Enchanted Bookstore Legends (5-book complete epic fantasy romance box set)

by Marsha A. Moore

  Lyra looked back at Yasqu. All thirty-some yards of him cleared the ceiling, stooping only occasionally for narrow passages.

  At the first junction with a secondary tunnel, a pack of five big rats sat watching them approach. Traveling with a dragon, Lyra expected those rats to be afraid and run. They didn’t bare their teeth and hiss like before. Instead, they raised up on their haunches and stared, jaws hanging open, their hairless tails quivering. The rats parted to either side as Lyra’s group passed. She peeked back under Yasqu’s folded wing. The pack joined into a huddle, each chattering at the same time.

  Kenzo fluttered off Cullen’s arm and hung in the air beside Lyra. “I hate rats. It was a wise thing to bring Yasqu.”

  She nodded.

  After passing a few more junctions, she said, “I know we make a right turn and then a left to go to the first village.”

  “I think so,” Cullen replied. “Let’s turn right onto this connector since it looks tall enough for a dragon.”

  Along the new corridor, they passed several more groups of rats that reacted the same way.

  Noba’s light reflected off of hazy smoke in the distance. A fat male Rotter skittered toward them, head buried in a cloth beret and nose down.

  From his position in the lead, Noba paused and looked over his shoulder. “Master, what is this creature? Is it a friend?”

  “Be cautious but polite,” Cullen replied and drew up against the backside of his familiar.

  Alerted by their voices, the Rotter raised his head and jumped back. “Ohh!” he squealed and dropped to his knees. He leaned forward and extended his shaking arms along the stone. His long, gray braid fell into a depression filled with green slime. Without looking up, he repeatedly mumbled, “Please don’t hurt me.”

  Lyra exchanged a confused look with Cullen. She touched his hand and said mentally, He’s acting from some previous experience, but what?

  Cullen shrugged.

  Their group walked past the cowering Rotter and continued to the edge of the village.

  Gray smoke hung in the air and seeped into Lyra’s lungs. Within seconds, a fuzzy feeling spread across her mind. Apparently, Mrinx’s obsidian dust had worn off, and the potioned well water only protected against the pestilence. She hoped her magic still functioned. Noba’s eyes glowed, so she assumed her powers remained intact.

  Walking under the first streetlamp, they passed a tall Vizard sitting on a stoop, his bony knees drawn up to the height of his shoulders. He whistled long and low through his teeth. Windows on either side opened, and heads of other Vizards popped out, gawking silently at Lyra’s group. Smoke curled into spirals from the bowls of their long pipes, idle and forgotten in their hands.

  Lyra didn’t think she or Cullen could remember the directions to Dradgest where they had made an exchange with the Malificate witch and her son. The Vizards held back and didn’t seem approachable.

  At the main crossroads, her group paused. She turned around and caught a glimpse of Skrunt, the guide from before who led them into a trap. His eyes met hers for an instant before he darted inside a shop.

  “Can any of you give us directions to Dradgest?” Cullen called to the silent group standing on a doorstep of the Lizard Libations pub.

  The men and women dropped their faces and fidgeted, kicking at the stonework with the toes of their heavy boots. Inside, the clientele laughed, but one by one heads peeped through windows and doorways until the bar fell quiet.

  “What are they afraid of?” Lyra whispered.

  “I’m not scared of nothin’,” a silky smooth voice replied a few yards from Cullen’s side.

  Lyra whipped around to face Tayzia, the whore, accompanied by three other scantily clad female Vizards. Lyra rubbed the underside of her bloodswear ring with her thumb and prepared to mentally fire an incantation. She easily identified the edge lines of the prostitute’s mask and badly wanted to yank it off to show Cullen the monster beneath the sexy exterior. Although on edge, she knew to hold off as long as possible. At least these Vizards spoke to them, unlike the men and women on the stoops who shied away.

  From drags off cigarettes in long holders balanced between their manicured nails, each exhaled thin threads of smoke magic.

  Cullen twisted his wizard’s staff, emitting a strong glow of blue. Before he could command his power to strike, the light faded, more with every tiny step Tayzia took toward him. “Stay back!” he cried and placed his staff between him and the tramp.

