Another mistake, he thought fiercely. I used the wrong magic again. Instead of flying, I’m swimming through the ice as I would glide through the air. He might have sat there embedded in the ice for some time as he analyzed the mistake and studied the way the spell had been modified, but a sense of urgency tugged at him. I need to get across the glacier while I can, he thought, remembering how tenuous his control over the magic had been. He repositioned himself until he was just below the surface of the ice with his head tilted slightly upward so he could see what was in front of him. Then he tweaked the strand to go lower, finding to his astonishment that he could breathe without any difficulty as the ice swallowed him up. But he didn’t go very deep beneath the surface, submersing only far enough to take full advantage of the spell’s effects.
Angus began by testing the gestures that normally redirected his movements while he was flying through air and found that they still worked for flying through ice. But his maneuverability was severely hampered by his inability to use his right hand, and the ice made it impossible to see more than a few yards in front of him—and even that was cloudy and distorted. He hovered near the edge where the glacier met the mountain, turning left and right, moving forward and back, skimming along the surface and going deeper into the ice to see what he could do.
He was still testing his limitations near the surface of the ice when a shadow darkened the ice above him.
9
Hobart squinted at the valley far below them and saw a flicker of a dim blue light on the ice. It was at the base of the mountain to the south, and it was only noticeable because the moon had been obscured by a passing cloud. “Ortis,” he said, his voice low and steady as he fought against the sudden burst of excitement the light had brought.
Ortis sat up abruptly, his bow in hand. “What is it?”
“Isn’t that like Angus’s Lamplight spell?” Hobart asked.
Ortis took a long look and shook his head. “Wrong color,” he said at once. “His spell was yellowish-orange. That one’s blue.”
Hobart nodded, “It was bright yellow when he melted the ice on the winch at that well,” he said. “Why can’t he make it blue? We really don’t know what magic he has, do we?” The blue light suddenly darted away from the mountain for several feet, and then stopped. After a brief pause, it squirting away from them and stopped again.
Ortis frowned. “It’s possible, I suppose,” he said. “But what if that isn’t him?”
“What if it is?” Hobart demanded, clenching his jaws and rising to his feet. What if it is Angus, he repeated to himself. “He would need our help, wouldn’t he?” The light suddenly shot across the valley in a straight line. “It’s moving like he did when we first saw him fly.”
“He had a lot of practice over the winter,” Ortis countered. “He wasn’t at all erratic when he went after those fletching eggs. It was almost like he had become part bird.”
Hobart studied the light for a few more seconds before the moon crept out from behind the cloud. The moonlight glistened on the ice and hid the little blue glow from view, and he stepped forward, sliding a bit on the loose rock. “It was heading for that mountain. Whatever it is, it will probably make its way up to the road we took to Giorge’s tomb.” He began walk-sliding in that direction. “We may as well check it out. We’re heading back anyway,” he added.
Ortis shrugged as if he were humoring a fool and fell in behind him.
But Hobart was no fool; he knew it wasn’t likely to be Angus, but they were out of options. It has to be him, he thought fiercely, taking long, quick strides down the easy slope of the mountain. If they hurried, and if it was coming toward them, they might meet up with it by midday. If it wasn’t Angus…
He shrugged. It had to be Angus.
10
As soon as the door opened far enough for him to reach through, Typhus lunged forward with the fishhook, wrapped it around Thaddius’s thick neck and jerked it forward. The barb caught on the flesh, ripped through it, and left behind a ragged, gaping wound that sprayed blood out in rhythmic spurts. Then Typhus used the blunt, curved loop of the hook to push against Thaddius’s chest. He staggered backward and reached for his throat, bumping into a man Typhus didn’t recognize. He tried to speak through the hole in his throat, but only frothy, gurgling blood gurgled out.
