by D. H. Aire
Stievan and the dwarves dragged two more bodies out of sight behind the bar, “You could have let us help, milady.”
Cle’or grinned, “You think she’s bad, you should meet the other one.”
“How’s Fri’il?” George vocalized with difficulty, concentrating upon his task.
His staff glowed blue, a warding light that protected them from further discovery. :Rear guard and safe enough, with Raven to look after her.:
“Good,” he muttered, glancing away, desperately trying to force back his mixed emotions.
:I can maintain the field stability at this level,: the enrapport staff offered.
Gripping, the staff harder, his slightly out of focus gaze abruptly centered upon Se’and, who looked at his with unfeigned concern. “I can not live the life you would demand of me,” he practically breathed, the sound was so quiet.
“I understand,” she answered, quickly turning away that he could not see the tears threatening to cloud her gaze. “Cle’or, take charge of this lot.”
“No!” exclaimed Stievan. “I’ll accompany the two of you. Tett and Spiro will go with the woman and Priest... One of us must be with you to serve as witness.”
Juels glanced at the frowning priest, still disconcerted by the sheer amount of violence the woman had so effortlessly displayed. The man Juels had thought merely a merchant not long ago nodded, “Very well. Cle’or there is another stair through there— no promises about what might be in your way.”
The two dwarves stood straighter, barely reaching the height of Cle’or’s shoulder. “Fear not, ManMage,” boasted Tett. “We shall defend them.” Spiro merely swallowed anxiously, while Cle’or grinned.
“That step, there, can trip you,” George warned, beginning his ascent up the main stair toward the rooms above. Se’and nodded and cautiously stepped over it to the next one, while Cle’or began to usher the others toward the back.
Stievan glanced back at his companions, then gingerly headed upward, warily edging around the warned step.
Frowning, the Priest said, “After the racket we just made, how could they not suspect we’re here?”
Grinning reassuringly, Cle’or gestured toward the fading glow of blue moving up the stairs behind them. “Believe me, no one else heard a thing.”
Juels gaped in awe as the dwarves nodded to one another. Tett whispered, “It is said that the ManMage will have great powers.”
“Well, lad, are you just going to stand there or are you coming?” Cle’or asked wryly.
The waif swallowed and hastened after them. Cle’or hung back only long enough for him to catch up. “Couldn’t you think of bringing a better weapon than a Priest?”
Grinning, the waif shrugged.
The darkness faced about. THERE IS NO ONE HERE, MASTER.
“What!” the Prince shrieked.
Terhun was ungently hauled to his feet, privately astonished by Gallen’s sudden absence, but he was not going to let these creatures know that, even as the Prince slapped him across the face. “What trick is this?! Where is that piteous urchin?”
“Urchin? What urchin?” Terhun replied with a malicious grin, though his split and bloody lower lip burned with pain. “Didn’t you know? I came here alone.” The Prince slapped him again.
The bonds that bound the gaping and confused Ruke were suddenly cut. His eyes widened, then he heard Andre’s sudden intake of breath an instant later, just as surprised at finding herself free. There was a reassuring touch on their arms, suggesting that they keep the appearance of being bound.
“Shalazzar, where is the urchin, Gallen?”
The darkness flickered at the edges, hinting at a monstrous form hidden in its depths. URCHIN NOR GALLEN IS TRUTH, echoed through their minds. THE LAD IS NOT WHAT HE APPEARS TO BE— AND IS NOT WHAT HE APPEARS TO BE.
“Stop your riddling! Answer as thee are bid! Where is the urchin?” he practically screamed.
The figure of darkness seemed to grow even larger. The heat in the room so unbearable that Mistress Melane’s makeup left smears as it dripped upon her garish dress. Slack-mouthed, she watched the creature as if mesmerized. It focused its attention just behind her, sensing the mischievous presence moving to hide behind her. He moved to obey his Master, took two great strides and tossed Melane’s bulk aside as the unseen presence danced away.
The woman shrieked as she struck the wall, bleeding from her nose and mouth. Her blood splattered the Prince who gasped in horror.
