“You must gather your things and leave now!” Maarkov said, overriding the father before he could speak.
“What? Who are you? Get out of my home! Leave my family alone!” the man shouted.
“Listen to me! You must leave! There is an attack on the town! You have to get out!”
The man seemed to really see Maarkov now, and his eyes widened in fear. He saw the man’s eyes dart from his face to his sword and back again, taking in his appearance as he did so. His stance abruptly changed, and he tried to herd his family into the space behind him in an attempt to keep Maarkov from getting to them.
“There’s something wrong with you…” the man began, but then there was a shriek from outside, the sound carrying in through the doorway.
It was the Hunter.
Maarkov turned his head to peer into the night, fear gripping his insides at the thought of being discovered. In the same instant he felt a warning instinct, and his muscles tensed as he whipped his sword free. There was a blur at the edge of his vision, and he’d reacted instinctively before he’d been able to think about it. He tried to pull the blow, but it was too late.
The blade that he’d spent so long sharpening went through the father’s neck cleanly, opening his throat. Maarkov had barely felt the shock of the blow through the sword. He watched in detached horror as the farmer fell forward, hitting the floor as he gurgled his last breaths into a puddle of his own blood.
The women screamed in unison, fearful and disbelieving cries erupting from three throats all at once. They abandoned their place behind the table and rushed forward to their husband and father as Maarkov backed away in surprised terror. He held his traitorous blade up to the light and regarded the light runnel of blood that trickled down toward the hilt as he turned it.
More blood to stain his hands. Another face to haunt his dreams.
The women were crying and cradling their man as he spluttered out his last breath. His blood soaked into their homespun dresses, and Maarkov noticed that the three daughters were all just growing out of their adolescent years. He felt odd noticing that at a time like this.
The man’s eyes turned to Maarkov as he died, and in them Maarkov could see pain, disbelief, and sorrow for his family. Those eyes drove home his failure, his embarrassment, and his cowardice. No matter what he did, he’d never be able to stem the flow of blood he’d started all those years ago. He could see that now.
Maaz would make strega from the women. That is, unless he chose one of them to feed upon. There was still something that Maarkov could do for them, one last kindness left to him. For some reason, he knew, Maaz couldn’t make the bodies into the strange animated corpses if they didn’t have heads. He didn’t know why, but he knew it was true. He’d heard his brother grumble about it in the past.
He felt sick, but it was the only thing he could do to help them now. These women wouldn’t leave their man here, and there was no way they could survive against Maaz’s power or the strega and their strange amount of supernatural strength and speed. If Maaz set the Hunter on them, they’d be dead even quicker. It was distasteful, but it was the only thing to be done. Maarkov set his jaw and moved forward.
He started with the mother.
He wondered if she’d thank him for keeping his blade sharp.
****
“Four gold marks apiece,” Allen said brightly, jingling his purse as they rode through the streets of Jerrantis, “Not a bad take, if I do say so myself. Who was that master of negotiation who garnered the deal? Oh yes, that’s right – it was me.”
Dormael smiled at his brother’s words, “Master of negotiation? I don’t think threatening to beat Binnael senseless if he didn’t come off with the money is much of a negotiation. It’s more like strong-arming.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t decide to tie him to the mainmast and use him for target practice,” Allen grumbled, “I was tempted. Hells, I’m almost tempted to hang around until nightfall and see who comes to pick up those crates. He still wouldn’t tell me where they were going, exactly.”
“It’s none of our affair, anyway,” D’Jenn said, talking over his shoulder from the front of the column they rode in, “We have to get out into the countryside. We’ve a long way to go.”
“No inn tonight? I was really hoping to get a bath in. That swamp we sailed through made me feel less than clean, you know,” Shawna said.
“I’m sure we’ll find a creek somewhere so you can pretty yourself up,” Allen said, “Plenty of opportunity to sneak off with my brother too, eh?”
Shawna stuck her tongue out at Allen and he laughed in reply. His jibes had failed to get a rise out of her lately. Dormael expected she was getting used to them, since Allen doled them out every chance he could get.
Jerrantis was really a beautiful city, if one took the time to look. The streets were a dark form of stone that Dormael hadn’t seen before, and he wondered where they’d come by it. Most of the buildings down by the docks had been built of timber, but the Farra-Jerrans had an odd sense of architecture. Everywhere there were arches and vaults, curling borders, and carved reliefs in columns, doors and frames. The Jerrans still enjoyed art in the old style. Most of their work employed curling, sinuous shapes that weaved in and out of each other to form intricate designs, or depictions of legends that emphasized features and impressions rather than realism.
The art was a strange contrast to the Jerrans themselves, who were a hardy people, and one of the most warlike tribes of the Sevenlands. Jerran men were mostly taller than average, burly and strong, and sported long beards in which they weaved trinkets, jewels, and trophies of war or contest. They favored tattoos in the same style as their art, and Jerran men were known for spending years of their life under the hammer and needle, getting large and intricate tattoos that had a theme and a moral to them. Dormael rather enjoyed Farra-Jerrans. They made very interesting company.
