City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1)

by Steven Montano

  Vellexa swallowed. She hadn’t told him yet, and she was afraid how he’d take the news. Sammeus and Cronak had been like brothers.

  “We need to get Targo out of here,” she said. “He is still alive, yes?”

  “Barely,” Sammeus laughed.

  “Good enough. Go see how Cronak is doing. As much as I dislike it, we need to return to the Cauldron. I can’t think of any other way to deal with Kleiderhorn other than to use Keyes’s plan.”

  “We don’t need Keyes,” Sammeus grumbled as he left the room. Vellexa hoped he was right.

  The men covered Targo with old bed sheets. The man clung to life by a thread. It would be advantageous if he lived – she could perhaps use him as a bargaining tool with Kleiderhorn, since it seemed they were friends.

  Vellexa headed towards the stairs. She saw a glow from the chamber where Cronak lay dead, and Sammeus’s tall shadow flickered against the wall. Vellexa thought about going to him, but decided against it. He wouldn’t want to be consoled, so she moved up the steps and thought of all of the terrible things she’d do to Bordrec Kleiderhorn for having put her through so much trouble. The same went for Azander Dane. It was unlikely he’d survived the explosion, but the Count was convinced the fallen knight yet lived.

  I hope so. You don’t deserve to get off that easy.

  Her mind was clouded when she came through the concealed door to the manor library. There had to be a way to deal with Kleiderhorn’s forces without getting Keyes involved. She had a small army of Tuscar mercenaries, but if Targo’s information was correct they’d have no chance against Kleiderhorn’s superior numbers. Unfortunately, if Keyes had his way then Serpentheart would be released through all of Ebonmark, not just Kleiderhorn’s underground lair.

  Vellexa had to speak with the Count. There was too little time and too many enemies afoot for them to make any more mistakes. She’d not die fighting some idiot battle.

  As she entered the manor she realized she wasn’t sure how much time had passed since they’d arrived. The light from outside was dimmer than it had been before, but that probably just meant storm clouds were moving in. She heard wood creak overhead, the sound of the sentries upstairs. The chill in the air was sharp. Vellexa wrapped her cloak tight and looked around. Something seemed out of place.

  Vellexa quietly slid a dagger from the hidden sheath on her arm and started for the main doors. The sky was filled with rapid-moving grey clouds, and trees bent from the force of the wind. Whirlpools of leaves twisted across the yard.

  She stopped, suddenly very conscious of the silence in the manor. She considered calling out for Regas, who she’d left posted at the door, but decided against it. The creaking on the upper floor grew loud, and rapid. Someone was coming down the stairs.

  Vellexa kept moving, and cried out when her boot landed on Regas’s dead hand. His throat had been cut and his body sat neatly against the wall, eyes staring at nothing. Vellexa turned and ran back towards the dungeon.

  “Sammeus! Tyvik!”

  It was too late. Two assassins came at her, one male and one female. Both wore black leather armor and were armed with short blades. Vellexa had no time to breathe out the Veil before the woman’s hand clasped over her mouth and painfully rammed her head against the wall. Her skull felt like it had split open, and the room was spinning. Her dagger was knocked away as a knee lifted into her stomach. She could hardly breathe.

  Everything went blurry. Vellexa stared down at the floor and fought the urge to be sick. They gagged her and bound her hands behind her back. Vellexa heard shouts of alarm and muffled cries.

  They were finished.

  Forty-Four

  Sammeus gripped Cronak’s hand tightly. “Hang in there, brother,” he whispered. “Just hang on.”

  How Cronak could still be alive after sustaining those wounds was beyond Sammeus, but somehow his long-time partner and only friend looked better than he had before. He had cuts on his shoulders and stomach, but even though they looked painful the wounds seemed to have mostly healed already.

  Cronak was unconscious. He looked pale and weak. Tyvik had done excellent work bandaging and cleaning him up.

  “Eh…you’ve looked worse, I guess,” Sammeus said.

