by Lee Carlon
Irritated, but trying not to let it show, Valan said, “You need me a lot more than I need you.”
“What happens when you’re the Lord of Damar?”
“You’ll be free to go where ever you want.”
“But not Damar?” Amir asked.
“Correct.”
“Why do you need me?” They were both speaking quickly now.
“To guide a group of people through the tunnels to Maiten’s Hall.”
“Rarick must have guards in the tunnels by now.”
“Which is why you will have to lead the people I have coming around the guards.”
“So you do need me?”
Valan smiled coldly, “Yes, but not as much as you need me.”
Amir was silent for a moment, then he asked, “How do you plan to kill Rarick? He won’t let you within a hundred meters of him if you’re armed.”
“I won’t need to be armed. You get the people—”
The cell door behind Valan opened. Valan waited a heartbeat, had they heard?
When nothing happened, Valan asked Amir, “Who were you working with? Who betrayed Lord Rarick?”
Amir laid back on the bench and looked stubbornly up at the ceiling. “I work for Lord Rarick’s brother. Warwick—”
There was a tremor in the guard’s voice as he said, “Sir, you have to leave now.”
3
The Fallen
Vernie arched her back and pressed her knuckles into the base of her spine. She sighed, knowing she still had more work to do, but she was running out of time.
Three months and nobody thought we might need chairs instead of crates.
She’d taped scraps of paper to the brickwork in the alcove where she worked. Each scrap of paper had one fact about their mission written on it. There was no natural light down here in the abandoned cellars deep below the Damarian citadel, so she swung the long-armed desk lamp to shine on a cluster of notes.
I’m missing something, Vernie thought again, but what is it?
She was accustomed to last day jitters and recognized the nervous anticipation within herself, but she knew something was different. Something was off. She pulled two notes from the wall and repositioned them with another cluster of notes. She studied the new configuration and then pulled three more from that cluster and scattered them among the rest of the notes on the wall. Her head spun, and she knew she should take a break, but she was certain if she could find the right order for the notes she would see what was missing from her plans.
A baritone voice, exaggerated by the cellar where they’d established their base of operations, asked, “Do you ever think about leaving Rhyne?”
Glad for the distraction, Vernie leaned back so she could see out of the alcove to where Stan sat on a dusty barrel cleaning one of a dozen laser-cutters he’d brought with him. He looked like a giant beneath the cellar’s arched brick ceiling. His freshly sharpened ax was in place at his belt.
They’d worked together before this mission, but never in such close quarters or for this length of time. Stan’s usual companions were Pete and Hull, and while Vernie could work with the three of them, she preferred not to. Their tastes were a little rough for her, but she’d gotten accustomed to Stan over the last few months. At first, his constant questions and hypotheticals had irritated her, and she’d wondered if he ever worked through an idea before voicing it, but as the weeks had turned into months, she’d come to realize this was just how he passed the time, and that there would always be more questions and hypotheticals.
With this realization, she’d switched from trying to answer his questions in the hope of shutting him up, to putting his questions back to him to keep him talking.
“And go where?” Vernie asked.
“I dunno. Anywhere,” Stan said and stopped checking his equipment for a moment to think. “Somewhere other than Rhyne. I’ve never been to Charoon.”
“You’re not in Rhyne now,” Cali said from where she lay stretched out on a sleeping roll in the shade of an ancient wooden barrel.
Vernie looked at the teenage descendant, and her back twinged just thinking about that sleeping roll.
At least I’m too old for sleep, Vernie thought. Then again, it might have been nice to sleep away a good part of the last three months.
“No, I know,” Stan said. “I mean permanently. You know, find somewhere else to live.”
Vernie looked back at the scraps of paper on the wall. Up and to the left she’d added a cluster of notes about an assassination attempt that had taken place the day before. Vernie didn’t know much, only that Valan had discovered an intruder and alerted Lord Rarick. A lone, unarmed assassin had been pulled from the tunnels beneath Maiten’s Hall and taken for questioning.
She’d written the words assassin, tunnels, Valan, and unarmed on scraps of paper.
How do they know he was an assassin if he was unarmed? Vernie wondered. Was he talented?
“I’ve been to Charoon,” Cali said.
Vernie glanced back into the cellar. Cali was still flat on her back with her hands behind her head, looking up at the curved ceiling. Stan had stopped working on his weapon and looked expectantly at the girl. Cali had also decoded Stan’s behavior, but she took a different approach to dealing with him.
Finally, Stan demanded, “And?”
“I didn’t like it,” Cali said.
Stan couldn’t see it from where he sat, but Vernie saw Cali’s sly smile. The older woman controlled a smile of her own to ask, “What about Lancity?”
She thought, You can’t drop three strangers into close quarters for months on end without friction.
“No way,” Cali said. “That place is full of hives. I don’t want to know what other people are thinking.”
“Lancity,” Stan mused. “Untouched by the Cleansing. And you don’t have to join a hive-mind. It’s not as hot as Rhyne either, and Lord Krista isn’t bound to a God, that could be—”
“Too weird,” Cali said. “Anyway, why leave?”
“See what else there is,” Stan said.
