An Emperor's Gamble (Legend of Tal: Book 3)

by J. D. L. Rosell

  With a start, Garin realized he'd never spoken of what had happened there. He averted his eyes, not wanting to see her reaction. "I know. I was the one who burned them."

  From the corner of his vision, he saw Ashelia become still. After a moment, she murmured, "Was it your devil?"

  If only. He shrugged. "Not exactly."

  A moment more passed before Ashelia reached out and gripped his shoulder — a significant act for elves, he knew, who did not often openly touch others.

  "Never mind that," she said, speaking as if she understood what truly weighed on his mind. "We will worry about it later. For now, we must follow the tracks and find what we may."

  Tal, he interpreted in his mind. Hopefully still alive. He held the sword back out toward Ashelia, careful to offer the hilt as she had.

  She hesitated, then shook her head. "You should keep it, Garin. I think he would want you to have it."

  He stared, disbelieving, for a long moment before retracting his arm. Velori was Tal's sword. It wasn't only that it was an enchanted blade, or that the weight and balance of it were unfamiliar. Somehow, it made him feel like he had as a child when he'd worn his father's old clothes, fetched from a chest where his mother kept them tucked away. Like he was pretending to be someone he was not.

  Nevertheless, he nodded and kept it as he followed her back to their company.

  Though the others glanced at the sword Garin now held, only Wren seemed to make note of it. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow. He shook his head. Ashelia was right; they'd wasted enough time as it was. Wren's expression tightened, but she seemed to accept it.

  While he'd been gone, the stors had joined their group. Helnor explained that the loyal beasts had been rounded up the night before as the riders found their mounts. There were six of them there, enough to carry them, though two would have to ride double in addition to Rolan and Ashelia. As he looked for his own beast, he realized Horn was not among them.

  At his query, the Prime gave him a sympathetic slap on the back. "Horn's the only one missing. You'll have to ride with Wren instead, if she's amenable to it."

  Garin turned away from Helnor's knowing grin. That was one problem in traveling in such a close-knit company: secrets were hard to keep, and troubles doubly so. He could only hope that, after their moment the night before, his and Wren's were finally at an end.

  He tried to reclaim some of his belief as he approached Wren, who already sat atop her stor, Lighthoof. A smile curled the corner of her lips.

  "Don't look so sheepish," she admonished. "I kissed you back, didn't I? Just don't stab me or Lightfoot with that sword — wrap it in this."

  Grinning with relief, Garin did as she bade, winding the stor's riding blanket around the ever-sharp blade and tucking it through the straps of the saddle. It was a poor method of securing it, but until they might find another scabbard for Velori, it was the best he could do.

  When all were ready, Helnor led their company north of the town, following a wide swath of tracks that even Garin's untrained eyes could pick out from the snow. These were made by the Ravagers, the Prime explained, which obscured the first set of tracks presumably made by Tal. Still, they reasoned that if they followed the Ravagers, they would likely be led to him.

  No one voiced the worry of what they might find at the end of that path. That they had not prepared to leave Vathda spoke their suspicions loudly enough.

  They followed the trail at a swift pace. The sun had emerged from behind the mountains, its light and warmth welcome. Garin found himself finally coming alert under the brightening day, the brisk winds, and their urgent task. As they rode, he often leaned over to check that Velori was still secured to Lighthoof's saddle. So far, his jury-rigged system seemed to be holding.

  The trail went on for mile after mile. Kaleras, who had dragged himself out of bed to join them, had lost his erect posture and looked about ready to fall out of the saddle. Yet with dogged toughness, the warlock held on. The others were in little better shape, either having fought the night before, stayed up all night, or both. Even Rolan, who had at first nearly bounced atop Ashelia's stor with unrestrained excitement, now sagged and looked drearily over the unchanging scenery.

  Still, they pressed on. No one intended to relent without discovering Tal's fate.

  Helnor frowned often as he studied the snow, but there seemed little opportunity for missing the tracks. The ledge they followed continued in one direction, with an impassable slope to the left and a treacherous fall to the right. Garin wondered if the flight through the dark might have ended in a sudden fall, then put the possibility from his mind.

