Suri, and all the other mercenaries, were behind the shifter when he roared. Still, she dropped her sword without second thought and covered her ears with both hands.
Her vision went wavy. She tried to rise to her feet, but her center of balance was off. She pitched over like a drunken sailor. All the mercenaries were sharing the same, overpowering experience. All but Raja and the lieutenant, who stood hunched over, jaws clenched and teeth bared. Veins throbbing at their temples as they managed to stay on their feet through strength of will.
It was a good thing too, because the fae in the jeans had protected himself from the shifter roar and launched a frenzied attack at the mercenaries atop the wall. As Suri watched, he scored a cut along the arm of tiger shifter lieutenant, who was doing everything he could to survive.
On the courtyard, the wall of steel collapsed. The line of charging guards writhed and twitched on the dirt, clutching their heads. Their helmets had only served to enhance the volume of the roar, letting the sound echo next to their ears. One of them had stopped moving.
The girl with the short black hair no longer glimmered green. She levitated off the ground, rising higher, to the height of the wall. A psionic shield surrounded her like a bubble, distorting the air and blurring her features.
Suri eyed the girl with great caution. She didn’t count on being able to muster a defense if the girl casted another spell.
But the girl retreated to the wall, and took up position behind her friend. Suri climbed uneasily to her feet, and watched the girl vomit. No more spells from you for a while, Suri thought, with a grin. And with the armored men disabled, perhaps permanently, the way was clear to enter the keep.
The Black Gauntlet mercenaries in the courtyard staggered back into a group. The girl had blasted a yawning hole into keep’s tower. An opening wide enough for four people to walk abreast.
The mercenaries didn’t have to wait for orders. They ran inside to find the leader of their assault party. Waylan dressed in his black leathers, had snuck inside the tower nearly an hour ago.
Suri threw a globe of light into the main hall. It floated up to the ceiling, and stopped beneath an unlit chandelier.
The inside was hollow. Empty of furniture and adornment, and making it clear that Turndour was a fake facade. It wasn’t a keep at all. The only occupants lived below, in the dungeon.
The way down was obvious because there was nothing else to look at other than bare stone walls. The mercenaries ran inside. The gorilla shifter grabbed the bars of the gated door against the wall, and ripped it off. Two guards lay slumped on the ground on the other side, both still clutching their spears, throats leaking blood.
Waylan’s handiwork.
Suri had only seen Vestrix’s second lieutenant from a distance. Waylan’s reputation, and appearance, was enough to confirm that he was the polar opposite of the tiger shifter, in both temperament and skill.
No one threw spells at their backs, or so much raised a sword to stop the Black Gauntlet assault squad from going down the steps that led to the dungeon.
24
“The flare!” Augustus shouted, at Mona. “Shoot it into the sky!”
Mona coughed. Wiped her lips on the shoulder of her cream-colored shirt. Her mind still reeled from tapping into the behelit seed. Only the enchanted emeralds fastened into her clothes had stemmed the flow of magic, and saved her from overcharging.
That was close. I almost burned out.
Mona smiled.
But I didn’t. The gems worked. And I casted the spell that Lord Hyde taught me.
The Masters would never have shown Mona the kame spell, not in a hundred years. It was unknown to even the Demon Hunters Guild.
But not to Lord Hyde. He knew everything, or so Mona thought. What’s more, he was actually teaching her new and wonderful spells. He was a real teacher, pushing her limits. Trying to get her to advance as a mage, and rapidly.
Mona slowly righted herself. Lord Hyde has big plans. He wants me to be ready for what’s coming. I can’t fail him now. Not ever.
The seed had already replenished her magic. Besides Mona’s aching eyeballs, heartburn, and intense nausea, it was as if the kame spell had never happened. She had magic to sling spells for days.
