He hadn’t wanted to accompany Lord Ridmark into the Shadow Ways, but he wondered if that would have been safer.
###
Ridmark shifted his grip on Oathshield’s hilt and met the attack of the kobolds.
They had passed through the catacombs and entered the dwarven ruins. The tunnels of the dwarves reminded Ridmark of the other dwarven ruins he had explored over the years. The floors and walls were flat and smooth, engineered with a precision that human masons could not match. Unlike the rest of the Shadow Ways, the dwarven tunnels had their own illumination. The dwarves bathed round stones in baths of specially prepared salts, and the stones glowed with a light that lasted for millennia. About half of the glowstones had gone out, but the rest still cast a pale glow over the dwarven galleries, throwing shadows in all directions.
There was more than enough light for Ridmark to see the kobolds.
Ridmark had entered a large pillared hall, Calliande and Third following him, and they had encountered a band of about twenty-five kobolds. The creatures stood four feet tall, their lean bodies covered in gray scales, their fingers and toes tipped with black claws. Long, slender tails waved behind them, and the kobolds had elongated, lizard-like skulls, the mouths filled with sharp fangs, their yellow eyes slit with black pupils. Crests of crimson scales crowned the backs of their heads, and each of the kobolds bore a tattoo burned into their chests, some glyph or symbol that Ridmark did not recognize. The kobolds carried spears and short swords.
Ridmark had shouted a greeting in the orcish tongue, hoping to negotiate.
Instead, the kobolds had attacked. No doubt they thought one human man and two human women would be easy prey, and kobolds ate humans when they could get away with it. Except Third was only half-human, Calliande was the Keeper of Andomhaim, and Ridmark was a Swordbearer.
The battle was not in the kobolds’ favor.
Calliande cast a spell of earth magic, sending a ripple through the floor. The distortion knocked about two-thirds of the kobolds from their feet. Third drew on her power and traveled in a flash of blue fire, Storm and Inferno in her hands. She reappeared behind the kobolds and began killing, while Ridmark planted himself between Calliande and the kobolds, Aegisikon in its shield form on his left arm.
The kobolds recovered and rushed at him, and Ridmark attacked, drawing on Oathshield for speed and power. The kobolds’ swords and spears rebounded from Aegisikon, and Oathshield rose and fell, killing with every swing and thrust. Calliande cast an augmentation spell, and white light shone around Ridmark and Third, making them even faster.
In short order, the battle was over. Half the kobolds lay dead, and the rest fled deeper into the dwarven ruins, vanishing into side passages. Neither Ridmark nor Third moved to pursue them. They both knew that the kobolds might try to lure them into a trap.
“Damn it,” said Ridmark. “I was hoping they would talk to us.”
Third shook her head. “No doubt they thought we were adventurers seeking treasure in the ruins. Likely the kobolds dine regularly upon the unwary.”
“Well, perhaps the survivors have learned a little more caution,” said Calliande. There was sympathy in her voice, but not all that much. She did not like kobolds. “But we’re getting closer. Descending from the human catacombs to the dwarven ruins drew us closer to the source of magical power.” She pointed down the pillared corridor. “If we keep going that way, I think we can traverse the dwarven ruins and find the edge of the old elven corridors.”
“That agrees with Jager’s map,” said Ridmark.
“But should we keep going?” said Third. “Perhaps it would be wiser to return to the surface and check with Accolon.” Ridmark unrolled the map, and Third pointed at it. “If we return to that catacomb gallery, there is an entrance to the surface in the crypt of a nearby church. I think it will take only twenty minutes’ walk, and then we can easily return to this location and resume our search tomorrow.”
“That’s a good suggestion, Ridmark,” said Calliande, her voice soft. “I would like to see Rhoanna and Joachim, I admit…but Accolon might have kicked the hornets’ nest with his decrees today. He might need our help.”
“Aye,” said Ridmark, thinking it over. That was one advantage of exploring the Shadow Ways. They had not gone all that far today, only a few miles. But those miles had been a maze, and ill-mapped and full of dangers. Best to proceed cautiously.
