City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1)

by Steven Montano

  Ijanna Breathed the Veil onto the chest. No trap was sprung, and not a single thread of Veilcraft reached out to assail her. She tried the latch, and it wasn’t even locked. Ijanna took a breath and opened the chest, and saw what she’d come for.

  The trap door crashed open behind her. Ijanna’s heart jumped into her throat.

  A white-haired man dressed all in black rose from the portal in the floor. His armor was layered with ring’tai, and a short spear was slung across his back. He moved with the speed and grace of a cat, and before she even knew what was happening he leapt over the table and came at her.

  Adrenaline pumped through her veins. Ijanna raced across the room and away from her pursuer. Metal sliced through the air, and she heard a ring’tai clang off the wall.

  Her eyes focused on the stone ahead. Ijanna reached for the tiny metal sphere in her belt pouch, a gift from Bordrec. Angry voices and heavy footsteps sounded behind her, and Ijanna heard weapons being drawn. She threw the metal ball ahead of her as she ran.

  The scythesphere struck the wall and silently flashed with a brilliant burst of silver light. A large and perfectly round hole appeared in the stone, just large enough for her to fit through. The cool night air hit Ijanna’s face. Another ring’tai sliced close, and she heard its razorine hiss as it whizzed past her ear.

  Ijanna dove through the hole and into the open air outside the tower. The bright blaze of tents burned below. Bordrec had come through with his distraction: they’d set a fire at the edge of camp.

  But they’re early.

  She fell. For a moment Ijanna hung suspended, and her body seemed frozen. Her stomach lurched, and her cloak rippled like confused wings. She fell, and Breathed the Veil to slow her descent.

  Ijanna saw a flash of white and silver. She twisted her body around so she fell feet first, and the Veil did the rest. Her boots touched down and she went heel to haunch, barely winded from the fall. Light from the blaze loomed like flaming ghosts in the murky night.

  She only made it a few steps before a sickeningly sharp pain scorched across her back. She fell forward, into darkness.

  Seventeen

  “How in the hell did she get inside my tower?!” Blackhall demanded. Captain Dringol was a young officer, and yelling at him made Blackhall feel like he was chastising his own son. “Well?!”

  “I’m sorry, Sir, I…”

  “Oh, shut up!” Blackhall shouted.

  He turned away and looked through the strange hole the intruder had somehow made in the wall to his chambers. Ruby clouds hung frozen in the dark sky, and the stench of extinguished flames thickened the air. He left Dringol quivering by the table and looked down at the spot where she’d fallen, where Slayne had struck her with a ring’tai.

  The place where her body should be.

  Slayne was searching for her now with his Black Eagles. Gess stood next to the hole with Blackhall, his lean face basked in the eerie half glow. Chill wind blew through the opening and shifted the papers and blankets on the floor.

  “Dismissed, Captain,” Blackhall said. “I don’t want to see your face again tonight.” Blackhall waited until Dringol was gone before he spoke to Gess. “So?”

  “She took the blades we were supposed to trade to the Phage for the Empress’s prize,” Gess said. He sounded distracted. “The worse thing is, it was her. Goddess…I hope Slayne didn’t kill her.” Gess kept his eyes on the ground far below where the girl had fallen. The Veilwarden often had that distant look, like he wasn’t really there.

  “Are you sure it was her?” Blackhall asked.

  “No. Not sure. Not yet. But I think we have to consider the possibility. No one else knew we had the blades.”

  “Except the Phage,” Blackhall said angrily. He should’ve let Gess kill that little bastard Harrick when they’d had the chance.

  “True, but let’s not jump to any conclusions.” Gess still hadn’t taken his eyes off of where she’d fallen. “Assuming they weren’t the ones who stole the blades, what are we going to tell them? Harrick expects a trade, and he won’t part with what the White Dragon wants until we give him the thar’koon.”

  “I’ll deal with him,” Blackhall said. “You help Slayne find the woman. One way or another, we’re getting what we want from our good friend Harrick.” Blackhall balled his fist. “No one breaks into my tower.”

  He left Gess there by the window.

  “What was on that parchment Harrick gave to you?” the Veilwarden called after him.