  Sammeus wished Cronak would wake. Cronak didn’t talk much, and never had, but he was the one constant in Sammeus’s life, the one person he could always count on. Other people in the Guild came and went, but Sammeus was always there. The Iron Count was like a distant nightmare, a terrible and faceless thing as vague and sometimes as unbelievable as the One Goddess. Vellexa had her son – what was his name? – who she was always worried about, and all of the Guild business angered and distracted her.

  Sammeus tried not to worry much. He and Cronak didn’t know all that much about the war with the Phage or this new Jlantrian Colonel who was causing so much trouble. All they knew was that a bunch of people were making Vellexa’s life difficult, which in turn made his and Cronak’s lives difficult, as well.

  Most of the time their lives were good. He and Cronak were cruel men from cruel homes, and they’d both grown up with blades in their hands. Sammeus liked to inflict pain – it was all he’d ever really been good at. He never got the impression Cronak enjoyed killing as much as he did…Cronak reminded Sammeus of his own father in that way. The man used to beat Sammeus and his mother not out of anger or malicious glee but because he seemed to feel it was his duty. Sammeus had tried to learn from his father, but he’d never been able to distance himself from the pain. He enjoyed it too much.

  Cronak breathed in rasps, and despite his profuse sweating his skin felt icy to the touch. “I made Targo pay,” Sammeus whispered. “Vellexa is keeping him alive – I guess we still need him. That’s why you need to get back on your feet, so you can be there when we don’t need him anymore.”

  Cronak’s eyes flickered open, and Sammeus stared in disbelief. They were blank and yellow, utterly inhuman. They closed again – it seemed Cronak hadn’t actually woken up. Sammeus nervously let go of his hand.

  “Goddess, Cronak,” he said. “I’ll carve his heart out for whatever he did to you.” He shivered. It had been years since he’d felt so afraid.

  A shout echoed from upstairs. It took Sammeus a moment to realize it was Vellexa. He sprang to life and raced out of the room, drawing his scimitar as he ran down the narrow hall. He heard ringing steel and running feet and saw a struggle at the top of the stairs, so he took a breath and ran up the steps.

  Forty-Five

  Cronak felt different inside. He was healthy and strong, which he knew wasn’t right. After all, he was dead.

  The lamplight was too bright, and it burned his eyes. Cronak’s heart pounded furiously, and he felt the blood flowing through his veins. He smelled sweat, and tasted blood. Echoes of unfamiliar voices rattled in his skull.

  Cronak sat up and opened his eyes for the second time since he’d died. The details were sharp. He smelled blood, oddly sweet and enticing. His gums ached with longing.

  He was afraid. It wasn’t an emotion he was used to.

  Cronak heard drops of water running down the walls, felt the breeze blow through an upstairs window. He tasted salty blood from the end of the hall.

  He noted the pungent but familiar smell of another creature like himself – the man called Jorias Targo, who wasn’t really a man at all. The scent was heady and threatening but also rank and dying. Cronak didn’t know or understand how he could discern those details, how his senses gave him knowledge of a battle going on in the room where Targo had been tortured.

  Cronak slowly rose from the table. His muscles burned with pain, and he felt like he’d tear open his wounds if he moved too quickly. His teeth ached. They were longer than they should have been, and so sharp he sliced open his tongue and tasted his own blood.

  He instinctively knew that the other Black Guild men down the hall were dead, slain by some silent band of intruders. Those intruders were dead, as well, slain by Targo, who’d drenche
d the room in blood and had rent his enemies limb from limb. Despite the ugly bond Cronak held with Targo – a bond born through the venom dripped from Targo’s claws and teeth – he shed no tears when he heard the other wolf’s heart beat its last. The exertion had been too much for the mortally wounded creature. Cronak knew that given time Targo would have recovered from his wounds, but he hadn’t waited long enough before going into battle, and it had cost him.

  Pain flashed up Cronak’s back. The muscles in his neck twisted and popped. He felt something moving under his skin, like tiny creatures swimming in the tide of his blood and tissue. Fire raced through his chest.

  He felt the venom in his blood, Targo’s man-made potion. Cronak opened his hands and stretched his fingers. Silver talons tore though his skin and forced themselves into the wall, ripping into the stone. His vision ran red.

