Thief of Souls

by Emma L. Adams

  I headed for the tree I’d used to store my spare cantrips in and retrieved them along with my weapons. As I took my first step onto the marshy ground, the shapes of several figures on horseback appeared in the mist.

  Not the Death King again. I ducked behind the tree, my heart thudding. No fewer than seven figures rode skeletal steeds across the swamp. Judging by their identical appearances, they weren’t the Death King’s Elemental Soldiers, but his foot-soldiers instead. I remained still, hoping they were wights and not liches. Liches were rumoured to be able to sense the living even when they were hidden from sight, but wights were little more than cavalry. Regardless, the Lich King didn’t typically send his army this close to the city.

  Something’s wrong. No shit, Liv. Surely it couldn’t all be about the amulet. If they’d killed the thief, then the matter should have been taken care of. Unless the soldiers were fired up for some other reason. Had the Order sent me out here into their path on purpose? No way. They might not be my biggest fans, but bumping me off would create too much paperwork. Still, it couldn’t be plainer there was something rotten in the state of Denmark, as Hamlet would say. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, Shakespeare quotes were the only part of my education I remembered. I got an A on that exam. I just failed everything else.

  I held my breath until the last of the horsemen had passed my hiding place. Then I ran across the swampland in search of the thief’s hut.

  As I’d feared, the place was gone. Burned to cinders. The Fire Element was rumoured to be the most violent of the Death King’s chosen soldiers. Playing up to stereotypes, maybe. Brant wasn’t that bad. Not to me, anyway. His offer to help me get my magic back was oddly heartfelt, even if it was misplaced.

  Maybe I should have at least taken him up on his offer of help at the very least, but the idea of abandoning the amulet in the swamp struck me as a waste. Maybe I could sell it instead. It wasn’t like the Order would check, and the thing was hand-carved, by the looks of things. There were plenty of people buying and selling artefacts at the market who might take it off my hands and give me some much-needed cash as a bonus.

  Mind made up, I turned around and walked out of the swampland towards the outskirts of town. Like everywhere on this side of the nodes, the city of Arcadia had been hit hard by the war. Roughly constructed stone houses filled the winding streets, while practitioners gathered around the ramshackle warehouses to sell their wares.

  In the city’s centre stood the Citadel of the Elements, where the elemental council had once held power before the spirit mages had killed off their brethren and then perished themselves. The towering spire looked as imposing as ever, but it had stood empty since the council’s demise.

  Nowadays, most elemental mages were to be found skulking in the city’s crooked streets alongside shapeshifters, elves, vampires and others who found it preferable to struggle here rather than surviving under the Order’s rules on the other side. The majority of practitioners had little talent worth a damn, and while the Parallel used to be self-sufficient before the war, it had grown dependent on supplies brought in from the other side.

  I ducked into the warehouse marked with a sign designating it as a trading area for magic, and a man with lizard-like features accosted me. “Can I interest you in a trinket or two?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m selling, in fact.”

  He extended a leathery hand. “Ooh, what d’you have?”

  I held up the amulet. “Know what this is made of?”

  The man recoiled with a gasp. “Death! Don’t bring that in here. Are you out of your mind?”

  I stiffened, then backed out into the street before his yells drew too much attention. A trickle of fear ran down my spine as I held the amulet up to the light and looked at it. Really looked at it.

  Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.

  Spirit magic might be forbidden, but one individual lay outside of the Order’s jurisdiction. The Death King—and by association, the Court of the Dead.

  Some say the first liches made a deal with the devil, others say they were backed into a corner after the war. Whatever the reason, their souls and their bodies existed in separate vessels. Every soldier held a pendant which contained their soul, and as long as it existed, no matter how many times they were killed, they couldn’t die.

  Now I had one of those souls in my own hands. The person it belonged to was likely pissed as hell that someone had taken it, which explained why those foot-soldiers had been scouring the swampland. They’d figured out the thief had stolen a soul straight from the Death King’s own territory, but when they’d caught him, he didn’t have the soul on him… because I’d stolen it.

