DAWN WAS STILL A WAYS off, and the streets were mostly empty. We saw only a few people about, early risers pulling carts or hefting sacks in preparation for the day’s toil. But despite the hour, they seemed almost cheery compared to when we had first arrived in the town. One of them even gave a happy smile and a nod to Mag, which she returned after a moment’s hesitation.
When we reached the building where we had fought the Shades, we saw that the front door had not been closed, but still hung open. I helped guide Dryleaf through it, helping him avoid the jagged edge of the shattered doorjamb. The Shades’ corpses were gone, but the bloodstains remained. For an uncomfortable moment, I was reminded of the shattered homestead to the north where we had found Liu.
Dryleaf paused inside the doorway, cocking his head back and forth as though listening. “This place has an evil feeling to it.”
“It does,” I agreed. In fact, the feeling had grown worse. It was stronger, more penetrating, like a thrumming in the air—a monstrous heartbeat that seized my own pulse and forced it to match time.
“Let us have a look about, then,” said Mag.
“You can go with her,” said Dryleaf. He released my arm and leaned on his staff. “I have my stick, and you can return to me if you have questions.”
“We will be quick,” I said. “Come, Mag.”
From room to room we went, circling all around the first floor. All we found were some discarded scraps of food and rubbish. No messages or any other signs of what the Shades had been up to. We went to the stairs and climbed to the second floor, but it was just as barren as the first—though, thankfully, it was free of the bloodstains that spattered the first floor. Indeed, the floors of the bedrooms upstairs looked fresh-scrubbed. There were no possessions to be found. Even the clothing had been taken. Mag and I poked at the mattresses in case something had been concealed within, but there seemed to be only feathers.
“Yue has been here already,” said Mag, frustrated. “If there was any clue, she has taken it.”
“Well, we can ask her tomorrow,” I said. “She said she wanted another word with us before we left town.”
“If she has found anything, I doubt she will tell us,” grumbled Mag.
“I think we have earned at least a little trust from her,” I said. “Come. Dryleaf will likely be wondering what has happened to us.”
Constable Ashta settled into her chair at the constable station. She would get no sleep that night, she knew. But the next day, for the first time in a long while, she thought she would be able to rest, well and truly.
She leaned her chair back against the wall, tilting her head back to rest against the wooden planks, and kicked her boots off. They fell to the floor, dripping a bit of mud. Twisting her feet, she reveled in the cool air washing across them, and released a deep sigh.
And then a thought occurred to her. A small, nagging thought, and yet it gave her no peace—the curse of a constable who held her duty as a sacred trust.
Did she forget to order the gate closed?
With a heavy sigh, she tilted the chair up again and reached for her boots. She was a citizen of Lan Shui. She had been born and raised here. But she still felt entirely fed up with the townsfolk sometimes. They would not wipe their own rear ends if the constables did not remind them.
Pulling on her boots—hating the warm, sweaty feel of them—she stood and strode out into the night again, turning her steps towards the north end of town. The streets were empty, thankfully, and so she was able to make quick progress. And the north gate was not far from the constables’ station. She would ensure the gate was closed, and then she would return to the station, and enjoy her night’s duty. Mayhap she could even sneak a nap. The sergeant would be in a lenient mood tonight.
Finally she rounded the last corner and came into sight of the north gate. Sure enough, it stood wide open. Ashta shook her head and looked skyward. She could not recall who was on gate duty that night. Was it Shen? That seemed likely. The woman had a mind like a sieve, and more than once Ashta had caught her sleeping in the guardhouse, or neglecting her duties in favor of a game of Moons.
Well, Ashta would give her a scare. Hopefully Shen would remember it, at least for a time, and not shirk her duties in the future.
She strode straight up to the guardhouse door and threw it open hard. The heavy iron knob slammed into the wooden wall behind the door, sending a loud crack reverberating through the night air.
The constable stopped dead in her tracks, her mouth open, a shout ready but already dying on her lips.
The guardhouse was empty.
Mag and I came downstairs to find Dryleaf had left the front room and gone to the sitting room on the building’s western side. The chairs had a thin film of dust. Oku sat by the old man’s side, huddling against his legs. It was clear the hound was put off by the evil energy that suffused the building.
“And?” said Dryleaf. “Was your hunt fruitful?”
“Sadly, no,” I said. “I fear we have only wasted our time, and yours.”
Dryleaf shook his head slowly, clucking his tongue. “Do not trouble yourself over me,” he said, shuffling towards the back of the room and feeling out the floor with his staff. “I am only sorry I could not be of more—”
He stopped.
Slowly, he turned and walked back the way he had come.
He stopped again.
“Dryleaf?” I said tentatively. “What is—”
“Quiet,” he said, so sudden and brusque that I found myself complying at once. It was like the order of a battlefield commander, and I realized rather suddenly that I knew almost nothing about the old man’s past. Mag, too, had fallen completely silent.
Back and forth Dryleaf walked, and now it was as if he was sniffing. But I could smell nothing other than whatever terrible, nameless stench seemed to permeate the very air in this place. At last he stopped near the center of the room. Then he turned and strode right towards us.