She would need the behelit seed itself, in her possession, to take full control of her newfound power. With the side effects fully negated, she would be able to cast spell after spell without being hit by magic sickness, or worrying about her mind burning out. Even the enchanted emeralds were not enough. They had negated the effects, but Mona’s mind hurt. It was difficult to describe. The closest thing to it, that she had felt, had been in her junior year when she’d stayed in the library all day and night studying for a final exam. Reading books by candlelight until 4AM. Forcing herself to stay awake, to keep reading and making notes, until her mind turned to mush and she could do little more than walk like a zombie back to her dormitory and collapse into her small, single bed.
Years of training since that night had hardened Mona’s mind, and given her greater endurance. She stood on the narrow wall of the keep. Augustus fought in front of her, driving back the insolent mercenaries. But their leader, a tiger shifter holding a red blade staff, was shaking off the effects of the gorilla shifter’s roar. He would soon be back to normal, and the others as well.
Not so with the guardsmen. The captain, the older man with the long jaw, lay curled on his side on the barren courtyard ground. A patch of fire burned next to him, sending smoke into his face. He did not turn away, eyes holding the undead quality of a thousand-yard stare.
Useless. It’s all on us now.
She uttered the words of the flare spell that Lord Hyde had taught her, aimed it high, and let it soar out from her fingertip.
The flare rose into the sky like a shooting star, burning bright and hanging high above the courtyard. Mona did not know exactly what help it would bring.
There is something that Augustus hasn’t told me.
Mona and Augustus could easily escape from Turndour. The mercenaries were intent on getting within, and would not dare to play the game of chasing them through the streets of Lodum. So the flare had not been to save their lives.
More reinforcements? But then why not call for them earlier?
One of the emeralds on Mona’s sleeve flickered, and went dark. The internal light, the enchantment, gone. Overwhelmed by the magic that Mona had channeled from the behelit.
I must have the seed.
The other option remained. The one that Yonafrew and all of the other nobles had chosen.
Become a vampire. Drink blood to rejuvenate. Become a predator…
The young mage clutched her head and slumped back down. The prospect of continuing to use the behelit without being a vampire did not strike her as wise. It would only be a matter of time until her connection to the seed became too strong, too uncontrollable, and her mind fried from magic overload.
And the only reason I’m of any use to the Hyde family is because of the seed.
The decision was an easy one. As Mona watched Augustus battle dance with the tiger shifter, she decided then and there to take her mentor’s advice and become more than human. ‘The third race,’ he had called it. ‘Greatest of them all.’
Mona licked her lips.
Soon I will have the full power of the seed. I will crush these rebels, and take my revenge.
A foul odor came up from the first level of the dungeon. Suri put a hand to her nose and slowed her gait to a walk. The mercenaries with her ran on without care.
Perhaps they were expecting it.
It was aggravating. Suri had learned practically nothing about Black Gauntlet from Vestrix. Even less about the character of the Blackwater family. The great black tome of her family history consisted of dry record keeping. The start of it, at least. The few chapters that Suri had read, out of a total two thousand pages.
The fighters all around her had a better sense of what was going on, yet Suri, by Vest
rix’s account, was the key to their ultimate victory over Lord Korka. They must have been fighting him for a long time.
Suri was the only one surprised to find, at the bottom of the stairs, a row of cells fitted with chains and dirty stable straw. The occupants wore rags. Filthy, unwashed. The source of the foul odor.
The mercenaries rushed past them, hardly giving the prisoners any notice. Ignoring their pleas, shaking them off as the prisoners reached out between the bars of their cells with spindly arms to clutch at the mercenary’s sleeves. Many could not even do that much, being chained to the far, stone wall. Those prisoners were the dirtiest, had the longest, matted hair, and wild eyes. They also called for help, rattling their chains in desperation.
Suri stopped, frozen in the middle of the long corridor leading to the next gate, and the next flight of stairs. Her eyes brimmed with tears. A mercenary coming from behind bumped into her shoulder as he ran past.