  No wonder the Order wanted me to take it back to the swamp. Would have been nice if they’d told me in the first place, but soul amulets were probably classified information, and given my history, they wouldn’t have wanted to risk telling someone who’d broken the law once already. Soul amulets were close enough to spirit magic to make most people uncomfortable.

  Whose soul might it be? Was it possible for me to return it to its owner? It wasn’t like I could ask one of the foot-soldiers. Wights weren’t capable of listening to reason. They were the cavalry, nothing more. They’d cut me up without answering any questions. I needed to speak to an actual person and tell them there’d been a mistake.

  The idea of striding right up to the gates of the Death King’s castle and handing it back to him, however, was laughable. He’d assume I’d had a moment of guilty conscience and have his soldier incinerate me the same way he’d killed the unfortunate water mage. I’d have liked to ask him how he’d stolen it, come to that. It couldn’t have been an easy job.

  I peered into the fog, my shoulders stiffening. Armoured figures appeared in the gloom of the swamp, heading this way. Speak of the devil. If the guy at the market told the Death King’s foot-soldiers that he’d seen me carrying an amulet around… I was screwed.

  I needed to get out of here. Running for the node by the tree would put me in the soldiers’ sight, so I had no option but to move deeper into the city’s outskirts.

  I ducked into the nearest alley and found a knife at my throat.

  5

  I kicked out, knocking my attacker backwards. In response, he dropped the knife, trod on the end of his own coat and would have fallen on his face if I hadn’t caught his arm.

  “Oh, it’s you, Trix.” I released him, my heart thumping. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “You told me to practise my ambushes.” The elf shuffled back. “How was that?”

  “Except for the bit when you dropped your knife? Not bad.”

  “Good.” He gave a wide smile. “I missed you at the game night.”

  “Something came up.”

  Trix was the only elf member of our D&D group. Pointed ears stuck up from his silky dark hair, while his luminescent skin glowed in the dim lighting. That was elves for you. Pretty, but lacking in the survival skills department. I figured that the only reason they’d survived the war in the Parallel was because there was so little that could actually kill them.

  “What’re they looking for?” he asked. “The Death King’s people, I mean?”

  Uh… I think they’re looking for me. Catch me giving that away now I knew what I held… a soul amulet. Trix would probably blurt it out by accident to the first person who asked.

  “No clue,” I lied easily. “Is he around?”

  “Who, the Death King?”

  I winced. “Maybe don’t talk so loudly when they can hear us?”

  “Why do you want to know if he’s here?” His brow furrowed in genuine confusion. He might be a little slow on the uptake, but he wouldn’t turn me in.

  “I’m in a spot of trouble.” There was no point in underplaying it at this point. “I need to speak to a representative from the same place those walking skeletons came from.”

  “You want to talk to them?”

  I rubbed my forehead. “No. I want
to talk to someone from the Death Kingdom who has a brain. Or some approximation of one, anyway.”

  I didn’t know the rules on metaphysics for death-cheating monsters, but even someone who could remove their soul and trap it in an object must still have something to think with. If I knew one thing, there was absolutely no way the Death King himself would ever listen to me when he likely assumed that I’d stolen from him. Instead, I needed to waylay one of his people and explain the situation. Someone who was willing to listen, if anyone in the Court of the Dead fitted that criteria.

  The sound of hooves thudding on the muddy path sent a fresh wave of alarm blaring through me. They came out of the swamp? The Death King’s people had entered the city itself?

  “Please tell me there’s a node near here,” I said to Trix. “I need to get out.”

  “They are looking for you.” He pulled out his knife again. “I’ll scare them off.”

  “Trix, they’re dead. A knife won’t even tickle them.” I backed down the alley as the hoofbeats grew louder. “I don’t normally cross over here. Which way did you come in?”

