“I shall not fail,” Hessar said. “And neither will she. I promise that.”
“We’ll see.”
He had not yet had the pleasure of facing the master’s third, but he anticipated that he would—and soon. He was about to go, but he saw Hessar staring after him with something like wistfulness. Strength, ruthlessness, and resolve won his respect, but there was something else.
“You’ve a question. Ask it.”
“Do you—nay. Think nothing of it.” Hessar cleared his throat. “Only tell me, why do you hate him so, when he is the one who taught you? Who made you what you are?”
Shadowbane did not answer immediately, but instead looked at Vindicator in his hand. The blade burned with the same gray flame that it bestowed upon all its wielders—warriors of faith who wielded it for one god or many. Gedrin Shadowbane. Kalen Dren. Vaelis. The Hawkwinter boy. Others.
“I will make of myself a darkness,” he mused. “A darkness where there is only me.”
Hessar narrowed his eyes. “I do not understand.”
“I will have vengeance upon he who abandoned me—and vengeance upon he who would take my name. And when I have cast my foe into his ruin—”
He dropped Vindicator clattering to the cobblestones, where it smoked and vanished.
“Then I will be the darkness, and there will be only me.”
NIGHT, 30 FLAMERULE
MYRIN STOOD SHIVERING AS THE SWEAT OF BATTLE turned to ice on her skin. The room above had been cold, but this place was a tomb. She could see her breath steaming out in front of her. Her knees felt weak, and she wavered. The ground looked so comfortable. Perhaps just a rest …
Gloved hands caught her under her armpits. “Steady,” a voice said softly in her ear. “You’re breathing too fast. Calm.”
That made sense. She still felt the terror of the vampire’s attack, saw again the horrific folds of skin hanging from its limbs, its blackened lips receding back from daggerlike fangs.
Strong arms wrapped around the wizard, both to hold her up and to reassure her.
Myrin relaxed, letting her breathing slow. Just as gradually, the fear faded. “Thanks, Kalen,” she said, so accustomed to his support that she expected him to be there. “I—”
Then she leaned back, and realized it wasn’t Kalen holding her. Nor was it Ilira. Three paces away, the elf rose woozily to her feet, aided by Brace. The darkness, cut only by the flickers of her torch, made her face a luminous patch of silver.
“Lady Darkdance?” Rujia asked.
Myrin’s truesight had faded, and she saw once again Rujia’s deva face. As a function of her magic, the deva seemed completely untouched after the vampire’s assault, but Myrin would not easily forget what she’d seen. Rujia looked unnerved, but was it because she suspected Myrin had seen through her illusion or because she had witnessed Myrin’s ruthless magic?
Myrin smiled. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
Rujia looked at her long and hard, then turned away.
Lying was much easier than Myrin had expected. What had she seen under the deva’s careful guise? What sort of monster lurked there, and to what end did she wear a different face?
She resolved to be more cautious of Rujia in the future.
“Ugh. Orbakh’s magic …” Ilira coughed blood onto her chin. Brace started to utter another healing insult, but she put a gloved finger to his lips. “See to the others.”
“I’m well,” Myrin said.
Rujia coughed and shook her head.
“In that case, say on,” Ilira leaned her ear to Brace’s lips. The gnome whispered something, and Ilira chuckled. “A promise easily made, but rather hard to keep.”
Brace blushed fiercely as the elf climbed unsteadily to her feet.
“This way, incidentally.” Ilira held aside a withered black curtain opposite the thrones and coffin. She raised her torch to indicate yawning darkness beyond.
“Just like that?” Brace asked. “We almost die, and we’re meant to move along without a moment’s pause?”
“No, she’s right,” Myrin said. “Let’s get away.”
Myrin wanted to leave the bleak chamber as soon as possible. The vampire attack had been bad enough, but the blue fire … that she did not want to remember.
The short passage opened into a much wider chamber. Slim columns heavy with spider webs rose around them, supporting a long hall that stretched off to what Myrin thought was the south. The teleportation had shattered her sense of direction. A thick black curtain cut off the other direction, rustling slightly in no breeze Myrin could feel.