“Stop!” he desperately cried as the creature spun about like a cat trying to reach its quick prey. Yet, it was casting itself vainly at empty air.
Ruke and Andre chose that moment to break and run, while Terhun fought to stand, staring in horror at the sobbing, injured, and terrified woman opposite him. The Prince’s guards just stood there stupefied and aghast.
Ebb’s squad of urchins could not help but stare. This was their nightmare... There were blank-eyed children chained by an ankle to posts set at the corners of one of the larger rooms. They looked little different than the thin urchins themselves, whether boy or girl.
“Hey, what are you doing there?” remarked a lovely woman in bright hose and colored silk. “Hey, Syll, come out here and see what the eunuch’s let in!”
Women and several young men dressed in fine silks came out, glancing out of their rooms. One of the young men paled seeing a particular face, “Ebb, get out of here!”
The urchin stared at a face that was no longer that of a child— someone remembered fondly from the street but thought vanished without trace forever, “Harl!”
“Get out of here!” Harl shouted before one of the older women hit him cruelly.
Then the woman was grinning at the lads, “Come inside lads, we can show you some of the pleasures the public seeks here.”
Ebb stared at his long lost friend and began to grow truly angry. “The night tales,” was all he said to his staring wide-eyed squad. They blinked, then clutched their makeshift blades, whether simple shards of glass or honed pieces of metal, tighter. The adults stared at the burning hatred beginning to gleam in the children’s eyes.
The first eunuch to arrive at the commotion barely had time to threaten them with his whip— he screamed, overwhelmed by the screaming child rats, who stabbed him, heedless of any blows he or the other adults used to fend them off.
Their screams were enough to wake the dead. The painted women and men instantly cleared the hall, all save the gaping and bruised Harl, who simply stood there, staring at the blood.
Guards rushed down the hall toward the stair to the private levels above. A bloody body tumbled down toward them with a great cry of horror.
Gabriol was not fool enough to approach too closely as the sound of screams of fright and pain above them greeted his ears. “They’ve broken through,” he warned the others with him. “Fall back to support the Prince… We’d best make preparations to get out of here!”
The men ran as the corpse of the eunuch tumbled down the steps, then they raced into the cross section. The lead man jerked backward, twin hiltless daggers jutting from his face, his dead weight driving his companion backwards.
Two dwarves leapt over the sprawled bodies and struck with their silver long knives. The melee began. Gabriol looked back to see an urchin covered and dripping in blood, warily glancing out from the base of the stair. He was a professional, not to be deterred. The Prince needed him now more than ever. He heard the clash of swords behind the dwarves and knew he would have to be quick.
Leaving his men to fight as best they may, Gabriol fled into a nearby room and shut the hidden bolt closed, barring the door firmly behind him. There were hidden passages throughout the building, provide discrete access and observation. If you knew precisely how, they could take you anywhere in the building. “I serve,” he intoned, keying a concealed catch, the panel swung wide and he entered darkness.
Oppressive heat. Terhun backed away, Ruke and Andre fighting to steady him, while the guards edged toward
the opposite side of the room afraid of the dark creature unleashed.
“Stop! I say!” the Prince shrilled as the darkness billowed.
It reluctantly came to a halt and turned back to face its Master, AS YOU COMMAND.
“What trick has been played upon me?” the Prince demanded, glaring at the freed youths.
THE ONE YOU SEEK IS HERE, I CAN FEEL THAT ONE’S PRESENCE. IT HIDES FROM US, MASTER.
“Impossible!” the Prince exclaimed, even as he began to note the noise outside. “What is that racket?”
SCREAMS FROM THOSE ABOVE AS THEY WITNESS DEATH AND
SOUNDS OUTSIDE OF THE DEATHS OF YOUR MINIONS, MASTER.
Blanching, the Prince gaped, disbelieving as the sound of clashing arms became clearer and closer. “Protect me! Kill my enemies!”
