by Brian Farrey
I made for the box but froze halfway when I heard the door slam shut behind me. Actually, it was the menacing growl after the slam that made me stop.
Turning slowly, I met the eyes of a sanguibeast no taller than me. I cursed quietly. I should have known they wouldn’t have left the interior completely unguarded.
I pressed up against the table that held the Sourcefire and reached for my dagger. The sanguibeast’s teeth gnashed, sending rivers of spittle in every direction. Just as my fingertips grazed the dagger’s hilt, the creature stopped. It backed up and said in a gravelly voice, “Is brother of Bright Eyes?”
“Gobek?”
The sanguibeast shrank. Soon, it was gone, replaced with the Creche’s caretaker.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Is protecting Sourcefire,” the shape-shifter said softly, grief filling his eyes. “Gobek is failing duties.”
“But why are you helping the Palatinate? Aubrin said they caused your pain.”
Gobek muttered. “Is always pain for Gobek. Is made from magic? Is to be in pain. Gobek is having nowhere else to go.”
I held out my hand. “If you help us, I promise to find a way to end your pain.”
Gobek looked uncertainly at my hand and then licked it. I took that as a yes.
Outside, it sounded like the fighting was getting closer to the wagon. I stood and faced the Sourcefire. The crystal box looked just as I remembered it except for one thing. A large golden disc, etched with magical sigils, sat affixed to the top. It resembled the medallions mages used to control their army of beasts.
“What’s this for?” I asked, pulling at the disc. It wouldn’t budge.
“Is not sure,” Gobek said. “Is not for Gobek to know—”
Gobek’s voice cut off. I spun around to find the former Creche keeper in the arms of an assassin-monk. The monk had hoisted Gobek in the air, clamping one hand around his mouth. Just past him, in the doorway, stood Edilman and Bennock. All three monks were frowning.
“Edilman,” I said. “We can end this now if we—”
But Edilman ignored me. He marched down the length of the wagon and pushed me out of the way. He caressed the Sourcefire’s box. Then, without looking back, he raised a single hand. Suddenly, Bennock grabbed me and held my arms behind my back. Skinny as he was, Bennock was strong.
“What the zoc?” I asked.
Edilman nodded at Bennock. The acolyte reached into my pocket, retrieved the Vanguard, and tossed it to Edilman.
“Bennock . . .” I yanked my arms. But Bennock held tightly. The only satisfaction I got was the look on his face. Bennock felt guilty.
Edilman’s free hand ran across the top of the box. He took a deep breath and touched the Vanguard to the disc on the Sourcefire box. Sparks shot up as the disc went dark. The abbot flicked his hand, sent the disc flying, and tucked the crystal box under his arm.
A lump filled my throat. This had been Edilman’s plan all along. He’d planned to steal the Sourcefire in the chaos.
“Don’t do this, Edilman,” I pleaded. “Please. It’s not worth it. You said we all need to fight together. You said—”
Outside, the air filled with a dozen dissonant roars. Something was different. The battle didn’t sound the same anymore. The monsters were much more vocal. Not as subdued as before.
“Time to go,” Edilman said. He dropped the Vanguard as Gobek and I were shoved to the floor. Edilman exited with the other monk. Bennock looked back into the wagon once more, then closed the door.
I got to my feet but before I could take a single step, the wagon tipped, falling on its side. Gobek and I were tossed against the wall. The disc landed next to Gobek’s head.
Outside, we heard screams: human, Aviard, par-Goblin. The screams were quickly drowned out as the monsters’ roars took over. I grabbed the once-glowing disc.
“This is how they controlled all the monsters,” I said to myself.
Callie and I had wondered how they maintained constant control when magic exhausted mages. This was how. The Sourcefire powered the control medallions through this master medallion. And now that the master was dead . . .
“Is not controlling monsters now,” Gobek whispered.
The wagon shook again. I cried out as we rolled over and over like a wheel. When we finally stopped, I snatched the Vanguard and scrambled out the door with Gobek.
Madness. Rebel and mage alike bolted helter-skelter as the monsters ran amok, destroying anything in sight. The spiderbats, realizing they were beaten, took off. Everyone else ran from the canyon as fast as they could. I looked around for Ma, Da, or anyone. That pause was enough time for a pair of skaiths to cut off my exit from the canyon.
The skaiths snarled and leaned back on their hind legs, ready to pounce. Suddenly, Gobek jumped in the air. In one swift move, he transformed into an Aviard. He grabbed me under my arms and flew us up out of the skaiths’ grasp.
Gobek’s wings flapped hard, taking us higher and higher. I looked down. From here, the shiny obsidian in the canyon looked like it was on fire. People poured from the bottleneck, scattering to avoid the rampaging monsters and running into the wastelands beyond.
“There!” I shouted to Gobek, pointing to where I saw Ma and Da running. Gobek dove and landed us in front of my family.
“By the Seven!” Ma cried, throwing her arms around me. “What are you—?”
“The mages can’t control the monsters anymore,” I said quickly.
“We’d figured that out,” Da said.
“Where’s the Dowager?” I asked. I scanned the crowd but she was nowhere in sight. And there was no sign of Maloch or Callie. Or Reena and Holm.
