Exile's Gamble_The Chronicles of Shadow_Book II

by Lee Dunning

  Good. I need heal. With that, the mighty creature collapsed on top of Raven.

  “Oh. Oh, dear,” Raven said from beneath the crushing weight of the limp mass of fur and feathers.

  Chapter 20

  Awareness came to K’hul in waves of gray. Sound filtered in first. He could hear screams and the clashing of weapons. The roar of something … Not able to recall where he knew that noise, he shook his head, instantly regretting the movement. With it came stunning pain he’d never experienced the likes of before. He drew breath to scream. Someone shoved something between his teeth and then threw their weight against him, wrestling him still.

  “As I feared, no one bothered to teach you how to deal with pain,” a rough female voice hissed in his ear.

  As the pulsing black and red of his agony receded, K’hul remembered the voice. Lady Earthfire. First Father, what happened?

  He tried to speak but she shushed him. She spoke in no more than a whisper. “Give yourself a few more minutes. We took quite a fall and you split your head open. At first, I thought you were dead but the First’s blood runs strong in you. Still, we don’t want to draw their attention before we’re ready.”

  K’hul finally dared to open his eyes and recoiled at the hell before him. His elemental still fought but it flailed ineffectually without his guidance. Hundreds of demons and devils clustered like pulsating sores across its body. Devils! They swarmed the battlefield. Where did they come from?

  Lady Earthfire eased her grip on him enough he could twist his head and take in their immediate surroundings. Stone, in a not quite haphazard manner, piled around the two of them. The arrangement created a clever blind. They could view the battle while remaining nearly invisible from their enemies.

  When K’hul remained calm, the female First Born gently pulled the wad of leather from his mouth. His pain dropped from soul shattering to merely madness inducing. His vision still swam and it took a moment before he recognized his people out on the field fighting the enemy with swords and axes and spears—not just the long-range magic they’d planned on. “How did this happen?”

  “We fell for a trap within a trap,” Lady Earthfire murmured. “We were so certain the small demon army served as a lure to keep us from Castle Teres, we didn’t consider the possibility they planned to ambush us with a more powerful force right here.”

  K’hul tested his limbs. His arms and legs responded and his breathing came easier. Only his head still screamed with the pain of a thousand bloody spears. “We had shielding.”

  “Yes, but the power of five Dukes of Hell turned them to so much nothing. One of them killed Lord Nocturne—”

  “Who?”

  “The mage Lord Icewind sent to serve us on the command post.”

  K’hul swallowed. “Of course.”

  “I threw the both of us off the edge of the cliff before we joined him in death. The devils sent the entire tor tumbling down, effectively spilling our army onto the field. Those who survived the fall regrouped and now fight. We’ve made a good showing of ourselves but we need reinforcements.”

  A spark of hope banished the last of K’hul’s grogginess. “We planned for this. We have reinforcements to call on.”

  “From what I can tell, not a single diviner is left to us to contact them,” Lady Earthfire said. “All First Home knows is we stopped communicating. We left my daughter in charge—she won’t rush in blind and risk a massacre.”

  K’hul extricated himself from the elfess and tried to get his legs under him. He grunted with disgust when she offered assistance and he felt obliged to accept. “Why in the hells are you in such good shape?” he snarled.

  “You broke my fall, Warlord,” the smith replied.

  He shot her a glance but her dirt and blood smudged face gave no hint if she joked. She hurts too, she’s just better at hiding it.

  The two stepped carefully along the staggered barricade of stone. “You set this up?” he asked.

  Lady Earthfire shrugged. “Few in my family have much magical ability but I can shift stone well enough. You needed time to recuperate.”

  “My thanks,” K’hul said. He froze as the carnage surrounding the makeshift hidey-hole came into view. Grey devils like those he’d fought in Second Home, lay everywhere, bloody and broken. One couldn’t take a step without treading on a severed arm or fanged head.

  “I had to clear the area before I could build our stone blind,” she explained.

  “You killed all of these?” K’hul couldn’t keep the incredulous tone from his voice.