  Forty-Six

  Vellexa was dizzy. She felt weightless. Her captors dragged her across the floor by her bonded wrists. Someone delivered a sharp kick to her ribs, and Vellexa doubled over with pain as the air raced from her lungs.

  The killers had to be from the Phage, or assassins sent by Blackhall. All Vellexa could hope for now was that they’d finish her quickly. She’d never see Kyver again…but maybe that was for the best. She’d never been much of a mother, and he deserved a life without her there to make a mess of things.

  “What’s taking them so long?” one of the assassins growled, an unshaven and well-muscled rogue with ghostly white hair and dead eyes. He held an archaic ring’tai in one hand and wore twin swords strapped across his back.

  “Should I check?” the woman asked.

  “No. Get her out of here, and I’ll…”

  Someone was hurrying up the stairs. The man went quiet and motioned his companion to back away from the door to the dungeon. Vellexa howled as loud as she could through her gag, but she could barely even hear herself. She tried to kick out but the woman easily overpowered her, and without the ability to open her mouth Vellexa couldn’t breathe the Veil. The woman pressed a curved blade to her throat and held her tight while the ghostly man moved against the wall next to the doorway.

  Sammeus ran into the room with his scimitar in hand. He made it two steps when a ring’tai took him in the sword arm. The assassin kicked Sammeus in the back and sent him sprawling to the floor.

  The ghost snatched the ring’tai free from Sammeus’s arm, drew a sword from his back and pinned Sammeus into a sitting position against the wall. He seized her henchman’s long hair with one hand and pushed his head against the stone, then pressed the tip of his blade into Sammeus’s mouth.

  Sammeus looked at Vellexa. His eyes were flooded with fear.

  The man shoved the sword into Sammeus’s mouth and through the back of his skull. Vellexa screamed, but nobody could hear her.

  Forty-Seven

  The mission had turned into a disaster. Black Eagles were exceptionally well trained and loyal, and Slayne had only lost two since forming the group just over a year ago.

  Now he’d three on one mission, and it didn’t make any sense. The table and instruments suggested Targo had been tortured to death, but there he was on the floor in a pool of blood and steel. Raeric’s blade protruded from the criminal’s face. There wasn’t much left of Raeric, either, and Slayne knew he wouldn’t have killed Targo unless he’d been left with no other choice.

  The room was awash with gore and pieces of bodies. The stench was nearly overpowering, and it was impossible to walk in the stone chamber without his boots getting stuck in the thick blood and steaming skin. Slayne hadn’t seen that brand of slaughter in years, and never in a city.

  This wasn’t the work of weapons. Weapons don’t tear people’s heads open or pull their spines out through their stomachs.

  There really wasn’t any way to determine how many had died in that cold chamber. Slayne walked around the room slowly so as not to slip in the morass. Raeric had killed Targo, but that left the obvious question as to what had killed Raeric.

  Slayne didn’t have time for this…but he’d make the time. Maybe that fool he’d dealt with upstairs had killed Raeric before coming up, but Slayne didn’t think so. This was something different. Something inhuman.

  He felt eyes on him. A presence waited somewhere in the dark, and Slayne desperately wanted to go and seek it out.

  No. Now’s not the time.

  Slayne hastily left the bloody manor and rejoined Syn and Vellexa in the commandeered carriage outside. There was work to be done, but Marros Slayne knew he’d be coming back.

  Forty-Eight

  Cronak waited.

  He was wrong – Targo hadn’t finished all of the people in that room, so Cronak had done it himself.

  He watched as the white-haired man departed. His bloodlust had been sated and he needed to rest, lest he overextend himself to the point where he couldn’t regenerate, just as Targo had. He was still weak, and for some reason the light at the top of the stairs terrified him. He wasn’t ready to go there. Not yet.

  Cronak smelled his friend, and knew that he was dead. Sorrow weighed on him. He slept, curled and uneasy at the bottom of the cold steps.

  Forty-Nine

  Ijanna and Kath spent the day in hiding. She needed to leave the city if she wanted to take advantage of the thar’koon, but first she had to make contact with Bordrec and let him know she was still alive. She owed him that much – however gruff and unlikeable he was, he’d been her father’s closest friend.

