Rathe followed the man’s gaze to the skull hanging over the crackling hearth, just where Horge had said it would be. Two small horns had been crudely affixed to the skull, and streaky red paint colored the bone.
Loro used the back of his hand to wipe foam from his lips. “If I do not miss my guess, that’s a horse skull.”
“As dragons spawned horses,” Gilip said in all seriousness, “there are similarities. Come back, and I’ll reveal all to you.”
As they made their way to the back of the common room, Rathe took a tentative sip of his ale. His tongue recoiled like a salted slug. Goat piss would be an improvement.
“Gods and demons,” Loro intoned, “this may be the finest ale I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting.”
“Just so,” Rathe agreed, trying not to gag. Passing a man facedown and drooling on the tabletop, he placed the tankard near his limp hand. As he looked half-dead already, a little more could not hurt him.
Horge went around a half-wall, pushed through a curtain of strung beads, small skulls of vermin, and strips of tattered linen. “Yiri? That you, dear sister?”
“Did you get the Heart of Majonis?” came a woman’s curt reply. She sounded young and hostile.
Rathe peered into the dimness hovering round a low-burning candle. A slender shape hunkered in a chair, almost lost in shadow.
“Yiri!” Horge cried nervously. “I’m glad you are well. I’ve brought friends. This is Rathe and Loro, up from realms south of the Gyntors. They saved me from—”
“I asked about the Majonis crystal, idiot,” Yiri snapped, shoving back her chair and standing up. She was shorter even than Horge, her silhouette blade-thin. The gloom still shrouded her features.
Horge flinched back. “Aye, ‘tis safe with Jathen!”
Yiri’s head turned. The glint of one dark eye shone through a fall of matted black hair. “Nothing is safe in the hands of those goat-buggering monks, and surely not the Heart of Majonis. Had you not entangled yourself in their schemes, the crystal would be in our hands, where it should be.” She studied Rathe and Loro’s robes. “Can we expect to have you two fools along, until this venture is done?”
“They aren’t brothers,” Horge said in an exaggerated whisper. “Theirs is but a disguise, put on them by Jathen. They are to help me find the trinkets the monks want.” Briefly he explained all that had happened from Deepreach to Skalos, and the debt he owed Rathe and Loro.
Yiri’s abrasive bearing relented by the end. She sat into her chair, passed a hand over the candle, and the flame leaped higher, casting all in a cheery light. “Horge my dear, sweet, witless brother, why must you be so reckless?”
He had no answer, save to twitch and fidget. She turned to Rathe and Loro, revealing a dirty, waifish face. Her resemblance to Horge was unmistakable. The difference rested in their manner. Yiri did not share Horge’s constant unease. She seemed wholly sure of herself. “As for you two, I suppose thanks are in order for saving my brother from his own foolery.”
Rathe accepted that with a nod. “Horge told us you would help.”
Yiri pushed a clump of hair back from her face to peer at him with unsettling intensity. “Give me your hand,” she ordered curtly.
“I’ll keep it to myself,” Rathe bristled.
Yiri snatched his wrist before he could jerk back, pulled him close with surprising strength. With a curse, Loro’s dagger flashed to her neck. “Unhand him, you shit-grubbing urchin, or find yourself with another set of lips.”
“Easy,” Rathe said, using his free hand to push the blade to a safe distance. “I think she wants to read my fortune.”
“Aye, aye!” Horge cried. “’Tis all. Just his fortune. No harm in that!”
Loro backed away, but did not sheathe his dagger. Yiri stared at him a long time, then bared a set of small white teeth in what might have been either a smile, or a hateful grimace. Rathe guessed the latter, as Yiri seemed averse to friendliness of any sort. Her expression smoothed, and she opened Rathe’s fist with the touch of a long-nailed finger.
“You have suffered great loss,” she said at once.
“What man hasn’t?”
She traced the lines of his palm. “True, but your wounds go deeper. You’ve lost friends and loved ones at the hands of others and—” she glanced up “—by your own hand.”
Rathe snorted. “I’ve never taken the life of one I loved.”
“Not by choice, and not always by violence,” Yiri agreed, her voice low enough that neither Loro nor Horge could hear her.
