Lady Of Regret (Book 2)

by James A. West

  “It is said you are a courageous man, unequaled with sword or bow. This must be so, for you to have so long held the honor, Champion of Cerrikoth.” He laughed, voice dripping incredulity. “Of course, lesser men oft sling garlands of praise round the necks of false heroes. I would see for myself if you are so great a warrior, or if you are but a fanciful illusion conjured by lesser men.”

  A stiff grin turned Rathe’s lips, as he turned to face the speaker. “Envy is a heavy burden, friend. Let me take that wearisome yoke from you.”

  “So eager for your heart to beat its last?” the man asked, now behind Rathe.

  Rathe whirled. How can a man move so quickly and quietly? The only answer was that he did not face a man. Old stories held that the Gyntors were mountains steeped in blood and pain and dread, a gathering place of haunts and undying evil.

  When Rathe spoke this time, a faint tremor of unease tinged his words. “I am not one to enjoy witless games. Whether you seek gold or fame, show yourself, and be done with this farce.”

  A low rustling turned Rathe again. A shimmering smear of darkness flitted near, at one with the mist, yet apart from it. His sword flashed to meet a slashing blade forged of night. His parry hissed through empty air. The looming shadow swarmed around him. As he twisted, a gentle tug sliced his jerkin. An inch deeper, and he would have found himself tripping through his own guts. Where the shadow had been, a milky whirl of fog took its place.

  He turned full circle, seeking, finding nothing. Despite the cold, his palm began to sweat against the sword hilt. Laughter and another ripping tug, this one across his back, spun him once more. All was still, his assailant invisible.

  “Fear, Scorpion—”

  A cut to Rathe’s shoulder whipped him round.

  “—hones a man—”

  Another strike brought a line of fire behind his knee.

  “—to his sharpest.”

  Rathe looped around, blindly hacking frosted air, hitting nothing, a bellow of rage burning his throat. Panting, he pressed his spine to a slab of rock leaning over the trail.

  “You are but a blunted edge.” The man’s voice saturated the fog, making it impossible to pinpoint him. “Trust that I will refine you, friend.” Disdainful laughter … faded … and was gone.

  For a long time, Rathe moved only his eyes, fear an iron spike ruthlessly digging through his skull. His rival did not show himself again.

  With a seething oath, Rathe scabbarded his sword. Shaking fingers then parted a handful of slices in the dark wool of his cloak, the leather of his jerkin. Only the cut at the back of his knee, a mere scratch, had drawn blood. Any of the attacks could have left him severely wounded. Or dead. He had faced his own demise before and often, but never had an opponent toyed with him, made him look inept.

  “I do not fear you, or any man!” he called. He received no response, and wondered, for a second time, if the enemy was a man at all. He saw no reason to wait around and find out.

  Soon after mounting and cantering along the trail, Rathe slowed the gray beside Loro. Still protesting everything under the sun, the man gave no indication that he had noticed Rathe’s absence.

  For now, Rathe kept his lips sealed about what he had seen and fought. No point adding to Loro’s grievances. After they crossed the mountains would be soon enough. But first there was the matter of escaping the Gyntor’s rugged peaks and plunging valleys, a possibility that seemed to grow more distant the farther they rode.

  Chapter 2

  The Blue Piper Inn was no fit place for a lady of station, but then, Lady Nesaea had never claimed noble birth. As the mistress of the Maidens of the Lyre, the title provided her an air of mystery. And, even at a flophouse like the Blue Piper, the term Lady ensured better payment for her and the Maidens.

  After finishing a humorous telling of Princess in the Mire, she retired from the makeshift stage, nothing more than a pair of long trestle tables jammed together and shoved against the back wall of the smoky common room. Lifting the hem of her modest linen dress to negotiate the stepstool revealed her ankles, earning cheerful catcalls from the men, and smoldering glares from the whores. Nesaea smiled at all, used to both reactions.

  Krysala took her place, a nubile blonde whose voice could bring joy or sorrow to the hardest warrior’s heart. Not waiting for the cheers to subside, she strummed the dulcimer on her lap, and began a jaunty rendition of A Pilgrim and the Toad. Claps and foot stomping arose at once.

