“Come along, Tiadaria.” The King's voice was kind, but firm. No matter how horrible it felt, she knew she would obey the King's orders. The Captain had trained her well.
Putting one foot in front of the other was the hardest thing Tiadaria had ever had to do. It took all of her concentration and force of will to follow Greymalkin into the city cemetery and down the well manicured path that lead to the stone monument that held the Captain's remains. Tia kept her eyes on the ground, both because she felt uncomfortable around so many dead, and because she didn't want the King to see the tears that welled in her eyes.
The King stopped and Tia finally looked up. The Captain's monument was before them. It was smaller than she remembered. It seemed so much bigger in her memory. She'd been younger then. Her perspective had changed, both with age and with experience. What had seemed to be a massive memorial at the time was, in reality, no more than a stone coffin a little larger than the man laid to rest inside it.
“Why are we here?” she asked in a whisper, proud that she'd managed to keep her voice from cracking.
Heron Greymalkin raised his cane, using it to point to the far end of the grave. Tiadaria, hands shaking, took slow steps toward the spot he had indicated. The grass was soft and green underfoot, a stark contrast to the stone pavers making up the path leading from the edge of the cemetery. She glanced back over her shoulder, half expecting the King to be gone, but he was still there, head bowed over his cane.
Tiadaria turned the corner of the memorial and the viper coiled around her spine attacked. Coldness spread through her body, starting at the base of her spine and racing down each limb and up into her head. Though the day was mild, Tia couldn't remember ever having been colder. She sank to numb knees, unable to control the tears that were now spilling down her cheeks.
It seemed like she was unable to breathe for a very long time. When she was finally able to draw a long, ragged breath, it burst out of her in a wail of anguish that wracked her entire body. She surrendered to the grief, letting it wash over her, hoping that it would drag her under and end her suffering. It wasn't fair. His dignity, his honor, was all she had left to remember him by and they had been ripped away.
Tia had never quite been able to reconcile herself to the human custom of an interment. The clan way was to honor their warriors with a funeral pyre, ensuring it burned so hot and so long that their worldly remains rejoined the essence of all things, just as their soul returned to the ethereal eternity of the Quintessential Sphere. Even though it somehow still felt wrong, she had come to terms with the Captain's remains resting in peace in the little garden cemetery in Dragonfell.
Now he was gone. Someone had smashed the back corner of the stone box containing his remains and dragged him out of his rest. Someone had violated both the Captain and his memory. Everything they had laid with him in the crypt, the flowers, his armor, his weapons, were all gone.
Rage replaced sorrow and she rounded on the King, who had come up behind her.
“How could you let this happen?” she demanded. “How could you let--”
Tiadaria faltered. She couldn't even imagine who would do such a thing. Who would take the Captain's body? And why?
The old King laid his hand on her shoulder, showing surprising strength when she tried to pull away from him. He held her there, one hand on her shoulder the other on his cane.
“That's why I called you here, Tiadaria. To find out and to make it right.”
#
The sun retreated from the sky, as if it knew what darkness was about to descend on Dragonfell and refused to bear witness to the horrors to come. A low hanging pall of smoke poisoned the evening sky, turning the last light of day to an ominous crimson glow.
Tionne stood in the center of the market square. Frantic people dashed past her. A woman was crouched by an overturned cart, scooping scattered fruit into the upturned hem of her skirt. A man running from the other end of the square collided with her, sending them both sprawling. The fruit rolled free of her skirt. She tried to grab for it, but someone stepped on her hand as they passed. Tionne heard the crunch of breaking bone and a strangled cry as the woman clutched her arm to her chest. With her other hand, she tried to retrieve the few pieces of fruit that hadn't been ruined.
The man who had collided with the old woman had regained his composure. He crouched by the overturned cart, watching the woman with wary, animal eyes. As she reached toward the tantalizing red sphere that was inches from her grasp, the man sprang at her. His fist caught her in the mouth and her head rocked back from the force of the blow. Her lips tore on her teeth and blood and spittle glistened in the evening light before she fell over backward and was still.
