Shadow Of The Mountain

by D. A. Stone

  Natalia was helped upright. Karin began to walk away before noticing her mistress wasn’t by her side.

  Turning around, she saw Natalia frozen in place, eyes watering over.

  “I miss him, Karin,” Natalia said simply, tears beading down her wind-burnt face. “I miss him so much.”

  “Oh, sweet girl.” Her handmaiden came back, lifting Natalia’s chin up. “I can’t imagine what you must be feeling now, but your man loved you. He still loves you, and he would be proud to see what you’ve done for us.”

  Natalia nodded, wiping the tears away with the back of her sleeve.

  Closing her eyes, she breathed in the cool air, filling her lungs. When next she looked, the Gambit was still before her, overwhelming her vision.

  Linking arms with her handmaiden, they moved toward the waiting Amorian students and were ushered into the shadowy mountain fissure to begin their climb.

  Chapter 22

  Courage is a wicked thing. It seems when you need it the most, it’s up and gone before you’ve had a chance to ask for help. Then you’re left to tremble and twitch with all the other emotions too stupid to flee: shock, disbelief, sadness. Why couldn’t courage intensify tenfold the way these do when faced with such a sickening end to one’s life?

  Tenlon felt dizzy with the fear, detached from his body. These men were going to kill him. He would tell them everything, every tiny detail about the egg and where to find it, and then they would end his life. That was the truth of it. There would be no other way.

  He had been forced from the basement by the large Volrathi, Lesandra still chained to the wall below. Each step brought him closer to whatever end these violent thugs meant for him. His imagination was overloaded with visions of his own murder, yet none could have prepared him for the nightmare of torture and anguish these black-eyed beasts of men were capable of.

  The living area they stepped into was lit with dozens of candles, their flames dancing eerie shadows against the wall as the open windows let in the breeze. There were two long couches and three plush winged chairs of cherry velvet. Scrolls and books were stacked up everywhere. Loose papers flapped between the furniture, a few clinging to the molding along the floor. Some piles of texts leaned against the corners of the room, rising like pillars, hip-height and in danger of falling over.

  Tenlon could see the street beyond the windows storm-gray and overcast. In the air he could feel it—a heavy rain approaching, building above in strength before it would finally drop its deluge onto the coastal city.

  There was something else that could be sensed in the room, though. A feeling, a smell. The worst thing perhaps. His feet slowed to a halt as he stared, the buzzing of flies reminding him of his march to Goridai, but he was not certain why.

  When he saw him there in the center of the room, resting in stillness before the cold fireplace, Tenlon’s brain grinded to a halt.

  The candlelight didn’t do it justice. Only when the wind picked up and threw the curtains about would the gloomy daylight show him what true terror was. It made him feel hot and sick all over. He wanted to vomit, to piss, to pass out from fright, to cry and scream and beg, anything to escape this place. But he did none of these things.

  The Volrathi let him have an eyeful before shoving him back into motion, through an archway and into the kitchen. They were past it now, but the image lingered.

  Bald Darien had been bound to a simple chair in the living room. Wrists tied to the chair’s arms, ankles laced to its legs, his head had been fixed immobile to the high backrest with a leather band. Each of his fingers were cut off at the center knuckles, leaving behind short, black-tipped nubs of flesh and gray bone that reached out like sharp claws. His face was contorted in an open-mouthed gape of the dead, front teeth torn out and gums a mess.

  The worst were his eyes. The Volrathi had taken them, but who could say how? They were hollow sockets of black with dried streams of gore painted down each of his cheeks like the tears of a demon pulled right from the Black Gates. It was the most horrifying display of suffering Tenlon had ever seen.

  A stain had surrounded Darien’s chair, the dried puddle broken up in uniform slats by the floorboards. If Lesandra had heard the dripping of her brother’s lifeblood, then surely she must have heard his screams.

  Tenlon found it difficult to focus on anything after that. Wherever he went, he floated. The world turned dreamlike.