  Smiling to herself, Nesaea wended through the throng. Before she reached the bar, a lanky man with stringy hair and a drunken sheen in his eye stopped her.

  “Never heard tha’ tale told so well.” He leaned forward, gusting ale fumes into Nesaea’s face. “Mayhap you can tell it again, jus’ to me.” To make his point clearer, his gaze flickered to the stairs leading up to the inn’s second floor, where there were rooms for rent.

  “You mistake me,” Nesaea said pleasantly.

  He held up a hand, grimy fingers clutching a silver penny. “M’ coin no good enough for you?”

  Nesaea’s smile remained, but her violet eyes went cold. Some mistook her troupe for traveling courtesans, or, rather, hoped they were. She found the assumption intolerable, but usually accepted it with grace. Tonight, in this rundown sty, and coming from this scoundrel, she did not feel so generous. “Keep your coin, and go find a willing sow to rut with.”

  Grumbling curses, the man made to tuck the penny back in his pocket. He missed. It bounced on the floor and rolled out of sight, amid thumping feet. The sot might seek it come dawn, but would likely believe he had drank it away.

  Nesaea tried to skirt past the fool, but he abruptly caught hold of one of her breasts, holding her in place with a painful squeeze. He leered through brown teeth, leaned close. “Be a good lil’ slut, an’ come to my room, or I’ll know the reason why.”

  “Here’s your reason why.” Nesaea jabbed the point of her belt knife against the man’s crotch. His yellowed eyes went wide, but he squeezed harder. Nesaea ignored the pain and pressed the blade deeper, its razor-edged steel parting the man’s filthy leather trousers.

  “Unhand me,” she said evenly, “or I’ll clip your precious fruits, and stuff them down your throat until you gag.”

  He cut her loose. To make sure he understood the unsteady ground he stood upon, she poked the blade hard against his loins. With a squawk, the drunkard backpedaled, tripped and fell on his backside, scrambled up, and fled. Those who noticed his wild flight bellowed laughter.

  Just a pretty girl in a sea of rowdy carousing, Nesaea calmly tucked away her knife. She made for her original destination, passing two men arm-wrestling over a fat coin purse. Shouts and waving tankards urged them on. Nesaea stepped nimbly to avoid flying gobbets of foamy ale, slapped away pawing hands, and held her breath against rank clouds of pipe smoke mingling with the stink of the unwashed.

  Most of her troupe sat around a table near the front doors, each waiting their turn at providing the night’s entertainment. Clean and well-dressed, they stood out as unassuming flowers in a field of weeds, each selected for beauty as much as for skill in dancing, music, and storytelling. Flowers they might appear, charming to a fault, but they were each of them deadly, trained in the bloody arts of war by Nesaea and the older Maidens. A realm might exist that favorably treated the meek and vulnerable, but Nesaea had yet to find it. Until she did, she demanded that her girls knew how to defend themselves.

  Bald and stout, the innkeeper Master Rigo greeted her at the bar. His florid jowls quivered with joy. “A fine evening! Gods, I cannot thank you enough for coming to the Blue Piper. Wine, milady?”

  “If you please.” Nesaea slid onto a high stool.

  The innkeeper ducked his bulk behind the bar, popped up a moment later with a brimming cup of house wine. Nesaea sipped the sweet blend, dropped a pair of coppers on the bar.

  Master Rigo pushed the coins back with a happy wink. “Your Maidens have earned their keep ten times over.” He swabbed a n
onexistent spot with a clean rag, then tucked it into the apron tied about his ample belly.

  There were two more inns and half a dozen taverns in the riverside village of Cliffbrook, all as rundown as the Blue Piper. Nesaea had chosen the place because Master Rigo seemed intent to make the best of what he had. Stains marred the rolling wooden floor, but he kept it swept clean. Rusted iron chandeliers hung from sagging rafters, but the serving girls kept the wicks trimmed on the candles, and did not allow the dripping wax to build up and hang like globs of melted cheese. The windows were scrubbed clean, no matter that they looked out on a street packed tight with parked merchant wagons.

  The innkeeper looked from Krysala to Nesaea. “Don’t expect I can talk you into staying on a few days, mayhap a week?”

  “We Maidens never stay in one place so long,” Nesaea demurred.

