Still chewing the last of his improvised snack, Cassian was heading out the door when he bumped into Jerenn.
"Do you need anything, sir? I—"
"Yes. Come with me," he said. If something went amiss, he might need to send a messenger to Ilfaralek, who knew Cassian trusted Jerenn.
"Perhaps you might also bring that knife you bought," he said.
"Will there be trouble?" Jerenn was obviously torn between half-wishing there would be and half-hoping there would not.
"I don't know," Cassian said quietly. "No, no, I shouldn't think so. Just to be on the safe side."
The coach drew up at Tarlanth's house shortly afterwards. Though the soldiers ringing the front and back entrances looked bored, Cassian saw to his relief that the place was well guarded. He paused to speak to the captain outside the front door.
"There's only a couple of men inside, sir," the captain said. "That brat said he didn't want the place crawling with soldiers. Stubborn little bugger. But Tashiri, that's one of the Legion wizards, sir, he's in there with several of my best men right outside the lad's rooms. Nothing's getting in or out of there, sir."
"Well done," Cassian said. "Very good. I'll just have a word with Tashiri if that's all right with you."
"Be my guest, sir," said the captain, relieved. Cassian opened the front door and made his way up the stairs to the rooms Lyn had been occupying. The landing area was poorly lit, but he could see the three guards sitting above him. Judging by their size, the captain had reinforced the wizard's presence with two orks of quite exceptional proportions.
But it was not till he neared the top of the stairs that he realized all of them were dead. Each one sat with a facial expression of contorted agony, veins bulging beneath skin, poisoned by the same snake venom—the devastating effects of which Cassian had seen before, all too often. His heart thumping in his chest, he pushed open the door to the room where Lyn's paintings were scattered.
There were signs of a desperate struggle. Canvases were flung hither and thither, most of them torn to shreds in what had plainly been a frenzied orgy of destruction. Cassian screamed the boy's name, but the only answer was silence. After drawing his enchanted dagger, he took out his magical scarab and lay it on the ground to do its work. He barely heard Jerenn's gasp behind him; the boy had been following some steps behind and had only just seen the corpses.
Cassian flung open the doors to Lyn's bedchamber. A huge mirror mocked him with his own reflection, and a musky, peppered scent hung in the air. Clicking after him, the scarab made its way slowly to the far wall and Cassian soon began to see the telltale evidence there. The form of a body began to appear in the position in which it had walked through the wall.
"He's been taken," Cassian said wretchedly. "Damn it all—where?"
"Who might know, sir?" Jerenn was shaking, standing behind him.
"Ziraldesh," Cassian said. "I think he must know. He's still keeping something from me, I'm sure of it. Curses! I should have thought to take Aralesh's books from him. I could have found out, surely." He sheathed his dagger and paused for a moment's thought.
"I can stay here and let you know if anything happens," Jerenn said dubiously. "No, wait. I can look in the secret places in the cellars. The young master may have hid down there. He did know of those passages. He caught me down there a couple of times and made me show him."
"Are you sure?" the elf said rather doubtfully, but the scarab showed him that the magically exiting figure had departed some minutes before. Jerenn would not be at risk now, and he did, after all, know the place well. "Very well, then. I won't be long."
Cassian raced down the stairs and past the guards, not even bothering to answer their queries. He virtually flung himself into his coach and yelled "Ziraldesh" to Kendreck. The man whipped the horses into action and, with a jolt that flung the elf against the back of the coach so that he struck his head on the panels, the carriage shot away into the night.
Cassian almost hammered down the door when they reached the house of Ziraldesh. When the door opened, he would probably have knocked down the servant who did so, but the man quickly got out of the way when he saw the look on the elf's face.
“He's in the study," Shusala said with some anxiety when he met her just beyond the hall. "What is it, what—
Cassian headed straight for the door, preparing to launch into a verbal assault on the wizard. He was sure Ziraldesh had been keeping something from him and time was very short. But the words never got out of his mouth. He was struck utterly speechless by what he saw in the flickering light of the candles guttering in the room.
