Frostborn: The Master Thief

by Jonathan Moeller

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Jager.

  “Of course not,” said Tarrabus, letting the stone drop back into the pouch. “I would be very surprised if you did.”

  “Use it change the world, eat it, or throw it in the damned Lake of Battles,” said Jager. “I don’t care what you do with it. I want Mara back, now.”

  “In good time,” said Tarrabus. “Ah. We can begin.”

  A man walked across the atrium, a knight tall and strong, with trim blond hair and mustache, his black eyes hard and cold.

  Sir Paul Tallmane.

  Jager’s hands clenched into fists.

  “Well, well,” said Paul. “The little rat actually succeeded?”

  “He did,” said Tarrabus. “He was more successful than you, I note.”

  Paul glared at Jager, his expression promising death.

  “Take this,” said Tarrabus, handing the stone to Paul. “Return to the Iron Tower and wait with it there. Shadowbearer will arrive as soon as he eludes the archmage of the high elves for a few days. Once he does, he will take the stone, and the new order shall begin.”

  Paul took the pouch, his expression almost reverent. “At long last, my lord Dux. At long last our hopes shall be fulfilled, and the new order will arise. Mankind shall be made strong and have dominion over the earth.”

  “Indeed,” said Tarrabus.

  Paul grinned. “Or shall I call you my lord High King?”

  “Patience,” said Tarrabus. “As the freeholders are fond of saying, let us not count our eggs before they have hatched.”

  “But with this,” said Paul, lifting the pouch with the soulstone, “we have the eggs in hand, do we not, my lord?”

  “We do,” said Tarrabus. “I shall return to Caerdracon and thence to Tarlion. Once Shadowbearer has the soulstone and can work his spell, matters will require my attention in the High King’s court. We shall have to proceed very carefully before knowledge of the Enlightened can become public. Once we are strong enough, we can sweep aside any resistance and do as we please. Until then, caution is required.”

  Paul bowed to his lord. “I shall depart tomorrow at first light.”

  “Good,” said Tarrabus.

  “What about Mara?” said Jager. “I demand you release her to me at once!”

  Both Paul and Tarrabus looked at him. Paul grinned like a wolf. Tarrabus remained calm, but Jager did not like the cold glint in his eyes.

  “We had a deal,” said Jager.

  “Yes, we did,” said Tarrabus. “And I shall adhere to it. If you brought me the soulstone, I promised that neither I nor my vassals would harm you, and that I would not bring any harm to Mara. And the Dux of Caerdracon keeps his word.” He looked towards the colonnade encircling the atrium. “Ah. Here come the rest of my guests. Would you like to meet them?”

  Jager followed the Dux’s gaze and flinched.

  Orcs strode from the colonnade, tall orcish warriors in fur and leather armor, swords and axes and maces at their belts. Their faces had been hideously scarred and tattooed in the image of crimson skulls. At their head walked a towering orcish warrior clad only in leather trousers and heavy boots, the muscles of his chest and arms marked with sigils of blood-colored flame. A huge double-bladed black axe rested in his right fist, the weapon longer than Jager was tall.

  Mournacht and his Mhorite followers.

  “You,” said Jager. “You hired them to hunt down Ridmark? You’re the Herald of Mhor?”

  He wondered how the devil Tarrabus had gotten the orcs through the city without anyone noticing.

  “Of course not,” said Tarrabus. “Tell me, Mournacht. Am I a Herald of Mhor?”

  Mournacht growled, grounded the blades of his axe, and rested his massive fists upon the shaft. “You are not. But the Heralds of Mhor have commanded us to cooperate with you.”

  “Yes,” said Tarrabus. “And here come the Heralds now.”

  Jager turned, his blood running cold.

  Four men in crimson leather armor walked from the colonnade, swords and daggers at their belts as they moved in eerie silence. All four men wore cowled black cloaks, and three of them also wore skull-masks of crimson steel over their faces. The fourth man carried his skull-mask and helmet beneath his arm, his face narrow and pale with graying yellow hair and dead, pale eyes.

  “Rotherius,” Jager whispered. The assassin had almost killed Jager in Cintarra when he had fled the city with Mara.

