Exile's Gamble_The Chronicles of Shadow_Book II

by Lee Dunning

  “Too delicate to look upon what you pricks did to me?” the mage said in passable Elvish.

  “One of your demons took your legs,” Lady Winterdawn corrected. “We elves saved your miserable life.”

  “Only so you could pick through my mind for answers,” the human said. “I’m not telling you jackass ears anything.”

  “He called me that earlier,” Lord Northwind said. He adjusted the blanket again, as the human’s constant squirming threatened to send it slithering to the floor again. “I have no idea what it means.”

  Kiat knew. He’d spent quite a lot time learning the lay of the castle and its grounds. Almost as many animals as humans called the immense compound home. He’d seen several of the creatures the human referenced. “He’s merely jealous he lacks the graceful sweep of elven ears,” he said.

  The human started to snarl out another insult, but bit his words off when Kiat thrust his arms out wide and uttered a single, resounding syllable. In the confines of the cell, the resulting metallic gong was enough to make all of them wince. The human’s narrowed his eyes and grew still as he reassessed Kiat.

  “I have imbued this room with a spell,” Kiat said, pulling the cuffs of his sleeves back into place. “It will ensure whatever comes out of your mouth is nothing but the truth. Resist all you like. It will compel you all the same.”

  Lady Winterdawn murmured under her breath. This was the first time Kiat had ever shown her this spell. He preferred more subtle magic—spells that provided information without directly affecting the subject. However, the necessity of finding the source of the payment used to secure the services of the mercenary city-state required Kiat to resort to such heavy-handed magic. As distasteful as he found it, Kiat felt the situation warranted it. That his apprentice found the use of such power fascinating put color into his cheeks.

  The human barked out a laugh, dispersing the warm glow settling into Kiat’s slim frame. “You can compel the truth but you can’t compel me to answer in the first place. I’ve dealt with your kind before—much too squeamish to do what needs doing. You shouldn’t have bothered with your little spell. I’m still not telling you shit.”

  Color again filled Kiat’s face, but instead of the pleasure of knowing he’d impressed Lady Winterdawn, shame reddened his skin. The mercenary had seen through his bluff, and recognized him for a coward. The human was right. He didn’t have a spell to force him to speak against his will. No elf cracked open people’s minds like that except Shadow Elves.

  Kiat took a step back, tapping a finger against his chin in thought.

  “We don’t need magic to force him to speak,” Lady Winterdawn said, drawing close so the human couldn’t overhear them. “The humans have men trained in the art of extracting information from their enemies. We could enlist their assistance.”

  Lord Northwind joined them, his face set in a frown of disapproval. “He only just regained consciousness,” he said. “We’re lucky he came out of his coma. Between whatever Lord W’rath did to him and the acid fire, he’s hovered near death since we pulled him from the field. I hardly think subjecting him to torture is a wise move.”

  “If he dies, we let a blood mage summon his spirit and claim the information that way,” Lady Winterdawn said. She dropped her eyes at the gasps her two companions emitted before lifting her head defiantly. “I lost three close friends and an aunt to the carnage of Second Home. I have no sympathy for this man.”

  Kiat’s breath sucked in. How could he not know that? She’d gone home for a few days after the ship, The First’s Dream, returned to port, and Second Home’s pitiful survivors staggered off to be enfolded in the arms of loved ones. As usual, he’d pondered some problem or knotty mystery of his art and completely missed the red-rimmed eyes and tight voice as she asked to visit her family for a few days. Ancestors, he couldn’t even remember what had so occupied his mind that night.

  Kiat refocused and willed the tears building in him to join the knot of regrets he carried with him always. “I wish it was that simple,” he said. “Speaking with the dead is unreliable. Only the most skilled blood mages can force a spirit to part with information they don’t wish to divulge. Our best blood mage perished at Second Home. Those who remain already tried to interrogate the mages who died when we disrupted their great casting during the battle against Oblund. They failed to extract any useful information from those spirits. It’s highly unlikely they’d have better success with this man.”

