Olea had taken on more airs (if that was even possible) and led them down to the basement. “What about Roya?” asked Ailan. He was concerned about using the secret entrance with the archivist around.
“He’s having afternoon tea,” said Olea. “He won’t be a problem.” They walked across the antechamber, their footsteps echoing across the stone floor.
“I still don’t know why you insist upon seeing it,” Olea said. “I assured Lahar personally that it was there yesterday.”
“With a second murder, I want to verify for myself that it is still here, as does the Grand Inquisitor.”
They paused in front of the storage room door. “The sword is still here in my possession, Inquisitor,” Olea said as he opened the door. “I’m afraid you are wasting your time. And mine.” He put a slight emphasis on the last word.
“That may be,” said Malvaceä. “But I like to see things with my own eyes.” He began pulling the storage room door closed. “Call it a personal trait of mine that I like to see things firsthand. If you are right, then there is no harm in checking again. But should I be right, then better to know now how bad the situation is.”
Olea gave a snort as he opened the secret door. “I think it’s more likely you don’t trust me and are hoping to score points with Lahar.”
As they walked through, Ailan glared at Olea, thinking You are such a twit. Why does Agera put up with you? Aloud, he said, “I only have the best interests of our group in mind.” The secret door closed behind them.
Magical light came to life as they entered the initiation chamber. Olea proudly pointed to the sword hanging on the wall with a flourish of his arms. “See? Safe and sound,” he said. “The Fury Blade is exactly where I told Lahar it was.”
The sword hung from a mount on the wall that cradled the hilt. The black blade, unsheathed, pointed to the floor and glowed with a soft red light.
“Is it?” questioned Ailan.
Olea gave him a look that said, Are you fucking stupid? It’s right there on the wall. Malvaceä ignored Olea and walked over to the sword, grabbing the weapon and pulling it down off the mount. He would never have done this with the real Fury Blade, but he trusted his instincts that this one was a fake.
Olea gave a gasp of dismay. “Are you mad? You can’t do that! Only the Underforest’s Emissary is allowed to touch the Fury Blade, and only after the proper rituals are performed!”
Malvaceä hefted the blade and swung it toward Olea, who flinched. “Are you trying to kill me?” he yelped.
“I should,” Malvaceä admitted, “because you’ve obviously failed at your task. But since this is clearly a fake, I guess my rage will have to be satisfied by just telling you that I told you so.” With a sneer, he tossed the sword to the floor with a clatter.
“What? It can’t be!” exclaimed Olea. He rushed over and, with a small bit of trepidation, picked up the weapon. Holding it in two hands, he walked over to a table sitting in the room, swinging the sword and bringing it down onto the table with a dull THUNK. He managed to carve out a small chunk of the wood, but the table remained whole.
“If the fact that you and I can handle the weapon isn’t proof enough, that should confirm it for you,” Malvaceä stated.
“But I don’t understand,” whined Olea. “What happened to the real Fury Blade?”
Why am I besieged by so many fools? Ailan asked himself. He didn’t bother to answer Olea’s question. “Who has access to this room? Besides our members, I mean.”
“Nobody,” said Olea indignantly. “This entrance is always sealed and it is never used, except by us, and only when we can enter the basement without being noticed. The other entrance is sealed as well and is impossible to find unless you know it is there.”
“So only we know about this room and the Fury Blade?”
“Are you suggesting that one of our members is crazy enough to handle the Fury Blade and commit these murders? We all know the power—and the danger—in even attempting to use the Fury Blade.”
“Somebody might think they could control the blade, bend it to their will,” Ailan mused. “Such a person would then have motive to try to take power for themselves in the order.”
“You must be crazy. We’ve heard the stories and know the legends. None of us would dare to try that.”
“What if we’ve been infiltrated? There was that one time…” Malvaceä mused.
“Yes, yes,” Olea dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “And you took care of that problem.”
