Thief of Lives

by J. C.

  "No lock, so it's latched or bolted from the inside," he whispered to Magiere.

  He pressed slowly and firmly against the door until he could slip the tiny strut through the crack at its frame. Closing his eyes, he slid the strut upward until it reached and raised a latch. He pulled the strut out and placed it into its slot in the box's lid.

  "Too easy," Leesil whispered. "Everyone stay clear of the door."

  Leesil tugged the crossbow's strap over his head and set the weapon upon the ground. He cocked and loaded it, signaling to Vatz to do the same. The boy plopped onto the ground and braced his feet against the bow, working its string into the catch.

  Again, Leesil examined frame and door but found nothing. He leaned against the wall on the door's hinged side. Then he pushed the door open with his right hand and quickly pulled back.

  Nothing happened.

  "If anything, and I mean anything, comes at you or Wynn," Leesil instructed Vatz, "you fire first and both of you get out of the way. Don't get fancy. Aim for the center of its body or the first part you can sight. Pain from the garlic water might buy you a moment, but that's all. If one of these things gets hold of you, it'll snap you in half."

  Vatz blinked, suddenly very still and quiet. He nodded, tight-lipped and determined. Chap rumbled softly, and Leesil grabbed his jaw.

  "You keep your head and watch out for them." He pointed to Wynn and Vatz.

  Chap offered an offended look and growled at the door.

  Wynn suddenly dug in her robe pockets and pulled out a small crystal much like one from a cold lamp. She rubbed it furiously between her hands, and it began to glow.

  "Keep that covered until I tell you otherwise," Leesil admonished.

  Wynn nodded, closing the crystal tightly in both hands. The light muted to a dull orange glow between her fingers.

  Leesil motioned to Magiere, and she slipped around to the door's far side, falchion in hand.

  In close quarters, any target would be near enough that little aiming would be necessary. The crossbow was heavy, but Leesil could still point and squeeze the firing lever with one hand. He gripped it in his left and slipped his right punching blade out of its sheath.

  There was no turning back now.

  Magiere appeared composed, but he knew better. She was the dhampir and played the council with cavalier confidence and mystery for their benefit. But in reality, this was only the second time they'd hunted undeads. He slipped through the door ahead of her.

  As expected, they entered a kitchen, everything neat, clean, and in place. Only a few items of cookware hung on the walls, and most looked old and untouched, having probably been left behind by a previous owner. An immaculate hearth free of ash or char was on the right with a line of rough cupboards to the left. In the room's center was a solid, thick-topped scullery table, yet there were no knives, cleavers, or preparation implements in its block or hanging from its side hooks. There were neither dishes nor food. No bread, no tea, not even a shriveled carrot.

  The kitchen hadn't been used in a long while.

  Leesil led them across to the far side doorway, Magiere close behind him. He stopped long enough to check the entry for anything suspicious and then pushed it open to scan the room for any movement or presence.

  This was the dining chamber. Stone walls were hung with simple tapestries, and an oval cherrywood table and matching chairs filled the room. Two silver candelabra rested upon the table. The candles were all new, having never been lit. Pulled to the ceiling upon its chain was a chandelier, dripping with an array of cut crystals.

  An earsplitting caw filled the dark room, and Leesil crouched low. He felt Magiere's hand clamp on his shoulder from behind as a tinkling sound pulled his attention upward.

  A large raven hopped about the crystal chandelier, flexing its wings, and its black beady eyes stared at them. It cawed again, louder, and Chap growled.

  "Ssh," Leesil warned the hound. He had to quiet the bird quickly.

  A snap and twang came from behind Leesil, and the crystals in the chandelier jangled loudly. The raven dropped with a hollow thump in the middle of the table, impaled through the body with a quarrel.

  Leesil looked back over his shoulder.

  Vatz's crossbow was empty. The boy shrugged. "It was loud."

  "Reload," Leesil whispered back, and rose from his crouch.

  At the room's far end was an open archway, and he stepped around the table toward it.

  Another low growl filled the room, but before Leesil turned to admonish Chap again, two glittering eyes came into view around the side of the entrance.

