Hweilan returned her attention to Maaqua. “You’ll let me go? Just like that? What do you want in return?”
Maaqua sat back and put the staff back in her lap. But by the tightness of her jaw and narrowed eyes, Hweilan knew the queen was holding on to her anger very carefully. “These … things coming out of Highwatch. They have become a problem. Rhan killed one, but only after it killed several of our warriors.”
“I told you already,” said Hweilan, “Rhan did not kill it. He may have destroyed the flesh it wore, but the spirit inside survived and went to find a new host.”
“I believe you,” said Maaqua, and Hweilan could sense no deceit in her tone. “I’m older and wiser than you are, girl. I have not sat idle while these vermin infested my homeland. I have learned a thing or two. But …”
“But you still don’t know how to kill them,” said Hweilan.
Maaqua smiled. “And you do.”
“So now we come to it.”
“I’ve changed my mind. You teach me how to kill these things, and I’ll let you go. You’ll keep your life. You don’t teach me … and I’ll make your pretty Damaran boy watch while I flay you alive.”
Hweilan held Maaqua’s gaze for a long time. Hweilan was no fool. Once Maaqua got what she wanted, she had no reason to let Hweilan live. What the queen was asking, however … Hweilan couldn’t have given it even if she wanted to. But as soon as the queen believed that, she would have no reason to let Hweilan go, much less keep her alive. Menduarthis taken by Jagun Ghen. The Damarans captured. Uncle gone. Hweilan’s only hope was the full moon, still days away. Her one strategy—keep Maaqua hungry. A trick every hunter knew: no matter how smart your prey was, get it hungry enough, and it will eventually snatch the bait.
So Hweilan let it out. It wasn’t hard. Perhaps it was the gunhin still coursing through her system. Or the desperation of her situation. After all she’d gone through, to meet her end at the hands of a viper like Maaqua … it was funny in a way. Hweilan threw her head back against the ironwood and laughed until tears streamed down her cheeks.
Maaqua pushed herself to her feet and raised her staff.
“My queen, please!” said Kaad.
But the queen ignored him. She struck Hweilan across the face with her staff, then again on the crown of her head with the backstroke.
Kaad stepped forward and tried to grab the staff, but Maaqua turned it on him. One sharp crack across his temple, and the scrawny healer collapsed. The hobgoblin queen stared down at Hweilan, her eyes narrowed to angry slits, her upper lip curled over her yellow teeth.
Hweilan laughed harder.
That only stoked Maaqua’s fury. She took a step back, raised the staff, and spoke the beginning of an incantation. Purple light sparked around her staff, each syllable she spoke bringing another, each stronger than the last.
“Stop!” said Hweilan, trying to stifle her laughter. “No need for that. You want to know how to deal with the baazuled? I’ll tell you that for nothing.”
Maaqua blinked. The arcane light gathering around her staff fizzled out. “Eh? What’s that? You’ll what?”
“You want to know how to kill them?”
“Yes!” said Maaqua, a manic light in her eye.
“First, you have to taste the venom of a thousand spiders, until their poison so fills your brain that only the mercy of the spiders’ god keeps you alive, filling you with visions. You’ll live a thousand lives. Die a thousand deaths. Joys, sorrows, triumphs, losses … you will know them all. And then spend your days being beaten senseless by the Fox, until you learn to fight back. Until the Fox becomes your sister. And then you’ll watch her die and drink the blood of her killer. I have done all that and more, you greedy, flea-bitten rat. So if you think your petty threats frighten me in the least, then go ahead. Kill me. On the next full moon, I’ll meet you in the Hells and teach you different.”
The queen stared down at Hweilan a long time, and Hweilan was beginning to think she’d gone too far. Finally, the old hobgoblin put her staff on the ground, leaned upon it, and looked down on her.
“Have it your way, you ungrateful little nit. But know this. I’ll find a way to deal with Highwatch. I have your weapons. It’s only a matter of time before I decipher all those symbols you’ve burned and scratched into them. If I can’t find the answers, I know those who can, be they gods or demons or devils. And when your horn-headed master comes—if he dares—I’ll throw your skin at him and spit. Meet you in the Hells? Heh. I’ve been there. And back.”