Snatching a few pieces of fruit from the ground, the man's eyes darted about the square. His gaze fell on Tionne. His face a menacing rictus, he took a step toward her. Tionne broke into a wide smile, her teeth gleaming behind ruby lips twisted to one side. The aggressor's step faltered. The menace in his eyes turned to fear and he tripped over his own feet backing away from her. He landed hard on his bottom, his teeth making an audible crack as they came together. Scrabbling away from her, he managed to get to his feet, and then he was gone. Just another body pelting headlong down the cobblestones.
Throwing her head back, Tionne laughed. Her laugh wasn't the laugh of a carefree girl of fifteen, just barely out of her apprenticeship at the Academy. No, this was the dire cackle of a banshee loosed from the very bowels of the Deep Void. Whether consciously or not, the other people in the square gave her wide berth as they abandoned the capital city of the Human Imperium.
The wind that howled through the square was hot on her face, warmed by the fires that burned almost every building in Dragonfell. She brushed her raven dark hair back from her face, her pale skin tinged an ugly orange by so many fires nearby. By morning, every building in the city that was capable of burning would be reduced to ash and cinder.
A brassy scream sounded high overhead and Tionne cast her large emerald eyes skyward. In stark contrast against the oncoming night, a massive white dragon turned on a wingtip, hurling magical lightning at a target only he could see. There was an explosion that shook the ground under her feet and a plume of dust and fire blossomed into the sky in the distance.
A child's wailing, the sound thin and warbling, seemed to pierce her eardrums and dragged her attention away from the destruction the dragon was raining down on the city. A little boy sat in the dirt under a nearby cart. His eyes were wide and wet, streaming rivulets down his dusty cheeks. A woman lay beside him, on her back, her open eyes staring sightlessly skyward. The woman's torment was over and she was still. Tionne only wished the toddler would stop its screaming. When it didn't, she resolved to do it herself.
As she moved toward the cart, a black shape bounded across her path. It reached the cart before she had even taken a step, the monster flipped the cart up and away from the child with the strength of half a dozen men. It snatched the little boy from the ground and whirled to face Tionne.
Half its face was a ruin of old scars and patchwork fur. One eye was missing, but the other burned with luminescent blue fire that sent a chill up her spine. The toddler's wails had become screams of terror. The Xarundi roared, baring its wicked fangs. There was a wet tearing sound. The child gave a final, gurgling scream and was still. Blood and offal dripped from the monster's jaws as it fed with messy greed.
As if spirited away, the panicked masses of people were gone. The fires were still, frozen. Coils of smoke arrested themselves in mid-motion, painted on the sky by the hand of some unseen artist. Only the Xarundi seemed to be immune from the sudden cessation of even the minutest movements of life.
It dropped the tattered remains of the boy and peered at her, the eye boring into her.
“We are bound by blood, child,” it said in a guttural but passable rendition of the low tongue. “Come to us. Come to us and we will rule together.”
Before Tionne could process the words, or feel
the gut-wrenching terror that she usually associated with the huge wolf creatures that had massacred her family, she was plunged into darkness. Not just darkness, but a blackness so deep and pervasive that she felt as if it was folding over her like a heavy blanket.
The air was fetid and seemed to cling to her, as if it was trying to smother her in her hiding place. Every breath she took sounded like the roar of a tornado in her ears and she dare not take too many. There was no way of knowing if the monsters were still there. The strong odor of urine and the uncomfortable dampness clinging to her thighs was proof of her fear. When mother had shoved her into the barrel, she had protested, half awake and groggy, not understanding what was happening.
The naked terror in her mother's face had stopped any more questions. Seven year old Tionne found herself shoved in an empty water barrel and wedged under a bed.
She had heard the monsters when they came into the house. Their claws made little scratching sounds on the floor. It sounds like the stylus on the slates at school, she thought. How strange that it could sound almost the same. Then the screaming started and she couldn't think of anything else. Tionne bit down on her lower lip, tasting copper and forcing any sound that might escape deep down into her belly which already ached from the panic that gripped her.
