Lady Of Regret (Book 2)

by James A. West

  Face ashen, swallowing compulsively as he scanned the dead, Horge did as bidden.

  Chapter 7

  Relief flooded Rathe when the river’s mossy scent tickled his nose. It seemed hours had passed since the trio set out from the kitchen. They would have been mounted and gone long before, but the hunters of Deepreach seemed to be everywhere. More, they were driven by Tulfa’s wild cries of, “Meat on the bone!” and “Yes! Yes! Hunt them down, and we shall feast!”

  Whenever the trio heard that voice, or the squeals of hungry shadowkin, they quickly lost themselves down unfamiliar passageways. Horge always brought them back to the first corridor, through which Rathe and Loro had traveled to the great hall.

  Now Rathe heard the river’s rush, saw a dim rectangle of lesser darkness. The way out. He touched Horge’s shoulder, and the man flinched violently, squeaked in terror. “Better let me lead from here,” Rathe said, wondering if the scrawny fellow had become jumpy after falling into the hands of the shadowkin, or if it was a particular trait. He guessed both.

  Loro searched Horge’s face. “Are you without a proper steed, friend?”

  “I have a beast of burden. I do hope these monsters did not get Samba, and that he remains where I tied him. I had gone fishing, you see, when Tulfa captured me, and—”

  “Which way?” Rathe asked, arresting the man’s explanation.

  Horge thought about it, a finger again tracing the air before his face. “That way,” he said, pointing in the direction Rathe and Loro had been going before Tulfa showed himself.

  “You can ride with Rathe,” Loro said quickly, patting his round slab of belly. “This much man-flesh does not favor two riders to a saddle.”

  “Let’s go,” Rathe said, seeing the way Loro’s nose wrinkled at Horge’s unpleasant scent, and regretting that he had not spoken first.

  After gathering their gear and saddles at the entrance, they moved into the mist-shrouded night. Their horses looked up from grazing, ears pricked and alert. It seemed a monstrous blessing that shadowkin had no love for meat that did not cover the bones of men. That aside, Rathe decided to take all blessings that came to him, and gave silent thanks to the Cerrikothian god of war, Ahnok.

  While he and Loro saddled their mounts, Horge danced nervously to one side of the entrance, pausing frequently to cock his head and listen.

  Rathe was slipping his toe into the stirrup, when the sound of claws scratching stone drew his eye upward. His blood went cold. Scores of shadowkin were climbing over the rails of the walkways above. Where the twisted folk scurried and scuttled on the ground, they moved with eerie grace in scaling surfaces that would hinder spiders.

  “Go!” Rathe called, leaping into the saddle.

  Loro kicked his horse into a bounding leap down the stairs to the roadway. Rathe reached for Horge, but the scrawny fellow had vanished. “Horge!”

  Only the shadowkin answered, mad squeals merging with the river’s throaty rumble.

  “He’s gone!” Loro shouted below, his horse dancing a circle.

  Rathe gave another second to searching for Horge, but there was no sign of the little man. Shadowkin began leaping down and scampering near. Rathe’s sword slashed, and the nearest foe toppled back, missing a few fingers.

  “Horge!”

  No answer. With a curse, Rathe joined Loro, and they sped away.

  “They’re after us,” Loro warned.

  Rathe glanced back. The freakish folk streaked like wolves on the hunt, closing the gap. His gray snorted in fear, began fighting the bit. Rathe almost lost his seat, but clutched the pommel and righted himself. He had no sooner settled back, when a pillar supporting one of the city’s many footbridges forced him to saw hard at the reins. Trumpeting, the gray swept by the column, so close Rathe had to tuck his shoulder to avoid collision.

  A leering face framed by streaming hair appeared at his stirrup. Rathe hacked his sword downward. The shadowkin fell away with garbled scream. Another took the place of the first. Yellowed claws swiped at the gray’s belly, setting it to bucking wildly. Rathe swung, and the clutching hand became a bloody stump. The second shadowkin stumbled, fell into a bouncing roll, and was gone.

  Rathe dug in his heels, and the gray focused on escape. Up ahead, cloak fluttering like the wing of a bat, Loro leaned over his red’s neck, swatting the horse’s rump with the flat of his blade. The big steed surged forward, steel-shod hooves throwing sparks over cobbles. They raced under another footbridge. A moment later, they flashed beneath another.

