by Bruce Blake
The act is familiar but uncomfortable, though it’s because of him, not because of the act itself. He’s nervous and afraid, clumsy. I make the best of it, coaxing as much out of him as I can. I’ve done this before, I know. Many times.
When I come to my end, he does, too. As my last satisfied gasp fades from my mouth, my lips find his and I take his breath. Then I break his heart.
I use his shirt to wipe his seed from between my legs and discard it on his naked corpse. Fat, lazy flies nearing the end of their lives in the autumn chill buzz around his companions as they grow stiff under the midday sun. A part of me feels reviled by what I’ve done, but whether it’s the killing or the fucking, I’m not sure. Truth is, most of me enjoyed both. They complement each other.
My clothes are back on my body, my sword belt at my waist when she appears. At first I think to hide like I’ve been caught doing something forbidden me, but I stand my ground. I’m no match for this woman, whoever she is, but I know she didn’t bring me back to be a coward.
“How did it feel?” she asks, and I wonder if she means the death or the sex before she continues. “How did it feel to kill your first man?”
I shrug and suppress the excited feeling in my stomach.
“He’s dead.”
The hole in the cowl laughs and I can’t help smiling.
“You have done well, Shariel, but this is only the beginning. Practice, if you will.” She moves closer, the tall grass making it seem like she floats over the ground. “There will be others. And the man Khirro will know you. He is dangerous.”
His name takes the smile from my lips. I tighten my belt one more notch and straighten the scabbard at my side.
“He will die.”
The black cowl moves, nodding, then the woman raises her arm, the sleeve falling away from a pale hand and painted fingertips. She points south.
“Go to Poltghasa,” she says. I recognize the name: the last Free City. The city of thieves and murderers. “That is where you will find him.”
I open my mouth to speak but she’s gone, disappeared as though never there.
“Poltghasa,” I say to the corpses around me. None of them offer comment.
I step over the body of my lover and head for the southern edge of the forest. A gust of wind swirls fallen leaves across my path, some of them the same color as the blood I wipe from my sword. I want to find them beautiful but can’t.
Not as long as the man called Khirro lives.
Chapter Eleven
The copper-sized circle of sky visible through the opening high above was barely distinguishable from the sides of the pit itself. Hours had passed. Khirro’s head hurt; he rubbed his temples, tentatively moved first one arm, then the other. When both worked, he did the same with his legs.
I’m lucky.
He pushed himself to a sitting position, wincing at the pain in his head. Other than the headache, he'd have a bruise on his hip, but nothing else hurt too badly; he seemed to have survived the fall relatively unscathed. That made twice now he’d taken major falls and survived. He hoped Athryn fared so well.
Athryn!
Khirro lurched to his feet, the sudden movement making his head spin and throb. He paused a moment to settle himself, then turned a tight circle, surveying the dimly lit pit. He saw nothing, so shuffled a wider arc, feet leaving divots in the pile of straw and moss that had cushioned his fall. Still no sign of his companion. He fell to his knees, looking for signs of the magician and what happened to him, where he had gone. His fingers grasped dry straw, sifted through loose dirt, but the lack of light made his search difficult as he scuffled around the thick layer set at the bottom of the pit.
This pit isn’t here by accident. But why? The only answer he could think of unsettled him: hunting.
His thoughts were interrupted when his hand found a wide path cut in the mossy pillow, like a track left when something was dragged away. He followed it a few feet until his hand touched a wet and tacky spot of dirt that stuck to the palm of his hand.
Blood.
Khirro held his breath and reached for the Mourning Sword, but his fingers found an empty scabbard. His mind searched back through what had happened; he recalled having the sword in his hand when he plummeted into the pit. He must have dropped it during the fall.
Damn lucky I didn’t land on it and kill myself.
His eyes flickered across the dark ground. The black blade would be invisible in the dark, but he hoped to catch sight of the faint red glow of the weapon’s runes. With his foot planted firmly on the bare dirt to keep from losing the track left on the ground, he groped through moss and straw, praying his fingers would touch cool steel. Nothing. He settled back on his haunches, despair threatening at the edge of his mind.
What am I without the Mourning Sword?
He set his jaw and forced the thought from his head. A sword could be replaced—even one such as the Mourning Sword—but without Athryn, all was lost.
He crawled tentatively forward along the track in the moss, eyes fixed straight ahead, until he saw the mouth of a tunnel. It was nothing more than a shadow in the pit’s black wall leading another unknown place, to unknown dangers. Khirro sighed. In his experience, nothing good happened underground.
After a moment steeling himself for what the darkness beyond held, Khirro rose to his feet and reached for Elyea’s dagger that he carried at his belt, but found its sheath empty, too. He reached for the small knife in his boot. Gone.
Not a coincidence.
He might have believed he dropped the sword and the dagger came loose in the fall, both of them lost in the dark, but the knife wouldn’t have come out of his boot. Someone had taken his weapons.
He wasn’t alone.
***
Despite the passage of day to twilight and beyond, a dim light illuminated the tunnel, allowing him to see a man's-length in front of him; better than he had experienced in the other underground paths he’d recently trodden. In fact, as Khirro went farther, it seemed he could see better.