When Rathe looked at them, they seemed frozen. Even the candle’s flame had ceased its gentle dance. “What witchery is this?” he demanded, trying unsuccessfully to pull free of her grasp.
“The kind that would shatter your mind to know,” Yiri crooned. “Do not fear … Scorpion, Champion of Cerrikoth, I will make an end to your burden.”
He started at that, for Horge had not made mention of those titles. Before his struggle broke her grip, Yiri’s eyes filled his sight, encompassed him about in a warm obscurity that was neither light nor darkness. Against his will, Rathe felt himself relaxing, unable to resist.
“Be at peace, Rathe. I mean you no harm. I will help you.”
“Help me … what do you mean?”
“Yours is a heart troubled by regret,” she said. “So burdened, a spirit-demon has found in you a perfect sanctuary.”
“You speak of the Khenasith!”
“Aye. ‘Tis time for you to be free of that burden. Let it go, Scorpion. Free yourself….”
At her soothing tone, nameless villages, razed and smoking, flashed behind Rathe’s eyes. Each filled with men, women, and children, all cut down and left to fill the gullets of vultures and starving dogs. Scenes of butchery and murder, made so at his command. Did it matter that, in turn, he had given his orders at the behest of his king?
He saw Thushar, his sword-brother, who had stood beside him against those who plotted his downfall. Thushar had died well and proud, where Rathe had been granted a reprieve.
Nesaea hove into view, his goddess of snow and silver. He had abandoned her at Valdar, claiming it was for her safety. He still believed it so, but could there have been another way? She had let him go, and he had not looked back. Her violet-blue eyes had shed tears at his departure, and he had felt his own tears burning in his heart, unshed.
“Do not bear these burdens,” Yiri admonished, voice coming from far away. “They are born of choices made out of love and loyalty and duty, not spite. Open yourself to me, and I will steal away these sorrows. Allow me to break the curse upon you.”
“My regrets are mine to keep,” Rathe said, voice hollow. “They are as much a part of me as my own flesh. Who are you to rob me of conscience? Who are you to pardon me?”
“What you are will remain,” Yiri promised. “I take only that which you should willingly banish from yourself, that which will leave you a broken shell of a man.”
“I … I do not know,” Rathe said.
“Keep your guilt, if you must,” Yiri breathed eagerly, “but I will take the life of the curse that makes sport of your pain, as it has so many others.”
Again, he tried to pull back, but Yiri was relentless, and he stood as frozen as everything around them. She loomed, eyes black as midnight waters, teeth white and sharp. She cast aside her tattered cloak, drew off her ankle-length tunic, revealing pale naked flesh stretched tight over prominent points of bone. A quick, deft tug at his belt opened his robes, and she molded herself against the lithe muscles of his chest and midsection, her arms stealing around him to draw them closer still. Her skin was cold, so cold, and his heat drained into her. With a languid sigh, Yiri pressed her face against his. Words of a strange tongue crossed her lips.
“What are you doing?” he tried to say, but the question never came.
Yiri’s answer was a kiss, gentle at first, then fierce, forcing his mouth open. When she leaned away, gasping, it felt as if she were extracting his soul. Rathe�
��s eyes widened at the wisps of dark vapor stretched between them. Yiri’s eyes rolled to show the whites. Her jaw came unhinged, and her mouth grew cavernous, rapidly filling with those ethereal wisps. Rathe screamed, but he heard only a sighing moan. Yiri’s spine bent back on itself until the top of her head touched the small humps of her backside. An arc of swirling darkness flowed out of him and into her.
Of a sudden, the last of the black mist tore free of Rathe, and he toppled to the floor. Yiri straightened, matted hair standing on end around her head. Her mouth gaped wide around the columnar body of a gray-scaled, serpentine creature. Blunt horns jutted from its skull. Instead of one face, four encircled its rounded head, each bearing three squinted gold eyes. The third eye of each face formed a vertical slit above the other two. The head turned, seeking, each trio of eyes finding Rathe before turning again, so that the others could take him in. Four mouths, ringed with rows of needled teeth, spoke as one.
“Think you to escape us so easily?” the four voices of the Khenasith boomed. “Think you to deny the ignominy of your existence?” raged the beast of untold sorrows, the Black Breath.
