Lady Of Regret (Book 2)

by James A. West

  Nesaea and Fira sprinted down the length of a wide passage, footsteps ringing. They slid around the corner to see Loro strike his sword against a pair of doors. He bellowed a bull’s rage, struck again, and again. Woodchips flew, driving back his two raggedy companions. “Damn you, open up, or by all the gods, I’ll break this accursed door and bury your corpse in the rubble.” What came after, spat through frothed lips, shocked even Nesaea.

  “Stand aside!” Fira snapped.

  At the sound of her voice, Loro spun, eyes bulging red and furious. “Fira? Nesaea? Gods and demons! What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your bloated arse,” Fira snarled, and threw herself into his arms. Her lips smashed violently against his. She abruptly drew back and slapped him, hard. “How dare you leave me without so much as a word, you bungling oaf!”

  When she made to strike him again, Loro caught her wrist. “There’s no time for this foolery, wench! Rathe is inside, with the Lady of Regret.”

  “Rathe?” Nesaea gasped, stunned despite earlier hopes.

  “Lady of what?” Fira demanded.

  With a harried expression, Loro looked to the wretched young woman and an equally ragged man, each who looked enough alike to make them siblings. “Yiri, Horge, tell them, while I get this door open.”

  “There’s no time for explanations,” Yiri said grimly, as Horge moved to an intersection of crossing corridors.

  “And there is no time to make firewood of the door,” Nesaea said, sparing a sidelong glance at the two wretches. Neither was there time to wonder over how and why Rathe and Loro were here. “Did you see a guard come this way?” Three heads shook as one. “Then we must hurry, for he doubtless went for help.”

  She knelt and set to work with the lock picks. There were no sounds beyond the doors. From the corridor came the heavy tread of running feet, the clank and rattle of armor. The alarm had been sounded. She worked faster, fingers shaking.

  Loro put safe distance between himself and Fira. He looked to the man cloaked in hanging rags. “Horge, what do you see?”

  “Wardens of Tanglewood,” the man squeaked. “A dozen or more.”

  Loro turned, desperation on his sweaty face. “Yiri, can you use your witchery?”

  The young woman’s small white teeth flashed. “But of course.”

  Nesaea felt a tumbler go, then another. Behind her, a crackling heat charged the air. Loro shouted something, and Fira cursed hotly. Venomous green light flared, poisoning all other color. Nesaea’s head turned of its own volition, seeking the source of such profane light.

  Yiri crouched at the heart of the crossing corridors, a wild sneer stretching her dirty cheeks. Her dark cloak and robes gave her the look of a scruffy bat. Between her hands roiled a jade ball of fire. Waves of heat blew back her matted hair, and her face shone with dread excitement. Her fingers curled, compressing the fireball, making it brighter, hotter.

  “Do not wait on our account,” Loro said, backing away, wrapping a protective arm around Fira.

  Crackling filaments of green lightning danced over the fireball’s surface. Forge heat baked the corridor, dried Nesaea’s eyes. How can she hold it?

  Running feet came closer.

  “Before it’s too late,” Loro urged, thrusting Fira behind him.

  “Now.” Yiri’s hoarse whisper filled the air around her with portentous weight. The Wardens dashed into the open, polished swords glittering emerald. Gauntleted hands rose to black-slitted visors. Yiri laughed, and the fireball became a column of blazing death. Snowy tabards blackened, chainmail smoked red-hot, withered flesh burst alight.

  A moment later, the magical fire winked out. Yiri danced clear of falling ash, cracked bones, and gobbets of molten steel.

  “Gods,” Fira breathed.

  “Demons, more like,” Loro said, turning back to Nesaea. “How much longer.”

  Blinking against searing afterimages, Nesaea went back to the lock. On the Isles of Giliron, there were masters of alchemy, and those who played at sorcery, but she had never seen the sheer raw power the likes of which this scrawny young woman had just wielded.

  “We’ve wasted too much time already,” Yiri said fiercely, striding forward. Smoke curled from her robes, but the immense heat had only raised a pretty blush to her cheeks. Her black eyes sparkled.

  “No, sister!” Horge called. “It will destroy you!”

  Yiri came on without missing a step. Nesaea needed neither invitation, nor orders. She scrambled clear of the young woman, whose entire body now sizzled with untold energies lighting her within. Arcane words spilled from her lips, merciless fury raged behind her now crimson eyes. Something leaped and thrashed under her blazing flesh, as a shadow dancing beneath a thin coverlet.

