I nodded.
“Good. Might I assume you had something to do with that?”
The flickering smile appeared and disappeared again, so quickly I thought I might have only imagined it.
“There is something to be said for consistency, for predictability, for the cautious and conservative approach at all times,” she said, by way of answer. “In Baranak’s case, that ‘something’ is called stubbornness. Lack of imagination. Stupidity, one might even say.”
I shrugged.
“So long as he keeps searching for me in places I am not.”
“Even so, I would defer any extended island vacations until later, Lucian. You are probably safe here for a day or so, but I would not linger beyond that.”
I nodded.
She stood and her white robes, catching the breeze, flared out from her, revealing more of her than I had expected to see. Quickly she pulled them in tighter. As always, with Alaria, I had no idea how intentional it had been.
“Until later, then,” she said.
I nodded, then hesitated.
“Say—how long have you known about my little island paradise, here?”
She snapped her fingers and a sparkling white portal flared into existence, tweaked by her power and her vanity into appearing as an ornate, full-length mirror.
“Oh, Lucian. Everyone knows about your island hideaway.”
Her rainbow eyes caught mine once more.
“If you are, in fact, missing some ‘stuff,’ as you say, then I would suggest it could have been any of two dozen different gods who took it. Or perhaps all of them.”
And with that, she stepped through the looking glass and vanished.
I reeled. All of them? I could not believe it. Everyone knew about this hideaway?
I kicked the sand at my feet. I had been out of circulation for a long time, but I had never suspected the others might start uncovering all of my old secrets in the interim. Malachek knew about one, and now Alaria claimed everyone knew about another. If they had all been compromised during my exile—if my private sanctuaries were all exposed and my hidden resources were long gone—my chances of redeeming myself were decreasing by the moment.
And where in the hell were the humans?
“She’s gone at last, then.”
I whirled.
At the top of the rise stood Arendal.
“Must be tourist season,” I muttered.
“You knew you could not long escape me,” he said. “I’m not Baranak, for crying out loud.”
I looked him up and down. His formerly immaculate, cream-colored suit was discolored with burn marks. One entire sleeve was nearly burned away. Dried blood covered half of his face.
“Those pilot lights can be a bitch to light, can’t they?” I said.
He shifted his silver cane from one hand to the other, then exerted a small fraction of the Power. His appearance and his clothing reverted to normal.
“I simply wanted you to see one of the reasons why I have become so put out with you,” he said.
I shrugged. We regarded one another in silence for a time.
“I should have known it was Alaria who let you out,” he said finally. “Under normal circumstances, I would have known. These are, of course, not normal circumstances.” He took a few steps down the hill towards me. “And I will say she’s been much better lately at avoiding my surveillance than in the past.”
I began forming tiny blue spheres on my fingertips once again.
“Maybe she did it,” I said. “The big ‘it,’ I mean.”
He snorted.
“At this point, I’m wondering if we will ever know who did it—or if that even matters,” he said. “The murders seem to have stopped. And the Power flows once more, so nothing short of a plunge into the Fountain can kill any of us now. And I, for one,” he added with a smirk, “have no intention of going anywhere near it.”
He stopped, now about twenty paces away from me, and began to draw figures in the sand with the tip of his cane. They appeared unfamiliar to me; but then, I had never attempted to augment my abilities through technical or mystical means, as everyone suspected Arendal had.
“I find myself sympathetic with the argument Turmborne advanced some time ago,” he said then. “All I really want at this point is stability; peace and quiet.” He smiled. “And I think things would be very quiet if you were in the dungeon. Or in the Fountain.”
I made ready to hurl my spheres.
“Before I take you back, however,” he said, “there is one matter I would like resolved.”
I said nothing, merely waiting.
“We’ve found all of your secret caches, as you have probably guessed by now.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to breathe evenly.
“Or so Baranak believes,” he continued.
I opened my eyes again.
“I am convinced we have missed at least one.”
“And why might that be?”
His eyebrows arched.
“Oh, just a hunch on my part, mostly,” he said. “The evidence is circumstantial, involving a variety of small clues—not least of which is the number of weapons we have recovered, as compared to what I believe you managed to construct or acquire before your rebellion.”
“Hm.”
“I believe you have a storeroom hidden somewhere. The biggest one of them all.”
“And this is why you did not want Turmborne taking me directly into custody,” I said.
It was not a question, and he ignored it.
“Further,” he said, “I believe you had weapons hidden there that Baranak has not even guessed exist.”
“And you want them—these hypothetical weapons—for purely altruistic reasons.”
He smiled. I really, really hated it when he smiled.
“So I am simply, obligingly going to tell you how to find this alleged hideaway.”
“That would be the preferred course of events, yes.”
I looked around again, frowned.
“Where are the humans, Arendal?”
“Just tending to that now,” he replied.
He completed whatever it was he had drawn in the sand, and the air above it crackled and popped. With a flash, the three humans appeared, hanging in the air, immobile, each about a foot above the ground.
“I believe I have located them,” he said. “Perhaps there is some finder’s fee, yes? No?”