Mother's screams, for she knew it was mother who had been screaming, ended in the same wet, rending sound that had ended the toddler's life only a few moments ago. It was dark in the barrel, but it wouldn't have mattered. Tionne's eyes were shut so tightly that her head pounded with the effort to not see anything at all.
Tionne would never be sure how long she had stayed that way, crammed into her tiny cylindrical prison. All she knew was that when the barrel was yanked from under the bed, she couldn't bear to be quiet any more. She started screaming before the monsters pulled off the lid and didn't stop for a long time.
Even when her eyes adjusted to the light flooding into the room from the broken window, she continued to scream. When she saw it was a woman, not a monster, who tried to take her from the barrel, Tionne screamed. When the woman called for help, Tionne screamed. When other men and women came rushing in, Tionne screamed. When they pulled her cramped body from what could have been a tiny coffin, Tionne screamed.
In fact, she went on screaming until one of the women summoned a healer, who had the good sense to dose her with an elixir of valerian root and chamomile. Her tiny stomach empty of anything substantial, Tionne almost vomited back up the vile tasting liquid, but managed to keep it down. After a while, she stopped screaming and stared with vacant eyes at those who were gathered around her. Somewhere, deep in her head, Tionne knew they were speaking the same language she had been raised on, but it was impossible for her to put the words together. It all sounded like gibberish, so she stood, and stared.
She wanted to ask for her mother, for her father, for her baby brother Raynold who was a very precocious two and liked to sit in the dirt by the water pump and make mud pies for hours on end. She saw Raynold with his mud pies. Then she saw the toddler from the market square. They were different, but the same.
No matter how she tried, Tionne couldn't make words come. Even if she had been able to speak, these people were strangers. Mother always told her not to talk to strangers unless she was nearby. But mother wasn't nearby, and Tionne knew with dreadful certainty that mother would never be nearby again.
The enormity of that knowledge seemed to fall on her like a mountain and Tionne dropped to her knees, oblivious to the fact that the congealed crimson liquid that stained the rough wooden planks of their common room had poured freely from her mother and father only hours before. Tionne curled herself into a tight little ball, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs. Mother used to hug her, but now she knew, she would have to hug herself. Tionne began to shake and the strangers clustered around her looked down on her with pity. One of them reached out, as if the gesture could offer some sort of comfort or ease the pain, but snatched their hand back when Tionne hissed at her like a feral cat.
Time seemed to have lost all meaning. The shadows moved ever so slowly across the floor as Tionne listened to the nonsense coming out of the strangers who had huddled by the door to speak in hushed tones. Tionne knew they were talking about her, but the full meaning and import of their words was still lost in the haze of indescribable longing that flooded every darkened corner of her soul. She wanted to smell the lilac of mother's perfume as she leaned over to tuck Tionne in for the night. She wanted to feel the rough skin of father's fingers catching on her raven dark hair as he smoothed it away from her face. She wanted to hear the squalling of baby Raynold, a pitiful wail that usually annoyed her to no end, as he called attention to his wet swaddling, or his hunger, or his fear. All these things she wanted, but would never again have.
Even as she sat there, rocking back and forth on the bloody floor of her family's home, the longing began to fade. Even more terrifying than the things she knew to be true, or the things she heard, was the fact that the longing left nothing but emptiness in its wake. She felt as if someone had pulled a stopper and drained out everything she was or wanted to be, leaving only a gaping, empty hole that would never be filled.
Tionne woke, screaming. She sat bolt upright in her bed, her thin nightshirt soaked through with sweat and plastered to her thin frame. Cutting off the sound as a gardener would prune off an errant twig, she forced herself to breathe, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light of her rented bedchamber. The shutters were ajar, letting a narrow sliver of moonlight pierce her room and adding an almost ethereal quality to the glow that permeated her room. She slipped out of bed, crossing to the deep window. She opened the shutters and looked down on the city laid out below her.