Brace stepped toward the curtain, but Ilira cleared her throat to interrupt him. “This way,” she said, gesturing into the wide hall with her torch.
The hall stretched away from them, supported by twin sets of six pillars from which hung tattered banners of an indeterminate color. The light didn’t quite reach the high ceiling, which had to be at least a dagger-cast above them. A carpet stretched from where they stood into the darkness at the other end of the hall. Dust as thick as piled linens obscured much of the hall.
“Looks like no one has set foot in this place in a century,” Brace said.
“Decades—but many of them,” Ilira corrected. “Phultan said the Master locked him away here. If he went without feeding that long …” She shook her head.
“Will there be more like that?” Brace asked. “More vampires?”
“Gedrin accounted for most of the Night Court—killed or fled. We saw what became of Phultan. The Duke of Whispers, he never found. I do not think any vampires would linger here today … unless the Night King has returned.”
“A frightening thought.” The gnome shivered. “This whole place is rather frightening, actually.”
Myrin wasn’t afraid. To her, the Night Masks were a hole in her memory. This Night King intrigued her, however. He must have been a great wizard to craft a teleportation circle that endured over a century, to set wards such as the lightning trap that had hurt Brace and Ilira, and to keep a creature like Phultan locked away so long. She could learn much from such a master.
What Phultan had said—about how he knew her, and that she was the Master’s “mare”—might be sheer lunacy, of course, if he’d been locked away for almost a century. But perhaps he had recognized her by her heritage the same way Ilira had. Perhaps one of her ancestors had been here, and that gave Myrin hope that she might find some clue to answer any one of a thousand questions. And perhaps Ilira knew it—why else would she have led them here?
So ultimately Myrin was not frightened, but rather excited, despite the danger.
“This is the worship hall, where Lady Vhammos led devotions to her goddess,” Ilira said. “The Night Masters’ inner sanctum lies deeper in, but I hope we’ve no need to find it. In fact—”
“Where’s Mistress Rujia?” Brace asked.
Myrin looked around, but indeed, the deva was nowhere to be seen. Ilira handed the torch to Brace even as she looked in the opposite direction. Myrin realized her gold eyes could pierce the darkness of the hall, without light to interfere. Then Ilira, too, disappeared into the gloom.
Brace turned with the torch to reveal a massive altar of basalt coated in a thick layer of dust at the end of the hall. It boasted a niche that might once have held a holy symbol, but it had been long since desecrated. Two tall black candles, one broken in half, sat on the altar.
Rujia and Ilira stood in the pitch dark, staring at one another. The deva had a hand on her sword hilt, and Ilira had three fingers out of one glove.
“What’s going on?” Myrin asked. “Mistress Rujia? Lady Nath—?”
Her words drowned in a rising swell of blue fire. Her forehead felt tight and her cheeks felt hot with blood. She became acutely aware of the veins beating in her throat, and she could hear her pulse pounding in her head. Her spellscar awakened and her eyes fell upon a polished crystal sphere that sat atop the basalt altar. She recognized it without memory.
“Oh,” Myrin
said.
As though activated by her proximity, azure flame lit inside the crystal.
“Is that why we came?” Myrin stepped forward without thinking. “Is that—?”
Ilira’s face appeared in the blue light, her expression uncertain. She made no move to stop Myrin when she moved toward the altar, her hand rising unconsciously toward the crystal.
Her fingers touched the deceptively smooth surface. It had hundreds of sharp edges that felt rough under her fingers. It felt warm, like something alive.
Blue runes spread up her arms and with them, memory.
Somewhere behind him, a man cried out for mercy, which the Night King found rather entertaining. He focused on the game they were playing.
“Like that, my dear,” Orbakh said. “Just like that.”
Tears leaked down her face as the woman worried at the wet object that sat on the table between them. Her sticky nails wedged under the edge of one layer and peeled it slowly back.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” the Night King asked. “Impressive, that such powerful magic can reside in such a tiny thing.”
