City of Delusions (The Dying World Book 2)

by John Triptych

  “Where is he?”

  “Somewhere in the noble’s quarter, under heavy guard I assume,” Zeren said wistfully.

  “I must find him,” Miri said as she stood up. While putting pressure on her legs, she suddenly experienced a bout of dizziness, and had to sit back down onto the bed once more.

  Zeren quickly got over beside her to prop her up. “You have gone through a savage ordeal, it is best that you get some more rest.”

  Miri took a few deep breaths. “I … I must help him. I can sense him calling out to me.”

  Zeren gave her a quizzical look. “You are that Striga from the wastes, yes? I have heard that the healers here performed foul deeds upon your kind.”

  “My mindsense has been taken from me,” Miri said softly. “But I can still hear him, crying out for help.”

  Zeren was unconvinced. “Are you sure that it may not be mere illusion on your part?”

  Miri scowled at him. “Yes. I am sure. It may not be my mind who is searching for him, but in fact, the other way around.”

  Zeren snorted in disbelief. “Are you saying that the boy is a Striga calling out to you? But he is not a female, as far as I can tell.”

  Miri examined the wound on her side. It was painful, but she felt she could still walk on her own. “Rion is neither Magus nor Striga, he is something else. It would not surprise me that his Vis could manifest itself in a myriad different ways.”

  Zeren sighed. He still had his doubts, but his own recollections of being healed by the boy’s blood made him question all that he knew about the world. “This may not be the best time to try and save him. The city is in a state of lawlessness, and I cannot tell who might ally with us.”

  “What of your friends? Did you redeem me on your own?”

  “No, I was helped by the League of the Sewer,” Zeren said, “a confederation of escaped slaves that want to overthrow the nobility and free their servile brothers. I gave them something of value in exchange for helping me free you, but I feel as though I cannot wholly trust them.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I gave them weapons called guns, but they should not have enough supplies to use them for a war,” Zeren said. “I was to give them the rest of the ammunition upon final payment for the rescue of you and the boy, but now it seems that they have found another source with which to power these weapons.”

  Miri had heard rumors of outlaw slaves hiding in the sewers. “Is that why I am here rather than in the underground conduits?”

  Zeren nodded. “I barely know the people of the sewer, so it was best that I brought you over to the few friends I have left.”

  “And the Watchers?”

  “They have all gathered at their camp,” Zeren said. “The walls are no longer manned. You can escape out of the city with the boy once you have him back. But I cannot imagine that is what you would do since I have heard there is nothing out there but sand.”

  Miri thought about it for a minute. “What part of the wall is closest to us?”

  “The wall that faces the desert,” Zeren said. “No doubt the same gate that brought you into the city will not be far from here.”

  “Help me,” Miri said as she tried to stand up again. This time her knees didn’t buckle. “There is a small boulder just outside of the gate. If the guard towers are no longer manned then we can get to it easily.”

  “And what would be hidden behind those rocks?” Zeren said.

  Miri looked into his eyes. “A spear that was entrusted to me. It once belonged to the greatest Magus the world had ever seen.”

  The boy finally lost consciousness. He had been tied down onto the stone dining table, crying and helpless until his agony gave way to exhausted torpor. Rion’s arm had a number of deep wounds on it, but they quickly closed up in a matter of seconds. Matriarch Cirine had never seen such a sight in all her years of existence. The bloodletting had gone on for hours, and it looked like they needed to stop or else they would kill him. Just as Corym was about to slash the boy’s wrist a sixth time, Cirine signaled him to stop.

  Acro was sitting down at the other end of the long table, his face ashen with dismay. He had kept away from the room until the screams gradually died down. “Why are you torturing that poor child?”

  Cirine snorted as she placed the cup to her lips and drank the blood. “Why do you think, you old fool? Look at me.”

