No, despite his misgivings, he would ride with the party to Kenabres. He knew if he returned there, discovery by those he had betrayed was all but certain.
A city that was the heart and soul of the Order of the Flaming Lance, the order to which he had once belonged and which he had betrayed.
The order that still sought to hunt Daryus down for his transgressions.
7
THE WOLF
It was all Grigor could do to keep on his feet after the spellwork. Drained beyond the limits of normal men, he leaned heavily on the staff. He thrust the dried eye into the pouch from which he had drawn it.
The assassin had indeed marked the human who had aided Toy, but it had been Toy’s mistake of opening his demon eye that had drawn Grigor’s attention. When that trace had vanished again, the witch had used the prize from his pouch to locate the man, a fool of a mercenary Grigor now knew was named Daryus Gaunt. Grigor had nearly insinuated himself in the man’s mind, but then something had broken the link. Still, the witch had some idea now just who and what had allied itself with the familiar.
Panting, Grigor forced himself straight. It would not do for the pitborn to see him so weak. They were kept in order through a combination of gold, fear, and the promises of what they would share in once he found the tomb. However, if they thought him too weak to achieve that goal, they might abandon him for better prospects. That would just not do. The witch still needed them, at least for the time being.
The windstorm had not been his creation—such grand power spread over so great a distance was beyond him—but rather just one example of the Worldwound’s unpredictability. However, it had provided him with enough chaos and distraction to nearly enable his efforts to break through the mercenary’s primitive mental barriers. Next time, Grigor swore, the man would have no reprieve. Whatever he knew, the witch would know.
After that, Toy’s fool of a puppet would be disposable.
Grigor frowned as a sudden fear overtook him, interrupting his thoughts concerning the mercenary. Removing his glove, he gingerly touched his cheek. The flesh felt dry, but still pliable. Thus far, his latest spellwork had not taken any toll.
Reassured, Grigor briefly considered the weasel’s puppet again. The man who had rescued Toy—the fool who had rescued the familiar—had proven of relatively strong will, but there had been no hint of any magical abilities. He was as he appeared, a simple sword hand. No concern at all for the witch.
Grigor stalked over to where the tomb was being looted. The pitborn currently at work had set up quite a pile of ancient artifacts for the witch to study. As he had expected, most of them had no use save as possibly a source of magical energy. It was doubtful he could gain much, but anything to keep him going until he corrected matters was welcome.
“Rubbish. Nothing but rubbish,” he declared to the cowering pitborn near the pile. “But tell your comrades that if one of them touches anything before I say otherwise, they’ll be a cinder.”
“Yes, Master!”
Some of the items had gold and jewels in them, but although Grigor could have used those to help keep the pitborn pliable, the witch intended to destroy most of them. Things taken from a tomb, even a tomb whose guardian Grigor had already destroyed, might still have residues of whatever curses the ancients might have put on the place. The witch wanted to take no chance that—
Grigor Dolch suddenly faced Grigor Dolch.
Barely stifling a cry, he stumbled back as his sallow face gaped back. There before him, he beheld the features of a handsome young exile of noble—if unacknowledged—blood. Young, if one did not look too close and see the crisscrossing lines. Handsome, if one did not notice the parchmentlike quality of the flesh and unliving glitter of the eyes.
The witch struck out with the staff, sending the reflection flying to the side with a loud clang. The two pitborn carrying the old ceremonial shield fell back in abject terror.
Still filled with both rage and fear, Grigor swung the staff hard at the nearest servant. The rat’s-head top proved far stronger than the pitborn’s skull. With a crack, the staff sent the unfortunate servant tumbling in a bloody heap.
Grigor shook the blood angrily from the staff. He glared at the second pitborn, who was already on his knees. The servant’s scaled face was devoid of hope. Grigor eyed the pathetic thing for a moment, then, snarling, continued on into the tomb.
The silence of the ancient edifice enabled him to come to grips with his emotions again. The pitborn had long-standing orders to obscure, hide, or cover any large reflective surface they came across. The witch swore he would slay every one of his servants if it took them that long to remember one simple, clear rule.
He came across another pitborn, this one immediately prostrating himself before the witch. Any of Grigor’s servants in the tomb had surely heard the latest scream. They would realize their master would be in a foul mood. It bespoke of their great eagerness to share in his future glory that they risked his deadly ire. Grigor had promised them much. Very much.
And with the power he knew he would obtain, he could give them all he had promised and more … if only they learned to obey to the letter.
“Get out of here!” Grigor ordered.
The horned and tailed creature leapt to his feet and scurried past.
It did not take long for Grigor to reach the main chamber. The tomb was a compact one, as had been common among the people the witch researched. Some civilizations built great structures that were promptly robbed or razed to the ground. Others, the more clever ones, made smaller, more cunning tombs that became part of the landscape, thus escaping notice for not just centuries, but millennia.