  “Underground. There’s a node just west of here if you go under the street.”

  Wonderful. “Do you have somewhere safe to hide?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I promise, I won’t breathe a word about you to anyone who asks.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Best to pretend you don’t know me at all, for both our sakes.”

  I backed between the warehouses, cursing my luck. If a lone horseman had come here, I might have considered speaking to them, but it sounded like half the army was pounding down the streets and spreading throughout the city. Wherever Dex had disappeared to, I had no clue, but I wouldn’t drag any more of my friends into this mess.

  The nearest route into the city’s underground lay down a rickety set of stairs at the alley’s end. I climbed down into darkness, hoping I wouldn’t run into worse than a wight there in the gloom. The labyrinthine passages beneath the city were mostly home to beings as friendly as the Death King’s lot, but I was counting on the inhabitants being too distracted by the chaos aboveground to notice me sneaking into their midst.

  The tunnel appeared empty at first, lit by the dim lights of old-fashioned lanterns. I shuffled across the damp floor, mentally mapping my surroundings to the streets aboveground. If Trix’s geography was accurate, I needed to head west to find the way out.

  A spark of light caught on my vision. Then a sharp pain stung my wrist. A pair of miniature flaming eyes stared accusingly at me. “What in blazes and tides are you doing here?”

  “Dex?”

  “You don’t know any other fire sprites,” he said. “You’d better not, anyway.”

  “Shh,” I hissed. “I’m in hiding. Anyone in the tunnel?”

  “Nope. They’re all up there, looking to see what all the fuss is about.”

  “You mean the wights.” I walked further into the gloom. “I wondered if they’d taken you.”

  “I’ve been hiding in a tree since those skeletal monsters started rampaging around,” he said accusingly. “Nice of you to come looking for me.”

  “I’m in major trouble.” I spoke in a low voice. “You know that amulet we found? It’s a soul amulet. Someone must have swiped it from one of the Death King’s own soldiers.”

  “Shit, Liv,” he said in a low, awed voice.

  “Yeah, exactly. I need to get to the node and get the fuck out of here.” Never mind the Death King. I’d take the amulet back to the Order and tell them exactly what they’d planted on me and why it was a death sentence to send me to return it.

  Dex flitted around my head. “Uh, slight issue. There may be someone else using the node.”

  I stopped walking. “You said there wasn’t anyone down here.”

  “Not right here, no,” he said. “But there’s always things near the node. They feed on the magic.”

  “By ‘things’, you don’t mean humans.” Just perfect. Nodes, sources of magic, were also sources of nourishment to some of the Parallel’s less than savoury beings. There wasn’t another way out, so I’d have to risk it.

  As we neared the corner, I sensed the node, its pulsing point like a beating heart deep in the darkness. Three creatures shaped like scrawny, hairless humans surrounded its flowing current. Revenants.

  After the Elements fell, there weren’t enough survivors to control the city, and others rushed in to fill the gap. Revenants—vampiric creatures which fed on the magic of the nodes—paled in comparison to their full-vampire counterparts, but the node was a feast they wouldn’t abandon without a fight.

  “Don’t mind me,” I said, when they all looked up at me with sightless eyes. “I just need to borrow your node.”

  A revenant hissed, lashing out with a bony hand. Coldness brushed against my skin, and the node’s power rattled in my veins. Dammit. I couldn’t take out all three of them at once without a struggle, and I didn’t want to know what the Order would do if I brought three revenants with me into the middle of town. Lock me up for a decade, no doubt.

  Dex flew in front of them, his transparent form blazing with orange light. They cringed away from the fire, hairless heads reflecting the gleaming light. I, meanwhile, backed around the corner and headed to the ladder leading aboveground. There’d better be another node in the city, or else I was in deeper shit than ever.

