The woman slid her hand down his arm, taking the last step toward him until she pressed herself against his chest. The beads and bones bit into him, and she brought her other hand up to bury her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck. Her burning lips brushing his ear sent a shiver through him when she whispered, “Give in to me.” Her voice had now become her own—a single, low tone of longing, separated from the eerie echo of the others. “Spend one night in my arms, and our pact will be fulfilled. You would give us so much.” One hand left his arm to travel below his belt, caressing him through the fabric of his trousers. “My people would rejoice at the fruit of our union.”
This snapped Kherron out of his indecision, forcing the consequences of such an agreement to the forefront of his awareness. None of this was real. This woman didn’t want him, Kherron the man. She wanted what he could do—the half of him that was not human. The Roaming People, this mass feeding on pleasure and desire like a parasite of primal nature, would harvest him to create another being in their greater whole. And whatever that new life became, it would provide the Roaming People access to the truths Kherron had yet to discover on his own.
Grinding his teeth, he removed her hand from below his waist, leaving her other fist entwined in his hair because he still clutched the Sky Metal dagger at his side. “No.”
The woman pulled back only slightly, though she did not release his hair, and smirked. “We will not proposition you again. Is this truly the answer you wish to give?”
Kherron shook his head, though his neck was so tense, he felt he could barely move. “I can’t.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth, the words heavy with anticipation.
The woman with the red paint across her cheekbones smirked, her nostrils flaring. Then she jerked her wrist from his grasp and wrenched her other hand away from his hair. Kherron hadn’t realized how tightly she’d grasped him and how much he’d resisted until the force of her release sent his head lurching forward. “Then we will leave you here,” she said, spreading her arms wide and stepping backward. Her features blurred into a dark, hazy wash, and then her form vanished completely. In its place hovered a body of the dark cloud’s swarming, insect-like specs, and it darted away from him to rejoin the remainder of its host.
Only then did Kherron realize that the black mass had resumed its frenzied motion, while everything else around him—the amarach who had caught his arm and the two others frozen mid-battle in the sky—remained unchanged. With a crack, the Roaming People disappeared. Kherron turned to glance at the suspended immortals, both hoping and fearing they would move again; he could not guess their intentions, and he’d be a fool to believe they’d come to protect him if he did not have the proof. But a dark, violet light flashed from everywhere all at once, and he felt as if the air was being sucked from his lungs.
When the brilliance receded, the violet tinge remained, tainting the trees lining the clearing, the waterfall, the grass at his feet, the sky. Nothing had changed but the colors around him, and when he watched the water surging and spraying over the rocky falls, thinking time moved forward once more, he realized it made no noise. No rush of water, no trickle of the stream leading away from him, no birdsong—he heard only his own irregular breath. The amarach had also vanished, leaving him alone in what looked nearly identical to the clearing in which he’d just stood. Without a doubt, wherever he was, Kherron existed somewhere else entirely in a place he could not name.
Chapter 15
Torrahs understood very well his new dominion over two amarach had no effect whatsoever on his discovery, but he couldn’t help feeling swept up by an uncanny tide of impeccable fortune. It allowed him, at least for now, to ignore what had gone awry despite all his efforts and planning. He set aside Lorraii’s precarious rebellion and the Brotherhood’s costly naivety for the prize he’d won by digging for answers.
Sitting at the table before the library’s massive hearth, he gazed down at the wrinkled parchment, the ink nearly illegible after years of improper care. While the Brotherhood had abused their compilation of invaluable records and histories by not preserving them the way Torrahs himself would have, he could still read the words. He’d found the spell.
While the demon he’d chased so many years before had led him into what he called the Ebbing Realm, the man had had no part in entering or exiting that place; he’d merely followed his quarry. There were, of course, no records in Deeprock Spire of those creatures of darkness, so he’d had to start his research with histories of the Priests of Imlach. These men secluded themselves within the temples at Arahaz, just beyond the last northern ridges of the Bladeshale Mountains, and Torrahs had found one willing to speak with him on greater mysteries. Only then, it had been because the man who called himself Grarum—taken from the god of patience, long-forgotten by all but the last of Imlach’s devout—had been at death’s door when they’d met.