  Rotherius grinned. Even without the mask, it made his face look like a skull. “Greetings, Jager. It has been far, far too long. Our Matriarch is disappointed with you.”

  “Really,” said Jager. “With my charming smile, I cannot imagine why.”

  “Ridmark Arban must die,” said Tarrabus. “I was content to take my vengeance in my own time, but the omen of the blue fire…let us say it set a deadline. And Ridmark has a way of causing trouble. He must be removed from our path. The Red Family failed to kill him at Aranaeus,” he glared at Paul, who looked abashed, “and again at Moraime.”

  “Fear not, Dux,” said Rotherius. “Ridmark Arban has slain too many of our Brothers. He shall die for his crimes against the Red Family of Mhor.”

  “A useful convergence of purpose, is it not, my little master thief?” said Tarrabus. “I want Ridmark dead. The Family also wants him dead, and they will kill him for me at no charge. Convenient, no?”

  “What about Mara?” demanded Jager. “You’re just going to give her to that band of damned murderers?”

  “Of course not,” said Tarrabus. “I keep my word. And your Mara is too useful to kill.”

  Jager’s blood ran colder. “What are you going to do to her?”

  Tarrabus smiled. “She is going to achieve her full potential. Her dark elven blood grants her power, and I shall unlock it and make her into a worthy tool of my will.”

  “No,” said Jager. “She’s fought against that all her life. You don’t have the right to do that to her.”

  Tarrabus raised an eyebrow. “You ought to know better. I am stronger than she is. The strong have the right to do what they like to the weak. And you should not concern yourself about what is going to happen to Mara. You ought to worry about what is about to happen to you.”

  “Me?” said Jager. “You gave your word. You said if I brought you the soulstone, you would release Mara and would not harm me.”

  Paul laughed, low and nasty.

  “I shall keep my word,” said Tarrabus. “And I will release Mara…into the fullness of her power, her dark potential. And neither I nor my vassals shall harm you. Rotherius! Are you my vassal?”

  “I serve only Mhor and the Matriarch,” said Rotherius.

  “You see?” said Tarrabus. “I have kept my word. I will not harm you.” He gestured at the colonnade. “You may go whenever you like, and neither I nor my men will hinder you. Such a pity you have made an enemy of the Red Family, though. Ah, well.”

  Rotherius and the other Red Brothers moved toward Jager, and he backed away.

  “I have not decided,” said Rotherius, “if I shall bring you alive to the Matriarch or not. Alive, I think. You are young enough to live for another forty or fifty years, and the Matriarch can keep you alive and in torment for every single moment of those years. How you shall scream!”

  “You will find Ridmark Arban at the Crow’s Helm in the Outwall,” said Tarrabus. “I suggest you kill him as soon as you can.”

  Rotherius grinned. “We need no counsel on how to harvest souls for Mhor, Dux of Caerdracon.”

  “Well and good,” said Tarrabus. “Go and harvest.” His face hardened. “And while I know it means nothing to you, few men have ever deserved death more than Ridmark Arban.”

  “And we shall deliver it to him,” said Rotherius.

  Tarrabus nodded and turned back to Sir Paul, giving him commands for the upcoming journey. Rotherius donned his helmet and skull mask, and the Mhorite orcs moved around Jager. They were going to kill him. They were going
to do worse than kill him.

  And Tarrabus would unlock Mara’s dark power, would twist her into the monster she had fought to escape.

  Unless Jager did something.

  He had no other choice. He had to use the dagger.

  “No!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

  Tarrabus and Paul ignored him, walking away.

  “Going to beg, little thief?” said Rotherius.

  Jager backed away, trying to keep them all in sight. “I am making the demands here, assassin. Tarrabus! Give Mara to me, now, or I will kill you all.”

  Tarrabus turned, amused. “And how are you going to accomplish that?”

  “With this,” said Jager.

  In one smooth motion, he reached under his jerkin and yanked the dark eleven dagger from its sheath.

  The whispers filled his mind and rose to a thunderous chorus. The sickly yellow glow from the three soulstones shone brighter, wreathing the blue blade in a diseased-looking light.

  Every man in the atrium cast a long shadow from the setting sun…and as Jager gripped the dagger, a peculiar ripple went through their shadows.