  A gray wolf as tall as Chap stood in their path, a low rumble issuing from its throat.

  Chap leaped to the tabletop beside Leesil, knocking both candelabra to the floor in a clatter. He answered the wolf with a snarl of his own, jowls back to expose flexing jaws.

  Before Leesil could fire, Chap lunged off the table, and the wolf launched himself forward. They slammed together, knocking the end chair over, as the room filled with sounds of snarls and snapping teeth.

  Leesil shifted back in panic. So much for the element of surprise.

  * * * *

  Chane lay fully clothed upon his bed in the cellar's back room, listening for any sound. Though he heard nothing, his nerves were tightly alert.

  Someone was in the house.

  His consciousness slipped upward through the building until it touched avian thoughts somewhere upon the main floor.

  At first the perspective was disorienting. His raven, Tihko, looked downward from a height, its vision partially obscured by tiny reflections of light in the dark dining chamber. Yes, Chane made out the table clearly now. Tihko was in the chandelier, crystals blocking parts of the room, but why were those crystals sparking softly with light? Twinkling reflections began to move.

  Dim light spread from one side of the room where the half-elf stood.

  It was the first time Chane had truly seen this man. Hair hidden beneath a dark scarf, he was of average height. Surprising, considering his mixed blood, as most elves were taller than humans. Now armored in a leather hauberk, he carried in one hand a loaded crossbow, and the other gripped a strange, wide-pointed blade extending from his fist, the outside edge arching back along his arm.

  Beside the half-elf was the blue-gray hound, its shining eyes peering about the room. Directly behind them was the hunter. At the sight of her, Chane experienced a surge of hunger.

  Back in the kitchen doorway was a young boy clutching a crossbow. A puzzling thing. Chane wondered why the hunter would bring a child into this. The light dimly illuminating the room came from the hands of a young woman in gray robes.

  Chane stiffened on his bed, and in response Tihko thrashed his wings, making Chane's vision through the bird's eyes waver.

  Wynn was in the house.

  Her appearance rattled Chane enough that he nearly lost contact with the raven. He watched the half-elf carefully enter the room, knees slightly bent.

  Tihko's loud caw filled Chane's head. The half-elf dropped low and looked up. Behind him, the boy raised the crossbow, and aimed at the raven—at Chane.

  A shaft of pain pierced Chane through the chest and his vision went black.

  Chane convulsed sharply into a ball, the pain stabbing through to his back. When he thrashed over the bedside, his tiny urn jangled on the floor stones. He pushed himself up to his knees, as the cellar back room snapped into focus.

  Tihko was dead.

  Sounds of snarling and crashing pounded down through the floor from above, and Chane's thoughts tangled. He could slip through the passage into the sewers and let Toret and Sapphire face the hunter and her minions. But what if Toret survived and realized he had run? As long as Toret lived, Chane was his slave. And then there was Wynn.

  He cleared his mind, and reason presented the only possible course of action.

  Chane pulled his long sword from its sheath and headed for the opening to the hidden passage at the base of
the cellar stairs.

  * * * *

  "Don't shoot," Leesil ordered Vatz. "You might hit Chap."

  "I ain't stupid," the boy answered.

  Leesil dropped the crossbow on top of the dining table. He heard Magiere pick it up and follow behind him as he inched toward the whirling tangle of hound and wolf battling in the archway. Chap could handle a wolf, but the fight made enough noise to wake the dead, literally.

  When the wolf twisted away from Chap's lunge, Leesil kicked out hard at it.

  The wolf slammed against the archway's side and lost its footing. Leesil stepped in, swinging his blade downward across the animal's neck. At the last moment, the wolf righted itself, head turning toward Leesil's forward leg.

  Chap darted in, jaws snapping closed over the wolf's snout, and he jerked, pulling its head away. Leesil's blade struck the animal's throat, sinking through fur and flesh, and nearly severing its head. The wolf dropped to the floor, motionless. With one last thrash and snarl, Chap released his grip. Magiere slipped past Leesil through the archway, and he saw the yellow glow of her topaz.

