Lady Of Regret (Book 2)

by James A. West

  ~ ~ ~

  Nesaea ran to Wina. The girl might not deserve deliverance for whatever it was she had done to fill Ravenhold with living corpses, but in her, at this moment, Nesaea saw only a terrified girl who had made a grievous error, tricked by magic she had not understood.

  They crashed together. Nesaea tried to drive Wina in the opposite direction, but the girl’s urgency gave her uncommon strength. Nesaea caught Wina’s face between her hands. “Death waits that way!”

  Wina jerked free, shoved past Nesaea. “The Wight Stone cannot fall into Safi’s hands!” She vanished into clouds of boiling smoke lit by sporadic flashes of green flame.

  Nesaea stumbled under a sweeping streak of fire. It raced high and low in sizzling arcs, cracking stone, making ash of lesser materials. Fighting for balance, she fell against the heaving bulk of a shaggy beast. Mother Safi. Samba the yak. One in the same.

  It grunted furiously, swung its head, nearly gored her with a horn. Nesaea danced aside, sword and dagger coming up. The beast charged. Nesaea feinted, drawing the yak, then reversed her feet, and buried her dagger deep into one of its eyes.

  Roaring, the creature flung its great head, yanking the dagger out of Nesaea’s hand. It charged past, slamming her with a shoulder as it went.

  Nesaea tried to land on her feet, but ended up on her belly, sliding across the floor. With an agonizing thud, she fetched up hard against a wall. Stunned, she barely missed a pair of slashing hooves sweeping down to crush her face.

  She rolled over and over, came up in a crouch, sword beating the air. One spiteful red eye locked on her. A savage grunt sounded above the spreading racket of battle, and the yak charged again.

  The point of Nesaea’s sword cleaved a furrow up the beast’s snout, gouged into the shelf of its brow. The animal bore down on her, lowered its great bloody head, rammed her full in the chest. The blow gusted the breath from Nesaea’s lungs, flung her rolling and skidding down the passage.

  She landed in a sprawl, the back of her head slapping against marble tiles. Her sword flew away with a discordant clanging. She remained still and breathless, ribs bruised or shattered, spots of lurid color flaring in front of her eyes.

  The yak gave a bloody snort and charged. Nesaea felt the rattle of hooves against the floor, tried to roll over, to reach for her sword, but her body refused to heed her commands.

  Closer the pounding came, heralded by another bellowing snort. Nesaea managed to move her head, saw all with the sluggishness of a nightmare. The beast rushed forward, backlit by green-tinged smoke and sputtering columns of emerald flame. Rathe stood over Wina, who was on her knees catching up her own severed hand. An unnatural smudge of darkness reared up out of the smoke behind them both, but concentrated on Rathe alone as it swept nearer. Loro and Fira stood shoulder-to-shoulder amid a group of soldiers cloaked in snow-white tabards, all ready to leap clear of Yiri’s murderous fires. Yiri, who burned brighter than the fiery death she wielded with reckless, sporadic abandon.

  Nesaea’s eyes, hot and gritty, rotated in their sockets. The beast loped nearer, her demise burning in its wounded sight. A small slender shape darted in front of the yak. It leaped high, lighting on the yak’s snout with a squealing cry that was at once animal and human. It savaged the hulking beast with stomach-churning ferocity, slithering over its head, tearing fur and hide with flashing claws, ripping meat with needle teeth. The bellowing yak veered, slammed against a wall, trying to crush its attacker. Marble paneling fell in broken shards.

  As the two abominations made their war, Nesaea found her strength. She wriggled along, grabbed her sword, struggled to her knees, to her feet. Breath burned in her throat and chest. Pains stabbed her head to toe. She wobbled forward, sword climbing overhead, waiting for an opening. She would get only one. The yak, now half human, bucked and writhed under a creature part man, part something long, sable-haired, and slinky.

  “Treacherous fool!” Mother Safi bawled, voice throaty and thick with blood.

  The creature savaging her answered with a chittering squeal. Lurching and clawing at the thing swarming over her head and shoulders, Safi turned, showing a humped back layered in folds of pale suet, patchy with long dark fur.

  Nesaea struck, steel delving deep to spike the witch’s heart. Nesaea threw her weight on the pommel of the sword, sinking it to the hilt. Mother Safi’s scream shook the smoke-roiled corridor. As the old woman collapsed, Nesaea’s defender leaped away, landed on all fours, turned to face her.