The sepulcher was also a simple one, a stone sarcophagus with little ornamentation the focal point. Grigor walked up to the now-empty coffin and peered inside. With the tomb’s occupant gone, little about the actual resting place interested him. The priest or witch—given the builders of this tomb, the occupant’s actual calling was a bit questionable—was not the ultimate reason for which this structure had been built, but rather merely a component of it. Indeed, if Grigor’s readings of the old texts were correct, it could not technically even be called a tomb, the man within having actually been sacrificed on this spot so he could guard whatever secret the ancient edifice held.
Grigor wiped away dust from the back wall. He grinned. There was the symbol for which he had been looking. The great wolf head peered to the left, the one eye visible narrowed as if the beast were in the midst of a hunt. Grigor Dolch followed the wolf’s gaze to the wall on the left. There, he saw nothing but more dust.
He wiped away the dust there. Markings lining up with the wolf’s eye caught Grigor’s attention. Unfortunately, they were of a different script than that which he had studied. Try as he might, Grigor could make no sense of them.
He swore, then raised the staff. Fortunately, sense returned to him before he could waste valuable power. Instead of a spell, he dismissed the staff and produced parchment and charcoal from a pouch at his belt. The ancient builders had been good enough to carve the arching words into the wall, which made his task easier. Rubbing the charcoal over the parchment, he reproduced the script.
Taking one last glance at the ancient writing, Grigor rolled up the small parchment and replaced it in the pouch.
Something at the edge of his vision caught his attention. He turned back to the image of the wolf.
The eye glistened.
Grigor strode over to the wolf, then leaned close to better study the eye. With the utmost caution, he gently touched it.
The click that followed was barely audible. Still, it was all the warning Grigor Dolch either needed or knew he would receive.
Spinning around, the witch darted through the tomb. As he ran, he summoned the staff.
The walls creaked. They began to close together. In touching the area, Grigor had set off a mechanism designed to trap treasure hunters. The witch paid no mind to the threat of the walls, though. He knew that the
true danger would come in an unexpected form.
Sure enough, the corridor ahead of him filled with an impenetrable mist. Grigor Dolch stumbled to a halt just before reaching it. Had he been one of the pitborn, he likely would have run through the mist without thinking.
Run through it … and probably been left a mass of liquefied flesh and bone. This was not the first such tomb the witch had ransacked. He had lost two pitborn to just such an acidic mist, an alchemical concoction apparently popular with the civilization that had built these structures.
With the walls closing on him, Grigor spun the staff in a circle. This time, a wind he summoned through the staff blew open a path for him. The witch quickly let it expand, then plunged forward.
He felt the sting of acid on his face. Aware what too lengthy an exposure would mean, Grigor threw himself forward.
Landing on the other side of the mist, he wasted no time in retreating down the remainder of the corridor. He stepped out just as a great moan arose from the structure. As Grigor had expected, the tomb began collapsing in on itself. With a loud cracking of stone and hard earth, the outer structure of the tomb gave way.
The witch watched as a huge cloud of dust rose over the devastated edifice. Grigor was not bothered in the least by the loss. He had seen what he wanted to see.
A tiny, yellowed fragment of what looked like parchment drifted past his gaze. Stiffening, Grigor thrust the staff under one arm, then removed his glove. With care, he ran his fingertips across the cheek nearest to the direction from which the fragment—or rather, flake—had drifted.
His fingers came away with several minute pieces of dried flesh. Grigor swore at his hubris. His efforts in the tomb had had more consequence than he’d imagined.
He had but to turn to the watching pitborn to send the one assigned to guarding the amber solution scurrying. The witch took a deep, calming breath and focused on his triumphs. He had taken another vital step in his quest.
The nervous pitborn held up the container, then raised the lid so that the underside was visible to Grigor Dolch. A sharp intake of breath escaped the witch. There was now a gap in his right cheek, a gap through which hints of his cheekbone could be seen.
“Hold it steady, you fool!” Grigor liberally applied the solution to the area, working it into the crumbling skin. The dryness gave way to a pliability of which Grigor immediately made use. Reaching into the cavity created by the loss of skin, he retrieved flakes of flesh from deep inside. With deft skill, he began applying them so that they covered the hole.
The amber solution allowed the inner flesh to blend with that from the face. By the time Grigor finished, there was barely any hint of the damage.
Still, he was not satisfied. He had let overconfidence rule him. That had been what had gotten him into trouble in the first place … that and Toy’s subsequent betrayal.
“We are done here,” he informed those pitborn near enough to hear as he finished with his face. “I want the animals packed up and ready to leave within two hours.”
“As you command, Master,” one of the largest growled. He was Grigor’s current second-in-command. The witch did not even know the demonspawn’s name, and had no intention of learning it. Grigor had already executed the creature’s three predecessors. If this one failed to act exactly as the witch desired, he would join them. There were many others eager to take the creature’s place, however risky the station. Those who served Grigor best would reap the greatest rewards.
Such a swift departure would mean leaving some of the tomb’s other treasures behind, but that was the pitborn’s concern, not his. They would take what they could easily carry, nothing more. As for Grigor himself, he had no interest in riches, only the answer to his troubles and the power those answers would bring in the process.
That … and Toy preferably skinned alive.