  Blackhall had forgotten all about it, and at the moment he didn’t care. Regardless of what Gess thought, Blackhall was still convinced the lady thief had been sent by the Phage, a way to get what they wanted without paying for it. He’d continue to believe that until proved otherwise, so he pulled the parchment out of his coat and tossed it to Gess; the mage suspended it in mid-air with a wave of his hand, and it gently floated over to him. Blackhall was almost out of the room when Gess called him back.

  “Colonel?”

  “What?” he said.

  Gess had a wide smile on his face. He dropped the parchment on the table. “An old friend of the White Dragon Crown is here in Ebonmark,” he grinned. “And Harrick just told us where he is. Oh, I can’t wait to tell Slayne, this is too…”

  “Who is it?” Blackhall asked.

  “Azander Dane,” Gess smiled.

  Blackhall gnashed his teeth. This was getting worse by the minute.

  Eighteen

  He carried her upstairs.

  Her limp body had gone cold, but her blood ran hot down his chest. The old steps creaked loudly as he made the ascent, and the lamp in the hall was dim. The smell of soup still hung in the air from another dinner he’d missed. He heard the rain beat against the windows.

  His head throbbed with pain, his fingers and face were covered in sweat, and he was so weak he could have collapsed there in the hall and slept for a month.

  But not yet. He’d slept enough, and he had to help her.

  Kath Cardrezhej kicked open the upstairs door. Drogan wasn’t asleep yet, though his hair was a mess, and he looked haggard and weary. He sat alone on the bed with an open book in his hand and nearly jumped out of his skin when the door burst open.

  “Kath?!” he said in surprise. His eyes drifted to the unconscious and bloodied woman. “I thought you were…son…what’s going on?”

  For a moment Kath couldn’t answer, because he couldn’t remember. But as he focused his mind and felt the weight of the woman in his arms, as he smelled her skin and sensed the blood on his hands, the disorientation and nausea and pain of the past several days faded away. He only had one purpose now.

  “She saved my life, Father. Now I have to save hers.”

  Nineteen

  The sunken walls of the arena were spattered with gore. Dane watched as a Tuscar waved its longspear back and forth in a desperate attempt to fend off the Kareeska, a six-armed monstrosity from the Heartfang Wastes. The insect-headed thing lumbered forward, bleeding noxious yellow blood from a wide and gaping wound as its huge claws clicked and snapped at its prey.

  Since Dane had slain three of Targo’s personal henchmen the criminal had been left short-handed for the Knuckle-Night event; by Targo’s logic, Dane owed it to him to fill in and help maintain order at the fight. Targo, however, had also agreed to give up Bordrec Kleiderhorn’s location in exchange for Dane’s cooperation, provided nothing went wrong. Dane had been involved in far too many underworld dealings to know that things never went smoothly, but all he had to do was make sure none of the spectators got out of line or tried to help the gladiators.

  But Knuckle-Night wasn’t what Dane had expected. Just a few minutes ago he’d watched a Den’nari warrior in spiked armor get crushed by a bald maniac with a flail in place of a forearm, and that had hardly been the worst of it. The crowd, also, wasn’t what he’d expected, and instead of being made up of criminal dregs the spectators were common people, farmers and laborers and even a few children, and it fr
ightened him how excited they were over the brutal spectacle.

  The arena was a sunken pit in an exceptionally large room buried beneath an abandoned warehouse in Ebonmark’s western docks district. Dozens of passages and well-locked doors led to a labyrinthine network of tunnels and caves under the city. People came from all over to see Targo’s fights, so each of the entrances to the tunnels was well guarded, and the network beneath the city was so extensive one needed a guide to reach the arena without getting hopelessly lost.

  Heavy sheets of glassy frost coated the walls, and the high ceiling was littered with icicles. Even then the room was only moderately cold, as the warmth of over a hundred bodies and their bloodthirsty shouts heated the area with adrenaline and hate. The spectators stood around a crude iron rail which circled the upper rim of the large fighting pit, and they shoved and crushed one another even as they cursed or cheered the fighters below.

  According to Azzah, potential gamblers knew the identities of the fighters ahead of time and all bets had already been placed, some with quite attractive odds. Now the ravaging spectators cheered their fighters and placed side bets with one another. Several of the gladiators seemed to be quite infamous, while others were fighting in the pits for the first time. Jorias Targo controlled the bouts in Ebonmark, but the sport was popular in Kaldrak Iyres, Raithe, Bloodwind and a few other cities, and the fighters and their owners traveled from place to place. There was only ever one survivor by the end of the night, so those who’d fought before were formidable opponents indeed.