  It was Horge, eyes bright red and filled with anguish.

  Beyond him, a human-shaped mass of fire ceased the assault on Loro, Fira, and the others. It was Yiri. She sprinted toward her fallen mother. A piercing wail ripped from her throat, needled into Nesaea’s skull, brought tears to her eyes. With each step, Yiri burned brighter, the heat of her filling the corridor, sucking the breath from Nesaea’s chest. Brighter … hotter.

  Nesaea retreated, her skin tightening, hair crisping.

  “Stop, Yiri!” Horge called, scuttling away from her.

  Yiri’s humanity faded, in its place a blinding light filled the narrow space.

  Nesaea turned just as that harsh light and heat exploded, sending a rush of destruction thundering down the corridor. Nesaea skidded around a corner. The blast caught up and lifted her. Weightless, she soared, spinning through empty burning air. She clamped her eyes and mouth shut. Nesaea hit a hard flat surface, and the ravening fires followed her down into the black.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sobbing, Wina knelt and cradled the severed hand to her chest. Seeing a queer light begin to fill her eyes, a faint glow flushing her skin and hair, Rathe snatched it away. She gave him an imploring look, but beneath her desperation played a face of wrath.

  “Behind you!” Loro yelled, diving clear of a blast of green fire.

  Rathe whirled to find a shadow stirring before him, the same he had first met and fought on the far side of the Gyntors, the same that had stalked him ever since.

  It edged closer, real as all the mind-bending horror of Ravenhold. The swirling shade coalesced, firmed into the shape of a man. An errant blast of emerald fire raked over him, brightening his outline as would lightning striking within a cloud. For an instant, a hard-edged face regarded Rathe with open contempt. Fast as a blink, a blade of night slashed free of an obsidian scabbard. Rathe reeled backward, fell into the great hall. With an unhurried air, the shadow-man followed, his wispy body becoming more firm in the dim light of the hall. He paused, glanced around, and the few burning candles puffed out.

  In the relative calm of the great hall, Rathe clambered to his feet, and flung Wina’s cooling hand aside. The grisly appendage skipped over the floor. The Wight Stone bounced free of clutching fingers, skated across embroidered carpets. Praying Wina would keep away, Rathe made ready.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The dark figure answered with a lazy flick of his blade. Rathe easily deflected the strike, then another, and recognized the testing of his defenses. He circled, wondering if shadows died as men did. His answering thought almost brought miserable laughter to his throat. Instead, he thrust without warning. The swordsman twisted, but not before the tip of Rathe’s sword pierced his arm, to no effect. Whatever the man’s flesh was made of, it seemed impervious to steel.

  “Very good, Scorpion,” the shadow warrior said, thin voice dripping scorn. “Had you but another life to live, you might make a worthy foe.”

  A reckless grin played over Rathe’s lips. “I’ve shit better than you on ground watered with the blood of my enemies.”

  Emotion rippled across that shadowed face. The swordsman’s dark blade flashed in a blinding pattern. Rathe blocked a few strikes, before jumping back with a hiss, nicked in two places, and sliced clean across one forearm. He had faced deadly men before, but such speed was as unnatural as the man’s shadowy substance. “What skill is there in hiding behind magic?”

  The swordsman’s shoulders flinched, and Rathe knew he was rig
ht. A pity that Yiri’s path no longer matched his own. Fighting magic with magic seemed a fairer game. He smiled ruefully. Little in his life had ever been fair.

  A pained scream from the corridor reached into the great hall, turning the shadow warrior. A moment later, a howl of rage and a blinding emerald light poured through the doorway. Loro and Fira, Wina and Horge, braced by a handful of Wardens, rushed into the hall. Panic had engraved itself upon every face. Their fear raced ahead of them, a force unto itself.

  Rathe’s study shifted to his distracted opponent, in an instant taking the measure of the man. In the harsh radiance, he had grown more substantial. Whip-thin, he stood taller than Rathe, with a head of short dark hair. Bedecked in fine leathers and a silver-embroidered wool cloak, he could have passed for a wealthy merchant. A long thin sword, fashioned to suit his build, was gripped in a strong hand that had become skin and bone, instead of shadow.

