Darkblade Savior

by Andy Peloquin

  The Serenii towers rose above the city like shards of blue sapphires driven into the mountaintop upon which Enarium sat. From their position in the northwest of the city, the Hunter could see the tips of twenty-four enormous towers, each at least eight to ten floors in height. The walls of the towers not only reflected the blue of the sky above, but seemed to glow with a faint internal brilliance. As they raced past the tower that stood on the northwest corner of the city’s lowest Echelon, the Hunter felt a humming beneath his feet.

  The city of the Serenii held an undeniable power. The magnificence of the constructions lent a solemn air to Enarium, compounded by the fact that there were no other living things in sight—none but the two racing in front of him.

  Kalil moved with the speedy grace the Hunter had come to equate with warriors of shorter stature. The Hunter could see no resemblance between the darker-skinned Bucelarii and Taiana, but he couldn’t help staring.

  Could he be the child I never had a chance to meet, the child I cannot remember? The Illusionist Clerics had stolen his memories; Taiana had been the one to hand him over.

  His eyes went to the woman, and he took in her strong shoulders, broad back, well-defined arms, slim waistline, and powerful hips and thighs. She had a fighter’s physique—hard to reconcile with those few memories he had of her—and though she was feminine and beautiful as he remembered, there was no denying her strength and agility.

  She is a warrior to the core. She held the stolen spikestaffs in casual, relaxed grips, but her head never stopped moving as she scanned her surroundings. She moved with no trace of fear, a predator on the prowl, ready for anything.

  Her clothing was simple without being ragged, a simple tunic belted at the waist over a pair of trousers. Unlike either of her companions, she wore no armor—perhaps, much like him, she preferred to move about silently, unhindered by the weight of metal. The absence of armor didn’t detract from the danger she radiated. Everything, down to the way her hands flexed and relaxed as if around the hilt of a weapon, spoke of a woman trained for war.

  “This way!” Taiana sprinted toward a squat stone building identical to the rest. Three stories tall, the building was blocky and square, free of adornments save for the threads of gold and silver running through the white stone. The door was closed, but Taiana made no attempt to open it. Instead, she ducked around the side of the building and into the shadow of what appeared to be an outdoor shed or storage structure.

  She pressed a finger to her lips and peered out toward the street. A moment later, the Hunter’s keen ears picked up the sound of heavy, booted feet. The tromp, tromp grew louder, until nearly thirty blue-armored men charged around the corner and up the street in their direction. Three carried the strange crossbow-looking weapons, while the rest carried the spikestaffs Taiana had taken from the corpses. They moved in perfect step despite their speed, with the same precision the Hunter had seen on the Elivasti practice field back in Kara-ket.

  Were these Elivasti also trained by the Warmaster? The Warmaster had mentioned his men in Enarium, which explained how he’d had opia when the Sage controlled its only source on Shana Laal.

  Thoughts of the opia brought back his anxiety for Hailen. Had these blue-armored Elivasti taken the boy or simply killed him? His purple eyes marked him as Elivasti, but could they have somehow discovered his true heritage as Melechha, a pure-blooded descendant of the Serenii? If they had, they would take him to the Sage.

  No telling what the Abiarazi will do with the boy if he finds out the truth. I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to him.

  And what of Kiara? The Voramian woman he’d once known as Celicia, Fourth of the Bloody Hand, had helped Hailen reach Enarium safely. Had she somehow managed to hide him before the Hunter arrived? Were they somewhere in the city looking for him, or just trying to survive? He had to figure out what happened to them. But he couldn’t do that with a pack of Elivasti in the street ahead of him.

  Taiana shrank back into the shadows as the blue-armored Elivasti clattered past their hiding place, and the Hunter found himself pressed against the wall, her face a finger’s breadth from his. The scent of her filled his nostrils and tugged at emotions he’d buried deep within himself. Her hot breath on his skin sent a shiver down his spine.

  A part of him wanted to take her in his arms, as he had so long ago, to crush her to him as he had in his memories. Yet another part of him knew a different truth: The woman I glimpsed in those flashes isn’t the same as the woman standing before me now.

