Malediction (Scars of the Sundering Book 1)

by Hans Cummings

  "Someone is supposed to be by later to put the chandelier back up. I think. They shouted at me with a lot of words I didn't understand, Pancras." Kale rubbed the back of his neck. ”It should have held my weight. It’s not my fault the palace servants can’t do their jobs properly and everything in here is junk."

  "We'll work around it. In the meantime, I have studying to do. Try not to break anything else." Pancras picked up his bottle of ale and retired to his room.

  Delilah resumed reading her grimoire and dismissed Kale with a wave of her hand. "Back to work!"

  Kale stuck out his tongue at his sister, but in truth, he couldn't blame her for not wanting to help him clean up. He would feel the same way in her place. He just hoped the palace staff would not refuse to feed them now. His grumbling stomach was a poor companion while he worked, and he wanted to silence it.

  * * *

  The storm seemed to linger with purpose over Almeria. For three days it raged, dumping prodigious amounts of cold, wet snow on the city. The first night, Kale was occupied with repairing the damage he caused, albeit a good deal of the actual work was done by palace servants. After that, he had only his puzzle box.

  Delilah with her grimoire and Pancras the Codex of Passion together studied their respective volumes in front of the hearth. Pancras flipped past all of the graphic descriptions of various positions best used for conception or best used for contraception and finally located the section which focused on remedies for various maladies. He wondered for whom the Codex of Passion was intended, as he doubted the people who would be most interested could make sense of the overly formal language used throughout. He supposed, perhaps, the illustrations were meant for the less educated.

  Still, with only three volumes of the codex in existence, Pancras doubted the knowledge contained within was truly intended for the common folk. Perhaps it's an instructional book for the priesthood. Aita's priesthood kept many texts in its temples, focused mostly on death rites, body preservation, and methods of dealing with corpses who refused to die. Pancras was not considered a priest himself. Even though he venerated Aita as the goddess of death, he did little to spread her word. That was the purview of the bonelords; the best of whom traveled Calliome, helping those who suffered from debilitating ailments pass to the next world. The worst of the bonelords turned their backs on the true teaching of Aita and perverted it by working to fill her realm with as many souls as they could, whether or not those souls were close to making that journey on their own.

  The Codex of Passion contained valuable information in the section dealing with contraceptives, however. From what Pancras surmised, there was a sect of the priesthood of Aurora known as the Ever-Flowering Devoted. They made it their singular purpose in life to spread the physical pleasure of Aurora to as many people or creatures as they could and wished not to become impregnated while doing so. They were sensualists in the extreme and believed that unplanned pregnancies hindered their goals.

  The Ever-Flowering Devoted wrote extensively on techniques to prevent conception and in some cases render the priest in question completely barren. For males the technique involved a sort of surgery. Pancras thought the process sounded much like castration, although the descriptions in the codex weren't clear on the actual details of the procedure. For females, however, the instructions were much easier to follow and involved the creation of a fetish. This fetish was to be inserted after which it would dissolve and release its potent magic. It was a temporary measure, but Pancras expected, given enough time, he could modify it to have a permanent effect.

  The thought turned his stomach. From his few interactions with Princess Valene, she seemed honorable and certainly more pleasant than her husband. He wasn't sold on the fetish insertion portion of the instructions, either. It was a task that would involve some measure on consent on the part of Princess Valene, consent that would fall to Prince Gavril to obtain. Pancras got the impression the prince wanted to be as hands-off as possible.

  Still, it was a start.

  * * *

  Delilah feared the snow would never stop. With Kale hopping around trying to learn how to fly, she found it difficult to concentrate on her grimoire. Every time she brought an image into focus and concentrated on its lesson, Kale made noise or bumped into her or knocked something over, and she lost the image and had to begin again. Moving into the bedroom offered no respite because he was so loud.

  By the third day, however, she learned to tune her brother out. She spent several uninterrupted hours studying the image of Gil-Li weaving magic in silence. The more she studied the image, the more she comprehended how such a thing was possible. The images seared themselves into her mind, and she saw them in her dreams.