  “You took it with you?” said Rotherius. “Fool! Do you have any idea of what that blade will do to you?”

  “No,” said Jager, “but I know what it will do to you.”

  “Bah,” said one of the Mhorites, stepping forward, “the rat thinks to threaten us with that toy? I…”

  Jager yelled and slashed the dagger, the tip of the blade scratching the orc’s hand. The Mhorite scowled and raised his sword.

  And then he started to scream.

  Yellow light twisted around him, and the orc shriveled and shrank. Within a heartbeat the dark magic had reduced the orc to a withered husk, an emaciated corpse left in the desert sun for a hundred years. The corpse toppled backwards, dust rising around it in a puff.

  The whispers in Jager’s head howled with glee.

  Everyone in the atrium froze, save for Tarrabus, who only looked intrigued.

  “What the hell is that thing?” said Paul. “It looks like a Soulblade, but...”

  “Why don’t you come over here?” said Jager, the whispers echoing inside his head. “Come over here and I’ll show you, you murderous swine.”

  Paul scowled, but made no move to approach.

  “That,” said Tarrabus, “is a dark elven weapon called a soulcatcher. A cousin of a sort to a Soulblade. They’re quite rare, and they’re extremely dangerous. I don’t think Jager knows exactly what it can do…or what it will do to him.”

  “I know exactly what it will do,” said Jager, the gleeful whispers filling his mind. It made it hard to think. A strange numbness spread from the dagger and up his arm. “You’re going to release Mara to me, or…”

  “Enough,” said Tarrabus, looking to Rotherius. “Finish this.”

  “Kill him now,” said Rotherius.

  The assassins closed on him, and Jager raised the dagger over his head.

  And as he did, he focused his mind upon the weapon, commanding its power to aid him, to rise and strike down his enemies. Darkness filled his vision, despite the glare of the setting sun, and the whispers rose to screams.

  The shadows of the orcs and the assassins and grew sharper and darker and harder, almost as if they had taken physical form.

  And then their shadows rose to attack them.

  They wrapped around the Mhorite warriors and the assassins, given life and form by the dagger’s magic, and the Red Brothers and the Mhorites found themselves wrestling against their own shadows. Two of the Mhorite orcs fell to the ground, killed by shadows that wrapped around them like ropes of darkness. Paul fought against his shadow, slashing his sword through the air like a madman as he bellowed curses.

  But Tarrabus was unaffected. His shadow rose up to attack him, but he gestured and it fell back to the ground.

  “Pathetic,” he said, his calm voice cutting through the screams. “Did you think to use such a trick against the Initiated of the Seventh Circle of the Enlightened? The shadows do not attack me, master thief. They obey me.”

  Mournacht roared and slashed his free hand, crimson fire blazing around his fingers as he cast a spell. Red light rippled near him, and his shadow fell back to the ground.

  “Kill him!” said Tarrabus. “Kill him now, and bring me that soulcatcher!”

  Jager wanted to throw himself screaming at them, to kill and kill with the dagger until they all fell dead at his feet. The whispers howled for him to do it, but the rest of his mind, the part that was still sane, realized this was an extraordinarily bad idea.

  Instead ran as fast as his legs could carry him, shoving the dagger back into its sheath.

  The horrible whispering faded away.

  Out. He had to get away while the Mhorites and the assassins still fought their own shadows. The front doors were barred, and Tarrabus’s men-at-arms waited near the doors. Going that way was suicide.

  Instead he dashed past a knot of struggling Kothluuskan orcs, ran into the colonnade, and sprinted into the domus’s kitchens. The kitchens, like the rest of the domus, were palatial, and Jager saw a dozen ovens and a long counter loaded with gleaming knives and pots and pans.

  He also saw the cellar door. He threw it open and scrambled down the steps into a gloomy cellar, lit only by a few high, narrow windows. His eyes roved back and forth, his heart pounding. If he had been wrong, if his guess had been mistaken, he was about to die.

  Another door stood in an arch on the far side of the cellar.

  Jager pushed it open.

  A set of stairs descended into the darkness, and the familiar musty smell of Coldinium’s catacombs came to his nostrils.