  What had changed? She had the same golden hair from his memories, but she wore it pulled back in a tight tail instead of letting it flow free around her face as he remembered. Her soft nose, high cheekbones, and full lips hadn’t changed, yet there was a hard, tight edge to her expression. Something unreadable filled her eyes. There was something guarded, distant about her. She spoke to him as if to a stranger, yet she fixed him with a piercing gaze that seemed to see to the very core of his being.

  He’d glimpsed her in his dreams, but it had been precisely that, a glimpse. So who is she really? What does she want with me, with Soulhunger?

  More than anything else, he wanted to find out. He ached to be near her, to ask her all the questions only she could answer about his past, their life together, their child. Yet he knew he could not rest until he had found Hailen, wherever in Enarium he was.

  “The boy,” he hissed in Taiana’s ear. “I have to find him.”

  “You say he arrived before you?” She spoke in a voice barely above a whisper, her lips dangerously close to his cheek.

  “Ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “Then the Elivasti have him,” she responded, no trace of doubt in her voice.

  “How can you be certain?”

  “There were Elivasti at the gate when we arrived. They were waiting for you, and they would have attacked had we not surprised them.”

  No. Dread writhed like a worm in the Hunter’s stomach. His worst fears had come true.

  “Then we have to go after the bastards,” the Hunter growled. “I can’t let them—”

  “You saw what they did to Neroth,” Taiana protested. She glanced at the now empty street, then stepped back. “Their Scorchslayers can kill us far faster than iron.”

  The Hunter’s eyebrows rose. Is that fear in her eyes? Taiana hadn’t shown any hesitation or fear when taking on the two Elivasti fighting Neroth, and she’d dispatched them with impressive ferocity. The two of them had killed six of the blue-armored men, including one with that strange weapon she’d called a Scorchslayer.

  Her gaze drilled into him. “They outnumber us a hundred to one. Only a fool would confront them before the time is right.”

  “Fine, then call me a fool.” The Hunter ground his teeth and pushed himself off the wall. “I’m not going to let the boy—”

  Taiana’s hand snapped out at his chest and thrust him backward against the wall with jarring force. “I will not let you ruin everything we’ve worked for, Drayvin.”

  The vehemence in her words and the flash of anger in her eyes took the Hunter by surprise. More surprising, however, was her strength. It proved nearly a match for the Warmaster’s or Tane’s, both powerfully-built Abiarazi.

  For the first time, he noticed her height. In his memories, he’d always been the taller, yet now he realized that he looked up to meet her eyes. Had she used their shape-shifting abilities to become taller? She showed no sign of straining to hold her form. So when had she outgrown him?

  “Listen, you have my word that I will help you,” Taiana said, her words firm, “but you will not risk our mission. Once we are safe, I will do everything in my power to find this boy you seek.”

  For the first time, she seemed to realize that she was holding him against the wall. She pulled her hand back, hesitant, almost nervous, and her tone softened. “Can you trust me, Drayvin, as you did all those years ago?”

  Her words brought back the familiar pang in his heart. He’d come all this wa
y to find her, so how could he want to be apart from her? She was the only link to his past, the only person on Einan who knew the truth of who he was.

  Going with her makes sense, he finally told himself. She knew her way around, so it would be more prudent to get her help than to stumble around the Lost City in an aimless search. I’ll be useless to Hailen if I’m killed or captured.

  He didn’t truly know if the Elivasti had the boy, or where they’d taken him if they did. All he knew was that Taiana had promised to help him once they were safe. That had to be enough, for now.

  “I will go with you,” he said. “But you cannot begin to understand how important this child is.”

  A shadow flashed in her eyes, and she nodded. “I believe you,” she said in a quiet voice.

  For an instant, he caught a glimpse of the woman from his memories. The woman that had stared at him with eyes full of love, had shared moments of tenderness with him. The woman he’d married and that had borne their child.

  Then her expression hardened, and he saw a glimpse of the woman that had stabbed him and turned him over to the Illusionist Clerics in the name of protecting that same child.

