A twig snapped behind Tarrik’s tree. He held his breath and kept still as a marfesh’s scaled head and long neck emerged to his right. Its lidless, orange eyes swiveled back and forth, its purple, forked tongue darting in and out. Fortunately for Tarrik, his concealment held as the marfesh’s senses were dull, and its focus remained fixated on the tower.
He was never one to spurn a gift when offered. Tarrik shifted his weight and drove the sword into the marfesh’s neck. Green blood spurted, splashing the ground, but the demon leaped back. Its mouth opened wide, and Tarrik threw himself to the side as the marfesh sprayed saliva. The soaked leaves began to smoke and wither, sending fumes into the air.
He rolled to his feet and rushed the marfesh, dodged a swipe of its talons, and hacked at its neck again. The demon collapsed, its body flopping like a puppet whose strings had been severed, its clawed hands scrabbling in the dead leaves. The marfesh shook with a violent tremor and was still.
Tarrik raced around the other side of the tree as another marfesh scurried toward its fallen companion. Before the demon realized he was there, he plunged his blade into its chest behind its foreleg and skewered its heart. The marfesh uttered a piercing shriek, sending a distant flock of birds cawing into the sky.
He jerked the sword free and ran, keeping within the cover of trees. Movement was the key now. The element of surprise was gone, and there was still another demon and a sorcerer to kill.
Tracks in the leaves made him pause: long strides, as if the marfesh was running. He followed them quickly—then they narrowed as the demon slowed its pace. The marfesh was somewhere close by, but he couldn’t see it. All was silent. Even the disturbed birds had flown away or settled down again.
He pressed his back against the rough bark of a large tree and willed himself to blend in. A drop of water landed on a leaf by his foot. A curl of smoke rose from the green.
Tarrik lunged to the side. Too late. His frame erupted in pain as the demon’s talons sliced into his shoulder and down his back. His legs tangled, and he tripped, falling onto the leaf-strewn earth.
A shriek filled the air as the marfesh dropped from its concealment in the tree. Tarrik scrambled to his feet and backed away, looking around for any sign of the sorcerer. The demon’s tongue flicked, and its mouth opened. Tarrik ducked and rolled forward. Venom sprayed overhead, and droplets burned his clothes and exposed skin, tearing a cry from his lips.
He clenched his jaw and thrust his sword at the marfesh. The demon dodged back, hissing as it rose on its hind legs. Tarrik leaped forward, avoiding its sharp talons, and sliced a shallow line across its chest. He caught a hammering blow to his side for his trouble and staggered back, breath coming in harsh gasps, sweat stinging his eyes.
He felt dusk-tide sorcery building behind him. He cursed and dodged around the marfesh until the beast was between him and the sorcerer.
Tendrils of violet crackled through the air, hissing with virulence. They slammed into the marfesh, causing its scales to glow a furious crimson before rolling off, the demon shedding the harmful incantations like water.
Tarrik heard the sorcerer curse but couldn’t spare him a glance. He ducked under a vicious swipe from the demon’s talons and drove his blade into its chest up to the hilt. Green blood spilled over his hand and spattered the ground. The marfesh fell, dragging his sword down. He tried to pull the blade free, but it was stuck between two ribs. The hilt slipped from his blood-drenched grip.
Tarrik grabbed it with both hands and pulled to no avail. Sorcery flared again behind him, and he flattened himself on the ground, pressing against the marfesh’s tough skin. The beast offered some protection, but not enough. Violet threads cascaded around him, searing his exposed flesh and burning his clothes.
When the attack subsided, Tarrik leaped to his feet and rushed the sorcerer before he had a chance to draw more power. He was a slender fellow, short, with oiled-back brown hair and a scraggly beard peppered with gray. One hand clutched what looked to be a stone statuette—his talisman.
A perfect sphere of protection materialized around the man. He gave Tarrik a sneering look before glancing at the tower.
“Run, little man,” goaded Tarrik. “She’s coming for you now that your pets are dead. Flee while you can.”
If the sorcerer required the help of three marfesh to take Ren down, she was obviously his better when it came to the arcane arts.
