The Tattooed Duchess (A Fire Beneath the Skin Book 2)

by Victor Gischler

  “No.” Rina shook her head slowly, her eyes not leaving his. “I don’t want anything to do with destiny. I make my own choices and live with them.”

  “Or die by them,” Krell said. “I would reconsider if I were you, Duchess. Time is running out.” Krell waved his hand.

  The fog rushed in from all sides to surround her. Rina’s world was reduced to gray mist, no sign of clearing, temple, or priest. She was turned around in seconds, clueless as to which way to go.

  The red eyes came toward her.

  She turned and ran, cold fear gripping her, bare feet splashing in mud. Rina didn’t dare turn to look. Whatever pursued her cast a sense of dread ahead of it. Her legs and arms felt heavy. The harder she ran the slower she went, and the thing chasing her was upon her now, right behind, within arm’s reach. She couldn’t turn to look, wouldn’t allow herself to see it, braced herself to be struck from behind, torn apart. She could barely move. She opened her mouth to scream but couldn’t.

  I’m going to die. It’s going to catch me.

  She opened her mouth to scream one more time. It caught in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Something heavy pressed down on her chest. The sense of dread was overwhelming her, everything going black . . .

  ***

  Rina sat up in bed, gasped, gulped for air. She was drenched in sweat. Her gloved hand went to a spot between her breasts. Her heart beat so hard, it hurt her chest. She shook, panted, eyes blinking to adjust to the darkness of her bedchamber. The embers burned low in the fireplace.

  A dream, but of course Krell had admitted as much.

  But not just a dream.

  She reached out to the empty space in bed next to her.

  Where’s Alem?

  She’d drifted off the night before, waiting for him. After several nights apart, she’d hoped to have his company for the evening. She just wanted him next to her, to sleep peacefully. Gant, Klarissa, even the king all wanted something from her. With Alem she didn’t have to be duchess. She was just Rina.

  And now this dream with High Priest Krell? What do I know about the gods? Dumo help me, how did I get into this? Where are you when I need you, Alem?

  Then she remembered.

  He’d be helping Tosh and the others with the horses, seeing them off. The king’s envoy and most of the other nobility would still be sleeping off last night’s revelry, and that’s just what Rina wanted. The fewer who saw Tosh leave the better. Not that a small group of people leaving Klaar on a short journey was particularly noteworthy, but the fewer who knew, the better. Innocent questions often led to more awkward ones.

  A soft light flickered into existence across the room, pale and cold and blue.

  For a second Rina thought something had followed her from her dream. She stepped back, tapped into the spirit, and calmly regarded the expanding light. It slowly took shape becoming a person. A woman.

  Talbun hovered like a ghost, a transparent apparition, her edges drifting into mist. Rina felt sure she could pass a hand right through her.

  “I always wondered what Weylan had in his spell books,” Talbun said. “I couldn’t resist trying out a few things. Also, we need to talk, and this is easier than going up and down all those stairs in the prayer tower.”

  Rina released her hold on the spirit. “If you have something to tell me, go ahead.”

  “It’s something I need to show you,” the wizard said. “Weylan kept a journal of his research. I think you should come up here.”

  Great. So I have to climb all the stairs instead.

  “Let me get dressed, and I’ll be up as soon as I can.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “There are instructions and likely a stencil for a tattoo in the Great Library of Tul-Agnon.” Talbun gestured at the book on the table in front of her. “If Weylan is to be believed.”

  “What?” Rina rapidly circled the table to read the book over the wizard’s shoulder. She squinted at the pages. They were unreadable, at least to her. At first she thought simply that Weylan’s penmanship was unreadable, but she looked again and saw the entries were written in some unfamiliar foreign tongue.

  “It’s ancient Fyrian,” Talbun explained.

  “And of course you’re fluent in ancient Fyrian,” Rina said.

  “Of course,” Talbun said with no hint of irony. “The mystic arts are said to have originated in Fyria. All wizards read and write it, so we can communicate with one another.”