The tunnel brushed his shoulder at some points, forcing him to turn sideways to pass through, and the ceiling threatened his forehead at others. He progressed slowly, straining to move quietly both to conceal his presence and to listen for sounds that weren’t echoes of his own. He heard nothing but the soft steps of his boots and the occasional scrape of scabbard against tunnel wall.
After ten minutes, the tunnel brightened, lit by a luminescent glow emanating from the ceiling a foot over Khirro’s head; it gave the passage the luster of dawn sneaking up on a new day. The glow spilled down the walls, clearly marking the path ahead, though it wasn’t bright enough to rescue his feet from shadow. The quality of the light reminded Khirro of the tunnels below the Necromancer’s keep and he shuddered because it also reminded him he was still in Lakesh. But this light was also different. In Darestat’s chambers, the lambency radiated from everywhere and nowhere, an indeterminate source; here, the glow came from the ceiling, close enough to touch.
Khirro stopped and looked up. The glow pulsed minutely, the light ebbing and flowing like a wave. Curious, he reached up and brushed his index and middle fingers across the surface. He felt the uneven, rocky ceiling, but it was covered with a thin, soft layer. His fingers came away glowing like the ceiling. Khirro held his fingertips close in front of his face for a better look.
Worms.
On the end of each finger several tiny, grub-like worms wriggled. Khirro chuckled. He’d heard of such things but never seen them. Things that lived in the dark found ways to survive, he supposed, and creating their own light was one of those ways. He watched, fascinated, as the things crawled down toward his first knuckle, leaving behind a glowing trail. It made him smile—how many people could say they’d seen such a thing?
“Oww!”
A pain in his finger like the prick of a needle melted the smile away. He looked closer and saw one of the worms burrowing into his flesh.
“Gods.”
K
hirro rubbed his fingers on his breeches, smearing glowing worm innards across his thigh, and fought the urge to pop the pained digit into his mouth. Shaking his fingers, he walked on again, thankful for the worms’ light but giving them all the space the cramped tunnel allowed.
A few steps farther on, a noise behind Khirro made him stop. A soft, barely-noticeable sound. He heard it again: plop. Like water falling on dry stone.
Khirro spun around, instinctively reaching for his missing sword, and saw two glowing spots on the ground where he’d just passed.
I must have loosened them when I touched the others.
The tip of his finger throbbed dully. Another blob of worms fell half a yard from him, then another landed inches from his boot.
I didn’t touch those ones.
Khirro spun on his heel and hurried down the tunnel; the sound of worms dropping from the ceiling followed him like the sound of rain drops on a canvas tent. He dodged as they came down in his path. A glob landed on his tunic and he wiped it away with his sleeve, smearing their glow along its length and cursing himself for not taking his gauntlets out of his pack.
If they penetrate my skin, can they eat through my clothes?
He wrestled his shield off his back, its fire-blackened steel edge striking sparks against the wall of the tunnel, and held it over his head. Worms pattered against it as he followed the tunnel around a curve where it widened and the ceiling sloped upward and away.
Khirro skidded to a halt as he emerged into a modest chamber. He peeked out from under his shield to see if the worms continued to fall, but the increased distance between their ceiling and his head seemed to deter them. Slowly, he removed the shield from above his head. Glow worms covered two-thirds of its surface.
They emitted enough light to cast shadows on the faces of the men in the chamber.
Khirro reacted by slamming the edge of his shield into the man directly ahead of him, but the others overcame him, tore his only weapon from his grasp and dragged him to the ground.
***
The thin rope of woven vines binding Khirro’s wrists was strong, and the men leading him with it allowed no slack in the line. All six men stood a few inches shorter than Khirro, with pale skin and black hair, long and matted. All but the youngest-looking—the one guiding Khirro—wore scraggly beards that brushed the tops of their bare chests. The two at the front of the line and the one behind Khirro carried torches that glowed rather than flickering with flame.
The group moved quickly, following twists and turns and side tunnels with the confidence of people who’d followed the path many times, their route quickly rendering Khirro unable to tell which direction he’d need to follow to find his way out. He wondered if these people were the ones who’d dragged Athryn away as he lay unconscious at the bottom of the pit.
Khirro heard running water, the sound growing louder with their advance. They passed a wide crack in the tunnel wall which opened on a cavern—where the sound of water was coming from—and he slowed to peer through, but the man leading him pulled hard on the rope, making him stumble. His knees hit the ground painfully and he tumbled onto his side.
The man behind said something Khirro didn’t understand, the timbre of his voice residing somewhere between words and grunts, and shoved his torch toward Khirro’s face. He flinched, expecting heat, but felt none. Instead, he saw glowing worms slithering and writhing beneath a translucent gauze keeping them in place to protect the torch-bearer, but easily released if the occasion arose.
The younger man tugged on the vine rope, prompting Khirro to struggle to his feet.
“Where are you taking me?” Khirro asked and received a poke in the ribs from the man behind. He hoped he hadn’t touched him with the worm covered torch.