Typhus twisted sideways to squeeze through the opening in the door and lunged toward the man he didn’t know. That man had lifted his hands and his eyes had dilated, but it was too late; a short, quick thrust with the little knife punctured his robes as the blade buried itself in his chest, just below the ribcage. A quick flick of the wrist severed the blood vessels feeding his heart, and Typhus dismissed him from his mind as he sidestepped around him.
A quick glance to the left confirmed his suspicion that Iscara was there, but for some reason, she had lingered in the corridor well away from the door—too far away for him to make a quick kill. She was already turning to run, so he turned to the right to see who was at the door mechanism. It was Gregor. He frowned. He actually liked Gregor, at least as much as he liked anyone, and he felt a pang of regret as he circled in behind him. He dropped the fishhook and reached for Gregor’s sword before the poor man had a chance to use it. A single thrust upward from the side, just above the waistline and at a sharp upward angle, and it was over. “Easy, Gregor,” he said, gently lowering him to the ground. “Leave the blade in and don’t move around. A healer can save you if one gets here in time. I missed all the important bits.” As Typhus turned away from him to run after Iscara, he wondered why he hadn’t killed him outright. He would die anyway; Argyle was far from lenient with incompetents and Iscara was his healer. And she—
Iscara was near the end of the corridor, some twenty feet away, but she made the mistake of slowing down as she went around it. He didn’t. He ran at full speed and used the wall as a springboard to redirect his momentum without significantly slowing him down. It was a difficult maneuver, one that he had practiced frequently while preparing for his escapes, and it gave him the advantage he needed to catch her before she reached the end of the short corridor that led to Argyle’s meeting chamber. It also made a lot of noise as his bare feet slapped against the smooth stone wall.
She screamed. It was a strange sound coming from her, a bizarre contrast to the squeals of delight she made when the blood began to spill. But somehow it was eerily similar to those squeals: a high pitched trill that grated on the nerves. A second later and he was upon her, wrapping his arms around her waist and thrusting her harshly against the corridor wall. He pressed his body close against her back, pinning her to the wall, and set the flat of the little knife’s bloody blade against her cheek. “Hush, Iscara,” he whispered into her ear as she struggled against him. When she didn’t calm down, he turned the blade and let it bite into her cheek. “Be still,” he hissed, his eyes darting to Argyle’s meeting chamber to see if anyone was coming. There was no sign—yet. No one seemed to have heard her scream, so he turned most of his attention back to Iscara.
She was trembling, her lower lip going in and out of her mouth as she tried not to make any sound while she sobbed. He smiled; it was so like her to be weak. Put her in a room with a man in chains, and she was as vicious and terrifying as they came, but up against a man on equal terms, and she quivered like a trapped rabbit. Or was it an act? An attempt to put him off guard? It didn’t matter; he had plans for her.
“I need your help,” he said, his voice soft as he eased up on the amount of pressure he was using to keep her pinned to the wall. “Give it, and you will live.”
She was sweating, now, but the worst of the trembling seemed to have passed as he turned her around to face him. “Typhus?” she asked, her voice soft, lilting. Her eyes stared blankly at his left shoulder, through his left shoulder.
He smiled and held up his right hand in front of her eyes. “See this?” he asked.
She gulped and shook her head. “How?” she began. “When?” Then she blurted
out, sharply and shrilly, “You don’t have magic!”
Typhus smiled and lowered his right hand, letting it fall upon her familiar, ample breast for a long moment before continuing to her hand. His fingertips raged at the contact, but he ignored them as he gripped her hand firmly and turned to Argyle’s meeting room. “Not here,” he said. “Argyle will catch us.” He tugged on her hand, but she didn’t move.
“No,” she said. “I won’t go.”
He turned back to her and made a quick slash with the knife, cutting a long gash across the top of her breast. She gasped and lurched backward, but he clung to her hand and prevented her escape. He pulled her closer to him and said, his voice cold and unfeeling, “Make no mistake, Iscara. Our past will not stay my hand.”
She shuddered and gulped. Then, quite suddenly, she straightened and said, “I can’t help you escape. Argyle will kill me.”
