“What happened?” I suspected I already knew, but I let him go on.
“It says an ocean of fire drowned the land and left behind shadow and dust.” He straightened. “This fire destroyed everything.”
“Not everything.” I swallowed. “Shadow and Dust. It’s literal. It’s a name. A person.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’ve spent the last few months trying to survive her.” And perhaps nurturing feelings that were, even now, making me second-guess myself.
“Ah, the woman you spoke of? The sorceress.”
Sorceress. Assassin. Friend. Enemy. And more, so much more.
I nodded. Shadow and Dust, the same term that followed her everywhere. It couldn’t be a coincidence. “She’s the sole survivor of a battle that killed hundreds?”
“Thousands died. On both sides. The queen controlled the Eye and laid waste to everything. But some survived. I’ll get to that …” Fallford pulled off his gloves. “Like any collector, I enjoy a tale or two, but this is unsettling. Where is the Eye, Vance?”
“Destroyed.” Fallford’s expression brightened, but mine obviously didn’t, because his relief was short-lived. “She crushed it. I don’t know why. If anything, these tales suggest she should want to keep the Eye. She told me there was the potential to use it to make a better time.”
“And she destroyed it?”
“Right in front of me. She said, ‘It begins.’ Do you know what that means?”
“I fear I do have some further knowledge regarding your companion. Come.” We moved from his study to his upstairs library packed floor to ceiling with shelves of books. Again, already laid out on the table, was a selection of journals, scribed in languages I didn’t have a hope of deciphering.
“There was one tale,” Fallford continued. “A colleague remembered it from his travels and loaned me this tome. It tells of the battle and how the land burned, but in the rubble a cup was found, entirely untouched by fire. It shouldn’t have survived the inferno, so few would touch the item, believing it to be cursed. They dug around it and buried it, along with their dead, and left this land. But that’s not the end of it. They later learned that the survivors were poisoned by the magic. Those infected heard whispers telling them how to harvest magic from the earth, or more precisely, from gems. They tried to use their new talent to build a city like Arach, but the more magic they used, the more it distorted them, until there was nothing left but hunger. Those poisoned were loaded onto what they called plague ships and sent back here, to Brea. The city was little more than a dockside then. I suppose they thought their infected would die here.”
They hadn’t died. They’d lived and built the Inner Circle and the grand spire. Hundreds of years and generations later, they still lived inside their walls, hiding their secret inside the spire. “And the curse of the cup? Does it say more in your books?”
“Yes. It claims the cup contained life and death.” He shook his head. “There cannot be life without death. The cup is a curse. Any who drink from it will be tethered to the earth. A life for life. You told me, Vance, you drank from the cup?”
“I did. And I’m still here.” But my smile barely covered my worry. She had bound me to her. Marked me. I felt her pain like it was my own. We were tied at some level I didn’t understand. “Just stories,” I dismissed, but didn’t believe my words. I wasn’t yet ready to reveal how close Shaianna and I had become. “Was there any mention of a Forgotten One? Or the Shadow?”
“Ah, yes. The Shadow and Dust …” Fallford rummaged through a stack of books. He pulled several free and flicked them open. “The Shadow was another name for the queen’s vengeance. It appears often in these Lanskewly tales. Some tales say the queen summoned the Forgotten One to aid in her battle. That this force rushed the opposing forces: a Shadow which consumed the land.”
The shadow will embrace all, the old mage had told me in the square. But it wasn’t any shadow; it was the Shadow.
I looked over the books on the table and considered the parchments, the artwork in the tombs, the mages’ riddles, and more. According to those tales, I was descended from the invading forces, those who’d survived and were poisoned by the flood of magic. Those banished from their lands, who’d found sanctuary in a young Brea. It explained how some Inner Circle people could use magic and why they were forbidden to do so. The combined explanations could go a long way in uncovering the truth. But Shaianna and the Eye?
“Shaianna wanted me to get the Eye to break our bond. And now she’s destroyed the Eye.”
“And the bond?”
I didn’t answer, which was answer enough. She had destroyed the Eye so there would be no way to break our bond. “I’ve seen what she can do and I wonder if it’s just the beginning.” It begins. “She is the Shadow, The Forgotten One, the Truth in the Lies. She is the queen’s vengeance, cursed into the cup and buried alongside the remains of her people.”
“Until the cup was found and you stole it. You woke her.”
“One of the people controlling the mages hired me to steal the cup. They knew it had been discovered. Perhaps they wanted to destroy it—destroy Shaianna before she regained her strength and fulfilled the queen’s wishes.” Some things should be destroyed. “They wanted her stopped before she was strong enough to fight back.”
Was that why she had destroyed the Eye? Because she no longer needed it? She was ready. Revived. She’d come back for revenge.
“If she is one of the Forgotten Ones the queen used in battle,” Fallford considered, “what is she planning now? Arach is gone, as are her people.”