  It was a technique she was eager to try.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Kale woke her up. "Deli! Deli, you've got to see this. There's so much snow!" He grabbed her arm and tried to pull her out of the bed. She snarled and groaned and pulled the covers over her head. Kale jumped up on the bed and straddled her. He pulled the covers off her head and pressed his snout against hers. "Get up, Deli! It's like those times we were snowed in in Drak-Anor, except there's a whole city out there!"

  He jumped off the bed and ran into the parlor. Delilah waited until the bouncing of her bed subsided, then rolled out of bed to join him. The door to the parlor was open, and cold wind blew in from outside. Delilah turned around and grabbed her thickest mantle, tightening it around her before returning to the parlor. Kale climbed up on the top of the wall in the outer hallway, steadying himself with his wings as he gazed out over the city.

  The brisk morning air cut through Delilah's cloak like an icy knife, and when she exhaled, her breath formed a fog. She giggled as she noticed Kale's breath clinging around him like his own personal cloud. Far in the distance, puffy clouds were suspended in the crystal blue sky, and Almeria was as still as death. Smoke rose from chimneys across the city, collecting to form a dark haze, which hung in the air above Almeria. Delilah saw where the streets were supposed to be only by finding the separation between roofs.

  "Isn't it great, Deli? It's like a painting!"

  Delilah looked at the scene for a moment. "Great, Kale." She turned around and returned to their suite's parlor. It was cold enough outside that she wanted only one thing: to sit in front of the fire bundled up in as many warm furs and blankets as possible.

  After a few minutes, just as Delilah felt warm again, Kale came in from outside, letting in a fresh blast of icy air. She grumbled and hunkered down further in the furs covering her armchair. She knew it would be several more days before the guards would be willing to take them into town again. She vowed that when they were finished with their business in Muncifer, she would find a warm place and never leave it again.

  * * *

  Kale wanted to leap off the castle wall to test his wings. He was certain the thick covering of snow on the ground would provide sufficient padding if something went wrong, but both Delilah and Pancras insisted he wait until conditions were such that they could supervise. He didn't see what the big fuss was about. He knew he could glide. It was just a question of how far. The question was if he could achieve true flight. In his mind, there was no better time to practice than when the ground was covered with a natural cushion.

  Since his sister was antisocial and growled when he spent too much time practicing flying in the parlor, he decided to check Kali's dead drop. The puzzle box stymied him for the time being. He wasn't sure the other drak could get a message to him with the weather as bad as it was, but he didn't have anything better to do.

  Every guard he encountered asked about his wings. After the third time telling the entire story about the chaos rift and leaving out the part how he was able now to breathe fire, too, he wished he had worn a cloak to cover his wings. He didn't like the way it made him look like a hunchback, but he also tired of telling the story and having to assure all the humans he wasn't contagious.

  He slipped away into the undercro
ft without arousing suspicion from the guards. Most of them were more concerned with staying warm than with where one little drak went exploring. He found a note written in Drak inside the ossuary. Kali's writing was precise, yet it flowed with broad, deliberate strokes. It appeared she might have dipped her claw in ink and used it as a writing implement.

  Kale,

  I found another route, a little longer, but from a more reliable source. She said it will take us right into the active part of the mine, though we might have to deal with some vermin first. I'll check the ossuary every night for your reply. I put ink in the box for you.

  Bring your sister if she wants to help.

  -- Kali

  He found the bottle of ink and replied in Drak.

  Kali,

  We'll try to get away tonight after dinner. If not, then tomorrow.

  Keep warm.

  -- Kale

  He looked around for something with which to wipe the excess ink off his claw finally settling on his leg. Kale placed the ink and paper back in the ossuary, closed the lid, and then returned to the upper levels to tell Delilah. His sister and Pancras were both dozing by the fire when he returned. He was thankful the wind died down so he didn't wake them with an icy blast when he opened the door. Kale tiptoed through the parlor to the bedroom he shared with Delilah and stared at his puzzle box sitting on the table. It seemed to mock his failure to discover the secret to unlocking the fourth side.