  Shadows abhor light.

  Ahnok, the god of war to which Rathe paid homage, demanded honor among warriors. For that reason alone, Rathe granted the treacherous whoreson the barest warning. “Your magic is fled, friend.” He laughed harshly at the man’s startlement, and ripped his blade across the swordsman’s back.

  The man spun with a look of shock, a swatch of wool cut from his cloak fluttering down. A backhand stroke sliced the man’s chin. Pressing in hard, Rathe’s fist followed the arc of his blade, and collided with the man’s jaw. The swordsman’s head snapped back, and he stumbled into Loro.

  Unhindered by gods or honor, the fat man judged the scene in an instant. His blade swept low, aimed to hamstring the swordsman—

  A thunderous boom shook the fortress, blazing green light flashed bright, and quickly died. Loro’s steel passed through swirling shadow. The fat man spun in confusion, searching, but the swordsman had joined his ensorcelled flesh to the darkness, and fled.

  Rathe picked up the swatch of wool, fingertips sliding through blood. He tucked the fabric into his belt. Some men found near-death disagreeable. Something told him this particular man would find a brush with mortality a challenge.

  Such was a matter for another time, Rathe thought, looking into the now darkened doorway. Loro said something as Rathe passed him by. Everyone he cared about, save Nesaea, was present in the great hall. He was running before he reached the corridor.

  Calling Nesaea’s name, Rathe ran in the direction he had last seen her. Smoke billowed orange-and-black off burning tapestries. The smell of scorched stone and meat hung in the air, quickening his pulse. Cracks riddled the walls, floor and ceiling—Yiri’s work, but he did not see her.

  He leaped a wide crater in the floor, its tarry heart scrawled with molten red veins. Monstrous heat beat at him as he soared over. He crunched down on a hulking shape with charred limbs. His thumping heart skipped a beat, but the carcass was too large to be Nesaea. And then he recognized Mother Safi, frozen forever into a tough mass of charcoal before she could revert back into Samba the yak.

  He kept going. Silence met his calls. He rounded a corner and ran on, the destruction dwindling with each step. The smoke thinned, until he was clear of the worst of it.

  Up ahead, a motionless human shape lay on its side at the base of a wall. He quickened his pace. Nesaea’s name remained locked in his throat.

  Rathe slowed a stride from the figure. “Nesaea?” He dropped down, gently eased her over. Tangled raven hair obscured her face. He pushed it back, fingers brushing cool, pale skin crusted with more blood than not.

  Her eyes fluttered open, dazed, but alive and aware. She searched his face, confusion dwindling. A faint scowl pinched her brow. “You are not worth this much trouble,” she croaked.

  Rathe held her face between gentle hands, kissed her with gentle lips. “You are.”

  Her fingers brushed his cheek, tangled in his hair, drew him closer.

  Chapter 33

  “Think he’ll come?” Nesaea asked Rathe. She sat her saddle gingerly, despite having spent a week abed under the care of Lady Mylene’s healers. Only time, they had told, would mend her sore ribs and fade bruises too numerous to count. Lucky it was, they had said, that she survived the magical blast of Yiri’s destruction, which had cracked the keep’s foundations.

  “If good Brother Jathen wants the Wight Stone, the Keeper’s Box, and his seeing glass,” Rathe said, “he’ll be here by midday.” After all that had happened at Ravenhold, Rathe decided his honor had limits. Jathen and his fellow monks might have saved Rathe’s life, but they had also nearly led him to his doom by leaving out the true nature of the dangers that faced him and his friends. And so he had used the seeing glass to make new arrangements with Jathen. The Brother had protested the demands at first, then tried in vain to hold Rathe to his word. Rathe had ended the negotiation with the threat of finding a buyer of arcane devices, someone from Giliron perhaps, and someone Jathen would never find.

  “And if he does not arrive?”

  Rathe closed his eyes to the dappled sunlight falling through the boughs, inhaled a breeze carrying the fresh scent of pine sap. It was as close to a warm days as he had felt, since coming across the Gyntors. “He’ll be here. After we give him what he wants, and I receive what was agreed upon, we’ll find your sister.”