Rathe steeled his resolve against the living spirit, its consuming malevolence now freed of the bonds safeguarding the seen world from the unseen. “Leave this place,” he grated, “and return to your masters in the Abyss.”
“Command us nothing!” four mouths shrieked. “We are born of the mystery of the dark, while you are but the issue of lesser beings crept from mud and filth.”
“Perhaps,” Rathe gasped, rising to his feet. “But my flesh is mine own, and you shall not possess it.”
“Dare not bandy words with us, fleshling. You are but an amusement, a plaything to be discarded at our pleasure—”
Rathe’s sword cleaved the four faces of spirit. They broke apart around flashing steel, only to reform. Four mouths grinned around innumerable teeth, twelve eyes flared like slivers cut from the sun. Before their mockery resumed, Yiri drew the darkness within herself, as if they were no more than smoke from a pipe. Behind her clenched teeth, voices of madness raved, and slowly dwindled.
“What did you do?” Rathe asked.
“I freed you,” Yiri replied, smiling weakly. “And now we must rest.”
Before Rathe could speak a word, Yiri waved a hand before his eyes, the motion drawing a curtain of night across his vision and mind.
Chapter 23
“Aye, ‘tis true,” the trapper murmured to those seated around him. “The Lady of Regret is joining the hunt this season, and with her the Wardens of Tanglewood.”
One of the man’s companions quaffed ale, slammed the tankard down. “Let the Hunting Bitch come!” he roared, reeling in his seat. “She’s welcome to my soul!”
“Your soul’s not worth the hair round my arsehole,” another man bellowed.
Crazed laughter met this, but the man who had spoken first looked at his companions with stark terror in his eye. “Laugh if you will, but I name it the death of fools to do so.”
Rathe shut his ears to another burst of derisive laughter, dropped his aching head onto his arms. It seemed he had been listening to that conversation for days.
Since coming into the Gelded Dragon, time had become distorted, elusive. Surely no more than an hour had passed since Horge introduced them to Yiri, but Rathe could scarcely recall a moment of it. Something had happened between him and Horge’s sister. Whatever it was, it escaped him. Neither Loro nor Horge seemed out of sorts. Rathe supposed his strange feelings might have more to do with the touch of the fire mage. Or it might have been that ghastly ale the innkeeper had given him. Or…. It matters nothing, he thought wearily, resting best he could.
Loro stumbled back from the bar and collapsed into a chair, fists filled with brimming tankards of Master Gilip’s goat piss ale. “It’s a dragon!” he announced.
Rathe sat up when Loro shoved a tankard in front of him. Despite himself, Rathe ignored the ale’s bitter stench, and gulped the tankard dry. He coughed, belched, and felt better. “Dragon?”
“Aye, the one on the wall,” Loro said with a sly wink. “Might look a horse’s skull with yak horns poked into it, but as Master Gilip saw fit to give me a round of free ale to hear him out, I let myself believe it’s just as he says.”
“Dragons, Lady of Regret, Wardens of Tanglewood,” Rathe mused. “These Iron Marches seem full of terrors.”
A look flashed between Horge and Yiri. “Myths,” he declared, at the same time she said, “Foolish legends.”
“Yes, well, I for one am ready to see what sort of bed my coin has bought,” Rathe said, pushing back from the table. “We have an early start, so I suggest——” The inn’s front door boomed open, cutting him short.
“Murder!” a man bellowed, shoving his way into the Gelded Dragon. Men and a few women spilled in with him, all shouting at once.
“What’s this?” Master Gilip demanded, his filthy rag poised over the bar.
“Wull’s near had his head cut off!” the first man cried, looking wildly about. “Madrin and Fedik’s dead too! Ander’s nowhere to be found.”
“Red butchery!” a woman shrieked, reeling as drunkenly as the man at her side. By the straw in their hair, and her with one pale teat flopped out of her bodice, they must’ve joined the mob after a tumble in a hayloft.
By now, a dozen folk had crammed through the doorway, shoving and shouting, all eager for a righteous bloodletting.
The trapper who had been speaking about the Lady of Regret leaped to his feet. “I warned you! Warned you all, I say! The Hunting Bitch is come again, and rides even now through Wyvernmoor! Arm yourselves!”