  They kept to the shadows, and when they did move in public Ijanna played the part of the hooded mute. Ebonmark was a boisterous and busy city filled with foot traffic. She led Kath through the markets, where vendors sold dried meats, smoked chickens, loaves of freshly baked bread, suits of cheap armor, coils of rope, bags of spice, blocks of ice from the Grim Titans and assorted articles of clothing. The air was thick with the smell of meat and woodsmoke, and the mood was somber in spite of the number of people about – many had died in the explosion a few nights ago, an attack the Jlantrians claimed was the fault of the Black Guild.

  The sky threatened rain, and Ijanna tasted ozone in the wind. The crowds thinned as she and Kath neared the residential districts, but they still passed plenty of folks pushing carts loaded with sacks of grain and baskets of fish. The faces Ijanna saw were as grey as the clouds.

  Before she’d spent three days unconscious at Kath’s house Ijanna had arranged to meet Kleiderhorn near the docks, at a shop called “Tark & Sons Exports”. A precursory examination of the area confirmed it wasn’t where they wanted to be, since fresh bloodstains were plainly visible on the outside walls, so dark and thick she wondered if even the coming rains would wash them away. There were a few dockworkers about, but they all seemed oblivious to the signs of recent carnage. Ijanna doubted any of the blood belonged to Bordrec – he was far too careful to ever be caught so unawares – but the thought of lingering in the area disturbed her, so she and Kath took their leave. Unfortunately, she wasn’t really sure where to go next.

  They made their way back to the Harpy’s String. Jovan – Kleiderhorn’s contact there – was nowhere to be found, and neither the plump woman tending bar nor the crowd of regulars had any notion where he’d gone or when he’d return. The fresh ham and biscuits in the Inn smelled delicious, and she was reminded of just how famished she was. Since she only knew of one more individual she could contact in hopes of finding Bordrec – the old man from the alley – Ijanna told Kath to grab a table in the shadowy back corner so they could enjoy a brief rest.

  She felt as though she hadn’t eaten in days, and upon reflection realized that was probably true. An entire day spent hiding while on the move had left her exhausted, and she needed a respite, even if it was to be brief. There were enough people in the String to make Ijanna feel relatively safe, but she kept a wary eye on the door nevertheless. The inn was populated primarily by travelers and merchants, but she saw a few farmers and laborers enjoying large plates of sausage and ham a
nd copious mounds of eggs, black bread and blocks of white cheese. There was no music – it was only early afternoon, and the String never had live entertainment before dark – but the air was loud from conversations and the rattle of plates and mugs.

  Kath returned with two tankards of foamy beer and a single plate piled high with charred ham, bacon and dark crusts of bread. He was an attractive young man, Ijanna decided, tall and muscular, broad of shoulder with a fine chiseled face and thick brown hair. He was friendly, quiet and complacent, but those last two effects were likely due to the bond Ijanna had unintentionally forged between them.

  She should have known better. There was always a barely understood side-effect when a Bloodspeaker used her powers to heal: the recipient of her magic became devoted to her. Normally it was a mild effect which only lasted for a short time. Some Bloodspeakers intentionally mastered the art of healing and positioned themselves as doctors or surgeons so they could acquire bands of devoted slaves, but most mages she’d met only acquired such followers by accident, an unforeseen inconvenience often accompanied by unfortunate consequences. The more power used to heal, the stronger and longer lasting the bond. Luckily it was never permanent, unless multiple healings occurred.

  But this was different. This bond was too powerful to be broken. Kath was gripped by an unstoppable drive to protect her, to help her…to die for her. To separate Kath from her now would likely kill him.

  She knew, because it had happened to her before.

  How could I let this happen again? What came over me?

  She ate and drank ravenously even though the beer wasn’t to her liking; at least the Veil inside her would keep her from getting drunk. Kath ate much slower, and she felt his eyes on her even though he tried to hide it.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he asked after they’d eaten for a time. It was the first thing he’d really said to her all day. He’d just followed her around the city, acting the role of the silent bodyguard without question or complaint.

  “Of course,” Ijanna said once she forced a swallow.