  Lady Earthfire tromped ahead, her prosthetic giving off an odd creak like tree branches in the wind. She paused to kick at a partially intact corpse with her flesh and blood leg. K’hul’s mind swam but this time it had nothing to do with injury. “But you only have one leg.”

  “Ancestors, Warlord,” she said over her shoulder, “if you’ve been swinging a sword with your legs all this time, you’ve been doing it wrong.”

  K’hul almost smiled. “We’ve been spotted,” he said and pointed as a mob of fiends broke away from the main battle and headed in their direction. “See if you and your leg can keep them off me for a minute.”

  He turned his attention to his beset elemental.

  Lady Culna’mo ran a hand through her short-cropped hair and stared glumly at the shaking child before her. Her mother loved kids and knew how to deal with them. Unfortunately, she wasn’t here.

  The councilor tried again. “Sweetheart, please stop crying. We need your help.”

  Seer rubbed at her face and snuffled loudly. She wouldn’t lift her head to meet anyone’s eyes but at least the continuous wailing stopped. “I’m of no use to anyone, just a vessel of corruption. Lady Reaper understood.”

  One of the healers who’d brought Seer to the council chamber cooed in sympathy and made as if to pull the child into an embrace. Lady Culna’mo pinned the healer in place with a glare. Maybe Raven had the right of it. Coddling didn’t appear to have any positive effect on the young Shadow Elf.

  The councilor pointed at each healer and then thrust her hand toward the door at the far end of the chamber. “Out.”

  They fluttered their hands in agitated protest. “We can’t just leave—”

  “Either walk out now or I’ll grab you by your ears and drag you out,” Lady Culna’mo said. Thank the ancestors Lady Sera hadn’t accompanied Seer as well. The councilor hated playing the villain but too many lives depended on what she could learn from Seer. She stood, rolled her massive shoulders and made grabby motions. The healers gulped and scampered for the door.

  All around the room, soldiers and casters alike found something of interest to draw their attention away from their commander. Good. Lady Culna’mo crossed her arms and imagined what atrocities her mother and friends faced as the minutes ticked by. Seer squirmed in the heavy silence and finally dragged her eyes from the floor to see what loomed over her. She quailed and raised her hands as if to ward off blows.

  “Stop that!” Lady Culna’mo ordered. Seer dropped her hands, eyes enormous. The First Born bent down, far down, to press her nose into the girl’s face. “I’m sick of hearing you’re helpless, you’re tainted, you’re of no use to my people. Our people.”

  She pinched the girl’s chin between her fingers, refusing to let Seer drop her gaze. “I’ve listened to all the excuses I ever want to hear from you. Supposedly, Reaper claimed you lot needed to redeem yourselves. You’re going to do that—right now. You tell me what happened to Lord K’hul’s army, or by the Traitor, I’ll banish you as the First did his own son.”

  When W’rath, Kiat and the three soldiers returned, Lady Swiftbrook waved the two councilors over to the scrying bowl. “Lady Culna’mo has information,” she said. She tipped her head and addressed the First Born’s shimmering image. “I hope your news is better this time.”

  “Only in the sense we know what’s going on with Lord K’hul’s army,” she replied.

  “You made contact?” Lady Swift
brook asked.

  “Not exactly.” Lady Culna’mo pulled a wasted figure into view. Bulging, yellowed eyes goggled out of a gray skull at the three councilors in Castle Teres. “This is my new friend, Seer. She used her talent to give us a clear idea of what befell those who went to take on the demons.”

  “Good job, lass,” W’rath said. The praise froze the desiccated girl as if she didn’t know how to respond. She finally settled on dropping her gaze to stare in befuddlement at her feet.

  Lady Culna’mo passed the girl to someone out of view. “Get her something to eat—force it down if you have to.” She turned back to the scrying pool. “You were right about the demons, Lord W’rath, just not quite in the way you figured. It was all a ruse to get us to commit a large number of forces to what looked like an easy win. Once the attack started, they ambushed us with devils and kicked us in the backside. The battle’s devolved into a huge melee. Even K’hul’s elemental looks bedraggled. Seer managed to confirm both he and my mother live but we’ve lost quite a few soldiers.”