What remained of Ziraldesh covered perhaps a quarter of the floor area. He had been very precisely quartered, his limbs removed with surgical precision and exactness from their sockets. His head was placed on his desk, held firm by murderous hands that were just completing a long cut from his forehead down the length of the face. Blood saturated everything, but not a single drop showed on the killer's hands or body. She stood there holding a bizarre relic, an elliptical orb of bone with an inlaid, silvered, hooked claw she was using to make the cuts. Blood seemed to be absorbed into the thing as she cut, and it pulsed with a visible scarlet aura.
He recognized her at once. The brilliant green eyes were unmistakable; he had seen her in the Undercity, where he'd nearly been consumed by her blazing magical fire. Not one of the protections he carried would withstand it if she had any time to use such power now. He leapt at her at once, hand reaching for his dagger. Her face, wreathed in black curls, broke into a fearful snarl, her lips drawing back from her mouth to reveal perfect white teeth.
She evaded him with feral, feline speed and dexterity, retreating like a hunched and cornered animal to the far wall, and then she simply backed straight through it, her body melding into the stone like a diver disappearing into water. Desperately, the elf looked around him, then crashed through the drapes close to where she'd disappeared. They fell around him as he smashed his way through the glass-paneled door into the garden. The figure was racing at impossible speed into the night, barely visible even as a shadow, fleeing northward.
He could not possibly keep up with her and by the time he reached the Grandwalk, she was gone. As he stood staring into the distance, Cassian suddenly realized that he'd left his scarab at Tarlanth's. He was furious with himself; if he'd had it to hand, he could surely have found a trail, no matter how strong her disguises and illusions or protections.
Well, there's nothing else for it, he thought glumly. Picking up his heels, he ran toward the mansion from which the person he'd thought to be the killer's last victim had been taken so recently.
Jerenn made a cursory check of the cellars, but he was beginning to think better of his offer to remain in the house. The guards outside showed no signs of being terribly eager to enter. He thought of leaving, and then a sudden rush of curiosity and foolhardiness got the better of him and he returned to Lyn's bedroom. Perhaps he would be able to find something there, some clue, which Cassian had missed. Standing in the doorway, he saw the little scarab the elf had left behind him and picked it up.
At least, he thought, I'll be able to give this back to him. It must be magical, or valuable; he wouldn't hide it on his person if it wasn't. Cheered by the thought, he put the beetle on the bed table and began to poke around the room for anything else of interest. His eyes settled on a wardrobe, and he opened it idly to see what he might find.
The clothes were finely made; he had seen Lyn wear them often enough, silks and cotton, cool and comfortable. For a moment he wondered about trying on one of the fine jackets or shirts and then scolded himself.
Then, quite suddenly, he realized his hands were in a place that didn't exist. The wardrobe was shallow, without any real depth to it, and yet his hands had reached not quite to the back of it. Intrigued, his hands closed around some silk and he drew the garment out. Puzzled by what he'd found, he was about to reach in and see what else he could discover when he caught a shimme
ring out the corner of his eye on the far wall. He closed the wardrobe door hurriedly and dived beneath the bed, the disarrayed coverlet hanging down just far enough to offer a viable hiding place.
He heard the figure enter, breathing hard, and terror rose in his heart.
Jerenn could not risk pulling the coverlet down further, or he would surely be seen. But the cloth covered the bed at a slight angle, and from where he lay he could see a little into the room. He realized that he could just, perhaps, be seen in the mirror and yet he dared not move. He could only hope that the girl would not notice. She seemed almost entranced in herself, while his face was barely visible in the shadows cast by the hanging coverlet.
She wore green and brown, leather and cotton, sturdy garments better suited to a laborer, though no laborer could have afforded clothing of such fine make. Her head was covered in thick black curls, and she stood before the mirror making a strange, high keening sound, in some terrible lamentation. He wanted to close his eyes, but he could not.
