by Jess Lebow
Bursting through, they swept into the great hall, pushing back the invaders all the while. Victory was within reach. The light at the end of the chamber came in over the drawbridge. If they could reach the entrance, they could win back the day.
Mere moments away from completing their victory, their momentum stalled. Their push came to a halt as the light at the end of the drawbridge went black and a huge second wave of beasts from the Obsidian Ridge crashed into the front of the palace.
It flooded past the portcullis, swamping the great hall, turning the tide on King Korox and his warriors.
The creatures scampered up the walls, filled the ceiling, and surrounded the remainder of the Erlkazarians in the great hall. The king's offensive became a defensive, and the surviving warriors encircled their king, preparing to fight to the death. The beasts closed on them, their numbers growing by the moment.
Then, just as quickly as they had arrived, the creatures stopped. They held their ground, pawing at the floor, growling at the soldiers, their advance halted.
"What are they doing?" asked Captain Kaden, his eyes wide, his back to the king.
"I do not know," replied Korox, breathing hard from the exertion. "But something tells me we're about to find out."
The mob of horrific beasts parted, lining up in an organized row and leaving a narrow passage that stretched out under the portcullis and across the drawbridge. What had been a chaotic, bloodthirsty horde had become a disciplined, organized army standing at attention.
Down the center of their ranks walked a hunched, disfigured man.
He wore the trappings of a mage-robes instead of armor, a wand in his belt instead of a sword, and wrinkles upon his face instead of scars. He walked upright on two legs, had two eyes, arms, and hands, but that was where the similarity between this figure and the rest of humanity ended.
His spine curved over itself as if it were trying to turn his whole body into a giant question mark. His back rose higher than his head, one shoulder more elevated than the other, and was marked mostly by a large, misshapen hump. His face, covered in blackened boils, was caved in, making his eyes bulge as he scanned the waiting beasts along the drawbridge.
Despite his disfigurement, the man was actually quite tall, due mostly to the length of his long, spindly limbs, which he used to great effect, moving through Klarsamryn at a rapid clip.
Arriving before the circle of Erlkazarian warriors, the man peered into the crowd.
"I am Arch Magus Xeries," he announced, his voice echoing as if two people were speaking his words at the same time. "I demand to see your king."
King Korox pushed his way through the Magistrates, Watchers, and soldiers. Each one he passed, he reassured with a knowing glance or a quick word.
"Don't go, my lord," pleaded a blood-covered man. "He would have to kill us all to get to you."
"Let us hope it does not come to that," replied the king.
He moved on, his warriors reluctantly stepping aside. When he reached the edge of the compact circle, he stepped through, into the opening the beasts had made, and looked up at the disfigured man.
"I am King Korox Morkann, ruler of Erlkazar."
Xeries examined Korox, as if using some invisible test to prove the validity of his claim. After a moment, he nodded, seemingly satisfied that this was indeed the man he was looking for.
"I will make this brief," said Xeries. "I am losing patience with you. I have come personally to collect your daughter. Where is she? I want her now."
King Korox took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "I wish I knew," he said. "My daughter has been missing for four days now."
"Yio-do not-not toy-toy With-with me-me, morta.-mortal!" shouted Xeries, his voice rising, exaggerating the echo and making it sound as if he were repeating himself.
King Korox looked back at the soldiers then again up at Xeries. Even if he did know where his daughter was, he still hadn't decided if he would turn her over to this monster. Weighing his personal feelings against the needs of the kingdom, there was no one clear choice.
"I am not one to waste the lives of my people so carelessly," said Korox. "I simply cannot give you what you ask for. It is not within my power."
"Then make it within your power," demanded the arch magus. "For every day that you make me wait, a new terror will be visited upon these lands. The first day the crops will wither and die. On the second day, the water will dry up, turning everything for as far as the eye can see into a desert. And on the third day"-he waved his spindly arms, encompassing the beasts beside and behind him-"I will unleash the rest of my army and lay waste to all of Erlkazar."
