There was just something about a glowing sword that gave a man courage. Long held his out and calmly climbed the steps leading into the statue’s mouth, noting the heavy wear that had polished the stones where feet had run like a river in either direction for untold years. Whatever lay beyond that door, it was unquestionably important to those who had once lived here. As Long extended a hand to try the door, he felt his courage abandoning him. “Spirk,” he called, “I think I’ll need your help after all.”
Of course, the young Shaper was only too happy to oblige. In his haste, he tripped coming up the stairs, and arrived at his captain’s side a bit more disheveled than he’d planned.
Long knew better than to mention it. Instead, he said, “You sense any magic in this door? I don’t want to grasp the handle and burst into flames.”
Spirk screwed up his features like a man fighting constipation and at last proclaimed, “Nothin’ like that. It’s more of a keepin’-us-out-and-them-in sorta feel.”
…Which answer was, perhaps, more alarming than the prospect of catching fire. “What’s that mean? Can you tell me more?”
“I just feel like we gotta, I dunno, break the door down or something. Like this.” Spirk thrust his hands towards the door, and there was a stupendous crash, accompanied by an equally powerful gust of wind. The door blasted inwards, whilst Spirk and Long were propelled backwards and down the steps in a tumbling mass of shrieks and grunts. Somewhere along the way, Long lost his grip on his sword, and it clanged off into the plaza, where it continued to glow in a rather forlorn manner.
Spirk, being younger, got to his feet first. Achieving a sitting position was enough of a challenge for Long.
“Shit,” he said.
“You alright, Captain?” Spirk asked sheepishly.
“I think I heard something crack in my shoulder. Like we can afford another broken bone in this company.”
Ron and Spirk crossed over to the captain and gently helped him to his feet.
Not one to miss out on the festivities, Yendor said, “Well, you’re not sharing my litter, that’s for damned sure!”
Long Pete ignored him and focused on working the aches and stiffness out of his shoulder. “Least it’s not my sword shoulder. That coulda been disaster.” He looked out into the plaza where his sword had landed and was astonished at how far away it seemed. “Say, Ron…walk me over to my sword? I don’t think anyone should go anywhere by himself in this place.”
When he reached his sword, however, he looked back to see Yendor alone at the bottom of the steps, Spirk’s arrow clasped firmly in his hands. Where in the countless hells had the Shaper gone? As if reading his thoughts, Ron nudged him on his uninjured shoulder and pointed at the statue’s mouth. Suddenly afraid he might lose another friend, Long rushed back the way he’d come, and made his way up the stairs. Spirk stood in the open door, unmoving, transfixed by whatever he saw in the room beyond.
“They’re children,” he cried. “At least, they was.”
*****
Mureen, In the Cottage
Mureen hadn’t slept for as much as five minutes the whole night. She was troubled by the uncomfortable energy and expectations Tinalia’s son had brought with him into the cottage, troubled by the fact they’d seen fit to bar her door and prevent her from leaving of her own accord, which meant she was not a guest, but a prisoner. And prisoners lived behind bars. And bars filled her with an equal mixture of fury and dread, though why this should be so she couldn’t guess. There was something…no, there was someone…But the answer eluded her. All that really mattered was what she was going to do once her bedroom door opened. Could she talk her way out of the house, or would she have to resort to violence?
She was still trying to make up her mind when she heard the hutch moving away from the door. She stepped backwards, bracing herself for unpleasantries, but none appeared. The door creaked open a few inches and stopped.
“Well,” Tinalia’s voice called from beyond. “Are you going to lie in bed all day, or will you come in here, have a little breakfast, and help me peel these potatoes?”
It felt like a trap. Every fiber of the giant’s being urged caution. Still, she couldn’t spend the rest of her days in the bedroom. Her eyes swept the room, looking for anything that might serve as a weapon, but nothing presented itself. In the other room, however, she’d seen an old two-man tree saw over the fireplace, an awkward weapon for a human or Svarra, but potentially lethal in Mureen’s hands. If she could just reach it in time.
