“I hate Wise Ones,” Lucas growled.
“You hate everyone.” Acacia glanced at the scarred man.
“I liked the Nuthaanian.”
“So did I.”
Forty-five
TWO CLOAKED FIGURES bent their heads together, creating a barrier against the wind and sleet. The mare stepped to the side, uneasy. Rashk steadied her restless mount before uncurling her fingers, checking the skree’s direction.
The stone arrowhead floating above her palm pulsed with runes, spinning aimlessly. “The storm,” Rashk hissed to her companion.
Thira’s lips moved, but her words were lost to the Rahuatl. With a decisive hand, Thira wove runes in the air, and swept them aside dismissively. They swirled to life and the wind subsided, snow drifted to the ground instead of slantwise into their faces.
Rashk did not know what Thira wove, but then there was so much about the woman that she did not understand. Knowledge and mystery, however, went both ways—Thira did not understand Rune-etching, only weaves and potions.
The skree stopped spinning, pointing solidly towards the sea and the group of manors perched on the hill. Rashk was not surprised. She curled her numb fingers around the skree, feeling the pillaged strands of hair wrapped around its weight.
Thira nudged her horse forward, oblivious to the cold, while Rashk shivered beneath her heavy fur poncho. The Rahuatl was not made for the north. The jungles of Rraal ran through her veins, not the Frozen Wastes.
The skree led the two women to white-washed walls and a heavy gate. Rashk hissed the Lore, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, what was dormant became visible. Runes scrolled over the tall walls of the manor, guarding Tharios’ estate.
Rashk uncurled her fingers again, checking the skree’s tip. It quivered at the gates. She frowned at the wards, and looked to Thira. The woman never had any scent, save for tea and dog; therefore, Rashk could not sense a thing from the Mistress of Novices. The lack of a scent made Rashk uneasy, made her want to gut the old woman and peek inside her body to see what made her tick.
“Are you sure, Rashk?” Thira asked.
“The skree does not lie. Are you sure you gave me the right hairbrush?”
Thira raised a sharp eyebrow. “The hairbrush was in Morigan’s rooms. So it is hers unless someone snuck into her chambers to use the brush, or for some fanciful reason, switched brushes. I think that highly doubtful, don’t you?”
“Maybe Morigan is visiting Tharios.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Rashk,” Thira snapped, dismounting. “I’m already surrounded by enough dim-witted fools.”
“Look at those wards,” Rashk thrust her chin towards the walls. “What are you going to do, walk up to the gate and knock?”
“What else would I do?”
Rashk hissed. “Hunters do not shout into a Reaper’s lair.”
“Oh, but I do, and I yell very loudly.” Thira set Crumpet down, and the useless animal shivered in the snow as his Mistress crooned over his poor little paws.
“We should speak with the Lord General.”
“And tell Ielequithe what, precisely?” Thira looked up at the Rahuatl. “That Marsais’ spymaster betrayed him, chased him from the castle, framed him with Bloodmagic, and that the current Archlord may or may not be a mad Bloodmagus holding a healer prisoner? Should we ask her to ever so politely interrupt the Nine’s Council so she can interrogate the Archlord?”
Rashk ran her forked tongue across her teeth in irritation.
“Stay if you like,” Thira said, opening her long coat and selecting a slim vial from a pocket. “You have found Morigan, as I asked of you, nothing more is needed.”
The Rahuatl eyed Thira, who was weaponless, save for her potions. She had the look of an old one who intended to walk into the jungle and never return.
“We should find a secret way,” Rashk said by way of answer. “A hunter strikes from the shadows.”
“Unless you are a Mammoth with the disposition of a Pomeranian.” Thira poured the vial down Crumpet’s throat, and the furball lapped at the liquid greedily. When the vial was empty, Thira swung onto her horse, and urged it towards the gate, leaving Rashk with a transforming dog. The swirl of runes was powerful, the light blinding, and the shape that emerged—mammoth.
The ground shook, the furry beast reared, and Rashk’s horse jumped back, dancing away from the tusked horror.
“Come along, Crumpet,” Thira called
As the earth shook with Crumpet’s gait, Thira summoned the Lore, weaving a Barrier of runes around her pet.
