Shadowblood tc-4

by William King

  She considered the advantages. If she did the thing right she would have the advantage of surprise. She doubted that Xephan had any idea of her true capabilities. Of course, she could say the same thing about him. He had changed and doubtless possessed great sorcerous power. Perhaps she would be unable to kill him. On the other hand, it was not going to get any easier if she gave him time to prepare.

  She did not like rushing things, haste breeds mistakes, but she could see she was going to have to. She also needed to have a contingency plan in place, in case things went wrong.

  She laughed softly. If things went wrong the most likely outcome was her death, but such thinking was neither constructive nor helpful. She needed to have an escape route in place, and a method of getting beyond Xephan’s vengeance. The more she considered it, the more it occurred to her that there really was only one option, the place where she had just come from, the West. She would need to hide herself in the shadow of the only person powerful enough to protect her from the revenge of a cabal of sorcerers, Asea of the Selari.

  Tamara lay flat on the roof of Lord Lichtenhau’s mansion and stared at the Palace. She was garbed in tight-fitting black. Soot smudged her face. She checked her gear one last time to be sure everything was in place; poisoned shortsword, throwing knives smeared with magebane, dagger, a garrotte wound around her waist. In the small carryall on her back she had a spidersilk rope and a silence enspelled grapnel, along with a full collection of combat drugs and medications.

  Doubts nagged at her. She was not at all sure that killing Xephan would change anything. Another member of the Brotherhood would step up and take his place. There were any number of ambitious politicians and mages among them. Killing one and thinking the matter was over was like stamping on an ant and thinking you had wiped out a whole nest.

  But she had to start somewhere. She would kill Xephan, and if need be she would kill his successor, and any successor after that, until eventually they got the message. The slaughter would unbalance the Brotherhood, slow their plans while they investigated, keep them off-balance and nervous. If things worked out right she could implicate other members in the assassination and perhaps trigger an internal war.

  As long as they did not suspect what she was about, she could get away with it. Of course, they might work out what she was up to and take steps to eliminate her. She wondered if any of them had known what her father really was, and what she had turned into. She had to trust to the fact that Malkior had been a very secretive Terrarch, and very good at keeping his secrets. Many had died to make certain of them.

  She was only putting things off. Procrastination never solved anything. She opened the shadow-path. Reality split in front of her and she stepped forward into the gap. Cold enveloped her. Chill presences surrounded her and she felt as she sometimes did in dreams, as if she were falling endlessly with no hope of being bumped into wakefulness.

  A moment later she was on the walls of the Palace, looking back and down over the cliffs onto the slate-tiled roofs where she had been heartbeats before. She breathed hard and took a mouthful of sorcerer’s cordial from her flask to rid herself of the feeling of being drained that shadow-walking always gave her.

  She moved along the side of the building, till she was above and just to the right of the window of Xephan’s apartments and looked around for sentries. There were none.

  Slipping the grapnel into place, she paid out the line, and then abseiled down, like a spider dropping on a thread of web. It was cold, and the ground was a long way below her. One slip would send her to her death.

  The night was pregnant with the possibility of doom. So much could go wrong, and all of it could be fatal. A thrill jolted her body. She loved this. There was no sensation comparable to taking your life in your hands, and measuring your skills against whatever fate might throw at you.

  A light glowed through the leaded panes of the window. She swung gently sideways and looked through it. There was nobody within. Coals still glowed feebly in the fireplace. Using her tools she opened the window and entered the room, pulling it closed behind her.

  The office looked smaller than it had when she visited previously, presumably because of the gloom and the shadows. Silently she moved over to the door and listened. She could hear voices talking in the antechamber. She put her ear to the keyhole and listened carefully, trying to work out how many of them there were. It would not do to have witnesses. Possibly if there were enough of them, and they had sorcerous enhancements they might even be able to overcome her. To be on the safe side she drew one of her envenomed daggers.

