The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  “Be still!”

  It was a tight murmur, nothing more, but she felt the fight tugged out of her like the stopper on a wine bottle. Felt her strength drain put behind the command. Even her knives fell abruptly quiet. All the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  “That’s better. We’ll have a bit less of the stroppy warrior queen, if you don’t mind.”

  A woman’s voice, throaty gorgeous and intimate; it seemed to echo and seep down into her belly, down where she’d left her feelings about the two hot-eyed Ishlinak whores. A fresh fire woke in her at the memory. The grip on her arms loosened the slightest fraction, a slim dark hand fluttered in her line of sight, like a conjuror’s flourish before the trick. Then, before she could react, the hand dropped again, went to the juncture of her thighs, pressed palm and long fingers into the gap. She gasped and arched. Her innards ran heated and liquid at the touch. Somehow, through leather and cotton layers, the fingers on that hand were right inside her, opening her suddenly willing cunt, pumping gently, firmly, reaching up to touch some unfeasible core within, cupping and pressing, and then it was like lava in the overflow lake at An-Monal, bursting the banks, pouring hot and thick and majestically unstoppable, tumbling stickily downward as shuddering, shaking, she came.

  Came harder than she had a living memory with which to compare.

  She slid down out of the encircling arms, sagged into a heap against the nearest hovel wall, panting, sobbing, tears squeezing into her eyes.

  “There you go. I’d like to see your little League hussy manage that for you.”

  Something dark knelt beside her in the alley. She blinked through tears, saw a face of perfectly molded beauty hanging over her—smooth ebony skin, a match almost for her own, grinning, overly sharp white teeth in a jaw framed by long riotous hair that didn’t look like it had seen a comb in its owner’s entire life. At the heart of it all, the eyes were the same amber she’d already seen twice that night. The same hand that had just lit her up now reached in and rearranged her collar, thumbed the tears off her face, and stroked her cheek, all with the gentle but insistent intimacy of a long-known lover. The voice sent tiny aftershock shudders through her lower body with each word it spoke.

  “What I mean to say is …” Tongue slipping out—just a little unnervingly long for the human face Kelgris wore—to wet her thumb before she went back to wiping away Archeth’s tears. “There’s no reason why you and I can’t be good friends—as long as you don’t overstep the mark on this ridiculous revenge fantasy you’re entertaining.”

  Archeth worked up a groggy smile. “So it’s commerce after all, is it?”

  “Would you prefer the wolf?” The woman or whatever wore her skin finished with Archeth’s face and ebbed gracefully away a couple of feet. In the darkness, she was all amber eyes and teeth now, only the faint crowning silhouette of her hair to define her as human. “You really need to take a more long-term outlook on this, kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal. Poltar the shaman and his pet clanmaster are mortal, both of them. They’ll die soon enough, without any help from you. As will your little northern piece of pussy waiting back home, come to that. It’s what they do, mortals. They die. Think about that—it’s going to be a long, lonely road for you. Maybe you could use a little immortal company now and then.”

  Archeth propped herself up a little better against the wall. She still could not rise; her legs felt like tangled drifts of seaweed beneath her. “I’ve turned down two whores so far this evening. I’m not about to cave in for a third.”

  A snarl, out of no human throat. Suddenly, Kelgris was in her face. The amber eyes burned inches away. A thin droplet of blood oozed out of her hair and ran down her face

  “You want to be careful with that mouth of yours, kir-Archeth.”

  Convulsively, Archeth flung out a hand and tangled it in that copious mane of hair. Brought Falling Angel up in her other hand, jammed the point of the blade under the other woman’s jaw. Faster than she’d ever moved before, she wasn’t even sure if it was her. She breathed in hard, leaned a half inch closer to the amber eyes.

  “I don’t plan to use my mouth on you, bitch,” she said tightly. “But I’m willing to find out if Kiriath steel can get the job done. You make me come, you think that’s it? I can do that myself, with only half the hand holding this knife.”