  The more he looked at her, the more he realized he didn’t truly know her. She had been a thing of his past, the driving force that kept him moving forward and brought him to Enarium against impossible odds. He wanted to get to know her, to find out if any of the Taiana from his memories remained. His desire to be reunited with her warred with his need to protect Hailen.

  Taiana glanced out from their hiding place. “Let’s move,” she said, once again composed and in command of herself.

  The Hunter hesitated a moment. He needed to find Hailen, but he desperately wanted to follow Taiana. Right now, he had nothing to go on, no leads to help him hunt down the boy. The smart play was to go with the woman.

  I’ll find you, lad, he promised in his mind as he slipped out into the street behind Taiana. Come fiery or frozen hell, I will come for you.

  Taiana led them along the lowest level of the city, following the circular streets toward the north. She moved cautiously, her eyes wary as she scanned every adjoining and parallel street they encountered. It was the caution developed over years of war, not the sort of paranoia common among thieves and assassins. Kalil, however, had the look of a thief about him. Though he wore the bronze armor comfortably, his darting eyes never stopped moving.

  It was strange to think of these two people beside him as Bucelarii. They had lived as long as he, perhaps had as many different lives. How many of those lives do they remember? What did they endure in their years roaming Einan? What sort of hardships, losses, and suffering did they survive?

  For the first time, he had found people who could understand what it meant to live centuries, millennia. The realization struck him as incredibly odd.

  The vibrations running beneath the Hunter’s feet grew louder as they drew near the blue gemstone tower in the north of the city. Instead of passing it, however, Taiana ducked through a narrow gap between a pair of three-story houses made of red and grey mountain stone, then into an open side door.

  The interior of the house seemed to have been suspended in time. Simple furniture of wood, cloth, and stone adorned living and sleeping areas, and the house had the colorful decorations—paintings, hand-woven tapestries, even carved wooden effigies—that marked it as occupied. Everything was perfectly in place, precisely organized, as if the owners would return at any moment. Even though the Hunter knew the house had been abandoned centuries ago, there was not a speck of dust in sight. Almost as if the magick of Enarium preserved everything in the city.

  The Hunter followed Taiana into the cellar, where he caught his first glimpse of dust. Dirt, piled in a heap off to one side of the darkened room. Taiana strode toward the far end of the basement, where the shadows were thickest. She drew a fist-sized glass orb from a pouch and shook it. The liquid swirling within flared to life, releasing a soft golden glow that illuminated the basement in a five-pace radius around her.

  “Right this way,” she said with a grin.

  In the faint light of the glowing globe, the Hunter saw the mouth of a passage carved from the upper layers of earth upon which the house was built. The passage ran straight for thirty paces before curving to the right and disappearing from sight. The walls and ceiling were hard-packed earth shored up by thick stone pillars.

  “The Serenii and their secret passages,” the Hunter said, snorting.

  Taiana shook her head. “These were built by human hands, though why, I cannot fathom.”

  There were many reasons for secret passages like this to exist, most of them deceitful and underhanded. Perhaps the humans of Enarium wanted to avoid their Serenii minders seeing everything that went on in the city. Or maybe they simply sought to hide their actions from their fellows.

  “The Elivasti do not know they exist,” Taiana explained, “and thus they provide us a safe way to move around unseen.” She strode through the tunnels ahead of him, and Kalil brought up the rear.

  “Where do they lead?”

  “All around Enarium,” she said over her shoulder. “These passages run just beneath the surface of the city, and they connect the lower two Echelons of Enarium—Base and Medial—to each other.” At that moment, the tunnel they strode down intersected with another. This side passage ran to the left, and the faint light of the glowing globe revealed a gentle incline.

  “And what about the top Echelon?” the Hunter asked. “If I wanted to get to the huge tower in the center of the city, could I get there underground like this?”

  “No.” Taiana shook her head. “The Prime Echelon was reserved for the Serenii only. To reach the Illumina, you must travel the streets.” She glanced over her shoulder, and her brow furrowed. “But I doubt your boy is being kept there.”