I merely waited. I had some idea where he might be going with this and, truth be told, I had no idea how I might react before the end.
“Where to begin?” He sighed, studying the humans as if he was preparing to create a work of art, and they were to be his canvas. “Where to begin.”
He walked over to Kim. “Perhaps here?”
Raising his cane, he touched the shiny pommel to Kim’s left foot. Silver flames erupted first from the cane, then from the man’s boot. The flames raced up his shin, to stop just past his knee.
“Oh,” Arendal said, gesturing with his other hand. “You may speak.”
Kim screamed.
I scoffed. “Like I care.”
Arendal held the cane steady, studying his work carefully, clinically. He did not even look at me.
“I believe you do care,” he said, after several seconds had passed.
“You could not be more mistaken, Arendal.”
I watched the silvery flames rising further up Kim’s leg as the man writhed in pain.
“Do you remember who I am?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said, touching the cane to Kim’s other leg. More flames erupted. “I believe I am actually finding this more enjoyable simply because you are… who you are.”
I clenched my fists, trying to ignore Kim’s cries. The other two humans seemed completely immobilized—apparently, they could neither turn their heads nor speak.
“No need to invest all of my efforts in one place, of course,” Arendal said after a few more seconds.
I waited, breathing
evenly, spheres of concentrated energy swelling within my clenched fists.
Arendal moved to stand beside Cassidy, raising his cane again. The silver flames lashed out. The big man managed to endure the treatment stoically for a few seconds longer than Kim had but, eventually, inevitably, the screams erupted from his throat as well.
“You are just annoying me now, Arendal,” I told him. “I care nothing for these mortals, but they have done nothing to earn this treatment. It is disgraceful, and it is shameful for you to be engaged in it.”
Arendal ignored me, continuing to administer the flames to Cassidy’s legs. The man’s screams clawed at my mind—something I found somewhat surprising.
“I ask you again, Arendal. Do you not know who I am? This is stupid and foolish. You honestly believe that torturing mortals will provoke some sort of response from the dark lord?”
He did not reply. Instead, he stepped back from Cassidy, looked at Evelyn, then looked back at me.
“One left,” he said, his expression somewhere between anticipation and pleasure.
I glared at him.
He lifted the cane toward her.
Her eyes widened.
I hurled the spheres.
He jerked his cane up a split second too late, managing to deflect one of the energy globules away but allowing the other to score a direct hit. It exploded against his chest and hurtled him backwards, past the humans, where he rolled to a stop in the sand.
I was on him instantly, my fists meeting his face at least three times before he roared and shoved me back.
“You are utterly transparent,” he spat at me, climbing to his feet, his glasses shattered and hanging precariously from one ear. Absently he swatted them from his face, then drew another pair from a jacket pocket and put them on. “‘Dark lord’ indeed. You have become a joke! Everyone knows it.”
I feinted to my right and swung out with my left boot, taking his legs out from under him. I kicked him squarely in the gut as he strove to rise.
“Who’s a joke? Who?”
I kicked him in the face, sending him tumbling backward into the sand again. Blood sprayed from his nose.
He recovered more quickly than I had thought possible, and his hurled cane struck me in the chest with the force of one of Turmborne’s punches. Staggering back, I shook my head to clear my vision, then grabbed for the cane, where it lay in the sand before me.
“Oh, yes, please do pick that up,” he laughed.
Too late—I’d already grasped it. Electricity flared out of the cane and surged through my body. Gasping, choking, I stumbled backward. The cane slipped from my numbed fingers. I could no longer feel the middle portion of my body, and the rest of it was not in particularly great shape either. When I dropped limply to the sand, I scarcely knew it.
My pistol slipped from my belt when I hit. I watched it tumble away from me, utterly powerless to stop it.
Arendal bent over and picked up his weapon and mine. He examined the pistol for a few seconds and frowned.
“Where did you get this?”
“M—mine,” I gasped.
“A thousand years ago it was yours,” he barked back. “I saw Baranak take it from you after the battle, along with all the others. He destroyed all of your weapons—right there in the square, beneath the Fountain—so no one could ever use them to threaten the City again.” He moved to stand over me, glaring down. “How did you come by it now?”
I groaned. It was all I could do. I cannot say which hurt worse: the pain running through my body, or the memory of Baranak gathering up all the guns I had worked so long and so hard to perfect and produce, and smashing them to pieces—over the objections of some on his side, as well as my own—in order to keep them out of anyone’s hands, in the future.
“You do have a secret storehouse somewhere,” he said softly, more to himself than to me.
Still frowning, he tucked the pistol into his belt. Then, wiping at the blood that streamed from his nose, he strolled leisurely back to where the three humans hung suspended in midair. Reaching up, he took hold of Evelyn’s ankle and pulled. As if emerging from quicksand or molasses, she slid slowly but steadily away from the others. Still immobile, she floated along behind Arendal like a helium balloon on a string.
I watched these actions, a still greater anger building within me, but found myself quite powerless to intervene. My muscles felt as frozen as the humans’ must have been, though after a few moments I could feel the numbness ever so slowly beginning to recede.