  Lady Winterdawn ducked her head. Kiat recognized it as a sign she felt foolish. “It was a good thought,” he said. In most situations, she was far more confident and competent than he. He found he hated to see her abashed in any way. “You’ll spend your entire life as a caster coming up with ideas only to realize they’re unworkable and require a different approach. Don’t berate yourself because you don’t succeed every time.”

  Lady Winterdawn rewarded Kiat with a brilliant smile. For a moment it washed away all else in his life and he found himself beaming back at her.

  Lord Northwind cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “If we cannot force him to talk, what do you propose?”

  Their current situation reasserted itself upon Kiat. Fortunately, the human had taken the exchange between him and Lady Winterdawn as some sort of diabolical scheming. For the first time since their arrival, the human had the glassy stare of a man with deep, fearful concerns. Normally Kiat hated to be the source of another’s fears but when he pictured Lady Winterdawn collapsed upon her bed, sobbing over the loss of her friends and family, he found what he needed to add to the mage’s mounting anxiety.

  “It’s true,” Kiat said to the human. “I haven’t the magic necessary to force you to speak to me.” He paused and gave a resigned shake of his head. “I don’t need that, though. The Shadow Elf who captured you will arrive here in a few days. He can pull anything directly from your mind. I’m told it is a singularly awful experience—the rape of one’s mind. But your stubbornness leaves me without further options.” He shuddered in not completely feigned horror.

  The mage’s wretched face went gray as the blood drained from it. His veins stood out like a creeping sickness against the pallor of his skin. Kiat only knew what he’d read concerning a psion’s attack on a person’s mind but it seemed his words rang true for the human. The blanket threatened to slip free again but this time uncontrolled trembling, not angry thrashing, was the cause. A new odor joined the rest.

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” the petrified man said, his words more a plea than a blank statement. “By the Gods of Mystery, I beg you … don’t let that monster have me.”

  Chapter 8

  K’hul sat on the veranda, which opened off his room at his family’s estate. Despite the pleasant air, the comfortable chair and the soft thrum of dragonflies, no sense of well-being filled him. Even the nearness of his favorite sword, leaning against the red marble pillar to his right, provided no comfort. No enemy presented itself for him to slay. His troubles came from his own family, and even they were out of reach, lost to an endless stream of senseless betrayals throughout the generations.

  He did not move. His left hand lay splayed upon the tabletop before him. Upon it, a gold ring set with flawless sapphires glinted in the late afternoon sun. Even blinking came hard to him, so obsessed had he become over the simple piece of jewelry he’d worn since the day he’d torn his way out of his mother.

  Until a few hours ago, the ring seldom drew his attention. He hadn’t spent a single day without it adorning his finger, yet it had never meant anything to him aside from an announcement to the world of his family affiliation. Every K’hul wore one. His father, Historian, his sister…

  As he’d grown, so too had the ring. A simple spell ensured it would always fit him perfectly. He now knew it held more than a basic enchantment even an apprentice could manage.

  “Without this,” Historian had told him, holding up his own hand with its own twinkling ring, “all that truly ma
kes you a K’hul would slowly fade from your mind.”

  “You speak in riddles—as usual,” K’hul replied. Sometimes he thought Historian went out of his way to present his lectures in the most obtuse manner possible. Hell’s teeth, it’s a wonder I can read.

  As they stood in the long grass outside the forest, Historian finally started his tale. “What do you know of the First’s disappearance?” he asked.

  “Everyone knows he led an army into the Abyss to rescue his traitorous son and never returned,” K’hul said.

  Historian shook his head. “You know because of your family ring. Others may have some vague recollection but mostly they have a sense he simply left.”

  “Ridiculous,” K’hul said. “We have many great families who lost people to that failed campaign. How could they not remember? At the very least they must have recorded the events.”