They passed an increasing number of side passages as they traversed the tunnels at a fast walk for ten more minutes. Khirro dared a glance into a few, careful not to slow his pace, but most were unlit. He could only allow himself to be led and hope they’d take him to Athryn.
As he walked, Khirro thought about the creature he saw that cast him into the pit. His glimpse had been brief but he clearly saw green skin, scales. The men leading him through the tunnel didn’t fit the description.
Might have been paint.
That would make sense for someone attempting to camouflage themselves. But the quality of the flesh made him doubt it. Its texture had looked scaly, inhuman.
Khirro's captors stopped without warning and he walked into the back of the man leading him who then collided with the next one in front of him. The young man holding the rope looked apologetic but the other man growled angrily, reminding Khirro of a trip through another tunnel and of another man angered at being bumped.
What a different trip this would have been if Gendred, Rudric and the Shaman lived.
The king would have been restored and Elyea and the others would still live.
But I wouldn’t have met them. Wouldn’t have met her.
The second man spoke in their unintelligible language, his voice gruff with anger. Khirro stared at him, watching annoyance harden his features. Someone pushed him from behind, prompting him toward a break in the tunnel wall. As he approached, Khirro saw a latticework of wide branches lashed together with thin twine held in place across the doorway by two thick logs propped against it.
Khirro stood before the makeshift jail cell while two of the men removed first the logs, then the lattice. The space beyond was dark; he looked into the gloom, searching for any indication of what fate may await him on the other side, but saw nothing. Another shove sent Khirro stumbling across the threshold, his wrists still tied, the rope trailing behind him. The younger man threw the rest of the rope through the doorway then helped replace the lattice and prop the logs back in place.
The men looked at him for a minute; one of them spoke a few words and the group continued down the tunnel in the direction they’d been leading Khirro, their glow worm torches fading to nothing in the distance.
Khirro turned slowly, already working his wrists, trying to loosen the rope. The muscles in his thighs tensed, ready to leap one way or the other, or to attack if necessary.
Attack with what?
“Khirro? Is that you?”
“Athryn!” Khirro moved toward the voice, treading carefully while his eyes adjusted to the dark. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” the magician replied. Khirro’s foot bumped something soft. “All right enough.”
Khirro knelt beside his prone companion, his eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the lack of light. He put his hand on Athryn’s arm, thankful to find him alive.
“Where do you think they’ve taken us?”
“I do not know. Too many turns and twists to keep track.”
Khirro’s brow furrowed; Athryn’s voice seemed to come from a different place than it should. Perhaps a trick of the cave walls. He put his hand on the magician’s chest, felt the shallow rise and fall of his breathing. A noise—the scuff of a boot on stone—made Khirro look up, confused and alert.
“Athryn? Where are you?”
“Over here.”
The chest Khirro’s hand rested on didn’t move when the magician spoke, the pattern of breathing didn’t change. He jerked his hand away and stumbled back from the person lying on the stone floor before him.
“We’re not alone,” he said.
“No,” a voice that didn’t belong to Athryn said from behind him. “You’re not.”
Chapter Twelve
What good is a soldier who can’t hold a sword?
Therrador stared at the red spot on the bandage wrapped around his hand. He wanted to scream and cry out in rage at the loss of his thumb, but worry for his son kept him from doing so. If he didn’t handle things correctly, he might never see him again, and he couldn’t know where the woman might have eyes and ears. He hoped she would let the boy live, though he may never know if that came to pass.
It seemed his stupid bravado had done nothing but e
nsure he’d never see the boy again.
He fussed with the bandage, scratched under its edge, and glanced about the sparsely furnished room. The wooden table was no comparison to the massive marble slab in the council room at Achtindel. Patches of its surface were discolored where some drunken knight or another had spilled wine, another spot splintered and worn as though a knife had been taken to the edge. Thinly padded chairs, not meant for comfort, surrounded the table. While the council room in the capital was designed for show—a place to pass laws and policy—the room at the fortress was used for many purposes, few of them glamorous. Here, bloodshed was planned in earnest, the deaths of good men cursed and victories celebrated.
Therrador snorted at the thought. It would be a long time before any victories would be celebrated in Erechania again. At least by Erechanians.
And there’s only one man to blame.
If he didn’t get the boy back, everything he’d done would be for naught. He’d turned an entire kingdom upside down for Graymon. He fidgeted in the chair, put his hand in his lap so he wouldn’t have to look at the reminder of where his thumb used to be.
How did she know I’d be there?
She’d been in the fortress when he crept out, he was sure of it, yet she appeared in the tent at precisely the right moment. There was more to the woman than he knew; she possessed great power and he finally had to admit he couldn’t overcome her on his own.
He needed help, and his ability to rule was already thrown into question by giving the fortress over to the enemy. Would anyone even listen to him after he admitted his treason?
The brass-banded wooden door swung open as though in response to his thoughts and four men entered the room. Therrador stood to greet them, wounded hand concealed behind his back. The men stopped short and bowed shallowly at the waist.
“You majesty,” Hanh Perdaro said for all of them.
“Gentlemen,” Therrador responded struggling to keep his voice even. He didn’t relish the conversation he was about to have. “Take a seat.”