  She groaned. "Anything in this house with ears is certainly awake now."

  "Wait," he said. "Let me."

  She stopped and let him lead. When Leesil looked back, he found Vatz pulling his quarrel out of the raven's body and Wynn, her brow furrowed in apprehension, staring at the wolf's corpse.

  This was not going well at all.

  * * * *

  Alone in the room he usually shared by day with Sapphire, Toret opened his eyes to a distant cawing. His sluggish thoughts cleared.

  Chane's raven was loose in the house, and its racket echoed up from the main floor. Toret remembered his wolf.

  He tried to do as Chane had taught him, tried to see through its eyes, but he caught only bizarre flashes of images passing through its mind. The view through its eyes was disorienting, misty, and kept shifting about.

  Something black dropped from the ceiling, and he barely heard its thud upon the table through the wolf's ears. Then the blue-gray hound appeared on the table, glaring at him with crystal-blue eyes as it snarled.

  To the table's side was a man in leather armor he couldn't see clearly. Then he made out the curved blade along the man's arm.

  Leesil.

  The hound lunged at Toret from the table. He flinched and lost contact with the wolf.

  Toret panicked. The half-blood had found him. Was it still day—or night?

  He forced himself to stay calm. If Leesil was here, then the hunter was with him, and Sapphire might still be dormant.

  She'd been so angry with him as dawn came that he said nothing when she'd stayed in her own room. He rose quickly from the bed. His sword leaned in the room's west corner. Part of him wanted to leave it and return to Ratboy's ways of tooth and nail, but upon leaving the room, he picked up the blade.

  * * * *

  Leesil stepped into the parlor, with the others close behind, and felt the mood inside the house instantly change.

  Colors here meshed in a warmth that surprised him. A tan-and-russet Suman rug covered the floor, and thick brocade draperies enclosed the windows. Mauve velvet divans were placed around the room below paintings of open glades and forests hung upon the walls. As Wynn stepped into the parlor's archway, the light of her crystal further enlivened the room, and Leesil's gaze passed to the back wall. There was a life-size portrait of Sapphire in a rich red gown.

  Wynn examined the portrait. "Someone lives in this space. Can you feel it?"

  This room felt different. The inhabitants never went to the dining chamber or kitchen, but they spent time in here. Down the hallway were only the foyer and front door, and a stairway beginning there led up to the next level. Beneath it was another set of stairs leading below.

  "Up or down?" Magiere asked.

  She still held the crossbow atop her falchion, and her topaz appeared slightly brighter. Chap growled toward the front foyer, lowering his head.

  "Up it is," Leesil said.

  He sheathed his blade and held out his hand to Wynn. She handed him the crystal, and he began working his way down the hall, watching for anything unusual. The last time they'd invaded an undead's lair, he'd tripped a wire and been buried under a rigged cave-in.

  When he reached the foyer, he turned to the stairs leading up. In place of the usual knob on the bottom of the staircase's oak railing was a softly glowing orb. It cast light like that of the sage's cold lamps, only dimmer, and appeared to serve no other purpose than illumination. Leesil turned his attention to the stairs themselves. Again, he found nothing, and that unnerved him.

  "Is it safe?" Magiere asked.

  "I can't find anything," he answered, and it sounded uncertain even to him, but they had to move on. "Step back into the foyer while I look farther up."

  He stepped up the first stair, and a thought occurred to him.

  What would undeads, who saw clearly in the dark, need with a light in the stairwell? He looked down at the orb as his foot touched the next step.

  The orb's light flashed like lightning, and Leesil raised his hand too late.

  Brilliant white stabbed through the backs of his eyes into his skull. He jerked away and his foot slipped. As he fell, his hands clamped over his eyes and he cried out, unable to stop himself.

  His back collided with something that stopped his fall, and he felt arms wrap around him and lower him to the floor. Someone gripped his wrists and pulled his hands away.

  "Leesil?" Magiere's voice asked sharply. "Are you all right?"

  He felt the floor at his back and below his head, and he opened his eyes. Above him wasn't Magiere's pale face but only an oily blackness sparked with swirls of blurred, mute colors.

