by T. A. Miles
The bones of the corpse Shalex had initially consumed lay several paces from those of the other two intended meals. Unlike its fellows, the first skeleton lay splintered, browned, and scattered. It looked like the remains of an animal attack, and at the same time, like something else altogether.
Korsten sat down beside her while Merran prodded the ashes with the end of his sword, and they both watched their fellow priest for a moment.
“He’s very thorough,” Tahlia commented.
Korsten gave a nod. “Yes, he is.”
“How long have you been working with him?”
“I’ve known him for over thirty years—as you recall, he was the one who brought me to Vassenleigh from Haddowyn.”
“Yes.” Tahlia offered a nod after the fact as she was made to recall also how rudely she may have handled their introduction. Korsten didn’t seem to be holding a grudge over it, which she was glad to discover. She had never been good at handling very sensitive people, in spite of many things.
“I trained for most of that time,” Korsten continued. “Some of it under Merran, but he still went out to hunt. He and I have only been hunting together since Lilende.”
“Not too long, then,” Tahlia summarized.
“Not too long.”
“Long enough to love each other,” she decided to say, bluntly. Veiling words were not a forte of hers.
Korsten’s pale cheeks betrayed him only a little. His answer was full surrender to the facts as they evidently were. “Long enough for that, yes.”
“So, Sharlotte left prematurely,” Tahlia said, not because Korsten’s involvement with another would have ended all option with a man like Ashwin—there were many within the Citadel who maintained romantic relationships with more than one person—but she suspected that Korsten was either young enough, or simply determined enough, to only want to keep one lover at a time.
Tahlia was old enough not to care what anyone elected to do, one way or the other. The Order had a peculiar way at aging people, which was to age them almost not at all. Physically, they were unaffected. Mentally, they grew in bounds that their association with war against men and demons demanded. Naivete and a lack of comprehension were simply not an option for any priest. On top of that, the learning of spells did happen to be a lengthy period of education, during which one could only excel if they were to become an effective priest. And the Order had no purpose for priests who were ineffective, hence training was both thorough and rigorous.
Emotionally was perhaps the most uncertain growth any of them underwent. Though they gained in numbered years, they gained no real distance from their past. At the same time, they accumulated new perception and understanding of people. They acquired insight that exceeded a person’s natural years, but they held onto instinct and reaction, as if they were still within a normal lifespan. Even the true ancients among them were capable of acquiring spontaneous feelings for someone, and of being injured by simple thoughtlessness. Simply put, no one of the Order grew above or beyond anything, save ignorance itself.
Tahlia had a talent for empathy, on two fronts. It was something she had little choice but to notice. The emotional growth of individuals was a helpless study at first, but it developed rapidly into an interest that she maintained. She was glad to have not changed at the core of herself. For a time, she harbored some worry that she might grow to be jaded or detached, all from acquiring too many years of life. It was Ashwin who first showed her that such did not have to be the outcome to extended life, though at first, she found herself questioning his actual years. She imagined that everyone underwent a period of that. It was a healthy reminder to be in the presence of someone who had so lately come out of it as Korsten.
“You’re doing well,” she decided to say.
Korsten thanked her with a smile, though his attention was partially caught on Merran, who seemed to have discovered something of interest.
“What did you find?” Tahlia called over to him.
Lifting the end of his sword, Merran displayed what he had plucked from the ashes. It was a ring of keys.
Tahlia frowned with immediate interest. “What are those for, I wonder?”
“Prison cells, maybe,” Korsten answered, feeding her suspicions as well as her hope.
While she could admit to the likeliness of Jhac’s or the others’ deaths, it was in no way anything that she wanted to live with.
•—•
Time was passing at an immeasurable rate.
It was decided, after they took a moment to breathe, following the fight with Shalex, that they should finish checking the area. None of them held any belief that they would find whoever had been dropping the bodies in the vicinity, else they would probably have shown themselves already. The lack of defiance or challenge—or hunger—suggested that the individual had not been one of the Vadryn. That meant that it was either a Morennish soldier who had been commanded to perform the deed by his general, who then ran in the face of three who were empowered to take down a demon; or it was someone taken or overly affected by the Vadryn, who had a strategic or personal reason as to why they did not wish to be discovered.
Korsten stood before a display of shelves, full of books with unreadable titles. He touched the spine of a random book, fingering the raised characters. Edrinor and Morenne barely had separate languages—mostly a variation in dialects—so the words must have belonged to an ancient form of the root language. It didn’t look like any of the ones he had come upon at the seminary library—belonging to the books that only the Superiors could open—but it still could have been related. Unfortunately, now was not the time to satisfy curiosity.
He stepped back from the shelves, looking the room over for any hidden places or entrances. An iron stairwell spiraled up to the second floor at one end of the room. Korsten went to it, his Lantern preceding him. It seemed doubtful that anything of immediate value would be found in a library, but at least he could carry on the search of the rest of the area from the second floor.
