The Tattooed Duchess (A Fire Beneath the Skin Book 2)

by Victor Gischler

  Rina was shaking her head. “I don’t understand. A place between worlds? That doesn’t make any—”

  “Between realities,” Talbun said. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “But why did you have to escape?”

  “Because I was going to die.”

  “But—”

  This doesn’t make any sense. She’s probably the most powerful wizard in Helva.

  “What day is it?” Talbun demanded.

  “What day?”

  “Damn you, what day is today?’

  Rina told her. A week before the thaw festival. Almost winter’s end by the calendar in Helva.

  “Blast. Three weeks,” Talbun said. “Nearly three weeks.”

  “You’ve been hiding for three weeks?”

  “Time didn’t exist for me,” Talbun said. “I was outside of time.”

  “Outside of . . . but how could—”

  “Quiet,” Talbun said. “Listen.”

  Rina shut her mouth.

  “I was in peril, and the spell allowed me to hide,” Talbun explained. “Your thinking of me was the final element needed to bring me back from my hiding place. That’s all you need to understand. I don’t have the energy to explain further.” She drained the cup and set it back on the table.

  Rina cleared her throat. Well, okay, then. She picked up the jug and refilled the cup.

  “I don’t mean to try your patience,” Rina said carefully. “I’m just trying to understand.”

  Talbun sighed and drank. “No, I should apologize. My nerves are frayed. It’s been a couple of centuries since I thought I was going to die. I’d forgotten what fear felt like. I don’t fancy it.”

  “It’s okay now,” Rina said. “You’re safe here.”

  Talbun laughed.

  “You were guarding the priests, yes?” Rina said. “During the Long Dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  Talbun blew out another tired sigh and shook her head. “I can’t say for sure. I think I know. It’s guesswork.”

  Rina filled her cup with wine again, fixed her with a stare she hoped was supportive and encouraging. “Then take a guess.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Three weeks earlier . . .

  Talbun screamed for the captain of the guard.

  Captain Joff burst into Talbun’s quarters, sword and armor rattling, helm carried under one arm. The man seemed ever ready, as if he never ate or slept. His eyes popped with alarm when he saw the smear of blood beneath Talbun’s nose. “Milady! You’re hurt!”

  “Never mind that,” the wizard said. “The temple is under attack. Gather every man. Saddle the horses. I can’t wait. Follow as fast as you can.”

  Joff nodded briefly, spun on his heel, and departed, already yelling for his men to make ready.

  Talbun grabbed a dress of sturdy material. Boots. It was one thing to lounge around half-naked, sipping wine, under normal circumstances. She liked to be comfortable, and she liked the way she looked, but going into battle that way didn’t strike her as a good idea. She briefly lamented giving away her armor to Duchess Veraiin. She’d hadn’t expected ever to wear it again, and anyway, she’d already cast magical wards that were better protection than any armor could be. She buckled around her waist a thin belt from which hung a modest dagger in a leather sheath. There always were those rare occasions when a bit of mundane steel was the answer to a problem instead of a spell.

  She wished she could wait for her guards to accompany her, but every moment of delay brought her closer to failure—if it wasn’t too late already. Her job had been to guard the Temple of Kashar while the monks within slept the hundred years of the Long Dream. Talbun’s tower had been built at the bottom of the mountain to watch over the only road leading up to the temple. Whatever was up there hadn’t come past the watchful eyes of the tower.

  Talbun closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The spell she was about to attempt took a lot of energy and concentration. She’d cast it before, but only a few times. She began to speak the arcane words, and in moments the spell became a torrent of blurred syllables trying to get out of her. She couldn’t have stopped the spell now even if she’d wanted to.

  She opened her eyes and saw the tower being stripped away a layer at a time, like watching an artist add color to a painting but in reverse. Talbun reminded herself it wasn’t the tower that was fading away. It was her. She closed her eyes again and pictured the top of the mountain, the temple, the wide courtyard with its broad flagstones, ancient and cracked. She’d never been there, but she’d seen the place before through scrying spells.