“Everywhere is the same and everywhere is different,” Cali said with teenage certainty. She brushed her fingertips across the scales on her left cheek in an unconscious gesture. “It’s all just buildings and people, mostly just buildings now.”
“Only Newterra was Cleansed,” Stan said.
“Newterra is the only place that matters,” Cali said.
“You don’t ever think about—” Stan stopped abruptly.
Vernie tried to head off the inevitable confrontation. “I went to Yergold’s Range once, before the Cleansing. They have the most beautiful coastlines I’ve ever seen.”
“Ever think about what?” Cali demanded of Stan.
“Nothing,” Stan said.
“No, come on, what?” Cali’s tone was deceptively calm.
“I dunno,” Stan mumbled. “I just wondered if you’d ever thought about visiting the Dragonlands, but—”
“Why would I do that?” Cali demanded, sitting upright in a sudden single movement.
“It doesn’t matter, I’m sorry.” Stan was almost three times Cali’s size, but in that moment he looked like a bashful boy. “I didn’t mean any—”
“I’m Newterran!” Cali told him.
“I know. I’m sorry,” Stan said. Unable to stop himself he said, “You’re a descendant too. Your ancestors came from the Dragonlands. I just thought—”
“My ancestors stayed when the Dragon Lords were defeated. My ancestors helped rebuild Newterra. I am as Newterran as anybody.”
“Cali, he didn’t mean anything by—”
A message flashed up on the terminal in the alcove. Vernie turned her attention to it and said, “Knock it off, you two.”
Vernie decrypted the code on a scrap of paper next to the computer.
“What is it, Vern?” Cali asked, craning her neck as though she could see the terminal through the brickwork.
“Changes.” The word was worse than an
y curse Vernie could think of. She decrypted the message again, wanting to be sure before telling her companions.
“Check again,” Stan said.
“That’d be right,” Cali said. “Of course Obdurin waits until today to change his mind.”
“Lord Obdurin,” Stan corrected her.
Vernie looked up in time to see Cali roll her eyes and mouth, Lord Obdurin.
“They’ve replaced Hull.”
“What?” Stan asked.
“Hull’s not coming,” Vernie said.
“Why not?” Stan asked.
“It doesn’t say,” Vernie said.
There was silence for a moment. They all knew what it meant. They all knew the risks of the life they led, but it still came as a shock when one of them fell.
“Silly bugger is probably too hungover,” Stan said. “He never could hold his drink.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Cali said too quickly.
Stan frowned into his lap, and Vernie and Cali exchanged worried looks but didn’t say anything.
“Who are they sending instead?” Cali asked.
“Vincent d’Rhyne.”
“Get fucked?” Cali said.
“Seriously?” Stan asked.
“Yep.” Vernie nodded.
Cali pursed her lips and blew. “The last I heard Benshi’s boy was serving penance on the frontline.”
“Well, I guess he finally proved himself and Obdurin has decided to make use of him,” Vernie said.
“Lord Obdurin,” Stan corrected her, but his heart wasn’t in it. He looked worriedly at his hands.
“Use him,” Cali said. “Yeah, but how? By sending him here, to Ardel, Maiten’s capital? I don’t like it.”
“He’s a good man,” Stan said looking up, but it wasn’t clear if he was talking about Lord Obdurin or Vincent d’Rhyne or even Hull.
“He’s a Chosen’s son,” Cali said. “It’s bad news.”
Something pinged, and Cali pulled an AI from her pocket. A second later she jumped to her feet and struggled to raise the heavy bolt across the door.
Stan almost stood up instinctively to help, but Cali had rejected his help often enough that he sat back down.
Cali said, “Gotta go.”
Before Cali disappeared through the door, Vernie asked, “Where?”
“Huh?” Cali had only opened the giant wooden door a crack and stopped now in the act of squeezing through to the other side. She looked almost like a pre-Cleansing teenager caught trying to escape from an evening with her parents. The green scales on her cheeks could have passed for skin mods or adhesive jewelry.
“Where are you going?” Vernie asked, feeling like the improbable mother to Cali’s impossible teenager.
“Oh, message from Valan. He’s back from Turintar and needs something.” Cali flashed her AI at Vernie, but the blank screen revealed nothing.
Vernie nodded and resisted the urge to complete the domestic picture by saying, Be careful.
“Get your non-human-ass back here safely, you hear?” Stan said, apparently unable to resist filling in the blanks.
Vernie tensed, waiting for Cali to explode, but the other woman flashed Stan a grin and said, “Don’t worry your non-dragon-ass, okay?”
Stan grinned as the door closed behind Cali. His grin faded as he lifted the heavy bolt back into place. “I don’t think we should tell Cali. Let’s wait until today is over.”
“Tell her what?” Vernie asked.
“We both know Hull is probably dead,” Stan said. “Best we don’t distract Cali with that news. She and he didn’t get on very well, but she’s more sensitive than she looks.”
“Right. Good idea,” Vernie said, not quite able to believe what she was hearing. Cali and Vernie had thought they were sparing Stan from the truth.
“I wonder how Pete took it,” Stan said.
“It’s best to focus and get through the day. The message says we should expect Walden—”
Something banged on the door and made both Vernie and Stan jump.