  “You talk shop in ancient Fyrian.”

  “That’s a tad glib,” Talbun said, “but yes.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It’s a little hard to follow,” Talbun said. “These are obviously notes to himself. It’s not a book meant to be read by others. Studying the tattoos was obviously his passion for many years. He’d been collecting rumors and stories and legends, anything that might lead to another tattoo or hint at its location. It makes sense, really.”

  “Why would he be so obsessed?”

  “Because Weylan could ink the Prime,” Talbun said. “There are other wizards like me who have power tattoos. Or your gypsy friend who put those feathers at the corners of your eyes. These tattoos are rare enough, but they mean nothing without the Prime, and Weylan might have been the last wizard alive who knew the secret.” She cast her eyes over the pile of books. “I’ve only just started going through his possessions. I was hoping to find something about inking the Prime. No luck so far, and I have to go slowly. A number of the books are spell-trapped.”

  “Yeah,” Rina said flatly. “I’ve unfortunately had some experience with that.”

  “I’m pretty sure if we studied Weylan’s books carefully, we could locate a half dozen power tattoos.”

  Rina’s heart skipped with excitement, and that excitement worried her. She didn’t want to want more tattoos.

  But she did.

  Weylan warned me. He said the power was seductive.

  “Not that we have the time to chase them to the four corners of the world,” Talbun continued. “But this tattoo is different.” She tapped a word in the middle of a page.

  Rina squinted at it. Kataar.

  The word meant nothing to her.

  “You’ll have to translate that for me.”

  “I can’t,” Talbun said. “It’s not Fyrian, and I’ve never seen the word before. But it’s what Weylan calls one of the tattoos.”

  “What’s so special about it?” Rina asked. “Would it let me fly or something?”

  “It’s not that it grants some specific power. That’s not what caught my attention,” Talbun said. “It’s more that it seems very relevant to our current problem.”

  There’s a tattoo that keeps the king from wanting me to marry his grandnephew?

  No. Obviously not. Wait, did she mean . . . ?

  “I had a dream last night,” Rina said. “More of a visitation, really. From a high priest of the Cult of Mordis.”

  Talbun’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me.”

  Rina related the dream, every detail. Talbun interrupted a few times for clarifications. When Rina had finished, the wizard looked troubled. She stood, walked to a window, looking out of it silently.

  Finally, Talbun turned and asked, “Are you sure? It wasn’t just a normal dream?”

  “I’m not sure of anything,” Rina admitted. “But I had an . . . awareness. I knew I was in a dream, and the priest admitted as much. He told me one epoch was ending and that another was about to begin.”

  Then Rina saw something she’d never seen before. Talbun afraid.

  “What do you know of the Mage Wars?” the wizard asked.

  “What everyone says.” Rina shrugged. “Powerful wizards dueling for power. Does it ever change? One crown and too many men who want to wear it.”

  “Some think the Mage Wars were all about the gods,” Talbun said. “Some say there were those who invented a new magic to oppose the gods themselves. And they were in turn opposed by those loyal to the gods. The entire war was reli
gious, some think.”

  Rina shook her head. “That’s . . . impossible.” The tattoos made her powerful, fast, strong, but mighty enough to take on a god? Ridiculous.

  “It will take more study,” Talbun said. “But the great library of Tul-Agnon is more than just a repository of books. It’s an ancient structure from the last age. The lower levels housed works used mostly by university scholars and students. The upper levels are off limits to all but select researchers. If there’s anywhere in the world one might find an ancient relic powerful enough to battle the gods, it would be there.”

  “Thank you for that bit of trivia,” Rina said. “I’m sure it will be very useful information. For somebody else.”

  “Count Becham and the royal envoy leave tomorrow for the capital,” Talbun said. “We can travel with them that far then continue on to Tul-Agnon ourselves.”