  She felt herself go light, and lift. In almost the same moment she had weight again, her feet firm on the ground.

  She opened her eyes . . . to the sight of a blazing hellscape.

  The temple’s wooden outbuildings had been almost completely consumed, the flames rising high and creating a hellish glow in the still-weak early morning light. Black smoke roiled across the courtyard.

  Bodies littered the flagstones, singed and smoking. Talbun identified the green robes of the Kashar monks. Other bodies were burned beyond recognition. The way the bodies were arranged suggested the monks had been fleeing the temple. None had made it. Scores lay dead, burned and blackened. The smell brought back a long-forgotten fray a century ago. The wizard had done her best to stay out of battles.

  Talbun stepped around the bodies, heading for the temple itself. It was a wide, two-story stone building. Stone steps led up to fluted columns lining the ground floor. An enormous set of closed double doors fifteen feet high. The second story was lined with high, arched windows. Black smoke billowed, a flickering fiery orange glow visible beyond the smoke. The temple was built of stone, but whatever was within burned freely. Just below the temple’s peaked roof was a stone carving of Kashar, the serpent circling the eye.

  I’ve failed, Talbun thought. For nearly a hundred years I’ve guarded these monks through the Long Dream, only to fail here at the last.

  With trepidation she began to climb the steps up to the temple. I have to look. I have to know for sure.

  She’d just put a boot on the second step when the huge double doors exploded outward with a deafening blast. The doors flew at her, fire belching from the open doorway. Talbun flinched and turned, felt the heat, hot and stinging, chase after her.

  The doors weighed at least a ton each. One tumbled down the steps, cracking stone and bouncing at a perilous angle past Talbun. She threw herself down as the second door flew over her head, coming within a foot of taking her head off.

  Talbun rolled back down the steps, slapping at her sleeve and trying to put out the flames where her dress had caught fire.

  She looked back up at the temple. Not only had the doors been blasted off their hinges, but much of the facade had been destroyed, leaving a gaping hole in the front of the temple. The interior was a storm of flame. Two gigantic figures battled within the fire.

  One of the figures was a gigantic serpent. Talbun recalled Rina’s experience with the temple guardian, a stone statue of a serpent that came to life and attacked her. Perhaps this creature was something similar, a guardian to repel the intruder.

  The other figure was a huge man—or at least the shape of a man. He looked to be wearing bulky spiked armor, but only his silhouette was visible, the details of his appearance lost amid the flames. The enormous serpent coiled around the figure, mouth open to strike. The other being grabbed the serpent by the jaws, prying its mouth open.

  The great serpent’s tail thrashed, and the ground shook. It felt like the entire mountain might shake to rubble. A cold fear gripped Talbun she hadn’t felt in decades. She hastily mumbled protection spells even as she knew they wouldn’t be enough.

  The hulking dark figure in the flames managed to get a powerful arm around the serpent’s throat. The huge snake redoubled its thrashing, but the dark figure spread its legs, taking up a wide stance to steady itself. It twisted sharply,
wrenching the snake’s neck.

  There was a snap so sharp and loud it made Talbun flinch.

  The figure flung the snake corpse aside with contempt.

  The serpent’s body flew out of the flames, through the wrecked temple doorway and toward Talbun. She swallowed a panicked scream and dove to the side.

  The serpent’s body crashed down the steps, singed and limp. It was impossibly long, its tail stretching back into the temple. Its dark-green scales glistened in the firelight. A golden ichor oozed from its wounds like blood. In the center of the serpent’s face was a single glowing eye.

  The glow faded, then went out completely.

  Talbun stumbled to her feet, gawked at the beast.

  This isn’t some guardian. This is Kashar himself. A god slain right in front of me.

  She raised her terrified eyes again to the temple.

  Another god stood there in all of his terrible glory. His armor was fashioned from some jagged dark metal. Talbun still couldn’t make out details through the flames, just gleaming eyes from the slits in his helm. The god raised an arm toward Talbun.

  I’m going to die.