  The kitchen was in disarray. Stacked crates lined the walls and a rank odor assaulted him, something smoky and sweet and horrid enough to make him choke back vomit.

  The Volrathi’s fist pushed him again from behind, this time to the left through a doorway. He found himself in some sort of supply shack, clearly a late addition to the house’s construction. The lumber of the walls was still exposed, the roof was slanted, and there was only one window, closed to the outside by long wooden shutters. Various herbs hung upside down to dry from the ceiling. Some of them he recognized, others he didn’t. A multitude of weapons rested against the opposite wall—broadswords and battle-axes, clubs and various sickle-curved blades that came to needle-sharp points, iron pliers and hammers of all shapes and sizes. He didn’t like this room overly much.

  Smoke pooled at the ceiling, the stench of it as foul as before but so much stronger for now he had found the source. It was growing darker and the wind wailed against the house from outside, rattling the shutters. The heady smoke twisted about the room.

  Tenlon saw a table with a second hulking Volrathi sitting behind it, big as the mammoth that had led him here. The first with the abnormal arm and engorged shoulder muscle now leaned against the doorway behind him, his great mass blocking the only way in or out of the room. These had been the men who had approached him on the street, Tenlon was sure of it.

  A strange container rested in the corner behind the table. It looked to be an oversized wooden barrel laid flat, the top half cut open and filled like a bathtub. The liquid was putrid and black as sewer slime. It was out of place and altogether frightening to him.

  His eyes fell to a third man who rose from the gloom, the burning glow of a curved pipe finding strength as he drew in the noxious smoke. He was tall and wiry, strong to be sure, but clearly of a different breed than these hulks of flesh that flanked him. If those two were bulls, then this one was a wolf.

  His hair was long, slicked back and greasy as appeared to be their style, while his teeth were white and even beneath blood-red lips. There was no weapon on him from what Tenlon could see, yet he wore a thin leather chest piece, iron-plated at the shoulders and breast, studded down the center in line with a polished belt buckle.

  Tenlon noticed something else about him, but it was intangible and unexplainable. There was an air around the man, a threatening weight of presence as if you were standing too close to a precariously perched boulder on a mountainside. He could crush you in a moment, Tenlon knew. Even before his thoughts and fears were proven, Tenlon already understood the truth of the lean man, of what he was.

  Placing his pipe on the table, the wolf walked around the tub and opened the shutters, letting in what light he could. When it apparently wasn’t enough, he flicked his fingers to the lantern hanging from a beam above, then again to a row of unlit candles along a shelf on the wall. The motions were executed with a great sense of boredom, as one might brush a piece of lint from their shirt to be tossed aside without care, yet Tenlon saw sparks dart from the man’s fingers into the air, spinning and wheeling white-hot embers.

  At once the sparks found the wicks of encased lantern and candle, sputtering them to flame and lighting up the wide room.

  He stood before Tenlon, looking down at him with a blank stare, black Volrathi eyes glossy in the candlelight. Tenlon had no courage to summon, but for once he didn’t care. Wicked courage would do him no good here.

  This wolf was Magi.

  ***

  “Which way?” Desik roared over his shoulder, running smoothly down the center of the deserted street, his hand
s keeping his swords from jostling about.

  “Ten blocks maybe?” Lanard huffed, two dozen strides behind but still fighting to keep up. The leather case of his flute was strapped over one shoulder, bouncing with each step. “We’ll turn south onto Breaker Lane. You’ll see houses and residential apartments as we get close.”

  Ten blocks. Desik sped up.

  The bartender, Tombsy, had sung like a parakeet, telling him everything he needed to know. The Korando crime lord, Okin Burback, had caught wind of an unknown Amorian treasure making its way to his coastal city and claimed it as his own. It seems that Darien Foll—the true Darien Foll—had drunk a pinch too much in one of Okin’s taverns and opened his mouth to the wrong people while he had waited for their arrival. The scholar was expecting a dragon’s egg, he’d said.

