“What interests? All of our agents in the city are dead. If Stel gets the iron, they’ll have to rely on Hamanu. He would give us control over the iron mines anyway. Especially after he finds out Vordon has committed soldiers to Tyr’s defense. We’d have to use slaves to quarry the iron. It’s just too expensive without them.”
Melech scowled.
“I’m not advocating slavery, Melech. It’s just the way it is. Tyr’s free now. And it’s special. I think … I think Tyr needs to be free. But even if the city does fall, destroying Kalak has signaled a change to these lands, a call to action. I wouldn’t be surprised to see others follow suit.”
“You’re not making any sense,” said Melech.
“Look, I’m just saying Tyr should be free to work out its own fate, without the merchant houses pulling strings and manipulating innocents. I don’t give a damn about the iron or what my house wants. Not anymore. The only way they’ll be able to make a ceramic piece on iron is through slaves. Slavery isn’t coming back to Tyr unless Urik first kicks down its walls.”
“Then why bother to warn Talara?” Melech asked.
“Thaxos. He intends something. If he succeeds, everything falls apart. Tyr collapses. The merchant houses go to war. Talara is the one with the best chance to stop Thaxos. If she’s still alive.”
Melech nodded but he didn’t look convinced. “You’re a strange woman,” he said.
“I know,” she said, grinning.
The ropes bit into Loren’s arms. They chewed on his skin, already slick with blood. Loren had lost feeling in his arms hours earlier, just before he gave in to the darkness and embraced the relief unconsciousness offered. Yet he found no haven in the darkness. Disturbing visions troubled his dreams, swimming up from memory to show him those innocents he had cut down, faces pinched with hunger, toothless mouths round and screaming for mercy, wet eyes of those who had lost everything—families, homes, villages—to his thirsty blade. The guilt squeezed his heart, pangs sharp enough to rip him from unconsciousness, to the world of pain, blood-gummed eyes, and shame.
Raising his head was an accomplishment. He didn’t know where he was. Everything was a brown smear, a bouncing, uneven mass of sickening color. He shook his head and tried to focus. The smell was astonishing, a rancid rot he realized came from himself and from the dead marching alongside the wagon bearing him. He remembered.
Temmnya had ensorcelled him. She seized his mind with dark magic and made him her slave. He had fought her. He had struggled against her vile influence. And he had lost. She made him do things, terrible things, making of him a butcher and tormentor, all while she stood by, watching and laughing, clapping her hands with each new evil she forced him to perform. Aeris had been there, face stony and green. Even he could not bear what Loren did under her spell. Loren took small pleasure in Aeris’s noisy vomiting.
When Temmnya was no longer amused, she had her slave tribe warriors haul him up to a wooden post and mounted it on a wagon like a mast on a silt skimmer. He remembered her saying, “Aeris, what do you think of our fine, new battle standard?” Loren hadn’t heard the mage’s reply and lost consciousness when the jouncing wagon began to roll on. Zombies, hitched like beasts to its traces, never tired as they pulled. Loren had hung there for days as her army traveled toward Tyr. He would have cried out, but thirst had swollen his tongue and the useless organ stuck out from his mouth, cracked and blackened. If there would be any consolation to his sorry fate, it would be getting to see the city of his birth one last time.
Melech left Alaeda at the Stadium Gate. They slipped into the city with the refugees. They sought shelter in the city, begging for the king’s protection. At first Melech had thought they were speaking of the approaching Urikite force. The snippets he heard told a different tale. They suggested some new threat rising from the south, an army of corpses. Many believed it was Kalak returned from the grave to punish the wayward citizens for their disloyalty, for freeing the slaves, for his murder, and for any of a half dozen other justifications. Melech thought about asking for more information until a fight broke out between a noble’s entourage and several ex-slaves. What began as an isolated melee soon swept out of control, involving the few templars and guards who tried but failed to restore order.
They exchanged no farewells when they split. Alaeda hadn’t asked for her dagger back. He ran off on feet torn and bloody from their crazed race to the city. Phytos’s mob would be hot on their heels, and when they showed, they would be as fire to the tinder. They’d throw the whole damned city into flames. An armed mob was all Tyr needed. The city’s best warriors were out, fighting in the field, leaving only boys and old men to guard the door.