“So nobody else knows about this room?” Malvaceä persisted, thinking that their mole had plenty of time to tell others about this room before Malvaceä had acted.
“No.”
Ailan thought he detected a slight hesitation from Olea before he answered, but he couldn’t be sure. He stepped over and grabbed the sword from Olea and then looked around the room. He finally settled on a canvas painting of some long dead Emissary and pulled it from the wall. He pulled out his dagger and started removing the frame.
Olea gave another gasp of alarm. “Now what are you doing?”
“Well, I certainly can’t walk out of here carrying this weapon for all of Tenyl to see, can I?”
“You’re taking the sword with you?”
“Yes, you idiot,” Malvaceä spat as he finished prying out the canvas. He was tired of being nice. He flipped the canvas so the painting was facing up and he placed the sword on it at one end. “I need to have this weapon tested by the mages at the Red Keep.” He started rolling up the sword. “They can tell me who made it.”
“You’re going to show the Fury Blade to others? Now everybody will know.”
Ailan finished rolling up the weapon and found some strips of leather to tie up the bundle. “It’s not the Fury Blade, and the mages at the Red Keep will believe whatever I tell them. Nobody will know anything.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” Olea asked with a plaintive sob.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what if the Emissary finds out the Fury Blade is missing? It’s been in our order’s care for nearly five hundred years. How will they react if they find out it’s missing?”
Ailan snorted. “What makes you think they don’t already know? The murders of Lavalé and Tala sent a pretty clear message as to what weapon was used. I’m actually surprised they aren’t here already.”
That seemed to make Olea even more nervous. He started rubbing his hands together and looking around the chamber, as though he was expecting dark elf assassins to leap out at him.
Malvaceä had managed to leave Pfeta fey Orung with the fake sword neatly hidden in the canvas. He’d gone straight to the Red Keep, where he went up to the third floor. This was where the Sucra’s mages had their library and did much of their work. He’d found a couple of mages working on some project and told them to stop what they were doing as he had a priority assignment for them.
Another thing about the Sucra that Malvaceä loved was how people took orders seriously and did what they were told without asking questions. The two mages had stopped their project and started to identify the sword’s maker.
The Sucra has one of the largest collections of magical auras in all of Tenyl, second only to that of Auros Academy. The collection served many purposes, but was most useful in identifying the unique magical markers associated with every mage. It was essentially the same reason the Constabulary collected auras at crime scenes, though their collection of auras was pitiful by comparison. The Sucra spent a considerable amount of time and money just collecting the auras, something the Constabulary couldn’t do.
Still, even with such a thorough collection, or quite possibly because it was so large, it took a considerable amount of time for the mages to identify the weapon’s maker. They hadn’t finished their work until after dinner. Once Malvaceä had the information, he was able to act, which was why h
e was currently standing in the front room of a cobbler’s shop, waiting for the owner of Qurna’s Curtain to come home.
That was something else he liked about the Sucra. They could take action whenever they wanted and weren’t accountable to anybody. It was a power that Ailan relished. Elves, humans, halpbloeden, or anybody else who crossed the King, or more accurately, those who crossed the Sucra itself, whose goals might sometimes differ from that of the King—such as now—would find themselves dealt with quickly and efficiently.
A flash of red light from a hooded lantern down the road told Ailan that his target was returning home. Within a minute he saw them, husband and wife and a boy of about thirty-five or forty, their son. Ailan allowed them to enter their home and he waited for a light to come on in the home above the shop. He saw it after a couple of minutes. There was no light that he could see in the shop downstairs, so everybody was probably upstairs. It was generally better to take a target inside their home, where they were less likely to flee. Also, it gave Ailan a chance to make a statement to the residents of this grove: don’t cross the Sucra.
