Dropping a hand down to her stomach, Elaine brushed the pommel of the short knife she had concealed under her tunic, and slowed her pace, looking to the alleys she passed and the few passers-by behind her. She suddenly felt very exposed, and wondered if an ambush was about to be sprung.
The woman continued her approach, her pace not slackening in the slightest as she stalked forwards. Elaine saw she was around her own age, with dark hair tied up behind her head. She wore a tunic of black leather, with unusual metal discs woven into the fabric, each dulled so as not to catch the sun. What arrested her attention, though, was the woman’s eyes, beautifully wide but almost black as she stared back. Elaine was sure she had seen the woman before.
As they moved to within a few yards of one another, Elaine whipped her knife out from under her tunic, keeping the blade down at her side, but in clear view of the other woman. The only response was a smile as the woman cupped a hand and then thrust it at Elaine, as if she were throwing something.
Elaine had barely started to dodge when she was blasted off her feet by a moving wall of air.
THE THIEVES HAD scattered long before Turnitia had come into sight as they walked back along the coastal road. Wendric and Ambrose had taken the bulk of them in a wide loop around the city, beyond the sight of its walls. There were numerous ways into the city that avoided the two main gates in the east and north walls, from storm drains to overflow pipes leading straight to the sewers. The thieves’ guild had long since mapped them all, and they had been a staple of smuggling franchises until Vos had strangled illicit trade in the city.
The journey along the coastal road, in the company of the remaining jubilant thieves, had been an amiable way of passing an afternoon. Though loaded down with heavy coins, even a wounded thief, his left arm strung across his chest with a makeshift sling, was laughing. They were giddy with their success, and while Lucius kept quiet himself, he enjoyed listening to their plans on how they were going to spend their fortunes. Even the hilly terrain through which they travelled did nothing to dampen their spirits, though every few paces one thief or another would stop to shift his sack from one shoulder to the other.
“Going to set me up a dozen new franchises,” one said. “Maybe something at the docks, corner all trade coming in by sea.”
“Investing in the future, then?”
“Aye, only sensible thing to do.”
“Well, in that case I think I’ll get myself a new sword. One of those Allantian-forged jobs, perfect balance, they say.”
“That’s for the future?”
“Sure, I’ll need it for when we go for the next silver train!”
“You would be better off investing in a pony and cart, so we don’t have to tip so much into the sea. What about you, Alfred, what are you going to do with your money?”
There was a long pause. “I think, on balance,” the thief Alfred said, “that I’ll take three rooms at the Red Lion, and invite every whore, troubadour and gambler to join me. Oh, and make sure Myrklar never runs out of wine. Think I’ll get through this little lot within a month or so, then I’ll be ready for more work.”
His plans were met with stunned silence, until he turned and winked at the rest of them. They all laughed then, though Lucius was still not sure Alfred was completely joking. He just hoped they would all have the sense to keep their heads down for the next few weeks. Any sudden appearance of huge quantities of cash would lead even the dullest Vos sergeant straight to a guilty thief, once the raid on the silver train became common knowledge.
“Hey, what’s going on there?” one thief asked.
The walls of Turnitia had come into view as they mounted the rise, and Lucius’ gaze was drawn straight to the thin columns of smoke rising from the centre of the city. He frowned. The smoke was too thick to come from a blacksmith’s, and there was too much for it to be an isolated house fire.
“Looks like it’s near the Citadel,” said one thief.
“A riot, you think?” Alfred asked.
Lucius shook his head. “I can’t see the Vos guard tolerating angry crowds long enough for them to light more than one or two fires. It looks like a battle is going on.”
That subdued the thieves, though their eyes lit up when Lucius slung his own sack of silver from his back and bade them share the load between them. Telling them to get back into the city through less obvious routes as planned, he jogged ahead, wanting to see what had happened within the city.