  Acro couldn’t believe his eyes. The moment she ingested the boy’s blood, Cirine’s wrinkles had gradually begun to disappear and she had a healthier complexion. Her once flabby arms seemed more muscular now, and her hair took on a darker sheen. Corym had wanted a little taste, but she denied him the pleasure, while Laox sat silently by the entryway, his demeanor far too timid to take advantage of the situation. Right outside the room stood a troop of house guards, their weapons at the ready.

  “You look as radiant as ever, Matriarch,” Corym said, smiling.

  “Enough of the flattery,” Cirine said. “Go to the guard commander and inquire about that messenger we are expecting.”

  “At once,” Corym said to her before leaving dining room.

  Cirine licked the last of the boy’s blood from her lips. The legends were true. These so-called children of the sky not only had the power to heal wounds, they could even extend one’s existence. She had originally planned on earning the boy’s loyalty by making him forget his previous life and giving him a title within the family. Now it was clear he had been planning an escape all along, and there was no way she could tolerate that. Cirine had always felt that loyalty was better than fear, but the boy’s actions gave her no alternative. With Rion under her firm control, she had leverage over the Magi alliance, even though the recent assassination of the Grand Magus had placed a damper on her dreams of ultimate greatness. Grimgrin’s dramatic rescue of the Red Gorgon and the slave revolts only made the situation even more uncertain, but she still felt confident that her house was on the winning side.

  Acro shuffled over to the part of the table where Rion was lying in. He peered closely at the pained expression on the unconscious boy’s face. “I… I hope he is not dying.”

  Cirine shook her head while placing the empty cup beside the table. This old brother of hers was an idiot. She only kept him on because she knew he was too naïve and stupid to ever betray her, and she needed trustworthy allies more than ever now. “Fear not, Acro. The boy is merely resting. Give him a few days to get better and the bloodletting can begin again,” she said to him before turning to gaze at her second husband. “Laox, call that slave girl over here- Kardra.”

  Laox nodded as he stood up and left the room.

  “What are you planning to do with him?” Acro asked.

  “Use him to keep myself young, of course,” Cirine said. “I had planned to offer the boy to help the old Grand Magus Jetan but sadly he is now dead. On the other hand, I am sure the new Grand Magus Nylius would relish at the thought of being able to live forever.”

  Acro was still worried. What had started as a glorious day was now one of trouble and chaos. “Do you plan to keep him tied to this table like some sort of wine jug for all eternity?”

  “Of course not,” Cirine hissed. “Once he learns that his place is by my side, I shall use my Vis to overcome his thought defenses to make him loyal to us once more.”

  “How will you affect his mind if he has thought blocks like a Magus?” Acro asked.

  Cirine gave him a wry smile. “You shall see soon enough.”

  Laox came into the room, with Kardra trailing right behind him. The young slave girl made a slight bow, her face full of worry and concern. “Milady, I am here to serve you,” she said

  Cirine pointed to the boy who was passed out on the table. “You will prepare him. Make sure that his restraints are secure, for we shall all be doing a bit of walking. If he ever escapes or dies, then it shall be your head. Arrange two other slaves to bear him on a stretcher.”

  Kardra made a bow before leaving the room. �
�At once, milady.”

  Just as the slave girl left, Corym came back through the entryway. “Our guards commander has reported that no messengers arrived.”

  Cirine grimaced. She was waiting for a message from Nylius so that she could bring her entire entourage to the Temple of Vis and hold up there with her Magi allies until order was restored throughout the city. The Magi were supposed to offer her entire family safe passage, but Nylius had been silent so far. She sensed that he was still loyal to their agreement, but his concerns over the missing guns held precedence since his new army of mindless men would be merely a slow rabble of infantry without those weapons. The actual Magi who could fight numbered in the few dozens, and would be overwhelmed by the massive forces out there if they were committed to battle without additional reinforcements. She had sensed that the young Magus that he brought over during that last dinner was actually a Striga in disguise, and Nylius himself confirmed it when they met just a few days ago. Elevis was a promising user of the mindsense, but she was too young and inexperienced to handle the large groups of sporemen- therefore Nylius had proposed that Cirine herself would mentally command most of his soldiers. Cirine found that the new terms of their alliance was even more pleasing than the previous proposal. With a large army of sporemen under her direct control, she would hold all the strings in this new alliance of theirs. Cirine knew that she could not allow herself to be replaced by Elevis, so that Striga of his would have to be killed or turned to her side in the cycles to come, for Cirine would never allow herself to be supplanted by another.