  Kale rummaged through Delilah's pack instead of continuing his exploration of the box, and took the lexicon she used to learn the common trade language. Maybe I can read myself to sleep, too.

  * * *

  A specter of the past rose out of Pancras's dreams. A furious, screaming, skull-headed man marched toward him. The man was short, but was convinced of his own superiority as he ranted and raved, waving his flanged mace around to punctuate his sentences. The words spewed forth were gibberish to Pancras

  The skull-headed man stalked closer, growing in size with each step until he loomed over Pancras. The minotaur cowered in the corner, and the skull-headed man raised his mace to strike. With a mighty overhead swing, he brought down the mace intent on pulverizing the minotaur's head. Pancras moved away at the last moment.

  Deep inside, Pancras knew what he saw was wrong. It was a vision of an event that never occurred, yet he was powerless to do anything except watch it unfold. Again and again the skull-headed man swung at Pancras, and again and again Pancras moved away at the last moment. The man's screaming rants turned into a high-pitched keen, and his features melted away. He dropped his mace and offered a fur-covered hand to the cowering minotaur.

  Pancras took the hand, and a familiar face greeted him as he was pulled to his feet.

  "Thanos? Is that you?"

  "I have missed you, Pancras." Thanos embraced him. Warmth Pancras had not felt in decades filled his body, and he felt a stirring within he thought was long dead.

  "Thanos, how did…" He held the other minotaur at arm's length to look at him. Thanos smiled at his lover. He moved to kiss Pancras, and his bottom jaw fell off. Eyes, clouded with decay, slid out of sockets and down Thanos's cheeks.

  Pancras screamed and shoved Thanos away. His hands punched through Thanos's chest, and the minotaur gurgled. Worms writhed and wriggled from the holes. Without conscious thought, Pancras worked the magic that took him away from Thanos so many years ago. He felt shadowy claws scratching at the back of his mind, wrapping themselves around his brain, and drawing out the magic. The tips of his horns glowed with brilliant emerald light. Tendrils of dark-green smoke swirled around the rotten corpse, lifting it up and devouring with raw power.

  "Thanos!" Pancras gasped and fell out of the armchair. The chair upended and fell with a crash, muffled by the thick carpet and the furs and blankets under which Pancras slept.

  Delilah awoke with a start and looked around the room, bleary eyed. "Who's Thanos? Is someone here?"

  Wiping tears from his cheeks, Pancras extracted himself from the tangle of blankets and righted the chair. "No, no one. Sorry, bad dream." He patted Delilah on the arm and looked out the window. "It's getting late. Perhaps we should see if dinner is ready?"

  She yawned and nodded. "Good idea. I'm hungry. I'll get Kale."

  Pancras had not thought about Thanos in years. When he was a youth in Muncifer, he and Thanos were lovers. They lived together and made plans together as young people in love do. During Pancras's final years at the Arcane University, however, Thanos became jealous of his lover's dedication to the arcane arts. He pledged himself to a mercenary company preparing for a lengthy expedition into the Western Wastes on the other side of the Dragon Spine Mountains.

  They promised to wait for each other until after their respective tasks were complete. Pancras waited two years after completing his apprenticeship, but the mercenaries never returned. He made some inquiries and learned they were thought to have been wiped out by giants in the mountains.

  Pancras left Muncifer that very day and had never returned. And now I'm going back to give money to the people who forced us apart. The vivid nature of his dream shook him to the core. He rarely remembered dreams, and when he did, they never involved the rotten corpses of people he knew. He never dreamed about the dead. Reaching up, he removed both components of his focus from the tips of his horns. He promised Kale and Delilah he would no longer sleep with them on. Of course, he hadn't planned to fall asleep by the fire.

