The Shadowhand Covenant

by Brian Farrey

  The menagerie keepers looked up at the bloodreavers. “I hate those things,” the mage with the book said.

  His partner shook his head. “You worry too much. Remember, they’re under our control.”

  He pointed to a medallion that hung around his neck. So I was right. The forge was making control medallions like the ones Xerrus had used to control the balanx in the Onyx Fortress. Had the Palatinate stolen the idea from him? And why?

  “Why do we bother with the cages?” the mage with the book asked. “They can disappear and appear at will.”

  “They only teleport when they’ve caught the scent of their prey.”

  Pop! One of the bloodreaver cages filled with smoke as its occupant vanished. A second cloud appeared on the floor near the mages and the bloodreaver stepped out, fangs bared. Seven more pops echoed throughout the menagerie as more bloodreavers freed themselves from their cages and reappeared on the floor.

  “They smell something,” the mage with the book said. The pair scanned the room until they spotted me half in shadow near the door.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said, doing my best to look offended. “I took a bath today. Okay, maybe it was a couple days ago.”

  As one, the bloodreavers gave a united howl and ran toward me.

  26

  Unexpected Rescue

  “Providing another’s alibi kindles a fire that burns for life.”

  —Ancient par-Goblin proverb

  I lifted my arm in the air and slammed a handful of smoke pellets onto the stone floor. Flash! A thick white mist surrounded me.

  I dove for the door, leaving the confused mages and bloodreavers inside. In the dark corridor, the moaning alarm ricocheted off the mordenstone walls so strongly that I could feel it through my boots.

  I held my hands over my ears and ran toward the warn charm. I fought off the growing terror inside that urged me to turn back. Aside from the fear, the noise upset my sense of balance, as it was designed to do. But I had to put as much space between the bloodreavers and me as possible, so I staggered on. Bounding into an intersection, I nearly ran into Maloch and Callie.

  “I’m guessing you succeeded. They’re playing the Grimjinx anthem!” I had to shout to be heard over the deafening alarm.

  But Callie, face flushed, was in no mood to joke. “I thought I’d disarmed all the traps. I must have missed one.”

  “Two Sentinels appeared as soon as the alarm sounded,” Maloch said, beaming. “And Callie set them on fire.”

  “I did not!” she said. “I was trying to do this spell that Talian taught me. It would have encased them in ice. But that’s the problem with speaking magic. I said cerata instead of ceraka and, well—”

  “Oh, relax,” Maloch said. “They put themselves out. Eventually.”

  “Is that it?” I asked, pointing to Maloch.

  His hands gripped a box about the size of a vessapede egg. The frame of the box was made of shining gold strips with raised magical sigils all along the edges. The walls of the box were thick, multifaceted crystal. Inside was the Sourcefire. At its core, a ball of dark blue flame churned and burned, surrounded by what looked like wisps of glowing green steam. Orbiting all of this were several tiny dots of red light that spun around the fire, leaving a comet-like trail.

  “A mite smaller than I imagined,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Maloch and I turned to run, but Callie stood her ground.

  “Callie, you’re an accomplice,” I said. “You have to come too.”

  She shook her head. “I told you. If you don’t stop Kolo, I can’t let the people here die. Sundown is in one hour. You’ve got half an hour to stop him. If you don’t show up at the palace gates to tell me you’ve succeeded, I’m going to warn the Palatinate and evacuate.”

  There was no arguing, and I couldn’t blame her. She understood the risk of evacuating, but it was better than sitting around, waiting to get blown up.

  “Let’s move, Jaxter,” Maloch said, charging down the hall. Callie threw an arm around my neck in a quick hug, and then I took off after Maloch.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.

  Maloch nodded. “Callie and I passed the laundry room on the way here. It’s not far.”

  He led us down several long halls, through a spoke, and finally back to the corridor where we’d first entered.

  “Down here!” he called.

  But just as we were nearly back to the laundry room, the floor lurched. The stones ahead parted, as if shoved aside by invisible hands. From the crevasse sprang a new wall made of glowing red bricks that went all the way to the ceiling.