  He was not all right. He was blind.

  * * * *

  Toret peered out of his door. There was no one in the hall. He hoped Chane had been awakened by the noise below. He crept down the hall and slipped into Sapphire's room, closing the door quietly.

  She was still dormant, lying atop her peach velvet comforter, and he paused at the sight of her creamy white face and dark-blond ringlets resting upon her cheeks. Adoration swelled inside him. Toret put his fingers over her soft mouth.

  "My dear," he whispered. "You must get up."

  Her sapphire-blue eyes opened in surprise. But when she saw him, they darkened in temper.

  "If you've come to beg for love, you can get out!"

  "Shush," he said, touching her mouth again. "Quiet, my sweet. The hunter is in the house."

  The expression on her face shifted to shock and then cunning. Indeed, it gave him some relief. It meant she understood their situation.

  "How could she find us?"

  Toret shook his head. "You need to escape. Chane, Tibor, and I will take care of this."

  "How can I get out if she's already here?"

  "The passageway behind the stairs, remember?" he answered, waiting for her realization. "Go down to the cellar and into the tunnel we made that leads to the sewers. I've heard the exits to the sea are closed, but you can travel a safe distance in that direction and climb out a grate in the city streets. I will find you later."

  She blinked at him as if he spoke a foreign language.

  "Drag one of my gowns through a sewer? My feet? Through that filth and stench?"

  A pained cry echoed up through the house.

  "What was that?" she asked.

  "With luck, one of our trespassers was caught in Chane's trap. Now you must get out of the house."

  She wore only a silk nightgown, so he hurried to the closet and grabbed the nearest gown.

  "You can't attract any undue attention in the city now. Put this on and leave quickly."

  "I'm not wearing that. You bought that; I didn't. Midnight blue makes me look sallow."

  "Then you won't care if it gets dragged through a sewer," he said, and tossed the gown on the bed.

  He needed to make sure Chane was awake and couldn't waste any more time. He w
as on the verge of outright ordering her into the sewer when she smiled.

  "Of course, you're right," she said. "I don't mean to be difficult. How will you find me later?"

  "I'll find you. Now get dressed and go."

  "I'll need some coin," she stated with a stubborn look.

  Toret sighed deeply. "There's a purse on my wardrobe."

  * * * *

  Magiere caught Leesil as he fell. Her eyes hurt, and everything she looked at was speckled with spots of light, but otherwise she could see.

  "I'm blind," Leesil said in a wild tone. "Magiere, I'm blind."

  Leesil had caught the globe's full flash in his face. Vatz seemed tense and on guard, rubbing his eyes, but he was unhurt, as was Wynn. Chap had been closer. He whined, shaking his head and pawing at his face, but from the way he looked about, responding to the movement of the others, he was able to see.

  Magiere pulled Leesil up to sit and kept one arm at his back for support. She didn't know what to do and hated the uncertainty.

  "Hold on," she whispered to him, and turned to the young sage. "Can you help him?"

  Wynn picked up the crystal that Leesil had dropped and stood examining the globe more closely now.

  "It's still intact," she whispered.

  "What is?" Magiere asked.

  "The globe. I do not know how it is triggered, but it could be almost any of the magics… conjury, thaumaturgy, maybe even alchemy by artificing."

  "Is it safe now?" Magiere asked with more insistence.

  "I do not know."

  Vatz jerked the globe free from the railing with both hands, dropped it, and stomped on it. The globe shattered like a mere eggshell upon the floor.

  "It's safe now," he said.

  Wynn sighed and knelt down beside Leesil.

  "Wynn, can you help him?" Magiere asked.

  "Blindness from a flash is usually temporary and passes in little time," the sage answered. "Apprentices have suffered similar accidents during first works of magic."

  "We don't have a little time," Leesil growled. "If you can do something… then do it!"

  Wynn slipped her hand around Leesil's back and nodded to Magiere that she had him supported. Magiere stood up. She reversed the falchion in her grip so she could still hold it and aim the crossbow.