AS YOU WILL, MASTER, replied the dark image, which instantly reacted by spreading itself thin. It seeped through the walls to its right and left and flowed downward into the very cracks in the floor. The wood warped at the unnatural heat, creaking eerily before the creature vanished.
Terhun coughed, “You fool! You’ve likely just killed us all!”
The Prince merely laughed, holding up the charm, “As long as I wield this, I have no such fear. But well you should.”
George frowned, noting shadow where no shadow should be. It was utterly dark, where his staff’s light should be providing illumination.
:George, the temperature has just risen twenty-eight degrees in the last ten seconds.:
Stievan gasped, “What is it?”
“Something loosed from Hell, I believe.” George replied as Se’and struggled to get a better grip upon her short sword, the sweat pouring down her face, down her arms, and threatening her hold. George raised his staff before him and shouted, “Enable!”
The staff flared with a light that dazzled Se’and and puzzled the dwarf beside them. It was like no light that he had ever before seen, it was indescribable, and it burned the darkness like nothing it had ever known before. The reaching swelling shadow shrieked, recoiling in agony, unable to hide from the overpowering light that bathed it even as it retreated.
Elsewhere, Spiro cried out in warning to his companions. Darkness poured upward from the floor, swallowing up the sprawled corpses. Cle’or cried for them to get back. The fallen blood smoldered, touched by the evil presence, rising before them.
Tett shouted, brandishing his silver sword, “Demon, we fear you not!”
The darkness welled over their heads and moved to crush them as the floorboards warped under the stress of the sudden heat. Juels stared in horror as the aged Priest merely smiled and raised his hands over his head. “From Dark Nothing, spun we,” the Priest sang joyously. “Elf passed into existence by the spark of magic of joined heaven and earth. That to ever be both their boon and bane. The dust of the earth bore Man, his spirit breathed into him by the Creator of All! He who has never forgotten us! He who looks upon us and comes to our aid as Elf and Man were made to come to each other’s aid at the beginning of the ending time...”
The darkness seemed to quake. Nothingness remembered, Nothingness feared. LIFE! It cried. I AM ALIVE! Yet, the words sung by the priest carried true power, power that recognized its uncanny exist not at all.
Light burned it otherwhere, knowledge burned it here. The imperative to KILL MY ENEMIES rang through it. The edges of it began to fray into oblivion. It knew real fear then and fled both the song and the light, knowing that the Prince’s imperative was to threaten its very existence. Desperate, it sought cunning as the means of answering its imperative. Purpose would give it focus.
True agony reached it from a source undreamt. It started as a twinge in his hand. The Prince’s fingertips spasmed around his grasp of the upheld glowing charm. He cried out as flames engulfed his hand.
Cursing in shock, the Prince threw down the charm in unthinking reaction, gaping as the fire and pain instantly vanished. Clutching his hand, he stared about him.
The Guards rushed forward as the lad, Gallen, appeared before them, tired but exultant. He held the malevolent charm in his hands. “It certainly doesn’t look like much.”
Terhun wasted little time; he threw himself forward into the knees of the onrushing guards. The men fell, shouting as Ruke and Andre leapt into the fray.
Gallen sighed, “I’d leave off, were I you, gentlemen.”
The men abruptly rose and edged back as the feared darkness returned, seeping out of the walls and coiling before the urchin leader.
MASTER! It fawned, executing a subservient bow.
The Prince wailed, “NO!”
Prophecy’s Price
7
There were screams and the muffled sounds of the clash of arms. That was enough for Fri’il, Terhun’s men, and the nearest half dozen urchins. They raced toward the bordello.
One of Terhun’s men went down, an arrow in his arm, then there was an awful cry and a “dagger” was knocked off a rooftop by a pale falc soaring upward. Fri’il searched for other attackers, but other than urchins and Terhun’s guard, there was no further sign of enemies.
Colvin grinned, glancing up at an urchin perched in a second floor window. The all clear was given. The “Daggers” were either dead or fled. Not bad for a Rat and a few friends, he thought wryly.