  “It seems Azaar’s army has orders to invade Sardea,” said a voice she recognised as Xephan’s.

  “Is he mad, to march on the Empire with so small a force?” said Ryzarde. So there were at least two of them. That made things more complicated but only a little more so. She did not find Ryzarde nearly so fearsome as the Prime Minister.

  “The First Blade was always over-confident.”

  “Perhaps he knows something we don’t. Perhaps the Great Bitch has some new trick up her sleeve. So far she has managed to foil all our best laid schemes.”

  “Yes,” said Xephan. “I find that very suspicious. It’s almost as if she had a spy among us.”

  “That is not possible.”

  “It was impossible to destroy the Serpent Tower but she managed it, while avoiding a Nerghul and the best efforts of Jaderac and the luscious Tamara. Malkior’s plan to kill Kathea was supposed to be fool-proof as well, and now he is dead.”

  “It does not matter. Once the Ritual of Death is complete we will have an invincible army at our disposal.”

  Tamara froze. It sounded like she was eavesdropping on a council of war. Possibly she might overhear some useful information if she kept listening.

  “The plagues have killed many. Soon the dead will outnumber the living, and we will be invincible.”

  “This world will change.”

  “It will be ours again. The humans will know their place. We will have an obedient army as great as anything they can field.”

  “I am almost sorry that Malkior is not here to witness this. The secrets were in his books. Using the spell with the power of the Black Mirror behind it was a stroke of genius if I say so myself.”

  The mention of her father froze her. She knew her father had a library of ancient sorcery in a secret chamber in the mansion. Had Xephan and his cohorts managed to plunder it, or had Malkior given them the book willingly when they were his pupils?

  Glasses clinked, and wine was sipped. Good, she thought, the two were relaxed. She tested the door gently. It was not locked. She loosened another dagger in its sheath and pulled the door open, taking in the chamber at a glance.

  Ryzarde sat in the nearest chair. Xephan stood in the corner with a decanter in his hand. She threw the dagger at him. It flew true and buried itself in his eye. She ripped her second blade clear of its sheath and lunged at Ryzarde. Her spell-enhanced speed carried her across the room, and she buried the blade in his heart.

  Even as it went in she knew that something was wrong. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Xephan was still standing. He threw the decanter at her with such force that she could not avoid it, only managing to twist her head so that it did not catch her full on. It glanced of her head, and hit the wall, shattering and spraying glass and brandy over Ryzarde.

  She rolled, blanking out the pain as she had been taught and tearing her shortsword from its sheath. Xephan stood there, the poisoned dagger protruding from his eye, seemingly unscathed. She saw no weakness in his stance, no sign that his throw had been some sort of last-gasp reflexive spasm.

  “What have we here?” he asked, amusement in his voice. “A would-be assassin?”

  He tugged the knife from his eye. It came free with a slurping sound, and the gel of his eyeball flowed back together.

  A sudden whiff of alcoholic fumes warned her, and she sprang to one side as Ryzarde pounced. He was slowed down no
more by her attack than Xephan had been by the one in his eye. It appeared she had been over-confident.

  Powerful hands clasped her arm with numbing force, in a grip far stronger than any Terrarch should have possessed. She twisted and slashed down with the blade, aiming for the wrist. The knife’s edge cut flesh but no blood flowed. The cut healed as swiftly as the blade bit. A fist smashed into her with the force of a horse’s kick, sending sparks flying across her field of vision. She speared at her attackers eyes with her fingers and felt them bite home. Her foe gurgled and fell back, leaving her free from his punishing grip. At very least, she had caused him some discomfort.

  Things were happening too fast. She had hoped to take her assailants by surprise, but instead she was the one who had been thrown off-balance by their unexpected abilities. Xephan drew a long blade and lunged at her face. She threw herself to one side but it caught the scarf around her face and jerked it free.