Typhus shrugged, then realized that she couldn’t see him shrugging and asked, “Would you prefer I kill you now?” He paused and added, “It is the only alternative. I can’t leave you here to tell Argyle what you have seen and—” he paused for a moment and then pointedly added “—what you haven’t.”
Her eyes widened as she shook her head. “But—”
“I need you to do two things,” Typhus interrupted. “After you’ve done them, I will let you go.”
She almost shook her head again, but then took a deep, ragged breath and asked, “What things?”
Typhus smiled. He had seen it so many times before that it didn’t surprise him any longer. People often put up a strong, defiant stance in the face of the overwhelming threat of death, but it wasn’t what they really wanted. Give them an alternative, offer to let them live if they do what you wanted of them, and they almost always buckled to the hope that life would reassert itself. Few clung to that desperate, defiant stance in the light of that alternative—no matter what they had to do to win their life back. It didn’t even matter if it was a real hope.
“First, you will help me leave here,” he said. “No one can see me, but they can see you. If I go alone, the doors will seem to be opening on their own, and that will draw the guards’ suspicion. I would have to kill them all, and that is something I would rather not do. I have already killed enough of Argyle’s men, and I have grown weary of it. You will leave as you usually do, act as you usually do, and I will accompany you. No one will see me, no one will know I am there, and we will walk out together without anyone the wiser.”
“But—”
“Compose yourself, Iscara,” Typhus said. “You’ll need to clean and heal that wound before we go; it will look suspicious if you don’t, even to the most dimwitted of guards.”
Iscara’s breathing was becoming regular, and her eyes dilated as she looked down at the long, straight cut drenching her breast in blood. She grimaced and lifted her hands to it. Beginning near her cleavage, she squeezed the edges of the wound together with her left hand and worked her way to the other side. Her right hand followed, hovering just above the skin, and as it passed, the wound sealed itself and left behind a bulging little scar. When she finished, she said, her voice even, “This will do for now. I’ll tend to the scar later. Couldn’t you have cut my arm, instead?”
Typhus smiled. So vain, so mercurial—nothing was ever simple with Iscara. “Tell the guards it’s my blood if they ask about it. They’ll believe that.”
“All right,” she said. “We should leave through the Grain Street entrance. There will be fewer guards, and it is not as well lighted as the other passages. It’s also the closest one to my shop.”
Typhus nodded and was about to lead her into Argyle’s meeting chamber when she asked, a slight tremor in her voice, “The second task?”
Typhus paused only long enough to say, “Minor healing. Burns. They can wait until we are out of here.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “And I will need some clothes.”
“I would think it would be easy for you to acquire clothes,” she scoffed, her normally snide attitude reasserting itself. “You are a capable thief, aren’t you? And moving unseen—”
“Hush,” Typhus said, his voice unbearably soft, almost kind. “We need to leave now. It won’t take long for Argyle to find out what happened.” He took her hand and ushered her through Argyle’s meeting room. It was a huge room with a gigantic throne in the middle, several corridors leading from it, and a variety of furniture and weapons that he sometimes used during his meetings. Typhus ignored most of it and ushered them to a short table—a human-sized table—that had a basin, ewer, and cloth rags on it. He poured water into the basin and reached for one of the towels. He couldn’t see the blood on his chest or thigh, but he could feel it, and after washing it off, he turned to Iscara and dabbed at the blood on her breast and cheek. Remarkably, the blood hadn’t splattered onto her healer’s gown.
“You know,” Iscara said, glaring at a spot a foot to the left of Typhus’s head. “I’ll be a lot more helpful if you tell me what Argyle wants to know.”
“What does he want—” Typhus began as he took hold of her elbow and led her toward the exit that would lead to the Grain Street entrance. But he didn’t finish the question; he already knew what the answer was.
“A key,” Iscara said. “I was told to ask you about a gold key. He wants to know where you’ve hidden it.”