The priest might have chosen a fitting name for himself when he’d entered the order, but it had seemed amusingly juxtaposed to the man’s last, desperate hours. Grarum had used the same magic Torrahs assumed the Roaming People employed, slowing the passage of time before his death so he could impart the secrets of his life he could not reveal to the rest of his Order upon the eager young stranger. Torrahs had not, at the time, had the presence of mind to ask the priest how he accomplished such a feat; he’d instead listened with rapt attention to the man’s tales and unveiled mysteries, none of which helped him now.
But pursuing that line of research had led him to this surprisingly old parchment, describing the employed enchantment not as a tool of the Priests of Imlach but of an even older people. The record named them only as Blood of the Veil, as far as he could translate it. The most he could make of their history was that these beings were a half-breed of some spirit race; sylph was the closest he could get to that unknown ancestral line, though he’d never encountered a people more closely tied to an ethereal existence than physical form. The amarach, of course, were an exception, but they did not procreate.
These Blood of the Veil, though—the celebrated progeny of whatever beings gave them life—were said to have used these enchantments to commune with and call upon their kindred not bound by corporeal bodies. The man who’d penned such a document, as old as it was, had referred to himself in these histories as Rovlen, describing with each such account that he belonged to no people or location, that he roamed the world in search of its stories and hidden truths. Torrahs had found a kinship with the dead purveyor of cultures when he’d found the first collection of Rovlen’s chronicles, focused on the people who had first settled the southern shores of the Teriborus Ocean. He’d also found the man’s meticulous history of the Priests of Imlach—who, during his time, had flourished at Arahaz and provided for the people of Imlach an age of peace and prosperity. That was where he’d discovered a reference to the Blood of the Veil, eventually coming to land on this document before him, which harbored surprising detail on the specific steps necessary to “lengthen the hours at will.”
How the man managed to glean such specifics of the process—whether directly from the Blood of the Veil themselves or through observation—Torrahs would never know. The parchment before him was incomplete, missing the first portion of the history and starting just before Rovlen had laid out the preparatory rituals. But he had what he needed. The dead man’s instructions named this a doorway only—that pushing farther through the thin shadow between worlds would bring one into “a realm of unyielding quiescence.” The description seemed too much like the Ebbing Realm for Torrahs to ignore, and he knew he’d found the knowledge he sought. And not a moment too soon.
With his immediate goal now realized, he carefully rolled the parchment, stood, and tucked it into the belt of his robes. Then he left the roaring fire and the dusty smell of untouched volumes for the main hall, a hot meal, and a mug of ale. The rest of the day would pass soon enough, and he’d make the offer he imagined the amarach would accept with pleasure.
WHEN
THE MOON HAD REACHED its highest point, Torrahs rounded the corner into the corridor and stopped at the room in which they kept Dehlyn. He’d told none of the Brothers of his plans, with good reason; they’d want to be a part of it and would surely, with their presence, lower his chances of an accord. And he was now one of the only two souls awake within the stone walls of Deeprock Spire.
He raised the ring of three keys—the other two for his own quarters and those in which he’d sequestered Lorraii—unlocked the door, and pushed it open. The wood creaked slightly on its hinges, and the figure stirred on the straw pallet against the far wall. It did not matter if he woke the woman-child now, though he preferred Dehlyn to remain asleep until her transformation. He’d grown weary of playing the caregiver—the calm, supportive presence who would do whatever he could to ensure her peace and happiness.