“Let’s go,” he finally said. He and the five other Inquisitors left the cobbler’s house and walked across the road. Two of the Novices carried a small oak log fitted with iron handles and capped at one end with iron. The other two Novices and the Inquisitor unholstered hand crossbows and cocked and loaded the weapons. The darts that they fitted into the weapons weren’t especially lethal, except for well-aimed shots to the head or heart, but each was tipped with a powerful sleeping toxin that could drop an ogre. Malvaceä himself pulled out his sword, his preferred weapon.
Once they were all ready and in position Malvaceä gave a nod. With well-practiced precision the two Novices swung the ram at the door, which crashed inward. They dropped the ram to the side as the other two Novices ran into the building, followed closely by the Inquisitor and the first two Novices, who were now pulling their own hand crossbows and knocking darts. Malvaceä followed them.
Inside he could hear the expected commotion typical when strangers burst into your home. There were calls of “What’s that?” and “Who’s there?” from upstairs.
The Sucra moved quickly through the shop, two Novices keeping cover as the others moved to the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs the Inquisitor pulled two small stones—each no larger than a walnut—from a pouch and threw them as hard as he could up the stairs, hitting the wall at the upper landing. The bangstones were small pieces of basalt that had some alchemical mixture filled into the rocks’ vesicles. Malvaceä didn’t understand what went into the rocks; all he cared about was their effect.
When the stones hit the wall they gave off a deafening BANG! and a flash of brilliant white light. The two Novices and the Inquisitor were rushing up the stairs within a moment of the bangstones exploding. Satisfied there was no ambush waiting downstairs, the other two Novices followed. Malvaceä followed at a more sedate pace, pausing to straighten a picture that one of the Novices had bumped on the way up.
Calls of “Clear!” resonated from the flat as Malvaceä reached the landing.
“Well done, Inquisitor,” Malvaceä said, sheathing his sword and entering the flat. It was neatly, if simply, decorated with the usual accoutrements: a table and chairs for meals, a kitchen area and larder, a couple of sitting chairs and a side table. Penciled portraits hung on the walls, as well as an illuminated degree from Auros Academy.
The three occupants were all down on the floor. Two of them were face down, straining to look up, the knees of two Novices firmly planted at the base of their necks, crossbows pointing at the backs of their heads. The third—the boy, Malvaceä saw—was lying arms and legs akimbo, like a rag doll tossed aside. One of the Novices was pulling a dart from the boy’s shoulder.
“We had to drop that one,” said the Inquisitor. “He had a weapon.”
Malvaceä saw the butter knife in the boy’s right hand and shrugged. The boy would have a pounding headache when he came to, but that was no concern of his. He walked over to the other two, stopping at the woman’s side.
“Gwenyth Ausier, you are under arrest on suspicion of treason.” He nodded and the Novice picked her up and pulled her hands behind her back. He started marching her out of the room to the stairs.
“Gwen!” called the husband. “Gwen, what’s going on?”
Malvaceä gave the man a glare that shut him up. The woman was cooperating, Malvaceä was pleased to see, though tears were streaming down her face and she was fighting to hold in sobs. She was led downstairs by two Novices. The other two and the Inquisitor followed. Malvaceä came last without a word.
Outside, a horse and a two-wheeled cart were waiting, as well as Ailan’s own horse. The woman got onto the cart, openly crying and blubbering now. A small crowd had gathered to see what was going on. Once they saw the green cloaks, they all quickly went back to their own business.
Two Novices got into the cart with the prisoner, while the Inquisitor got up and sat by the driver. They started off with a flick of the reins, the other two Novices following behind on foot. Ailan mounted his horse and followed. The entire operation had taken less than two minutes by his reckoning. He needed to remember to submit a commendation for these Inquisitors.
Ailan sighed as they slowly rode back to the Red Keep. Another long night awaited him. He should be the one getting the commendation for all the time he spent away from his family and mistress.
Twenty
Olea Aucarii scowled as he rode through fog-shrouded streets, his personal litter swaying slightly. He’d been rudely awakened an hour ago when one of his servants delivered a note from Senior Inquisitor Malvaceä.