Though Ridmark could not dismiss the feeling that they needed to find that source of magical power sooner rather than later.
“Very well,” said Ridmark. “Back to the surface. We’ll keep looking tomorrow.”
Assuming, of course, that Cintarra had not erupted in revolt or exploded into civil war.
***
Chapter 10: A Dark Soulblade
As she had so many times before, Aeliana Carhaine prepared for an assassination.
After she left the Scepter Bank and Cyprian, she went at once to the mansion of Lord Hadrian Vindon. There were only a few hours of darkness left, and she needed to make good use of that time. Lord Hadrian lived a short distance from the Scepter Bank and the Prince’s Palace, his domus only a little less ornate than the Bank. It had the features common to many grand Cintarran domi – the outer courtyard, the house built around the inner courtyard, the proud tower rising from the structure. As Aeliana expected, the place was crawling with guards. Lord Hadrian’s humiliation had given him a new level of paranoia. Four men stood guard at the courtyard gate, and more patrolled the courtyard.
Nevertheless, they were not prepared to deal with someone like Aeliana, or the abilities the Mark of the Herald gave her.
She vaulted the wall, raced across the courtyard, and climbed up the side of the house with the ease of a spider. That was one of the gifts of the Mark – in addition to seeing with perfect clarity in the dark, Aeliana could scale a sheer wall as if it had been a ladder.
Her ascent ended at a spot just below the windows leading to Hadrian’s bedroom. Aeliana had in fact been inside his domus before. Years ago, when she had still been part of the Red Family, the assassins had taken a contract to assassinate a minor noble who was a frequent guest of Hadrian. In the guise of minor nobles, Aeliana and several other assassins had scouted the mansion’s interior and finally concluded that it would make an unsuitable location to offer up their target as a sacrifice to Mhor.
Aeliana’s mouth twisted with disdain. Wrapped in fanaticism, the brothers and sisters of the Red Family could not see that the religion of Mhor was only a tool the Matriarch used to control them, to bind them to her will. Did they really think that Mhor awaited them after death? Perhaps they realized their folly in the final moment before their bloodstained souls tumbled into unending oblivion.
She pushed aside the thought and considered the windows. To judge from the weathering on the shutters, they had not been opened in a long time. Likely Hadrian was not the sort of man who wanted morning sunshine to disturb his hangover. Aeliana unhooked the sheathed dark soulblade from her belt and set it on the windowsill, taking care to make no noise. The sword would be secure until she returned for it.
And if someone found it, well…Aeliana wasn’t sure what would happen if anyone other than her drew the weapon, but it was bound to be spectacular. High elven soulblades rejected anyone but their proper wielder. Should someone other than Aeliana draw the dark soulblade, she suspected the sword would make a meal of them.
She would have to experiment later.
Once the dark soulblade was secured, she added a small sack holding a change of clothing that she would need for her escape. Then Aeliana descended the wall and escaped the mansion. A short walk brought to her to the Great Northern Gate and the shops and the taverns surrounding it. Aeliana turned down a small side street and came to a building that looked like an inn – four stories tall, built of brick and timber, with a roof of fired clay tiles.
But it was only incidentally an inn. The Red Curtain was a brothel, the most expensive one in Cint
arra. At various times the Princes of Cintarra, gripped by fits of conscience or moralizing, had attempted to ban brothels. That had never worked, and finally, the Princes had given up (or seen a new source of revenue) and instead licensed brothels. So long as the brothel owner paid the yearly fee and kept things quiet and orderly, the whores could go about their business in peace. No doubt that annoyed someone like Caelmark Arban, but Aeliana didn’t care what the archbishop thought about anything.
With the power of the Mark of the Herald, Aeliana climbed the wall of the house opposite the Red Curtain, settled atop the roof, and waited. She stretched herself out flat, lying on her stomach, and drew on the Mark. Another of the Mark’s gifts allowed her to bypass sleep when necessary. Aeliana found it useful and enjoyable. Too often her dreams were littered with the defeats of her life – her father’s death at Ridmark’s hands, her enslavement to the Matriarch and the Red Family, the petty little humiliations the assassins had enjoyed heaping upon her.