“I know exactly what she wants.” I didn’t want to believe it. I’d seen so much more of Shaianna than what these legends suggested. I’d held her crying in my arms, but I’d also witnessed the quick flash of her blade and the stone heart with which she killed. I knew all too well how dangerous she could be, and I’d left her with Agatha. A killer who’d returned to this land for one purpose. “Do your books say any more about the Forgotten Ones? Where they came from?”
“Myths, legends, far-fetched tales. The Forgotten Ones, plural, were only called upon in the most dire of times because they killed without discrimination. Some tales say the queen had doomed her people the moment she summoned the Forgotten One. They are killers. Some texts refer to them as the hunger, and all call them monsters in their own language.” He lifted a sorry look to me. “There is nothing good written about them.”
“What happened to them? Did they all burn, like the Arachians?”
“It seems they vanished. There is some mention of them”—he brushed his fingertips over a foreign word—“waiting.”
For a better time. My heart sank and I turned away. “I have to get back—”
Fallford caught my arm. “Vance, the mages, the people corrupted by magic, they’re still here, aren’t they? The killings in the city, the slaughter in the market. It’s all related.”
The truth. He and others like him—those high enough in Brean society to make a difference—had to know. “There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I think—I hope if Shaianna is everything you say, then she perhaps returned to kill those the queen missed the first time around. Or, at least, their descendants. The ones turned mage.”
I didn’t know what she was waiting for. Over a month had passed since we found the Eye, and she clearly no longer needed it. Why wait?
“Where are the mages coming from?” Fallford asked.
“The spire.”
“The Inner Circle?” He scoffed. “Those things are coming from inside the wall? The heart of Brea? How do you know this?”
“I’m the one that got away.” And I had to go back.
Tired of snow-caked boots and the bitter air biting my lips, I dipped into a nearby Inn and pilfered a few gems from those staving of the cold inside, and paid for a carriage ride back to the pleasure house. While it bumped and skipped its way through the streets, I went over Fallford’s findings again and again
. I didn’t want to believe it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Some things I couldn’t deny. The mages. The Eye. The tomb with the wall art matching Fallford’s tales. I’d left as he’d begun talking about mounting an expedition to Arach. They wanted to find the tomb and see it with their own eyes before reaching any conclusions. I wasn’t sure Brea had the luxury of time. He’d wanted to hire me as a guide. I’d told him I’d consider it and then promised to show him the tunnel into the Inner Circle, but not without weapons. Many weapons.
The carriage jolted and shifted sharply to one side, abruptly halting. The horses shied, and then the driver banged a fist on the roof to signal my ride was over.
The metallic tang of blood—I could taste it in the air, like I had when I discovered Daryn’s body. I stepped from the carriage and saw a crowd loitering outside the pleasure house. The piled-up snow had turned brown with churned blood. With every step I took, my thoughts numbed.
There’s too much. It cannot all be blood.
“Let me through …” I shoved and elbowed my way through the crowd and stumbled into a clearing.
“Sir, please stay back.” A city guard waved a bloodied hand at me, but I could hardly see him and barely heard his words. Agatha’s body lay sprawled in the snow at the foot of the front steps, her guts steaming in the cold air.
“Sir.”
“I don’t—” I mumbled.
Someone grabbed my arm. “Step back.”
I blinked at the pale face of the man trying to tug me away. “I know them. I … was here, not two hours ago.”
“They’re dead,” the pale-faced man said. “They’re all dead.”
I yanked my arm free and trudged through the blood-stained snow, passing Agatha’s body as a guard threw a cover over her. Inside, the ripe stench of blood and exposed meat turned over my empty gut. My boots slipped, and I planted my splayed fingers on a patch of sticky wetness on the wall.
Catherine lay among the dead, face down in the kitchen doorway. My feet continued moving, my body pushing on, but inside, I didn’t feel a thing and my thoughts coasted, silent and empty. I drifted through the house, losing count of the dead as I went. The guards ignored my passing, their task too great to bother with me. Room after room, more dead. No music, no chatter, no fake laughter. Just the stomp of boots, the rustle of sheets, and a man vomiting.
The hidden paneled door hung open and bloodied footprints ascended the narrow secret stairs onto the balcony. I followed the steps and found Shaianna’s blood-soaked dress on the roof. I lunged for it, lifting the fabric in my hands. The dress had been discarded. A pair of small footprints led across the balcony. The footprints stopped at the edge.
I leaned against the balcony rail and peered down at the sharp drop to the street below. She could have made a running jump to the opposite roof. I’d seen her perform a similar jump when escaping the mages. Had she jumped to escape whoever had done this?
Unless she did this?
I threw the dress down and glared across the city at the spire glinting its perfection in the winter sun.
Mages, it had to be … Or, if Fallford was right, the queen’s vengeance had returned. And she had only just begun. I couldn’t—wouldn’t believe this slaughter had been Shaianna’s doing. She wouldn’t have hurt these people. Whatever Shaianna was, she wasn’t a monster.
I looked down at the single set of footprints and then headed back through the house. I made it as far as the neighboring street before I dry-heaved.
It wasn’t her…
It wasn’t.
I dug my fingers into the crumbling brick, waiting for the retching to stop.