  A fluttering commotion arose where Horge stood, but Nesaea could not drag her gaze from Yiri. A pace from the scarred doors, she reached out. A patch of air shimmered and grew opaque before her outstretched fingers, then became a rounded shield. With a snarl, she thrust her arms forward, smashing the creation against the doors. Iron banding shrieked as it stretched, wood bulged inward, then all broke asunder with a shuddering explosion. A hail of jagged splinters and whirlwinds of powdered wood filled the air, and a sharp blast of wind knocked Nesaea and the others flat. Lampstands crashed down, their light extinguished, leaving all dim and hazed.

  Yiri, alone, remained standing, the shadow within her gone, her blush of eagerness dead. Shoulders and head hanging, she staggered. Horge emerged from the dusted gloom paces from where Nesaea had last seen him. He rushed to his sister, caught her before she collapsed. “Come, rest,” he urged, trying to pull her away from the door. Yiri had neither the heart nor the strength to offer resistance.

  Nesaea had just gotten to her hands and knees, when a screaming man in a monk’s habit charged out of the great hall. His blade arced toward Yiri’s face. Horge yelped, Yiri threw up a hand. With a wild rustling, both vanished. The man’s sword flashed through empty space, the force of his missed strike upsetting his balance. He stumbled deeper into the murky corridor. At his feet, two slinking shapes darted out of sight.

  “Nesaea?” Loro called. “Yiri … Horge?”

  “Beware!” Nesaea shouted back. The swordsman spun toward her, his face masked by the gloom. She ran down the corridor, back the way she and Fira had come. When her sword came to hand, she whirled, fell into a ready crouch.

  A racket rose up beyond sight, punctuated by clanging swords, Loro’s shouts, and Fira’s frantic cries. “Wardens!” Loro called, sounding winded. “Run, girl!”

  Nesaea refused to abandon her friends, but a shadow came before her, quickly resolved into the silhouetted swordsman. There was something familiar about—

  He attacked, an imposing specter bearing the gift of death. With a ringing clash, Nesaea caught his blade against hers. His fist cracked against her ribs, knocking her back. Gasping, she retreated three quick strides, set her feet. He came again, weaving a blur of steel before him.

  Blade met blade, the collision numbing her hands. The swordsman bellowed, his weapon flickered and slashed. She met each attack, gritting her teeth. Never had she faced so quick a blade, nor blocked such withering blows. She did now. To do less was to die.

  Another flurry of cuts and thrusts set Nesaea into a tripping retreat. She parried a backhand stroke, ducked a chopping strike. The swordsman’s fist struck rapidly, once and again, slamming her cheek, pulverizing her lips.

  Legs wobbly, she dropped to one knee. Shaking and dazed, she tossed back her dark hair, spat a mouthful of blood at the feet of her foe. At the same time, she furtively drew her dagger. His next strike might take her life, but not before her short blade stirred his bowels.

  He crept closer, cautious now. Somewhere behind him, Fira screamed in pain, and Loro raged. The clamor of colliding steel filled the corridor with an unbroken wall of racket.

  Closer the swordsman came, looming.

  Nesaea’s eyes climbed to his face. Her pounding heart stilled
. “Rathe?”

  He missed a step, sword poised. He shook his head, swinging tangled black hair. Black also were his eyes, but not as she remembered. No hint of white showed. All that darkness drew more darkness to it.

  His sword swung, faster than Nesaea thought possible, so fast the dagger in her hand did not so much as twitch.

  “No!” The order came, sharp and sweet, just as Rathe’s sword touched Nesaea’s neck and stopped. A shiver coursed through her, as a thin hot trickle ran over her skin.

  Arms shaking, Rathe glared hatefully, not the man she had known. The golden woman who had captured Nesaea moved beside him, her skin and hair aglow. At her touch, Rathe drew back, taking his blade with him.

  To Nesaea, she said, “I am Wina, mistress of Ravenhold, and I can give you eternity,” she said calmly, as if Loro and Fira’s battle did not still rage behind her.

  Nesaea’s lip curled. “Keep it.”

  Wina cocked her head and reached out. Nesaea leaned away from a hand oozing the same blackness that had infused Rathe’s eyes. Wina’s fingers unfurled, revealing an eight-sided amulet set with a pulsing black gemstone. Icy currents and coiling ebon threads reached out from that stone, seeking like blinds worms.