  Kiat blanched and clapped a trembling hand to his chest. “I sent people into that.”

  Lady Swiftbrook resisted an urge to reach out and comfort the sensitive diviner. She understood well the burden of surviving while those under her command perished. Their place wasn’t to sob and wring their hands, though. We win first, and then we face our regrets.

  “I take it you plan to reinforce our beleaguered troops?” W’rath asked.

  “Yes,” the First Born said. “We can do to the devils what they did to us. But what of you? Lady Swiftbrook indicated you have problems on your end as well.”

  The Sky Elf hadn’t had a chance to interrogate W’rath or Kiat but the way Kiat pressed his eyes shut told her all she needed. Still, she looked to W’rath to gauge his reaction. He practically glowed with good cheer. Her worry turned to dread.

  W’rath smiled into the scrying bowl. “Oh, a few mischievous scamps managed to make their way into the castle. We’ll hunt them down soon enough. You finish off the enemy beating on K’hul and then pop over for a bit of sport when you’re able.”

  “You’re up to your eyeballs in gassy orcs, aren’t you,” Lady Culna’mo said, no more fooled by W’rath’s cavalier attitude than Lady Swiftbrook.

  “I prefer to think of it as a chance to hone our skills,” W’rath replied. His face settled into a more earnest countenance. “Your concern should lie with extricating our allies already locked in battle. Here, the enemy tests our defenses but hasn’t fallen fully upon us. Better you use your strength to gain a decisive win on one front than split your forces further and risk losing all.”

  “Get going, Councilor,” Lady Swiftbrook said. “Leave someone to monitor the scrying bowl. We’ll try to keep them updated.” The image in the water disappeared and Lady Swiftbrook turned to her companions. “How bad is it?”

  “Someone sabotaged the sewer wards,” Kiat said in a small, defeated voice.

  “What?” She had to have heard Kiat wrong. Certainly none of the humans wielded enough magical skill to bring down elven defenses. “Are you saying the enemy already infiltrated the castle before you secured it?”

  W’rath pulled a small object out of a pouch and tossed it onto the table where it came to rest next to the scrying bowl. “That’s not what he means at all. One of our own works against us—or at least did.”

  Lady Swiftbrook stared at the ring. She’d seen many like it thousands of times over the years. Each member of the K’hul family wore one. Historian attended every K’hul birth and slipped one of the sapphire rings onto the thrashing right hand of each child, where it resized to fit the finger it encircled. “K’hul didn’t do it,” she said. “He’s angry but he’d never betray us.”

  W’rath raised a skeptical eyebrow and she flushed. “All right,” she amended. “He wouldn’t risk my life in order to get at you.”

  The Shadow Elf plucked up the ring before nodding. “I agree, however some among his family have no such qualms. Do you know of any likely suspects?”

  “I do,” she said with a snort of disgust, “but I’m not sure K’hul’s sister Itarillë is bright enough to pull it off.” Her gray eyes slid to Kiat. “Fortunately, we have a skilled diviner who can settle the matter for us.”

  Kiat accepted the ring as if W’rath handed him a dead rat riddled with maggots. “I hardly think now is the time.”

  “You’re assuming the individual who wore this ring acted on their own,” W’rath said. “They might have accomplices still at large in the castle.”

  The mage gaped at W’rath. “You think of the most awful things!”

  “One of my many gifts,” the psion said. Kiat placed the ring in the water of the scrying bowl and started summoning his power. W’rath tugged at Lady Swiftbrook’s sleeve and drew her a few feet away. “We should consider lending our assistance to K’hul and Lady Culna’mo.”

  “We’re not leaving the humans to fend for themselves,” Lady Swiftbrook said with a sharp look. “We brought this death to their door.”

  W’rath kept his voice low, uncompromising. “Must I remind you the humans brought this upon themselves when they chose to attack the Wood Elves?”

  He made a valid argument but she refused to cede the point. She tried a different tact. “Would you abandon that little girl to monsters? You know damned well her parents can’t protect her. There’re probably dozens of others like her in the same position.”

  W’rath flinched but his face didn’t soften. “If it means saving the lives of elves, then yes, madam.”