Dragonfell slept. Only a few windows flickered with light across the dark expanse of the city. Tionne cast an eye upward, judging the length of the hour by the position of the moon as it dangled in the sky. Midway between midnight and morning, if she had to guess.
Idle fingers scratched at a half healed scar below her elbow. The fine white lines, the ghosts of long healed incisions, ran down her forearm from her elbow, as neat and tidy as farmers' furrows. Tionne no longer remembered when she had started cutting, only that she needed it. It had started as a way to feel something when nothing else seemed to fill the void inside her. The pain had helped, for a time. She felt something. Not alive, not happy, but something. Then she had become accustomed to the pain, and the emptiness returned. Now she needed something more. That was how she had discovered Aluka.
By the light of the waxing moon, Tionne crossed to the chest at the foot of the bed. She opened it, slow and steady, to ensure that an errant squeak of the hinges wouldn't call the attention of anyone else at the inn. She lifted out her clothes. Robes and underthings, the finery Faxon had bought her on her fifteenth name day, not yet six months ago. Her fingers lingered on the black velvet tunic and pants. At least Faxon knew her well enough to not have given her a dress. The black, he had said, would bring out the subtle highlights in her hair. Tionne wasn't sure. She hadn't had occasion to wear it. Nor did she want to. She didn't trust it. She didn't trust him.
Setting the clothing aside, she slid her hands down the inside walls of the chest and, with deft fingers, lifted the almost invisible catches that held the false bottom in place. It had taken her nearly a year to cobble together the materials she needed to create an adequate space for her secrets. Patience had paid off, however, and been rewarded with craftsmanship that would meet with envy, even among some gnomish circles.
The thin waxed boards out of the way, Tionne could gaze with unfettered longing at her clandestine treasures. An obsidian dagger, the edge formed and enhanced by spells of her own creation, lay to one side. An intricate motif of skulls and thorns adorned the hilt, etched with a meticulous hand. On the other side of the shallow drawer were vials of thick red fluid; the blood that she had harvested from each of the rows she had carved into her own flesh
. In the center, between the dagger and the vials, lay the bloodstone, her newest treasure.
She frowned, the downturned corners of her mouth drawing her brow into a scowl. The blood called out to her. It wanted to be used. It wanted to be put to its purpose. Lifting one of the vials from the darkness, she cradled it in reverent hands. Soon, she promised. Soon you will fulfill your purpose and help me fulfill mine.
The night she had acquired the bloodstone, she had followed it all over the city, hoping that it would lead her to Nerillia. The endeavor had been fruitless. All she had ended up with at the end of the night was a pair of bloodshot eyes and dark circles under them. She'd fallen into bed in the morning, only to be woken by Faxon's incessant demands a short while later.
His constant intrusion on everything she did almost made her think that he knew she was trying to get out from under his thumb. Faxon always seemed to be watching her, asking her about her day, offering to help her with her studies. It was enough to drive her crazy.
In truth, she had all but abandoned her studies. All she needed to know, she was certain Nerillia could teach her, if Tionne could only find her. Perhaps tonight was the night. She lifted the bloodstone and a vial of blood from the bottom of the chest. Pulling the stopper with her teeth, she upended the vial over the stone, watching with curious fascination as it drank in every drop.
She clutched the stone in her palm, feeling its gentle pull.
CHAPTER THREE
Though the sun had inched its way into the sky, the morning fog hadn't yet burned off. Low hanging clouds and thick fog wrapped Dragonfell in a shroud that gave the capital city a soft, ethereal glow and deadened even the loudest sounds.
Loud sounds weren't a problem for Tiadaria, Wynn, and Faxon. They stood in a loose knot, at the edge of the cobblestone path, looking at the tomb where the Captain had been laid to rest. A rest that had been disturbed in the worst way imaginable. The three of them stood and stared in silence, the daily sounds of city life muted and far off, as if the city itself were honoring their vigil.
The Swordmage Trilogy Bundle, Volumes 1-3 Page 39