  “Those words don’t be for me, darlin’.” Tayzia easily glided around Cullen’s weapon to his side and draped a long, thin arm over his shoulder. Her long platinum hair hung in a slightly different style of three braids tied together. She wore the same tightly wrapped length of gauze fabric that substituted for a dress, this time in a dark olive shade.

  Her friends dressed in similar form-fitting garb, adorned with armfuls of metal bangles that clanked as the women sashayed. All three favored the same bright hue of crimson lipstick, making Tayzia stand apart with her grape-colored pout.

  “Darlin’, you travel with some grand company this time here.” Tayzia waved a hand with chiseled black nails in the direction of the animal guides. “How might you know them?” Turning back, her gaze fell on Lyra, and she snapped her nails into a fist. With lips pursed into a bow, she brushed them against Cullen’s ear. A thin stream of smoke escaped with flicks of her darting tongue.

  One of the other whores pranced in a small circle in front of him, wiggling her wide hips, before she stopped at his other side and cradled his arm into hers.

  Cullen’s eyes followed every movement of the seductive motion, but he failed to answer Tayzia’s question. He stood still and helpless as she rubbed a hand over his crotch.

  Lyra chewed on the inside of her cheek. With two women dangling from him, she couldn’t even touch him to send a mental thought. Hoping to provide a distraction, she bent and scooped Noba into her arms, bringing him directly in front of Cullen. She nodded to Kenzo, and he took her cue, hovering above her with his usual protective display of a wide wingspan.

  “You aren’t treating my master right,” the pseudodragon hissed and whipped his tail from her grasp, accidentally scratching the skin of Lyra’s arm. Noba waived its barbed tip in front of the pear-shaped seductress as though he intended to strike.

  Yasqu growled through clenched teeth and shot a flame that pierced the smoky air overhead.

  Tayzia screamed as the whore on the other side of Cullen dropped limp to the stone floor.

  Chapter Ten: Cursed One

  Lyra relaxed her grip on Noba, who squirmed to get free.

  The Vizards in the doorways ran into the street and fully prostrated themselves.

  After Noba jumped to the ground, Lyra stooped beside the woman lying in a heap at Cullen’s feet. Following her earlier instinct, Lyra rubbed the dragon face of her ring. “Abstergo.” She sent energy through words of the incantation to the whore’s painted face. The mask slid to the stone, revealing the ghastly anatomical structures underneath—charred fragments of tendons and muscles clinging onto bony prominences of the cheekbones, jaw, and eye sockets. The rest of her appeared lifeless with no movement. Not knowing whether a Vizard’s body used normal circulation and respiration, Lyra refrained from searching for a pulse. While keeping her eyes on the still form, she raised a hand to touch Cullen’s lower leg. Look down, she conveyed to him.

  He stirred, and she glanced up to be certain the effluvial spell broke.

  Tayzia and her friend trembled and backed away, tripping on the hems of their long, tight dresses. After a couple falls, their shaking legs would no longer pick them up, and they remained huddled together.

  Lyra clutched Cullen’s shin, glad to have him back with her.

  His eyes opened wide. Gripping Lyra by the shoulder, he dragged her away from the slumped body. While she regained her balance to stand, he looked around, fixing his sight on the rows of Vizards lying face down along both sides of the street. “En
ough of this! Get up! We need directions to Dradgest, and I expect an answer,” he growled at them.

  Lyra took a step forward. “We need to find the Malificates, Mrinx and Lesot. We don’t want others to die.” She nodded at the motionless whore. Although she didn’t know what actually killed the woman, it seemed like a good bluff.

  “She ain’t dead,” a strong male voice called out from an open window of the nearby pub. The smeared glass prevented Lyra from seeing who spoke.

  Kenzo clacked his beak and swooped close above the backs of the prostrated Vizards. His talons scratched tears in a few of their thin shirts.

  Lyra lifted her ring to eye level, but hesitated since none grabbed for the owl or for Noba, who ran along in front of their heads.

  Some of the men extended their arms in front of them toward the pseudodragon, but their palms spread down. The pale skin of their splayed hands contrasted with the black obsidian floor.