  Master Rigo’s face fell. Just as quickly, he brightened. “If your travels ever bring you near to Cliffbrook again, you and your girls are more than welcome at the Blue Piper. Free food and wine, if you return.”

  “My thanks,” Nesaea said.

  Master Rigo bobbed his head, then bustled off to serve another customer.

  Nesaea leaned on the bar, a finger tracing old scars in the bloodwood slab. She did not expect to ever venture so close to the Shadow Road again, or the Gyntor Mountains. Southern Qairennor, Trem, Unylle were all territories more to her liking. And the earnings were better. After what had happened at Fortress Hilan, all that with Lord Sanouk and the demon-god he had treated with, this part of the world had lost what little appeal it held for her.

  She shivered, recalling the cramped tomb Sanouk had sealed her into, while deadly potions gnawed at her mind and rotted her insides. Dark sorcery had given Sanouk a resistance to all the poisons that afflicted her. Others had been trapped with her in those lightless catacombs, each condemned to suffer a different form of death in order to safeguard the outcast brother to the King of Cerrikoth. Most had escaped. A few had not. Had it not been for Rathe, Nesaea might still be there, forever held between life and death, slowly overcome by madness wrought by perpetual agony.

  Thinking of him soured her mood. Rathe had saved her, then left her with that jumped-up chit, Erryn of Valdar. The self-styled Queen of the North had quickly found her power, and with it the boldness to pursue a man whose heart belonged to another. At least, that had been the way Nesaea saw it. With men like Rathe, you never could tell.

  “Rathe, a king?” Nesaea scoffed under her breath, recalling Erryn’s clumsy attempt to get Rathe into her bed. Nesaea gulped the last of her wine, knowing she was being unfair. Rathe had, after all, denied the girl’s ridiculous offer. In the end, he had done what he thought best, drawing those who hunted him away from Valdar and Erryn, but also away from her. And I let him go.

  “She’s come far,” Fira said, hopping onto a stool.

  “Who?” Nesaea asked, glad for the distraction. She had promised herself not to think about Rathe. Fira always helped distract her, save those times when the fire-haired woman got too deep in her cups, and started lamenting Loro’s absence. Just what the woman saw in Rathe’s vulgar companion remained a mystery, but her strange affection oft brought a smile to Nesaea’s lips.

  “Krysala, of course,” Fira said.

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose? Gods, when we found her, she was nothing but a grubby waif, scurrying about the sewers like a common rat. Look at her now, and tell me you can imagine her filching your apples.”

  “She’s lucky I did not take off her fingers.” Nesaea remembered the heat of that day, the narrow street jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with hawkers and their custom, curtained palanquins borne by sweating servants, rumbling merchant wagons cutting swaths through the crowds. The port city of Vencio was a city too small by half for all the folk who lived and traded there. Breezes off the Sea of Grelar usually cleared out the stenches of salt, tar, and fish, but the air had been calm the day Krysala tried to snatch a sack of apples off Nesaea’s wagon seat. Instead of reaching for her knife, she had grabbed the girl’s wrist, hauled her up, and plopped her down. That had proven to be the easy part. “She fought like a rat, too,” Nesaea said fondly.

  Fira grinned. “Still has that same feistiness.”

  “Not so long ago,” Nesaea mused, “you were such a waif.”

  “A lifetime ago, and someone’s else life, at that. You and the Maidens have been good to me.”

  Nesaea put her back to the bar, dividing her attention between Krysala’s next song, and Fira’s excited chatter about the new dress she had commissioned from a local seamstress. To hear her, no one would suspect she had orchestrated and led the attack against Fortress Hilan. And, in so doing, had inadvertently given Rathe the opportunity needed to end Lord Sanouk and his wicked schemes.

  “I tell you true,” a man said off to one side, voice overloud with indignation. “The man be a wizard. Best I ever seen.”

  As a dabbler in such arts, those words caught Nesaea’s ear. Many claimed such powers, but most were charlatans, masters of trickery and illusion. She turned slightly to listen.

  “Any man can juggle,” another fellow jeered.

  “Aye, ‘tis true, but this man did so without his hands.”

  “No hands? Then what’d he use, his tongue?” He snorted derisive laughter. “I’d rather a wench use her tongue to juggle my—”

  “Not his tongue, you daft fool. Nor was there any wenches about. He used his mind for the balls, and naught else.”

