by Cindy Dees
“Aye, sir.”
Eben sipped the frothy, cold ale appreciatively.
“What can I do for you, my young friend?” Rynn asked quietly.
“I have to get to the dream plane again.”
“You are determined to go through with this plan of yours to infiltrate Vesper’s army, then?”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it. My mind is made up.”
“Fair enough.” The paxan took a pull from his ale and grimaced. “Tell me this. Do you want to physically walk onto the dream plane like Will and Raina did when they found the echo of the Sleeping King, or do you want to sleep and go there only with your dreaming mind? Each method poses its own set of risks.”
“I thought merely to dream my way there. Reaching the plane physically nearly killed all of us the last time we did it.”
“When do you wish to make the journey?”
“As soon as possible. Can you help me?”
“I can, and I will. As for when, we can do it this very night if you wish.”
Eben started. He’d expected a pitched argument from the paxan trying to talk him out of it, and Rynn’s quick capitulation had taken him unawares. “Uh, that would be great. Tonight is perfect. The others won’t expect me to move so soon.”
“They really do care for you, you know. Even Sha’Li.”
He scowled. “She betrayed me. Betrayed us all. I will not forgive that.”
“Betrayed us how?”
Eben drained his mug and gestured for a refill. “She chose the Tribe of the Moon over her friends.”
“How?”
“I do not wish to speak of it,” he declared darkly.
“Fair enough.” Rynn paused while the barman placed two fresh pints in front of them. The man retreated, and Rynn murmured, “All of us face dilemmas. Split loyalties, choices with no right answer. Sha’Li is not a bad person. She had to choose between two things, both important to her. She made the best decision she could in the circumstances. Don’t condemn her for trying to do the right thing.”
He leaned forward and ground out angrily, “She let Kerryl Moonrunner go. I had him, and she helped him escape me.”
Rynn shrugged. “Mayhap she did you a favor. Perhaps in years to come you will look back and be glad you did not murder the nature guardian. He may yet prove his worth to us all.”
“Not bloody likely. He’s mad as a hatter.”
Rynn replied gently, “I have to agree with Sha’Li in that debate. He is most certainly not mad. I do not know why he does all that he does, but he is cunning and clever. He has a plan.”
Eben scowled into his mug. Kerryl had kidnapped Kendrick Hyland and turned the youth into a were-creature against Kendrick’s will. Kerryl was a bad guy. Period.
“We will need a private place where both of us can sleep undisturbed and in safety,” Rynn said.
“Hyland House?” Eben suggested.
“Perfect. As soon as Aurelius clears out of there, we can go back and get to sleep. Tell me. How do you plan to convince Vesper that you sincerely want to betray your friends and work for her?”
Easy. He would tell the truth. He would speak of how Kendrick had betrayed him by choosing to stay with his captor. How Sha’Li had betrayed him by choosing Kerryl Moonrunner over him. How they all had betrayed him by taking Sha’Li’s side.
“She has not asked me to betray my friends. To date, she has only offered to help me achieve my fondest wishes.”
“Aurelius has the right of it. She is not helping you out of the goodness of her black heart. She wants something from you.”
Then she could take a place in the long line of people who seemed to want something from him these days. All he wanted to do was get his family back together, safe and sound, and get on with his life. Was that too much to ask?
Eben glared bitterly into his ale and tossed down the last of it. “Let’s go. I’m tired of waiting around doing nothing.”
Rynn nodded silently and gestured at the door. “I’m ready when you are.”
The hour had grown late, and a sharp wind had picked up. Bits of trash blew down the street on a gust of fine grit that stung Eben’s skin. Shutters rattled, and the night buffeted him angrily. Head down, he leaned into the gale, holding his cloak closed as the wind tore at the wool.
Rynn drew up short beside him, making Eben look up sharply. Six men had stepped out of an alley in front of them and blocked their path.
“A foul night to be abroad, gentlemen,” Rynn said evenly.
