by Scott Kaelen
Gorven led them into a long, ornate room. Several large windows to left and right overlooked an expanse of flat and domed rooftops. Lining the walls were paintings, sconces with unlit torches, and bookshelves filled with tomes. The floor was dominated by an elegant but worn rug. The cityscape to the east stretched away, capped by a roiling mass of stormclouds crawling inland. Through the western windows, jutting above the roofs were the battlements of a defensive wall. Between the wall’s raised merlons, Oriken could see the horizon of the Echinus Ocean beneath a bright and clear sky.
Gorven closed the door they’d entered through, locked it and stuffed the key into a pocket of his leather breeches. “Wait here, please,” he said as he strode across the room. “Do make yourselves comfortable.” He swept an arm to encompass the various darkly-varnished chairs and tables and padded benches beneath the windows. “There are some riveting reads on the shelves, and a decanter of water in the corner, but I’m afraid we’re all out of any other… refreshments.” He swung about and strode towards a set of double doors.
“Hold on a minute!” Jalis’s voice rang through the room. “Why don’t you tell us how you knew—”
“Your concerns,” Gorven said over his shoulder, “will be addressed momentarily.” That faint crackly, liquidy sound beneath his voice added a menacing note to his words despite the apparent civility. “Now, please, be so kind as to extend me a moment of patience as I have done for you.” With that, he opened the doors, strode through and pulled them shut behind him.
The slide and click of tumblers told Oriken they’d been locked inside. He ran to the doors, snatched the brass doorknobs and gave them a sharp tug, then slammed his shoulder into the crack between the doors. Reinforced with iron slats, the thick-set wood scarcely budged.
“Hey!” He slammed the flat of his fist upon a door.
“Oriken.” Jalis crossed the distance to him. “Leave it.”
Oriken swung on her. “The other door, I’ll try that.” He made to pass Jalis but she grabbed his arm and fixed him with a warning look.
“Cool your furnace. We’ll get nowhere if you’re running around like a caged cravant.”
“We’ll get nowhere if we can’t leave this damned room, or this whole fucking rabbit warren of a house, for that matter.”
Jalis released his arm. “Gorven said he’d return shortly. Let’s give him ten minutes. Then, if he’s not returned, you can try your best to smash the doors in, or the windows, if you prefer.”
“The windows! Jalis, you’re a genius. We’ve got the grappling hook. We can scale down. Ha! Thought he outsmarted us, did he?”
Jalis’s expression was flat as she raised an eyebrow at him.
“Shit,” he muttered. “No, we don’t have the grappler, do we? We left it in those sodding shrubs.”
“Mm-hm.”
“So, what then? We just wait for a horde of undead to be unleashed into the room? Offer them all a nourishing cup of water as they swarm through the doors?” Oriken strode past Jalis and across the length of the room, his footfalls muted upon the rug. When he reached the single door, he gave it the same treatment as he’d given the others, but to no avail.
“It’s your call,” he said as he whirled around. “But the longer we wait, the colder Dagra’s trail gets. Gah! I could’ve carved that Gorven fellow up when his back was turned.”
“I know,” Jalis called. “I saw it on your face. But you were wise not to. If he knows something about Dagra, we won’t get the information by slicing it out of him, not when doing so would only get us on his rankled side. Let’s just sit down and wait. Conserve your strength.” She walked over to a chair. “You might very well need it.”
With a growl of frustration, he slammed his fist against the door, then took a deep deep breath. “Fine,” he said. He strode to the chair beside Jalis and thrust himself onto it.
“I know how you feel,” Jalis said tightly. “I’m right there with you.”
Oriken paused, then placed his hand on her thigh and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I know.”
The minutes stretched by as he waited restlessly, staring out of the window at the approaching storm, and still Gorven didn’t show up.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he said eventually. “We’ve given him long enough. It’s time to act.”
Jalis sat pensively, an arm resting on her lap, the other hand toying with the criss-crossed lace of her chemise. “All right,” she said. “But I can’t stop wondering, if Gorven intended us harm, why didn’t he attack us back in the cellar room? He could at least have incapacitated us if he had the mind to.”