  “I’m sure some did but as time went by their writer’s memories faded or they perished without passing the books on to the next generation. I’m certain the Stormchasers kept a history but the last of them died without leaving an heir. The Exiles now occupy the structure. The female supposedly considers herself a scholar. For her to stumble across such sensitive information would prove disastrous.”

  K’hul barked out a laugh, and gave a contemptuous wave of his ringed hand to his teacher. “And people claim I’m paranoid about the second coming of Umbral! I agree, W’rath is a problem but Raven hasn’t a malicious bone in her warrior’s body. I’m not sure she’s even capable of lying.”

  “It doesn’t matter. If she finds the information she’ll give it to that serpent and he’ll destroy us with it,” Historian insisted.

  K’hul considered leaving. Historian had done a spectacular job of convincing K’hul the family carried some terrible secret in their past but now the sinister plot appeared to be no more than common knowledge no one had bothered to pass on to their descendants. The fool would fit right in with the doddering gits of Oblund’s advising council. Making up his mind, K’hul rose from the stone he’d taken as a chair, and turned toward home.

  “They didn’t end up in the Abyss.” Historian’s words froze him in mid step.

  “Where?” With one sentence, the dread K’hul had shrugged off returned.

  “His betrayers shifted the destination of the portal to the Ninth Gate of the Hells. Not even an army consisting of the First, Lady Stormchaser and Amryth Earthfire could overcome what lay beyond that doorway.” Historian spoke plainly now, the directness somehow transforming the words into cruel, bloody weapons.

  “Who would betray the First? Why?” Raised to view Umbral as an anomaly, the thought of others turning against the First struck K’hul as incomprehensible. He urged his legs to start moving again but he remained bound to the earth as though Historian had captured him with a spell.

  Historian loosed a sad, bitter laugh. “Who do you think? His sons, his daughters, his grandchildren, his great grandchildren, those bearing grudges, probably even secret Umbral loyalists. He’d outlived his use. He was a relic and others with ambitions wished to step into his place. Such a plot would have required hundreds of participants. There was no shortage.”

  “What about you?” K’hul asked. “Did you take part in this treachery?”

  “I was just a child. I merely survived the ensuing war. The K’huls prevailed and raised one last great conjuring.” Historian fell silent.

  K’hul’s eyes dropped down to the ring on his hand. He couldn’t think of a single individual, not even Lady Swiftbrook or Kiat, who knew of this tale. A terrible thought came to him. “They made everyone forget but made these rings to spare our family.”

  K’hul wanted Historian to correct him, scoff and say he’d jumped to conclusions. He didn’t. “The rings protect us from losing ourselves over the years. In truth, I do not know if our ancestors intended for their casting to last all this time, or if it escaped them. I can’t imagine they meant to slowly kill off all of our people but in essence they have.” Now that he’d finally said his piece, Historian’s voice had grown flat with exhaustion.

  K’hul now understood why Historian had danced around the issue and delayed in the telling. What he couldn’t comprehend was how his teacher had borne this information all these years. “We need to give these rings out to the other families. We can keep our secret without condemning the others to—what? Mental enfeeblement? I haven’t noticed any mindless idiots drooling amongst our people.”

  “Don’t you think others have tried?” Historian didn’t say but K’hul had a sudden vision of his teacher working tirelessly to end the curse their ancestors had unleashed on First Home—and failing. “Whoever made these rings took the secret with them to some nameless grave. We can’t make more. Our powers have faded along with people’s memories. When our minds lose too much, the magic binding us dissipates. We simply cease to exist. And then those who remain start to forget us too.”

  The sky spun and K’hul found himself kneeling in the grass, struggling to remain upright. His face felt wet and he raised a shaking hand to find weakness spilling down his cheeks and off his chin.

  Historian came up beside him. “Your father wept too. Like you, he was an idiot but he did care about our people. That’s why he set about returning us to the mainland. That’s why he agreed to build Second Home.”