  “An’ you call me daft? You was tricked, I say.”

  “Go see for yourself, then. Sazukford is not so far off. He’s serving as Lord Arthard’s court magician. Goes by the name Sytheus Vonterel. Ask round, an’ folk will know who you mean….”

  At the mention of Sytheus Vonterel, the voices faded to the back of Nesaea’s mind. She knew the man, but had not seen him since she was a girl. She had given up hunting him after coming to believe he was dead.

  “Nesaea?” Fira leaned close, worry wrinkling her brow. “Are you ill?”

  Nesaea shook off her shock. “No … I’m fine.”

  Fira looked doubtful, but let her concern pass. “Well, I was asking where are we headed next? Trem, Unylle, perhaps across the Sea of Grelar to Monseriq? You were born there, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Nesaea said absently, struggling not to let the long-buried memories of her homelands come. Recollections of blood, dust, and the death of all that she had loved. In a single moment, her life had taken a course far different than what she had ever imagined. A course no child in her right mind would want.

  “Then it’s time you returned,” Fira said excitedly. “Taking the wagons by ship might be difficult, but we’ve gold enough to hire a small fleet. Besides, I’ve never known a sailor to turn down a pretty pair of eyes—”

  “We go to Sazukford,” Nesaea cut in, caught between past and present. To hear forgotten screams mingling with Krysala’s sweet voice made her stomach clench.

  “Whatever for?”

  With tears in her eyes, Nesaea said, “To find my father.”

  Chapter 3

  The mountain trail led Rathe and Loro over an ancient stone bridge spanning a river that surged from the mouth of a steep-walled gorge. On the far side, the trail turned hard north to follow the river up into a soggy white curtain of mist. The two riders halted in a patch of grass to let their horses graze.

  Loro cast a baleful eye on the river gorge. “Do you suppose we’ll ever get out of these accursed mountains?” Clad in leather jerkin and trousers, a cloak of simple dark wool, with shoulders nearly as wide as he was tall, Loro had the look of an ascetic warrior-priest with a weakness for feasting.

  Rathe searched for another way, some indication of lowlands. Where the forest did not block their path, dark granite cliffs did. There might have been more, but he could see nothing beyond the fog. As ever, ravens croaked their gleeful scorn somewhere above.

  “North is the only way out of th
e Gyntors.” Rathe nodded at the gorge. “As that heads north, I’d say we are on the right path.”

  Loro shivered under his cloak. “Or, it might be that the mountains go all the way to world’s end.”

  Over the last many days, when not considering the shadowed swordsman he had faced, Rathe had begun to think the same, though a map he saw once named the lands beyond the mountains the Iron Marches. “You wanted the life of a thief. I dare say cold, hunger, and hard paths are the lot of such men.”

  “Not along the shores of the Sea of Muika,” Loro said, falling back on his tired belief they could live like bandit-kings on the western shores of Qairennor.

  “Once we get through the mountains, mayhap we’ll find the truth of that. Not before. Until then, we ride until sunset. As always.”

  “I’ve not seen the sun in days,” Loro said, sneaking a sip of blackberry brandy from the flask he kept under his cloak. Popping the stopper back, he glanced skyward to prove his point.

  Rathe craned his neck, found a pale glowing disk just beginning its slow westward fall. “There it is,” he said with forced cheer. He heeled the gray into a plodding walk up the steep trail.

  Loro cursed him, but followed.

  The air grew colder and thinner as the day wore on. The horses labored up the steep trail, hooves slipping over ice as often as loose gravel. Sprigs of tough grass and clumps of wiry bramble took root in thin soil along the riverbank, spread dripping branches over sheets of crusty snow. Rathe wondered how anything grew here.

  “Gods and demons, my arse is sore,” Loro protested. He had lasted a full quarter turn of the glass without a word of complaint. He shifted in the saddle with a scowl. “And my stones, gods be cursed, have grown a bleeding crop of blisters. Show me the civilized man who has ever had to suffer such as this!” His shout could not contend with the voice of the river, a rumbling rush filling the gorge with thunder.

  “We stop at dusk, no sooner,” Rathe said.