  “Why do you say that?” the Hunter asked.

  “The Elivasti have made their home in Hellsgate, and that is where they take all the prisoners they bring to Enarium.”

  The words “all the prisoners” sounded strange.

  “What do you mean?” The Hunter’s brow furrowed. “The Elivasti bring prisoners to Enarium?”

  “Yes. Mostly from Vothmot, but many from around Einan.”

  “What for?”

  Taiana hesitated, then shook her head. “I cannot truly say. We have not yet ventured to enter Hellsgate. Our mission is too important to risk.”

  “That’s the second time you mentioned mission,” the Hunter said. “What is it?”

  “I will show you,” was all Taiana would say.

  The Hunter shot a questioning glance over his shoulder at Kalil, but the smaller Bucelarii’s expression was unreadable. His dark eyes, however, strayed time and again to Soulhunger’s sheath on the Hunter’s hip.

  He’d noticed that neither Taiana nor Kalil carried a weapon like Soulhunger, at least none he could see. Indeed, they had only the crossbow-looking weapon and spikestaffs they’d taken from the dead Elivasti. He couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the weapons they’d received from their Abiarazi ancestors. Both Bucelarii had looked at Soulhunger with the same hungry eagerness that had burned in the eyes of the demons he’d encountered.

  A nagging fear echoed in the back of his mind. Will they try to take Soulhunger from me? Taiana had returned the blade, but there had been a moment of hesitation. What would he do if they tried? Would he kill them like he had all the others? He could only hope he wouldn’t have to find out.

  They rounded a bend in the passages, which ended in a blank wall. “We’re here,” Taiana said.

  The Hunter cocked an eyebrow as the glowing globe shone on a waist-high hole set into the hard-packed earth. Piles of dirt bordered both sides of the hole, and it had the look of a freshly dug opening.

  Taiana motioned for him to go first. After a moment of hesitation, he crouched and crawled into the hole. His ears caught the muffled sounds of someone—Taiana, he guessed—following him. The tight space pr
essed close beside his shoulders, and he had to duck his head to avoid bumping it on the ceiling of the shaft. It ran for about twenty paces, slanted sharply upward for another five paces up a steep incline, then opened into a larger chamber.

  A soft blue glow filled the room at the end of the tunnel. The Hunter could feel the humming in his hands and feet as he crawled out, then stood. He found himself in what looked like another basement, but with walls that emanated the same blue light as the Serenii towers.

  In that moment, a rough hand seized him, dragged him into the room, and slammed him against the wall. Cold metal pressed against his throat as a man—who reeked of mud mixed with leather, citrus oil, hops, and pine oil—growled into his face. “You’ve got two seconds to tell me who in the bloody hell you are, else I gut you like a pig.”

  Chapter Three

  The Hunter’s instincts kicked in, and his hand dropped to Soulhunger’s hilt. He whipped the dagger free in a single smooth motion and lashed out with a quick disemboweling stroke. The razor tip was a finger’s breadth from slitting the man’s gut when Taiana’s curse halted him.

  “Damn it, Cerran!” Taiana, who had emerged behind the Hunter, imposed herself between them and shoved the man away. “He’s with us.”

  The Hunter glared at Cerran. The man had no idea how damned lucky he was; Taiana had just saved him from an agonizing death.

  Cerran was nearly as tall as the Hunter and visibly broader in the chest and shoulders. His bushy red beard matched the fiery hue of his hair, which he wore in the long leather-bound braids common among the Fehlan clansmen across the Frozen Sea. In his hand, he held one of the Elivasti spikestaffs, though far duller and more worn than the ones Taiana and Kalil had collected.

  “Warn a fellow next time, then,” Cerran mumbled and shot a scowl at the Hunter and Taiana both.

  The threat passed, the Hunter sheathed Soulhunger and straightened his clothing. He tried to place the man’s accent. It reminded him of the Malandrians, but had the harsh edge of someone that had spent time among the clans of Fehl. How he’d gotten all the way from the far south here to Enarium was as much a mystery as the presence of Kalil, Taiana, and Neroth.