Xeries pulled his arms back into his body, making himself much smaller. "I shall take your daughter from your own hands or from the ruins of your kingdom. Either way, she will be mine."
Chapter Twenty-Five
There she is," whispered Quinn. "She's still alive."
He had followed Mariko's trail of personal runes all the way to this… place. It wasn't a cave, or a room, or anything like any of the other spaces he had seen inside the Cellar. If he had to describe it, he would have said it was more like a mansion, carved from stone, right in the middle of the hallway. The passage they had traversed had simply grown wider, and there it was-a huge replica of an opulent home, chiseled "Out of the natural cave.
Someone had taken great care to recreate every detail. It had open windows and balconies. It had doors and a porch. It even had a tiled roof-which was where Quinn and Evelyne now perched.
They looked down into a courtyard in the middle of the mansion. Almost a dozen of Erlkazar's lesser-known underworld figures were present. They busily moved back and forth between three fully functional Elixir distilleries. They had managed to turn the confines and horrors of the Cellar into a hub for their illegal business. How they got here, and more importantly, how they returned, were questions to which Quinn did not have the answers.
Then he saw something even more puzzling.
He pointed down at the man standing beside the tied princess. "The fat one. That's Pello Tasca. He's the only one who's supposed to be here."
Evelyne squinted. "That one there?" She pointed to the same man. "I know him."
"How?"
"He's the one I crossed."
"You're saying Pello Tasca sent you here, to the Cellar?"
Evelyne nodded. "A did a job for him and his brother, and when it came time to be paid, they only gave me half of what they promised."
"And they sent you here because you were unhappy with their payment?"
"No," replied Evelyne. "I got even by burning down their storehouse."
"I see," said Quinn, but he didn't really. "How did they manage to send you to the Cellar? When you said you crossed someone, I figured it was someone official, not an underworld boss."
"When the brother and his men caught up to me, they dragged me to this woman. They called her the Matron. She sent me here. Had some sort of a device."
"Right. So the Matron has unfettered access to the Cellar." It was all starting to make sense now. "That's how Mariko was sent here. And now the Matron thinks she can run her Elixir operations safely from inside."
Quinn watched the activity down below. They all seemed preoccupied with their individual tasks, no one walking patrols or even guarding the entrances.
That's when he caught sight of the horned man, and another realization struck-Jallal Tasca.
It was him. No doubt. Though his beard was gone, his face and body transformed, Quinn could clearly see the resemblance to his brother and to the man he used to be. Jallal was supposed to be dead. Quinn had punctured his neck and had watched him bleed out on the floor of the slaughterhouse. But something or someone had brought him back, and whatever or whoever that was had drastically disfigured the eldest Tasca.
"Let's sneak down the side, over in the corner. That'll get us close to the princess and-" He turned to Evelyne as he spoke. But she was gone, replaced by a pair of Tasca's burly guards.
A heavy club hit Quinn in the face, and his vision wavered. He tried to block the second swing with his right gauntlet, but he was not yet use to the lack of blades. The club hit him again, and the world went black.
+++++
A bucket of cold water hit Quinn in the face, and he started awake.
"Welcome to the Cellar."
He had been stripped to his smallclothes and was being held by the arms between two men-the same two he'd seen before being knocked cold. His head throbbed, and one eye was swollen, partially closed.
"We've been expecting you."
Shaking the water from his face, he looked up into the grinning, pointed teeth of Jallal Tasca.
"I thought you were dead," said Quinn.
Jallal nodded, a look of fake contemplation on his face. "I hear that a lot."
"I'll bet."
"What was it that made you finally recognize me?" asked Jallal. "The water?" He slapped the side of the bucket with his hairy palm.
"When I saw your brother and your Elixir operation here," said Quinn.
"Oh this?" taunted Tasca, turning to look at the glass vats as if he'd just realized they were there. "This is just temporary, until we've dealt with you and put the king on the payroll."