Fri’il reached the doorway even as Raven flew back out of the low hanging thick gray clouds. She shimmered, coming to ground. Urchins and guards alike gaped as feathers faded, replaced by fur. The beast they had seen all too often padded to Fri’il’s side as she paused to glance back before nodding to the beast and bursting through the door.
Swallowing anxiously, Colvin signed Clawd and several older boys to follow as escort, while he remained behind as rear guard.
Terhun’s wounded man was pulled out of sight into the alley across the way, when the first urchin urgently signaled hearing the sound of men and horses behind the wall of fog. Colvin signaled everyone to get out of sight.
The sound of men walking their horses reached their ears. Colvin watched cautiously from the alley’s entrance, staring at the eight Imperials struggling to pull their uneasy quivering mounts through the fog. “Blasted Magery!” their captain rasped.
Juels tried not to look at all the blood and death as Ebb’s advance scouts came into view.
The elderly priest stared a moment in amazement at the gore the children had amassed upon clothes and their jagged daggers. Cle’or took charge, ignoring it all, “Status of your squad?”
“We’s tak’n some knocks and cuts, nothin’ serious, the’,” the lad said, flushed and trembling with reaction. “We’s blocked in the ladies and the like in dere rooms… but dere’s also lots o’ Rids up dere. Don’ know how we can free ‘em.”
The Priest quickly came forward, “We can’t leave the children in this place.”
Cle’or nodded agreement, “We’ve little time. Tett, Spiro, give what help you can.”
“I’m going with them,” the priest stated, adamantly.
She gestured for him to follow the urchins as they climbed over the body of the eunuch. He did not hesitate.
Juels, on the other hand, murmured, “Min’ if’n I tag along, milady?”
Cle’or glanced at the lad wryly, seeing him stand straighter and could not help but chuckle. “I think I saw that other one head into this room, here.” She turned the knob quietly, but it refused to open.
Grinning, Juels brushed past her to the door, “Allow me, ma’am.” Juels slid his blade under the knob, popping it out, then began twisting gently inside. The bolt slid free. “After you.”
Cle’or burst inside to find the room empty; she frowned and muttered, “Any ideas.”
Juels looked about musingly, then smiled broadly noting the lay of the lace across the room. It moved as if by a breeze— in a room without a window.
His sergeant muttered, “We don’t know that they came this way.”
“Don’t we?” Yates responded, glancing about the empty
street. “This is the focus— look at your sword, man!”
The Imperial blades were now burning with golden fire lacing the runes wrought into their design. Dark magery was afoot— justifying his instinct in following the Cathartan garbed horsewoman and her pursuer.
“Uh, Captain...” murmured one of his men. “There are some very conspicuous bodies lying over there.”
Grinning, Yates replied, “Gentlemen, I hear fighting— coming from in there. Follow me.”
None seemed particularly eager, noted the cloaked figure standing just within the mist.
George closed his eyes. The room before them was where the Summoning led. It jangled his nerves, warning him that something was very wrong and dangerous within.
Se’and moved to precede him, his right arm moved to stay her. “No,” he whispered distantly as Stievan raised his silver sword just a bit higher. “Probe,” he mumbled, his enrapport mind expanding tentatively outward.
His mind elsewhere, his right hand plucked his strange blade from his sash, giving it to Se’and who stared.
:My friend, I believe you will have need of this,: said the voice in her mind she knew to be Je’orj’s staff’s.
Se’and accepted the weapon and anxiously waited.
Gabriol reached the peephole to the room. He gaped only momentarily at the Prince and his once bound prisoners inside.
WHAT DOES THY NEW MASTER BID ME? Cringed the Dark, seeming somewhat shorter of stature than when it went to obey the Prince’s curtailed command.
Andre struggled to her feet, a new bruise welling as she looked at the frightened and silent guards. Ruke helped Terhun to stand as they gazed from the creature to Gallen, to the sputtering and disbelieving Prince.
“You’re mine!” the man cried piteously desperate. “You are bound the words writ in my blood upon that stone!”
The darkness focused on its former master, NEW MASTER, GIVE ME LEAVE TO EAT THIS ONE’S SOUL.