It was at the top of the stairs, where he discovered Merran, which contradicted his previous thought regarding valuable finds.
“Anything?” Merran asked.
“No.” Korsten left the spiraling staircase and joined his partner at the railing. “I think staying here is only going to keep us easily where Endmark or another of his agents can find us when he’s ready.”
“I agree. Let’s try to cover more ground, if Tahlia hasn’t found anything.”
Merran led the way to the second-floor exit. A spike of presence lanced coldly through Korsten’s blood before they fully remerged onto the balcony, inspiring him to look behind him, back into the library. On the wall opposite the door, he descried a texture that was neither drapes nor the shadows of shelving and other furniture. It appeared a gauzy mist and wasn’t entirely unfamiliar, owed to his recent dream. Only a few seconds of scanning the drifting surface let him find the outline of the eye. He closed the door in the moment the lids were separating. A flash of red striations raked across his mental vision and he stood for a moment with his hand on the latch.
“Endmark,” Korsten said, before Merran had to ask, if he was going to. His partner appeared ready for confrontation or flight.
Under the circumstances, Korsten was inclined to the latter. Since nothing was happening immediately, the demon might not have been provoked enough to attack them.
“We should leave,” he said to Merran.
Merran agreed, and they quickly located Tahlia. She was just coming down the corridor from another doorway.
“That last door leads out into the main passage,” she told them, attempting to analyze their quickened pace. “What is it?”
“We’re being closely watched here,” Korsten told her.
Tahlia required no further explanation and fell in step with them.
They left the area promptly. Korste
n understood that they were likely being guided in some fashion. The demon would not have knowingly allowed them to roam its perceived domain otherwise. There could have been any of a number of reasons for that, one of them including the possibility of an invading force that would shortly arrive to deal with not only them, but the remains of Endmark. There would be no one in place to properly defend the town in that event and the Morennish army would have a clear path south, with no support from the already conquered towns to either side of it. Once again, the Borderlands would extend, further into Edrinor.
•—•
A corridor with dark panels brought them to an intersection of passages. A circular pool stood at the center of the large junction, though the water within it was bracken. Though the basin was shallow, it was virtually impossible to see through to the floor of it. Whatever ornamental plants or animals may have once lived in it were long past living within such an environment.
Merran touched Korsten’s arm in an effort to redirect his interest, should his curious partner attempt to see too far beyond the surface. Whether or not Korsten meant to, he was easily diverted by the sight of a pair of arcing double doors at the end of the passage to their right. The relief work that crowned the peak of the entryway was intact and clean, suggesting attention had lately been given to it. And that, in turn implied that someone might have been frequenting or occupying whatever room or rooms lay beyond.
It was Merran’s hope that they had not been run to the center of a demon’s maze. Still, there were two other options in terms of directions they could take. Merran indicated the passage directly ahead of them.
They moved quietly across the intersection and down the passage, where they came upon a shallow set of stairs that brought them to a carpeted room with two exits. One led to another pair of doors similar to those they had just decided to avoid. The other was the continuation of the corridor, straight across from where they stood.
It was decided that they would proceed down the passage.
Before long, they were met with another stair, this one fuller and curling downward. Movement near the base inspired all three of them to halt. Merran’s hand was on the hilt of his sword when the face of a young-looking woman in white peered around the curve of the stairwell at them. Straight brown hair was fashioned mostly down and leaned with her while she tried to position herself for a better view. Recognition struck belatedly, drawing their fellow priest fully onto the steps.
“Syndel,” Tahlia breathed, then rushed down to meet their colleague. She embraced her tightly. “Thank the gods, you’re alive. Where are Jhac and Herrel, and the soldiers?”
“We’ve tried looking for the others,” Syndel explained. Her long eyebrows drew a stitched line of worry over her large blue eyes. Her knee-length white tunic was marred with color that didn’t belong to it—some of it dirt, some of it blood. The silvery-gray leggings and boots had suffered similarly, indicating that she had been affected by the enemy’s portal spell in the same way that Tahlia had. “It’s been difficult with Endmark present.”
“We’ve already come across him,” Korsten said while taking the steps down.
His words and his approach drew a glance from Syndel. “He’s one of the ancient masters. I’m certain.”
“Hell’s depths,” Tahlia complained.
“This castle seems to be exactly that,” was Syndel’s response.
“Who’s with you?” Merran asked.
“Jhac,” she answered, which drew a sound of relief from Tahlia. “He’s injured very badly. I’ve tried to keep him from overexerting himself, but I’m not a healer.”
In the process of Korsten looking back at him, Merran said, “I am.”
•—•
Jhac was being kept in what was tantamount to a storage closet. There were vats of unknown content and quantity throughout the space; on shelves, upon stands, sometimes sitting on the floor. They were all lidded and opaque, preserving the mystery of them. An assortment of other items filled the room, though still left sections of the stone floor open enough to be traversed without risk of knocking into anything. It was upon a stone platform where Tahlia’s partner shared space with wooden pallets and a few canisters and boxes.