  Tal can't die that way, he told himself. He just can't.

  But hadn't Tal himself claimed he was nothing more than a man? Even with all the sorcery he possessed, an unlucky plunge might kill him just the same.

  Garin's attention jerked back to the present when Helnor and Ashelia, who rode at the fore, called the company to a halt. His heart beat quicker as he led Kaleras' stor up to the front, moving cautiously so as not to disturb any tracks. But the Prime didn't seem concerned with it, for his gaze was settled on a spot near the cliff's edge.

  As he came abreast of him, Garin saw the blood streaking across the snow, all the way to the brink.

  He heard the others speaking, but he couldn't attend to their words. It was like the experience of hearing the Song: the World falling away, his mind narrowing in on a single, inescapable notion. He stared, and the scene played out in his mind.

  Garin found he was shaking his head, his eyes flitting around the area. Snow was trampled across a small plateau underneath a black, rocky outcropping. Unless the ledge continued on the other side of the boulder, the trail ended here.

  His gaze returned to the bloodstains.

  "Are they from him?" Wren asked curtly. "Is it Tal's blood?"

  "I don't know," Helnor answered without looking around.

  The Prime dismounted, prowling around the edge of the clearing to move to the rocky outcropping. Ashelia continued to stare at the spot, unmoving, oblivious to Rolan's repeated questions. "What's happened, Momua? What's happening?"

  Aelyn and Kaleras had dismounted as well, both grave as they slowly walked over the patch of snow. Aelyn's lips moved, muttering words to himself, while the warlock remained completely silent.

  Garin finally slid off of Lighthoof's back. He didn't know what use he could be to the search. Yet in that moment, it seemed better to do something useless than nothing at all.

  "It's him." Wren's hard words did not seem directed at anyone in particular. "He fell."

  "Wren!" Falcon sounded aghast at her callous tone, but also halfway to laughing, to Garin's perplexity. "Don't jump to conclusions. Our Tal is more than capable of staging his death — after all, he's done it more than once before!"

  Wren only scowled and crossed her arms. She hadn't dismounted, clearly seeing no point to it.

  Privately, Garin agreed more with Wren's assessment with each passing moment. From the expressions of the others, no good news was forthcoming as they drifted together again.

  "Prints lead up the outcropping, then come down," Helnor said, his broad shoulders bowed. "But they don't lead anywhere else."

  "Sorcery was cast here," Aelyn said. "I cannot say what spells precisely, only that they were powerful workings."

  He cast a sidelong glance at Kaleras, as if worried the warlock might contradict him. But Kaleras only stared at the snow, brow furrowed, seeming to sort out a puzzle.

  "A stor is below." It was Ashelia who spoke now. She stared straight ahead, not looking at any of them.

  "Tal's body isn't," Wren added.

  Helnor frowned, looking again around them as if he might have missed something. "Ravagers might have taken him and killed the stor. They might have captured him alive."

  "Comrades!" Falcon was staring at each of them like they'd gone mad, though it was his smile that looked cracked to Garin. "You can't believe he's dead, surely? This is Ta
l Harrenfel we're speaking of! The Man of a Thousand Names! The Devil Killer of Elendol! Need I remind you of all he's survived? A fall from a cliff is certainly not the way he'll end, if indeed anything might finish him!"

  But far from convincing the company, Falcon's words seemed to further impress the truth on them. Garin sucked in a breath, then spoke what he suspected nobody else wanted to say.

  "If the stor fell, Tal probably did too. There would be no reason for the Ravagers to push it off." He looked at Helnor, who confirmed the supposition with a nod.

  "Then he's dead, or will be soon," Wren concluded. She turned her stor away. "Fine. Now we know."

  "He's not dead, daughter!" Falcon openly laughed now, a manic edge to it. "He's not dead!"

  But Garin saw that no one else believed it. They knew the most likely conclusion before them. The Ravagers didn't take prisoners, after all. They took heads.

  There was only one thing any of them could reasonably believe.

  Tal was dead.

  Stone in the Wheel

  Tal's muscles burned like they were lashed again with Heyl's flames.