  Dane stood at the edge of the railing, the hood of his cloak drawn and his vra’taar firmly in hand. Even his brandished weapon didn’t stop the throng of spectators from crowding in on him. Dane smelled sweaty bodies and alcohol, and the ringing of steel and the roar of the crowd rattled his skull. His muscles ached under his armor from being jostled and shoved, and he’d come close to blows with a few people because they couldn’t stay back.

  The room was spinning. Dane swam through a tidal pool of faces and noise. His back was tense, and the sweat was cold beneath his helmet. He seemed outside himself, detached from his body. None of it seemed real. The air was filled with violence and a lust for pain. Merchants and young women and dockworkers and children pushed and jeered, their eyes glued to the carnage. Dane watched with them, unable to look away.

  The Tuscar turned the tide of the match. Oozing gristle was visible beneath its torn shoulder armor, and bloody cuts covered its ugly face. The grey warrior danced circles around the Kareeska like a wolf circling a maimed moose. For any human the tactic would have been suicide – even if one managed to avoid the near ten-foot reach of the multi-armed horror they’d tire themselves out long before they could ever find an opening in the insectoid’s defense. But a Tuscar had three times the stamina of the healthiest human, and some were said to be capable of running from dawn until dusk with barely a need for rest. So it wasn’t a surprise to Dane when the circling Tuscar dodged beneath one of the Kareeska’s seemingly endless string of attacks and plunged its longspear straight into the ant-like face. Green and yellow pus splattered up on several spectators and doused the victor as he pulled his weapon free, much to the pleasure of the lunatic crowd. The room exploded into a chorus of curses and cheers.

  Dane hated Targo at that moment. When he’d been a Dawn Knight he’d have taken a certain glee in destroying that place, in halting the orgy of violence and greed. The inhuman gladiators would have been summarily executed, the spectators would have been sent away in chains, and Targo and his freakish henchmen would answer for their crimes.

  But that was before, in another life. Dane had done things which could never be forgiven. He no longer had the right to judge.

  This is what you’re worth now. This is where you belong. You grow more distant from the man you used to be with each passing breath.

  If only he could find his way back.

  The next match began, this time between a black horse with lance-like horns and a vacant-eyed Allaji woman with metal wings. Azzah had warned Dane the men who owned the gladiator slaves often went to great lengths to find unusual and powerful champions, as such freaks brought more people to the fights.

  Dane had seen much in his day, but the grisly ingenuity of Veilcraft still managed to take him by surprise. The horse was something out of a nightmare. Its horns resembled twisted and bloody stakes, hellish eyes burned with a dull red shine, and cloven hooves oozed burning black filth onto the dirt.

  Its opponent was just as gruesome. Every inch of the nude woman’s pale body was covered with jagged scars, and her skin was cracked and blistered where the metal had been grafted to her flesh. Streams of watery blood gushed down her back every time her wings moved.

  He watched, feeling cold and dead inside. There were five more matches before the night would be over. Targo would tell him where to find Bordrec Kleiderhorn, and Dane would be one step closer to collecting the Dream Witch.

  He couldn’t wait to get away from that mad city.

  Twenty

  Kruje imagined himself back in the underground city of Meledrakkar. Green orbs of flame illuminated black-skinned Voss as they crossed enormous bridges over smoke-filled canyons. Black iron towers covered with ancestral runes and majestic staircases stretched towards the impossibly high cavern ceiling. Fields of shadow surrounded the city like an umbra sea. Kruje heard singing from somewhere far away, buried in the din of Vossian machines and the screams of condemned prisoners.

  Hollow pain clutched his chest. It had been so long since he’d seen his home.

  Kruje’s mind swam through the haze of Kar-Thelud, the Trance of Peaceful Memories. He had to fall away, had to come back into the present, but it was difficult. He remembered promises and vows, the pride of standing at the head of the Vossian council. He remembered his father at his back and his brother by his side.

  So long ago.