  Dinner was a quiet affair. He ascertained by each drak's body language they made plans for after dinner, but Pancras decided to let them be. Stopping them would be too much work for too little gain, and if they kept themselves busy and didn't burn down the palace or rip chandeliers out of the ceiling, who was he to complain?

  The Codex of Passion awaited him after dinner. He was almost ready to return it, but there were a few more notes he wanted to take and a few more passages he wanted to revisit. After he completed those tasks, all that remained was to confirm a few things with a priest of Cybele and to gather ingredients. In his heart, Pancras knew giving Prince Gavril what he wanted was wrong. He would make the prince happy, though, because he planned to make him believe he got what he wanted. The hard part was making the effect last long enough to convince Prince Gavril that it worked. Pancras needed to bide sufficient time for the snows to melt, all of them to leave Almeria, and reach a safe distance before the prince discovered the ruse.

  * * *

  "I noticed you didn't bother telling Pancras where we were going."

  Kale smiled and held the door to the undercroft open for his sister. "What's the point? He'd just worry or want to go with us, and we can move faster without him. Besides, he's too big for some of these tunnels, and he looked terrible. You said he had a bad dream or something?" Kale couldn't remember the last time he had anything but happy or silly dreams, like being chased by giant fruit or being held down by fuzzy rocks while they tickled his feet. He asked Oren about his dreams once, but the drak fortune teller was hardly helpful and predicted he was likely to die by choking on a piece of moldy fruit.

  They entered the catacombs, and Kale paused to check the ossuary. The note was gone, but the inkwell remained.

  "So what?" Delilah paused to illuminate her staff. "She's got a new route for us that isn't going to be a dead-end-waste-of-time?"

  "Yes, she does." Kali stepped out of the shadows. "I'm glad you were able to make it. Word is they brought a new batch of slaves in just before that storm. New slaves are stronger and will be able to fight back."

  Kale took point as they moved through the catacombs. Kali directed him with taps on his shoulder when they needed to take a new turn. "So what do we do if we free a bunch of slaves? Lead a revolt and kill all the slavers? Deli and I can't just flee the city if things go bad."

  "You won't have to. We'll lead them back here to the catacombs. There's a network of sympathetic folk who have cellars that connect. They'll hide them and give them shelter for now. Slavery is illegal; t
he only way they get away with it is because most humans don't care about draks."

  Kale didn't know many humans. Mirek and Dusan seemed nice, and there were a few others who came to Drak-Anor over the years who didn't seem to think draks were some sort of vermin. "Not all humans are bad."

  "True enough, but there are enough who think if you're not a smoothskin, you're little better than an animal, and there aren't enough willing to stand against them. They think it's not their fight." Kali tapped Kale on the shoulder and pointed down a cobweb-filled corridor. The burial niches were shrouded in shadow, and the odor of the grave permeated the air.

  Darkness encroached upon the light from Delilah's staff. Kale cut away the cobwebs with one of his daggers, but the preternatural silence unnerved him. "Shouldn't there be rats or something?"

  Kali held up her hand signaling them to stop. "You're right. It's too quiet."

  "You said there'd be some small vermin. I don't hear any vermin."

  Delilah thrust her staff between them, illuminating the corridor ahead. "I'm cold. It's cold in here, more so than it should be, I think."

  All three draks stiffened as something scraped against the stone behind them. They turned in unison and saw a cadaverous form with long nails, stringy black hair, and burning red eyes. Knife-like teeth filled its mouth, and it ran its nails along the walls. A long pointed tongue ran along its teeth as it glared at them.

  "That's not a small vermin." Kale took a step back, away from the creature.

  "Ghoul." Delilah pointed her staff at it.

  It hissed and lunged.

  "Run!" Kale turned and grabbed his sister. The three draks tripped over each other in their haste to leave it behind. Kale heard its nails scraping the rock as it loped behind them, giving chase, but he dared not look back. Its long legs enabled it to close the distance, and Kale saw a grimy, skeletal arm swipe at Delilah's cloak, rending the fabric.