  “I think,” I said slowly, “they’re onto us.”

  “Quick!” Maloch tugged at my arm, and we darted down another hall. It turned right. Then left. Then left again. Then right. It didn’t make sense. When we’d first arrived, all the passageways in this area were straight and long. There hadn’t been this many turns.

  I thought of the wall that had just sprung up out of nowhere, blocking our access to the exit hole. They were altering the corridors. Guiding us to exactly where they wanted us to go . . .

  “Maloch—,” I said, trying to warn him. He took a sharp right, and I followed. The howling alarm stopped. A wall of red glowing bricks sprang up behind us, blocking the way back.

  The room we were in looked like a garden. Topiaries and flower beds covered the grassy floors, all lit by a thawglobe above. Festerelm trees, with their gnarled trunks that oozed sap, wove a latticework of twisting branches overhead. The scene looked so idyllic I expected to hear birds chirping. Instead, we heard a chorus of unearthly screeches from above.

  Looking up, we spotted bloodreavers—eight of them—swinging by their arms between the festerelm branches, preparing to attack.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Forgot to mention. I ran into some old friends.”

  Maloch’s hand went for his ankle, where he kept his dagger. Then he remembered that Kolo had taken our weapons. Together, we dove under a topiary shaped like a mang, Maloch clutching the Sourcefire tightly to his chest.

  The bloodreavers charged. The largest, who I took to be the leader, moved to the head of the pack and advanced on us. The arms that came up over his shoulders thrashed wildly at the air.

  “Do something!” Maloch said, ripping apart my apprentice robes and exposing my pouches.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. But I was doubtful I could concoct anything that might help us fast enough.

  Shkk! Shkk! Shkk!

  It was so soft I barely heard it. But the three rapid-fire shots hit their mark. The lead bloodreaver stopped advancing. Its massive pupils suddenly shrank to near nothing, just before its eyes rolled back in its head and it hit the ground, unconscious.

  The other bloodreavers looked to one another, barking in some unknown tongue.

  “Yeah!” I said, suddenly feeling quite brave. “Back off or there’s more where that came from.”

  Maloch poked me. “What are you—?”

  “Work with me, Maloch,” I said.

  I didn’t know if the bloodreavers understood me. If they did, they weren’t buying my bluff. The rest came at us, arms raised, fangs bared.

  Shkk! Shkk! Shkk! Shkk! Shkk! Shkk!

  The air came alive with the sound, and one by one the bloodreavers fell until just two remained standing. They looked around at their fallen brethren, faces contorted into what I could only guess were perplexed looks.

  Just past the bloodreavers, I spotted a flower bed where Reena, on one knee, was hurriedly jamming more darts into her blowgun. Standing on a rock nearby, Holm lifted his chin and planted his fists on his hips.

  “Do not fear and do not cuss. You’d be dead if not for us!”

  The two bloodreavers howled and ran at their new quarry. In a flash, the Sarosans lifted their blowguns to their mouths and fired off enough darts to stop the creatures in their tracks.

  Maloch and I crawled out from under the topiary.

  “Are you a
ll right?” Reena asked, running to us.

  “Did Kolo send you to spy on us?” Maloch said with a sneer.

  Reena’s eyes flared for a moment, and then she looked genuinely hurt. “We came to help you. We overheard everything Kolo told you and . . . He doesn’t speak for all the Sarosans. If our people were still around, there’s no way they’d condone murder. Our parents personally would have stopped him.”

  Maloch rubbed the back of his neck. “Erm . . . sorry. It’s . . . appreciated. Thank you for . . . you know, the poison darts. How did you find us?”

  Reena shook her head. “We didn’t. We were roaming the halls looking for you when we ran into the bloodreavers. They picked up our scent and chased us in here. It’s just lucky you came in when you did. Gave us a chance to load our blowguns.”

  I agreed. “Yeah, thanks, guys. But we can’t sit here. I’m pretty sure they can track the Sourcefire. I say we forget trying to find the laundry room and just get out any way we can. Any window, any door . . .”