It was only an onion she was peeling, but it might as well have been a hunk of meat. Indeed, that was the effect of her magic on the prisoner behind him. As she worked at the onion, her flesh-reaving magic worked at his flesh. He moaned—it was important she hear the moans.
“I wonder, if I keep telling you to do it will you carry on?” He leaned in and sniffed her throat. “Or do you require the threat of your own pain to keep torturing that poor man?”
She looked up at Orbakh through bleary blue eyes. Her hand strayed across the table toward the shimmering crystal ball with the black flame inside. It was one of his favorite trinkets—powerful, too—and she was reaching for it seemingly unconsciously. Her fingers touched the orb, and the flames within turned bright blue.
“Fascinating,” he murmured again.
He caught her wrist, making her freeze in place. His nails bit into her skin, and blood bloomed. Her eyes shot back to Orbakh, who smiled.
“Now, now.” He relished the sensation of his fangs poking his lower lip. “A taste for you—a taste for me.”
Orbakh raised her wrist to his lips. His fangs tore her skin open, and she released a sigh of longing. He positioned her wrist over a fine goblet, crafted of bone and set with scores of tiny red stones like droplets of blood. The goblet blazed with overwhelming magic, and when the first drip of the woman’s blood struck its hollow surface, blue flames spread around the edge.
“Delicious,” the Night King said.
He lifted the cup to his lips and drank.
Myrin realized she was staring at the basalt altar, watching as wind scraped away thick layers of dust from the stone. The broken candles rattled against the stone.
Something moved on the altar, disturbed in the dust and gleaming in the light of her magic: a single shard of what looked like porcelain. It matched the cup in her vision, into which Orbakh had poured her blood.
“Myrin,” said an urgent voice. “Myrin!”
Blue hair whipped past her face, as though she stood in the midst of a hurricane. She could still see herself in her mind’s eye—could still taste her own blood from Orbakh’s vivid memory—but she was abruptly back in the worship hall, a chamber that was no longer dark but rather dancing with crackling blue fire like she’d seen inside the crystal in her vision.
What was happening?
Brace had fallen back against the stone wall, dodging stabbing daggers of azure fire. Rujia slashed her sword around herself, weaving a shield of sword magic to keep the flames at bay. Ilira had fallen to one knee, her teeth gritted against the blue firestorm.
“Myrin, look at me,” she said. “Don’t—”
A source of warmth in her hands drew Myrin’s attention, and she saw she was holding the big crystal from the altar. Just as in her vision, it glowed fiercely within, building to a steady blaze like that of a hearth fire. The twisting flames held her gaze, and she could not look away. She thought she could see faces deep inside. The fire sang to her scarred soul, which returned the call in a beautiful harmony.
“Myrin, don’t—” Ilira was saying.
Then the crystal shot through with veins of black lightning, and she knew horror.
He threw back his head and laughed at the woman’s pathetic mewls for mercy. Mercy seemed very much outside the bounds of possibility just at the moment.
“This has been an amusing game, once-apprentice,” Orbakh the Night King said. “But truly, I’d have expected more from one of the Blackcloak’s finest students.”
The young woman moaned and tried to rise, her blue hair lank and bloody against her face, but the darkness Orbakh had conjured ripped through her body and she collapsed. She clutched at herself, fighting against agony from within and without. Her gown fell in tatters around her, unable to withstand his scything magic.
“I should have drained you dry the moment you came to me, would-be Incantatrix,” Orbakh said. “But how could I, when you had so much to teach me? You should consider it an honor to teach one who has forgotten more of the Art than you could ever hope to learn.”
He raised one gloved hand and his magic wrenched her off the ground. She gave a choked cry as she dangled from nothing, her limbs taut as though pulled by unseen forces. A fall of black blood gushed from her nose and dripped across her chin. Orbakh was not a slave to his urges, but just then, the little wench’s blood looked so delicious he couldn’t help licking his lips.
“Your suffering is almost ended, dear one—or, at least, your displeasure in it.”