In their time at Deeprock Spire, the blue-eyed Dehlyn had finally seemed to note the deeper veins of impatience and irritation Torrahs had worked for so long to suppress. He doubted she understood her current predicament in any fashion, but she’d stopped running to him in joy when he visited her during the day. She’d merely gazed at him with a child’s unwavering skepticism, as if he’d become a stranger to her. And, of course, he had. He’d also stopped those visits completely after their first attempt in the tower, and he’d left the responsibility of caring for her baser needs within this room to those Brothers willing to accept the task. But even when he’d come to retrieve her the previous night to lead her to the tower—before Lorraii had so foolishly disobeyed him—she’d followed him with wide eyes and a silent regard that irked him to no end. The woman-child never screamed, never struggled or tried to oppose him. That had, of course, been her entire existence upon this earth—until the dark hours of the night when her true nature emerged and the amarach came for her.
Torrahs expected a similar visit tonight, as he had every night before this. Though after the unseemly disaster of the amarach’s end at Lorraii’s own hand, he had not thought he would come to her so soon. But he could not rationalize waiting any longer now that he’d found how to open the doorway. Tonight, he knew, a new immortal would arrive to depart with the vessel into the celestial plane, and he would entreat with this being instead.
Closing the door behind him, he locked it again and raised the oil lamp in his other hand to eye the sleeping Dehlyn. She lay curled up on the pallet on the floor, her plain dress bunched up around her knees. This woman-child—this ruse—never slept for long. For nearly the entire time he’d been her caretaker, she had remained awake into the late hours of the night. Oftentimes, he’d fallen asleep before she had, though when he’d first discovered the black-haired amarach and the creature’s nightly visits, Torrahs had found himself unable to sleep, energized by anticipation and curiosity. That had quickly changed when he came to understand the unyielding regularity of such nightly occurrences, and no matter what he did or where he went, Dehlyn had always been returned to him with the rising sun. Nothing he’d ever done had succeeded in granting him more than a few moments with the green-eyed vessel, who opened her eyes and prepared to greet her immortal visitor. Sometimes, she’d offered him a few words of warning, meant to dissuade him from his path and what he meant to do. Tonight, though, he would finally have his time with her.
With light footsteps, Torrahs crossed the room toward his sleeping ward. He set the lamp on the side table beside a pitcher of water, then gently lowered himself to sit at the edge of the bed, his weight only slightly disrupting the stillness. Dehlyn sighed and moved her golden head before burying it again in the thin blanket beneath her.
He did not have to wait very long at all. Within a few minutes, the gentle rise and fall of Dehlyn’s chest ceased. With a deep breath, which seemed to swell and fill the entire room, she pushed herself up on the pallet and turned to fix Torrahs with her gaze. Her now green eyes almost glowed in the darkness and the flickering lamplight, no trace of receding fatigue or just having awakened upon her features; she studied him with more alert awareness than any creature had a right to do. “You will not find what you seek tonight,” she said, her voice low and unwavering.
Torrahs tipped his head and leaned toward her, as though they conspired together in this. “I have something different in mind.”
The immortal vessel regarded him with disinterest, raising her brows as though she questioned his belief in his own success. “Nothing that has not been attempted before.”
Torrahs intended to discover the meaning behind that cryptic statement—surely, there could not have been others with both the knowledge contained in Rovlen’s histories and the amarach vessel so close at hand—but he had no time to voice his curiosity. Though the stone room had no windows and no view of the night sky, manmade walls did nothing to deter the amarach. The lamp cast stark, flickering shadows across the uneven stone, then that scant light was dwarfed in an instant by the brilliant flash of the immortal’s coming. As quickly as the light had blinded him, it vanished, revealing the new celestial being who had stepped up to take his predecessor’s place.
