Cunning Devil (Lost Falls Book 1)

by Chris Underwood

  She hesitated. “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t?” Rodetk leaned over her. “You don’t remember your father’s disgrace? A disgrace I made disappear?” He sneered. “You know, I always thought that was hypocritical of you. A storykeeper is supposed to be pure. Supposed to bring the truth to the people. When it came to your family’s secrets, though, you were more than happy to hide them. You were more than happy to beg.” Rodetk shrugged. “But I suppose, if you’ve changed your mind, I can find another storykeeper who would love to hear what your father did.”

  “No!” she yelped. “No, please.”

  “Then you’ll answer our questions?”

  “Yes. Anything.”

  “Good.” Rodetk turned to me.

  “Tell us about Khataz’s sorcerer,” I said. “Tell us about Likho.”

  She swallowed. “What about him?”

  “Are the rumors true?” Rodetk asked. “Does he have Alcaraz in thrall?”

  “Likho is just here to advise the Lord,” she said woodenly. “He is a servant of the city.”

  Rodetk slammed his open palm down on the desk, and a few sheets of paper fluttered to the floor. “I didn’t ask you to recite his propaganda.”

  The storykeeper curled into a ball. “I know little of sorcery. But…but the Lord’s mood has soured in the last year. He seems…tired. Tired and nervous. Most of his proclamations come through Likho now. He has become increasingly concerned for the safety of the city.”

  “Is that why his soldiers are stomping about everywhere?”

  She gave a jerky nod. “He enforces strict curfews. Monitors all trade into and out of the mountain. Goblins are encouraged to report on their neighbors if they suspect subversion.”

  “And the council lets him?”

  “The council no longer has the power to overrule him.”

  Rodetk scowled and opened his mouth again, but I cut in before he could speak. We were wasting time. We weren’t here to talk politics.

  “What have you heard about a curse?” I said.

  “Curse?” The storykeeper looked at me. “What kind of curse?”

  “A bad one.”

  “I told you. I know little of sorcery.”

  “What about changelings?” I said.

  The goblin woman shrunk further into herself. Changeling was a dangerous word down here. “Please, I don’t—”

  “Answer the question, storykeeper,” Rodetk snapped.

  “Rumors!” Her eyes darted between us over the rims of her spectacles. “That’s all I’ve heard. Some speak of hearing the cries of human inside the Tower. But it’s just a rumor! The practice is outlawed. Even Khataz wouldn’t—”

  Something on my face made her stop talking with a squeak. Lilian touched my back, murmured in my ear.

  “Take it easy,” she said. “Use the anger. Don’t let it use you.”

  She was right. I couldn’t be the boy I’d once been. I exhaled through gritted teeth, getting myself under control.

  “So you don’t know anything about the abduction of a human boy. A baby, name of Mills?”

  She shook her head. “But…but if there are changelings, Likho has to be responsible. He’s been rounding up every goblin proficient in the dark arts, having them executed or sent to the dungeons. All sorcery is forbidden now, except that performed by Likho himself.”

  Lilian stepped forward, and the storykeeper seemed to notice her for the first time.

  “You know the hag who lives in Lost Falls?” Lilian asked.

  The storykeeper hesitated, then nodded. “I have heard of her.”

  “She’s missing. What do you know about that?”

  “Nothing. What does that have to do with us?”

  I studied her face and found no sign that she was lying.

  “Never mind,” I said. “This Likho, where is he now?”

  The storykeeper thought for a moment. “He rarely goes far from the Lord.”

  “The Tower?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “He must have chambers inside,” I said. “A lab where he works.”

  She nodded again.

  I planted my hands on the desk and leaned over her. “You’re going to take us there.”

  “I… No. No, I can’t.”

  “You carry the keys to the city,” Rodetk said. “You can go places we can’t, storykeeper.”

  “But not there!” she squealed. “Not there!”

  She started to rise, but Rodetk put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down onto her stool. He leaned down and began to whisper in her ear.