  “Laox, how many men do we have guarding this place?” Cirine asked her second husband.

  “With the recent pledge of loyalty to us with some of the Watchers, around three hundred,” Laox said.

  Cirine crossed her arms. It was not enough. “Are they all here?”

  “Manning the gates and walls of the compound as we speak,” Corym said. He hated that the matriarch always asked Laox all the pertinent questions instead of him.

  “Good,” Cirine said. “Have them prepare to—”

  The matriarch’s order was interrupted by numerous shouting and the sounds of battle coming from the outside. Everyone in the room stood in mute shock for a few seconds, before being jolted back to reality when a tremendous crashing noise was heard, akin to the sound of banging metal. Corym quickly ran to a side table and began putting on his breastplate. Acro glanced around nervously, not knowing what to do.

  Kardra entered the dining hall through a side entrance, right behind her were two other house slaves carrying a stretcher. Cirine silently gestured at them to place Rion on the leather and bone pallet, and they quickly began to put the boy on it. The loud crashing noise continued to reverberate from the outside, its constant clanging seemed to get louder with each successive interval.

  A guard came in through the entryway, his face a mask of bewilderment and barely contained fear. “Matriarch, we are under attack!”

  Cirine remained calm. “By who?”

  “Mercenaries, milady,” the guard said. “Most of them have pointy helmets, so it must be the Stingers, and they have been augmented by some others. There are hundreds of them, and they have some sort of battering ram that they are smashing the main gate with. We are using our bows from the walls, but they have their own archers as well.”

  “Deploy all the reinforcements,” Cirine said. “The main gate must hold.”

  “At once, milady,” the guard said before turning around and leaving the room.

  Acro looked at his older sister with alarm. “Mercenaries? Why are they attacking us? What did we do to deserve such an atrocity?”

  Cirine ran a hand over her forehead to wipe away the sweat on her brow. There had been rumors that the Stingers had thrown their lot in with House Aranida, their age-old rivals. With the Watchers becoming useless due to a leadership vacuum and the slave pits in open revolt, Matriarch Tanys must have sensed that the time had come to eradicate her enemies once and for all. She would have done the same thing. Cirine’s earliest memory was when she had been taken to see her grandmother. The old matriarch was nearly a hundred cycles old and she was dying, but still strong with her mindsense ability. Cirine had been made to kneel and was subjected to constant mental attacks until she broke down, and her grandmother made her swear an oath to destroy House Aranida if ever given the chance to do so. She imagined that her rival must have been made to pledge a similar vow.

  “It is House Aranida,” Cirine said with finality before turning to face Kardra, who was standing by her along with the two slaves who carried the boy. “Let us head down into the catacombs, for there is a seldom used passageway there leading to the sewers.”

  Corym had his sword drawn while looking majestically in his gleaming, gold plated breastplate. “I am confident we could fight them off, Matriarch.”

  Cirine shook her head. Tanys would not commit to such an attack unless she was sure she could win. Already they could hear the sounds of the gate giving way. “No, there are too many of them. Our guards will slow them down long enough for us to get to the Temple of Vis. Lead the way, Corym.”

  Sheathing his sword while trying not to look like a coward, Corym gestured at Kardra and the stretcher bearers to follow him down the flight of stairs. Acro had wanted to bring his chest of possessions, but soon balked when he realized that he would have to carry it himself. Putting on several dozen necklaces and a pair of gold wristbands, he locked the chest with a key and tried to hide it behind a statue before he shuffled down the stairs to catch up with the others, leaving only Cirine and Laox in the room.