  He had promised her that after learning Nesaea’s reason for being at Ravenhold, instead of far to the south, in Cerrikoth or Qairennor. According to Wina, Sytheus Vonterel had called on Ravenhold a season past. With no small amount of shame, the now one-handed handmaid admitted that when she tried to turn him into a wight, he had used his own magic against her, and the Wardens of Tanglewood had cut him to pieces. Rathe’s hope was that Lord Arthard of Dionis Keep did not soon learn of Sytheus’ death. If he did, he would have no reason to keep Nesaea’s half-sister for ransom. Of course, a man like that would not simply free her. Just what he would do, Rathe kept to himself, though Nesaea likely knew better than anyone.

  Nesaea folded a hand over his. “It’s not a burden I expect you to take on.”

  “I gave my word,” he said gravely, not regretting it in the least. “I am bound by honor to keep it.” He ruined his seriousness with a smile. “Believe me, hunting anyone with you at my side, is better than wandering about the world listening to Loro’s complaints. Now I can share my misery.”

  They both looked to Loro and Fira, who had dismounted to lounge on a bed of moss in the shade of a great pine. Fira cooed softly to him, teasing his lips with a bit of smoked meat. Loro caught it between snapping teeth, and gobbled it down with disturbing relish.

  Struggling not to grimace, Rathe said, “A tale of passion only a drunken bard could appreciate.” Nesaea slapped his hand, but laughed in that way of hers, a way that heated his blood as no other woman had before. He had forgotten her influence over him, his goddess of snow and silver. He did not mean to forget again.

  They held quiet for a time, listening to the sigh of wind, the twitter of birds and chatter of squirrels. Nesaea was first to break the silence.

  “I do hope Lady Mylene has forgiven Wina.”

  “She knows the Wight Stone fed off the girl’s loyalty and love.”

  “Such power as that should never have fallen into her hands. Nor should it fall into anyone else’s.”

  “As long as there are those who seek power, it will wait to seduce the unwary. This power, though,” he said, carefully lifting a sack of coarse weave off the pommel of his saddle, “will tempt no one again.”

  Nesaea smiled grimly. “You are wrong, there. Jathen will seek to use it, for all the good it will do him. Would that I could see his face when he tries.”

  Rathe was not sure what Nesaea had done to the accursed amulet, but she assured him it was now useless. Alchemy, she promised, solved problems at least as well as magic did. In a day, maybe two, the monk would learn of his loss, much to his regret.

  A rustling in a patch of bushes near the trail turned all eyes, tightened hands on hilts. The danger that burst clear of the bramble was only a
danger to himself.

  Horge came to a halt, brushed a few stray leaves off his tatty cloak, looked up with a wide grin for Rathe. “He comes.”

  “Alone?”

  Horge bobbed his head. “Just as you ordered.”

  A familiar grunting pulled alarmed stares back to the bushes. When a dark and saggy beast nosed through the tangle, Loro shouted, “The witch lives!”

  Horge leaped in front of the yak, hands waving. “’Tis Samba!” The yak, hearing its name, halted and glanced round with placid eyes, jaw working cud in slow circles.

  “You sure?” Loro demanded.

  “Aye. Do you think I’d not know the difference between my mother and a yak?”

  Rathe and Loro shared a skeptical look.

  Crestfallen, Horge toed a pinecone. “How was I supposed to know my sister had grown powerful enough to return Mama to life?”

  A chill crept up Rathe’s spine remembering the mist he had seen Yiri speaking with at the charred remains of Mother Safi’s hovel. Changing the subject, and hoping to put Horge at ease, he said, “Where did you find him?”

  The ratty little man glanced at him, an unspoken thanks shining in his eyes. “I told you, when those men attacked us in Wyvernmoor, the real Samba knew the way home, and that’s where I found him. At my home, a place Yiri did not know.” He puffed up his chest, scanned each face. “Pleased to see me, he was, which is more than I can say for you lot.”

  Loro burst out laughing, and the others joined him. Horge blinked in owlish bemusement.

  Rathe had pitied the man went first met, and still did. Through various stories, Rathe had concluded that Horge’s mother and sister had misused him from the day of his birth. After Safi’s death, Yiri had surpassed their mother in cruel mistreatment. Horge revealed that she had forced him to undertake countless dangerous and devious tasks. The better he became at escaping troublesome situations, the greater her demands became. But now Safi and Yiri were good and truly dead, killed by the magic Yiri had thought to master.