Pandemonium broke out, women shrieking, men cursing, everyone jostling. Two men butted heads by accident, and set to pummeling each other with hard fists. Master Gilip clambered over the bar, bellowing for everyone to get out, before they tore the place down around his ears.
“Weren’t no ghost lady,” came a piercing cry. “’Twas them as did it, the monks!”
Silence fell in an instant. Horge squeaked, and Loro guzzled the last of his ale. The young woman who had spoken stood holding a gurgling baby in the crook of her arm.
Master Gilip shook his head. “They been here most of the night, drinking my ale. I even told the fat one about the dragon. Besides,” he added, voice low and urgent, “They’re monks. You want no part of the trouble as comes from attacking such men.”
“Mayhap time’s come to run ‘em out?” a man queried in an eager voice.
“Mayhap,” another said, low and dangerous, “it be time to kill ‘em all!”
Angry, merciless glares turned on Rathe and the others. The wench with the bared teat stuffed it away, filled her hand with a rusted dagger, doubtless preparing to spill a few bowels.
“Here now,” Gilip said, raising his hands for peace. “There be no call for such talk. Like as not to find your head missing its neck, you keep on this way.”
“We want no trouble,” Rathe said calmly. “We’ll just be on our way.”
“I seen ‘em do it,” the young mother spat, the lie almost hidden by the mad gleam in her bulging stare. “They all set on Wull like wild beasts. Cut ‘em to bits, they did, and kept some pieces as trophies.”
Rathe blinked in amazement. The throng took his hesitation as an admission of guilt, and began pushing forward, fighting each other for the privilege to get at Rathe and the others first.
“This way,” Yiri hissed, teeth bared, hunchbacked as an angry cat.
Rathe hurled a table into the path of the clamoring horde, and darted after her. A tankard soared past his head, another pelted him square in the back. He was thanking Ahnok that no one had thrown a knife, when a twirling blade streaked by his ear and thudded into the wall.
Then he and Loro, hard on the heels of Horge and Yiri, ducked into a narrow hallway, raced down its length, burst through a ramshackle door and out into the night. Yiri wheeled down the alley and scampered into the woods. The rest followed. Rathe
darted behind a screen of brambles, as the villagers came howling out of the Gelded Dragon.
“Keep low, and hold your tongues,” Yiri warned, slapping a hand over Horge’s quivering lips. When he nodded, eyes bulging above her fingers, she let him go.
Without another word, she began creeping quickly through the dark forest. Behind them, the villagers were spreading out, some bearing torches, others beating the brush.
Yiri led them deeper into the forest, and the commotion at their backs faded. They soon came to a game trail, where she paused to listen for sounds of pursuit.
“Did you kill Wull and the others?” she demanded, voice low.
Looking back the way they had come, but not seeing anyone, Rathe nodded. “They gave us no choice. They wanted your brother,” he added, when it seemed she would start cursing them for idiots.
She chewed her bottom lip. “You should have told me sooner. We could’ve been well away by now.”
“Is there a safe place?” Loro asked.
“Not this side of the mountains,” Yiri said. “Best to fetch whatever Jathen wants, and be done with it.” She looked at her brother. “And what does the good monk want?”
When Horge swallowed, his throat clicked. “The … the Keeper’s Box.”
“No,” Yiri snarled. “’Tis not his to claim.”
Rathe, who had not been paying close attention, spun at her harsh tone. “What’s so special about this box that you would sacrifice your brother’s life for it?”
“I don’t know that there is anything special about it,” she said, gaze wavering with the lie. “What concerns me is that Jathen has the Heart of Majonis, and now also wants the box.”
“What difference does that make?” Loro asked.
“Only one power can seal such a box, and that power comes from the Heart of Majonis.”
Rathe studied the young woman. “Why should sealing a box concern you?”
Yiri drew a deep breath. “Because such a seal is unbreakable and everlasting, save for those who sealed it.”
Someone yelled close enough for Rathe to duck down. He whispered, “It could well be that Jathen intends to seal something that should be hidden away. Besides, I gave my word that I would help him find what he wanted. As you know where this box is, you’re going to take me to it.”
Lady Of Regret (Book 2) Page 14