“Mureen?” Tinalia called, a bit more stridently.
The giant took a deep breath and pulled the door wide.
Tinalia sat in her chair by the fire, a large tub of potatoes at her feet. When she saw Mureen, she pointed to the bench the giant had used the night before. A platter full of food had been set there.
“I tell myself it’s all the excitement of finally meeting Baris. That must be it, am I right?” Tinalia smiled. “Well, just calm yourself down and have a bit to eat. Baris has gone out for a while, but he’ll be back shortly.”
Mureen caught herself, a large slab of bread halfway to her mouth. Again, she thought of poison. It seemed ridiculous after all the meals she’d safely eaten in this cottage, but she couldn’t chase her suspicions from her mind. Clearing her throat, she set the bread back on the platter.
The Svarren woman made no effort to hide her displeasure. “No appetite, dearie? I find that hard to believe.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” Mureen answered. “It’s…well, I was wondering…”
“Yes?” Tinalia demanded impatiently. Where had all of the woman’s charm gone? She’d never had much of a surplus, but now she was openly irritable.
“Who…who painted that mural in the bedroom?” It was a foolish question, certainly no reason to delay her breakfast, but it was the only thing Mureen could think to say.
Tinalia looked quite mystified by the question. “The what? The mural? Oh!” she brightened. “Yes, well, you’ve been looking at that for days and days, haven’t you? I imagine you would be curious about it.” But she did not answer the question. Instead, she resumed peeling her potatoes. “Have a bite to eat, dearie. You’ll need your strength for Baris.”
Mureen didn’t trust anyone who couldn’t answer a simple question directly. Or, at least, she believed that was her policy. Much was still lost to her. What she did know was that the longer she sat on this bench and engaged in this conversation, the fewer and fewer her options became. She was not going to eat this meal, and Tinalia would become angry. Sooner or later – sooner, if Mureen had to guess – Baris would be home, too, and the giant would be outnumbered.
She picked up a bowl of stew as if she were ready to eat and abruptly flung it in Tinalia’s face. Whilst the Svarren woman screamed in shock and pain and endeavored to clear her vision, Mureen raced to the fire and ripped the saw from the stonework. The wires that held it in place bit into the giant’s fingers and hands, but that was the least of her worries. Tinalia had risen from her chair, potato knife in hand. Somehow, it seemed much larger than it had mere seconds ago. Mureen whipped the blade around with all her strength and took the top of Tinalia’s head right off. For a moment, the Svarren woman looked almost pleasantly surprised, and then she toppled over onto the floor, her brains spilling out onto the rug and her body twitching.
Mureen turned her attention to the room’s various doors, but none opened. The cottage had fallen silent.
Had she been wrong about Tinalia’s intent? Well, it didn’t matter now. The woman was dead, and if Mureen didn’t encounter Tinalia’s son soon, she certainly would later. Baris would make sure of it.
Knowing the younger Svarren might appear at any moment, Mureen grabbed the blanket off her bed, spread it on the table, and wrapped as much food in it as she could find. In, too, went three bottles of wine and Tinalia’s paring knife. In went tinder and flint she’d found on the hearth. In went rope. The two-man saw was a fearsome weapon, but not especially
practical. This, Mureen replaced with a small sickle that had been nailed to one of the room’s other walls. Feeling as prepared as she was ever likely to be, Mureen pulled the front door open…
…And was hit in the face by a bitter blast of wind. Some things hadn’t improved over the last several days (or weeks?). Mureen looked left and right and then left and right again. Baris was nowhere in sight, so the giantess raced from the cottage into the snow. She got about fifty strides into the adjacent woods and came across an old smoking shed, half hidden in drift. As there were no fresh footprints in the snow, she hazarded a peek inside and immediately wished she’d left well enough alone.
Hanging from beams across the ceiling were venison haunches and half a boar. Those, she’d expected. But there were also the well-dried and thoroughly smoked limbs of humans, one of which still had toes.