“What in Basvu’s name does he want at this bloody hour of the morning?” Olea had grumbled while reading the note, which ordered Olea to meet Malvaceä. It was that interminable time of night between midnight and dawn, a time best for sleeping, not being summoned to clandestine meetings.
The note had said to meet Malvaceä at Pfeta fey Orung in an hour, and that it was urgent. Olea toyed with the idea of ignoring the summons but had dismissed that thought. Malvaceä was an arrogant son of a succubus, but he was also a member of the Sucra, and even somebody as important as Olea couldn’t ignore such a summons. Besides, Malvaceä was part of the group, and since the note said to meet at Pfeta fey Orung and not the Red Keep, Olea was sure this urgent matter must be related to the Fury Blade.
After discovering that the Fury Blade in their care was a fake, Olea was hoping that Malvaceä might have some good news. But he made a mental note to have a few words with Lahar about Malvaceä. He was getting too authoritative on matters concerning the group. He needed to be reminded of where his place really was in the organization.
That would have to come later. Now the litter stopped in front of Pfeta fey Orung. Olea dismounted from the litter and looked around, sliding the note into an inner pocket of his cloak. He dismissed the litter, which moved off. A thick fog lay upon the city, hiding everything beyond about twenty paces. Olea didn’t see the fog, or anything else. He was looking for Malvaceä’s horse, which he did not see.
Maybe he walked, Olea thought. If he’d come from the Red Keep it wasn’t that far away. Or maybe I’m early. If he’s late for this meeting I will be sure to add that to my grievance with Lahar.
Olea pulled his cloak tight about him as he walked to the door, pulling out his key. The building was open for all members during the day, but only members of the governing board—and a few select others— had keys to allow them access at night.
The door opened silently on well-oiled hinges and Olea walked down the dark hall to the rotunda. The large room was dark as well, but Olea’s feet knew the way to his office and he headed across the room with confident strides.
Brilliant light blazed down on Olea as he crossed the seal in the center of the room. The light was blinding and he held up his left arm to shield his ey
es.
“What the…?” he exclaimed. He blinked a few times but all he saw was the bright light.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” The laugh, almost a barking sound, came from above him.
“Malvaceä? Who’s there?” Olea turned in a circle trying to find the source of the laugh. “I will punish whoever is responsible for this! You are keeping me from an important meeting with a Sucra officer!”
“You are a fool, Olea! There is no meeting.” The voice called out, echoing off the walls of the rotunda.
“There most certainly is,” Olea stated. He’d not yet registered that he’d been set up. “Whoever you are, I will see to it personally that you will pay for interfering with us.”
“Idiot. There is no meeting. I sent you the note ordering you to come here.”
“What? Who are you?” Olea demanded. He was angry now at being lured here. “If this is some kind of joke—”
“The only joke here is your leadership! You’ve deceived us for too long. Tonight your lies will be revealed for what they are.”
“What?” Olea’s voice was high, a hint of fear now in it. He started backing out of the circle of light.
There was a sound behind him. Olea spun around to see a crouching elf, his left hand resting on the floor beside his left knee. His right leg was bent, pushing the figure up into a standing position. He was wearing black boots and brown pants, with leather armor that was tooled and worked with green leaves and vines. He had golden-brown hair that cascaded around his shoulders. Most importantly, however, in his right hand was the Fury Blade. Olea recognized it instantly. The black blade gave off a dull red light which reflected in the red and black obsidian gem set in the pommel.
Olea’s stomach filled with acid, tightening into gut-wrenching fear. He took a tentative step back as the elf stood up, looking at him with a masked face.
“A Basvu Mask!” Olea exclaimed. “You have no right to wear that!” Indignation was replacing the fear. “Only the head of Pfeta fey Orung is allowed to wear that mask!”
Wrath of the Fury Blade Page 15