And the women…Dormael smiled broadly at the thought of the women. They were a fiery sort, and Dormael supposed they had to be in order to deal with the men, but Gods they were beautiful. Farra-Jerran women were mostly pale of skin, and had light colored hair that could span the hues between auburn shades all the way into a bright gold. The women used their own hair the same way that the men used their beards; weaving objects of beauty into them and wearing them with pride. There was a saying in the Sevenlands: Farra-Jerran women make the best wives if you can take a punch. It was true. Dormael had courted a few of them.
Another reason Dormael loved this city was the windmills. There were windmills everywhere in Jerrantis, powering everything from lumber mills to grain mills, and the Jerrans were masters at engineering. Not only were the windmills integrated into the city in every imaginable fashion, but they were also painted with designs and hung with streamers that made them appealing to the eye. It gave the city a sense of constant movement, and it was somehow soothing to Dormael.
The prospect of leaving the city without spending even one night here disappointed Dormael a little. He knew they had work to do, but he’d harbored a secret hope that they’d arrive too late to leave. It was just as well, though. If they stayed here, he’d undoubtedly get blindly drunk and would be useless in the morning.
So they rode past the shops displaying everything from swords to quills without stopping. They passed murals painted upon an entire section of a street, spanning over multiple buildings and lending them personality with swirling colors. They clucked to their horses and rode through choked markets where tradesmen cried everything from apples to trinkets made of the teeth of the Garthorin to the real Lost Treasure of Tirrin. Finally, they left the city, headed east, and Dormael glanced back at it with regret in his heart, until it faded into the distance and all that surrounded them was a waving sea of long grasses.
The quiet of the plains was unsettling after leaving the bustling din of the city. Dormael looked off to the north, where the tall craggy peaks of the Gathan Mountains reached toward the sky like greedy claws graspin
g at the clouds. Those mountains were forbidding, and their constant presence coupled with the quiet of the grassy hills gave Dormael an uneasy feeling of being watched.
They traveled in silence, all of them a little tired from the pace of the journey. Bethany had given up on tapping Dormael’s goatee against his saddle, and even she seemed a little subdued and introspective as they clopped through the deserted hills. The road they traveled was hard packed dirt, and Dormael thought it ran straight into Duadan, if he remembered anything about the maps of the land. They wouldn’t be going that far, though. If D’Jenn was correct, then Orm lay somewhere in the extreme north of Farra-Jerra, near the Gathan Boundary. They’d inevitably turn north before long.
That night they camped near the road, taking extra caution with making their fire small and manageable. A stray spark in these grasslands could set off a wildfire quicker than most people realized, but the companions were very careful about it. That night they ate pickled sausage and cheese, and D’Jenn and Dormael gave Bethany a mathematics lesson. The stars seemed incredibly expansive out here, and as Dormael laid down to sleep that night he thought of the strange dream that the armlet had sent him, where he’d been flying into the Void.
****
Dormael stood again on the stone walkway in the sewers beneath Ishamael. The scene was strangely quiet, and it took Dormael a second to realize what was different about it. It was the boilers – they weren’t making any noise. They were still working. Dormael could see steam bleeding out of the small vents in the bronze hoods over the giant pots, but there was no sound.
He stood looking up at the hood that he’d destroyed as he’d knocked that strange creature into it. It was distended, warped from the impact and the grip of his magic. There were also scorch marks along the outside of it, evidence of his use of lightning.
“I was wondering when you’d show up again,” Dormael said, sensing a presence beside him.
“Your mind is not the only place I exist at any given time,” Tamasis said. Dormael turned to regard him. He appeared as he always did, a young dark haired man wearing a dark robe. He was barefoot still, and his eyes still glowed with that strange green light.
“Where do you go when you’re not with me?” Dormael asked.
“Many places. Sometimes I am called back to my prison before I can find a way out, and sometimes I am here, with you. Sometimes I am able to move to other places, but never very far from you when I am in your world.”
“You brought me here,” Dormael said. It was a statement more than a question, but he wasn’t altogether sure of it.
“Yes, but this is your place. It is your memory. But it is also mine.”
“Sometimes you make about as much sense as a dull sword,” Dormael grumbled.
“I do not…wait…a dull sword. Yes, I understand. This is humor, correct?”
“Why are we here?” Dormael asked, ignoring Tamasis’s question.
“There is something you must see,” Tamasis said, indicating the twisted bronze hood.
“What am I looking for?”
“You will know it when it happens. This is a real event; it happened just after you left this chamber. Observe,” Tamasis said, flicking his wrist as if he were commanding the event to play out.
Dormael turned to watch the chamber, but was surprised to hear a grating, screeching noise issuing from the hood that he’d damaged. He turned his eyes to it, and watched as a clawed hand wormed its way from inside of the hood, wriggling back and forth as if to gain enough space to work. As it worked itself free, the hand grasped the edge of the hood and pushed at it, opening a wide space in the cocoon that Dormael had made of it.