  With the gray now striving to catch the red, Rathe risked another look behind. The shadowkin had fallen back, but showed no indication of tiring. Facing forward, he saw Deepreach stretching into moonlit fog. There was no telling how far they must go before escaping the city.

  Rathe’s gray veered to avoid another leaning pillar. Far up ahead, a line of darkness, half the height of a man, blocked the roadway. After a few more strides, the darkness resolved into fallen pillar.

  Loro began to pull back on the reins, but Rathe called, “Jump it!”

  “Not at this pace!”

  “We have no choice!”

  The nearer they came, the more daunting the pillar seemed. Rathe kicked the gray to greater speed. The blowing horses leaped together. Soaring through a tattered streamer of mist, the gray’s rear hooves struck the pillar’s curved surface. The big red made the jump clean. They hit the roadway on the far side, hooves clattering loudly. Without breaking stride, the horses galloped on, necks stretching, manes flying.

  It was not enough. The relentless shadowkin were gaining. Rathe had to end the chase.

  He drew rein. The gray dropped its hindquarters and slid to a halt. While Loro rushed off into the milky gloom, Rathe spun his mount.

  Leaping shapes plunged closer. Hungry calls pebbled his flesh, and he almost abandoned his plan. But he had to try, or run until the shadowkin ran them down.

  “Come on, boy,” he urged, patting the gray’s neck. The horse tossed his head and whinnied. He was no fierce destrier, such as those Rathe had ridden when he commanded the Ghosts of Ahnok, but he gamely went where Rathe directed him.

  Rathe reined in at a pillar rising crookedly to the base of the footbridge overhead. With its neighbor toppled into a heap of rubble, this pillar served as the bridge’s last support on this side of the river.

  He forced the gray’s shoulder against the column’s cracked base. The horse shied at a deep grinding noise. “No time to be skittish,” Rathe said gently, guiding the gray back against the pillar. Ahead, Loro’s voice drifted back through the fastness of Deepreach. Behind, the shadowkin closed swiftly.

  “Last chance,” Rathe chided the horse. With a shout, he put boots to the horse’s flanks. The gray strained against the pillar. Rathe felt the grinding of stone in his teeth, as the immeasurable weight of the bridge pressed down on the weakened support.

  The gray tried to shy again, but Rathe kept him under tight rein. “Heave, you bloody nag!” The gray snorted, seemingly in affront, and Rathe laughed out loud. “Push, you tired tub of guts!”

  The gray’s neck arched, its hindquarters rippled, and its hooves began slipping over the ground. Hairline cracks widened … widened. The pillar gave way all at once. Stonework began to fall. Rathe kicked the horse into a gallop.

  An instant later, thunder rolled from the collapsing bridge. Dust billowed and, by the screams, shattered stonework had fallen on at least a few of the shadowkin. There were plenty to take their place. He gave the gray its head, and they galloped deep into the misty night.

  After he passed through Deepreach’s second barbican gate, which had survived the ages no better than its counterpart at the far end of the city, he found Loro waiting next to a briar patch.

  Rathe glanced around. “Horge?”

  Loro slammed his sword into the scabbard. “He’s lost to us.”

  The nearing cries of shadowkin were growing in intensity. Rathe called out for Horge, and looked for the scrawny little
fellow to come bursting out of mist or brush, but he never did.

  “Mayhap he got away,” Loro offered.

  Rathe nodded doubtfully. There was no need for words, or time to speak them. They abandoned Deepreach and its atrocious inhabitants, and climbed higher into the Gyntors.

  Chapter 8

  From high gibbets flanking either side of the road, men hung in rusted cages. As most were dead, or close enough not to matter, they offered no complaint to the squabbling crows busy plucking off strips of meat. A long summer had made dusty skeletons of those longest in the cages. Others were fresher and flyblown. Withered or seeping, all stared at passersby with cavernous sockets, for the carrion birds took the eyes of the dead first.

  Squinting against the lowering sun, Lady Nesaea led the small caravan of gaily painted wagons, all fashioned after sailing ships, through the swinging garden of death and toward the low stone walls of Sazukford, a small city in northern Qairennor.