  As if Falling Angel poured fresh, cabled strength down into her the muscles of her grip and the arm behind it. She felt the force of it flood her, felt a surge inside like breaking waves. She pressed herself back into the wall, levered herself slowly to her feet. Brought Kelgris with her, hooked up on the knife blade as she rose. Blood was running down out of the Sky Dweller’s hairline now at an alarming rate, painting half her face bloody and wet. Her lips writhed with syllables unspoken, a low growl was rising in her throat. Wraithslayer awoke moaning, shivered to life in the harness on Archeth’s chest. Archeth lifted Falling Angel higher, let go the the goddess’s mane with her other hand, took Wraithslayer out of the air as it left its sheath, like catching it as it fell. She slid Falling Angel slowly out from under Kelgris’s blood-dripping chin.

  “I’m done,” she hissed. “You can go.”

  The face in front of her seemed to shiver and shift, a composite swirl of different women, different in almost everything but the amber eyes and the steady seep of blood down one side of the face. Kelgris bared her teeth in an awful grin.

  “You have been warned twice now, kir-Archeth,” she said in a voice gone suddenly cold and harsh. “There will not be a third time.”

  And gone again.

  After a while, Archeth got herself off the wall. She shook the shiver out of her spine, looked about the confined space the confrontation had taken place in. Trampled mud and scattered clods of horseshit kicked in here off the street over time. She laughed, a little shakily.

  “Divine intervention, eh? Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

  She stepped back out into the main thoroughfare, peered left and right. No one in sight, and the twitchy sense of pursuit she’d had since the brothel was gone. She breathed in, and even the wood-smoke-smelling air seemed a little less heavy in her lungs.

  “Right, Archidi,” she said out loud to the empty street. “Let’s see if we can’t get you home without any more excitement.”

  SHE ALMOST MANAGED IT. UP TO THE EMBASSY COMPOUND, NODDED through the gate by respectful imperials, past the stables and across the courtyard, into the main block. Through the hall and up the stairs to her apartment. She was on the third flight when she heard a door open behind her, and then the diffident clearing of a throat.

  She turned and found Yilmar Kaptal stood on the landing below, door to his apartment ajar behind him. By the look of it, he’d been waiting up for her.

  “My lord Kaptal. Can I help you?”

  “My lady Archeth, I have been thinking.” Kaptal scrubbed at his face with one hand, like a man recently woken from sleep. He sounded oddly puzzled, as if taken aback by the words coming out of his own mouth. “It strikes me … would it perhaps not make sense, I mean …”

  She stifled a yawn. “Would what make sense?”

  “A change of ruling dynasty,” he said. “If you became Empress.”

  CHAPTER 56

  hey were holding the prisoners in an empty wine cellar at the rear of the warehouse. Stone steps down and a low ceiling in vaulted black brick. Guttering torches in brackets on the walls, solid oak doors closing off sections on either side. There was a six-man guard mounted outside the second door on the left, hard-bitten Etterkal toughs armed with knives and clubs, sitting around on wine barrels or propped against the vaulted walls in the glow from a couple of lanterns on the floor. They’d come scrambling to their feet as soon as they heard boots on the stairs, let loose oaths when they saw Ringil and a pinioned, broken-faced Slab Findrich at the head of a squad of grim and bloodied imperial soldiers.

  Ringil stopped a couple of yards from where they stood, let them get a good look. He’d
only brought eight of his able-bodied men with him, left Klithren with the rest to get the wounded bound up and ready to move. But it was eight heavily armed marines, jubilant with their just-done victory against dark forces, just scraped and banged up enough to feed the combat fire in their bellies. They’d eat Findrich’s men alive. Ringil gave the local hard men time to do the math, waited the scant moments it took them to decide.

  He nodded curtly back at the stairs he’d just come down.

  “Go on, fuck off. Leave the keys.”

  Clank of the big iron key ring as it hit the stone flags. The man who’d unhitched it from his belt skirted a wide, wary circle around the imperials and then scurried up the stairs like a spooked rat. His comrades weren’t far behind. Hurried footfalls, fading away. Ringil glanced sidelong at Findrich.

  “Just can’t get the help these days, eh? What is the Salt Warren coming to?”

  The slave merchant made a strangled noise. Ringil stepped over to the fallen keys, toed them back across the flags to where the two marines held Findrich pinioned between them. He nodded at the imperials to let him go.