  Soft words often had hard consequences. Such a prize would have been too much for any criminal to pass up, and this Okin was no exception. The youngster and later the unruly pirates he’d met at the Lonely Fox were no coincidence. Somehow, despite all of his careful evasions, they had still been followed from the moment they’d entered the city. The men had been sent into the tavern to see if they were alone, what strength they were at, testing the water.

  But Desik still couldn’t place the Volrathis that had taken Tenlon into the equation. Even though the man parading himself around as Darien Foll spoke of them, Tombsy swore to the sun and sky that he knew nothing of the dark troops, and after asking politely several times regarding the matter, Desik believed him.

  The barkeeper offered only one address: Darien and Lesandra’s very own house. After that Tombsy was left to bleed out on the floor of an abandoned building near the explosion. Desik would have time to double back should his information prove to be in error. His thoughts once more returned to the three who had taken the boy. They could only be Volrathi.

  The men had been hooded, concealing their most distinguishable features: eyes of piercing black that all were speaking of, everyone from the Sand Vale to the Eastern Isles. Even though the main force was on the march, their command would send scouting groups ahead of the invading army, a standard practice in any invasion.

  While Korando maintained no military presence, it was still a port city the Volrathi would leave a force behind to secure as they swung through Amoria and into eastern Endura. No sense in leaving any pocket unfilled or hole unguarded. War wasn’t about doubling back, but moving forward.

  He ran on. Six more block before he’d have to turn west on Breaker Lane.

  So how did Okin and the Volrathi come together in all of this? he wondered. They were obviously working together, but what would this Okin do with a dragon’s egg?

  The question reminded him of Tenlon’s words from earlier: An egg could buy you a kingdom of gold, or a kingdom itself.

  Okin would be in it for the gold. And the way the Volrathi were marching, those bastards would have the loot to bankroll him and a thousand other brigands should the need arise. Such a score would find Okin and his crew cozy stations within the new Volrathi empire they aimed to build, and they still very well might do it. These bastards were changing the whole map.

  Desik wiped a sleeve across his forehead, his arm coming back stained with sweat and blood. He spat to the side of the road, dismissing the questions of intrigue and shadowy connections that spun through his mind.

  He didn’t give a shit about any of it really. How Korando thugs and Volrathi scouts fit together interested him about as much as the beads of sweat trickling down his ass crack. He was going to fucking murder every person he came across until he reached the boy, and that was that.

  Desik suddenly skidded to a halt, still two blocks from his turn.

  Nearly missed it, he thought. But did he have enough time? It would only take a minute. He had to, his mind whispered.

  And who knew if he’d get the chance again?

  Lanard finally caught up, stumbling next to him, bent over with exhaustion. The flutist looked at the broad entrance of the stable Desik moved toward.

  “Horses!” he said breathlessly. “What a splendid idea.”

  ***

  “You study the Arts,” Tenlon muttered nervously.

  He had no idea where the words came from, they had just tumbled out. His intentions were to remain silent for as long as possible, then spin every lie his brain could muster before finally spilling the truth out like cowardly vomit at his feet. With luck Desik would find him well before that, or at least get the Lancer and egg out to sea.

  With no luck? The location of the egg would be tortured out of him over a period of seconds or minutes. He had no illusions about his resistance to pain. They would make him talk.

  Would he beg for death? he wondered. Had poor Darien pled for it?

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” the man asked, holding up his hand. White light sparked from his fingers, bridging them together tip-to-tip in crackles of minute lightning, flaunting the energy as if it were a parlor trick. “It feels like…the clingy charge you get when you walk across a rug in your woolen socks,” he smiled.

  Tenlon looked at him. Had he just made a joke?

  The man laughed at his expression, moving once more behind the table. “You clearly haven’t spent a great deal of time around my people. We are not the demons you were made to think.”

  The second Volrathi remained in his chair beside the Magi, one giant mud-stained boot resting on the table’s edge. His eyes burned into Tenlon, hot and mad with intensity.

  “Well, perhaps not all of us are demons.”