Mureen did not run away in terror or even grow sick to her stomach. It was more or less what she’d feared since she’d first awoken in Tinalia’s presence. Here, Mureen thought, were the original owners of the cottage, here, the painters of the bedroom’s lovely mural. If she’d had any misgivings about killing the Svarren woman, they were gone now. Tinalia and her son were murderers and might well have killed her as well, had she failed to satisfy Baris.
But then Mureen remembered the farmhouse she’d stormed a while back, in a desperate bid for food and warmth. Hadn’t she, too, killed someone recently? She readied herself for the anticipated wave of guilt, but felt nothing. Less than nothing. Killing seemed as natural, as commonplace as, say, pissing.
Had she been an assassin in her younger days?
It was time to get moving again. Mureen pushed the door open, stepped into the air, and caught sight of a huge knife streaking towards her in her peripheral vision. At the last second, she flinched backwards, and the knife buried itself in her left shoulder.
Baris had found her.
He’d made a mistake, though. Mureen noticed he wasn’t wielding a second knife, so that his only weapon was temporarily unavailable. Mureen rolled away, along the shed’s outer wall, until she was able to stumble into open space beyond the small building. She reached up to pull Baris’ knife, and the Svarra bull-rushed her onto her back. The next several seconds were a blur of thrashing about, grunting, and struggling for control. The Svarra was strong and furious, but Mureen outweighed him significantly and was probably stronger, too.
“If I can’t get some sons on you,” Baris growled, “Be assured I’ll have my fun with your corpse before eatin’ ya!”
He was on top of her, battling her right arm for possession of the blade still lodged in her shoulder. With her left arm, she tried to put enough pressure on his throat to force a retreat. It wasn’t working. He glowered at her with all his eyes, like some hellish insect advancing upon its prey. If only Mureen had thought to draw that sickle from the cord around her waist.
Somehow, Baris finally got ahold of the knife and, instead of yanking it free, gave it a good twist, eliciting a scream of pain from Mureen. That she’d felt far worse in her day was perhaps one secret advantage she held over the Svarren brute. She let him continue to twist, while she reached up and popped one of his eyes like a grape with her thumb. Now, it was his turn to yowl.
And yet he did not. What was one eye when he had so many? Mureen knew she had to burst a good deal more before Baris would even begin to consider protecting himself. And so she did. Squish! Two. Pop! Three. The Svarra got the message and attempted to grab the giant’s arms.
Mureen caught his nose in her teeth and bit down with all her considerable might, and Baris made the mistake of pulling away. Blood gushed from a newly made hole in the center of his face, as well as the slightly older holes where eyes had been.
“Bitch!” he yelled and began buffeting Mureen’s head and shoulders with a torrent of blows.
Strangely, they didn’t hurt much.
In one motion, Mureen pulled the knife from her shoulder and swept it across Baris’ throat.
He was still throwing punches when he realized he was dead. He put both hands to his neck and fell over onto his side.
Mureen stomped on his head twice to make sure the Svarra died. When he stopped moving, she searched through his clothing for anything that might be of value. She found a few coins and a smaller, collapsible knife.
And then she left him in a fast-freezing pool of his own blood.
*****
The False Reaper & Omeyo, the North
The Svarren attacked Aoife’s fortress as she had known they would, because it hadn’t been there the day before. Its appearance, therefore, was a provocation, a challenge to their domination of the local environs. But it was an attack that was doomed to fail, because they did not understand their foe.
Initially, a few Svarren scouts attempted to investigate the great hedge. When they didn’t return, a larger party was sent to locate and retrieve them. That party walked into an ambush, the like of which none of the Svarren had ever witnessed or experienced. Tremendous vines snaked out of the wall of greenery like thorny tentacles and crushed or choked their prey. Deep pits opened beneath Svarren feet, swallowing the savages in twos and threes. Noxious gasses and gouts of faerie fire erupted without warning. Dart-like needles laden with paralyzing poison exploded from plant stalks. In the end, it was an utter rout, an affair so disastrous that Omeyo was afraid to relay its outcome to his master.
“Show me,” was all that the Pretender said in response.