This amarach seemed entirely docile compared to the one who had come to collect Dehlyn every night for the last few years—most likely every night before that, before Torrahs had found the woman-child scrubbing floors in a derelict tavern. The creature’s wings were of a dull grey, feathers fluttering softly as he folded them against his back. His hair, of the same cloudy hue, had been pulled back into a loose plait, lying flat against his head to trail down the back of his neck. The last immortal who had come for Dehlyn had never worn more than loose trousers, no matter the weather, and this one seemed only more slightly inclined to cover his form. Torrahs found himself confused by the creature’s vest of what could have been either leather or fur; it wavered in the lamplight unlike any material known to him. The immortal’s eyes, however, were the only detail he shared with the black-haired amarach Lorraii had slain. They too produced a foreboding orange hue, as though the life behind them came from something much like the flame of the oil lamp beside the bed.
The amarach gazed at the green-eyed Dehlyn as if he had not just appeared from another realm—as if he’d entered through the door and had focused on her during his approach. But then he turned his attention to Torrahs with a withering glare of warning, the corners of his mouth turned down in contempt. “You know how this is done.” The creature’s voice echoed within the stone walls, the aggression contained therein restricted only by the laws binding him against acting on it.
“I do,” Torrahs replied. He had not moved from his place on the pallet beside Dehlyn; the amarach posed no immediate threat. Still, maintaining poised control over his own presence would greatly raise his chances of what he intended next. “Though I wish to change the order of things. Only once. Only tonight.”
The amarach blinked, and a frown pinched his thin brows. “You can do nothing to change what happens tonight,” he said.
“Of course not. You will take her and return her with the dawn, as you must. As your predecessor always had.” Torrahs knew he’d struck a chord of emotion within the immortal at the mention of the vessel’s slain guardian. The creature’s nostrils flared, and his head twitched as though an insect had brushed against his face. “All I require is your consent,” Torrahs continued, seizing his opportunity. “And in return, I will give you the Ouroke.” Though he trained his gaze upon the amarach’s grey eyes, he noted Dehlyn slowly turning her head to look at him.
The immortal grunted. “To what end?”
“To whatever end you see fit.” Torrahs had realized, after his last conversation with Lorraii, that the tattooed woman had outlived her usefulness to him. He had hoped he could have used her as a bargaining chip in the end, when he’d nearly reached his goals. But she’d chosen to act against his wishes and had forged herself an entirely new purpose.
For a moment, it seemed the immortal would deny him entirely. Then he raised his brows. “I will come for the Ouroke when the sun rises.” He di
d not glance at Dehlyn for approval or permission, which struck Torrahs as unlikely and strange. Perhaps, though, the vessel had no part in an exchange such as this. Perhaps her very nature exempted her from the machinations of amarach vengeance—a life for a life.
“If that is your desire,” Torrahs replied, inclining his head. His muscles twitched with anticipation, every inch of him burning to make his move once the winged creature gave his consent. The words of the incantation hummed behind his lips.
“Very well,” the amarach said.
The instant the immortal stepped forward, Torrahs whispered the words written down by Rovlen—the words that would summon the doorway to him. He muttered them quickly and effortlessly, having burned them in his memory with every other powerful magic he’d come to know. The amarach reached out with a strong hand, anticipating his contact with Dehlyn, which would take her away with him. At that moment, Torrahs uttered the final word and clamped his hand around Dehlyn’s wrist.
All the air vanished from the room, from Torrahs’ very lungs, until it returned again with a thunderous crack and a flash of violet light. The amarach’s hand stopped above Dehlyn’s shoulder, hovering in its gentle arc, and the flame lighting the oil lamp froze mid-flicker. Torrahs turned to look at the woman sitting beside him, unnerved by the unsurprised blink of her green eyes.
“This will not end the way you anticipate,” she said, seemingly unaffected by their hasty entrance into this place neither of the physical plane nor beyond into the Ebbing Realm.
Torrahs removed his hand from her wrist, slightly vexed by her indifference after what he’d just accomplished. Could nothing produce a reaction in her? But her opinion of him did not matter in the least, and he had to press on before they reached the end of his borrowed time. “Now, we finally have a chance to palaver,” he said.
Secret of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 2) Page 19
