of the heads, a fierce bird of some type with a massive pointed beak. “But I don’t know how much rain this island really gets.”
“What do you mean?”
At just that moment, another of the lightning bolts struck the cliffs of the Godswall far in the distance, highlighting the dark clouds that seemed to flow around the island. He considered his words, searching to explain his guess. “I think…” he began, “that whatever magic is at work with the Godswall, the lightning, and the fog, somehow also keeps the weather so mild, so unseasonably warm, and the sky overhead clear of clouds. I don’t think this island sees much rainfall.”
“That’s just not possible,” she said.
He shrugged. “Some rainfall must blow in over the Godswall, or else there’d be no trees or vegetation at all.”
“That makes no sense,” said Fioni, joining them.
“Nothing on this island makes sense,” he answered. “But we can’t stand around anymore, and it is high ground, the most defensible terrain I’ve seen all day.”
“Agreed,” said Fioni, staring up the steps to the top of the pyramid. “And it’s as good a place as any to search for my uncle.” She took the torch from Lady Danika and began to climb the stone steps. Owen waited for Lady Danika and then followed her. The others came behind, a long line of exhausted crew members trudging up the scores of steps. By the time they neared the top, Owen was breathing heavily, his heart pounding beneath his armor. It would be worse, he knew, for an attacker to climb all those stairs while defenders threw stones and hindered their way. About twenty steps below the summit, a long, wide stone landing, like a massive balcony, circled the top. Here, he told himself, is where they’ll pause, re-form their lines, and ready themselves for the final push up to the top. We’ll hold the high ground… but for how long?
He climbed the last of the steps, coming out with the others upon the pyramid’s flat summit, at least a hundred paces wide and lined with stone columns that had once held a stone walkway, and was now only rubble.
Well… at least we won’t run out of stones to throw.
The pyramid must have been a temple after all, because a large black stone altar sat in the center of the smooth tiled surface, surrounded by more rubble. The surface of the pyramid was easily large enough to hold hundreds of spectators around the altar.
He paced along the top of the stairs, mentally measuring the length of a shield wall they could place here. Unfortunately, there was far more open ground than there were crew members—especially crew members with shields. They’ll move quickly up the stairs, and by the time they reach the landing below, they’ll be tired, and we’ll be throwing stones the entire way, but they’ll pause and re-form their lines before coming against us. In his mind, he once again relived the many tactical discussions he had held with Keep-Captain Brice Awde, examining the battle from all angles. “Fight the battle first in your mind, Owen,” he remembered Keep-Captain Awde telling him repeatedly. “How does it end?”
It ends, he knew, with Galas’s men swarming around our flanks to strike our rear and shatter us. Tired or not, there’s just too many of them.
“We can’t defend here,” he whispered, recognizing the truth of it the moment the words slipped past his lips.
“Owen!” Gali yelled from behind, excitement in her voice.
The young woman rushed over, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him along with her toward the dark stone altar. “Come quickly. Fioni found something.”
Broken stones lay near the altar, where Lady Danika, Fioni, and Kora stood, examining something alongside the altar before them. Fioni held a fluttering torch, her face grim; as Gali drew him closer, he saw why: sitting back against the stone altar, almost in repose, were the skeletal remains of what had once clearly been a man. An age-browned skull rested atop the rusting remains of a ring-mail coat and rotten shreds of dark clothing and boots. A hole the size of his hand had been punched right through the rusted ring-mail links, directly over the skeleton’s ribcage, leaving the shattered bones visible. Several feet away from the corpse, an elaborately carved wooden staff had been thrust between stones so that it still stood upright all these years later. The top foot or so of the staff had been broken. It was still attached but leaned away from the rest of the staff at an angle. Even from here, he could see that the runes carved into the length of the staff were Fenyir. He turned to Fioni, cold understanding rippling through him. “This is him, isn’t it, your uncle?”
She nodded, her lips mashed together. “It’s Denyr.”
“But…” said Lady Danika, her voice faltering, “if someone killed him, why break his staff and leave it standing like that all these years?”
Owen stared at the corpse, his anguish mounting. “The jewel case—”
“Isn’t here,” she finished for him. “Serina’s heart is not here.”