A plume of blue flame from a braxilar shot over our heads.
“We have to go!” Da shouted.
With Gobek at our side, we all joined hands and fled into the night.
PART THREE
THE SCOURGE
33
A Plague of Monsters
“A lie too-oft told casts the shadow of truth.”
—Lyraken Grimjinx, architect of the Kaladark mine plunder
It was called the Scourge, that much we knew.
In the three weeks following the Palatinate’s fall at the Battle of Obsidian Canyon—when they lost control of their monster army—the stories that filtered through the Provinces were wild and rampant, two parts fiction to one part fact. Sifting through the tales proved difficult. But no matter how gruesome the story, some facts remained the same.
The trouble started as a wisp on the horizon, a long black cloud mingling among the white. If you stared long enough, the wisp grew wider and darker. In an hour, it blotted out the skyline completely. The wisp became a wall that stretched from land to sky. And as it drew closer, you could hear it.
Distant chatter. Insects chirping in the forest at sunset. Then the chatter became a rattle, like hail beating on a steel roof. When the black wall eclipsed the sky, the noise became a unified wail. Pain, agony, torture. The sound nightmares make when they’re afraid.
By the time you heard the wailing, the stories all agreed, it was over. By then, the Scourge was upon you. Thousands and thousands of monsters descended, wiping out an entire town-state in a matter of minutes, leaving a mound of fiery embers. And nothing more.
Everything we ever knew was gone. Governments vanished. Communities disintegrated. Da said there was a name for what was happening: anarchy.
But only one name meant anything to anyone.
The Scourge.
“That one?”
“Elios.”
“That one?”
“Sorivol.”
“How about . . . that one?”
“Xaa. Everyone knows that.”
Years ago, when Nanni first moved into our house back in Vengekeep, she and I would spend whole evenings up on the roof. There, we’d lie for hours and she’d teach me all the constellations in the sky. She said it was important for a thief to know them. They could guide you hom
e if you ever got lost. Now, as we sat side by side on a different roof, she quizzed me on which stars I remembered. It was like the good old days.
They seemed so long ago.
“I was afraid you’d forget all this, moving off to Redvalor Castle with the Dowager. I bet she doesn’t quiz you on your constellations,” Nanni said with a sniff.
Not exactly. The Dowager and I used her telescope to look at the constellations, studying their movement in the sky and trying to learn more about them. I didn’t tell Nanni that though. I liked letting her think that the stars were something only she and I shared.
“You know,” I said, “some people think that stars are big balls of fire in the sky.”
Nanni frowned. “Well, that’s just naff-nut. The sky’s a dumb place to keep fire.”
We leaned back on the old flour mill’s thatched roof, staring past the overlapping moons toward the starry sky. I balanced near the edge of a gaping hole that opened up into the dusty attic below. Not the safest place, to be sure. But the roof was filled with holes. Safe was relative.
Far below, in the mill’s basement, what remained of the rebellion had gathered to discuss strategy. The Obsidian Canyon survivors had returned here three weeks ago to regroup. As stories about the Scourge’s carnage filtered in from all corners of the land, the Dowager made one thing very clear: we needed to build a new kind of army. We weren’t trying to liberate the Provinces from the Palatinate anymore. We were trying to save our land from destruction.
Most nights—like tonight—the “strategy talks” involved lots of arguing. Everyone had an opinion on what we should do next. These opinions tended to be very loud. After a while, Nanni and I would get tired of it all and head up to the roof. Here, we could at least pretend the world wasn’t coming to an end.
Nearby, a giant wooden waterwheel creaked as it turned, scooping up tubs of water each time it dipped into the rushing stream three stories down. I’d grown to love that creaking sound. I had no choice. The wheel’s axle was right outside my bedroom window. I heard it all night long.
I peered out to the eastern horizon. In the distance, a parade of tiny lights marched in a single-file line.
“There go some more,” I said. Every day, we saw numerous bands of refugees heading south. Many followed the stream just outside the mill. Sometimes, they came in small groups. Other times, entire villages wandered by.
“Harash porr glagg.” Nanni whispered the par-Goblin blessing as she did whenever we saw refugees escaping from the devastated north.
“Wish they were closer,” I said. “We could use some more news.”
This was how we learned what was going on in the world. With no governments, money was meaningless. Most people traded in two currencies these days: weapons and food. But we knew there was something of far more value out there.
Information.
When people wandered by, Ma and Da would grill them about where they’d been and what they’d seen. Then the Dowager would try to recruit them to join us. No one did. They just kept moving south. It was safer, so they said.
“We’ve heard the news,” Nanni said glumly. “None of it’s good.”
She was talking about what we’d learned just last week. A family from Merriton told us how the Scourge had descended on their town-state and reduced it to rubble. Just as the attack started, Blackvesper Abbey appeared outside the city gates. The monks, ready to fight, had barely started to emerge before the entire swarm of monsters reduced the tower to rubble. There was nothing left of the Abbey. Or the monks.
And if there were no survivors, then that meant Bennock . . .