  The mountain he labored up seemed endless. He was bent double, and simply continuing to draw in air seemed a monumental task. He barely saw where he went, barely raised his head to the guide before him.

  The man behind the legend revealed, he thought with a weary smile.

  Pim moved ahead of him, implacable and unforgiving in their pace. Tal had nearly begged him to move slower, but the elf had refused, claiming Tal had to keep moving or risk stopping altogether. It was a merciless command, one only a man devoid of all pity could have given.

  But then again, he is Extinguished.

  He'd had little time to process that fact. They'd barely taken a moment to breathe, much less think, since leaving the outcropping where Tal had intended to make his last stand against the Ravagers. Pim had only delayed their departure for as long as it took to obscure their path. First, he sorcerously shoved the poor departed stor over the cliff to make it seem as if Tal had fallen to his death. Then he had swept their footsteps clean with a scouring wind. Pim had maintained the effort as they climbed the mountain slope, the elf hiding any evidence of their passage even after he summoned footholds from the cliff side to make their ascent possible.

  Only he's not an elf, is he?

  He thought of it again, of the true identity of the man to whom, even now, he entrusted his life.

  Extinguished.

  Yuldor's servant sorcerers were four in number according to every tale Tal had heard. During his lifetime, he'd met three. Soltor, who tricked him into becoming the Magebutcher and later stole Falcon's face. The Thorn, his adversary in Elendol on both occasions. And Inanis, who coerced him into acting as Death's Hand in the darkness of Dhuulheim.

  And now there was Pim.

  If he was the fourth, or Inanis in a different guise, he could not tell. There were certainly resemblances to Inanis — if not in appearance, then in manner: the teasing irony, the effortless manipulation, the almost mystical prescience.

  But he can't be the same.

  The Extinguished in the mines had made Tal, adrift and friendless, dance to his strings in service of his master. He'd been arrogant and seemed almost bored in his role. He would not have risked any discomfort to save Tal.

  Yet here Pim was, trekking through the mountain snows, leading him to where Tal might be healed. He'd saved Tal's life twice. He had no reason to doubt his intentions.

  Except, of course, that he's Extinguished.

  As soon as they stopped, there would be a reckoning. But first, they had to achieve their aim.

  Pim had told Tal little enough of their immediate destination, only that it would be a safe place for Tal to recover enough to make the rest of the trek to where he might be truly healed. More than once, it occurred to him that this might all be a cruel jape on Pim's part, a diverting pastime for Yuldor to observe from afar. But even if it was, he had no choice but to follow. He lacked food, water, and shelter beyond what Pim carried. Velori had been left back in Vathda, and the Binding Ring as well — just when it might have been of some use. His sorcery alone, as much poison as panacea, would not preserve him for long in isolation.

  Much as he hated to admit it, he needed Pim.

  If I need a Soulstealer to survive, Tal mulled, I've lived too long.

  "Almost there," Pim called back suddenly. "Hold on a little longer, Skaldurak."

  Tal had no breath to answer. Vaguely, he noticed the slope leveling beneath his feet. He raised his head, but through his haze of exhaustion, he could make out no more than the impression of a basin with a frozen glacial lake surrounded by squat mountains.

  Just as he began to lower his eyes to his feet again and continue his shuffle forward, movement in the corner of his eye startled him. Tal jerked his head back up and squinted at the shadow lifting into the air, silhouetted by the bright clouds. It was too large to be a natural bird, far too large. A roc? The great hawks were far from harmless, but preferable to many of the creatures haunting the Eastern mountains.

  Then his vision resolved enough for him to make out not two legs on the beast, but four. He froze in place, fear and foreboding forcing the instincts of prey upon him.

  A gryphon stalked them.

  From his tutelage under the warlock Elis, Tal knew far more of the beast than was comfortable. A monster blended from an eagle and a lion, it inherited the potent hunting abilities of both predators. Its wings spread wide like the sails of a ship, and its body was as long as a small fishing vessel's hull. Its physique, lean and powerful, held a wiry strength beyond its slightness and was dusted in a coat that vacillated between feathers and fur. Its front legs had the deadly talons of a raptor, while its hind legs were thick and powerful, such as a leopard might possess to eviscerate adversaries. Its head had the shape and beak of a bird, but the thick chest and, in the males, the feathered mane was such as any lion would have been envious to possess.