Rashk abandoned her horse, and sped after the charging mammoth, drawing her kukri from its sheath. Alarms rose, guards shouted, and thunder bellowed as Crumpet slammed his tusks into the gate, triggering a chain reaction of wards. Lightning struck the mammoth, but bounced harmlessly off, reeling into the night. Crumpet charged the guards with a bellow.
Rashk hurried through the ruins of the gate, keeping to shadow and silence as Thira trotted on Crumpet’s heels, cloaked in a swirl of runes and protective Barriers. Arrows zipped though the air, and Rashk moved quickly, slipping behind the crossbowmen. Her blade struck kidneys, quick and brutal, dropping three guards in agony.
A clash of runes rose from the center of the courtyard as a Wise One challenged Thira. The Mistress of Novices deflected the weave, sending it hurling back at the foolish Wise One. With a flash of energy he dropped dead. A stream of guards flowed from all corners and Crumpet greeted them with a clash of tusk against flesh and crushing hooves.
A guttural chant pricked the Rahuatl’s sensitive ears. Bloodmagic. Rashk hurled herself to the side as a wave of darkness washed over the courtyard. The earth continued to shake, the blind mammoth rampaged, and Rashk landed, coming up in a crouch, ears straining. A hunter did not need her eyes. Unfortunately, another hunter had his.
A lash of energy bit her arm, and Rashk rolled, summoning the Lore, pressing her palm to the earth, listening between strike of thunder and lashing runes, to the slight tremor of footsteps. She twisted, and threw her kukri. The enchanted blade spun end over end, a deadly swish of steel in the darkness. She heard a grunt, and followed in its wake, surging towards the noise, ducking beneath a sword’s edge. With a shout, her blade returned, slapping into her palm in time to bite flesh again.
The darkness lifted with the Bloodmagus’ death, and Rashk stood over the body of Victer. She sneered down at the traitor.
Thira was also off her horse, and Crumpet romped around the courtyard, charging anything that moved. The rail thin woman stepped over a corpse and joined Rashk. Thira finally had a scent: revulsion.
“If there is one thing I hate more than a Bloodmagus, it is a Wise One who turned towards the despicable practice,” Thira said, and then added, as if the grievance were worse than Bloodmagic, “Victer was an uninspiring apprentice.”
Rashk scanned the ravaged courtyard and the lights glowing from the manor house. When no apparent threats revealed themselves, she removed the skree from its pocket and opened her hand. The stone pointed down.
Thira eyed the ground around Victer, following the obvious footprints in the grass, leading to an unexceptional outhouse. The two women walked to the structure and Thira summoned the Lore, studying it with an arcane eye that revealed nothing more. She opened the door and they walked into a garden shed.
Something crashed outside, and Rashk looked out. Crumpet was applying himself to the manor house. She would never again think of that dog as useless.
Thira made a slow circuit of the shed, walking around its center, and then she stopped, tapping her foot. “Bloodmagi are clever. They leave elaborate temples for the Blessed Order, making them difficult, but not impossible to find. So the Blessed Order always looks for the grand, while the real enclaves are overlooked for their modesty.” Thira withdrew a thin stiletto, and pricked her finger, letting a single drop fall into the earth. A squarish void materialized at their feet.
Thira gathered up her skirts and step
ped into the void. Rashk followed on her heels, tightening her claws around the kukri.
The air was cold, colder than the air above. Ice clung to the stone and steps, coating the underground lair with crystal brilliance. A creaking, rasping rhythm echoed off the stone, raising the Rahuatl’s hackles. Something fathomless and ancient drew a restless breath and Thira stopped, listening.
“What has he done,” the woman breathed at length. With the next breath, she summoned the Lore, weaving a powerful ward. Thira tapped Rashk. Needles prickled her skin, crawling under flesh, and the Rahuatl’s heart spasmed as if she had plunged into a frozen lake.
“It will pass.”
When Rashk found her breath, Thira moved forward into the tunnel, following the widening course. The ice flowed into a massive ritual chamber and a terror from time immortal. Rashk stepped back into the passage. A monstrous elemental creaked in the chamber’s center, pulsing with red and blue energy, straining against its runic chains.