She pulled off her brown boots and then her jerkin and shirt, until she was standing before the mirror clad only in loose trousers. Jerenn could see her back clearly, her pale skin and the bones of her spine, and he could see part of her face in the mirrored reflection. The face was afire, green eyes brilliant with some violent emotion. Her breasts were small, and though she was tall enough for a full-grown woman there was something deeply childlike about her. Horrified fascination mingled with the fear inside him.
She yanked off her trousers and stood naked before the mirror for a moment, then she padded on her small and nimble feet to the wardrobe and reached into the back, taking out a scarlet dress and pulling it on over her head. She gazed at herself in the mirror again, and then her hands reached to her face and head.
Jerenn almost cried out loud as he witnessed what happened next. Before his horrified gaze she seemed almost to be ripping her head asunder. Her right hand seemed to tear into her flesh, which came away in a thin, torn sheet like the skin of some fabulous and exotic reptile. Meanwhile, her left hand pulled at her hair, and it too came away in a single lifeless mass.
With whatever had been the material used to assist the illusion gone, and the wig removed to complete the transformation, Lyn stood absolutely still, gazing at himself in the body-length mirror. Then, very deliberately, he drew something out of the jerkin he had been wearing upon first entering and gripped it firmly in one hand while pulling the dress over his head with the other.
The body is a girl's, Jerenn thought, his mind in turmoil, but the Passions alone know what soul is within it.
Then he saw the twisted instrument in her hands, an orb of bone with a skewering talon of silver within it. Holding the bone part firmly, Lyn drove it firmly into the pit of her stomach and sank screaming to her knees. Jerenn made an incipient movement to abandon his hiding place and save her, but his instincts roared at him to stay still. It saved his life.
The scream settled into a gurgling moan, and then back to the terrible keening sound, exultant now. Jerenn suddenly realized that there was no blood to be seen. What should have been an appalling, mortal wound showed no sign that it even existed. Hands still firmly balled into her abdomen, the girl rose slowly and stood before the mirror. To his horror, Jerenn could see her pulling the serrated silver claw slowly out of her body, grimacing with pain all the while, the withdrawal being an obscene ceremony of some kind. A little blood seemed to fleck her lips, and she licked at the sides of her mouth with her tongue.
There was the sound of footfalls outside, someone unmistakably headed for the room. The girl's demeanor changed utterly. She half-fell back on her haunches, gripping the fully withdrawn claw, hands cupped around it with fingers that seemed like claws, like an organic outgrowth from the cruel fusion of metal and bone. The door opened.
Cassian stood there, his face a mask of amazement. He saw bright green eyes, discarded clothes, and then his dagger was in his hand. The clawed orb was already raised and what seemed to be a ball of whirling metal flew from it. As Jerenn watched, it divided into four parts, each a metal blade the length of a hand, two aiming for the elf's armpits and two at his hips. Cassian reeled back as the blades struck, but though there was pain on his face Jerenn could sense from the girl's reaction that the attack failed to achieve the desired effect. The magical girdle the elf wore saved him, though Jerenn could not know that.
Desperately, he began to slither out from his cover.
The girl had a knife now, a long discolored blade grabbed from somewhere beyond his vision, and as she sprang at the elf a ruby aura flared about her and Jerenn could sense the heat even as she moved away from him. Cassian gripped her blade-holding wrist with one hand and struck at her with the dagger in his other, but it was as if the metal of the enchanted blade struck a formidable unseen barrier. It was like driving his hand into a wall, and he cried out with pain. Worse still, the elemental fire around her was beginning to wither even his protections. The carpet beneath her naked body was beginning to smoke.
She surprised him, her free hand slamming at his forehead and burning deeply into it, the flesh charring beneath her touch. Cassian screamed and writhed beneath her, unable to maintain his grip on her other hand now, his senses swimming with pain. She dragged her arm free of his hold and held the orb aloft in both hands with a desolate wail of triumph.
But the blow never came. Jerenn had sprung from his hiding place and his knife did its work well. Metal bit down hard through skin and sinew and bone, magical protections unable to sustain against it.