It took him nearly an hour to reach the northern city gates. They were wide open, as was usual during the day, but completely untended. Hesitantly, fearing a trap, he approached the gates and peered inside, half-expecting to see ranks of Vos soldiers beyond, spears and crossbows levelled at him as he entered. There was nothing. As he passed under the high stone arch of the gatehouse, Lucius began to pick up speed, looking anxiously for anyone that could tell him what had happened. Every street near the gatehouse was deserted, with the windows of many of the buildings shuttered or barred. He made his way towards the centre of the city, heading for Ring Street and the Citadel.
The northernmost of the Five Markets looked like a battleground, and Lucius wondered if he had missed a sneak attack from some secret army of Pontaine, come to claim the city from the Empire.
On Ring Street, three houses blazed, pouring black smoke into the afternoon sky, the columns streaking across the huge azure sphere of Kerberos. The dead lay everywhere on the cobbles of the marketplace, their bodies looking as if they had been picked up by some giant and then dashed on the ground. Limbs and heads lay at unnatural angles, while some were impaled on the smashed remains of vendors’ stalls. He could not see a single wound on any that looked as though it was made by a weapon.
He walked across the marketplace stunned, unable to believe what he was seeing, and he was not alone. Others stumbled over bodies as if in a daze. Every now and again, someone would cry out as they recognised a loved one, falling to their knees beside a body.
It was a massacre, indiscriminate killing on a scale he had only seen performed by the worst mercenary companies operating in the Anclas Territories. The broken bodies of Vos soldiers were scattered all over the cobbles, most near the sealed gates of the Citadel. However, many more of the dead were ordinary men and women, the life blasted out of their corpses. With a shock, Lucius realised that many children were among the dead, covered by the bodies of their mothers or fathers as if they had tried, in vain, to shield them from attack. There were a hundred or more dead in the market.
He walked past the wreckage of one stall, its bright green awning now a tattered sheet flapping in the breeze. The wood used to build the stall was little more than jagged splinters, mixed with the broken crockery the stall had sold. Seated on the ground next to the ruin, Lucius saw an aged woman, her long silver hair shielding her eyes from the devastation surrounding them.
She sat, motionless, staring into nothingness, one hand on the twisted body of a man of similar age. His dead gaze was fixed on the sky, his neck broken.
Crouching down by the woman, Lucius gently took her hand.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, but received no response. He moved so he was crouching directly in her field of vision, and carefully brushed her hair to one side, before repeating the question.
She did not stir for several seconds. When she looked up at him there was fear in her face.
“I will not harm you,” he said softly. “Are you injured?”
Slowly, she shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said simply. She was silent for a moment more, then added, “Pietre threw me behind the stall. Then he died.”
Lucius looked around the market. The scene was being repeated all over, with survivors emerging from the wreckage, aided by those who had ventured to the scene of the battle. The gates of the Citadel opened enough to let a squad of Vos guards through, and they immediately set to work, dragging the bodies of fallen soldiers into the fortress. Only then did Lucius notice that the walls of the Citadel themselves ha
d sustained damage. Great gouges had been torn into the stonework, as if by a powerful siege engine. Mystified, he turned back to the woman.
“What happened here?”
“She said she had come for everyone Vos-born,” the woman said after a moment’s hesitation. “Then she started attacking the soldiers.”
“Who?”
“Some people started cheering at first, seeing the soldiers thrown around like rag dolls. But when she ran out of soldiers, she turned on everyone else. She just... broke them. Threw them into the stalls, the buildings, each other.”
“Lady, who did this?”
“Pietre wanted to run, but I was frozen where I stood. Too scared to move. He saw what she was doing, as she killed everyone she could see. He saw her come towards us, and got me out of the way. Then she... she...”
Lucius grasped the woman by her shoulders, shaking her slightly to bring her attention back to him.
“Please, you must tell me,” he said. “Who was it?” He knew the answer before the woman spoke.