  It was necessary to feel at peace before he shifted his consciousness to Kar-Kalled, the Bloodlust Trance. Kruje found he was able to enter that deplorable mindset only after his thoughts had been given a chance to experience the peace of Kar-Thelud. It had never been his intent to be a warrior, nor was it his calling. Combat didn’t come naturally to him, and never would.

  Kruje heard cries of pain as blood was spilled on the other side of the gate. He stood in a large round room stained with vomit, urine and fecal matter left by the fighters who’d come before. Kruje stretched his back and flexed his stiff fingers. He’d only been outside of his cage for a short time, and in a few more minutes he’d be released into the arena. Maddox stood behind him, gripping a small smooth stone he wore on a leather cord around his neck. Kruje’s iron collar ground painfully against his skin, but he didn’t dare touch it. Besides the collar, Kruje wore an ill-fitted suit of leather and iron plate armor which Maddox’s lackeys had purchased for him months ago.

  Kruje looked back. Maddox flashed a wicked grin and dangled the stone, which he could use to kill the giant in an instant. Kruje had seen Maddox use the same type of device on another slave, a human fighter he’d once owned. All the fat bastard had to do was rub the stone’s surface a certain way and the man’s collar had launched blades on the inner rim which drove straight through his neck. The poor fool’s head had rolled to the floor before he’d even realized he was dead. Without that stone, Kruje would have smashed Maddox’s skull like a melon.

  He watched the door, and waited. Tension knotted his chest. He heard the crowd gasp on the other side, heard steel cut through flesh. The point of the barbaric spectacle escaped him. The Voss did horrible things to their own prisoners, true, but always with purpose. Sometimes it was to break their will, or to get information, and sometimes their blood or souls were needed to fuel the powerful war machines or furnaces that kept Meledrakkar running. Most often it was as punishment for crimes.

  These ridiculous fighting matches are stupidity. What a shame you humans won the War.

  Maddox shouted something at Kruje, doubtles
s a threat, or maybe even encouragement. It didn’t matter. Kruje didn’t understand a single word of the human tongue and had no desire to, for their language was guttural and ugly, the unevolved chattering of simians. All Kruje knew was that it wouldn’t be long now. He reached down and picked up the enormous axe they’d laid at his feet, and it felt bulky and awkward in his grip. The blade was obviously constructed by humans, not Voss, for its balance was all wrong, and he’d be lucky to get a good swing with the keen double blades without cutting his own legs off.

  Fear clogged in his throat, but Kruje bit it back. He wouldn’t show this loathsome little monster his terror. In time Maddox would pay for what he’d done. The Voss rarely forgot, and never forgave.

  Kruje allowed Kar-Kalled to overtake him. His mind faded, buried beneath a sea of cold rage. His breaths grew slow and heavy, his muscles tightened, and his heartbeat slowed, second by second, until it was barely perceptible. His breathing calmed. Memories of past battles came to him. His thoughts turned to murder. He saw bodies fall before him, felt their bones crack as he tasted the tang of his victim’s fear. His large fingers clenched the haft of the war axe. Kruje’s teeth clenched. In his mind he walked through fields slick with blood.

  He clung to a fragment of his rational mind. Kruje hated Kar-Kalled, and only used it because he was desperate. He was no warrior, and never had been, and without the rage to guide him he was as good as dead.

  Kruje held his breath as the gate groaned open. He stepped into the noisy and blood-filled arena.

  Twenty-One

  Dane wiped the horse’s blood from his boot. It had been a quick battle, and the crowd was in an absolute frenzy. He almost expected people to start jumping down to the arena floor. Dane had been forced to push spectators away from him during the fight, and even with his armor he knew his legs would be bruised black in the morning from being rammed against the railing so many times.

  The metal angel could fly, but Dane didn’t detect any aspect of the Veil on her, which he thought impossible – there was no way the monstrous woman had come into her current form without Veilcraft. Her mobility made all of the horned horse’s attacks futile, and the beast spent much of the short battle leaping and righting itself after every jump, not understanding why it couldn’t reach its opponent. Only once did it manage to tear into the bizarre woman, when it caught her with a glancing blow in the left leg. After that the fight was over quickly. The woman’s razor-sharp wings caught the horse mid-jump and neatly cleaved its body in half. Dark blood covered the woman like a dismal cloak, and gore sprayed all over the spectators closest to the pit.