  Rina groaned. This was all too much. “Why is it up to us to do anything about this? I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t want—”

  With a crack like thunder the tower’s roof was ripped away in a ball of flame.

  Rina and Talbun dove to the floor, hands and arms going over their heads as debris rained down on them, fragments of stonework and dust and splintered wood. A scorched roof beam landed with a clatter six inches from Rina’s head.

  The women staggered to their feet in the center of a circle of ruined stonework. A cold wind whistled past them, tugging at hair and clothing, smoke swirling.

  “What happened?” Rina shouted over the wind.

  Talbun scanned the sky then pointed. “There.”

  It dropped out of the clouds, the morning sun glinting off its scales. It wheeled, spreading its wings, and Rina got a good look at it. The head was long like a horse’s, but flatter, with rows of spiky teeth. A long snakelike body with two short legs at the back end, a long barbed tail trailing behind. A three-fingered claw at the end of each wing. A ridge of stumpy spikes down its spine. Its scales gleamed like metal, bright green along its back and fading to white on its belly. It was bigger than a wagon.

  Bigger than some cottages she’d seen in lowland villages.

  It finished its turn and dove for them.

  “A dragon,” Rina said in awe.

  “No. The great dragons are extinct,” Talbun said. “This is a mountain wyvern from the west.”

  Rina shot her a scowl. “This is no time to split hairs!”

  The wyvern pulled up at the last moment, its great flapping wings buffeting the women, almost knocking them over. It opened its mouth, hunched up its back.

  “It’s going to breathe fire again,” Talbun said.

  “What?” Rina shrieked. “That sounds bad.”

  “It is.”

  Talbun flung out a hand and mumbled quick arcane syllables. Scorching pink light flew from her fingertips and struck the wyvern in the face. The beast’s head flinched back and up as it belched fire, the gout of flame shooting straight up into the air.

  From below, the wyvern’s barbed tail swung up fast like the tip of a coachman’s whip. It crashed through the tower’s stonework and wooden floor. Both women lost their footing and found themselves tumbling through the air, screaming, the ground coming up at them so very fast.

  EPISODE FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Even with the late departure, the streets of Back Gate were nearly deserted. Few saw them, the horses clopping along the cobblestones in the early gray, a somber pall still hanging over them after Prinn’s death. Alem had known her slightly, but Tosh and the other women had known her since the Wounded Bird days, and they sat in the saddle, shoulders slumped, heads down. The guards waved them through the Back Gate, and they started the slow, winding journey down the Small Road.

  The seven of them traveled single file and in silence. Tosh rode at the head of the line, followed by Maurizan and Alem. The woman behind him was named Viriam. Alem knew her only vaguely. The other three women were new to him. Lureen was tall, slim hips, almost boyish but with a striking face, clear skin, and eyes so blue and bright they seemed to glow. Her hair, black as midnight, was woven into a tight braid and fell to the middle of her back. The twins were called Kalli and Nell, blond and pretty in an ordinary way. Alem was given to understand they were something of a tag-team attraction when they’d worked at the Wounded Bird, although they were no longer quite identical, Kalli bearing a scar down the left side of her face from the battle to drive out the Perranese.

  The solemn troop rode without talking for another hour, the wind and the quiet clank of armor and weapons the only sounds.

  When the road widened enough for two horses to walk side by side, Alem spurred his mount and pulled alongside Maurizan.

  “I didn’t invite myself along just to upset you,” Alem said. “I promise.”

  She kept her eyes forward, chin up. “You can’t upset me. Not anymore because I don’t care what you do or where you go.”

  “All I mean is that if we’re going to travel together, it’s probably best for everyone if we get along,” Alem said. “We can be courteous.”

  Now she did turn to him, eyes hard. She pitched her voice low for just the two of them to hear, but there was an intensity that made Alem wince. “Listen to me, stable boy. If I say something or act in a way that seems impolite to you, then that’s just too fucking bad. I’m not interested. I don’t have any cordial small talk for you. No pleases or thank-yous. Are we clear?”