  “Gods and demons!” Loro cursed in the distance, and Fira yelled, “Watch out!”

  Wina twisted round, fingers closing reflexively, as Rathe moved to protect her. Nesaea leaped to her feet. Wina’s head came around, her lips parting to cry a warning. Nesaea’s sword sliced down. Where razor-edge steel met the woman’s wrist, skin and bone gave way. Wina’s warning became a piercing shriek, as her severed hand fell to the floor. That scream rose to a howl of terror when a nightmarish creature charged out of the shadows. The beast rammed Rathe aside, crashed headlong into Wina, tumbling her head over heels down the dust-choked corridor.

  The creature charged past Nesaea and stopped over Wina. It reared up on hind legs, its bulk twisting and swelling, as it changed into something unimaginable.

  Chapter 32

  Rathe wallowed on the marble tiles, groaned, shook his aching head, confused as to how he had come to be on his back, looking up through a shroud of thick haze. Last he remembered, he was fighting off … Wina!

  Hands slapping air, he sat up, kicked his feet against the floor until a wall guarded his back. He reached for his sword hilt. Not in the scabbard. The sharp point of a blade poking his neck sharpened his focus. He glanced up slowly, found a beautiful woman staring murder at him. His eyes went wide. “Nesaea?”

  Blood trickled from her swollen cheek and puffy lips. More ran down the side of her neck, wetting a tumbling fall of midnight waves. She looked almost as untidy as Yiri and Horge.

  “Feeling better?” she asked, tone as dangerous as he remembered it. “Or do you still want to cut me to pieces?”

  Everything that had happened since coming into the keep worked its way to the forefront of his mind, came as flashes from a fevered nightmare. His mouth worked. “I … never meant … I was not myself.”

  Furious grunts and squeals mingling with horrible, guttural words, pushed all that aside. His gaze found a lumpy shape, broad as it was tall, standing over Wina. The girl looked different, not so beautiful as before, not so radiant. The otherworldly glow that had suffused her skin and hair had vanished. Now she was just a young woman in pain, cradling the bleeding stump of her arm to the waist of her tattered silken dress. The thing between her and Rathe leaned over, grasping with long fingers tipped in ragged nails. Wina scrambled out of reach, screaming.

  Rathe slapped the sword off his neck. “We must help her.”

  Nesaea glanced that way and back. “Why would I? She put me in a cell, intending to turn me into one of her pets.” A ripple of distaste flickered over her features.

  Rathe quickly dragged himself off the floor, retrieved his sword lying nearby. “It was the Wight Stone, it … takes you. I felt its power in me, changing me, as it must have changed her.” That was the simplest way he could describe what he could not fully understand.

  Nesaea’s stare did not soften a whit. “For now, I’ll trust your judgment, though I know not why I should.”

  Rathe moved toward Wina, creeping up on her attacker—an old woman, best he could tell, naked, dirty and gray. She lumbered forward, yellowed nails reaching for Wina.

  “Hold!” Rathe warned.

  A rheumy-eyed hag turned, all of pallid and hanging flesh, save at her throat, where a great purple scar reached ear to ear. “Think you to command me, Scorpion?” She rasped. But how could she know him?

  “Who are you?”

  “She came first as a beast,” Nesaea cautioned, anger replaced by troubled wonder. “A yak, I believe such creatures are called.”

  Rathe searched his mind, found an image of a black and shaggy creature running him down. Samba? No. Surely that was a poisoned vision created by the power of the Wight Stone. But it was not. Somehow, the hideous old woman was also Samba the yak.

  The woman snorted, and her pink tongue darted to lap spittle from cracked lips. “Think you to stand between Mother Safi and her vengeance? Many crossed me before I went into the Abyss. Never a one lived long enough to make penance. Now that I am returned, more will pay for their betrayal.”

  “Safi?” Rathe said, incredulous. “You died—” he glanced at Wina “—by her hand.”

  “Aye, but my spirit lived on,” the woman cackled, making her hanging slabs of flesh jiggle.

  Farther down the corridor, beyond Safi and Wina, stealthy shapes slithered low across the floor. There came a violent flapping rustle, and the shapes grew and rose up, curtains of undulating darkness. From this emerged Yiri and Horge. Wina shrank away, moaning. They passed by Rathe and Nesaea, and joined the old woman. Yiri looked a corpse, cheeks wan, eyes hollow. Horge was as frightened and fidgety as Rathe had ever seen him.