  The god clenched his fist, and a brilliant green light shot out from his hand and struck Talbun. A hot-pink globe of light blazed into existence around the wizard, shielding her from the attack. The protective globe was Talbun’s strongest ward, but with a single strike from the god, she already felt the globe shudder on the edge of collapse.

  The god still stood amid the flames inside the temple, visible only as a hulking silhouette.

  If I knew which god it was, maybe I could guess a weakness or at least try to understand what’s going—

  Another stab of eldritch light lanced out and shattered Talbun’s shield. The blast lifted her and tossed her back thirty feet. She smacked into one of the large boulders that ringed the clearing, felt and heard bones snap, then tumbled to the ground hard, twisting an ankle.

  Pain shocked though her, tears blinding her. She summoned the will to ignore her injuries and mumbled the words to a spell. Immediately a healing warmth spread though her body, bones mending, bruises fading.

  That’s my only healing spell. If he hits me again—

  The green light blazed, and Talbun dove out of the way. The boulder behind her was blasted to pieces. Talbun threw herself to the ground, her arms going over her head as dust and rubble rained down.

  The wizard heaved herself to her feet, coughing and wiping dust from her eyes.

  The god stirred within the temple.

  He’s staying inside. Why doesn’t he come out?

  The god roared, went to one knee, and slammed a fist into the floor of the temple.

  It sounded like a crack of thunder. The ground shook beneath Talbun’s feet, almost knocking her over. The earth still shaking, Talbun widened her stance to keep upright. Everything shook apart around her. The burned-out buildings collapsed in on themselves, sending swirling sparks into the air along with black smoke.

  The earsplitting sound of fracturing stone drew her attention back to the temple.

  From the strike of the god’s fist, fissures spread rapidly down the stone steps. The fissures glowed a bright red, branched, and branched again, like a hot bright spiderweb spreading out from the burning temple and across the flagstones of the courtyard. Wherever the web intersected the body of a fallen monk, a blinding flash of red swallowed the corpse, red lines circling the body as if wrapping it in a cocoon of pure light.

  In a matter of seconds, the body of every monk was wrapped in a brilliant red glow, sixty or seventy in all.

  And suddenly the glow ceased. The ground stopped shaking. The only sound was the lick of flame from the burning temple, the snap and pop of shifting lumber as the last of the temple’s outbuildings fell over.

  Talbun stood completely still.

  Is that it? Is it over?

  She could just make out the sound of something like a boot scraping on stone. A second later, she heard a similar sound come from another direction. Soon the entire courtyard crawled with the sound. She blinked. The ground was moving.

  No, of course it wasn’t. It wasn’t the ground that was moving. It was what was on the ground.

  The corpses.

  The bodies of the monks quivered, hesitantly at first, as if they were trying to remember how to move again, feet twitching, hands scraping along the flagstones, fingers flexing and struggling for purchase.

  Well, this is . . . interesting.

  She readied herself, summoning a spell to the surface of her mind.

  The corpses lurched to their feet, took halting steps toward her. Smoke still rose from many of them. Their eyes raged with the same red glow that had enveloped them seconds before. They moved as one mass slowly but steadily toward the wizard.

  Talbun’s eyes made a quick scan of the courtyard. The only path leading back down the mountain was on the other side of the corpse horde that was moving toward her.

  She muttered arcane words, and a sword of pure light appeared in her hand. The blade was straight and thin and glowed a cold blue. It had been years since she’d wielded a weapon of any kind, but her old reflexes returned quickly as she swung at the closest corpse.

  Talbun wasn’t particularly strong, but that hardly mattered with the spell sword. The blade sliced through the corpse’s neck like soft cheese. The light blinked out of its eyes as the head went flying.

  The dead monks crowded closer, and Talbun swung the spell sword wildly, hacking the limbs reaching out for her. The corpses didn’t even flinch, the armless dead still pressing in, mouths working like grotesque predatory fish. She swung again, took off another head, and the monk collapsed inanimate into a heap.

  The heads! You’ve got to decapitate them.