  “Why it’s the lovely Tamara,” said Xephan. “Did Arachne put you up to this? Was that what your little chat was about? I believe I shall have to show our beloved Empress who is the real ruler of Sardea. Perhaps your corpse will demonstrate that sufficiently.”

  The insanity of the situation hit her. Xephan was speaking in perfectly measured, perfectly reasonable tones. He did not look like a Terrarch who had just had a dagger plunged through his eye and into his brain. Ryzarde paid no attention to the poisoned dagger sticking forth from his ribs. Both of them looked amused.

  “What has happened to you both?” she asked to distract them as she lunged at Xephan with her shortsword. The blade slashed his face, revealing something black that reminded her of the underside of a woodlouse before the flesh knitted cleanly together again over it. She remembered where she had seen its like; in Jaderac’s alchemical laboratory, when he had created the Nerghul. Had this pair been turned into unholy necromantic monsters? She did not see what else it could be.

  “We have been remade,” said Xephan. “As you might have been if you had remained loyal to the Brotherhood. We are immortal and invincible. But really you are the surprising one here, little Tamara. You are impressively skilled.”

  He attacked on the last word, and it was all Tamara could do to keep clear of his grasp. Her rolling leap carried her back into the office. Ryzarde came in on her heels, still stinking of brandy. Tamara’s fingers clasped on the coal shovel. She reached into the fire with it, and scooped out the last of the glowing embers, sending them showering over her pursuer. The brandy caught fire, burning in blueish flames, scorching flesh and cloth. Ryzarde reeled back, proving once more the old adage that fire was no friend to the undead.

  She considered her options. Soon guards would come to investigate and there was no sense in sticking around for a fight she could not win. She had made enemies tonight she doubted that even the Empress could protect her from. It was time to make a run for it, to get away if she could. She sprang for the window and grabbed the spidersilk line. Momentum carried her out into the night. She let it carry her back to the wall and scampered up it.

  She saw Xephan stick his head out the window, not knowing immediately where she had gone. In the darkness the line was almost invisible. Not that it mattered. They would soon have agents looking for her. It would be better not to go back to the mansion.

  She felt a brief surge of regret. She would have liked to have found the books they had referred to, but there was no guarantee those were still in the library, or that they would be of any use even if she could find them. No, it was time to flee into the night and hope she could outpace the hounds that would inevitably follow her. There was really only one place for her to go now.

  Back to the West, if she could make it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tamara pulled the cloak tight around her shoulders and rode on. The farmlands of one of the great estates swept by at a thunderous pace. She was once again in the garb of a military courier but it was only a matter of time before the hounds were on her trail. She had used this disguise before so it was safest to assume that Xephan knew about it and that word would be spread about her, but at the moment, she needed to cover a lot of ground, and this was the easiest way. She could commandeer post horses and travel at haste without attracting too much notice or too many questions.

  She let her body flow into the rhythm of the ride. She had a good deal to think about and not much time to work it out. Nowhere in Sardea was safe and not even the Empress could protect her from the Brotherhood. She needed to put herself beyond their reach, and the only place she could think of to do that was in Talorea.

  She had something to bargain with- knowledge of Xephan and the Brotherhood that might prove useful to Asea and her cohorts, and there was the private arrangement that Rik had proposed. She might even have something to offer there as well. He was a Shadowblood but an untrained one, and she could show him how to master those skills. She was sure also that Asea could put an assassin of her talents to work. It seemed for the moment that their objectives might be similar. The Brotherhood had them both marked for death and she had no doubt that they would send proficient killers.

  There were other things that troubled her. Xephan and Ryzarde had been changed in a way that spoke of a mastery of sorcerous techniques beyond anything in this world. She had only heard of such things in tales of Al’Terra, and the implications filled her with dread. She did not like to think of pitting herself against beings possessed of such powers.

