“Yeah,” Deathmask said. “Something like that.”
“Name’s Dunk,” the man said while Deathmask shifted and checked his shackles. Thick iron, and painfully tight. His wrists were crossed above his head, the chains hooked into the low ceiling. He sat on his knees, and when he tried to stand, he found another set of shackles holding him immobile.
“Don’t bother struggling,” Dunk said. “Not even a bit of chain on your feet, just locks attached to the wall. You’ll get used to it.”
“Dunk?” Deathmask said, feeling his patience waning thin.
“Dunk the Drunk,” the old man said, and he giggled as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
“Well then, Dunk,” Deathmask said, his voice turning icy cold. “Shut…up…now.”
“Shut it,” said the man chained to Deathmask’s right. “Your jabbering’s worse than the chains.”
There were five of them attached to the wall, and the other two chimed in their displeasure at Dunk’s talking.
“You’ll learn to appreciate me,” Dunk said. “I don’t recognize a one of you. Just wait. Third, fourth time you get tossed here, you’ll love to see a friendly face. Wish I was seeing one now.”
Deathmask smacked his head repeatedly against the stone wall behind him. They were bathed in dim light. Most of the torches in the windowless room were hanging beside the doors, with a few more surrounding the tables where the guards killed their time. One glanced back, distracted by all the chatter.
“Shut up, all of you,” the guard said, rubbing his bent nose, “or I’ll take a club and wail until my arms get tired.”
“He’s serious about that too,” Dunk said.
“Quiet!”
Dunk laughed as the guard stood, reaching for a club, but the old man said no more, and for that, Deathmask was eternally grateful. He decided when they made their escape, he would do his best to spare that guard’s life.
The thought of escape brought him back to the matter at hand. So far, he wasn’t being closely watched, and that was good. What was bad, though, was how restricted his hands and feet were. He twisted his wrists, testing their give. Very, very little. One by one he listed off the spells he could cast with such a limited motion. They were not many, and even worse, there was still the matter of the guards less than ten feet away. If he started whispering verbal components to a spell, all it would take was one to know what they were and mash a fist into his mouth to end all possibility of escape.
That left Veliana. He looked about, realizing that of the five chained by the entrance, all were men.
“Where do they put women who are brought in drunk?” Deathmask asked. The others ignored him, but Dunk just smiled. Deathmask asked a second time, and as the guards glared over, Dunk just winked and made kissing motions with his lips.
“Damn it,” Deathmask muttered. “Fine, Dunk, I’m sorry. Now, please, can you tell me?”
In answer, Dunk looked left and nodded his head toward a second set of stairs leading further into the prison.
“In chains like this?” Deathmask asked.
Dunk shook his head.
“Then like what?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders.
A roar rose from the tables as two men tossed down a week’s wages, each convinced of victory over the other. Deathmask used that chance to cast a simple spell. A flicker of fire shot from his fingers, just enough for him to get a better glimpse at the chains around his wrists.
Dunk’s eyes grew real big at the sight of the fire.
Another roar, coupled with laughter. The two guards had thrown down their cards, only to discover they each held the exact same hand. Deathmask tried a trickier spell, hoping he could manage the intricate movements of his fingers. Shadows curled down from the ceiling, swirling into his fingers and then pulsing into his veins.
“Dunk,” he said. “Can you lean toward me?”
“What for, devil man?” Dunk asked.
“Just do it,” Deathmask hissed. The rest of the guards were laughing and clapping the men on the back, congratulating both for the guts to bet such an amount, while both sighed with relief at knowing that, though they had not won, they had not lost. It wouldn’t be long before the hubbub died and their attention refocused.
Shifting his wiry frame over, his shoulder leading, Dunk tilted his head as close as possible. Deathmask imitated the motion, and for the briefest moment their foreheads touched. Just a slight bump, but it was enough to pour all the dark energy out of Deathmask and into Dunk. The old man’s body turned incorporeal, his muscle and bone replaced with shadow and magic. Dunk slipped from the bonds and laughed long and loud.