  She did not have to look around to know she was not alone in holding a fragrant pomander to her nose to block the reek. Hanging cages, the impaled, tarred heads on spikes, all those and other morbid displays were common wherever men gathered in number. Such exhibitions never seemed to concern lawbreakers, for there was never a shortage of them, but open punishment and death kept order-seeking citizenry feeling safe, placid, and cared for by highborn who’d not squander their noble piss on a burning child. And if anyone had a grudge and gold enough, why, a word whispered into the right ear ensured their rival met a good and proper end, for all to see.

  “Milady!” a man cried weakly. He still had his eyes, and they bulged with fright. The rest of him was a mass of dried blood. He had been flayed to the bone, and skin dangled in ribbons. Nesaea knew he would not survive the night, and within an hour of sunrise he, too, would lose his sight to feasting crows. “Bring word to Lord Arthard that … that I was returning his ring, not stealing it. Please, milady, have mercy!”

  He fell to moaning after Nesaea’s wagon wheeled by. The possibility existed that he spoke the truth, but chances favored him being a thief who had realized too late that pilfering was not a game for fools or the unlucky, though thieving seemed to attract that sort, more often than not.

  The sun dropped below the horizon, as the Maidens of the Lyre approached the stone wall. The gate guard gave Nesaea a penetrating look, demanded a trade levy despite her assurance that they had nothing to trade, then waved her through. As she passed, he went back to leaning on his spear, as if bored beyond all measure. The weapon’s leaf-shaped blade glimmered in the dusky light, and his well-kept mail shone silver under a tabard emblazoned with the device of House Arthard, a scarlet cockatrice constrained within a golden, seven-pointed star. More guards strode the wall walks. Sazukford was still a place to step lightly, much as Nesaea remembered it.

  Beyond the east gate, the smallish city bustled in dusty twilight, the smell of the unwashed mingling with the scent of flowers in full bloom, roasting meat, open sewers, and rotting middens. Good and bad, places like Sazukford had a seedy charm Nesaea found alluring. Such places reminded her of home on the outskirts of Alhaz, across the Strait of Eroe-Si. She missed the evening sea breezes that cleared the dust, many stenches, and clamor of the city, and left the sky a dazzling shade of blue. Home. So long lost to her, she could scarcely understand the pang in her heart. She would go back, one day, but Sazukford and her father, first.

  The last time she was here, she had been running from those who wanted to return her to the silken sheets and velvet shackles of her former master, on the island kingdom of Giliron. In Sazukford, she had laid her traps, and ended the hunt. After, she vanished as cleanly as a breath of night wind. If not for the help of one woman, whose aid she now sought again, she never would have succeeded.

  Although their faces had changed over the years, Nesaea remembered the urchins scuttling among the forest of adults. Peddlers eager to earn a bit more coin, still hawked wares from booths set up along the main thoroughfare, all loud and obnoxious. Mongrels braved kicks to snuffle chickens and lambs and squealing shoats caged in wicker. Rich merchants in all their finery perused a hundred varied displays, eager to make a profitable deal.

  The road wended through rows of slate-roofed houses, shops, taverns and inns, all wanting for fresh plaster and whitewash. As ever in such places, be they rich or poor, slatterns called from windows and stoops, their wares barely concealed under strips of silk or linen, or jingling garments of shiny brass coins. These last were oft the most beautiful, and so fetched the highest prices. In light or dark, they resembled fabled mermaids. Drunks reeled out of tavern doors, or were thrown out by bouncers. A dozen kinds of music merged into a discordant melody, setting a sordid but jubilant mood.

  Nesaea took it all in, careful to keep an eye on those who might mistake her for the soft highborn lady she portrayed. Some lurked in the shadows, eyes beady and dark, like rats. Others sat in plain sight, sipping tankards of local brew, laughing boisterously, even as they measured the worth of every passerby. To both varieties of trouble, Nesaea showed a diamond-hard grin, daring them to make their play. Most looked to easier prey. Those who did not were the fools who might attempt a raid on her caravan. If so, they would suffer a harsh lesson.

  Nesaea drew rein at a low wooden bridge spanning the River Idoril. Rickety and sagging, the bridge should have been rebuilt in stone a hundred years gone. With darkness closing fast, torches marched along its rails, lighting timbers and planking coated with tar. A barge of bloodwood logs, down from the southern foothills of the Gyntors, swept beneath the bridge’s leaning pilings, guided by a score of men with long push-poles.