  Perhaps the best she could do was find a place to hide, to put her head down and hope that the Brotherhood did not catch up with her. She knew that was a forlorn hope. Until recently she had been confident in her ability to elude anyone. She was a Shadowblood. Normal sorcerers could not hope to trace her by mystical means but there were other ways. Rik and the Nerghul had shown her that. The undead creature had been able to trace him even though he was Shadowblood too. She needed to get away quickly and in a way that would make her almost impossible to follow. Fortunately, she had method of doing so in mind. It was risky but not as much as trying to ride the long roads to the West.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself. Unless they had used very potent magic, there was no way Xephan or his men could beat her to where she was going. But then they had access to powerful magic, and perhaps they might even have anticipated her plan. She pushed such thoughts aside. There was no sense in worrying about such things until the possibility materialised.

  It had been a busy day, she reflected. She had failed to assassinate the Prime Minister and if things went according to plan she would commit a few more capital crimes before this night was out.

  The thought amused her.

  There were no guards at the estate gates. No one tried to arrest her as she raced towards the mansion house she had known since childhood. She felt a thrill of nostalgia as she thundered up the tree-lined approach. She remembered the scent and the taste of the night air and the moon-blossoming flowers. She caught the glitter of light on the crystal roof of the glasshouse in which her mother had once cultivated her exotic plants.

  Her approach had not gone unnoticed. Lights came on in the windows and armed figures emerged from the doors. She was relieved to see that they were all servants, humans that she remembered, and hopefully loyal to her family still.

  Guilt stabbed at her. She had signed all their death warrants by coming here tonight. She told herself that it was not her fault, that Xephan would kill them all anyway, but somehow she could not convince herself of it. She told herself that the deaths of a few score humans did not matter, not compared to the life of a Terrarch and especially her own, but that did not change anything either. She was doing them wrong and she knew it. She cursed herself- who had ever heard of an assassin with a bad conscience?

  “Who goes there?” shouted a footman, pointing a blunderbuss in her direction. “You should know we are armed.”

  “It is Lady Tamara,” she shouted back, and was gratified and made more guilty still by their immediate recogniti
on. A groom ran to take her horse. If anyone noticed her unusual attire they gave no sign of being concerned.

  “You’ll be wanting food, Milady,” said the chief servant.

  “I will. Bring it to the dragon cave. I have urgent business to perform there.”

  “As you command, Milady.”

  Without waiting for any further questions, she headed towards the hill, praying that Ironfang was not still dormant from his winter sleep.

  The ornate iron gates were locked. She took a deep breath, catching the faint acrid smell of dragon as she waited for the keeper to come with the keys. It was late, it was unusual to for anyone to want access at this time of night, and the Keeper was old and crotchety. Tamara drummed her fingers against her side. She had the feeling that Xephan’s minions could close in any time, and to be found here would mean death. They knew what she was capable of now, and the Brotherhood would see that anyone sent for her would come prepared. She did not like the idea of facing a host of sorcerously enhanced minions armed with magebane and truesilver.

  The Keeper arrived, his keys clanking on a huge iron ring. Two of his apprentices accompanied him with prods and lanterns. He looked up at her, rheumy eyes disapproving, as if this were some dark conspiracy to separate him from his bed. Recognition dawned slowly and he smiled, revealing yellow teeth and black stumps. In the lantern-light his face was as leathery and seamed as those of his charges, and his eyes just as malevolent. They say shepherds come to resemble their sheep, she thought, so why not keepers and their dragons?

  “Your wish, mistress?” he asked.

  “Ironfang must be ready to fly at dawn.”

  “The master sent no word to me, mistress.”

  “That’s why he sent me.” At the moment it seemed best not to reveal her plan. All females save the empress were forbidden from riding dragons. She was glad now her father had been sufficiently unconventional as to secretly defy that law and give her lessons. He was always saying you could never tell when a skill might prove useful. At the time, she had not realised that if they were seen she could have been executed for usurping the Empress’s prerogatives. Even then her father had been reckless with her life, a foretaste of what was to come.