He knew that tone of voice from the paxan. Rynn had settled into the deep mental calm he used when he entered combat. Eben reassessed the men in front of them again. Now that he looked more closely, a certain predatory eagerness clung to the group. Hands hovered near knife hilts in belts, and they were spread out widely enough not to hinder one another in battle.
“What think you, Rynn? Shall we share them, or are you in the mood for a workout? I’ll let you have them all if you wish.”
Rynn released his cloak, and it flew back behind him, snagging on a large barrel standing in front of a general store. “I’m in a sharing mood. Shall we split them three and three?”
He replied casually, “It hardly seems fair to fight three on one against these amateurs, but the night is cold, and I’m eager to reach my warm bed. We might as well make this quick.”
The brigands in front of them seemed momentarily taken aback, but then their gazes hardened.
One of them growled, “No need for violence, boys. Just hand over yer purses, swords, and them fancy gauntlets the pretty one is wearing, and we’ll be on our way.”
Eben grinned. “I’m fairly certain I speak for my friend as well when I say, if you want our possessions, come and take them.” Although he suspected their possessions were not the goal at all. Surely these were more of Anton’s boys in search of whatever fat bounty was being offered for them. At least the ex-governor had not made the mistake of making it an even fight this time.
The brigands rushed down the street, closing the distance quickly. Eben supposed they thought to intimidate him and Rynn. Which was laughable after the foes they’d faced before. He drew his sword with his right hand and pulled his mace from its holder on his back with his left hand.
Rynn took a step away from Eben, giving each of them plenty of room to move. A good decision given the way Rynn could kick, punch, jump, and spin with lightning speed.
The fight was swift and brutal. Eben parried a blow with each of his weapons simultaneously, directing the parries in an X across the front of his body. He carried the momentum of his weapons in fast upward arcs, smashing the many-pointed mace into the side of one brigand’s head and slashing his sword across the torso of a second one. The third fellow forced him to duck a wild sword swing, but a quick, brutal upward thrust of his own long sword into the belly of the swordsman made short work of him.
The guy he’d hit with his mace dropped to the ground unconscious or maybe dead. Sword guy number two staggered back swearing, and Eben stepped over his fallen companion, stalking his attacker aggressively. A flash of silver flew at him, and Eben batted the thrown knife out of the air with his mace, irritated now.
He feinted with his mace, a big upward swing that the brigand turned aside easily enough. But in so doing, the brigand turned slightly, opening up his side to attack. Eben chopped down into the fellow’s hamstring with his sword. It wasn’t an elegant blow, but it crippled his opponent and sent him to the ground, screaming.
Eben whirled to Rynn’s assistance, but the paxan knelt beside one of his three prone attackers, his hand pressed against the brigand’s temple. Eben bit out, “Did you kill them?”
Rynn looked up grimly. “Nay, they are not dead, but it is necessary to erase their memories of the fight.”
“Because of your eye?”
“Just so.”
“What about the other ones?”
“I’ve already cleansed their minds.”
“That’s a handy trick.
Can you plant false memories at the same time you erase real ones?” Eben asked curiously.
“I can, but it’s tricky to insert memories that fit seamlessly with a subject’s actual experiences.”
“Can all paxan do that, or is it an open-third-eye thing?”
Rynn rose to his full height, fetched his cloak, and returned to Eben, swinging the voluminous wool around his muscular frame. He pulled the hood up over his head, cloaking his offending eye in darkness. Only then did Rynn answer, “All paxan can influence others’ minds with proper training, but doing so ethically is only allowed in limited circumstances. Such as this one.”
Eben was impressed but also disturbed at the paxan’s ability to alter another person’s mind. Thankfully, he knew Rynn to be a man of ironclad personal morals. It was not hard to see, though, why the Empire despised his kind.
Rynn suggested, “What say we tie up these brigands and leave a note for the town guard that they are bandits and thieves?”