Maaqua nudged Kaad with her toe. The healer stirred and looked up at her, but made no move to get up.
“Get her ready,” said Maaqua. “I’ve decided to let Rhan kill the bitch.”
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN VAZHAD FINALLY EMERGED INTO THE courtyard, with his master and the eladrin following, it was midmorning. The sky overhead was a cloudless blue, but the sun had still not managed to climb the high eastern wall. Vazhad wondered if the guards would still be there as he’d ordered them. He wouldn’t have blamed them if they’d fled. But he suspected they’d stayed. He didn’t know these two, but he’d known many like them—men so eager for power that they’d betray clan and family. Their lust for reward would outweigh their instinct for self-preservation.
He was right.
Both men were crouched against the far wall of the courtyard where the sun would strike first. The way they sat, face to face, looking at the ground, Vazhad knew they were tossing dice or stones, probably gambling away what gold or silver they still had from the ransacking of Highwatch.
Vazhad emerged from the tunnel first, making sure he stepped loudly enough to announce their presence.
The guards stood and turned to face them. At first, they looked relieved to see only Vazhad, but when he stepped aside and Jagun Ghen and Kathkur followed, both men stood at attention and looked down in deference.
Jagun Ghen’s hood was pulled so low that only a fraction of his chin showed. Vazhad suspected the guards did not know enough to discern the true will inside the body. Most likely, they saw only Argalath, demonbinder and conqueror of Highwatch. Though that was enough to cause even the hardiest and greediest of the Creel to fear, Vazhad doubted even their avarice would have kept them here had they known the truth of what walked out next.
Kathkur stopped beside his master, his gaze fixed on the two Creel. “These two, then?”
“They are yours,” said Jagun Ghen.
The rune on the eladrin’s forehead flared suddenly, like a breeze stirring an ember. He shivered and hunched his shoulders, as if struck with a sudden chill, and then he charged.
The Creel, used to obeying orders, held their ground a moment longer than they should have. Then both men’s eyes went wide and bright like freshly minted coins. The big one screamed, “No! Please! Plea—” while his companion simply fled.
Kathkur pursued the runner, cackling with the glee of a naughty child. He caught the man after five strides, both hands seizing the man’s shoulders, and pushed him to the flagstones.
The big one still stood, not moving, wide-eyed, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looked to Vazhad and said in Nar, “Kinsman, please—”
Vazhad shrugged and replied in kind, “Run if you wish. You might stand a chance if your friend struggles a while.”
Beside him, Jagun Ghen chuckled.
The man let out all his breath, and Vazhad saw the front of his trousers darkening with wetness. Vazhad turned away in disgust. No shame in dying, but to die craven …
Still laughing, Kathkur turned the other Creel over with no more difficulty than a scholar turning the page of a book, then came down atop him, pinning one arm under his leg. The man screamed and swung his other hand. It held a dagger. He buried it to the hilt between the eladrin’s ribs.
“That hurt, you little morsel,” said Kathkur.
Vazhad could not see his face, but the sound of the possessed eladrin’s voice was not that of a man with half a foot of steel in his side.
He almost sounded … pleased. But he spoke in Damaran, and Vazhad doubted the guard even understood him.
Kathkur grabbed the man’s hand and squeezed. Vazhad heard bones snap, then crumble, and the Creel’s screams turned to agony. Vazhad clenched his jaw and breathed very carefully through his nose. He would not look away. With his free hand, the eladrin grabbed the man’s chin and pushed his head back, exposing his neck.
“There,” he said. “I think I’ll start with the soft bits first.”
He bent close. The Creel’s screaming turned so shrill that Vazhad feared the man might tear his throat. Still, Vazhad did not look away. He had seen death many times, and his own choices had brought him here. If his soul were to be damned, at least he would not flinch from it.
But then, his teeth just inches from the Creel’s throat, Kathkur stopped. He trembled. But the tremble didn’t stop. It grew until the eladrin’s whole body was shaking with such force that Vazhad could hear the grit on the flagstones scraping under the two men.