“I’m a ghost!” he shouted with glee. At this, the guards turned and saw the bizarre sight. They cried out in alarm, and several lunged for their weapons. Dunk wasted no time. He bolted straight for, and then through, the double-doors, vanishing into the castle.
“After him,” they cried. In the confusion, Deathmask twiddled his fingers, wincing each time the sharp metal cut into his wrists. His own body turned translucent, and during that brief moment he fell forward, freeing himself from his chains. Still unnoticed, he stood, fire bursting from his palms. Half the guards had already unlocked the doors and hurried out. The nearest of the remaining four screamed as his body was engulfed in flame. The ash of his corpse floated through the air, settling into a faint cloud swirling around Deathmask’s head.
“It’s the Ghost!” screamed a guard, flinging his club and turning to flee. Deathmask brought him down with a word. Blood poured out of his ears, mouth, and eyes. The club struck by Deathmask’s feet, doing no harm. Behind him, the remaining men chained to the wall gaped in terror. Magic flared in the small dark room, slashing the final guards to pieces with shadow blades. When the chained men continued to howl, Deathmask whirled upon them and pointed a finger.
“Quiet, or die,” he said. Two obeyed. A third did not. Deathmask shot a single bolt of dark magic through his throat. The man quieted. Shaking his head, Deathmask rushed deeper into the prison. Halfway down the stairs he met a guard rushing up to investigate the confusion. Deathmask put a hand upon his throat and whispered two words of power. The guard collapsed, his throat constricted and unable to open for breath.
At the bottom of the steps was another door. As he reached for the handle he cried out in alarm. The door swung out, cracking him across the shoulder. He collapsed to the ground, muttering and promising death. Instead, a feminine hand reached down to help him up.
“I had to kill seven,” Veliana said, pulling him to his feet. “What took you so long?”
“They chained me to a wall,” Deathmask said. “You?”
“Holding cell with two other women. Nice gals.”
The two rushed back up the steps, stepped over the dead bodies, and approached the double-doors to the jail. Against the wall, the remaining two prisoners closed their eyes and bit their tongues to hold in their sobs.
“Guards?” Veliana whispered, gesturing to the doors.
Deathmask nodded.
On the count of three, Veliana slammed them open. The two guards posted with their backs to them could only yelp in surprise before she slammed a club across their faces, shattering cartilage and splattering blood across the floor. Frowning at the club, Veliana dropped it and took the shortswords from the unconscious guards. She twirled them in her hands and whispered a word of magic. A soft purple glow surrounded the blades, strengthening them.
“We’ll be near the soldiers’ quarters,” Deathmask said. “Where do you figure this Melorak will be?”
“The throne room,” Veliana said, glancing up and down the hallway they had entered.
“I figured he would be with his priests,” Deathmask said as he followed her.
“No,” Veliana said, stopping at another intersection. They had been to the castle only a couple of times before, but that was enough for Veliana to have memorized the bulk of the corridors and winding passageways. So far, no sign o
f guards, and in that they were lucky, for Dunk had led most of them on a wild goose chase through walls and out into the streets of Mordeina.
Dead of night, three hours before dawn, and as they had hoped most of the castle was asleep. Veliana had been adamant: if there was any time to strike, it was at night.
“It doesn’t matter how powerful he is,” Veliana had argued during the creation of their plan. “All men are the same when they sleep.”
The castle was incredibly well guarded on the outside, but within, other than the dozen at the entrance to the jail, it was unnaturally empty. Before, there might have been servants and nobles and all the miscellaneous characters of courtly life. Instead, there was silence. Melorak had executed everyone with the slightest hint of nobility. As for the servants, the cooks, the ladies-in-waiting, well…
Deathmask did his best to ignore the rotting corpses hanging from hooks hammered into the wall. For some reason they didn’t smell, and he felt his fingers tingle with the proximity of magic. Not right, he thought. Not right at all.
“So we’re here,” Deathmask said, gesturing to the expansive and empty throne room. “Why are we here again?”