  “Tell you what, Slab—you open up for us. If Risgillen’s built any nasty surprises into that lock, you can taste them first.”

  Privately, he thought a trap of that sort unlikely. There was no whiff of magic he could detect, dwenda or otherwise, anywhere in the cellar, and he was getting pretty good at sniffing these things out. But Findrich didn’t know that. Loosed by his captors, he bent and picked up the keys like a man forced to handle a snake. He stood hesitant, staring at the door.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Ringil shoved him forward, closed up the gap, shoved him again. Forced him to the door, where Findrich worked the lock with trembling hands.

  The oak paneling hinged creakily inward. Ringil shoved the slaver through ahead of him, followed him briskly in. There was lantern light inside, some crude straw matting and trestle cots. He saw familiar faces, familiar figures, scrambling to their feet. Mahmal Shanta—Menith Tand—Klarn Shendanak there, one eye drooped and dead-seeming for some reason. All three of them looking a lot thinner and worn than he remembered, but otherwise intact. A couple of ranking marine officers for a bonus, a Throne Eternal lieutenant of Rakan’s with his arm in a grubby sling …

  He shoveled Findrich out of the way, stood glaring around the chamber.

  “Ringil?” Mahmal Shanta’s reedy voice, disbelieving. “Is it really you?”

  “Where the fuck is the Dragonbane?” He swung on Findrich, hands crooked like talons. “Where’s Archeth?”

  IT TOOK TAND AND SHENDANAK, IN A COOPERATIVE EFFORT HE WOULDN’T have believed if he hadn’t seen it, to talk him down.

  He had Findrich by the throat, rammed up against the nearest black brick wall. Yelling for his men to bring the sword again in its casket, see if that didn’t loosen this fuck’s lips for real this time, Findrich grunting in panic through the clenched grip on his windpipe, hands trying in vain to prize Ringil’s iron-fingered hold loose, wheezing desperately with what breath he had left, he didn’t know what Gil was talking about, what Dragonbane, what fucking Black Folk bitch, these were all the imperial prisoners they had, the rest were lost, they were lost, the man-of-war Lord of the Salt Wind never made it home, the storm, the fucking storm—

  “He’s telling you the truth, Eskiath.” Menith Tand put in with mannered calm. “Before you choke him quite to death there.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Shendanak, up off the cot he was sitting on, shoulder to shoulder with Tand. He seemed to be limping, and Ringil noticed for the first time that his arm was also in a sling. “Listen to the man, will you. The Dragonbane never made it. Archeth neither. They wrecked off the Wastes coast.”

  The simple fact of Tand’s and Shendanak’s voices chiming agreement was enough of a miracle to stop Gil in his tracks. He turned his head, loosened his grip on Findrich’s windpipe. Stared from the scarred Majak visage to Tand’s blandly composed features. He let go of Findrich convulsively, let him slump to the floor.

  “Wrecked?” he asked stupidly.

  Tand nodded. “I’m afraid so. Yilmar Kaptal was aboard as well. Quite a few marines, some of Klarn’s best men, a number of Throne Eternal, too, I believe. We waited for news while they held us at the Chancellery, but none came. Lord of the Salt Wind never made it home.”

  “They could have lied to you.” Lips numb as the words mumbled out. “You were prisoners of war, maybe they—”

  “We saw them driven in toward the shore,” Mahmal Shanta said somberly. “The storm came out of nowhere, we had no warning. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. We nearly wrecked on the headland ourselves. Any closer in and we would have been smashed to kindling. And their ship was a good quarter league to port of ours. I’m sorry, Ringil. They are gone.”

  A storm out of nowhere.

  He heard it again, grumbling and prowling, somewhere under the horizon to the south and east as the elementals wrapped Dragon’s Demise in fog. The outlying recalcitrant snarl of the forces he had summoned and strictured to his will.

  You don’t know that, Gil. You don’t know that’s how it was.

  But he did. He knew.

  He heard Hjel’s sombre tones again.

  The elementals are capricious, and their range is wide. Unleash them, and their mischief will be general. Try not to worry about it too much, it’s a price you have no choice but to pay.