  Holm pointed frantically to the far side of the garden. Reena nodded. “When we were looking for you, we found the main gates. There’s a gallery just through that door. The gates are beyond that.”

  We ran across the garden and into the next room. The hall was egg-shaped, long and round. Dark indigo fire from chandeliers high above offered barely enough light to show us the way. The purple glow gave the room the feel of a creepy museum. Paintings hung from the smooth marble walls, and a seemingly endless collection of glass statues on golden plinths stood between us and the far side of the room.

  “If this art is valuable,” I said, looking around, “there could be traps in the floor to prevent theft. Move quickly—but carefully.”

  We tiptoed among the field of statues, the glass infused with the purple fire’s glow. When we reached the midpoint of the room without triggering any traps, I guessed we were clear and urged everyone to move faster.

  “Here’s what we do when we get out,” I said. “Reena, you and Holm go to Kolo and tell him that Maloch and I have the Sourcefire but won’t bring it to him until he agrees to negotiate.”

  “Jaxter . . . ,” Maloch said.

  “Where will you be?” Reena asked.

  “I dunno. In the woods somewhere. We can find a clearing and—”

  “Jaxter!”

  The anger that normally coated every word Maloch said had drained completely away. He sounded scared.

  I turned back to see that we’d left him several paces behind, near the center of the room. He was gaping up, barely holding on to the Sourcefire.

  Reena and I went back to him. I took the box, handed it to Reena, and snapped my fingers in front of his eyes. “Hey! Angry mages! Stolen Sourcefire! Trying to escape! Any of this ringing a bell?”

  Maloch remained quiet and slack-jawed. I followed his gaze up to a statue. It looked like a tall, balding man with huge muttonchops down his cheeks. He wore a cape that billowed and fine boots that went up over his knees. Unlike most statues, which normally looked pleasant or stoic, the face on this man looked clenched as if in pain. His arm was outstretched, his fingers curled inward to a claw. I squinted in the darkness and could just make out that his fingers were wrapped around a shiny tingroat.

  Maloch breathed heavily. “It’s my da.”

  27

  The Labyrinth of Glass

  “Forging a signature is smart. Forging a life is brilliant.”

  —Allia Grimjinx, master forger of Korrin Province

  Mr. Oxter wasn’t alone. A semicircle of ten more statues, each gripping a tingroat, surrounded Maloch’s da. The Shadowhands. The only one missing was Dylis, who remained trapped in the Covenant chamber of the Dagger.

  “Why is he here?” Maloch said through clenched teeth. “If Kolo hired the Shadowhands, why are they all here?”

  “Maloch,” I said softly, putting a hand on his shoulder, “we can’t help him. Not right now. We have to get out of here.”

  “I can’t leave him!” His voice shook, and for just a second, he reminded me of when we were younger and friends.

  It was Reena who finally got through. “We’ll come back for him. Right now, we have to stop Kolo. If he blows up the palace, the Shadowhands go too.”

  Tears streamed down Maloch’s flushed cheeks. He looked up at his father’s frozen face and gave a single nod. Then he snatched the Sourcefire back from Reena, tucked it under his arm, and said, “Move.”

  We started back through the forest of statues, heading for the exit, when the sound of footfalls from the rear made us stop.

  “Surrender!” a woman’s voice rang out. “You can’t escape.”

  I looked over my shoulder. Several mages, their spellspheres burning hot in their hands like miniature suns, filed into the room. They lined up against the wall, waiting for instructions. A woman in long flowing robes with an elaborate headdress stood in the center of the doorway, her spellsphere casting dark blue-gray shadows up into her stern face. Her right eye held a gold-rimmed monocle. I immediately recognized her. Her name was Nalia. I’d seen her after that business with the tapestry in Vengekeep. She was a member of the Lordcourt, the Palatinate’s ruling council.

  We could have slipped into the shadows to hide if Maloch hadn’t been carrying a crystal box filled with magical fire that shot rays of multicolored light in every direction. Bit of a giveaway. As the mages fanned out, we ducked behind the plinths and waited.

  “You’ll never leave this room alive,” Nalia said, an edge to her voice suggesting she very much meant that. “Surrender now. I won’t ask a third time.”