  He hadn’t been wrong. The Mhorite orcs were many things, but inconspicuous was not one of them. There was no way Tarrabus could have gotten the Mhorites to his domus without rousing half the city to alarm. But there were entrances to the catacombs and the sewers outside the city, and if Mournacht knew of them, he could have used them to make his way unseen to Tarrabus’s domus.

  Jager scrambled down the stairs and into an abandoned funerary chapel, an entrance to the catacombs on the far wall. Stone statues of apostles and saints stood in niches, dusty and neglected. A wooden table held tools and a lantern, and Jager snatched it and set the wick ablaze. He heard clattering from the cellar above. The Mhorites, or the Red Brothers, or both.

  Jager raced into the catacombs, through the galleries of stone lined with niches of the silent dead. He ran and ran, his breath tearing at his throat, his back and shoulder burning with pain. He went deeper and deeper, almost to the dwarven ruins, and at last collapsed against a wall, his chest heaving, his throat burning, the knapsack digging into his wounded back.

  He could run no further.

  But the catacombs were silent around him.

  He had eluded his pursuers. And, indeed, why would they pursue him? Tarrabus had the soulstone. Paul had Mara in the Iron Tower. The Red Brothers likely wanted to kill Ridmark more than they wanted to kill Jager. Even with the dagger, he was not a threat to them, not really.

  He could do nothing to harm them.

  And they had Mara…and he had no way to help her.

  Jager bowed his head and wept in the darkness.

  Chapter 17 - Gift of a Dagger

  “You’re sure, then?” said Ridmark, his mind racing. “You’re absolutely sure that Jager had her knapsack.”

  “I am certain,” said Gavin. He sighed. “It was just out of my reach.”

  “Why is that important?” said Morigna.

  “Watch,” murmured Caius. “I think he’s about to do something clever.”

  “Calliande,” said Ridmark. “Your dagger. Do you know where it is?”

  “My dagger?” said Calliande.

  “Yes, the one you used to kill Alamur,” said Ridmark. “Do you have it with you?”

  She touched her belt. “No, I don’t. I had it with me when we came to the Crow’s Helm, but...I put it in my pack
.” Her eyes widened. “The same pack with the soulstone!”

  “Why,” said Morigna, “is that important?”

  Calliande sat down, closed her eyes, and began to speak in silence, gesturing as she as she cast a spell.

  “Because,” said Ridmark, “I gave Calliande that dagger after we escaped from the village of the Blue Hand in the Deeps. Later in Dun Licinia a Magistrius named Alamur tried to take her captive and present her to Shadowbearer. He attacked Calliande, and she killed him with that dagger.”

  Morigna’s black eyes narrowed. “So she slew him with a gift, and that means…”

  “It means,” said Calliande, “that it created a link between me and the dagger, a link that the magic of the Well can follow.”

  Gavin grinned. “And if Jager still has the knapsack, a link she can use to find him.”

  “Even if he discarded the knapsack and kept going,” said Ridmark. “Perhaps we can find his lair. Either way, this is our best chance of finding him and reclaiming the soulstone.”

  Calliande took a deep breath and gestured, white light glimmering around her fingers.

  “And you’re sure this will work?” said Morigna.

  “I am certain,” said Ridmark. “How do you think she found me after I left Dun Licinia?”

  Morigna snorted. “Sheer rock-headed stubbornness, I would assume.”

  “I can hear you, you know,” said Calliande.

  Morigna smirked. “I know.”

  Calliande stood up, frowning with concentration as the light faded from her hands.

  “You can feel it?” said Ridmark.

  “Aye,” said Calliande. “It’s not far away. Maybe a mile. And,” she frowned, rubbing her face, “below us? Yes, underneath us.”

  “You mean underground?” said Morigna.

  “I think so,” said Calliande.

  “There are catacombs beneath Coldinium, like Cintarra and Tarlion,” said Ridmark. “A clever thief might hide there.”

  “There are more than catacombs beneath Coldinium,” said Caius. “There are dwarven ruins below the city.”

  Kharlacht sighed.

  “What?” said Morigna.

  “Our experiences in dwarven ruins,” said Kharlacht, “have not been pleasant.”