  Laox had wanted to bring the telling stones that held the house finances, and had placed all the important ones in a leather satchel that he could sling over his shoulders. Just as he was about to pick up the bag and go downstairs, he realized that Cirine just stood there, staring at him. “Milady, should we head down below?” he asked.

  Cirine narrowed her eyes, and Laox was unable to move his limbs. His body wouldn’t respond, no matter how hard he thought about it. The second husband tried to say something, but all he could muster was a hoarse croak. The matriarch took a few steps forward until she could gaze directly into his eyes.

  “I know you are a spy,” Cirine whispered in his ear. “Did you honestly think your little ruse in sending telling stones through the underground spring was foolproof? You were taught by a Striga to hide your true self from my mental probes, but I have my own informants.”

  All Laox could do was shift his eyes and blink. Sweat ran down his forehead while his body shook a little, but retained its rigid composure. Did the boy betray him?

  Cirine was having a hard time trying to penetrate his mental blocks, but she sensed the one little stray thought that had entered his mind. “So the boy knew about you? No, I shall tell you that it was not him,” she said. “It was Elevis who told me about you. When she was our guest here for dinner, you had been concentrating on hiding your thoughts from me, but you never realized that she was in fact, a girl- and she had the mindsense.”

  Laox was doing all he could to speak. “I … do … not … work … Ara … nida.”

  Cirine nodded smugly. “That is good news, for once. So if you do not work for Matriarch Tanys, then who are you a spy for?”

  “L … League.”

  Cirine had a surprised look on her face. “The League of the Sewer? A group of slaves? Why would you ever want to throw your lot in with that pathetic horde?”

  “Free … dom.”

  Cirine snorted in disgust. She would have never had guessed that Laox could have developed any sympathy for thralls. It was clear her initial suspicions were wrong. That meant House Aranida must have another spy in her family. This attack was too well timed for it to be something else. Their enemies were seemingly always one step ahead of them since the very beginning- mere coincidence could no longer be taken as an excuse for all the setbacks that House Kentis was experiencing. Cirine ran through all the other suspects that could
have passed information over to her opponents. She would need to lead a great purge with the family once this was all over. “Do you have any inkling as to who the spy for House Aranida could be?” she said while placing her ear close to his mouth.

  Laox sensed that she might be merciful if he cooperated. He whispered a name to her.

  Cirine nodded while taking a few steps back. “My thanks, Laox. It is a pity that you turned against your own kind. I have always found you to be intelligent and good keeper of finances. Farewell.”

  A loud ringing noise suddenly manifested itself in his brain. Laox tried to scream, but all he could muster was a short exhalation of breath. The pain in his head suddenly became unbearable. It felt like a giant slab of stone was at top of his skull, slowly bearing its load down on him. The shrill din increased in volume, and it felt like a needle was being poked in his ears. Blood began to pour down his nostrils. Laox gritted his teeth, hoping it would somehow alleviate the torment, but there was no respite. Laox’s final thoughts were a jumbled mess of old memories and the instinctual tendency to gravitate away from suffering.

  When Cirine opened her eyes, she looked down for a brief moment at the pieces of brains and scalp strewn all over on her once gleaming floor. The matriarch walked towards the stairs leading down to the tunnels, the sounds of fighting continuing ever closer. Walking past the open bronze door that revealed a flight of stone steps, she closed the door behind her and locked it.

  Despite her leisurely gait, Cirine had managed to catch up with the small group as they made their way to the end of the catacombs. Acro and Kardra carried torches, as the two slave bearers stood side by side with Corym, who had a hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword, ready to draw it out in case of any trouble.

  Cirine pointed at a dusty, man-sized niche at the far wall. “You know about this, Acro. What are you waiting for?”

  Acro nodded as his free hand reached out and found what looked like a small turning wheel, embedded in the damp stone. Twisting it slightly, there was a sudden, grinding noise. The back part of the alcove suddenly parted away, revealing another set of stairs leading down below. As they slowly began to make their way deeper underground, a banging noise could be heard from where the sealed bronze door was. Evidently the enemy had already penetrated into the compound.