And sometimes she dreamed of Urd Morlemoch, of the ribbons of blue fire lashing at the black vault of the sky, the central tower like a monolith of bone and the great Tyrathstone burning atop its altar, of the aura of dark power and majesty that surrounded the Warden like heat radiating from a foundry…
It was an unsettling dream, but it didn’t matter. Aeliana remembered Urd Morlemoch whether she was awake or sleeping, and sometimes her thoughts seemed to speak in the Warden’s voice. She was not entirely sure if that was a product of her imagination. Maybe it really was the Warden’s voice. The Warden had given her power with the Mark of the Herald, her and the other four Heralds of Ruin. And to the five Heralds and no one else (and the Theophract, of course), the Warden had spoken of his great work. How he would correct the mistakes that God had made when He had set the stars and the worlds upon their foundations. How he would rip down the cosmos, shatter it, and rebuild it in a new and better form.
To do that, the Warden would open the door beneath Cathair Kaldran. And to reach Cathair Kaldran, the Warden needed to open the Great Eye beneath Cintarra.
And then all things would be set to order. There would be no more injustice because there would be no such thing as justice. All laws, whether moral or physical, would be shattered and made anew. A cosmos of order would take its place.
Aeliana smiled in the darkness.
And, of course, to help the Warden’s great work, Aeliana needed to murder a fat lord so stupid and venal he failed to realize he was a tool and nothing more.
The absurdity of it pleased her.
Ah, but she loved her work. She had hated the Red Family but loved the killing, loved culling the weak and the stupid from the herd of humanity.
There was a great deal of culling to come.
She waited, in a state almost like a trance, for the better part of six hours. The sun rose, and the men of Cintarra went to their shops and warehouses. Those who had jobs, at any rate. Quite a few men lurked in alleys, ragged and dirty, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but to wait for food to be distributed at the city’s various churches. Aeliana loathed the commoners even as she sympathized with them. Why should they not be angry? They had been denied their livelihoods and cast out of their homes. They had a right to their grievances.
Of course, their grievances were irrelevant. In the new cosmos, they would always be perfectly content, for it would never occur to them to rebel.
Aeliana waited, ignoring hunger, ignoring thirst. The Mark of the Herald could sustain her for days, though she would need to eat eventually.
As dark began to fall, a coach appeared in the courtyard of the Red Curtain, maneuvering out of the stables and driving to the back of the brothel. Aeliana watched with interest, and a few moments later the coach emerged, driving at a sedate pace, flanked by a pair of burly men armed with cudgels and short swords.
A cold smile spread over Aeliana’s face.
The madam of the Red Curtain generally did not send her women into the city. Patrons wishing to enjoy their company had to come in person. But Lord Hadrian was rich and powerful, and a mere brothel owner did not risk defying him. When Lord Hadrian wanted a woman, a woman was sent to him.
Aeliana got to her feet and ran, jumping from rooftop to rooftop as the coach maneuvered its way through Cintarra’s streets. She knew the route it would take to Lord Hadrian’s mansion through the main avenues and was fast enough to put the coach behind her.
At last, she came to a house overlooking a narrow street, and Aeliana began climbing down the wall, the power of the Mark letting cling to the bricks. Aeliana lowered herself until she was only twenty feet above the ground, and then the coach passed beneath her.
She released the wall and landed atop the coach in silence. The guards, preoccupied with glaring at the displaced villagers in the alleys, did not notice her presence. The coach had a trapdoor in the roof, and Aeliana lifted the latch, opened the door, and dropped inside.
The coach’s single occupant was a woman of about twenty years, clad in a crimson gown that dipped low in front. The woman was holding a small mirror set in a wooden frame, and scrutinized her appearance, turning her makeup-caked face back and forth before the glass.
She looked up in surprise, her mouth dropping open, and Aeliana hit her in the side of the neck. That stunned the prostitute long enough for Aeliana to reach into her belt pouch and produce a rag drenched in an elixir she had stolen from an apothecary’s shop. The woman started to fight but went limp, and Aeliana eased her to the floor. She poured some of the elixir down the woman’s throat. That would keep her unconscious for several hours, or it would stop her heart before dawn. Either outcome was acceptable.