He waved his hand, beckoning her toward him, and the obedient magic brought her gasping in his direction. His power pulled her arms and legs wide, and she floated spread-eagled in front of him. His assault had torn some of her clothing away, and her bare skin gleamed with the black arcane runes that were the legacy of her checkered upbringing.
“I promise you, treacherous child.” The Night King ran his fingers over her pert chin, loving the defiance on her face. “You will enjoy what befalls next.”
Myrin wrenched out of the vision once more into a world blazing with blue fire and crackling with black lightning. She stood at the center of a storm of rending, life-stealing magic: necromancy enhanced with spellplague. Her friends lay all around her, coughing and gasping as twisting winds lashed them with soul-draining, flesh-warping flames.
Myrin looked down at the crystal ball between her hands, from which the flames lashed like flares of the sun. Indeed, it was the same crystal she’d seen in her vision, but the sparks of blue she remembered had become a surging bonfire. It was as though she held a star between her hands, which radiated a whirlwind of death. The power came not from the crystal, however, but from Myrin herself. It flowed through her chest like a river of scalding blood.
It was a trap. The Night King had known what would happen when she touched the crystal ball. The magic she could resist, and yet …
And yet, she did not want to resist. As horrible as the memories were, she wanted them so very badly. That had been her—Myrin Darkdance, blue-haired and covered in black tattoos—fighting the Night King himself. She had seen the fight through his eyes and heard him call her something—Incantatrix. If only she had more: more memories, more clues, more …
Her friends were dying. Ilira wept at the pain, blood running from her eyes and mouth. Brace lay unmoving. Rujia moaned and shivered.
Myrin could not choose her memories over them—especially not Ilira. She looked sadly down at the crystal in her hands, with the memories and power it promised.
It was something she simply could not have.
Slowly, her soul protesting every tiny adjustment of her muscles, she pulled one hand away from the crystal. Her skin stuck to it as though seared in place, but she gritted her teeth against the pain. She brought her tingling hand down to her belt pouch and, fingers shaking, unbuckled it. Lilten’s orb pressed into her hand, radiating a soothing coolness. I
t had nothing like the power of the Night King’s crystal, but she hoped it could tip the balance.
Myrin spoke words she didn’t know—words that fell from her lips without conscious thought. She stared deeply into the orb, searching its cloudy blue interior for … there. She found a spark upon which she could focus.
Muscles straining, she brought the orb toward the crystal ball. Her arms were covered with azure tattoos now, and she could feel the markings creep up her shoulders and back.
After an agonizing effort, she touched the orb to the crystal with a tiny click. She did it again, then a third time with increasing rapidity until she hammered the orb against it over and over. Each time, it hurt her more and more. She struck again and again until finally a crack appeared. She hit it again, and cracks spider webbed across the surface of the crystal ball.
Soon all her strength was gone. Lilten’s orb fell from her hand, saved from shattering only when it bounced off her foot and rolled across the stone floor. Myrin moaned. It seemed she was going to get her memories after all.
Then a shadow rose before her, and a pair of gold eyes gleamed into hers.
“Ilira,” Myrin said.
The elf gave her a nod. Then she wrenched the crystal ball out of Myrin’s hands. The power roared into her, making her arch in pain, her hands shaking. Blood flew.
“Ilira!” Myrin cried. “Give it back. I—”
Even as she collapsed, the elf hurled the ball aside, and it shattered against the wall.
The magic roared. The haze of fire and lightning took on the visage of a man half laughing, half screaming. Then it was gone.
Myrin sank to her knees, utterly spent, next to Ilira on the floor. The wizard reached toward the elf’s face, but thought better of it. Instead, she laid her hand upon Ilira’s breast and put her ear close to her lips. The elf took a shallow breath, and as Myrin watched, the gold eyes fluttered open. The women exchanged a silent look of relief.
“Well, lay me to sleep, evil angel,” Brace murmured, rubbing his head. “A bit of warning, Lady Darkdance, when next you’re going to do sommat the like?”
Shadowbane: Eye of Justice Page 18