As they approached the exit, Typhus began to laugh. It was a soft, intense laugh, one that only lasted a few seconds. Then he turned to her and said, “All right, tell him this. Exactly this. I no longer have the key. It is in Angus’s backpack, where Sardach dropped him. If he wants it, he will have to send someone to get it.”
Iscara frowned for a long moment, and then said, “I suppose, since there is no Truthseer present, I will have to take your word for it.”
Typhus laughed, a short, simple laugh, and asked, “Have I ever lied to you, Iscara?”
She scowled in his direction and demanded, “How would I know?”
He laughed again, and she turned abruptly down the corridor. “You no longer have the key,” she said. “It is in Angle’s back—”
“Angus’s backpack.”
“—pack, where Sardach dropped him. If he wants it, he will have to send someone to get it.” She paused, and then said with some amusement, “Argyle will probably send Sardach. He already knows where he dropped Angros.”
“Angus,” Typhus corrected her again, wondering not for the first time why she had such a horrid time remembering people’s names—other people’s names; somehow she had no trouble remembering his. No matter; if she remembered the rest of it, Sardach would know enough to fill in the details. Hopefully it would be enough for him to avoid a resurgence of Argyle’s wrath, and perhaps it would even offset the loss of Thaddius and the new Truthseer. And Gregor, if he didn’t get help soon enough.
11
As Angus veered sharply to the right, something struck the thick ice to his left a vicious blow, shattering the surface and sending a crack fragmenting downward, narrowly missing his head by a few feet. He veered again as the shadow leapt after him, and the reverberation of the impact vibrated through him, setting fire to the nerves in his right shoulder. He gasped, almost lost his grip on the magic, and plunged deeper. He slowed after only a few seconds, and found himself surrounded by a blue-tinged darkness that the Lamplight did little to penetrate. He stayed there for nearly a minute, willing the pain in his shoulder to ease, and then moved cautiously forward—what he thought was forward—for almost five minutes before rising slowly up through the ice. At least, he hoped he was going upward, but after almost a minute, he wasn’t so sure. He should have reached the surface by now, but he hadn’t. Still, he kept going in the same direction.
Five minutes later, he stopped. He was certain his direction sense was off, but other than knowing he wasn’t going up to the surface, he wasn’t sure which way he was going. He closed his eyes and replayed the directive gestures he had made since plunging down to escape from whateve
r had tried to get at him through the ice. He frowned and went through them a second time. They should have brought him to the surface if he had gone straight down, but he wasn’t sure if he had gone straight down.
He blinked. He had gone down, but he had twisted over onto his back when he had. He was facing up when he settled, but he hadn’t realized it; he had been distracted by the agony in his shoulder. He sighed, turned over, and reversed his motion, moving upward with greater rapidity than he had when he had descended. The surface came with little warning, and his momentum shot him upward into the air at least ten feet. As he slowed at the top of his leap, he saw that he was much closer to the center of the glacier than he had expected, and as he descended, he caught a glimpse of a huge shape coming toward him. It was close, so close that he wished he was falling faster, and just before he plunged back into the ice like a salmon embracing the water of its home stream, he met the wide eyes of its feline stare as it plunged after him, trying to follow him into the ice.
The weight of the beast shattered the newly formed ice and sent a shudder through him as he dipped deep again. This time, he wasn’t startled, wasn’t distracted by the pain, and moved horizontally toward the mountain he sought. He went quickly, and after a few minutes, he rose to skim along just below the surface of the ice. Another minute went by, and he rose out of the ice to see if the creature had followed him. A yiffrim, he thought. It was a yiffrim. He did a complete circle, trying to see the yiffrim, but it was beyond the range of his deformed Lamplight, and none of the shadows captured by the moonlight seemed to be moving. It can move with stealth, he thought, and blend into its surroundings. But what was it doing here? Yiffrim were creatures of the far north, where the snow never melts. The glacier would be suitable for its habitat, but how had it found its way here? And where was its mate? They always hunted in pairs.
The Golden Key (Book 3) Page 7