Thira stiffened her spine, and stepped into the chamber, skirting the walkway and the elemental. The skree led them down a side passage, into cages and frozen corpses, and eventually, to a dungeon set apart from the rest.
A crossbow bolt zipped down the hallway, hitting Thira in the throat before bouncing harmlessly off her armor weave. In answer, Thira hurled a weave. The attacker clutched his throat, choking and gasping for air. Rashk stepped up and rescued him from suffocation with the blade of her kukri. He fell over dead. She retrieved a set of keys and the women moved forward into a dungeon lined with metal doors and thrumming wards.
“I see prison has been good for you,” Thira said to a set of bars in a door.
“Thira,” Morigan said from inside. “And Rashk.”
Rashk bared her teeth at the portly woman. She looked unharmed and well rested.
The keys deactivated the wards. The lock clicked, the door swung open, and Morigan stepped out, nodding to the two women. “I certainly didn’t expect you, Thira.”
“If you had not let yourself be captured, I wouldn’t have had to come.”
Morigan snorted, caught the bony woman in a hug, and set her back just as quickly, before moving to the cell opposite. Rashk handed Morigan the keys.
A dark little boy stepped out of the cage, throwing his arms around the motherly healer. “I told you we’d find a way out, now didn’t I, Zoshi?” she pressed her lips to the boy’s filthy hair, and spoke over his head. “The boy saw Tharios use Bloodmagic, and Isek and Victer were the ones who captured us.”
“As I thought.”
Morigan moved to another cell, looked inside, and with a tight-lipped grimace put key to lock, rushing inside.
A battered, redheaded Nuthaanian woman was chained to the wall. Morigan knelt beside her, unlocking the chains. The Nuthaanian’s wrists were raw and bleeding and her lips were cracked.
“Get the water from my cell,” Morigan ordered. Rashk jumped to retrieve the jug, and Morigan pressed it to the Nuthaanian’s lips. She stirred, and drank.
“Get on your feet, Priestess,” Thira urged. “We need to leave at once.”
Morigan shot Thira a withering glare, but the order roused the priestess to her senses. She gulped down the jug of water, and stood, swaying unsteadily on her feet. The ring finger and pinky of her right hand was a bloody bandaged stump. Morigan put a shoulder under her.
“What are we going to do?” Morigan asked. “Tharios will know we’re free soon enough—if he doesn’t already.”
Thira plucked the empty jug from the ground. “We’ll inform the High Inquisitor, but I’ll not wait for his incompetence. Let us hope the Lord General is loyal to the Order and not Tharios.”
“And if she’s not?”
Thira frowned at the jug in her hands. “Then we’ll make sure and take them all with us into the ol’River.”
❧
There was no moon, only the wind and an endless swirl. Thira, Rashk, Morigan, Brinehilde, and Zoshi rode through the main gate, into the inner bailey.
Thira dismounted, tossed her reins to a stableboy, and mounted the steps. Lord General Ielequithe was waiting in front of the Storm Gates with a company of Isle Guards.
A sleek crow swept from its perch on a guardian statue and settled on Thira’s shoulder. She hushed Crumpet’s demanding squawk with a word. He hated being a bird, but instead of transforming him, she shooed him back to his safe perch.
“Lord General, I see my message was delivered.” Thira held her breath, and the jug in her hand, fearing the Lord General was here to arrest rather than aid.
“Your charges are not light, Mistress Thira,” The Lord General said. Dark-haired, sharp-eyed, and stern as a crag, Ielequithe did not waste time with pleasantries. Thira always worked well with the soldier.
“I have a witness,” Thira gestured to Zoshi.
“You will need more than a boy.”
“Morigan and the priestess were taken prisoner by Isek Beirnuckle and Victer along with a number of your own guard.”
A muscle in the Lord General’s jaw twitched.
“Rashk and I rescued them from Tharios’ manor house,” Thira explained. “From a Bloodmagus ritual chamber beneath his property. I’ve sent a message to the High Inquisitor.”
Ielequithe looked to each in turn, who nodded confirmation. Decided, she placed her helm on her shaven head, and nodded to her soldiers. They moved into formation.
“The Nine are in Council.”
“An excellent place to lay charges against the Archlord.”