“Hmph. Maybe so, but I still feel like we’ve been herded like sheep to a slaughterhouse.”
“I can assure you,” said a muffled voice from behind the double doors, “that is not the case at all.” The echo of a key being turned resounded within the room, and the doors were pushed inward to reveal Gorven standing at the threshold, a hand on each doorknob, the tails of an unbuttoned dark-blue overcoat hanging to his thighs. He smiled wanly, his eyes on Oriken who was on his feet and striding towards him.
“Thank you for waiting,” Gorven said, flicking a glance toward the still-seated Jalis. “My apologies for the precautions, but one can never be too careful, no? As you can see, I had to change my shirt since the other sported a bloodstained hole. I shall have to ask Krea to darn it. I do hope—”
Oriken was on him. Gorven’s smile faltered as Oriken grabbed fistfuls of the man’s fresh shirt and pulled him into the room. The doors swung shut and clicked together. Oriken bared his teeth and wrenched Gorven close.
“Not so amiable now, hey, feller? I’ll tear you another new hole if you pull any shit like that again.”
Gorven turned his face aside and grasped Oriken’s shoulders, pushing him away until he was at arm’s length.
Oriken balked. “What in the—” Damn! The strength of the man! Gorven exhibited scant effort in forcing him away; Oriken was no pushover, and he’d bested his fair share of men in arm wrestles back in the Lonely Peddler, but his arm lock was easily broken by Gorven as if doing so were no more strenuous than lifting a tankard of ale.
“I advise you to not get too close,” Gorven warned. His smile dropped completely. “Just being in this place, you’re putting yourselves at unnecessary and foolish risk.”
Jalis stepped up beside them. “We’re here to find our friend. We know you have him. It would be in everybody’s best interests if you hand him back to us.”
“Yeah,” Oriken said as Gorven released him. Reluctantly, he did likewise. “We don’t care who you are or what you’re doing in Lachyla. When we have Dagra we’ll be gone, and you can forget we were ever here.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be quite that simple,” Gorven said as he smoothed the creases in his shirt. “Ah, here he comes now.” Footsteps sounded beyond the room, stopping outside the doors. Gorven – ever the host – pulled one of them open to reveal a discomfited but very much alive Dagra.
Oriken and Jalis blurted his name in unison, breathing sighs of relief at the sight of their friend as Gorven ushered him in with a hand upon Dagra’s shoulder. When the door closed behind him, Dagra regarded his friends with a curiously solemn expression.
No jewel, Oriken noted with a frown. “What in the Pit’s going on, Dag? We should be several hours north of here by now. You know that, right?” He clicked his fingers before Dagra’s face. “Just nod if you can hear me, you little shit! I swear I’ve never been so pissed with you in all our years.” The urge to grab him and shake some sort of reaction from him was almost overwhelming, but Oriken managed to resist it.
Dagra held his gaze, then shrugged. “I was at camp. The two of you were sleeping. Then I was here and…” His brow furrowed as he regarded Gorven. “And Gorven was there, telling me to follow him.” He shrugged. “And now I’m here. I don’t remember much else.”
Oriken raised his eyebrows. “Uh huh? You seem to know your way around well enough.” He edged
his face closer to Dagra and looked him in the eye. “How’s that?”
“I can’t tell you. I sort of recall some bits from before, but it wasn’t me.”
Jalis held her hands out in confusion. “What does that even mean?”
“How can you stand there so casual?” Oriken demanded. “You had us worried sick, and here you are swanning around with some sort of gro…” He waved a hand dismissively towards Gorven.
“Grotesquerie?” Gorven offered.
“That’s the one.”
Gorven sighed. “It’s been quite a while since I was last called one of those.”
“Well, you better get used to it,” Oriken snapped, stabbing a finger towards him. “You’ll be—”
“Oriken,” Jalis warned. “Remember that furnace?”