  But in the end, he was not the one who had paid.

  That they do your will in the immediate vicinity is the trick. What havoc they wreak elsewhere need not be your concern.

  The fucking ikinri ‘ska.

  He felt the rage come twitching through him, icy in the hollow space under his ribs, like rivulets of meltwater down rock. He felt his breathing come hard, felt his jaw tighten. Looked around as if awakening from something, saw Findrich on the floor at his feet.

  At his shoulder—the two marines he’d charged with carrying the sword stood expectantly by, open casket held up between them.

  And the Aldrain blade waiting within.

  Findrich read his face, the look in his eyes, and a panicked moan broke from his lips. When Ringil threatened him with the sword before, when he held the languidly writhing tang up close to the slave merchant’s face, Slab-face Findrich had cracked like an egg. Babbled out the location of the prisoners, promised to lead Ringil to them, to stand down his guard, anything, anything, just get that fucking thing away from me …

  Looked like Risgillen had at some point explained pretty clearly to him what would happen to whoever took up the sword.

  Now it was the same. Findrich tried to push himself away backward along the black brick wall, eyes fixed in horror on the casket. Ringil stood staring down at him, wrapped in a paroxysm of loss, and something seemed to pass between the two men, some long-awaited understanding coming home.

  “No, Gil, listen …”

  “Archeth and Egar are gone.” He said it quietly, reasonably, as if trying to explain it. “Wrecked. What does that leave me, Slab?”

  “Gil, please …”

  “It’s time, Slab. Way past time.”

  He swung on the casket, took hold of the sword at the blade where it joined the hilt. He felt it leap alive at the touch, felt it try to twist in his grip, but his fist was closed too tight. He dropped to one knee in front of Findrich, vaguely aware he was grinning like a skull. He grasped the slaver’s right arm at the wrist, dug a thumb savagely into the nerve point so Findrich’s fisted fingers loosened. Findrich flailed and kicked, Ringil held on stolidly, leaned in close.

  “Be still,” he hissed, and the slave merchant’s struggles ceased.

  Throat clearing behind him. “My lord Ringil, we should perhaps—”

  “Shut up, Tand. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  Findrich lay there rigid, sweat beading his face, lips twitching with pleas he had no way to voice. The sword wriggled impatiently in Ringil’s grip. Gil let go the slave merchant’s wrist,
pressed the paralyzed hand open on the flagstone floor.

  “Truth is, Slab—I never fucking liked you, even back in the day. And we’ve none of us improved with age.”

  He laid the softly flexing sword tang across Findrich’s open palm.

  Let it go.

  Watched, fascinated, as the metal coiled stealthily around the slave merchant’s hand and forearm, then drew savagely tight. Findrich screamed, girlishly high, staring down the length of his arm in horror as the sharp end of the tang lifted like a striking snake, bent, stabbed down into the meager flesh at the wrist. Another shriek, wrung out of the slaver like water from drenched clothing, the metal end digging hungrily into the meat of his wrist now, gouging deeper but no blood apparent, Findrich’s body beginning to shudder …

  Gil got to his feet. Glanced at Tand and the others, there in a gathered ring behind him, ashen faced and staring. He gave them a small, preoccupied smile.

  “You want to get out and leave this to me?”

  They needed no further encouragement. Out the door as fast as they could walk without loss of dignity in front of the watching marines. He saw the last of them out, nodded at the two men holding the casket.

  “You, too. This is just tidying up. Tell Rakan—” He remembered. Blinked. “Tell, uhm, Salk to head back and have the wounded detail ready to move out. We’ve got another forced march to the harbor coming up. Everybody else stay put out there and wait for me. Yeah, you can leave that here.”

  They dropped the casket where they stood, visibly relieved to be rid of it. Hasty salutes and they backed out. He wondered if they could sense even a fraction of the stink of magic that was rising in the room around him. Or maybe the twitching, undead body on the floor and the leeching sword wrapped around its arm was enough.

  “Would you mind explaining to me,” Anasharal asked irritably in his ear, “what it is exactly that you’re doing now?”