“Move,” he said, again speaking in a voice that brooked no disobedience. Mag and I stepped aside, watching the old man. As he passed us, Mag looked at me, raising her eyebrows. I shrugged.
Dryleaf stopped at a tapestry hanging on a wall. He reached out and felt it with his hands before pulling it aside. He probed the wall behind it with his fingers. Then, suddenly, his fingers sank into the wall—or rather, a piece of the wall moved, taking his fingers with it.
There came a sharp click, and a section of wall beside the tapestry swung open to reveal a dank staircase.
The old man turned to us, folding his arms over each other and around his staff. I eyed him for a long moment.
“When I was a child,” I said slowly, “I heard stories of blind people whose other senses grew sharper than was natural. Their other senses became so good, in fact, that they almost replaced the missing sight. Some of them could perform incredible feats, like seeing through walls, or catching arrows in midair. But I never believed such stories.”
Dryleaf snorted loudly. “You were wise not to,” he said, grinning. “Such tales are ridiculous, at least so far as I have experienced. I cannot hear a mouse fart from a span away, or some such nonsense. But without my eyes to distract me, I do pay a bit more attention to my ears. That is why, when I was walking about, I heard this.”
He walked to the middle of the room. There, he took his staff and struck the floor at his feet. Then he struck the floor again a pace away.
Thoom.
Thunk.
Mag stared at him, astonished. “They sound different.”
“Indeed they do,” said Dryleaf. “Because there is a hollow spot here, and a deep one. A chamber under the house.”
“Well,” I said. “I suppose that makes more sense than my first thought.”
Dryleaf grinned. “Sometimes, what appears to be magic is simply a matter of paying attention.”
Constable Yue stalked through the street, entirely irritated. Ashta had come and fetched her as soon as she had found the north
gatehouse unoccupied. She would have gone to find Shen on her own, but she did not know where the woman lived—and so it fell to Yue, as so many things did.
Yue hardly thought it was worth it. Shen was probably in her home getting drunk, celebrating the vampire’s death. That was what Yue had been in the middle of doing, before Ashta came pounding at her door.
Two lefts, and then … and then a right? Yue frowned, stopping in the street and looking around. It had been this way. She was almost certain of it. But in the middle of the night, and with two cups of wine in her belly, it was suddenly less clear.
Kaw
Yue looked up. A raven perched on the edge of a building above her, looking down. It seemed to be studying her. For a moment Yue had the nonsensical thought that it was waiting for her to do something.
“Shoo,” she growled at it. “I have little patience for anything tonight, least of all you.”
The raven did not understand her, of course, and so Yue surely imagined the vague expression of amusement in the way it tilted its head at her.
She had had just enough wine that she did not wonder what a raven was doing out at night.
“Ah, there,” she said, recognizing Shen’s home and happy for a reason to leave the bird behind her. Shen lived in a small, two-room house wedged between a smith on one side and a tavern on the other—a tavern where she and Yue had shared many drinks in the past. Sky as her witness, Yue was going to make Shen buy her plenty of drinks to make up for this cursed nighttime adventure.
The front door stood slightly open. Curse the woman, she must be well and truly drunk. Yue threw it open unceremoniously.
“Shen!” she cried. “Where in the darkness below have you gotten off to?”
But the front room was empty. Yue gave an exasperated grunt and stalked towards the bedroom in the back. She threw it open, but the bedroom, too, was empty.
That gave her pause, and she looked back into the front room, frowning. Where under the sky had Shen gone?
And then she heard a scraping against one of the walls.
Of course. The alley between Shen’s home and the tavern. There was a privy there. Shen was having herself a piss.
“Shen!” roared Yue, stalking towards the alley. She would likely wake up some of the neighbors, but she did not care. Let them take their frustration out on Shen, once morning came.
She rounded the corner. There was the privy.
And there was Shen. On the ground, slumped against the wall, her face deathly white, her tunic covered with blood—but not as much as Yue would have expected, judging from the gaping wound in her neck.
Yue froze.
No, she thought. No, that is not right.
The vampire did not come within the walls.
Yet there was Shen.
The vampire was dead.
Yet there was Shen.
Even as she watched, Shen’s fingers scrabbled futilely against the cobblestones. She shuddered one last time and died.
Yue turned and sprinted for the constables’ station.
Dryleaf took my arm, and together we followed Mag down the stairs into a wide chamber beneath the house. With every step down, the evil feeling in the air increased. Oku whined, trotting just behind me, his steps hesitant. I thought about sending him back to wait outside the house, but I wanted him close to protect Dryleaf, in case of danger.
Below, I felt the air open up into a large space. But everything was pitch black, with no faintest light reaching us from the stairway.
“Is there a torch?” I said. My voice vanished into the empty space.
I heard the sound of Mag fumbling along the wall. “Here is one,” she said at last. “Give me a moment to light it.”
Sparks glinted in the shadows as she worked. Finally a flame sprang to life, and Mag lifted the torch high.