He shot her a stony look. “Fine, fine.” Turning his attention back to Dagra, he said, “You took over my shift, then you buggered off without a word. Why would you do that?”
“Please,” Gorven interjected. “Don’t be so hard on your friend. He’s still waking up.”
“Huh?”
“That’s right. He sleepwalked his way here.” With a small shrug, he added, “With a little help from me, of course.”
With a derisory sneer, Oriken folded his arms. “Sleepwalking now, you say?”
Gorven gave a curt nod. “He’s not well.”
Oriken barked a mirthless laugh. “You don’t fucking say?” He glanced down at Dagra. “And where in the name of all that’s fucking unholy is the jewel? Hm?”
Dagra’s surprise looked genuine. “It was in your pack.”
“Well, it’s not there now.”
“I’m telling you,” Dagra insisted with a perplexed shake of his head, “I don’t remember—”
“You’ve already said that!” Oriken snapped in Dagra’s face. He bunched his fists, barely resisting the urge to lay his friend out before beating Gorven Althalus to death.
“Forgive me for putting another word in,” Jalis said caustically as she fixed Dagra with a level look, “but you don’t seem overly concerned about any of this. In fact, my bearded friend, sleepwalking or not, you don’t seem quite you at all.”
Dagra’s confused gaze turned to Gorven, who regarded him attentively.
Gorven’s black-rimmed gaze passed between the three of them. “So, not only did you steal something you had no right to, but now it seems you’ve also lost it. If only we had been aware earlier that you had removed it from the tomb. We assumed it was still in your possession, hence bringing your friend to us for you to follow.”
“Hey.” Oriken brandished an accusing finger, first at Gorven, then at Dagra. “What are the two of you playing at here? It’s time we got some answers, and quickly. If Dagra doesn’t have the jewel”—he squared on Gorven—“and you don’t have it”—he flicked a hand at Jalis beside him—“and I’m sure as cowshit that we don’t have it, then who the fuck does? And who in the rutting, fucking Underland is we and us you keep referring to?”
Soft footfalls padding down the corridor beyond the doors paused any further discussion. One of the doors opened and in stepped a young girl, scarcely in her teenage years.
“Must you all talk so loud?” she piped in a weary and irritated voice as she planted her hands on her hips. She fixed her glare onto Oriken. “What does a lady have to do around here to get her beauty sleep?”
“Ah, Krea,” Gorven said. “My apologies for disturbing you. It seems our new arrival and his companions have brought us an unforeseen and somewhat disturbing complication.”
“Hmph,” Krea declared by way of answer. She circled around Dagra, eyeing his unkempt hair. “You’re not as tall as you think you are, you know?” She seemed oblivious that her own dark hair, pulled tightly from her forehead and clasped into a tuft at the crown to fountain to her shoulders, scarcely reached the top of Dagra’s head. With a scowl that encompassed all their dirt-streaked and dusty footwear, she added,“And do you have to trample this filth through my house?” With a haughty gasp, she turned her scrutiny on Oriken.
He stared incredulously back at the girl, if indeed that was what she was; he’d seen a few under-developed women, skin the colour of copper, apparently from somewhere over the southern sea, brought on boats to ply their high-priced services in the brothels and harbours of Brancosi Bay. But the skin of the girl before Oriken was not coppery but pallid. Like Gorven, thin lines of black were beneath her eyelids, and her voice had the same faint, crackly, watery undertone like a hushed echo from deep within her.
Krea’s lips were full, her eyes the lightest of blues. A single silver ring adorned one toe on her bare feet. She was slim but toned, which added to the notion that she might be older than her voice and stature suggested. Her pleated dress had a pinched waist and a square neckline, low enough to sufficiently show that her buds were indeed in bloom.
“You, on the other hand, are quite the strapping one. Inquisitive, too.” She tilted her head and pursed her lips. “Hmm. I like that.”
“Uh…”
Gorven cleared his throat – which made those weird sub-vocal noises all the worse – and said, “Allow me to introduce you to my daughter… although, after a certain amount of time, such a term does become quite moot.” He gestured toward the three of them. “Krea, this is Jalis Falconet and, ah, Oriken and Dagra.”