“Quiet,” Veliana said, glaring at him with her lone eye. She pointed to a door at the far right of the throne. “In there,” she said. “That will lead to several rooms for servants, and then the king’s quarters.”
Deathmask chuckled at the word ‘king.’ So far Melorak had been adamant no one call him a king, to the point of issuing an edict threatening pain of death to those who dared say it. He was a priest, a prophet, but not a king. It made no sense at all to Deathmask, but it did reinforce to him that whoever this man was, he couldn’t possibly be sane.
“There will be a secret passageway out of the room,” Veliana said. “So we have to strike fast to prevent him from fleeing.”
“I don’t think fleeing is something this guy does,” Deathmask said. Still, he did his best to open the door quietly. In the days of old, several guards would have stood at attention through all hours of the day to ensure the safety of king and queen’s possessions, so that no would-be assassin poisoned clothes or slipped snakes into the bed sheets. Now, though, it appeared Melorak feared nothing. No guards, not for him. Just the streets, and the exterior of the castle.
They crept down the hallway, silent as ghosts. They passed by two small doors, most likely servants’ quarters, and then small windows opened up along the wall, revealing glimpses of the bedroom. Paintings lined the walls, and long curtains trailed from the ceiling before looping back upward. In the center was the gilded bed, and through the thin curtains both assassins could clearly see a sleeping form.
See, he sleeps, Deathmask said through quick motions of his fingers in an intricate language thieves had developed over a hundred years.
Silent, Veliana signaled back. No pause. You right. Me left.
At the end of the hall was the door into the bedroom. Deathmask grabbed the latch with his left hand and cast a spell with his other. When he lifted the latch, it made not a sound. He touched the hinges and again cast the spell. The door swung open without the slightest creak. In perfect unison the two stepped into the room. Their footfalls were softer and quieter than a gentle snowfall. Their clothes did not rustle. No light glinted off their possessions. A shadow of death, the both of them.
And it didn’t matter.
Halfway to the bed, they stopped as the ceiling erupted in a cacophony of wails and shrieks. Veliana’s eyes glanced up. Her hands shook, and her heart skipped. Hidden by the many curtains and hanging by thick nails and hooks were twenty corpses, every one animated by Melorak’s dark magic. Their eyelids were peeled and gone. The corpses saw the assassins’ entrance, and did exactly as they had been commanded to do: scream.
“Damn it,” Veliana shouted, her strong legs propelling her forward. Deathmask trailed after, a spell on his lips. They still had a chance, if they could catch Melorak in the confusion. Deathmask’s spell burst the curtains around the bed into flame, and through their dissipating ash Veliana leapt, her shortswords thrusting downward.
But for Melorak, there was no difference between dream and wake, for in both he dwelt in the darkness of Karak’s embrace. A cocoon of shadows swirled from underneath the bed, entombing his body. Veliana’s swords sparked at contact with it, and then the metal shattered. She screamed, the shards shooting back in all directions. Blood ran down her face and arms.
“Get out!” Deathmask shouted. He flung a bolt of magic, and in the brief flash of its travel a thin purple tail trailed after it like a comet. It splashed against the shadow barrier like water on stone. As Veliana retreated, clutching her face, the two felt icy shudders travel up and down their spines, for amid the din of undead shrieks they heard joyful laughter.
Melorak emerged from the cocoon with a smile on his face.
“The Ghost and his Blade,” he said, his smile growing. “How I’ve ached to meet you.”
His face was plain, his hair neat and trimmed. His teeth glimmered white compared to his dark skin and deep brown hair. If his face was plain, his eyes, however, were not. One shone a deep red, as if it were a window into the fiery abyss. The other was a milky white, victim to Mordeina’s dying queen in a last act of vengeance against the man who had destroyed her kingdom.
“We’ve met,” Deathmask said. His whole body straightened. “Bye now.”
He clapped. Power rushed forth, and before Melorak could react, a wall of fire cut the room in half, separating him from the assassins. Hand in hand, they fled.