  “Here walk the darkest of sorceries,” Nesaea warned.

  “Mama?” Horge said in disbelief, face slack. If he was pleased to see his mother alive, it did not show.

  “Horge, my wee, craven son,” Mother Safi snapped without a hint of love. “Gather what was stolen from your dear mama. ‘Tis yonder, clutched in that dead hand.” When he did not move fast enough, she landed a meaty palm to the back of his head. “Quit pissing down your leg, and do as I say!”

  Hunched and whimpering, Horge scuttled to retrieve the hand that held the amulet.

  “Do not touch it!” Wina snarled, all timidity gone. A monstrous sneer twisted her face. “She’ll turn us all to her bidding.”

  Horge halted, staring about in confusion. Rathe beckoned to him, but the scrawny wretch hunkered lower, shivering in his skin.

  “Do as I say,” Safi growled. She turned a baleful eye on Wina. “And you shut your sniveling gob. Had you died like a good girl, the curse of the Stone would no have fallen to you and yours.”

  Wina drew a belt knife, a gleaming steel tooth. Blood pattered down from the stump of her other arm. “Most all were dead by the time I returned, rotted by the plague you set upon Ravenhold. Murdered for what, some petty affront by Lord Gafford? This night, I’ll finish what you and I began, what he should have done, instead of granting you freedom.”

  “No,” Yiri said, dark eyes going to glowing crimson. “This night you will die.” She raised her hands, fingertips throwing emerald sparks. Her teeth flashed as she muttered strange words, and those sparks coalesced into a fist-sized ball of fire.

  “No!” Horge cried. “You cannot force the spirit to your will. It will destroy you, sister! That’s what it wants!”

  Yiri stepped toward Wina, the crackling ball growing large as a head.

  “Scorch the meat from her bones!” Mother Safi cried with maniacal glee.

  “The girl is beyond our help,” Nesaea said against Rathe’s ear, hauling him down the corridor.

  “Burn her!” Mother Safi hooted, dancing a few lively steps, her form changing.

  “Just so, Mama,” Yiri intoned.

  Wina ra
ised her stump against the heat, terror twisting her face.

  A bullish man shoved between Rathe and Nesaea, halted at the sight of the now shaggy creature Safi was becoming. Though he no longer wore his helm, Rathe knew him as the captain of the Wardens of Tanglewood, by his size and the knot of rank on his shoulder.

  “Stand down, witch,” the stone-faced captain warned Yiri, his voice deep, uncompromising. He bore a sword in his hand longer than she was tall, and a hand span wide. Its edges rippled and ran with the verdant light of Yiri’s magic.

  Wina’s eyes shifted, widened. “Gyleon, you are freed of the Stone!”

  The captain glanced at her, disdain mixing with pity on his hard features. “Away with you, girl.”

  “One is good as another,” Yiri said, throwing a stream of jade fire into his face. Gyleon dove out of the way, but half of the blast seared across the side of his head. He fell howling, blazing.

  Yiri howled with him. And, too, she burned, as the fire in her hands broke its unseen bonds and expanded rapidly, making her into a blazing torch. Yiri did not relent, but followed the captain, bars of fire cutting molten tracks into the walls, splitting the floor. Something struggled out of her, a coiling thing of smoke and a head with four grotesque faces, each with three burning eyes that locked on Rathe, and flared with eagerness.

  Rathe reached to drag Nesaea to safety, only to find she had already bolted in another direction. A jet of emerald fire vaporized the tiles at his feet. He leaped clear, hit the floor and rolled, but found there was no escape from the spreading bedlam, or the fiend of smoke. It slithered from Yiri’s burning husk, sank into Rathe with a triumphant cry. In a horrifying blink, he relieved the instant Yiri had taken that dark curse from him in the Gelded Dragon.

  He fell to the floor, shuddering uncontrollably, wailing, clawing at his skin. Pain did not trouble him, but instead a feeling of corruption and remorse and undying guilt….

  And then, of a sudden, it was gone, leaving in its wake a sense of inescapable desolation, a foreign spirit overriding his own. It was the Khenasith, the Black Breath. It was as familiar to him as his own face, though unrecognized until now. With its return, a well-acquainted rage fell over him, his only defense against crushing misery. His hand sought the hilt of his sword, and his sword sought blood.