“Some maddened wizard, some rogue mage. Said she wanted to destroy everything Vos-built and Vos-born. Cloaked in darkness, she was.”
Dropping his own gaze to the ground, Lucius sighed uselessly, trying to find some course through the disaster.
“Why did she leave?”
“I don’t know,” the woman answered bleakly. “I don’t think there was anyone left to kill.”
Squeezing the woman’s hand slightly before he stood, Lucius turned and walked slowly away. He had heard Adrianna’s threats, of course, but it staggered him to think she had done this to so many innocent people. She was ferociously dedicated to the Shadowmages and their loose guild, and he could well believe that she would cheerfully slay every Vos soldier and official if it would make them leave the city, but he had never thought she was capable of this level of destruction.
As he left the marketplace, he turned to look at the scene of the massacre. The other troubling thought was that Adrianna was more powerful than he had suspected. Lucius remembered his confrontation with her outside his old home, and how he felt she could easily best him if angered. He had had no idea how true that was. The magnitude of the magics she must have controlled to destroy so much was astounding. He had begun to think he was starting to make progress in the Shadowmage’s art, but he was no more than a novice. Adrianna’s power and talent were far beyond his own.
Turning into a short dead end of an alley, Lucius leaned against the wall of a small brewing house for support as he gathered his thoughts. He knew exactly what he had to do next, but he feared the confrontation.
Taking a deep, ragged breath, he summoned the threads of magic to his will, shaping them into a quiet clarion call that would find Adrianna and let her know where he was. He felt the magical chimes radiate away from him, and he turned to leave the alley, wanting to find a more discreet place to meet.
His delicate chimes were suddenly overwhelmed by a massive tolling, a mighty arcane summons that sundered his own spell and caused him to stagger under its force. It felt as if he were inside a huge bell that rang with a deep, bass note, and Lucius clutched at his head.
Breathing heavily under the strain, he built a magical defence that siphoned off a little of the summoning spell’s energy. Each peal was still a deafening blast inside his head, but the pain became manageable and, once he was sure his feet were steady, he left the alley. Adrianna was calling him to the harbour, and she had left him with little choice other than to obey.
THE INCESSANT TOLLING had receded by the time he reached the harbour, becoming little more than a constant, dull throbbing in his mind. Tolerable, yet impossible to ignore. It directed him along the cliffs, where labourers toiled with boxed crates and sacks, piling them onto flat platforms that were then hoisted into the open air by sturdy cranes and lowered to the docks. Evidently, a ship was expected, and there were plenty of merchants who wanted to take advantage of another vessel daring to run the gauntlet of the churning seas.
Moving away from the bustling activity, Lucius continued along the cliff top before stopping. He had reached his destination. Looking about, he frowned. The homes of one of the poorer districts of Turnitia were immediately to his left, along with a few scattered warehouses. Gulls circled lazily above him. Beyond them, the calm waters of the harbour belied the crashing storm that raged against the monoliths at its mouth. Adrianna had found a well-concealed lair in which to hide.
Walking to the very edge of the cliffs, he looked down, and fought against the heady sense of vertigo. The docks seemed far below, and their stone foundations, married to wooden piers, stretched out into the harbour like fingers. A single piece of black cloth, perhaps torn from a larger cloak, fluttered in the sea wind, seemingly caught on a jagged outcropping of rock. Lucius smiled.
Calling upon the magical strands, he constructed a spell he had seen performed before, but had never attempted. Shaping the arcane energy to call wind currents to his command, he shaped an invisible, shallow bowl just beyond the cliff’s edge. Raising a foot, he stepped tentatively over the lethal drop.
His foot was buoyed up by a solid support of air. It felt like stepping into a bowl of corn and, hesitantly, he brought his other foot on board. Arms instinctively outstretched for balance, he hung motionless in mid-air.
Conscious that a flying man would bring unwanted attention from the labourers working further down the cliffs, he willed the cushion of air into movement, and Lucius gently floated downwards to the black rag.