He had never felt more of a stranger in the city than he did at that moment. People watched him wherever he went, and he saw in each face the master who wanted him dead.
He followed the main path to the stadium walls, great, fat columns holding up the seats for the rabid crowds who once gathered every so many days to watch the drama of life and death unfold on the killing floor. There, he followed the columns to the northeast until he had moved beyond the great arena and reached the ziggurat dominating the city’s center.
Melech had bare threads of an actual plan. He didn’t know where he would find the elf. He guessed Torston would know where his quarry hid. Not that Torston would be at all cooperative; Melech was supposed to be dead, and the old crime lord hated it when things didn’t go according to plan. Melech would get his master to talk even if he had to cut off all the man’s fingers and toes. Melech didn’t have a lot of hope for success. He expected Torston to kill him.
Melech thought about lying low, maybe at the Golden Inix, at least until he could hitch a ride on a caravan for someplace, anyplace else. The desert was no place for him, though, and he doubted Mila would welcome him back. He was certain she wouldn’t if he told her Torston wanted his head. He realized he hadn’t done a thing for the Inix’s lady. He hadn’t had the chance to bring the matter up to Torston. Melech guessed Mila was paying out coins for protection like everyone else in the damned city and cursing Melech’s name with each one she dropped in her “protector’s” hands.
He sighed, knowing there was nothing he could do for her or anyone else. The best he could hope for was to get revenge or die trying.
Korvak wasn’t sure how long he had been a prisoner or how long he had wandered the tunnels after the dwarf died, but he wept like a child when he came up through a dreaming den’s floor. By the look of the place, it was in the Warrens, all run down and shabby. The tile players seated around a table looked up with alarm when they saw him staggering up the steps. Their fear turned into disgust. They made warding signs against evil when they saw the gore covering his face and arms, the filth clotting his sodden robes.
He stood dumbfounded by the light. He wiped blood and filth from his face. A rough-handed dwarf grabbed him and led him off to a private room. Korvak didn’t expect the act was done from kindness, but rather to assuage paying customers. The dwarf left him there on a cot with a cup of broy in his hand while he went off to calm frightened patrons and deflect their questions.
The room was small. A pot held sand for scrubbing, and a cracked mirror hung on a wall. The cot was lumpy and stained, little more than a large sack stuffed with sand or rocks, as it felt to Korvak’s seat. Korvak drained the cup and tossed it to the floor.
He reached for the pot and scooped sand to scrub away the dirt.
Looking at the pot brought him back to the quiet moments after Pakka’s death. He had left the dwarf where she lay. After all, there was little left but ashes. Before he continued his wandering, he had inspected the pattern the woman had scrawled on the floor. He knew enough about sorcery to know it was some sort of portal, a summoning circle, once activated, able to let something through. He didn’t know what would come through, but he did not want to wait around and find out what it was. He scrubbed out the chalk as best he could and wandered the tunnels until he escaped.
>
The dwarf returned. Heavy eyes stared at him from inside a sagging face. He wore soft velvets, threadbare at the elbows and frayed on the cuffs. “You can’t stay here,” he said, his voice high pitched.
Korvak barked a laugh. “Master dwarf, I have no intention of doing that. Tell me, though, where am I?”
“The Dew on the Lotus,” he said.
“And where is this place?” He stood up, having collected himself and removed the worst of his filth from his face and arms.
“Ah. Er … the Warrens, master templar. Not far from Shadow Square.”
Korvak imagined he was close to Talara Vordon if she was where Pakka said she would be.
The dwarf would not look at him. Korvak wasn’t surprised. The halfling had not been gentle.
“Many thanks, master dwarf. If you’ll show me the door?”
The dwarf bowed and led him out. Frightened stares and disgusted expressions followed him into the street.