Suri couldn’t tear her gaze away from cells. The prisoners were all fae, but it made no difference. They were suffering. Tortured. Skin fish-belly white from lack of sun…No, it was more than that. More than lack a lack of outdoors and a healthy diet. It was if something had drained their vitality. But the dungeon, so far, lacked the signature, unremovable smell of oil and brimstone. Black magic was not in play. Not recently. Not that it meant much. There was a whole range of ways to make a living thing suffer. All one needed was an imagination.
There was one prisoner who did not cry for help. Her cell was the same as the others, but even dirtier. The straw covering the floor looked like it hadn’t been replaced in years. The fae woman’s thick hair hung down past her hips and was so dirty that Suri could not tell its natural color.
She met Suri’s eyes with a steady gaze of her own. Rose, and walked forward in her cell until her chains went taut. The woman was as pale as the others. The difference was the intelligent gleam in her eyes. She had not yet become a crying, blubbering mess begging for escape.
Suri felt herself drawn to the prisoner. She walked to the cell door and grabbed the bars. The woman said one word.
“Please.”
Lorace ran past Suri. She looked back, seeing Suri standing still and near the cell. “Come on,” she said. “This place is huge. We need to hurry.”
“What about the prisoners?” Suri asked, again turning her gaze on the whole of the first subterranean floor of the Hyde dungeon. There were ten cells in total. Ten prisoners.
Lorace shook her head. “Don’t waste your time on them,” she said, as if explaining the obvious. “Who knows what they did to end up here. Could be dangerous.”
“I’d be dangerous too, if I was locked up like this.”
Lorace shrugged. She adjusted the grip on her longsword, leather glove rubbing against the hilt. Glanced over her shoulder at the next doorway, which had been broken apart minutes ago by the silverback gorilla. “Have it your way,” she said, and ran on.
“Wait!” Suri called, but Lorace was already gone. Running for the stone steps leading down. Pulling up a black bandit’s bandana up from where it hung around her neck to cover her face. The moment it covered the lower half of her face, a rune stitched into the cloth with yellow thread began to glow. As the rune activated, Suri swore she saw Lorace’s ears shrink to human size.
She looks human! Why would she be wearing a glamour?
Suri had assumed that she was the only human at Black Gauntlet. Perhaps she had been wrong. She had, after all, only seen a small fraction of the guild’s members.
Suri returned her attention to the prisoner with long hair. The woman had waited, watching the exchange in silence. For the first time since their eyes met, she looked away and slowly turned her stare to the lock on the cell door.
Suri called to mind an acid spell to melt the metal—paused, as she remembered Clarissa. Rescuing the young chef from her shop, guiding her through the burning wreckage of the human district. Being slowed down, distracted. Almost caught and killed by goblins. Suri had been lucky to escape into the catacombs.
Suri let out a deep sigh. I’m thinking about it too much. Trying to rationalize the wrong decision, when I already know what I have to do. The criminal past of the prisoners did not matter. No living thing deserves this treatment.
Suri finished her spell. Drops of acid dropped from her index finger, like a leaky faucet. As it dripped, she walked to all of the cell doors. Suri steeled herself from the horrible stench that came from the prisoners, some of whom shouted in her face and grabbed at her arm when she walked past.
One by one, the locks on the cell doors melted off. The prisoners stumbled out of their cells for the steps leading up to the surface. They ran as best they could on thin legs, laughing and crying in joy.
Suri couldn’t watch. It was likely that many would die in the courtyard, or be recaptured. But whatever their fate, it had turned for the better.
Some of them must have a place to go, Suri told herself. They wouldn’t all be locked up for nothing.
Suri brought her acid to the manacles of the four special prisoners chained to their cell walls. They ran off after the others. All but one.
The fae woman with long hair calmly stepped out of her cell. She rubbed the red on her wrists from where the metal manacles had scraped against her skin. At only a little over five feet in height, she was amazingly short for a fae. And her ears, Suri noticed, as the woman leaned over and shook her hair, were twice as long as those on any fae that Suri had seen. Twice as long as Suri’s own.