  We looked to one another and cast furtive glimpses at the escape door. It was so close. Could we make it before the mages reached us? I nodded to Maloch, who nodded to Reena, who took hold of her brother’s hand.

  “Go!” I whispered. And as one, we ran for the exit.

  The room exploded like fireworks on Grundilus Day. The mages lifted their spellspheres high in the air, and bolts of energy rained down, detonating all around. The first hit the floor in front of us, sending mordenstone shrapnel into the air. We scattered, diving for cover. I hid behind a statue of an Aviard, nobly holding a war hammer over its head. Fiery torrents of magic zeroed in on me, and I was thrown back as the statue and its plinth were reduced to dust.

  Holm cried out as debris caught him in the forehead. Hands over our heads, we zigzagged amid the statues and sculptures, trying to make it to the exit. I found myself with a straight path to the door, tucked my chin, and ran for all I was worth. I heard the sound of stone grinding on stone and looked up to find a statue and its plinth sliding across the floor to block my path. I took a hard left to go around, just as another statue moved to block me.

  All the statues were sliding now, moving like game pieces on a board. Just as they had manipulated the palace halls earlier, the mages were creating a labyrinth, redirecting us back to the other side of the room where they all waited. I could see Nalia, whispering to her spellsphere. I tried to throw her off, faking one direction, then jumping in the other and sneaking around a statue already in motion. But it was like she knew exactly what I was going to do and blocked me before I could change directions. A new volley of magical lightning tore up the floor around me. I took a large stone to the forehead and stumbled down behind an empty plinth, its statue recently destroyed.

  Breathing hard, I scanned the dimly lit room. The statues had stopped moving. I couldn’t see Maloch or Reena, but Holm was crouched on all fours nearby. The room grew quiet as the assault stopped. I coughed on the smoke and dust that filled the air. Peering around my plinth, I could still see the silhouettes of the mages holding their spellspheres. But what were they waiting for?

  Suddenly, beneath my fingertips, I could feel my plinth vibrate. It shook and shook until it finally shot straight up into the air, stopping just before it hit the ceiling. It hung there as if suspended by an invisible string. I jumped and joined Holm in his hiding spot.

  The air filled
with the sound of statues whooshing straight up as, one by one, the labyrinth of art was lifted to safety high above. Pretty soon, there’d be nothing to hide behind. I tapped Holm’s shoulder and pointed in the direction of the exit.

  He held up a fist in agreement. We watched as the statues continued to fly up off the ground. Finally, a group of three flew away and we could see the outline of the exit door. We could make it. Easily.

  I took his hand and we sprinted toward the door. By now, the room was nearly bare, and as their shields flew away, Maloch and Reena joined us. I reached out to shove the door open. But then I blinked and in that instant, Nalia stood in front of us, staring through her monocle, arm and spellsphere outstretched.

  She hissed a word, and four rings of blue light shot out of the spellsphere. The rings flew over our heads and down around our shoulders, pulling our arms tight to our sides. Slowly, all four of us began to rise, our feet kicking out to touch the floor that was now far below us. A wicked smile on her lips, Nalia stepped forward, and the magic rings that bound our arms pulled us backward toward the center of the room.

  The other mages in the room formed a circle around us. We clumped together, our backs to one another. Nalia called out, “Iossa!” The room went pitch-black for a moment. Then the torches in the room burst to life with brilliant green-blue flames that banished the darkness.

  I tried to reach my pouches, hoping to grab something—anything—to divert them. But the blue ring held me so tightly that my hands had begun to lose feeling. The ruby-eyed mage, still sweaty from his work at the forge, stepped forward with his spellsphere and barked a magical command. I winced, but nothing happened. He spoke again and still nothing.

  “Cyric!” Nalia said. The forge master cowered under her withering glare. “You can’t use magic to summon the Sourcefire.”

  “Yeah, Cyric,” I chided, having no idea why you couldn’t use magic on the Sourcefire, “don’t you know anything?” Ugh. Something in the Grimjinx blood made us flippant when faced with danger. It was going to get me killed someday.