  Alem swallowed hard. “Clear.”

  He spurred his horse ahead to ride beside Tosh. “You catch any of that?”

  “Enough,” Tosh said. “You must’ve done a number on her.”

  “It’s a long story,” Alem said.

  “Never mind. I can guess most of it anyway,” Tosh said. “You know what I said about sleeping with one eye open?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Better make it both eyes.”

  Alem forced a smile. “Great.”

  “I would give you some advice about women.”

  “But?”

  “But I don’t know shit.” Tosh shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Okay if I change the subject?”

  “Please.”

  “How far do we go today?”

  Tosh tugged an earlobe, thinking. “I don’t want to camp in the mountains. Warmer down below. We’ll see how much daylight is left when we hit the valley floor.”

  The road circled back along the mountain and afforded a partial view of Klaar, the tops of the tallest towers. Alem wondered if he’d ever return, then reminded himself not to be so melodramatic. Maybe all he really needed was some time away to think, time to let it sink in that Rina was getting married and that was just how it was going to be. What he’d do in the immediate future was still a toss-up. Maybe in Kern he could find work or—

  He blinked. Something had move rapidly across the sky over Klaar, but he’d only seen a blur. Too big for a bird. Too fast for a wisp of cloud. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.

  A ball of fire followed by a distant boom.

  All heads turned at once, looking back toward Klaar.

  Tosh stood in the saddle, eyes squinting. “What in blazes was that?”

  “The prayer tower,” Alem said. “It just exploded.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Rina and Talbun tumbled among the debris from the ruined prayer tower and plunged, the ground below spinning and approaching far too rapidly, cold wind whipping past them. Rina tapped into the spirit, and her mind cleared, the panic caused by her imminent impact evaporating.

  Okay, assess the situation. What can you do?

  The short answer was not a damn thing. She was falling and would keep falling until she hit with a splat. Part of her urgently wanted to feel pure stark fear about this fact, but she kept fear at bay. If she survived the fall, the healing rune would eventually put her back together, but the odds of surviving a fall from the prayer tower—the tallest tower in the city—were outlandish. The obvious conclusion was t
hat she would now die.

  I always think that I’m about to die these days. It’s getting old.

  This entire thought process blazed through her mind in the merest fraction of a second.

  Rina felt a hand grab her wrist. She turned to see a wide-eyed Talbun, the wizard’s mouth working rapidly to spit out some spell.

  The world blurred for a moment, and their descent slowed to almost nothing halfway down the tower. They were still falling but like a feather now. “That spell. You made us lighter somehow, didn’t you?”

  “No.” Talbun’s face was still a mask of fear. “We’re in a time bubble. We’re still falling just as fast. When we hit, we’re dead.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s no time to explain.”

  “We’re in a time bubble, but there’s not enough time to explain?”

  “Shut up and listen!” Talbun shouted. “It’s the only spell I thought might help. I’ve bought us time—a small amount of time—to think of something. So think of something!”

  “Take off your dress,” Rina said. “Rip it into strips. Not too thin.”

  There was slight hesitation, but then Talbun obeyed. Rina did the same, and soon both women were falling in their shifts. As Rina tied the torn strips of her dress together, she searched the face of the tower until she found what she wanted, an outcropping with a gargoyle carved into the stone.

  She finished tying the strips of the dress together. She tied a loop in one end. Rina pulled Talbun close to her. “Hang on to me and don’t let go.”

  “The spell is about to give out,” Talbun warned.

  “Just do it!”

  Talbun held on tight.

  As they passed the gargoyle, Rina tossed the looped end of the makeshift rope over it. She wrapped the other end of the fabric around her arm three times and gripped it with all of her strength. Her other arm went around the wizard.

  “Brace yourself for a jolt,” Rina said.

  Talbun opened her mouth to say something, but that’s when the spell expired. They were immediately falling at full speed again.