He reeled back himself as the figure of Lyn jerked backward in a convulsion so severe he thought the girl's spine would snap in two. Her magical barrier had been entirely frontal, woven to deny the elf any opportunity to strike at her; she had no inkling that an enemy lurked behind her as well. The naked body thrashed on the floor before going still for a moment. Then, to Jerenn's horror, it slowly began to rise, blood dripping from the shoulders onto the floor. Jerenn stood helpless, paralyzed with fear, the bloody knife fallen from his hands as the vengeful creature rose to its knees.
As he stared, unable to take his gaze away from the hate-filled, insane visage, the girl took the orb in both hands again and slashed her own throat from ear to ear. Jerenn felt himself beginning to gag and vomit as then, impossibly, the girl drew out the silvered claw and plunged it into her forehead, cutting down in the same move, slashing a bloody cleft down the length of her face and through the sideways cut to form a ghastly suicidal cross of blood. Strength disappeared from her fingers and she slumped forward, her blond head falling at his feet. Blood was still running in rivulets down her narrow, pale back even as a pool of it began to form a dreadful halo around her head. Cassian meanwhile was struggling to his knees, a blackened stigmata of flesh on his forehead, pale and shaking. Jerenn fell onto the bed and was helplessly sick.
Then the elf's hands were on his shoulders, helping him up as he coughed and spat the last of the bitter taste from his mouth.
"Come now. It's over," Cassian whispered gently.
34
Cassian laid down his pen for a moment and tried not to scratch at his forehead. The salve was very good, and had taken away all the pain save for a residual prickliness that still caused him a troublesome itch at unpredictable moments. It was an annoying distraction.
Tarlanth appears to have fostered the deception for reasons of inheritance, he read back to himself. A daughter would not have inherited his property nor continued the family line. His wife would have acquired his property and her ir-House would have gained the riches and influence of House Medari. So, when a daughter was born, Tarlanth and his wife proclaimed the birth as that of a son and they raised the child as a boy.
It may seem surprising that Tarlanth's wife agreed to cooperate with this subterfuge. But she has recently confessed that her plan was to await her husband's death and then do away with the child, permitting the woman herself to inherit. Obviously, the Lyn-girl would not have bee
n able to marry as a man and bear sons to deny her that, though I suspect Tarlanth may even have arranged some stratagem for simulating such a contingency. Most likely, after a "grandson" had been arranged for, Lyn would have been killed off.
There seems little doubt from the few surviving notes in Lyn's hand that she believed so. She has known all her life that the form in which she'd been born was worthless to her parents, and that their plans included destroying her as soon as was practically feasible and politically convenient. There must be added to this the strong likelihood of abuse at the hands of her father, though I have no conclusive evidence of this. Please consult the second of the codicil statements with respect to this matter for supporting circumstantial evidence.
Under such extreme circumstances, the development of a dual personality and dissociative madness are entirely unsurprising. There is evidence of considerable sensitivity in her artistic creations, which suggest both an intensity of suffering and a predisposition to a disintegration of her personality.
Not much of an epitaph, he reflected. Cool and official words to sum up what must have been an unimaginable hell of a short life. Cassian had sensed from the moment he saw the mother that the woman was a monster, he'd known that, and yet never looked at it closely enough. He'd realized far too late that the plot to destroy Tarlanth used his business connections only because that was convenient. The man was away at his work often enough. It would have been simple for Lyn to learn all she needed to know from creeping into his rooms and studying his ledgers and books. She could easily have found enough there to send the letter that drove Daralec to his suicide, and to have composed the threat to Mordain. Yet she had to do it.
She could have killed her baneful father and mother easily enough, but she needed all of what she learned to destroy Tarlanth. Destroying his power and influence and leaving him in penury would have been far worse than death for him, and she knew and desired that. If, at the last, she went too far and overreached herself, it was likely because the weight of all those deaths began to hang heavy on even her heart and impair her judgment. After all, she ended her own life when she could still have killed Cassian and Jerenn. Perhaps all that was left of what must once have been a gentle and quiet soul had rebelled and decided that there was enough blood on its hands.
Shadowrun - [Earthdawn 05] - Shroud of Madness Page 26