The cliff side bowed out during his descent, hiding a cleft from casual view. Only someone suicidal enough to try and scale the sheer surface would find it. Shifting the flow of air supporting him, Lucius descended into the cleft and spotted a small cave or tunnel, boring straight into the cliff side. He dropped to its level and stooped as he stepped onto solid ground.
Inside, the cave quickly widened, its ceiling rising so he could stand. He took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and noticed that, a little further in, the rocky walls seemed to glow with their own dull, green-tinged light. Lucius had heard of luminescent moss in the past, but this seemed different somehow to him, and he suspected the light was being sustained by magic as he felt the threads ripple with the presence of an existing enchantment. The threads began to noticeably buckle and twist as he took a further step inside, causing him to halt quickly.
There was another spell at work here, some sort of ward or trap to discourage unwanted visitors, as unlikely as they might be. Having no wish to inadvertently activate the spell, he created his own shield against it, drawing upon the same shadow magic that created the ward. Wreathing himself in the conjuration, he thus appeared invisible to the spell, and he walked past with trepidation, ready to react if his assumptions about it were wrong.
The tunnel twisted a little before descending on a gentle slope, the route always lit by the softly glowing rocks. He marvelled at the construction of this place, and the effort it must have taken to bore this far into the cliff. Whether it had been done by mundane means or magical, it was something of an achievement.
Lucius felt the presence of Adrianna a moment before he saw her. The tunnel jinked slightly to the left and, as he rounded the corner, widened out into a roughly hewn chamber with two more passages leading off it, deeper into the cliff. Before them stood Adrianna, arms folded across her chest while her dark eyes bored into his.
He did not need to see Adrianna’s face to feel her fury, for it punched through the air like a hammer. More disturbing to him were the threads of magic he saw in his mind, pitching and twisting as if reacting to her very presence. Lucius had known that meeting Adrianna was dangerous but, for the first time, he gave himself only even odds for walking out of her lair alive.
“Adrianna...” Lucius began, but immediately faltered. He realised that he really did not know the woman before him at all.
“Useless, feckless, ignorant thief,” she hissed. “You have wasted everything you hav
e ever been given. You are no more use than a miserable beggar, scrabbling for whatever scraps Vos leaves on the table for you to steal.”
Lucius took a breath before speaking.
“Adrianna, what have you done?” he asked. “All those people...”
“Idiot! If you had accepted our alliance, if you had joined me, this war would be over already! The power of the Empire would be in ruins, and this city would be free again. And where were you instead? Playing bandit in the hills!”
For a second, Lucius was speechless. “And what did you think you were going to achieve? Do you know how many innocent people you have killed?”
She gave him a scornful look. “Together, we could have blasted the Citadel into ruins, then marched on the Cathedral. Vos would have had nowhere to run! We could have blasted every one of them clear out of the city!”
“And how many others would have died? My God, Adrianna, there are dead children in the markets! How does that advance your cause?”
“If it means the Empire withdraws, a few dead, more or less, certainly does not hinder it,” she said flatly.
“We don’t have to be like this, Adrianna,” Lucius said evenly; if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Adrianna would not look kindly on any display of weakness. “That banditry in the hills you talk about probably did more damage to the Empire in the long run than your own attack. You don’t have to become like Vos in order to beat it.”
“You fool,” she said, as if talking to a particularly slow child. “Becoming like Vos has no relevance whatsoever. What matters is who wins! Who is left standing after this war is done – and it will be done very soon, Lucius, mark my words.”
“There is another way.”
“No,” she said. “Not any more. They have started to strike at us. We must hit back, and harder. Show them that we are invincible, that whatever hurt they bring upon us will be revisited upon them a hundredfold.”
He tried another tack. “Even if I had been there, two mages cannot defeat the entire Citadel, let alone every soldier Vos has stationed in the city.”
The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) Page 41