The sorcerer swallowed, and a flash of fear crossed his face. Then he set his mouth into a grim line. “I will not. I . . . cannot.”
Only the pain in his shoulder and back and the feel of his blood trickling down his side prevented Tarrik from rolling his eyes. Humans were too timid. The sorcerer probably thought he’d be killed if he let Ren escape. And from the fear he displayed, he was probably right.
The door to the tower opened, and Ren strode out. She gave the sorcerer a contemptuous glance, then ignored him as if he were of no consequence, focusing instead on the dead marfesh. But Tarrik knew she would still be weak from the summoning. He hoped she had a plan, as he couldn’t get through the looming arcane shield.
“Why not leave and enjoy the remaining life you have,” he said to the man, “before she kills you.”
The sorcerer shook his head. “He will find me. Better a quick death now than one at his hands. Failure is not tolerated.”
“Then skin one of the marfesh. Make some armor from it to deflect sorcery.”
The skin would degrade quickly no matter what was done to preserve it and thus would only offer limited protection. But this man was probably ignorant of such matters.
“Who are you?” the sorcerer asked. “How do you know what the demons are called and the properties of their skin?”
Tarrik tried a nonchalant shrug, then grimaced in pain. “I’m just a man like any other.”
“Your blood is purple.”
Oh. Yes.
“He has the blood of demons in him,” Ren said. “A useful trait, as you saw. Now, who sent you?”
The man licked his lips, eyes shifting nervously. Tarrik felt him begin drawing dawn-tide and dusk-tide power.
“Don’t,” said Ren flatly. “You know who I am.”
Tarrik gave her a sharp look.
“You know you’re no match for me. If you try to kill me, I’ll send you to the abyss as a plaything for the demons. It is within my power. Instead, leave with your life, and be thankful.”
For an instant Tarrik thought the sorcerer would attack, but the energies he’d gathered dissipated. He backed up a step, then turned and ran. Once into the trees, he dropped his spherical shield.
“That didn’t go too badly,” said Tarrik.
Ren passed a weary hand over her face, then slumped to the damp ground, her eyes closed.
“Back in a bit,” Tarrik said, and sprinted after the sorcerer. The man couldn’t be allowed to live, not now that he’d seen Tarrik. Someone might put together his origins. Ren was obviously up against powerful individuals, and Tarrik would need all the advantages he could get to survive.
“No!” Ren called after him.
As he ran through the forest, plotting an arc to intercept the sorcerer, bonds tugged at him—Ren trying to restrain him. She clearly hadn’t thought of simply countermanding her order to kill those who hunted her. That, combined with the looser bindings, gave Tarrik a certain amount of leeway.
His bare feet brushed over the damp leaves and pine needles with scarcely a sound. If the sorcerer was still running, he wouldn’t hear or see Tarrik until too late. And as Tarrik ran, the stresses of his summoning, of being made a slave again, came crashing down. He wanted to kill someone for what had happened to him. To scream and burn and murder, to wash away his rage with blood and violence.
Just as the man paused to glance fleetingly over his shoulder, Tarrik caught sight of him.
The sorcerer slipped, stumbling down the bank of a stream and splashing across it. On the other side, a gray horse was tied to a branch. The animal whuf
fed as Tarrik approached from the side. Its ears swiveled uneasily.
The man looked behind him again before stopping to catch his breath. Tarrik stepped out from behind a tree and cut his throat with the sword. A gurgling sound bubbled through the blood, a disgusting red color, and the sorcerer clutched at Tarrik’s clothes.
Tarrik waited until the light left the sorcerer’s eyes, then let him slump to the ground. He picked up a rock and hammered the man’s skull again and again until his arm ached.
He sat back on his haunches, panting, and dropped the gore-spattered rock. One less summoner in the world. He felt a certain amount of satisfaction in killing one of the humans that enslaved his kind.
Would Ren thank him? Probably not. She was a summoner herself. She probably thought slavery wasn’t abhorrent.
Tarrik took a few moments to steady himself. His shredded back and shoulder stung, but he’d survived much worse. Still, he’d have to see to the wounds soon.