  Talbun swung hard, lopping off a head, the backswing taking off another. If the spell sword had been heavy steel, Talbun would have been fatigued quickly. But the weapon was no heavier than a willow switch. Talbun kept swinging, and heads rolled.

  A few seconds later, a pile of monk corpses lay in a semicircle at her feet. She was panting now, a cold trickle of sweat down her back. The dead continued to press in relentlessly, and she was no closer to breaking through and escaping.

  A corpse snatched at her from the side. Talbun flinched back, but a monk had hold of her sleeve. She lashed out with the sword and cut the monk’s hand off at the wrist. More of the dead crowded her from all sides.

  Too many. I need to try something else.

  She scrolled through the spells in her head but none fit the situation.

  Idiot. You’re the most powerful wizard in Helva, and you’re going to die because you memorized the wrong spells.

  One of the monks latched on to her left wrist, grip like iron. She lifted the spell sword to strike, but two more corpses grabbed her arm. She struggled as they started to pull her down.

  Talbun bit the inside of her lip. Hard. She spit blood, and the red splatter landed at her feet. She muttered the words of her spell and stepped back, yanking her sword arm from the dead monk’s grip, slashing through the middle of the monk’s face.

  She finished her spell, and the droplets of blood began to bubble and expand in front of her. Five of the blood droplets were substantial enough to catch the magic. In a matter of seconds, they grew into gelatinous mounds and then elongated and took shape. All five were perfect duplicates of Talbun herself, except they were nude, and red as the blood the wizard had spilled.

  The duplicates pushed forward into the corpses, heedless of their own safety, the dead monks clawing and grabbing at them. Talban stumbled back against one of the perimeter boulders, chest heaving as she gulped breath. The duplicates would keep the corpses at bay for only a minute. Her mind raced for some plan.

  A horn sounded.

  Beyond the mass of corpses, Talbun saw two dozen mounted soldiers riding fast, spears lowered in a charge. Joff sat astride the lead horse, spear tucked under one arm, his other hand bringing a curved horn to his
mouth, blowing hard to sound that rescue was on the way.

  Talbun’s heart leapt. Bless you, Joff, you loyal old hound.

  The horsemen crashed into the rear rank of corpses with a deafening clamor of armor, spears, pierced bodies, and horses tromping singed monks into the flagstones.

  The attack had a mixed effect. A dozen corpses fell, jabbed clean through the chest with spears. Others went down, trampled by the horses. A few of the monks attempting to push past the duplicates turned to face the new threat instead.

  Half the corpses that went down stood up again, moving awkwardly with spears through their chests. Joff’s men rode among them, hacking down with swords, slicing away random chunks of monk.

  “The heads!” Talbun yelled. “Take off the heads.”

  Joff nodded, shouted the instructions back to his men. Immediately the soldiers began the decapitations, swords rising and falling with meaty thwaks.

  The corpses swirled around the men and horses, heedless of their own safety. The soldiers continued to hack and slash, heads tumbling and rolling along the ground. Moments later, the sounds of slaughter died away, until only the armor clank of dismounting soldiers, the snort of horses, and the crackle of flame from the temple could be heard.

  Talbun looked around the courtyard. Piles of bodies littered the flagstones, heads everywhere, many with expressions of pain and terror etched across their faces. The wizard gaped at the macabre scene, not completely understanding what had happened. Her eyes darted to the gaping hole in the temple and the fire beyond. No sign of the hulking god who’d menaced her.

  A god. Is that possible?

  Her eyes shifted to the great serpent Kashar. Dead.

  She waved her hand absently, and the duplicates dissolved into puddles of dirty blood.

  Joff leapt from his horse and ran to her. “Milady, are you all right?”

  “Just bruised, Joff.”

  Joff gestured to the carnage around him. “This . . . this is madness.”

  Talbun shook her head. She didn’t have an explanation. All she knew was that she’d failed to protect the monks during the Long Dream. And yet she couldn’t quite fault her efforts. For nearly a century she’d kept brigands and petty thieves from molesting the monks while they slumbered. How could she have known . . .