Stopping about ten yards away from me, Arendal released Evelyn’s ankle and allowed her to hang there.
“Well, well. I could scarcely have imagined it.” He looked down at me, a contemptuous smile spreading across his face. “You have some sort of feelings for this… human.”
I wanted desperately to reply—to heap scorn upon his outlandish fantasies—but found my jaw still as limp as the rest of me.
“How long could you possibly have known her?” He snorted. “Some sort of whirlwind romance, I suppose.” He looked her over, once, then turned back to me, gesturing with his cane. “This, then, is our dark lord now,” he pronounced gravely, voice overflowing with sarcasm. “Once the scourge of the gods. Now a sad and ineffectual fraud.”
Prostrate on the sand, I glared at him.
“I’ve had names and titles given to me over the centuries, too, you know,” he said then. “Those in our City have called me quite a few things.”
I noticed his voice was slightly distorted by the damage I had done to his nasal passages.
“‘Hero’ has never been one of those things,” he continued. He smiled flatly. “Perhaps now that will change.”
I tried to reply with a scornful rebuff, but only an unintelligible grunt emerged from my nearly dead lips.
“Yes, yes, well said.” He brushed impatiently at the flecks of blood on his white jacket. “Your eloquence has always moved me.”
Trying desperately to ignore his banter, forcing myself to concentrate, I summoned the Power and channeled it through my limbs. Pins and needles raced over nearly every surface of my body, and I gritted my teeth, willing the process to speed up. My right index finger moved, then my whole hand. I pulled in more of the Power and let it flush the lingering numbness from my system. As the seconds crawled by, ever so slowly, I felt normal sensations returning.
Arendal stood over me, leering down, kicking at one of my seemingly paralyzed legs.
“The funny thing, Lucian, is that, aside from Baranak—who is just too pig-headed to think things through—they all pretty much know you didn’t kill anyone.” He shrugged. “But they don’t care. You have been designated as the sacrificial lamb. Lamb? No, that hardly fits, in your case.” He stroked his chin for a moment. “The sacrificial black sheep, perhaps. Yes. A sacrifice to appease the gods, I suppose you could say.” He glanced back at Evelyn. “Along with some degree of… unavoidable… collateral damage.”
I screamed then. What I said, I do not know. It was a scream wrenched from the depths of my soul, and I believe it actually startled Arendal. Perhaps it caused him to hesitate. Perhaps it did not. In any case, I had an opening, and I knew I could move again, and I struck.
Admittedly, my first blow might not be best described as honorable; but then, we were not exactly engaged in matters of honor at the moment.
He staggered back, clutching his groin, stunned, as I struggled to my still-somewhat-leaden feet. Behind him, I saw Evelyn fall to the sand, the force he had used to hold her apparently disrupted by my attack.
Fists, boot, blue spheres—whatever I could tag him with, I used, and I aimed them at any vulnerabilities I could find. For a short while, things seemed to be going my way. Then his damned cane struck me again, this time a glancing blow to the forehead, silver fire flashing in my eyes, and I staggered back, reeling.
He had already recovered from my assault. All traces of humor were gone from his face now. He brandished the cane again, flames crackling in the air
around him. I had always known him to be clever, wily, and very likely treacherous in the extreme, but nothing I had ever seen or heard about him had given me reason to think he possessed reserves of power as great as this. Had I so misjudged myself? Had I become weakened during my long exile among the humans? Or had Arendal tapped into some new power source, boosting himself beyond what he once had been? None of those possibilities struck me as positive or encouraging. For the first time, some measure of fear crept through the dark recesses of my mind.
“You have this coming, Lucian,” he said then. “After what happened to Halaini.”
I froze, just staring at him.
“I loved her, you know,” he said.
I blinked, my mouth opening and closing, but I remained silent. I had no idea how to respond to that.
“It was your fault, after all,” he continued.
He pulled himself up straight, smoothing his cream colored suit with one hand. His eyes had a wild, haunted look in them, suddenly.
“Entirely your fault. She didn’t have to die. She had absolutely no business being there, in the courtyard, that day. She was only there because of you. You killed her.”
With his left hand he raised the cane into a horizontal position in front of him. Grasping the other end with his right hand, he pulled. The bottom portion slid loose with a popping sound, revealing itself to be only a hollow sleeve. Where before the cane had ended with a flattened base, now it trailed down to a fine, wicked point. He tossed the sleeve aside and brandished the cane like a dagger, over his head, eyeing my chest—and then lurched suddenly forward with a grunt, sprawling facedown in the sand. Evelyn stood behind him, a grimace on her face, still in the stance from which she had delivered a solid, violent kick to his back.
The pistol, knocked loose, tumbled away from him. I dived for it, grabbed at it.
He scrambled toward his cane where it had fallen. Clutching it, climbing to his feet, he looked up, only to find himself staring down the barrel of my gun.
“See,” I said in an extremely soft, smooth voice, as I channeled my energies down my arm and into the specially designed weapon, and thus into the small, red crystal contained within, “that whole bit with Halaini—all it did was piss me off.”
Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (The Above Book 1) Page 9