Eben grinned. “At this rate, we will reduce Anton’s ranks of rascals to zero in no time.”
They cut strips off the attackers’ cloaks and used them to bind the unconscious men’s wrists and ankles. While Rynn took care of the last man, Eben tore a page out of his trade journal and hastily scrawled a note declaring the men to be outlaws and thieves who had tried to rob lawful citizens of Dupree. He used one of the brigand’s cloak brooches to pin the note prominently to the fellow’s chest.
Eben and Rynn stood back to survey their work, grinning. Anton was going to be apoplectic when he heard about this.
“Shall we make our way to Hyland House before these miscreants awake or we run into any more unfortunate encounters?” Rynn asked.
“Aye. Let us be quit of this foul night. My sister—and Vesper—await.”
* * *
Raw evenings like this made Marikeen grateful for her icy elemental alignment. It afforded her a certain comfort with cold and wet that most humans did not have. Still, she was annoyed to be kept from her bed by this late-night meeting. Anton Constantine was apparently up to his old tricks and hoped to recruit the Cabal, a secretive group of powerful magic users, to his nefarious purposes.
Anton believed that the Cabal’s leader, Richard Layheart, was loyal to him, but Marikeen knew that not to be true. She’d heard Richard speak with disdain of his former superior, laughing about how easy it was to play upon Anton’s greed and lust for revenge.
Of course, Richard was speaking in tones of utmost respect now to the former governor, droning on about what an honor and pleasure it was to be visited by the great Anton Constantine. For his part, the ex-governor preened at the praise.
Arrogant poppycock.
“And to what do we owe this delightful and wholly unexpected visit, Governor?” Richard asked.
“As you may know, I have spent the past months rebuilding my organization to be even stronger and more effective than before.”
“Do you speak of retaking the palace in Dupree?” Richard asked in apparent surprise.
“Nothing so obvious as that. And furthermore, I do not need the palace to accomplish my goals. In fact, I can achieve my desired ends even more readily without the encumbrance of all that petty bureaucracy.”
“Indeed?” Richard drawled. “I always thought you found all that bureaucracy extremely profitable.”
“Oh, it was, but I can keep all the profits of my endeavors now and do not have to share any of them with my Imperial overlords. Anton Constantine is going into business for himself.”
The way Marikeen had heard it, he’d been the head of the biggest underground crime ring in Haelos for years. The Coil apparently had connections across all the known continents, in fact.
“Can I assume, then, that your visit to us has something to do with this new enterprise of yours?” Richard asked.
“Indeed.” Anton paced the length of the table they all sat around, gesturing grandly as he spoke and walked. “Although the bureaucracy was a millstone around my neck, it served its purpose. The guilds, for example, fulfilled a necessary function of resource harvesting and management. I still have need of such people, but working for me and not for that avarian impostor.”
So. He wished to build a shadow government loyal to and reporting only to him, did he? She supposed if she were a criminal overlord, she would proceed in much the same fashion.
“How do you see our little group fitting into your larger scheme?” Richard asked shrewdly.
“I will have need of accomplished mages to marshal the resources necessary to use magic strategically in the furtherance of my goals.”
He wanted to create a shadow Mage’s Guild, in other words. What would Aurelius Lightstar have to say about that? She’d met the solinari guildmaster several times, and he struck her as a formidable foe.
Richard sat back at the head of the table, studying his guest closely. “Why should I believe you have the capacity to build this grand organization of which you speak?”
“Have I not decimated the Haelan legion by convincing men loyal to me to leave its ranks? Have I not gutted the guilds and the treasury with my departure? Is trade not chaotic in my wake? Are my enemies not dead?”
He reached into his pouch and slammed an object onto the table in front of Richard. It took Marikeen a moment to identify the foot-long, spiky object, but when she did, she rose to her feet with a gasp.
“Where did you get that?” she demanded.