“Yeah,” Oriken nodded curtly at the girl, still taken aback by her forwardness. He pinched the brim of his hat in greeting, despite feeling not at all in the mood for introductions. “So, what’s with all the eye-liner around here?”
Krea flashed him a snarling grin. Nonplussed, he frowned at the gums around her teeth; where most folk’s would be pink, hers were as dark as the paint around her eyes. And it wasn’t just the flesh immediately arching her teeth, like some townsfolk he could name who had the hygiene level of ditch rats; no, Krea’s entire gums were black. Not withered, just black. Her teeth, though, were as white as Jalis’s.
Jalis was staring, too, but not at Krea, at Gorven. “Again!” she exclaimed. “How do you know my family name? What sort of information have you been squeezing out of our friend?”
Krea thrust her chin up at Gorven. “You mentioned complications, but I don’t see any. You predicted his friends would follow. Do you really need assistance to deal with them?”
Jalis’s hands went to her daggers. “Dealing with us?”
“Now, look here,” Oriken said to Gorven, whose eyes were fixed on Krea. “You too, little lady. I don’t know what sort of sick set-up you’ve got going on in this house, but we came for two things – our friend and the jewel. We got one back. Now, where’s the other?”
Krea nodded to her so-called father as if in response to unspoken words. “I see,” she said, then turned a stony look on Oriken. “You mean to tell us that you do not have my family’s burial stone?”
Jalis’s eyes widened. “Your family? Oh, this is getting ridiculous. Are you trying to tell us—”
“I’m trying to tell you nothing, girl,” Krea snapped. “I am telling you that your meddling in our affairs could have dire consequences, the likes of which you would not comprehend.”
“Wait.” Oriken was scarcely keeping up with the shifts in the conversation. To Krea, he said, “Am I understanding this right? You’re…”
The girl pressed her lips together. “You catch on quickly, don’t you? Handsome you might be, but thick as pigshit. Yes, I am Krea Chiddari.”
Oriken’s black disposition sank deeper. Great. Just what we needed. Another bloody Chiddari.
The moment hung in the air as he shared a look with Jalis. When she shook her head, he turned to Dagra, but the bearded one hardly seemed to realise he was awake – which, apparently, he wasn’t, at least not fully.
“You took the stone,” Krea said accusingly. “It belongs to us, so you can drop the attitude and tell us where it is.”
Oriken shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Your daddy here seems to be the font of all knowledge. Ask
him.”
Krea’s lips pressed to a line as she glared at Oriken. Perhaps it was meant to look menacing, but it seemed that she was one step away from throwing a tantrum.
“For the stars’ sake,” Oriken sighed. “This is the Blighted City. You’re not supposed to be here. How were we to know anyone was living in Lachyla?”
Gorven chuckled. “Living. Now there’s another word that’s an eternal subject of hot debate.”
“What does that mean?” Jalis asked.
Gorven ignored the question. “We can at least rule Dagra out. The stone was still at your camp when he left.”
“What?” Oriken glared at each occupant of the room as he considered Gorven’s words. There was only one explanation. Demelza, he thought. That double-crossing waif pulled the burlap right over our eyes, snuck into camp after Dagra wandered off and before Jalis woke.
“All right.” There was an edge to Jalis’s voice as she looked hard at Gorven. “I’ve had enough of this. How in the Pit do you know what happened at our camp?”
“Because,” Krea spat, nudging her head towards Dagra, “that’s when Gorven became aware of your scraggly dwarf.”
“Hey!” Dagra protested, though he still looked confused.
“Krea, please,” Gorven chided. To Oriken, he said, “What I sensed was faint at first, but, while Dagra and you conversed, I discerned a little of your words and actions. Not enough, unfortunately. Of course, by that time Dagra was not entirely his usual self, entering the second stage of—”
“This is nonsense,” Oriken sneered at both the father and the daughter. “If you can see so damned much, you can find the jewel yourselves.”