  People accuse me of following an inflexible code! She steadied her resolve. Foolish of her to think an emotional argument would win him over, at least where it concerned humans. She needed to appeal to his practical side. “If we leave now, we’ll forsake elves as well. They’re scattered all over the castle and the outer defenses. We can’t possibly gather them all in one place for you to port them out. We’d strand them here to die with the humans.”

  “And most of the portal mages returned to First Home to help with K’hul’s fight,” W’rath said, finishing her argument for her. “You have the right of it, madam.” He drew his lips into a tight grimace.

  Back at the table, Kiat muttered irritably, drawing the two from their debate and back to his side. Lady Swiftbrook spied the image of a young, black-haired First Born shining up from the surface of the water. “Who is that?”

  “I have no idea,” Kiat replied. “He can’t possibly be a K’hul with that black hair. They’d never stand for it. Unfortunately, he didn’t possess the ring long enough for me to learn anything about him other than appearance.”

  “Lord Cinder,” an unexpected voice drew their attention from the water’s image. Lady Winterdawn leaned in the doorway to the bedroom. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I overheard everything and wanted to help.”

  She adjusted the robe she’d donned to replace the one destroyed by Lord Darson. Her hair needed a good washing and combing but blood no longer streaked her face. A yellow cast to her skin hinted at terrible injuries on the mend. The soldier Lady Swiftbrook assigned to the apprentice’s care hovered nearby, ready to lend a steadying hand.

  Lady Winterdawn took a deep breath and stepped into the room. The soldier placed a hand on her elbow but the Sky Elf pulled away. “Please, I need to do this myself,” she said. She wobbled across the floor and sighed in relief when she made it to the table. She peered into the pool. “Yes, that is definitely Lord Cinder.”

  Kiat seemed to have lost his voice. He started to reach across the table to his apprentice and then drew back, his hand curling against his chest like a dying flower. Lady Swiftbrook mentally shook her head. He’s besotted. “How do you know Lord Cinder?” she asked.

  “He’s one of Lady Itarillë K’hul’s new suitors,” Lady Winterdawn explained. “I gather news each morning and present it to Lord Icewind so he can stay informed. Lady K’hul’s recent adoption of four young males into her family caused quite a bit
of tongue wagging. Lord Cinder’s obvious Sky Elf blood made him especially gossip-worthy.”

  Kiat blinked, coming out of his mooncalf state. “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “I’m sorry,” his disheveled twin said. “At the time I didn’t consider it worthy of your attention.” She pressed a shaking hand to her damp forehead and sucked in a steadying breath.

  Lady Swiftbrook glared at Kiat, silently willing him to go to the poor girl and put an arm around her. Instead, he stayed frozen in place like a gormless fifty-year-old. She rolled her eyes. Better she focus on their predicament rather than her colleague’s lack of social skills. “Ancestors, surely the other three aren’t wandering the halls ready to kill us all just to impress a girl?”

  “Would she risk involving so many in her schemes?” W’rath asked. “You mentioned she’s a bit lacking.” He tapped his temple for emphasis.

  Lady Swiftbrook silently berated herself. She and Itarillë might not get along but the girl’s faults generally lay in reckless stunts not murder. “I may have spoken before thinking things through,” she admitted. “Itarillë likes to get into trouble but I don’t see her hand in this. Perhaps the boy came up with the idea on his own and things got out of hand?”

  “It doesn’t explain where Lord Cinder obtained the powder he used to disenchant my wards,” Lord Icewind said. He brushed away the image of the young elf from the surface of the water. “Between the rare ingredients and the skill it takes to compound, even a small quantity would take years to process. The amount used probably took a good fifty years to make.”

  “So someone with skill and an agenda found an expendable, naïve pawn to further their plans?” Lady Swiftbrook said. She couldn’t comprehend someone doing something so heinous.

  “More than expendable,” W’rath said. “They chose Lord Cinder specifically because they wished for him to perish.” He tapped his chin with one long finger, so absorbed in the task of teasing apart the puzzle he didn’t seem to notice how the others stared at him aghast.