Although in a rush, Alaeda took the time to interrogate a man about what many were calling Kalak’s army. He was maimed in the attack, and his description left Alaeda feeling queasy and frightened. Undead were on the march, led by a terrible witch. The walking corpses were villagers, farmers, soldiers, and they killed everything in their path and added to their numbers. The man’s village had been destroyed, and the dead rose up to join the slaves under the woman’s commands. The man had survived by hiding under the bodies of his wife and children, an act that disgusted Alaeda even though she understood it. She left the wretch, but he caught her arm with his one good hand. “Her name … a warrior said her name … Temmnya.”
Alaeda broke the man’s grasp and fled from him and the other ruined folk who were choking Stadium Gate. She forgot Melech, forgot Talara, forgot everything, such was the revulsion building inside her. Temmnya Shom. The halfling hadn’t lied. The army of the dead belonged to Shom. The attacks, the lives lost, all of it, was Alaeda’s fault. Her instructions to Farlahn Mordis were simple: attack a few villages, strike a few caravans, nothing much, just enough to draw King Tithian’s gaze from the city so she and her agents could move into position in the city. There was nothing in their bargain about building an army and using it to attack Tyr.
Alaeda ran several blocks until exhaustion slowed her down to a walk. She was somewhere in the Tradesmen’s District, a crowded neighborhood, where masters worked their craft, whether they were potters or weavers, weaponsmiths or cobblers. The street was quiet in the darkening afternoon, most business concluded and apprentices hurrying home to their evening meals. Alaeda didn’t know where she was, being unfamiliar with the streets, so she walked a little farther, looking for a major road she could use to cross the city to where she hoped Talara Vordon would still be found.
She had thought often about the red-haired woman and how she had affected her. There was something in Talara, a quality Alaeda hadn’t often come across. She wasn’t exceptional with a blade and didn’t seem to have any particular talent at trading. She had a quiet authority, though, and a natural charm capable of instilling loyalty in those people around her. Alaeda could be happy working for the Vordon woman.
Yet she was Stel. Her loyalty was to her house first. The conflict she felt made her question why she was rushing to Talara even as she thought about it. House Shom may have overstepped its orders, but would not attacking the city help Stel? The undead would wipe out the city. Temmnya’s rule would be cut short by Hamanu’s approaching armies. He would crush her like an insect, Shom would be ruined, and Stel would profit. In fact, Alaeda believed if she left Tyr, she would be rewarded.
She couldn’t do it, though. She would not condone Temmnya Shom’s evil. How could she live with herself if she did? Urik might crush the city, but the people would still be alive, even if they were slaves. Shom had to be stopped.
“Loren!”
He stirred. Pain shot through his arms; agony raced up through to his neck. He wondered how long he had been there. He coughed bloody phlegm into his mouth and spit it onto a zombie that gave no sign it noticed.
“Ah, our great warrior still lives,” said Temmnya. She sat in a saddle across the back of some great skeletal beast and rode alongside him. “You look awful, Loren, but your suffering is almost at an end. See.” She pointed at a smudge nestled amid the towering mountains blocking out the horizon ahead. “Tyr. Now will you be a good boy and fight as you promised, or should I leave you here to die?”
Loren tried to laugh. A wheezing, ratting noise sounded instead.
“Very good, Loren. You, cut him down. Make him ready to fight, and tend to his wounds. And give him a bath. He smells worse than my soldiers.”
A few moments later, a voice woke him again. “You’re just about impossible to kill, aren’t you, Loren?”
Loren grunted. Kutok’s haggard face swam into view.
He smirked. “Don’t know there’s much I can do for you, but I can at least make you comfortable.” Kutok lowered the water skin to Loren’s lips. Loren didn’t think he could scream any more, but the pain from simple water sent him thrashing.
The spy shifted from foot to foot, shrinking as Thaxos Vordon pinned him with his gaze. He held him there for a minute more, watching the elf’s narrow face, seeing the duplicity in his bright eyes, the droplet of sweat rolling down his long pointed nose to fall onto the rich Balican rug covering the office floor. Thaxos placed his hands on his desk’s surface and shoved himself up. “You have done very well, Galadan,” he said, “better than I had hoped.”