The chamber was large—larger than the first floor of the house, which meant it extended under the buildings on either side. There were desks and tables around the sides of the room, some of them littered with papers. But in the center of the room was a massive cauldron filled with a liquid I thought was entirely black. It was only when we took a few steps forwards, and the light of Mag’s torch fell upon the cauldron, that I saw a glint of red.
“Sky above,” I breathed.
Mag walked up to the cauldron and took a closer look. Oku went with her, growling in his throat at the cauldron. Mag sniffed. When she turned back to me, her expression was grim.
“Blood,” she said. “Old blood. It smells almost … rotten.”
I knew instinctively that this must be the source of the evil feeling in the house. But how could that be? It was a great deal of blood, true, but it was not as though we could smell it through the floor.
“Let me get another torch,” I said. I removed Dryleaf’s hand from my arm and went to the wall, fetching another torch and lighting it with Mag’s.
“What is it?” said Dryleaf. “Tell me.”
“My apologies,” I said. “There is a cauldron here, filled with blood. It is paces across.”
“Sky,” whispered Dryleaf. “How much? How many …”
He did not finish, but I heard the words as plainly as if he had spoken them. How many people died to fill this cauldron?
I went to Mag’s side and knelt, thrusting my torch close to the ground. A pit had been dug beneath the great iron bowl. The stones within were blackened and twisted. I could see no fuel. Whatever had burned there had burned away … but it had melted a great deal of the surrounding stone.
“Darkfire,” I whispered. “These stones have been melted by darkfire.”
“Darkfire?” said Mag. “What is that?”
“An evil magic,” said Dryleaf. “You have heard of magestones?”
Mag frowned. “I know that they are a dangerous substance.”
“Forbidden by the King’s law,” said Dryleaf, nodding. “When a wizard eats them, they gain immeasurable power according to their branch. Firemages gain the power of darkfire. It is a black flame that consumes light instead of giving it, and it will melt almost anything.”
“But there is another way to create darkfire,” I said. “Setting fire to magestones will do it.”
“I have never heard that,” said Dryleaf.
“Neither had I,” I said. “I learned it only recently.” It had been in the Greatrocks, with Loren.
“So these Shades you were hunting,” said Dryleaf. “They used darkfire to heat the cauldron. To … to boil the blood.”
“But for what purpose?” I said.
“The vampire,” said Dryleaf. “It must have been. The feeling in this place … the smell. Mayhap that is what summoned the vampire. I was right all along, though I wish I had not been. The Shades did bring the creature. But why? What did they hope to gain?”
“Some sort of weapon,” said Mag.
I looked up in surprise. She was across the room, standing by one of the desks that lined the walls, and she had a stack of papers in her hand through which she was riffling. “These mention the vampire. The cauldron appears to be part of some ritual to summon it—to unleash it on the Shades’ enemies. Using a magestone fire infuses the blood with the stones’ essence. It increases the strength of it, gives it some sort of … magical property. I am not certain. There are many things written here I do not understand. But that is what brought the vampire out of the mountains, if indeed that is where it came from.”
That was a thought so dark, I was stunned to silence for a moment, and Dryleaf seemed to feel the same way. Only Mag still moved or made a noise, flipping through more and more of the papers.
“I do not understand,” I said in a hushed voice. “A vampire cannot be controlled. But even if you could set it loose in a town and unleash it, it is … well, it is still just a creature. If we had not arrived to kill it, the people of Lan Shui would have done so in time. They would have gotten word to the Mystics eventually. And if the Shades mean to use this as a weapon of war, it is an even worse idea. I
n a large city, one worth conquering, there would be many guards and constables, and even Mystics, to hunt it. That is what happens whenever a vampire is desperate enough to attack a city by its own choice. That is why they prey on the weak and the isolated.”
“There is more,” said Mag, scanning a page. “Something about … empowering the vampires. Strengthening them. I cannot entirely understand, but it seems they had some scheme for making the beasts even more fearsome.”
“The beast, you mean,” I said. “Only one.”
Mag stopped short. “I suppose you are right,” she said. “Though … though they speak of more than one in these pages.”
I felt a sensation like ice sliding down my throat and into my gut.
“Mag,” I said, my voice coming as a whisper. “How far would this ritual reach? How close would a vampire have to be for the magic to draw it in?”
“Sky above,” said Dryleaf. But Mag only stared at me. My words were still working their way through her mind.
“Mag,” I said again.
“It says … it says many leagues,” she told me.
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Lan Shui stands at the feet of the Greatrocks. There is nowhere in Dorsea, and few places in all of Underrealm, where vampires can be found in greater numbers.”
“But … but vampires never work together,” said Mag. “You both said so.”
“That is what the stories say,” muttered Dryleaf. “But you should know better than to believe every story you hear, child.”
And then in the town above us, the screaming began.
“LEAVE ME HERE!” SAID DRYLEAF. “Close the chamber door while you go and help the town.”
“We cannot,” I said. “They are coming for this place. You are in danger while you remain here. Come, we will hide you upstairs.”
We hurried him up to the second floor and made him lock himself in a bedroom. Then Mag and I burst out of the house’s front door. In the open air, we could finally place the direction of the screams—north. We flew that way, our boots slapping on the cobblestone streets.
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