He rifled through the horse’s saddlebags, ignoring the way the beast stared at him. Horrible creature. Only good for its meat.
He found mostly useless belongings: clothes, too small for him; a bundle of fire sticks; a pot and a pan; other cooking utensils; provisions. His stomach growled. Maybe there was useful stuff here after all.
Tarrik slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and knelt next to the dead sorcerer. The man’s purse was full of coin. He had a gem-studded knife too—which gave Tarrik an idea.
He cut open the man’s shirt, then felt for a lump next to his heart, the area where sorcerers’ catalysts were usually implanted. He sliced open the skin, grasped the blood-slick gem, and wrenched it out. The process was much easier after death, when they didn’t bleed so much.
Striding to the stream, he washed the blood from the catalyst. The gem was illuminated from within by a silvery glow, with dark threads fracturing the surface. Tarrik slipped it into a pocket. The crystal might come in handy.
The horse snorted again.
Tarrik untied the beast’s reins and led the steed through the stream and back to the tower. Ren might have a use for the animal, and if not, they could always eat it. His stomach rumbled at the thought.
“Did you kill him?” Ren asked when Tarrik handed her the horse’s reins.
“No, we had a conversation over a cup of tea. Of course I killed him.”
“Why?”
“That was your original command, and I don’t like loose ends.”
“He wasn’t a danger anymore.”
“Treat me like a demon slave, and that’s how I’ll act.”
“I offered you freedom.”
“Oh, so it’s all my fault? And what freedom? Freedom to serve you?”
“No. I didn’t mean that. Just . . . forget it.”
“As you wish, Master.”
Her mouth drew into a thin line at his words. She considered the horse, then the rapidly diminishing bonfire. “You keep the horse. Mine is at the back of the tower.”
“I don’t want it. I’ll walk.”
“Don’t be so stubborn. We have a long way to travel.”
“Don’t worry about me, Master. I’ll keep up. Besides, I hate horses, and they hate me.” He gestured toward the fire. “I’m going to cook—I need to eat before we leave. I assume we are leaving soon?”
She nodded. “We can’t stay here now. We’ll head out once you’ve eaten.” She disappeared around the side of the tower.
Tarrik took the cooking pot from the saddlebags and walked to fill it from the brook nearby. When he returned, Ren was securing both horses to a tree, the gray and her brown one. Tarrik ignored her and poked around inside the tower until he found a sack of grains. He added several handfuls and some sort of dried meat from the dead sorcerer’s provisions into the pot along with finger-size green vegetables that he broke into pieces. He found a long stick and placed the pot in the fire.
“That was for the horse,” said Ren.
“What?”
“The grain. It’s a mixture of corn, oats, and barley.”
Tarrik shrugged. All food in this world was terrible, apart from the meat. And he hadn’t exactly been eating well on Shimrax, where food was scarce and sometimes all he could manage were baked riven-grubs. He hadn’t had a decent meal since being exiled. “But it’s edible?”
“Yes . . . but I’ll do the cooking from now on.” She gestured to his shoulder. “Let me take a look at your wounds. I have a salve and some bandages.”
Her touch was gentle—and disturbing. Having a human’s hands on him wasn’t a new experience, but the sensation was as unsettling as he remembered. It took all his willpower to allow her ministrations and not attempt to tear her throat out. When she probed a tender spot, he inadvertently drew on his dark-tide power, which Ren ruthlessly tore from his grasp as her own power flared—another reminder that she was his master.
Chapter Two
They traveled west for a day, Tarrik walking while Ren rode. The temperature grew cold as the sun descended, and Tarrik guessed the season was either side of winter, but which side he couldn’t be sure. The air smelled too damp and washed clean to him; he preferred the dry and odorous demon realms.
They made camp beside a small cliff with enough of an overhang to provide shelter in case it rained again.
“Fetch wood for a fire,” Ren said as she dismounted and found a suitable branch to secure the horses. “No one will be following us yet, so we may as well be comfortable while we can.”