“It hasn’t all been bad,” I said to distract myself. “Quite a few places have been spared.” In the early days of the Scourge’s onslaught, all we’d heard about was the devastation. We’d only recently started hearing about places the Scourge had left alone.
Nanni grunted. “That makes things worse. They attack randomly.”
Every refugee who’d shared information with us had said the same thing: the Scourge’s attacks made no sense. Some massive cities were laid to waste; others were spared. Tiny villages without any means of defending themselves were wiped off the map. How could we fight an enemy when we had no idea where they’d strike next?
“They’re monsters,” I said. “It’s not like they have to use logic. Maybe we need to think like monsters.”
“What we need,” Nanni continued, pointing straight down, “is for everyone to quit bickering so we can figure out what to do next.”
She had a point. The resistance hadn’t accomplished much in the past three weeks. Unless you count disagreeing, in which case we’d achieved master status. The one thing we could agree on was that the Scourge needed to be stopped before it destroyed everything. But we had no idea how.
“It’s strange the Scourge left Port Scaldhaven alone,” I mused. We’d learned about this from a group of refugees only yesterday. “It’s the second largest city in the Provinces. You’d think they’d destroy cities with large populations. It would cut back on resistance.”
“I’ve been to Port Scaldhaven,” Nanni said. “Highly overrated. The Scourge probably left it alone because the monsters couldn’t get a decent cup of singetea there.”
I laughed. “That’s it! They’re only attacking places that make great singetea. They want the rest of us to suffer without it.”
Nanni chuckled. The idea was absurd, of course. I pictured the Scourge on a search for the best singetea and only attacking those towns that possessed it. If that’s what they were really doing, then suddenly their attacks would make sense.
Yes . . .
The attacks would make sense if all the places under siege had shared something.
My mind raced. What if all the places that the Scourge had destroyed were linked? What if—no matter how big the town-state or how small the village—they all shared something in common? Something important to the Scourge.
I leaped up, stepped onto the top of the waterwheel, and rode it down. Just before it disappeared into the stream, I jumped off and ran toward the mill’s front door.
“Jaxter Grimjinx,” Nanni called down, “what are you doing?”
“Just the usual: saving the Provinces,” I yelled back up. “I get it now. The attacks aren’t random. The Scourge is looking for something!”
34
Is Death
“Choose allies slowly. Lose allies slower still.”
—The Lymmaris Creed
I cursed myself for not seeing it sooner. Huddling in the dark and fearing for your life can really be murder on your deductive skills.
I ran down the stairs to the basement. There were fewer people now than when I’d been here earlier. Most, I guessed, had grown tired of the yelling and gone upstairs to the second floor where we all slept.
Our leaders stood around a large table in the room’s center. As usual, Kendil and Mr. Oxter were at each other’s throats, seeing who could outshout the other. Luda stood nearby, watching them carefully. These days, most of her time was spent keeping those two from coming to blows. By contrast, Ma and Da sat calmly at the far end of the table, playing a round of giggly dice to pass the time.
“It’s very simple,” Kendil was shouting. “If we take refuge in a town the Scourge has already spared, we’ll be safe.”
“We don’t know why the Scourge spared them,” Mr. Oxter countered. “It may only be a temporary reprieve!”
As the argument got louder, Maloch gathered the seven seers, who were quietly playing card games in the corner, and led them upstairs. He often did this when things got heated. The seers had been through enough, he reasoned, and didn’t need to hear any more.
It had been some time since any of them had had a vision of the future. At first, I thought it was stress. Callie had said stress interfered with a seer’s abilities. And maybe that was true. But I began to suspect a far more sinister reason for the recent lack of prophecies.
They can’t see anything,
I thought, because there’s no future to see.
The Dowager paced back and forth, ignoring the heated debate. She’d been walking with a pronounced limp since the Battle of Obsidian Canyon. It was her only wound. She was considered lucky. Some of the survivors still hadn’t recovered from the burns and deep gashes they’d received. Many others—Oberax and most of the Sarosans—had never returned from the Canyon.
Every so often, the Dowager cast her eyes at the tabletop. It was covered with scraps of paper, each black with scribbles that represented the sum of our knowledge about the Scourge. In the center of the table was a large map of the Provinces. Every Scourge attack had been marked with a large red X. Like me, she suspected that the attacks weren’t random at all. She thought that if she glared at the map long enough, the answer would come to her.
This time, it had worked. Because I was here with the answer.
I grabbed the map, took a quill, and started circling all the places we knew the Scourge had been but had ignored.
“We haven’t been focusing on the fact that the Scourge is sparing some towns,” I told the Dowager, loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “They’re selective in the places they’re attacking. Which means . . .”
“. . . they’re looking for something,” the Dowager finished softly.
Nearby, Reena helped Holm to his feet. A large cloth bandage wove around his head diagonally, covering his left eye. Odds were he wouldn’t see out of it again. The siblings took their places at their father’s side along the broad edge of the table.
Reena scowled. “What could a plague of monsters possibly be looking for?”
A few people glanced over at Callie. As an apprentice mage, people kept expecting her to have more information on the Scourge than she had. Her face flushed.
“You’d have to ask the Palatinate,” she said coolly. “They didn’t share all their secrets with us apprentices.”