The elf’s relief was evident. He straightened. A smile spread across his face. He was tall and lanky, with sandy hair and modest clothing—a simple beige smock with black breeches. Thaxos disliked elves. They were a shifty, duplicitous lot. They had a habit of coming out on the winning side of things. He never would have placed any trust in an elf. Galadan loyalties could be bought and sold for just a few coins. But the elf’s connections were many, and his information, priceless, so Thaxos had set aside his misgivings and dealt with him.
Galadan had come to him months before about House Stel’s efforts to swoop in while Vordon was weak and scoop up the iron trade contracts. Galadan, it seemed, was a patriot. When Vordon asked the elf why he came forward with the information, the elf had said, “Stel is no friend to my people,” as if that explained everything. And it did. House Stel had a reputation for being intolerant when it came to nonhumans. Its leaders seemed focused on purifying the lands all around them, focusing their slave-taking operations on their settlements and outposts, killing any who resisted. All the animosity they expressed toward dwarves and thri-kreen were nothing, though, compared with what they did to the elf trade clans.
Stel had wiped out at least two tribes Thaxos knew of and was engaged in a near open war with the Swiftwing tribe. All along the caravan routes between Urik and Silver Spring Oasis were signs of their fighting—burned wagons, dead kanks, the bones of countless dune traders and caravan guards from both sides. Vordon didn’t know the source of their present tension. It had proved useful in distracting Stel from his own efforts to grow his house’s influence in Urik. Galadan’s eagerness to destroy Stel came as no surprise.
From what Thaxos could tell, after plying the elf with question, threats, and a little pain, he had come by the information from a Stel agent embedded in Tyr. Galadan, not willing to pass up the chance to stick a knife in a Stel operative, had done a little coaxing himself and discovered the plot to destroy House Vordon.
Another merchant might have been distraught at learning of a far-reaching plot with such dire consequences. Thaxos was not just another merchant, though. He found the whole thing amusing. Stel and Vordon had danced the dance before, and the new plan was just another move to expand their influence. Thaxos imagined the elf had hoped to receive a few coins as payment for his discovery and be on his way. Thaxos had other ideas. Galadan would take the Stel agent’s place and do all the Stel agent had planned to do. He would ferret out the agents and kill them. Ho
w he did that, Vordon didn’t care. But the elf managed it by hiring help.
Thus far, all the pieces had fallen into place except one: Alaeda Stel. Vordon had made it very clear to Galadan that Alaeda was supposed to die. She had killed the assassin sent to her chambers then vanished. Neither Galadan nor his contacts had managed to find her since she fled the House of Fingers. She was a threat, and he would not see the past years’ plotting unravel thanks to one unfortunate woman. He had considered holding off his coup until Galadan found her, and if the elf couldn’t, Vordon would find someone who could. Delay at that point would be as disastrous as anything she could do to him. He had to move before Urik defeated the Crimson Legion. Events had to proceed on schedule.
“Yes, Galadan, very well.”
“It is my pleasure to serve.” There was finality in his voice, an expectation his time in Vordon’s employ was at an end.
Thaxos was not done with him, however. “I have one final task for you, Galadan,” he said, smiling as the elf wilted once more.
“Anything, Master Vordon, anything at all.” He did not sound convincing.
“My cousin Talara Vordon. Kill her. Do this and our business is concluded.”
The elf blanched but he nodded in agreement. It wasn’t as if he had a choice. Vordon could kill him, and no one would notice or care. He would kill the elf but not right now. He remained useful. Perhaps he would give him to his pet halfling when their business was done.
He tossed him a pouch filled with ceramic coins, and the elf snatched it from the air. When Galadan left, Watari slid into the office.
“Send runners to our friends,” said Thaxos. “By dawn, the city will be mine.”
After sundown, Alaeda found Talara Vordon’s apartments. They were inside a three-story building fronting Caravan Way, a brick structure with wooden balconies overlooking the broad street, a flat roof, and a single door leading inside to a foyer. The building was one of several catering to the wealthy and powerful, with sumptuous rooms fit for envoys, merchant lords, and other well-to-do visitors.
Death Mark Page 26