Removing the prostitute’s clothing was a challenge in the cramped space, but Aeliana did it anyway. In short order she had donned the crimson gown herself, tying the laces in the back as tight as they would go since she was a bit thinner than the unconscious woman. She settled on the seat, lifted the discarded mirror, and took a moment to arrange her hair in a suitably tousled fashion. Then she donned a red veil lying on the seat next to her, no doubt intended to complete the unconscious woman’s costume.
About five seconds later, the coach came to a stop, and someone rapped on the door.
“We’re here,” said a rough voice. “Time to earn your pay.”
Somebody laughed.
Aeliana opened the door and closed it behind her, making sure to angle her body to block the view of the coach’s interior. She emerged into the courtyard of Lord Hadrian’s domus, the mansion rising above her and gleaming in the pale silver-blue moonlight. The two guards from the Red Curtain awaited her, and one of Lord Hadrian’s servants turned a disapproving, purse-lipped look in her direction. The guards frowned at her, perhaps realizing that something was amiss, but both night and the crimson veil obscured her features.
By the time they figured it out, she would be long gone. Perhaps the blame for what was about to happen would even fall on their heads.
“This way,” snapped the servant, and Aeliana followed him, her stolen slippers making no noise against the ground. The servant led the way into the entry hall of Hadrian Vindon’s domus, and then up the stairs and through a corridor. Aeliana noted the rich furnishings, the tapestries, and the silver vases and bowls. Had she been so inclined, she could have robbed this place and made a tidy bit of money. It seemed that even the audacious Wraith had not managed to clean Hadrian out.
They stopped before an imposing door of polished dark wood.
“His lordship is inside,” said the servant. “Remember to do all that he commands. I shall come and fetch you in the morning. And for God’s sake, don’t disturb his lordship’s sleep once he has exhausted himself.”
Aeliana inclined her head, and the servant rapped on the door.
“Send her in,” came the deep voice of Hadrian Vindon.
The servant opened the door, urged Aeliana inside, and closed it behind her.
The bedroom was as opulent as Aeliana would have e
xpected. Her feet sank into the rich carpet, and tapestries of hunting scenes covered the walls. A fire crackled in a hearth, keeping the chill of the Cintarran spring night at bay. An enormous bed dominated the room, and the sweet odor of lavender and sage could not quite mask the rancid scent that came to Aeliana’s nose.
The source of the scent was the huge man lying naked on the bed, his hands propped behind his head. Hadrian Vindon’s skin already glistened with sweat despite the chill, and he leered when he saw her.
“Come, my dear,” rumbled Hadrian. “Let us see you.”
“Not yet, my lord,” murmured Aeliana, pitching her voice higher than usual.
Hadrian blinked. “I don’t think you’re one of my usual women.”
“I’m new, my lord,” said Aeliana, loosening the front of her gown as she passed towards the window. “The madam thought I would please you. I do hope you think me fair.”
Hadrian made a rumbling sound of impatience. “Come on, then, let’s see you.”
With slow, languid movements, Aeliana peeled herself out of the gown, taking care to expose only one small part of herself at a time, and every step moved her closer to the shuttered window. Hadrian watched, enraptured, a flush spreading over his face and chest. Aeliana felt a wave of amused contempt for the fool. Truly, those who could not master their hungers were the slaves of those who had.
At last Aeliana tossed aside the gown, her only remaining garment the veil. Hadrian licked his lips as his eyes flicked over her body, and she struck a pose, cocking a hip to one side.
“Do I find favor in my lord’s eyes?” said Aeliana.
“Very much so,” said Hadrian, extending his arms towards her. “Come to me, and I shall show you how much. Take off that ridiculous veil, first.”
“Would my lord not prefer to take it off me himself?” said Aeliana, reaching for the shutters.
“What are you doing, woman?” said Hadrian. She heard the annoyance in his voice.
Dragontiarna: Thieves Page 19