His interest again on his former familiar, Grigor turned to stare in the direction he and his band would travel. The trek would be arduous—at least for the pitborn—but time was of the essence. Time … and the manipulation of his unsuspecting puppet.
“Anyone not ready when it is time to leave will suffer the consequences,” he needlessly reminded the others. “I will see us within sight of our destination in three days. Is that understood?”
The demonspawn bowed their misshapen heads and rushed to obey. From there on, Grigor Dolch paid them no mind, his gaze focused on the path ahead.
On the path, and on the one stop on the way to his eventual glory.
Kenabres.
8
KENABRES
Shiera exhaled as they neared the walls of Kenabres. The detour to the other city had gone without incident, but, unfortunately, at only half the pace for which she had been hoping. That, at times, had pushed her patience to the edge.
Once through the massive and aptly named Southgate entrance, the party moved quickly past the temples dedicated to patient Abadar and the more stoic Torag—two of Kenabres’s patron deities—and into the Southgate Market. The clang of metal surrounded them, and the tinge of smoke and searing iron floated heavy in the air.
Yet, while Shiera was relieved to finally enter Kenabres, she noticed that Daryus was anything but pleased. The fighter had been fairly calm and steady throughout the trek, but now that he had reached the great city, he seemed even more eager to leave than he had been in Nerosyan.
The reason why became obvious the first time Shiera caught sight of a contingent of crusaders from the Flaming Lance crossing their path. Somehow, Daryus managed to maneuver behind Captain Galifar and stay clear of the marching figures until they were long gone, but it was clear that he and they had a bad history.
What did he do? Shiera’s knowledge of the order—of all the crusader orders, really—was peripheral at best. Staunch believers—some would even say “fanatical”—willing to give their lives to achieve the world their leaders preached. In main, a force for good, but Shiera had heard rumors about overzealous members of the Flaming Lance committing troublesome acts in the name of “justice.” Could Daryus have done something so awful that he’d had to escape the order?
It seemed at odds with the sort of man she had come to know on the journey thus far, but Shiera also recalled her former admiration for Amadan Gwinn. Still, she didn’t care what Daryus had done so long as he kept his word as per the contract. In the end, whatever Shiera might think of Daryus, what mattered most was locating the lost temple-city.
Captain Galifar and his men spent most of their time eyeing the nearby taverns as the party rode through the thick crowds. Shiera couldn’t blame them; she needed a strong drink herself after the trek. If left to her choice, she would have given them permission to go, but since Raffan had hired the band, it was his responsibility.
Raffan was his usual anxious self, the somewhat rumpled young man peering at a small notebook he had pulled from his pack. Whatever he read had his rapt attention.
She urged her mount next to Daryus. His expression shifted as he noticed her, all emotion disappearing.
“How familiar are you with Kenabres?” Shiera asked nonchalantly.
“I’ve been here before.”
She wrinkled her nose in frustration. “Yes, that I’ve already gathered from your reaction to your friends who passed us by.” When he stiffened at the comment, Shiera quickly shook her head. “I don’t care about that. Do you know where we can find a place to hole up until we’re ready to depart?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Aren’t we leaving first thing in the morning?”
“I’d like to,” she replied, shrugging. “The information I need, I should be able to gather today, but at the moment I think our actual departure depends on Raffan.”
He glanced at the other man, who continued to peruse the small notebook. “He’s got business here?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but I overheard him talking to Galifar, and—”
Before Shiera could finish, Daryus urged his horse toward Raffan. The younger man l
ooked up from his reading as Daryus neared. Raffan quickly shut the notebook and returned it to the pack.
“Is there something you wanted?” he asked Daryus with clear disdain.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Daryus responded far too respectfully for Shiera. He bowed his head. “Will we need to stay more than one night? I need to know how to house the animals.”
His deferential treatment assuaged Raffan. With a nod to the fighter’s “appropriate” attitude, Raffan answered, “We will need to stay for three days. My master has some contacts here I think I should locate.”
“Three days? Begging your pardon again, sir, but each day we remain might risk the ultimate goal—”
“I am very aware of all aspects of this venture, my good man! Since we are here, it behooves me to make the best of the visit, and I will require two days to accomplish what I want. That includes garnering some information from these contacts that might impact our expedition in the long run. Now, that should be a sufficient answer even for you, should it not?”
Even from where she sat, Shiera could hear the utter dismissal in Raffan’s tone. She watched as Daryus bowed his head, then still very respectfully turned from the younger man. However, the look on the man’s scarred face as he returned to her was hardly one of satisfaction. If anything, Daryus appeared more disturbed than ever.
That look vanished when he noticed her eyeing him. Daryus took up a place beside Shiera, then whispered, “You heard?”
“How could I not? I doubt Raffan has the ability to talk below a pompous bellow. Don’t think you’re the only one displeased with this. If he intended this once we changed direction, why didn’t he say anything until we got here?”
“It does pose an interesting question, doesn’t it? I would recommend leaving tomorrow, if we can. That looks to be your desire, too. I have no say, but you might be able to convince him.”
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