  After paying yet another levy, the bridge guard waved her on. Nesaea took a deep breath, whispered a fervent prayer of protection, and snapped the reins. The four-horse team took her onto the bridge. It groaned and shivered under the weight of the wagon. Nesaea did not stop praying until all her caravan had crossed.

  Over the river, Sazukford was cleaner, the buildings taller and painted in rainbow hues, its cobbled streets patrolled by squads of Lord Arthard’s foot soldiers. The road split, and Nesaea turned north. The farther she led her troupe, the richer the surroundings became, until she drew rein in front of the Silver Archer, a three-story inn, its high-peaked tile roof guarded by four towers awash with flowering vines.

  The inn’s proprietress, Mistress Lynira, stood amid a gathering of pretty men. Lofty arbors curved above them, supported by wooden columns carved all over with blossoms that never wilted. Lynira’s laugh filled the area, melodic and enticing as the rest of her person. Tonight she wore a gown of maroon silk, accented with cloth-of-gold to match her golden curls. As was her wont, she had loosened the laces of her bodice to reveal more of her bosom than it hid, and a belt of gold links emphasized her narrow waist.

  In the short time Nesaea had spent in Sazukford, Lynira had taught her never to feel guilt for using the gifts born to her. Lynira used her gifts to gain wealth and notoriety, selling that which could be bought anywhere for a fraction of the price. “Peddle exclusivity,” she had advised, “and you’ll never want for gold.”

  Adding to Lynira’s charming allure, a snowy owl perched on her arm, yellow eyes on the fops surrounding its mistress. It was no exaggeration to say that men crossed realms and treacherous seas for a mere glance at Lynira. Gaining an audience with her was tantamount to visiting royalty. Even if they heard from Lynira’s lips that she had been born in slattern’s hovel in the Dreamer’s Quarter of Sazukford, none would have believed it. Watching her now, with her almost magical grace and aplomb, even Nesaea found the story hard to believe.

  The owl’s head turned all the way round, fixed its golden stare on Nesaea. Some of those gathered near Lynira looked, too. Their eyes widened at the sight of Nesaea’s wagons. When Lynira tossed a glance over her shoulder, delighted surprise erased some of her composure. She hastily invited her guests indoors, while she escaped the pillared terrace and stopped below Nesaea. Deep br
own eyes favored her onetime pupil with a wry appraisal.

  “Lady Nesaea,” Lynira said, with a knowing wink and a graceful curtsy. “I see now the rumors are true. You and your Maidens of the Lyre have done as well as I have heard.”

  Nesaea smiled warmly. “I have you to thank.”

  “I trust you have not come to steal my business?”

  “Of course not,” Nesaea said. “But I dare say I can increase it while I am here, if you are in need of performers.”

  “I have many performers.”

  “My girls are not that sort,” Nesaea explained. “We sing and dance and entice. The rest, I leave to you.”

  “I had heard that, as well, but did not believe,” Lynira said, in the musing tone of a shrewd proprietor. “Very well. I accept your offer. Even if your girls sing like screeching cats, you are welcome.”

  “I must warn you,” Nesaea said, “I come to Sazukford not to entertain, but to find someone I have not seen in many years. In seeking him, I may bring danger upon you.”

  Lynira laughed, a bold, throaty sound. “You let me worry about danger, girl. Now, get down off that gaudy cart, and tell me all about your wanderings. My men will take your caravan around back, for safekeeping.”

  “What of your guests?” Nesaea said, nodding to a few men who lingered just outside the burnished silver doors of the inn. They jostled one another for a better look at Lynira and the newcomers, like lovesick fools.

  Lynira flashed a mischievous grin. “My absence makes them even more ravenous for my attention. By the time you tell me what you’ve been up to, they will be ready to kill for my affection.” At Nesaea’s stunned look, Lynira laughed all the harder.

  Chapter 9

  Lynira glided through the common room of the Silver Archer, speaking to some patrons, laughing with others. When anyone made to stop her, she brushed past so smoothly they did not recognize the rebuff. Nesaea followed, becoming once again the young woman running from her past, and toward an uncertain future.