  K’hul barely registered Historian’s needling. His father’s support of Second Home now made sense. Lady Swiftbrook, Kiara, had thought his love of books had served as impetus for such an uncharacteristic decision but that wasn’t it at all. The senior K’hul’s need had driven him to get his people away from First Home without revealing what he knew of the curse destroying them. However, leaving First Home had made them vulnerable to attack, and so, here they huddled, in the very place poisoning them.

  Historian had let him go then, back to the compound, back to imagined safety. K’hul fled that open field as fast as his shaking legs would carry him. Any thoughts of returning to the mainland to relieve Kiat of his odious assignment disappeared under a tumult of outrage and the crushing burden he’d inherited.

  K’hul blinked, slowly as if coming out of a deep enchantment. The veranda with its solid, perfectly manicured plants shifted back into focus. A jewel-like dragonfly droned past. Its slender body and silver hue reminded him of Kiara—he refused to call her Lady Swiftbrook in the privacy of his mind—and the terrible fate awaiting her if he didn’t do something to reverse what his ancestors had wrought.

  His splayed hand flexed and drew in to form a fist. He slammed it into the table in a sudden fury. The damned ring cut into his finger like a smug reminder he too was now part of the conspiracy. “We have to reclaim Second Home,” K’hul said out loud, purpose pushing back his despair. “We will hunt down those who attacked us and reclaim our lives. I will not let Kiara fade.”

  Raven had managed to escape her weapons trainers. Lady Earthfire needed the two Sky Elf sword masters to help with a crucial step in the creation of Raven’s new weapon. A good dozen others, including Lady Culna’mo and a gaggle of casters, would work alongside the smith to create and enchant the blade with special properties.

  Raven felt unworthy of so much attention. When Linden’s father arrived, the air in the smithy grew close and difficult to breath. The kind elf with the sad eyes broke her heart. Relieved to discover her presence wasn’t needed, Raven used her shadow walking ability to flee. She hoped no one would notice her absence.

  She made her way to House of Memories, grateful to have a day free of teachers and training. The sword masters had kept her so busy she hadn’t had time to further study the nature of gryphons. If she planned to convince the gryphons to serve as an aerial cavalry for the elves she needed to learn all she could of them before settling on a strategy for approaching them. She supposed she ought to tell others of her idea but after Lady Sera’s less than enthusiastic reaction to the subject of gryphons, she decided to adopt W’rath’s philosophy: Do as she wished and ask for forg
iveness later.

  When Raven reached House of Memories, she found Foxfire and another Wood Elf she didn’t know taking a turn at guarding the front doors. “You playing hooky?” he asked with a smile.

  “I have no idea what that means,” she said.

  Foxfire’s face turned as red as his spiky hair and Raven felt bad she hadn’t just pretended his odd words made sense. “You hiding out from your overzealous weapons trainers?” he tried again.

  “Oh! Yes, just pretend I’m not here,” she said slipping by the two Wood Elves.

  “There’s been no change in his condition,” Foxfire called as she entered the main hall. She stiffened for a moment and then nodded as the doors closed behind her.

  Alone again, Raven paused with the realization she hadn’t planned what to do once she arrived home. Home. How strange to think in those terms. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined living on First Home in a palace of light. The two enormous statues gazed impassively upon her. Lady Uruviel Stormchaser and Umbral K’hul.

  “Gods,” she whispered to no one. The statue of the young Umbral served as a reminder that the adult Umbral lay upstairs—a piece of living history only she knew about. Thus far, she’d managed to avoid considering the ramifications of what she’d discovered. She’d used W’rath’s continued frailty as an excuse to ignore the truth about him. Lady Sera had faith he would recover, though. Once he did, Raven had no idea how to face him.

  She started up the shining staircase, which led to the twisting halls and spacious rooms making up House of Memories. While her training kept her mind busy during the day, nights gave her plenty of time to fret over W’rath’s identity. She lay in bed, weary but unable to drop off to sleep while her mind chased itself around considering what the return of Umbral meant to the elves—what it meant to her.