Beside Vazhad, Jagun Ghen tensed, bellowed, “No!” and then rushed forward.
The eladrin screamed—a ragged-edged awful sound that began like the roar of an animal, and then rose to something that seemed … afraid, horrified, and in terrible pain, yes, but … normal. Of this world.
This was not Kathkur any longer. This was Menduarthis.
Still straddling the Creel, the eladrin turned and raised a hand at the onrushing Jagun Ghen.
Before his master stepped in front of his view, Vazhad saw the eladrin’s face. The rune on his forehead was blazing, a hot, angry red, the skin around it scorched and smoking. His expression was that of a man in terrible pain.
Then Vazhad heard it before he felt it. Wind. Not the late spring breeze of Narfell. This was a monster gale, with gusts that came out of the mountains in the darkest months of winter. It fell over the courtyard walls with the force of a cataract, shattering the dry, dead ivy on the walls, swirling around the eladrin, gathering its strength. He shrieked—Vazhad thought there might have been words in the cry—and the wind shot out from his grasp with the power of a battering ram.
But Jagun Ghen seemed to have been expecting as much. He stopped his charge and raised his own counterstrike. The wind struck, but it hit something that Jagun Ghen held up in front of him. Vazhad saw flames flickering in the air as the gale broke around his master, whipping at his robes and throwing off his hood, but otherwise doing him no harm.
And then the cloud of dust and grit and dry leaves washed over Vazhad, and he had to close his eyes and turn away. Even over the roar of the wind, he could hear the eladrin screaming, and Jagun Ghen shouting incomprehensible words.
When Vazhad opened his eyes again, his torch was no more than a smoldering branch, nearly extinguished by the wind. Vazhad tossed it aside and sought refuge inside the tunnel, going in just far enough to escape the worst of the wind but stopping well before the light ran out.
Vazhad reached into his sleeve and grabbed the talisman, holding on to it like a little boy holds a horse’s mane during his first ride alone. He could feel the point of it piercing his palm—deep, drawing blood—but he did not care.
The wind rose to a scream, and Jagun Ghen shrieked a final word, the harsh syllables like hot needles in Vazhad’s ears.
And then it was over. The wind died, but not gradually as natural gales do. It ceased all at once. Leaves and grit fell in a rattle on the flagstones of the courtyard.
Vazhad emerged, wiping his sleeve over eyes teary from dust. He fully expected to see the eladrin’s dead body splayed over the stones. But when he opened his eyes, he saw his master leaning against the far wall, the blue light of his spellscar still flickering as it faded. Jagun Ghen was breathing hard, like a man who’s just run a long ways uphill.
The eladrin lay crumpled nearby, also breathing heavily and still very much alive, despite the dagger protruding from his ribs. Vazhad could tell by the steady, pulsing glow of the rune on his forehead and the way the skin was pulled tight over his face, as if every muscle were tensed like a drawn bowstring, that the true eladrin had been subdued. The demon was now holding the reins again.
The guard who had done the stabbing lay curled in a fetal position just beyond the eladrin’s feet, his arms covering his head. He was mumbling something that Vazhad thought sounded like desperate prayers.
The eladrin’s head lolled to one side, then the other. Then strength finally seemed to come back to him, and he looked up.
“Thank you, Master,” he said.
Jagun Ghen, hood down and bare-headed to the dim morning light in the shadowed courtyard, kept his eyes closed. For all his power, he could not entirely escape the weaknesses of Argalath’s body. But he managed a smile as his breathing slowed.
“This one … is powerful … indeed. Perhaps we should find more eladrin for our new home?”
“It is not his lineage,” said Kathkur. “Not his flesh. He once was eladrin, but his studies, his rites and dabblings, have made him … something more. So strong. My claws are sunk deep in his soul, but he still manages to squirm out of my grip.”
“We shall do all that we can to aid you.”
Kathkur looked down at the hilt protruding from his chest. His brow wrinkled, confused and annoyed, as if he had just discovered a loose button on a shirt. He grasped the hilt and pulled. The steel slipped out, spouting droplets of blood that spattered over the Creel and the flagstones. Kathkur studied the blade a moment, then licked his blood from it.