The Lord General nodded her agreement.
Morigan breathed with relief, turned to a soldier, and told him to guard Zoshi.
“But I want to come,” the boy protested.
Morigan pushed him into a guard’s hand and the group passed the Storm Gates into the outer sanctum of the main hall. Thedus, naked and sunburnt, stood in the center, beneath the dome, gazing at the cycle of constellations blazing on the ceiling. He did not glance at the new arrivals. They passed beneath Lispen’s Folly—the churning whirlpool of chaotic energy—and barged into the Council Chambers of the Nine.
Tharios sat in the Archlord’s chair. Shimei Al’eeth, Isek Beirnuckle, Eldred, Yasimina, Tulipin, Sidonie, Eiji, and Taal Greysparrow sat around the massive stone table.
All eyes turned on the intruders with varying degrees of surprise, save Tharios, who smiled in greeting. “I was expecting you, Thira.”
“Your eyes and ears, I’m sure, are everywhere.”
“And yet you came willingly?”
The Nuthaanians behind her bristled, and the combined glares from the priestess and Morigan nearly seared a hole in the Archlord’s head.
Thira ignored Tharios, turning to the assembled Nine. “We have been fooled. Marsais and Oenghus were betrayed by Isek Beirnuckle, who was working with Tharios.”
Eldred’s dwarven brow furrowed, and Tulipin sputtered.
“Tharios used Bloodmagic,” Morigan added. “A boy witnessed a Blood Portal being opened, and he escaped, fleeing to Brinehilde’s orphanage. I was called to heal him, and we were captured there—ambushed by Isek and Victer and taken to Tharios’ ritual chamber.”
“What do you say to these charges, Archlord?” Ielequithe inquired.
Tharios spread his hands. “I admit to everything.”
All the Wise Ones save Isek and Tharios stood, backing away from their chairs and the accused. “You are under arrest,” the Lord General said, drawing her sword. “I suggest you come quietly.”
The guards fanned out.
“As with all things, let us put it to the Nine.” Tharios looked at the assembled Wise Ones. “Cast your say—shall I be removed as Archlord? All in favor?”
“Absolutely not,” Tulipin bristled so badly with outrage that his levitation weave faltered.
Eldred crossed his massive arms. “Tie Tharios’ limbs to a horse.”
Rashk scanned the remaining six—all silent. The Rahuatl smelled approaching death, her own.
> “Surely not all of you?” Morigan gasped. “Taal?”
“All opposed?”
All six raised their hands.
“You see, Lord General—I have the majority.”
“There is no room in this Order for Bloodmagi,” Ielequithe said, firmly.
Tharios stood, meeting her gaze across the expanse of stone. “We are not Bloodmagi, Lord General. We are Wise Ones who seek to restore this Order’s glory.”
Eiji smirked, a secretive little look.
“There is no glory at the end of your path,” Ielequithe said.
“Yours, I’m afraid, is at an end,” Tharios nodded to the soldiers, half of whom formed a protective ring around their Archlord. The other half took sides with their Lord General. “Most everyone has a weakness, Ielequithe, save you.”
Realization cracked her stony face. They were outnumbered and surrounded.
Tension lay heavy in the chamber. The guards were tense, the Wise Ones ready, but before Tharios could give the order, Thira pulled a trick from beneath her long coat.
“Here is your glory, Tharios,” she hissed. With a casual gesture, she hurled the clay jug onto the stone table. Pottery shattered, binding runes flared and swirled, and winter howled into the chamber.
Frost blasted the assembled, flinging them against the walls, stealing the air from their lungs and turning their veins to ice. Wise Ones and guards scrambled, fighting, one over the other to escape the frozen terror. Ice crawled over the great stone table of the Wise Ones Order. The elemental bellowed a freezing breath that cracked the stone beneath its foundations.
The timeless granite shattered, and the flowing words of the Order—We protect the past to safeguard the future—crumbled to frozen shards.
❧
The castle shuddered. Tharios slapped his palm against the stone and melted into the Archlord’s preparation chamber. He gasped, breathing warm air, and stumbled to the other side, pressing his palm against the marble.
“That crone,” he snarled.
King's Folly (Book 2) Page 36