  It had all the faculties of a hunter, and the clever mind to employ them. And, unfortunately for Tal, gryphons were supremely territorial around their nesting grounds — upon which, he guessed, they now intruded.

  "We have to hide!" he wheezed to Pim. "Gryphon!"

  He stumbled over to his guide and seized his sleeve, fear overcoming his revulsion of touching Pim. Yet Tal was shocked into silence as the fell warlock turned and grinned at him, not seeming the least bit alarmed.

  "I thought you understood the Nightkin, Bran. Or do you prefer Barrows, or Harrenfel, perhaps?"

  The sorcerer was crazed — but then, Tal couldn't have expected any less from one of Yuldor's old apprentices. Abandoning his attempts at reason, Tal scanned the surrounding area for any likely hiding place. But they walked over a frozen tundra. There were no trees to cower beneath, and no shelter larger than the occasional boulder, which would pose no great barrier to a gryphon.

  They would have to make a stand. As long as I can stand.

  He was busy looking for a defensible spot when Pim's hand slapped on his chest with a squelch. He nearly fell over in his surprise. The stench caused him to look down, where he saw the warlock was smearing some foul-smelling paste over his cloak and coat. It reeked of fish and deer's innards and dried-out excrement. For a moment, he gagged too much to object.

  "Spread this everywhere you can," Pim said matter-of-factly. "And quickly, if you value your guts on the inside of your body."

  "What?" Tal finally managed to exclaim. His hands had risen to hover over the blob of brownish paste slowly dripping down his clothes.

  The Extinguished gestured impatiently. "Quickly! It is your only chance of survival."

  Tal's hands moved of their own accord, doing as Pim instructed, while his eyes followed the gryphon's flight above, circling closer to the ground with each pass. He spread the revolting pap everywhere he could reach — his arms, his legs, even up his neck. When he hesitated at his head, Pim snorted a laugh and, with a flick of th
e flask he'd taken the paste from, upended more over his hood.

  "You will smell worse if you are dead," his guide pointed out.

  Knowing he had no choice but to trust this man who should be his enemy, Tal took his debasement further still.

  Their putrid ablution complete, Tal watched the gryphon and asked, "Now what?"

  "Now we wait for the magnificent beast to come to us."

  "What?" Tal took a step away from the sorcerer, as if that might preserve him from his fate. "That's your plan?"

  "Bran, Barrows, Harrenfel — you really ought to tell me your preference of name, for the ease of conversation—"

  "Just Tal."

  Pim smiled indulgently. "Ah — so you do yearn to fulfill your legend. Well, Tal, what you have spread over yourself is a concoction that mimics the stench of gryphon offspring — including their pheromones, which are not easily extracted and preserved, I can assure you."

  Slow as fear and exhaustion made his mind, the strategy finally dawned on him. "Gryphons largely identify other creatures by smell."

  "Precisely! So even when our shapes show us to be prey, the evidence of their nares will override any predatory instincts and foster nurturing feelings in their place."

  Tal found himself speechless as the gryphon swooped within fifty feet, close enough that he could feel the wind from its wings. Though he was glad to know the rationale behind the Soulstealer's plan, it did little to ease the terror suffusing his body. If Pim was wrong, he could always be resurrected by his master.

  Tal had no such luxury.

  "Try not to move!" Pim shouted as the gryphon suddenly banked toward the ground and, with an outstretching of its wings, alighted on the snow before them.

  Tal moved his head to the side, careful not to meet the gryphon's eyes. To hold its gaze would be to issue a challenge, and he doubted any amount of fledgling scat could avert a fight then. From the corner of his vision, he made note of the beast. It appeared to be female from the lack of a mane and her smaller size. Her shoulders came to Tal's chest, and her head, proudly erect, rose higher still. Her eyes were golden and had the severe shape of an eagle's. She cocked her head as she examined them. The gryphon had appeared intimidating in the air; now, standing before them, she was more terrifying still.