“So … hungry,” he said.
“Then feed, my brother,” said Jagun Ghen.
Vazhad looked away as Kathkur fell upon the whimpering Creel. Only then did he realize that the other guard, the tall one, was nowhere to be seen. He had fled at last.
Vazhad wished him gods’ speed, pissed trousers and all, then snorted in disgust. How far he had fallen, wishing the gods’ blessings upon such a coward.
The feeding didn’t take long. Vazhad kept his distance and his back to the spectacle. The sight of death had little effect on him. He’d killed a dozen men or more in his time, two with his bare hands. But the wet, tearing sound of the monster feeding unnerved him.
“You may go, if you wish.”
Vazhad turned to see Jagun Ghen watching him. His eyes squinted against the full morning light, but Vazhad had no doubt he could see in other ways. Vazhad almost took the opportunity. But he knew he walked a delicate edge here.
So he gave a small bow and said, “I wish only to serve, Master.”
Jagun Ghen did not smile. But his lips twitched and settled into something like a pleased leer. “If only I had a hundred more like you,” he said.
On the other side of the courtyard, Kathkur stood up. The figure on the flagstones beneath him was no longer recognizably human. It was only a pile of blood, bone, and mangled entrails.
“You feel stronger now?” said Jagun Ghen.
“Oh, yes.” Kathkur had none of the reputed grace of the eladrin. His limbs were taut, his fingers curled into claws. “But still … he fights me. Every moment.”
“We shall deal with that,” said Jagun Ghen, “if you let me.”
“I am yours, lord and master.”
“Good. Then we shall put this eladrin in his place.”
CHAPTER SIX
MAAQUA HAD LEFT THE DOOR OPEN WHEN SHE departed, and bright daylight spilled across the floor. Hweilan flinched, remembering the queen’s words about sunlight hitting the muck on her arm, wondering if it might have any effect on her. But as the sunlight fell on her legs, she felt nothing but warmth.
Kaad pushed himself to his feet, put his hand to his temple, then pulled it away, looking at the blood on his fingers. Now that he stood in the full light, Hweilan could pick out more details. He was more than scrawny and old. Pale tracks of fading scars marred his face and forehead and even the back of his hands. He dipped the edge of his robe in the cauldron of water and daubed at his bleeding temple.
“Not the fir
st time she’s hit you,” said Hweilan.
Kaad didn’t look as he replied. “I am a slave. But I am also a healer. I have a balm. This wound will not fester.”
“Not the skin anyway,” she told him, and he gave her a sly smile. “You are not Razor Heart?”
“Black Wolf.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Thirty years,” he said. “Thirty years since I last walked the Dunwood. Long years in these cold mountains.”
“Why stay, then?”
He sneered, the look an older brother might give a sister who had just said something stupid. “I am a slave,” he said. “I have no say in where I go.”
“You are a healer,” said Hweilan. “You know the herbs and roots that mend. I’d wager you know the ones that kill just as well.”
Kaad dipped the edge of his robe into the water again and dabbed some more at his temple. “You have nothing to wager. I will live to see the sunset tomorrow.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I owe you nothing.”
“And if you’re right, I’ll be dead tomorrow. You have nothing to lose.”
“Why do you care?”
Hweilan said nothing. She’d learned—most often from her mother when she’d done something wrong—that silence and a firm gaze did more to make people talk than anything else.
Kaad sighed and turned away, and for a moment Hweilan thought she had lost him. But then he said, “Why have I stayed? My son. He was my apprentice. Neither of us were fighters. But warriors have need of healers. It was not a bad life in the Black Wolf. But Razor Heart captured us. At first, I stayed and served willingly, for Maaqua told me that as long as I was faithful, my son would live.”
There was a long silence, but Hweilan did not break it. She knew Kaad would either say his next bit or he wouldn’t. He stared into the fire and continued.
“My son excelled at my teachings. In time, he would have surpassed me. Quite a valuable prize. So Maaqua sold him to the Blood Mountain tribe nine years ago. I stay now … because I have nowhere else to go.”
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