"And how do you intend to do that?"
"Oh, I don't know," replied Jallal. "For you, I was thinking simple torture. Nothing fancy, just some good old fashioned pain, stretched out for our enjoyment." His eyes revealed his elation. "A little payback for the marks you gave me."
Jallal ran his fingers over his neck and the smooth purple scars that had been left by the Claw's blades.
"And the king? You can't bribe him. Your coin and your favors are no good to a man of principles."
"Maybe so," replied Jallal. "But we have his daughter." He pointed to Quinn's left.
On the ground, beside and behind him, sat Princess Mariko, bound and gagged. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and alert.
"Are you hurt?" He tested the two men holding him, but they were both very strong, and they held him fast.
Mariko shook her head. She shot a nasty glare at Jallal, which told Quinn the whole story.
"The king's not the only one who wants her," replied Quinn.
Jallal chuckled. "That's very sweet. Showing your devotion as you go to your death."
Quinn gritted his teeth. "Perhaps you were dead when it arrived, but there is a huge black citadel floating over Llorbauth, and the arch magus inside is demanding that we turn over the princess, or he'll lay waste to the entire kingdom."
"Yes, yes, I'd heard. How unfortunate."
"Do you really think the king is going to give you anything in exchange for his daughter? She's safer down here than she would be with him."
Jallal scrubbed his chin. "You see, that's the beauty of all this. The Matron has already brokered a deal. We help him fight off this Xeries fellow, and he gets his daughter back."
"And you get to run your Elixir operations unfettered, is that it?"
"After we dispose of you, yes."
"Well, I guess you've thought of everything then."
"Indeed, we have."
Like every other place in the Cellar, there was more than one way to get inside the carved stone mansion. Lucky for Evelyne, she had noticed this one-just before those guards had arrived.
Evelyne pressed herself tight up against the cracked stone and looked out onto the courtyard. She could hear voices just off to her left.
"… how unfortunate."
Directly in front of her, a fire raged underneath a strange glass contraption that looked like a giant, see-through centipede. A short, fat man moved back and forth, in and out of her view, magically tending to the fire and casting ice spells on other parts of the centipede.
Feeling around inside her pouch, Evelyne found the two globes she had taken from Quinn when they had first met.
"Alchemist's fire," she whispered, a smile spreading across her face.
Slipping out of the cracked stone, she stayed close to the wall and out of sight. Quinn was being held by the two burly men who had knocked him out. The horned man he'd fought in the water cavern was taunting him. The princess was on the ground by his feet, and everyone else was busy working the giant centipedes.
"Well, I guess you've thought of everything then," said Quinn.
"Not everything," whispered Evelyne. She hurled both orbs of alchemist's fire at the base of the nearest vat.
The courtyard erupted as the glass broke and the substance inside caught flame. It bubbled and popped, spitting bits of sizzling fire in every direction like an angry adolescent hydra.
"Whoa," said Evelyne. "This should be fun."
+++++
"I'm on fire! I'm on fire!" Pello Tasca ran backward from the ruined Elixir still, his clothes engulfed in flames. His arms flailed, trying to scrape the sticky, burning substance from his exposed flesh.
"Brother!" Jallal bolted across the courtyard to Pello's side. Knocking him to the ground, he rolled him in the dirt and beat at the flames with his hands.
Shouts and confusion filled the courtyard as the other guards came running to help. The Elixir had ignited and was slowly seeping toward the second still, a running river of flame.
Taking advantage of the moment, Quinn kicked his legs in the air and flipped over backward, breaking the grip of the two men. They went for their swords, but Quinn was quicker.
"That's for the club in the face," he said, punching the first guard square in the jaw.
The man reeled back from the blow. Quinn followed with a second shot to the gut, which knocked the wind from the guard's lungs and forced him to double over. Spinning, Quinn shifted his weight and kicked the second guard in the groin, dropping him to his knees.
"I'll take that." Quinn pulled the first guard's long sword from its sheath.