They shared an embarrassed smile. Stan got to his feet, his head almost brushing the ceiling, and lifted the bolt as he asked in a loud voice, “What did you forget?”
Vernie turned back to the terminal. They still had some time before Walden and the rest of the group arrived, but Vernie wanted to go over the details one more time. She looked up at the notes and asked herself, What’s the pattern? She knew there had to be one. She just couldn’t see it.
The door thudded softly as it closed.
Assassin. Tunnels. Valan. Unarmed. Vernie read the notes to herself again and came back to one. Valan. It went without saying that they didn’t trust Valan, but in this line of work, Vernie often worked with people she didn’t trust. Their plans had been worked out to the last detail and agreed upon so that trust issues could be set aside. Nobody ever said it, but they had put themselves into positions where they had to rely on each other to survive. If either party betrayed the other, they were all fucked. If he agrees with Obdurin’s plan why would he have stopped a would-be assassin? The goal was to displace Rarick, putting Walden in Rarick’s place was just the icing on the cake.
Neither Cali nor Stan had said a word since Cali had returned, and a cold breeze blew in through the door. Vernie almost said, Door! but she caught herself. She thought she’d already heard the door close. She suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold and slowly slid her left hand down to her thigh where the handheld laser-cutter was holstered. She put her hand to the weapon and pivoted, drawing it as she got to her feet.
She didn’t make it all the way up.
Something was in her way. Something that hadn’t been there before. She looked down. Between her feet a deep red, reflective surface was growing on the floor, spreading out from the center. She caught sight of her own distorted image before looking up.
“Val—” The word didn’t come out as it was supposed to.
She dropped to one knee.
Valan looked back into her eyes. Vernie felt like he was pressing his hand into her chest.
Past Valan, Stan was slumped against the wall, his weapons discarded on the floor behind him. He looked like he’d fallen asleep on the spot.
Vernie looked into Valan’s eyes. There was something she should ask him, but she knew she didn’t have long and the question refused to come.
She dropped to both knees and finally managed, “Why?”
Darkness swept in around her sealing her off from the world. If Valan answered her question, she didn’t hear him.
4
Shroud
The heavy needle came through the thick linen sheet with a pop. Doran pulled the needle and the cord attached to it through the folded sheet sealing the corpse inside. She tightened the cord, tied it off, and looked up and around, checking for threats.
She was in a long abandoned hospital room with dried blood-stains smeared across the walls. Snuffle stood off to one side, as wide and long as the hospital bed where Doran worked. His blind eyes pointed at a wall, his massive, blood-red flanks rose and fell gently as he breathed.
“Never again,” Doran whispered to herself.
The last time she’d been there, wrapping another body, she’d promised herself she’d find a better place to do this next time.
“Next time,” she whispered and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Here, boy,” Doran called and Snuffle moved closer, the thuds of his heavy footsteps loud in the quiet room.
He winced, his breath an expressive snort, as he put his left foreleg down.
“What happened?” Doran asked as she rounded the bed to him. She knelt by his side and ran a hand over his shoulder. He leaned into her hand, and she told him, “You’re nothing but a big puppy.”
Snuffle snorted and stamped his feet happily then winced again.
There was a small nick in the skin behind Snuffle’s left foreleg. The skin around the cut had already started to scab. She patted his side again. “It’s n
othing.”
Doran stood from Snuffle’s side and checked the single doorway into the room. She listened for movement but heard nothing. When she’d first found this realm, she’d closed that door a dozen times, but it refused to take. In this reality that door was open, and no matter how many times she closed it, it stayed open.
She tied another knot in the cord and felt the presence she’d been expecting coalesce behind her. Still with her back to the newly formed presence, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve again and moved around the hospital bed where the body lay.
She checked her knots and satisfied they would hold, she glanced at her visitor.
Corsari looked the same as the last time Doran had seen her. Doran didn’t know why that always surprised her, but it did. Maybe it was because the changes were subtle and happened over time, but many of the people she met in the realms were so far gone from who they’d been, that it still surprised her they could start out so familiar. So mundane. So beautiful.
The older woman was examining the hospital room, her eyes passed over details she couldn’t be familiar with, but her expression revealed no surprise or curiosity. Eventually, Corsari’s sleepy eyes landed on Doran, and she asked, “Where’s Vincent?”
“He stepped away for a minute.”
Doran pulled the shroud wrapped body to the edge of the bed with both hands, then held it in place with one hand and slapped Snuffle’s flank with the other. He edged closer. Still holding the body in place, Doran ducked under Snuffle’s head and swapped hands.
Corsari took a step forward, reaching for the wrapped body, but Doran shouted, much louder than she’d intended, “No!”
Please, Abyss no. Not yet.
Corsari stepped back startled, but she covered it with a lazy smile that matched her habitually sleepy expression. “Fine, hurt yourself proving how strong you are.”
Doran heaved the body up and over Snuffle’s back until it was safely in place. Rigor-mortis hadn’t set in yet, and the body fit snuggly over Snuffle’s back, conforming to his form.
Doran slapped Snuffle’s side again, and he snorted once in answer. He knew the routine.