“You are here for the human,” the woman said, looking at Suri again with her steady gaze. Now that there was nothing between them, Suri felt the full weight of the woman’s gaze. Somehow, she felt the shorter of the two. And suddenly self-conscious of how she looked, when by all reason it should be the other way around.
The woman did not move to leave. Suri did not know what to do, so she simply spoke her mind.
“You aren’t the same as the others,” she stated. “Why?”
“Wai,” the woman repeated, in a strange accent. “They are city-dwellers. Minds, weak.”
It was an answer, of sorts. “I can’t help you get out,” said Suri, turning to leave. “I have to join the others.”
The woman’s hand shot out and clutched onto Suri’s forearm. She was skin and bones. Suri shivered at the woman’s touch, but did not pull away. The woman’s heavy gaze held Suri in place, telling her it would be a grave mistake to leave without permission. The hand squeezed, small skeletal fingers digging into Suri’s flesh.
“Hakomi will not forget,” she said. Then, abruptly, she let go of Suri’s arm and walked for the exit. Gliding, a pale ghost, over the ground.
Suri shook herself back to her senses and made her way to the opposite end of the dungeon corridor.
How many more levels are there? And where will we find councillor Weathers?
25
A flare lit up the sky above Turndour keep. It hung suspended in the air and slowly began to fall, miles above the stone tower.
Vestrix flew on, catching a gust of wind and riding it high into the air. From where she flew, Lodum looked small. Insignificant. Tiny clusters of buildings, tiny threads of road. But inside…on the ground…plots and schemes abounded. If the public ever got wind of them, it would be the end of Faerie as they knew it.
The same story of every empire.
The Lady of Arrows would keep her secrets. They were a coat of armor more powerful than any of her spells.
Information is the lever of the world.
It was her spies, questing for information, who had first told Vestrix of the young, human courier from Earth. ‘She has red, curly hair,’ they said. ‘Her face and eyes, they are just like his.’ They had been so certain that they had found her. The One. The half-breed who would bring Faerie and Earth together in a peace that would last ten thousand years. It was prophecy.
And so Vestrix had discretely sent an envelope for the human girl to deliver. Not knowing that she
would find the girl days later in her guild house! A strange turn of events that even Hundred Eyes did not predict.
But Vestrix had not been the only one with open eyes and ears. Lord Korka was far older than Vestrix. He had been searching for Suri half of his life. It was a small miracle that she had found Suri first, and secured her within Black Gauntlet’s stronghold. Where the girl could train and learn and become the women she was destined to be…
No more! Hundreds of years of searching. I finally find her, and the girl runs off right under my nose!
Vestrix dove free of the gust of wind, lowering her altitude. Another minute and she would arrive at the tower. It was unwise to expose herself in the middle of Lodum, in a fray on Hyde property. Should her enemies find out, the skirmish would quickly spiral into chaos. But if Suri was in danger…
I will watch, and wait. Only play my hand if there is no alternative.
The Lady of Arrows slowed her descent and began to circle high above the tower. Her raven eyes saw clearly the battle taking place on Turndour keep’s battlements, atop the wall, and the corpses and fires littering the small, barren courtyard. She saw too the smoking hole in the side of the keep, and knew at once that the mercenaries had made their way inside.
Waylan, Yiali, Vestrix prayed, invoking the names of her two junior lieutenants. Do not fail me!
She was watching the drawbridge, and the tall hedges bordering the keep on all sides, when a huge gust of wind bowled her over. Vestrix scrambled, rapidly flapping her wings to regain her balance.
Another gust, as powerful as the last, came a moment later, sending Vestrix spinning through the air.
Damn this raven form! It was small, discrete and agile. Exactly what she required to traverse the city and go about her appointments. But so flimsy! She was glad that no one was around to watch the Lady of Arrows, Archon of the Black Gauntlet mercenaries, flutter and spin. Rolling through the air, only to be knocked off balance again by the next gust. They were like clockwork, coming from higher than she was flying.
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