  Behind her, Yasqu unfolded his wings and sealed the tunnel.

  The male Vizards rose, but cautioned their female companions to remain down. The men reluctantly took a couple steps toward Cullen.

  A hulk of a man sped through the pub’s doorway and made a path straight for the wizard. Although tall as any Vizard, his frame was stocky like that of a Rotter. Wide shoulders filled out his gray work shirt, and a round belly pushed apart the opening of a coarse twill vest, worn slick and missing buttons at the mid-section. Still, his clothes appeared newer than the ragged garments worn by the street Vizards. He wore a beret like many of the Rotters, but restyled with a slit for his single black braid to pass through. His scalp below the cap was thin and bald, showing a network of veins bulging under the surface. He leaned close and offered his pipe to Cullen. “Name’s Chane, owner of Lizard Libations, purveyor of more spirits than any pub in the underground. I’ll speak for the lot and get you to where you’re going.”

  Cullen waved the pipe aside and lowered his head in a token bow.

  Lyra searched the man’s face for mask lines, but found none.

  Chane eyed her. “I ain’t afraid of your threat, missy. I’m not no true Vizard or Rotter, but a bit of both, born under a Malificate curse. Vizards say I can’t end up like Valeria there—what you call dead. What she is is worse than that. Called bone-crypt. Her body is a prison where energy can’t come or go. Worst of all, she knows everything inside herself, nothing else.”

  “What will happen to her?” Lyra asked.

  “That tramp’s so poor, she’ll be left out for the scorpents to finish her off. Best thing though, unless your friends care to help her out. Considering what Skrunt did to you before, no one’s bettin’ on that turn.”

  “What about a trade?” Cullen asked. “You guide us to those we seek, and we’ll save your friend.”

  Lyra’s shoulder still rested against his side, which allowed her to read his thoughts. This was as much a bluff as her own threat. She kept her thumb in contact with her ring.

  “Don’t mix much with them sort…” Chane hesitated and looked to his friends hanging at the pub’s stoop.

  The faces of the Vizards were frozen with half-smiles, probably the natural state of their masks since Valeria’s grinned from where it rested on the ground.

  Lyra pushed up the sleeves of her dress bodice and summoned a large portion of her aura, positioning it under her skin to use clairvoyance. She shot Cullen a thought to keep watch, then focused on a loose pebble at her feet to center herself. Her fifth sense detected many vibrations, which she quickly sampled and read.

  Different energies pummeled her at rapid fire, so fast they challenged her analysis. Several she discarded without reading, quickly recognizing them as Kenzo’s, Yasqu’s, or Cullen’s. Strangely, none were from Noba, who would likely be the most agitated. Those she grasped held emotions of selfish fear that the tramp’s fate would soon be their own, but not a care about the woman’s welfare. Lyra forced more power to her skin in order to determine the angle they contacted her. Most ricocheted off too fast. After several failed attempts, she managed to extend fingers of her power into one sample, only to have it dissipate into space.

  Frustrated, Lyra relaxed her clairvoyance and took a deep breath to center herself for another try.

  Cullen nudged her shoulder. She opened her eyes, and he pulled her backward across the street several yards to escape a cloud of thick, gray smoke.

  Despite their quick retreat, a rush of air into her lungs made her cough and choke. The smoke stung.

  A larger group of Vizards had gathered, madly puffing on long-handled pipes. They huddled only forty-some feet away, but the cloud prevented her from counting their number. Arms passed pipes around the group. They produced a thick layer of effluvial magic.

  Lyra’s mind reeled with the effects of their smoke magic. She braced her temples with her hands and forced her aura to her skin. No vibrations reached her from the Vizards.

  Then, a new vibration slipped along her skin. With her power already humming at the hairs along her arm, she read it completely. Lyra flashed her eyes in the direction of the transmission and saw a male Rotter, cowering on the lowest step of Contan’s Cantraps.

  He hugged his knees close to his round belly. Hairy knobs poked through holes in his shabby pants. With a cap in his hand, he bowed his head. From the Rotter’s emotions, she didn’t read a fear of bone-crypt but of enslavement. More vibrations on the same theme crept over her skin, all from Rotters who hid in the shadows of shop doorways along the street. Female rat-people trembled and looked at her with pleading eyes, as if they became aware of her connection to their fears.