Dormael’s mouth dropped open as the creature he’d defeated crawled forth from the twisted hood. Part of its head was crushed, and it had only one light shining through its undamaged eye, but the wound didn’t seem to affect the thing very much. It pulled itself free of the bronze prison, then crouched and leapt back to the walkway, scattering the gray salt of its companion’s corpse.
“What in the Six Hells is that thing?” Dormael muttered, “I threw enough power at it to vaporize the Gods damned creature. How did it survive?”
“Watch first, I will explain after,” Tamasis said.
The thing seemed to be acting sluggishly, as if it were stunned. It shook itself like a dog might after climbing from a river, and reached down to touch its left arm. Dormael saw now that the arm was mangled almost beyond recognition, and twisted around the wrong way. But the creature grabbed its own forearm and turned it one way, then the other, tilting its head as if considering the arm. Finally, it twisted it sharply, and the elbow socket lined back up. The flesh was still ravaged, but it could move the appendage again.
“Gods,” Dormael breathed in wonder and revulsion.
The creature’s one glowing eye flashed and it gazed off in the direction that Dormael and Allen had gone, as if it were considering following them, but then it turned its head down to the salty grit that it stood in. It crouched and grabbed up a handful of the stuff, letting it trickle through its fingers, sniffing it as it fell. Then, it did something very odd.
It crooned, and Dormael swore that it was an expression of sadness. It reminded him of the way an animal croons over a fallen pack mate, or something similar. Oddly, Dormael felt sorry for the thing, even though it had been trying to kill him and his brother. Finally, it raised its head sharply, as if something were calling to it. Salt sprayed into the air as the thing bounded off back the way it had come, moving faster than anything should be able to.
“What is that thing?” Dormael asked.
“It is a Hunter. Its purpose is exactly that. It was sent to find you, and kill you.”
“Well I gathered that much from the way it and its friend were trying to kill me that night. Where does it come from? What exactly is it?” Dormael asked, his irritation growing.
“It comes from a different place, a place of darkness. Its true form is amorphous, able to take on any shape it pleases. There aren’t many of them, even in their home. When they are summoned here, they must be placed into a vessel, else the fabric of your world will tear them asunder,” Tamasis explained.
“Asunder…nice word,” Dormael said, regarding Tamasis out of the corner of his eye.
“Thank you. What I wanted to stress to you is that once a Hunter has your essence, it can find you anywhere. It will follow you until it destroys you, or is destroyed itself,” Tamasis said.
“And this one is still alive. Its working for this Vilth, I imagine,” Dormael said in a frustrated tone.
“Yes.”
“How is it that these things are resistant to magic? I couldn’t sense them with my Kai, and my magic seemed to sort of resist touching them. Why is that?”
“I am not sure. Something about their nature makes them nearly immune to it.”
“You know what? How is it that you know all of this? You claim to be ignorant of almost every question I ask you, but then you show up and show me this, telling me exactly what I’m looking at and explaining it like you’re a Gods damned instructor in a classroom.”
“I know about the denizens of the other worlds because I can watch them from my prison. I have observed them over eons. Sometimes, things would be summoned to your world, and when that happened I could observe a small part of your world,” Tamasis said, as if he were confused about Dormael’s anger with him.
“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Dormael asked, throwing his hands up in the air in irritation at the young man.
“I am still learning to communicate with you. Your mind is a jumbled place, and gleaning your language from it is difficult, also you never asked me, specifically.”
“I did!”
“No. You asked me general questions that pertained to my nature and origins. Those questions are still out of my sight…I cannot answer them, yet.”
“Why are you helping me? Why are you here?”
“I…am intrigued. You found me.
My connection with you has somehow broken my bonds, and I want to know more.”
Dormael sighed, feeling a little sheepish about his anger. Tamasis looked at him with a confused expression on his face. It appeared comical, and again Dormael had the impression that he’d never used the expression before.
“So…you were imprisoned in a place where you could watch these things, but not my world.”
“Yes.”
A thought struck Dormael, and he felt a cold chill run down his spine, “How many creatures like these Hunters and the Takers were you able to watch? Were you near them, somehow?”
Tamasis scrunched his face up in thought and paced back and forth on the walkway for a few seconds before answering, “I am not sure if I was near them. But I was somehow able to watch the place where they live.”
“How many worlds like that were you able to watch?”
“Five others…there are different creatures that reside in each of them.”
“And you couldn’t watch my world, or any others?”
“No…only my own and the five other realms that I could somehow perceive,” Tamasis said, “Why? Does this mean something to you?”
Dormael backed away slowly, fear climbing his spine with cold fingers. If Tamasis had been imprisoned in some other place, a place where he’d been able to watch five other worlds and perceive no others…
The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs) Page 87