It wasn’t a bad hiding place. They would undoubtedly have been found eventually, by sheer accident, but it was perhaps nowhere anyone within the fortress would consider looking immediately with the intention of finding a pair of priests, whose missing status may or may not have been known to their unwanted hosts. With the manner in which the resident lord was watching over his claimed space, it seemed doubtful that they had gone completely unnoticed.
“Exactly what happened?” Korsten asked, lingering near the front part of the storage area with Syndel, so that Merran could attend to Tahlia’s partner without too many bodies crowding around him. Tahlia was the one to loiter over Merran’s shoulder, which was precisely where Korsten would have been, had Merran been in a similar predicament.
“The spell passed over us, like an ash cloud described in stories of cataclysm,” Syndel answered. “It was all a painful blur. I couldn’t decide whether I was falling or drowning. We had no opportunity to defend ourselves, though Jhac tried to cast Barrier. I think, when the force came against it, the Barrier collided into Tahlia and threw her off the path. At the same time, it twisted Jhac around. I think he’s torn or stretched muscles. It hurts him quite a lot to move, even long afterward, but that isn’t the actual problem.”
“What is?”
Syndel hesitated. Looking up at Korsten, she asked, “Have you seen the eye yet?”
“Yes.”
“When we first saw it, Jhac pushed me from its view. It lurched from the wall, as if it would take fuller form. Jhac instinctively moved away from it, but his only exit was a balcony railing. Quickness is a prominent talent of his, and he tried reflexively maneuvering himself to safety, but his previous injury hampered him. A part of the railing broke and, though he caught himself, he drove a shaft of wood through his side.”
“Endmark could have taken him then, and didn’t,” Korsten observed.
“It would seem that way,” Syndel admitted.
“How did the two of you come to be separated from the others to begin with?”
“The portal brought us to a long corridor with rough walls. Men and animals were instantly enclosed in the space, like sheep. Many were injured by the transfer, some had died. I had lost track of Herrel in the chaos, but Jhac took hold of me at some point. He dragged me into a hole in the floor and we fell into water.”
“The river?”
“Yes. Its flow is gentle and our captors didn’t seem to notice our departure. We thought about following it outside, but Jhac’s injury was hindering him, and when we realized we had been neutralized, we doubted we would get far on foot. We were forced to wait for him to recover somewhat. While he did that, I began to search around and learned things.”
“We know where the others are,” came a new voice, one that was smooth in a way that warmed the senses.
Korsten looked over at a man who was quite lean. He wore a black jerkin, and trousers with short boots. Hair the color of a winter sun was queued at the base of his neck. Long eyes with a narrow set glowed green beneath a pale brow and, worrying around his head and shoulders, was a dragonfly so white it appeared made of crystal.
Seeing Jhac’s soulkeeper inspired Korsten to look deliberately for Syndel’s. He spotted the brown butterfly camouflaged amid the smudges within the lower folds of her tunic. Without question, it was largely owed to the soulkeepers that the demons within the fortress struggled to locate any of them from one moment to the next. Without the obvious presence of a soul to draw the Vadryn, they could not hunt them, like hounds on the scent of blood.
And that was the notion that reminded Korsten fully that he was the exception to that, owed to both Allurance and the potential of Song. In sp
ite of Analee’s efforts, his blood would continue to call out, and entice. He had no idea if there would ever be a way to fully control that, but their present circumstances seemed to demand that they come up with a plan to counteract it, lest he unintentionally undermine their efforts to stay hidden from and ahead of their enemies.
“Those keys—at least one of them—belong to the butcher’s domain,” Syndel was saying. Merran had brought out the ring of keys he found on Shalex. “We can use them to learn exactly what that means, though we suspect its where all the others are being kept …possibly killed, with a title like that. The only problem is Endmark himself. He’s impossibly alert to movement from one room to the next.”
“I think it’s possible that he’s more alert now,” Korsten said, drawing a quick look from Merran.
Syndel didn’t wait for an explanation. “He’ll never allow us near the captives. He may even come to confront us soon, now that Shalex is gone. Also, there’s still the boy …”
“The boy?” Tahlia asked.
“Alsaide,” Jhac replied. “The poisoner, some have called him.”
“I know who he is,” Korsten said.
“He’s one to watch out for,” Syndel continued with a nod. “But he does sooner run from direct conflict than face it. I startled him once. Thankfully, I had regained enough use of my spells to imply that he might have to fight in order to bring me in. He left.”
“Probably to tell of your presence,” Tahlia inserted.
“We’ll contend with him if it comes to it,” Merran decided. “Let’s see to the others first.”
“And Endmark?” Syndel asked.
“I’ll go to him,” Korsten volunteered, because it was time, and he suspected they had already gone by the place they would find the demon—or the man affected by one.