  The wolf reached under the table to lift a medium-sized wooden trunk. Crafted with skill, the chest had a curved lid, its edges lined in iron bands and studs. Even though Tenlon watched him drop it onto the table, the sound of it still made him jump.

  The wolf leaned in, a glint in his eye. “You were at Goridai,” he said, fingers opening the trunk’s bronze clasp with a click. “Weren’t you?”

  No, Tenlon thought. Don’t give him any words. You’re smarter than he, so search for the advantage! That’s what Desik would do.

  “Yes,” he answered meekly.

  “What did you do there?” the wolf asked with interest, leaning against the closed trunk and resting his chin on it.

  Eat shit, you inbred, greasy turd! “I was an apprentice.”

  “An apprentice to what? To the…” He waved his arms about, casting imaginary spells and adding sound effects, the way a child might.

  Tenlon nodded his head in agreement.

  “Ah, yes. The Amorian academies of the Magi.” He whistled in awe, turning serious once more. “Powerful men, those Amorian Mages. I can understand why you’d want to pursue such a life.”

  “I’m actually a scholarly mage,” Tenlon told him. “All my life I’ve wanted to…”

  He trailed off, a seed of dread sprouting at the pit of his stomach. The man was casting some sort of spell on him, making him talk. He could feel the words already clawing at the base of his throat, screaming to be released.

  “You always wanted to…what?” the Volrathi prompted, black eyes unblinking and gripping his gaze.

  Tenlon licked his lips, throat dry. He had to break the trance. Do something! Anything! Just don’t…

  “Dragons.” The word toppled out with incredible ease, weight lifting from his mind. “I’ve always…wanted to work with dragons.”

  The wolf rose upright, his face lighting up bright as the afternoon sun. “Dragons?” he exclaimed with a smile. “Why, I’ve always wanted to work with dragons, too! How fortuitous to find ourselves here, two men of similar interests. Today is indeed turning into a fine day!”

  Even as he spoke, Tenlon could feel unseen weights pressing down on his mind. The longer he tried to be quiet, the more painful the pressure became. He had learned of such spells. Only speech would relieve the pain, and even then only the truthful words this Magi desired to hear.

  He had to act, to somehow break the spell. The man’s concentration had to be inter
rupted.

  “How did you escape Goridai?” the wolf asked amiably, the pain of the spell increasing. Each syllable became a sizzling-hot iron plate stacked on top of his brain. “I thought that your army was surrounded. No quarter and cut-off heads and whatnot.”

  “We were.” Tenlon couldn’t break the gaze they were locked in. It was mesmerizing.

  He felt the whole story bubbling up inside to press against the lid, spitting and ready to spill out. First Mage Braiden, the egg, the ride through Killian Forest, he and Desik the only survivors.

  Then would come the name of the ship, the Lancer, and the egg within.

  He opened his mouth and the spell softened just a sliver in response of his intention to speak.

  Sever the spell! Create a diversion! Fall over, faint, scream, slam your head into the table! Anything, just don’t tell him!

  For once in your life, damn it, grow a spine and a set of stones! Even if it’s just for a moment, at least pretend to have courage before this loathsome wretch!

  Give yourself something to hold onto when it’s you strapped to the chair and the hot knives and pliers come out to twist and pull at your skin. Too many lives have been lost along the way for it to end here without a fight.

  The Volrathi seemed to notice his struggle. “If you were surrounded,” he pressed on, “how did you escape? You must have ridden out from the--”

  Tenlon’s hand darted out, slapping the wolf across the face harder than he’d ever hit anyone in his life.

  The fleshy smack rang out sharp as whip in the storage room. The boot of the sitting Volrathi slid off the table, an expression of shock filling his face. It was probably similar to Tenlon’s own look of horrified disbelief.

  He felt the spell’s pain vanish as a red handprint grew on the Magi’s cheek. The wolf’s jaw tightened and a narrow vein surfaced on the skin of his forehead. Tenlon felt himself start to tremble.

  Wicked courage, he thought again. Here one instant and gone the next, leaving him alone to deal with its price.