Tarrik wasn’t so sure—she hadn’t sensed the sorcerer hunting her, after all—but he gathered a hefty pile and set it ablaze using one of the dead sorcerer’s fire sticks. He was hungry again despite having eaten all the stew he’d cooked in the morning and quite a bit of bread and cheese on the trail. Ren seemed to eat sparingly.
As the sun set, she left him warming by the fire and disappeared into the forest. When the sun dipped below the horizon, the dusk-tide came. Tarrik felt the surge of power as a tingling in his skin. He could sense Ren absorbing its energy.
Human sorcerers drew on the eldritch forces that swept their world at sunrise and sunset and stored the dawn-tide and dusk-tide energy in their repositories. Both sources of power needed to be replenished regularly; if they weren’t, the sorcerer’s repositories would eventually drain to empty. The sorcerer could shape and control the energies using a combination of his or her mental abilities and cants based upon geometric calculations and the ancient Skanuric language—one of the first tongues of this world, now spoken only by scholars, sorcerers, and priests. Demons, on the other hand, used dark-tide energy for their innate talents and their own cants. Unfortunately for Tarrik, the dark-tide was only available in this world when both of its moons remained below the horizon.
Ren’s accumulation of the dusk-tide continued for some time. Her ability to absorb the energy was greater than that of most other sorcerers Tarrik had known. He wondered how much of Contian’s talent she’d inherited.
A short time later he felt two minuscule surges of dawn-tide sorcery. When Ren returned, she carried two dead birds.
Sitting on the ground away from the fire, she began plucking them, starting at the legs, then moving to the back and breast. Tarrik suppressed a snort. With their bare torsos and feathered wings and tails, the birds looked like miniature grebsuls, lower-order demons usually hunted for food.
Ren hacked the wings off, then took a burning brand from the fire and scorched the remaining tufts to ash. She cut off the legs and heads, placed both carcasses into a cast-iron pot, added some dried herbs and a splash of water, then put the lid on and shoved the pot into the coals.
“I noticed you’re eating quite a lot,” she said. “Is that normal?”
“It will only last another day or two. A summons takes a lot of energy from me. And my wounds are healing.”
Ren frowned. “Why does the summons take your energy? Doesn’t the sorcery do all the work?”
“I don’t know.” He stood and gathered
their canteens. “I’ll fill these.” Her questions irritated him, and he didn’t want to engage with her.
He wandered off in the direction of the sound of running water and stopped at a clear stream flowing over rounded pebbles. Tarrik scratched the bandage on his shoulder but couldn’t reach the itchy wound on his back. The flesh was healing swiftly and should be almost whole in a day or so. He contemplated the movement of the water and his predicament, even though the wind chilled him. The truth was, he had little room to maneuver with Ren and her hateful bindings. Which meant, as usual, he needed to remain calm and cunning and search for any weakness.
When he looked up, it was dark. Filling the canteens, he returned to the camp.
Ren had dragged the pot from the fire and was sitting cross-legged on a blanket with a sorcerous light hovering above her shoulder. She was reading a book.
She looked up at him and smiled. “We’ll need to find you some new clothes at the next town. We can’t hide your size, but we can at least make you less conspicuous.”
That suited him. The less trouble he ran into, the better. Usually sorcerers only summoned a demon for violent purposes. Maybe this time would be different—except it hadn’t started out that way.
“I’ll find you a proper sword too,” she added. “If you’re to pose as my bodyguard, you’ll need to look the part, and act it. That sorcerer and the demons aren’t all that’s following me.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“There’s . . . a presence I’ve felt. It will strike soon—I’m sure of it.” Her eyes searched the night around them before returning to the fire.
Vague.
“What kind of presence?”
“I’ve told you all you need to know.”
Tarrik tried another line of questioning. “I need to know how powerful you are. What you can and can’t do.”
She’d summoned him unaided, which spoke of great power and control, but if he had a better idea of how skilled she was, he might be able to figure out a way around her defenses. And then she’d be dead, and he’d be back on Shimrax. There, he could continue to plan. He couldn’t live in his austere cave forever, hunting merely to survive the arid wastes. It was either escape or go mad.
Shadow of the Exile (The Infernal Guardian Book 1) Page 3