  I strained to hear what he was saying, but I couldn’t make it out. The storykeeper grew still as she listened. Her eyes flickered to me. Her fear faded slightly, replaced by a look that was thoughtful, almost calculating.

  I exchanged a glance with Lilian. Whatever Rodetk was saying, it seemed to be working.

  He moved away from her ear, hand still on her shoulder, and gave her a meaningful look. She swallowed.

  “The sorcerer has rooms in the Tower,” she said, her voice shaking. “But that’s not where he works his magic. There is a secret chamber near the Tower’s base, unknown to all but a few. That’s where he goes, when he’s not at the Lord’s side. It should be empty now.” She took a deep breath. “I will take you there.”

  “How did you manage that?” I asked Rodetk in a low voice as we followed the storykeeper along a small private tunnel.

  “I talked to her in a way only a goblin would understand,” he said after a moment. Then he hurried forward to make sure the storykeeper didn’t get too far ahead.

  “Cryptic bastard,” I muttered to Lilian. She just gave me a condescending pat on the shoulder.

  Through openings in the passage we caught glimpses of the Tower looming over us. Unlike most of the buildings in the Mines, it wasn’t just a ramshackle hovel made of timber and stone and leather. It had been carved out of the mountain itself, all stone columns and grand archways. This was where the council gathered—or at least where they used to—and where the Lord addressed the people of the city.

  But the passage we were using was completely deserted. The only sign of life was the sound of rodents scurrying about in the shadows.

  “No guards around,” Lilian said. “Are we sure this is the right place?”

  “Likho puts little trust in guards,” the storykeeper said distractedly. She was balancing an open book in one hand as she walked, using a flashlight to illuminate the pages. “One of my predecessors recorded the location of the chamber. It’s supposed to be right here.” She looked up, shining the flashlight up and down the passageway. “I don’t understand. There should be a door.”

  “We haven’t seen a door for a quarter of an hour,” Rodetk said. “We haven’t seen anything. You must’ve taken a wrong turn.”

  “I followed the directions perfectly,” she said.

  “Then the directions are wrong.”

  “Maybe not,” I muttered, glancing along the wall. I crouched down, pulled a piece of parchment from my bag, and began to scribble a charm. “Lilian, grab a candle out of my bag and light it, will you?”

  She gave me a weird look, but she did what I asked. It took me a couple of tries to get the charm right; it wasn’t the kind of magic I was used to dealing with. This was more subtle than witchcraft.

  I folded the parchment and snatched the candle out of Lilian’s hand. Rodetk frowned as I dripped wax on the parchment to seal it. The storykeeper just covered her eyes and turned away, moaning to herself about forbidden sorcery.

  “What is it?” Lilian asked.

  “Charm of True Sight,” I said, holding up the paper. “Bon appetit .”

  I shoved the charm in my mouth and swallowed it.

  “Jesus, what the hell, Ozzy?” Lilian said.

  The parchment scratched at the back of my throat, making me gag. Screwing my eyes up tight, I massaged my throat, helping the charm make its way down.
<
br />   A burning, prickling sensation began in the back of my skull and moved to the space behind my eyes.

  Finally—and thankfully—the charm dropped all the way down into my stomach. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.

  The passageway looked pretty much the same as before. The light from the storykeeper’s flashlight flicked across the walls that’d been hewn from the rock by goblin hands.

  Except this time, a few feet behind the storykeeper, there was a door I hadn’t noticed before.

  It wasn’t invisible, or anything like that. It was just hard to focus on. Like when you can’t find your keys, even though they’re sitting right there in front of you.

  Even now, with the charm, my eyes tried to slide past the door. I couldn’t look at it straight on. As I approached it, I kept it in my peripheral vision. It was a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron. The handle was trimmed with silver.

  A clever little piece of work. It looked dull and ordinary, just like it was designed to do. The wards that kept it hidden had been worked into the door itself.

  “Where are your keys, storykeeper?” I asked.