But what if it was always her?
Chapter Twenty-One
The look on my face must have been dire for Molly to allow me entry into Fallford’s house without so much as an eye roll. She took my cloak and gasped. I’d forgotten about the blood. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing at Fallford’s or how I’d gotten there. I had nowhere else to go.
“It’s not mine,” I mumbled without realizing my admission didn’t help.
“You’d better come with me,” she grumbled, skirts rustling as she marched through a door beneath the staircase. I dutifully followed her through the quiet and apparently empty servants’ quarters and eventually into the kitchen.
Molly barked at me to sit at the table. I peeled off my coat and removed the dagger, placing it on the table in plain sight, not wanting to frighten her.
She tutted and grumbled a few more choice words, and then planted a bowl of soapy water in front of me. “Wash the blood off your face, man.”
I didn’t have the strength to reply.
She turned her back on me and scrubbed at the plates in the sink. “His lordship had a son like you. All trouble and no worth.”
I picked dried blood from under my fingernails and swirled my hands in the warm water. “What happened to him?”
“Got himself killed on some foreign adventure. Took after his father, he did, but didn’t have the smarts to stay alive. Well-to-doers die as easily as thieves.”
I smiled despite my mood. “Why Molly, I thought we were friends. That sounded suspiciously like a threat.”
She turned, brushed her mop of hair out of her face, and planted a hand on her hip. “I don’t need no threats when his lordship will do just the same, but with fancier words. Just know, you bring trouble here, he’ll deal with it—no matter what. Don’t let his smiles and welcoming manner fool you. Lord Fallford has ways.”
“Duly noted,” I replied, then smiled at her back as she busied herself with kitchen duties. “I didn’t come here to bring trouble.”
“That’s what them’s all say.”
A bell chimed. Molly spat a rich curse and eyed me warily. “I’ve counted the silverware. If there’s anything missing when I return, I’ll take your thumbs.”
She left before I could defend myself. Although she was right. I might have considered pocketing some of the silver knives. I didn’t have a gem to my name, and the kitchen housed a few treasures that would fetch a few gem fragments in the market.
A collection of voices drifted from behind the kitchen door and boots thumped on the hardwood floors. The visitors climbed the stairs. Doors closed and the quiet returned. The warmth of the kitchen and the smell of soup and something like leather soap—it was nice. Comforting. I hoarded the feel of it and soaked up the warmth. I didn’t want to go back out on the streets. I didn’t want to face the reality of what I’d seen. Agatha, Catherine, and so many others. Had I brought a killer under their roof?
I dried my hands on a towel, wiped my face, and then stared at my reflection in the bowl of dirty water. The laughing woman, the woman I’d seen in the river and dancing at Calwyton, wouldn’t have murdered anyone. But there was another side to Shaianna. The side quick to kill without flinching. It was that woman I feared, and I believed Shaianna feared her too.
“Vance …”
“Lord Fallford. I was just … Molly insisted …” My words trailed off.
He braced his hands on the table and peered at me, barely a smile where there had always been one before. “I’ve already heard the news. Grim business. Agatha, well … a terrible crime. You knew them well?”
I swallowed and pushed the bowl away, hoping I at least resembled a man in control, even if I didn’t feel like one. “Agatha saved my life.”
“Are there any suspects?” he asked.
Clenching my jaw, I couldn’t bring myself to implicate Shaianna. We were bonded, and at some level, I knew she wasn’t responsible. What was done was done, and we had more pressing concerns—and lives to save. “We need to stop the mages. If we blow the tunnel, they can’t get out of the Inner Circle.”
“Besides the front gates?”
“But at least then we’ll see them coming.”
Fallford straightened and nodded firmly. “Some of the colleagues I mentioned are here now. We were discussing the expedition … but I dare say our resources could
be better spent.” He held my gaze. “I’d like you to speak with them.”
“Me?” I raked my hand through my hair, and neither of us failed to notice how my fingers shook. “I don’t know what I can say that will help you.”
“You’ve seen the mages. You’ve been to the tomb. You’re at the very heart of everything, Vance. If I’m to move forward, they need to know you.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in the bench seat with a sigh. “Who are these people?”
“A business man and seafaring trader; he regularly trades in antiquities. It’s how we met. He has a keen mind and some, shall we say, experience with weapons. Another, Lady Porter. She’s the daughter of Lord Jeremy Porter, the landowner. She’s wealthy and has an adventurous soul and a good sense for using her position to help the people where she can. We also have a high-ranking member of the city guard here—”
“No.”
“Vance …”
“No. If I tell them I’m from the Inner Circle, they’ll throw me back in there. I’ve escaped twice. Once by luck, the second time with help. I’m not tempting fate again.”
“They’re not interested in you, man. They want to protect their interests, which means protecting Brea. Where you came from won’t matter to them.”
“You want me to stand in front of a room of well-to-doers and tell them there are magic-addicted monsters in the spire? That’s what you’re asking?”
The Heartstone Thief (Dragon Eye Chronicles Book 1) Page 19