But Omeyo could not. The hedge had disappeared, taking the dead with it and leaving only a few small piles of dirt or puddles of blood on the filthy snow.
“And do you expect me to believe this hedge simply ran away?” the boy asked, his voice a deadly calm.
“I would never lie to you, Master. I know the price could well be death.”
The boy knelt, scooped up some of the frozen dirt and sifted it through his gloved fingers. “As it happens, I believe I know what occurred here: it can only be Anders’ sister, the End’s sister. I should have predicted this.” The Pretender returned to his horse and climbed into the saddle.
“Your will, Master?” Omeyo asked.
The boy shrugged as if the answer was obvious. “Return to camp. Attend me. There’s nothing we can do about this woman until she returns, but when she returns – and she will – we must have a better response.”
The False Reaper was unaccountably tired, which worried him. Sleep had never been important to him before, but now it pulled at him constantly. And why? What had changed of late? Was it prelude to a hoped-for transcendence, or was he ill, as he feared? Surely a brief nap couldn’t hurt, and a survey of his condition afterwards might prove informative. Before he knew it, he was stretched out on his bearskin rug on the floor, rapidly descending into unconsciousness…
Where he found himself in the clutches of the End-of-All-Things.
“Miss me?” the fiend shrieked.
The boy tried to shove him away to no avail; Anders’ grip was unbreakable. “Where are the others?” the boy asked, endeavoring to sound less concerned than he felt.
“The others?” the End giggled maniacally. “Why, I’ve consumed them, of course.”
“Of course,” the boy replied, with a bravado he did not feel. “It’s just as well. Makes for less noise when I’m trying to concentrate.”
The End’s face bobbed in the darkness before him like a dandelion seed on the breeze.
“What is it you want, anyway?” the boy asked.
Again, the End cackled. “But you already know that: you must give yourself over to me. You will, in time.”
At last, the False Reaper was able to break free of the End’s grasp. “No. You were a failure. I will not have that stench lingering about me and my efforts.”
“You have no choice! I am stronger than you, and I continue to grow in strength with each passing hour.”
The boy thought to wake himself, to escape the End’s presence, but could not.
�
�Do you see?” Anders cooed. “For all your hubris, you are still a child! Soon, I’ll take your place, and you’ll be trapped in here. Soon, I’ll…”
One of his Svarren jostled him awake. Normally, the False Reaper would have been enraged at the creature’s presumption. Not this time. The Svarren had saved him from dissolution.
“What is it?” he said to the Svarra at his side.
“You crying out.”
“A bit of indigestion,” said the boy. “No cause for concern.”
If the Svarra was unconvinced, he had the brains to keep it to himself.
“Omeyo!” the boy called out.
The general appeared in a trice. “Your will?”
On his feet now, the boy straightened his clothing. “Do not let me sleep anymore.”
“Your pardon, Master, but…”
“I’ll sleep no more, and that is final. Do not fail me.”
This last was said with such passion, such force, that Omeyo could only bow and digest his thoughts in silence.
*****
Vykers & Turley, In Lunessfor
Being a goddess, the Queen would figure out that the dagger had been stolen, if the resident goblins didn’t tell her first. She would also discover her warden had been killed and his keys taken. Vykers had a hard time imagining her connecting those two events in any meaningful way, goddess or not. She might conclude that an especially gifted thief was responsible, but the Reaper? It seemed beyond unlikely.
Now, it was time for the next phase of Vykers’ plan. The trouble was, he couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work. He had Igraine pacing back and forth in frustration, whilst Turley watched her in abject silence. After several hours of this, Vykers finally gave up.
“It’s like this,” Igraine told Turley, “I need to lure someone into a trap, but I don’t know where this person is, or even if she’s…he’s still in the city. And I can’t move on ‘til I’ve taken care of this…issue.”
“And who and what is this person to you?”
“It’s Tarmun Vykers.” Igraine could see by the alarm on the goblin’s face that he recognized the name. “As for what he is to me, well, you’d never believe me if I told you. Can you help me?”
Corpse Cold (Immortal Treachery Book 3) Page 23