  She looked at the wall beside me, confused—her eyes slid past the door, unable to focus on it. But she dug through her robes and took out her iron ring of keys.

  “This is the one,” she said, selecting one of the keys on the ring. It was iron, plain and unadorned just like the rest. “But I don’t—”

  I took the key from her and slid it into the lock. The well-oiled lock turned smoothly. I opened the door.

  The others sucked in air as the door’s illusory wards were broken. It was a satisfying sound.

  “Guess he’s useful for something after all,” Lilian said. Rodetk nodded.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Just let me have this.”

  I turned back to the doorway. It opened onto a tightly coiling staircase.

  Just what I needed. More stairs.

  With the charm still working its magic on me, I studied the doorway for any other wards or traps, but I couldn’t see anything. The sorcerer thought he could rely on his little hiding trick.

  “This is it,” the storykeeper said. “I did what you asked. I have to get back before someone—”

  Rodetk grabbed her by her robes as she turned to leave. The goblin woman let out a low wail.

  “Uh-uh. You’re staying with us, storykeeper.” Rodetk pushed her forward. “Move.”

  26

  I unhooked my truncheon from my belt and pulled my ward-detecting talisman from my pocket. Taking a deep breath, I started down the stairs. Lilian stuck close behind me, silent as the dead, while Rodetk and the storykeeper took up the rear.

  The stairway was narrow, only a little wider than my shoulders. Like the walls, the stairs themselves had been carved out of the mountain. They were short and steep, made for nimble goblin feet, not my great big trotters. The stairwell coiled down into the mountain, lit by electric lanterns burning in recesses cut into the outer wall.

  Soft sounds echoed up from below: bubbling and hissing and dripping. But I heard no voices, no footsteps. With luck, the storyteller was right and the sorcerer was off holding court right now, giving us free rein of his lab.

  I kept one eye on the ward-detecting talisman as I descended, but the marble didn’t move. It occurred to me that Likho might be able to weave some kind of goblin ward that my talisman couldn’t detect. I knew little of his magic, after all.

  Screw it. Too late to stop now. Besides, if anything was going to give us away it would be the storyteller’s sniveling. I swallowed down my nervousness and continued on.

  Suddenly, I was at the bottom of the stairs. I paused, grip tightening on my truncheon, and stepped through the low archway into the sorcerer’s lair.

  The wide, circular room was crammed to the gills with stuff. Just… stuff.

  There, a ramshackle wooden bookcase stretching to the ceiling and creaking ominously, stocked full of books much like the grimoires I kept in my workshop. And over there in the fireplace, what looked like a large wok re-purposed as a cauldron, sitting over the last embers of the fire.

  The sad remains of a cat sat on a table in front of me, its belly opened up with a surgeon’s precision. Overhead, hanging low enough to brush the top of my head as I moved, were hundreds of animal bones, feathers, talismans, and dried herbs.

  “Oh, God,” Lilian whispered as she emerged behind me, covering her mouth and nose. “What’s that smell?”

  There was more than one smell. Strongest of all was the stink of death and decay, maybe coming from the poor dissected cat, or maybe there was some rotting meat still left on the animal bones hanging from the ceiling. But there were other smells as well, and almost all of them stuck to the roof of my mouth and made me want to heave. The sweet, pungent stink of strange herbs I didn’t recognize. A black, smoky smell. Something sharp, like formaldehyde. But there was one subtle, coppery smell that stuck out to me most.

  “Fresh blood,” I whispered.

  I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. A couple more lanterns were scattered about the place, but darkness and towering piles of junk still swallowed up large chunks of the room.

  The storykeeper made a groaning sound as she and Rodetk reached the bottom of the stairs. I turned and hissed at Rodetk.

  “Keep her quiet!”

  “You want to babysit her?” he snapped back. He turned to the storykeeper. “Why are you moaning, anyway? You’re in Likho’s lab. There must be centuries’ worth of occult knowledge here. This should be paradise for you, storykeeper.”