“Then,” said Kora sadly, “that means…”
“That we can’t stop Serina,” said Lady Danika. “We’ve failed.”
Lightning crackled across the sky.
Chapter 45
Galas
“You said we’d catch up to them before nightfall,” Galas admonished his tracker, Grotlin. Night had fallen, and many of his men now carried lit torches. Another of his men held a torch for Grotlin while the tracker knelt on all fours on the broken stone avenue that ran through the ruined city.
“Was before they jumped up the Hishtari guppies,” the tracker answered as he peered intently at one of the rare boot tracks left among all the stones. He snorted in amusement. “Was a nice piece of work, though.”
“Not so nice that Fioni ain’t dead for it.” Galas tamped down his mounting agitation, grinding his teeth. This was all taking too long. The queen would be on her way by now. If she had to finish his work, she’d be displeased. She might even start asking questions about how Dey and all his men had died. He needed to give her the Dain woman to play with. “How much longer?”
Grotlin stood, noisily hawked a mouthful of snot, and then swallowed it instead of spitting. Galas watched in disgust as Grotlin pursed his thin lips. “Each time we make up ground, they go faster. Someone’s tellin’ tales on us, I figure.”
“You’re sure?” Galas asked, now feeling unseen eyes on him. He spun about, looking in all directions, feeling suddenly vulnerable, as if one of the powerful Kur’teshi crossbows were aimed at his back right now. No, he realized. They barely had enough bolts for the ambush; I doubt they held any back. Still, just the same, he slipped between Grotlin and his first mate, Aegrism. Aegrism, no fool, shifted uncomfortably, his captured crossbow resting across his thick shoulder as his gaze darted about.
“I think I sees ‘em a while back,” Grotlin said, scratching at the thick mole on his cheek. “If I was a gamblin’ man, which I is, I’d say they hidin’ over there.” Without pointing, he looked toward a cluster of fallen stones ahead and to their right, with a commanding view of the broken avenue.
“Is that a fact?” Galas thrummed his fingers on his sword hilt.
“Ayup,” Grotlin grunted.
“That new toy of
yours...” He turned to Aegrism. “How many bolts you find?”
“A few,” Aegrism answered with a sly grin.
“All right. We’re going to set a large fire right here, act like we’re setting up for the night. You, me, and Grotlin. None other.”
“We want prisoners?” Aegrism asked.
Galas sucked on his front teeth as he thought about it, and then shook his head. “Later, after we got the kingdom bitch and the sword.”
#
As ordered, his men built a large fire, set to cooking stores for dinner, while Galas, Grotlin, and Aegrism slipped away into the dark ruins, slowly circling around the collapsed building Grotlin thought the most likely place for scouts to be hiding. Galas was no woodsman, but when necessary, he could be stealthy enough. He had learned long ago that the unseen knife striking from behind was often much more effective—and less dangerous—than direct confrontation, although there was a time for both. Aegrism, by comparison, was surprisingly quiet, nearly more so than Grotlin. Galas made a mental note of this little fact; knowing who could and couldn’t quietly slide a blade between your ribs was potentially crucial knowledge.
They circled around the rubble, a collapsed tower of some kind, coming in on it from behind. With luck, the scouts would be watching the campfires—if Grotlin had been correct. If he was full of shit, Galas might be looking for a new tracker this night.
Grotlin paused often, remaining motionless, listening to the silent city around them. The only noise Galas heard came from his own men, laughing and talking around their fires. At the edge of the ruins, Grotlin dropped down on his belly, and Galas and Aegrism did the same. They slowly crawled forward, keeping behind cover whenever possible. Finally, Grotlin stopped entirely, turned, and slowly motioned to a gap between two large stone blocks sitting near the top of the fallen tower. Galas stared, not seeing anything. But then, he caught a quick flicker of movement. One of the shadows between the blocks had shifted. Grotlin held up his thumb and forefinger, silently mouthing the number two. Now, Galas was able to see two distinct forms kneeling amidst the rubble, watching his men around their fires. He turned to Aegrism, who was slowly fitting a bolt to his already cocked weapon, and nodded.
The Vampire Queen Saga: Books 1-3: (The Vampire Queen Saga Boxset) Page 78