“Find them, my children!” Melorak shouted, and his voice carried throughout the entire castle on magical wings. He waved his hands, whispering a prayer to Karak. The fire died. Still smiling, Melorak threw on his black priestly robes. He would make an example of the two assassins, and he intended it to be very long, and very public. He needed to be ready, for he had no doubt that they would be captured within the hour.
They had reached the throne room by the time Melorak’s command rolled through the castle. At first they feared guards, but when they turned a corner, a hand reached out, fingers entangling Veliana’s hair. She did not scream, only twist and kick. Her kick did nothing but sink into the rotten flesh of the corpse attached to the walls. It screamed and moaned, still reaching.
“Go back to death you mongrel,” Deathmask said, shoving his fingers into the thing’s eyes. His magic poured in, releasing it from its spell. Flesh peeled, and innards plopped to the floor in a soupy mess. Veliana broke two of its fingers off getting the rest of her hair free, then threw the pieces of bone to the floor. On the other side of the hallway, another corpse waved its arms uselessly and shouted again and again in a mindless roar.
“The guards—” Veliana said. She didn’t need to finish, for Deathmask clearly understood as well. They fled down the hall, and with each turn, each step, their passage was tracked by the myriad of corpses shouting out their location. Calls of alarm from actual living guards soon joined their tail.
Deathmask followed Veliana with perfect trust. He slammed his fists to the ground at the first patrol they found, unleashing his fury into the stone. The floor cracked, and then spikes tore from ground to ceiling blocking them off. Veliana didn’t say a word at their sudden change in direction, only sprinting the other way, bobbing and weaving as necessary to avoid the undead arms and legs. They passed a flight of stairs, and almost as if it were an after-thought, the woman turned back and sprinted up them, Deathmask quickly after.
“Height is our friend now,” she said.
They travelled upward, into what appeared to be a tall defensive tower. They passed a few unused bunks for soldiers, along with many windows facing the steps leading up to the castle. Veliana peered through them, pondering.
“Time is not our friend,” Deathmask said.
“No use going further up,” Veliana said. “I hoped to avoid those damn undead, but there are no connecting bridges, no ladders, and no pathways. This is a dead end
.”
“Then down we go,” Deathmask said.
As if in answer, they heard guards shouting, followed by the clanking of armor rushing up steps. Veliana kissed her palms with trembling lips. Purple fire engulfed them, making her deadly hands that much deadlier. Deathmask shook his head, realizing her aim.
“No last stands,” he said. “Not for us, not ever. We kill, or we flee. There is no in-between.”
“Then let’s kill,” she said. “For where else do we flee?”
“Come,” he said, grabbing her hand without harm. “We climb higher.”
Up the stairs they went. The rooms grew narrower, the furnishings more and more sparse. At last they were at the top, and Veliana held her breath at the view. There were windows on all sides, and barely enough room for the two of them to stand. She could see for miles in all directions. It felt like the entire tower shifted and swayed with the wind, and she clutched Deathmask for a moment as her fear got the best of her. At his smirk, though, she let go.
“Here is a much better place to kill,” he said.
They stood on either side of the stairs. The first guard to emerge from below died before his head was level with the floor. The second died before he knew the first was dead. The third died when the bodies of the first two exploded in shrapnel of bone and metal. The fourth waited for more guards.
Deathmask rushed from window to window while Veliana hovered over the stairs, her clenched fists eager to deal more death.
“Veliana!” he shouted. “How scared of heights are you?”
“More than of dying,” she shouted back. A cluster of undead had climbed up the stairs, and she repeatedly punched and kicked to topple them back.
“Is that your preference of those two options?”
Veliana glared at him.
“What have you got in mind, fool?”
Deathmask laughed, and without giving her any warning, he grabbed her hand and leapt out the window. So deep was her trust, so ingrained her discipline to follow her guild leader, she did not even hesitate. Out the window she jumped, still hand in hand with the laughing Deathmask.
A Sliver of Redemption (Half-Orcs Book 5) Page 6