“I got it from my man recently. He used it to kill Leland Hyland in his own home. There is no place in Haelos I cannot reach, no enemy I cannot kill.”
The white antler lying on the table came from the Spirit Stag of Hyland, and she had stared at it on the wall of her foster father’s trophy room for most of her childhood, ever since he caught the stag and, without killing it, removed a single antler to earn a boon from the magical stag.
His man had killed Leland? Anton was behind the death of the only father she’d ever known? Marikeen lifted her stare to Anton and memorized every last detail of his features so she could picture his bloated, smug face while she plotted his slow and painful demise. He thought he had an enemy in her little brother? He knew nothing of real enemies. She would utterly destroy him and everything he stood for.
“Give me that antler,” she said coldly. “It is my right to have the weapon that killed my father.”
Anton snorted in disdain. “Hyland was not your father, girl. I know who spawned you.”
“Tell me,” she demanded, her voice thick with rage.
“Enough, Marikeen,” Richard said coldly. “Anton is our guest.”
It took every ounce of self-discipline she possessed not to blast Anton into a pile of dust where he stood. She knew the magic to do it. Had the power.
“As a gesture of good faith, my friend, I respectfully request that you give my rather outspoken apprentice the item she requested.”
Anton frowned, not pleased with the request, which, knowing Richard, was exactly why he’d made it. It was a subtle power play to force Anton into giving up a trophy he cherished.
The ex-governor hesitated a moment more and then looked up at Richard with a shrug and a smile. “Why not? My enemy is dead. That is what matters to me, not the toy that accomplished the deed.”
Anton tossed the antler toward her. He aimed high, however, and it sailed over her head, clattering to the stone floor behind her. Infuriated at his intentional miss with the spirit antler, she nonetheless scrambled after it, clutching it tightly to her breast.
If she was right about it, the spirit stag’s antler had more power than Anton knew. Much more. Power she would use to destroy the man who had destroyed Leland Hyland. She had no illusions that the assassin who had wielded the antler worked for anyone but Anton himself. The former governor had made an enemy tonight. An enemy he would live to regret making.
Her.
* * *
Hemlocke woke by slow degrees, coming into awareness of her body bit by bit, stretchi
ng deliciously as her senses came alive. There was something intensely satisfying about waking from a long winter’s nap, feeling the distant approach of spring.
Not that she could see the earth waking up down here at the bottom of her deep, dark lake, encased in a magical bubble of air as she was. She could breathe water if she chose; she just preferred air with all its rich, lingering scents of green and growing things and drenched with the taste of emotions, human and animal, a spicy seasoning to flavor it.
Stretching her wings wide, testing their span, she rose to her haunches and, swinging her tail side to side, gave her spine a mighty crack. It was all right to confine herself to human form now and then, but she much preferred her massive draconic body to the puny bipedal existence of humans.
I would have music.
On command, the creatures of the lake, and the water of the lake itself, began to hum, serenading her with melodies older than time. Almost older than she. But not quite.
She expanded her awareness to take in the continent beneath her great claws. It was restless. Disturbed. Strange magics had come to it, tugging and distorting the natural ley lines of the land. The other planes crowded close, too close, their alien magics distorting the lush green magic of this land. It was these disturbances in the fabric of life on Haelos that had woken her, in fact.
She expanded her awareness further and felt living creatures scurrying across and under the land like so many busy ants, each intent upon its own petty business. Except …
Her sentinel’s alertness zeroed in on a few of the tiny mortals in particular. Ignoring the boundaries of time, she looked back over the past few decades of human-measured time and found the disturbing pattern she sought.
She tsked to herself as she watched what they’d been up to.
A few of those scurrying humans were toying with forces well beyond their understanding. Irritation and a measure of curiosity coursed through her. So meddlesome, these short-lived humans.
She tested the greater winds of time, seeking intersections between past and future, mapping the effect of current actions by the young humans who’d caught her attention so sharply.