  She didn’t quit her moaning entirely, but she did get a little quieter as she looked around the room with fresh eyes. It would have to do.

  I returned my attention to the chamber. Was the Mills boy here? Even if he wasn’t, we still needed to find some evidence of the sorcerer’s involvement in the curse. And we needed to find it fast, before he returned and found us here. But where did we start?

  I glanced back to see everyone looking at me, waiting for instructions. Like I was the goddamn leader of our little gang of Scooby Doo mystery solvers. Hell.

  “Spread out, I guess,” I said. “But don’t touch anything. If you find anything, tell me.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Lilian asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Great. Thanks, fearless leader.”

  We each picked a path through the clutter and began to explore the room. Rodetk kept a firm hand on the storykeeper, while I went to investigate the contents of the wok in the fireplace. There was barely enough room to move. Once I caught sight of something skittering across the stone floor, scurrying beneath piles of crap. It was either a small rat or a large cockroach.

  Whatever had been in the wok was now unidentifiable, but it was definitely animal-based. I gave it a whiff, choked down the urge to vomit, and moved on.

  There had to be something here. Some hint of what the sorcerer’s plans were. If we could figure out what Likho was trying to do, we could figure out how to stop him. I had a few good ideas on that front, and most of them involved putting a bullet in the goblin sorcerer’s head. But we couldn’t act until we were sure.

  See, Early. I can be patient. I can be extremely patient.

  On a recessed shelf in the wall, I caught sight of a violin that looked as old as the Mines. One of the strings was broken and the veneer was scuffed, but it was a beautiful piece of work. Piano had always been my forte, but I’d dabbled with the violin as well.

  As I studied the instrument, the old ache in my brain started up again, and I touched the scar on the side of my head. How could I miss music, when I couldn’t even remember what it sounded like? It made no sense. But I found myself reaching out for the violin just the same, as if maybe this time, when I plucked the string, it would all come flooding back to me.

  “Ozzy!” Lilian’s urgent whisper carried across the room. “You have to see this.”

  I paused and let my
hand drop to my side, turning away from the violin with a sigh. I didn’t have enough of a future left to keep living in the past.

  I weaved through the maze of junk, following the sound of Lilian’s voice. I found her standing near the back wall of the room. She’d pulled back a heavy leather curtain to reveal an alcove set into the wall. As I approached, the smell of blood grew stronger.

  “What—” I stopped and stared. “Holy shit.”

  Lilian nodded. “Yeah.”

  Six iron cages were secured to the wall, each of them maybe a cubic yard in size. A whole lot of newspapers had been stolen from somewhere, torn up, and used to line the bottom of the cages.

  And in each of the cages—bar one—sat a creature. They were humanoid, sallow-skinned, each the size of a toddler. They had big heads and long, slender arms that each ended in three hooked claws. They looked out at us through half-lidded eyes, breathing rapidly as they slumped against the bars of their cages.

  “Holy fucking shit,” I said. “Are you seeing this?”

  “I’m not blind,” Lilian said.

  “They’re the same,” I breathed. “The same type of creature as the one I caught in my sister’s basement. They’re just like Lawrence.” I rubbed my head, trying to make things fit together. “What the hell are they all doing here?”

  She shook her head. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  Rodetk and the storykeeper hurried over to us. “What is it?” Rodetk hissed. “You two need to keep quiet! If the sorcerer finds us here—”

  “Shut up for a second.” I looked at the single empty cage, then glanced at Lilian. “Do you think…?”

  Lilian pushed me aside and went to the empty cage. The creatures followed her with their eyes as she got near, and a couple lazily bared their teeth, but they all seemed too exhausted to care. Lilian pulled open the empty cage door, the squeal of the hinge echoing through the room. She picked up a handful of shredded newspapers and sniffed them.

  “Ew,” I said. “You know they’ve been shitting in that, right?”

  “Obviously,” she said, tossing the newspaper back and brushing her hand on her pants. “I’d say it’s about a week old. Maybe less.”