  I climbed the ladder, my hands slipping on the rungs, and pushed my way into the alley. Trix had vanished, as I’d expected, but the hoofbeats sounded louder than ever. My nerves jangled, my hands shivering with the echo of the node. Dammit. There’s got to be another one somewhere.

  Instinct drove me around a corner, deeper into the warren of warehouses that formed the outskirts of the city. The liches wouldn’t have the nerve to march right up to the ruling vampire council’s doorstep, would they? If the amulet was that valuable, perhaps they would. I couldn’t take the chance. My heart beat wildly against my ribs, and a current of magic drew me like the point of a compass. The node did come out aboveground—if I was willing to risk being spotted.

  Screw it. I followed the tug of magic until I spotted the node gleaming ahead. Revenants didn’t come to the surface in daylight, and the Death King had no reason to send his people into a realm where the magic keeping them intact no longer functioned. My path was clear. I’d have no better shot at escaping. Here we go.

  I broke into a full-out sprint at the torrent of light. The node tugged at me, and I willingly fell into its embrace.

  Just as the current caught me, a pair of grasping hands dug into my arm from behind, and I kicked out, trying to dislodge my attacker. With a jolt, I crashed through the node and skidded to a halt on the pavement.

  A skeletal creature lay in a heap next to me, as out of place against the concrete backdrop as a unicorn on the high street. The wight had followed me home. Oh, Elements.

  As it rose upright, I kicked out, feeling bone splinter beneath my heel. Wights were weaklings on this side, sapped of the power they gained from the Court of the Dead, but that didn’t change the fact that it’d followed me through.

  I gave another kick, breaking its leg. The wight fell into a heap, its bones already turning into dust without the magic of the node to sustain it.

  I reached for a cantrip and crouched over the wight’s body, but before I could move another inch, someone shouted, “Freeze!”

  Judith French marched over to me, her expression livid. Oh, boy.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “This wight followed me.” I indicated the monster’s skeletal form, or what was left of it. “Through the node. Tried to kill me.”

  “You brought it with you,” she said. “That’s a violation of our rules.”

  “It tried to kill me,” I repeated. “There’s something really messed up going on over there—”

  “Is there a problem?” said another, male voice.

  Brant. I’d never thought I’d be glad to see him, bu
t he’d come at the right moment to offer a diversion. He walked over, looking unexpectedly menacing in his long cloak, his messy dark hair blowing in the breeze.

  “Who are you?” said Judith.

  “None of your concern,” he said. “If Liv says the wight tried to kill her, she’s telling the truth.”

  “That may be,” said Judith, “but this is a public location, and not an appropriate place to engage with a magical attacker.”

  “Is that why you’re yelling at Liv about wights in front of everyone within hearing distance?” he said.

  Judith flushed bright red. “There’s nobody but you within hearing distance.”

  “Good job I’m not an ordinary human, then,” he said. “That was careless. Worth reporting to your supervisor, even.”

  “Don’t you threaten me, mage,” said Judith.

  “Not a threat,” he said breezily. “A warning. I’ll help Liv take care of this guy, and you’ll leave her alone. Then nobody gets reported. Deal?”

  Her furious gaze trailed over us, but apparently it wasn’t worth risking a black mark on her own record over a decomposing wight. “Don’t let it happen again.”

  Relief swept over me. Brant might be reckless sometimes, but he could barbecue the Order’s guards with his back turned. Judith knew better than to pick a fight at this point, even with backup around the corner.

  “Thanks,” I whispered to him.

  “Anytime.” Flames sparked between his hands, transferring to the wight’s remains. In a flash, they turned to ashes, drifting away on the chilly March breeze. “There. No harm done.”

  I released a slow, steady breath. “Not on this side, anyway. I’m in trouble.”

  He cut me a concerned look. “How bad?”

  “Bad,” I said. “I need to go to the Order.”

  He shook his head. “You got lucky this time, but if you go in there now, they’ll want to know why you’re already back without following their instructions.”