  “I hear you, Old Marl. My concern too,” Chane said to the rat-man at the Cantrap shop. He turned to face Cullen and Lyra. “Here’s my offer—I’ll jaunt you myself far as the main intersection by their run. In trade, I’ll name my price—this handsome staff.” He reached toward Cullen’s staff.

  “Recedo!” Cullen stated with a raspy voice and a cough.

  “Don’t!” Chane sensed the magic and was only a second late, clenching a handful of air where the staff vanished. “Deal be off!” He blew a circle of pipe smoke that encircled Cullen’s head.

  His action brought a chorus of whimpers from the rat-people and a collective gasp from the knot of Vizards.

  Cullen’s arm brushed Lyra’s.

  She took advantage of the moment to make her thoughts available about what she discovered with clairvoyance.

  He bent low, coughing and wiping his forehead. Wise choice. I tried fascination on a few, but the effluvium blocked my aura from reaching their eyes. At any rate, they all fear us. Let’s use that. Cullen faced Chane who turned to walk away. “What good is my staff to you?”

  “Only so that I have something valuable of yours an’ to gain it back, you’ll command Valeria be helped. An’ with my back turned along the streak, your power’ll be less.” He nodded in the direction of his friends on his bar steps, then smiled at Cullen. “Anything else you’re willing to put up?”

  “Indeed.” Cullen reached in his pocket and pulled out one of the baubles the Imperial Dragon had given him—a blue crystal the size of a golf ball. It caught the light from the obsidian inclusions and refracted it into beams of red and orange. “This magic crystal absorbs blue energy from every source, reflecting all others. What is stored is very strong. You keep this, and once you show us the way, I’ll teach you how to unlock the power.”

  Chane accepted and turned the sphere over from palm to palm. His massive hands dwarfed the crystal. “Deal!” he finally proclaimed. “Round up your crew.”

  The orb looked like blue topaz, Cullen’s birthmate gem that helped him channel his aura. She wondered if there was a connection, but Lyra didn’t have a chance to touch Cullen and exchange communication while signaling Kenzo and Noba to her side.

  “Ready?” The tall Rotter motioned them forward with a wave of his arm. He led the way, and those on the street clutched to one another as they passed.

  “Are w
e just going to leave this woman in the street, suffering? Can’t we help her?” Lyra asked, gazing at where the whore lay.

  “She don’t be suffering. Can only feel her own insides. ‘Sides, you gave word to help her once I take you to the coalsuckers’ run,” Chane replied.

  Lyra shook her head and opened her arms to Noba, who passed her by and landed between the spines on Yasqu’s neck. She let him have his choice. Her pounding head weakened her so much that she probably couldn’t carry him far.

  She took a deep breath, but instead of gaining strength, she coughed hard from the bottom of her lungs as though she had bronchitis. Her head reverberated with the convulsions, and her hand throbbed where Noba’s tail barb had scratched. Finding herself unable to cup her fingers around her bloodswear ring, she waved her injured hand past Cullen.

  He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.

  Can you heal me while we walk without drawing attention? she asked mentally.

  Cullen covered the injury with his free hand, bending his elbow to hide the faint blue glow of his healing. Better?

  Lyra nodded. A little. At least enough to get me by for a while. She removed her hand, and the owl settled onto the wristlet of Cullen’s other arm. His tongue lolled out of his open beak, panting.

  “Kenzo, are you okay?” she whispered as soon as they cleared the merchant area.

  He rotated his neck and looked at her with glassy eyes. His usually crystal clear blue irises clouded as if covered with cataracts.

  “Cullen, he isn’t well,” she said, then stepped away when she noticed their guide glance over his shoulder at them with a sly grin.

  Cullen placed his free hand over on his assistant’s head feathers.

  Kenzo didn’t even turn his neck to beg for his favorite rub. He teetered to keep balance on his perch.

  As they walked beyond the last residences of the village, the tunnel darkened, only lit by the glow of the obsidian inclusions and Noba’s eyes.