With two quick motions, he finished off both men.
In the center of the carved-stone mansion, the second Elixir distillery exploded, sending another rain of sticky fire out over the underworld guards. Pello, covered in a shroud of orange and yellow light, still screamed and kicked the ground.
One of the guards noticed Quinn through the confusion and shouted, "They’re escaping!"
Dropping to his knees, Quinn lodged the tip of his sword in the bonds on Mariko's wrists and ankles. He yanked, and the ropes fell away. Her hands free, Mariko pulled the gag off of her mouth.
"I guess this isn't the time for a warm reunion," she said, lifting herself off the ground.
Quinn tossed her his sword, retrieving another from the second fallen guard. "Not quite."
That was all they had time for as the rush of the mob came on.
Quinn and Mariko worked back to back, circling around and beating back advances. They moved as one, never having fought together before but somehow reading each other's movements. They swirled, swords clanging, metal clashing, the flesh of their enemies cut to ribbons.
They made quick work of the first half-dozen guards before the third and final Elixir still erupted. Only four guards remained on their feet. Jallal bent over the now-motionless frame of his brother. Their entire operation was up in smoke.
Standing, Jallal pulled his sword and came right at Quinn. "You killed me once, and now you've killed my brother." He swung wildly as he came on, his words an unearthly growl. "It's your turn to die."
Jallal's guards scattered, disappearing into the open doorways-of the mansion as he pressed the attack. Gone was his calculating, controlled demeanor, replaced by the chaotic machinations of a desperate man, bent on revenge.
"Watch you bleed! Cut you to pieces! Get my brother back!" shouted Jallal, his eyes shifting madly, burning with hatred.
Quinn, still in his smallclothes, dodged each swing, giving ground and working his way into the courtyard. Flames burned at his back and he circled, giving the wild man in front of him plenty of room.
Princess Mariko slipped in behind Jallal, flanking him.
&nbs
p; "Kill you… both!" muttered Jallal, his face turning red. He swung his blade in huge, careless arcs, turning first toward Quinn then back toward Mariko. He grunted and growled, putting everything he had into each swing.
His blade closed on Mariko, and she had to stutter step to get back in time. Quinn dived into the gap, but the demon-man was quick, and he turned, swinging back. His exotic blade rang as it sliced the tip from Quinn's long sword.
"I'm going to take you apart, little by little, and I'm going to enjoy every single slice." Jallal lunged at Quinn.
A loud crack and thud echoed off the stone walls, sounding like a pumpkin being cleaved in two. Jallal stopped his attack. His hairy, muscular arms dropped to his side, and he stood up rail straight. A heartbeat later, he fell to the ground, a dagger buried to the hilt in the center of his forehead-right between his horns.
"Both brothers dead," said Evelyne, appearing from the shadows. "That'll teach you to not pay your debts." She crossed the courtyard to retrieve her dagger from Jallal Tasca's skull, a smug look on her face. "All that's left is to get out of here."
Mariko spun on the newcomer, raising her sword. "Drop it!" she warned. Her eyes scanned the courtyard, searching for any of the other guards.
Evelyne put her hand on her hip, examining Mariko but unfazed by the princess's aggressive stance. "I see now why you're here, Quinn." She gave him a devilish smirk. "I'd risk my life for her too."
Mariko partially lowered her blade, still on guard. "You know this woman?"
Quinn nodded, lifting his hand to stay her blade. "It's all right, Mariko. This is Evelyne. She… lives here. She helped me find you."
Evelyne offered her hand to Mariko, stepping in much closer. "A pleasure to meet you, Princess."
Reluctantly, Mariko held out her hand. Evelyne bent down and kissed it, caressing the princess's palm with her fingers.
Mariko looked at Quinn, but he just shrugged.
With a small amount of effort, the princess managed to pull back her hand, and she took a step away from Evelyne. "Very well. Then let's get out of here."
Quinn held out his arms, indicating his state of near nakedness. "Not without my things," he replied.